The Canopian Journal

The Codex Gigas (AKA The Devils Bible)

2011-12-11T11:18:00.000Z

Another enigmatic manuscript. Created in the 12th century it has a most strange history. The book is 92 cm x 50 cm and the largest known medieval manuscript in the world. It consists of the Bible with demonic exorcist spells next to the many pages and strange illustrations including a full page illustration of the Devil not presiding over hell, but, seemingly enclosed in a cell.

The legend of its creation says that a monk did something so bad he was sentenced to death. It is never said what he did. He pleaded for his life and said that if he was spared he would create a manuscript that included the Bible and all human knowledge and would do so in one night. This was accepted, but, thought impossible. During the night he realised he could not do it and so made a pact with the Devil. In the morning it was completed.

It has a strange history, was given by the Black Monks to the White Monks, captured in battles and finally ended up in Prague.

Not long ago research was done into it. Samples of ink were taken from it and analyzed. At the time of its writing two types of ink were used, one made from metal and the other from crushed insect nests. It was found that it was made from crushed insect nests and the same throughout indicating it was done in one place. Next a graphologist analysed the writing to find out if it was done by one person or a few. The findings showed it had been created by one person. Considering how long one line of text takes to copy this indicates it could have taken between 30 to 50 years to write.

Wikipedia entry on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Gigas
The complete Codex Gigas in images

Thae Voynich manuscript - The Most Mysterious Manuscript In The Worl.

2011-09-30T07:02:00.000+01:00

Carbon dated to the 15th Century it has baffled cryptographers throughout the world including those that cracked the Enigma Code. Many people come to the conclusion it is a hoax created to sell a manuscript to collectors, but, if so it would take many years to create it to the extent that it is logical within itself and pointless as no one at the time period of the hoaxer could tell the difference between a simple hoax and something as elaborate as this.

Wikipedia Article on it.
Downloadable Photos in various sizes

The book in readable form:

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward | Official Trailer- [ Extended ] Zeitgeist

2010-10-04T14:56:00.000+01:00

Coming Soon!

The Official UK UFO Files From The National Archives

2010-02-19T08:56:00.000Z

The Government run National Archives in the UK has released this month (Feb. 2010) new files under the freedom of information act. Here is the Channel 4 news clip of the story:

And here is the link to the files themselves on the UK Government's National Archives. There is a video on this page along with links to download some high detailed and large file size photos plus a pdf highlights guide.

GMail Goes "https-only" By Default

2010-01-13T16:10:00.000Z

And I bet not many people knew you could vamp up your security with Googlemail by opting to access it via HTTPS, I didn't until I fell across it by accident when I scrolled right to the bottom of my Preferences.

http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/gmail-goes-https-only-default-011310

Virtual Reality Transcends To Reality - A Second Life Saga

2010-01-09T16:49:00.000Z

During my short time in Second Life I have become used to Companies such as IBM etc. having a virtual presence in Second Life, but, I have never come across something in Second Life being accepted as real in the Real World. This has just happened to our little Zeitgeist Group on Second Life. Let me explain.

The Zeitgeist Movement is split up into many Chapters spread around the World. For instance there is a Welsh Chapter, a London Chapter, a New York Chapter etc. Anyone can start a Chapter and it has it's own section on the Zeitgeist Web Site. On second Life a person who's Avatar name is Celeborn set up a sim called Zeitgeist with a Group to go along with it. It is a very beautiful sim with some wonderful people resident on it. We've been expanding its activities including bringing out a magazine and of course also having a bit of fun with Celeborn, his lady Galadriel and I chasing each other around the sim with bows and arrows and swords (we've all been into role play). I have just found out that the Zeitgeist Group on Second Life has been officially accepted as an official Chapter of the Zeitgeist Movement. Virtual reality has become real :)

ID Cards - a World View

2009-12-09T16:00:00.000Z

ID Cards - a World View by Nathan Allonby

The other day the subject of ID cards came up in a comment in someones blog here. It was stated that ID cards had been in Europe for very many years and hardly anyone blinks an eye at them taking them completely for granted. Europeans are often amazed at the attitude toward them of folk here in Britain about them, how so many people are against them and astounded that we can check into an hotel without having to produce one or any form of ID.

Things are changing though. The National ID Card scheme seems to be going ahead albeit with many people putting hurdles in its way. It is not just a matter of ID cards though, the type proposed link into an all pervading citizen data base that for the first time links all the separate data bases together. It goes further still though as these cards will have RFID technology embedded into them meaning that they will be able to be read from a distance and the person carrying them tracked wherever they go whether they actually use them or not.

Even more worrying though is that although to folks in Britain it may seem just a British concern there are nations throughout the world that, if they have not already implemented these types of ID card, are planning to implement them by 2012. This is not just a National ID card scheme, it is a world wide ID card scheme and some of the main players of this cause who have been planning it from way before 9/11 are the World Bank and the IMF.

The other day I read a very revealing article about it all in Nexus Magazine, it was a cut down version of the article "ID Cards - A World View by Nathan Alonby" which can be read in full by clicking on the link at the beginning of this Blog. I have not reproduced it here as there are many important links leading from that article and the site Global Research where it appears is well worth a visit anyway.

The Love Police

2009-12-04T08:44:00.000Z

WE WANT NIGEL, WE WANT NIGEL, TURN THEM ON NIGEL!

2009-12-03T17:56:00.000Z

Water - A Fascinating Video of How Water Has Memory

2009-12-01T09:28:00.000Z

Colt put up a link to this quite some time ago, but, the actual video has never been shown here. I find it fascinating how much of this video also harmonises if not adds to the research of Victor Schauberger, the water wizard.

twtfast Phishing Scam on Twitter

2009-11-16T16:01:00.000Z

I know one person who's already fallen for it. There is a site called twtfast http://twtfast.info/ that promises to bump up your following. You are required to give them your Username and Password. Once you do that they have control over your account and access to your email address and mobile phone number if you have activated that plus any other details. A bot will then put out a message about every hour from your account making it look like you are doing it and will say such things as "I got 100 followers using http://4gk.com/2749 . Check it out!"

As it seems to come from you it means your friends and followers trusting you may very well also sign up and so it spreads. Normally, when their userbase reaches a certain number they will switch to spamming a product or products for real using your account or even sell your robotised account on to other spammers or virus spreaders.

If you have fallen for this you can try to change your Password unless twtfast has already done so and locked you out of it.

Picture Perfect - Memories: ~The Tomb of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, Konya~

2009-10-24T10:01:00.000+01:00

The photo is mine taken on 24 August 2003, the words are those of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi.

The day I've died, my pall is moving on...
But do not think my heart is still on earth!
Don't weep and pity me: "Oh woe, how awful!"
You fall in devil's snare - woe, that is awful!
Don't cry "Woe, parted!" at my burial...
For me this is the time of joyful meeting!
Don't say "Farewell!" when I'm put in the grave...
A curtain is it for eternal bliss.
You saw "descending"...now look at the rising!
Is setting dangerous for sun and moon?
To you it looks like setting, but it's rising;
The coffin seems a jail, yet it means freedom.
Which seed fell on the earth that did not grow there?
Why do you doubt the fate of human seed?
What bucket came not filled from out the cistern?
Why should the Yusuf "Soul" then fear this well?
Close here your mouth and open it on that side
So that your hymns may sound in Where-no-place!

Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi
from the Divan-i Shams

Sand Art

2009-10-20T19:41:00.000+01:00

This is the video I recently uploaded to my videos, it may be of better quality here. I''m afraid I don't have any info on the beautiful young lady who performs the art. Viewing full screen is preferable.

A Talk By Naomi Klein on Her Book "The Shock Doctrine"

2009-09-05T16:49:00.000+01:00

This is a talk given given by Naomi Klein at the First Unitarian Church in Portland on December 7 2007 about her book "The Shock Doctrine". Naomi is one of the finest reporters of her time, nothing she writes cannot be proved. I have mentioned her before in a few Blogs and here you can see her in the flesh so to speak. Excuse the quality, sound and vision get out of sync, but, the sound and message is clear.

For those in Britain go to Chanel4.com where you can watch a documentary on the Shock Doctrine that was broadcast on More4 on Sept 1 2009 and which presently can be viewed for 26 days more.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-shock-doctrine/4od#2934729

!!!Warning - Monsanto...GM Crops...Pesticides...Conspiracy - Warning!!!

2009-09-02T17:55:00.000+01:00

Nostradamus - Al Stewart

2009-08-03T14:07:00.000+01:00

NOSTRADAMUS lyrics AL STEWART
In the east the wind is blowing the boats across the sea
And their sails will fill the morning and their cries ring out to me
Oh, Oh
Oh, the more it changes, the more it stays the same
And the hand just re-arranges the players in the game

Oh, I had a dream, it seemed I stood alone
And the veil of all the years
Goes sinking from my eyes like a stone

A king shall fall and put to death by the English parliament shall be
Fire and plague to London come in the year of six and twenties three
An emperor of France shall rise who will be born near Italy
His rule shall cost his empire dear, Napoloron his name shall be
From Castile does Franco come and the Government driven out shall be
An English king seeks divorce, and from his throne cast down is he
One named Hister shall become a captain of Greater Germany
No law does this man observe and bloody his rise and fall shall be

Man, man, your time is sand, your ways are leaves upon the sea
I am the eyes of Nostradamus, all your ways are known to me
Man, man, your time is sand, your ways are leaves upon the sea
I am the eyes of Nostradamus, all your ways are known to me

In the new lands of America three brothers now shall come to power
Two alone are born to rule but all must die before their hour
Two great men yet brothers not make the north united stand
Its power be seen to grow, and fear possess the eastern lands
Three leagues from the gates of Rome a Pope named Pol is doomed to die
A great wall that divides a city at this time is cast aside
These are the signs I bring to you to show you when the time is nigh
Man, man, your time is sand, your ways are leaves upon the sea
I am the eyes of Nostradamus, all your ways are known to me

LyricsBay | NOSTRADAMUS lyrics AL STEWART

The Missing Apollo Videotapes And Data

2009-07-14T08:50:00.000+01:00

It's the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing and here is some information that will probably not be talked about in any of the forthcoming TV programs about it.

During the first moon landing a large amount of video was transmitted to NASA. The pictures captured were taken by a specially designed TV camera using Slow Scan TV (SSTV) and were of high quality. These were the pictures shown on the NASA monitors, but, they were then rescanned and converted to a format capable of being transmitted to ordinary home TV. It was these lower resolution images which we saw and which are always shown on TV or in newspapers etc. As technology has advanced we are now capable of taking these original high definition images and further enhancing them as was expected. Unfortunately a little problem has occurred, all the original images have disappeared. Nearly 700 boxes of these images have vanished into the twilight zone or are sitting in someones house.

As the images were coming in and being displayed on NASA monitors someone took Polaroid photos of them and these are the only records of some of the images that have survived. The 6 videos below are a recording of an interview with Richard C. Hoagland on Coast To Coast AM and include images of the moon etc. talked about. Richard C. Hoagland is a former space science museum curator; a former NASA consultant, and during the historic Apollo Missions to the Moon, was science adviser to Walter Cronkite and CBS News. For over 20 years, Hoagland has been leading an outside scientific team in a critically acclaimed independent analysis of possible intelligently-designed artifacts on Mars. Richard and his team's investigations have been quietly extended to include over 30 years of previously hidden data from NASA, Soviet, and Pentagon missions to the Moon. Still images can be found here and on his site you will find much interesting information.

Alarming New Hospital Phone Practice

2009-07-08T19:11:00.000+01:00

Some time ago I wrote a Blog about a phone scam where you could be tricked into pressing a number when you receive a call which then connects you to a premium rate line. There are far worse ones that people have been warned about that hands over your phone to the caller in such a way that they can then make loads of International calls, premium rate calls etc. on your account and you may not find out about it for up to three months when your next bill arrives. It was with shock today that I leaned of a very dangerous practice that has started that could have very bad consequences.

My mother was telling me that this morning she received a phone call from someone with what sounded like an Australian accent. "Are you Mrs. xxx?" he said, "If you are press 1." Following instructions she pressed 1.

I was aghast at this. "I've told you, when you get a phone call from someone you don't know that tells you to press a number, don't do it." and explained why again. Anyway, she had pressed one and then heard "This is such and such hospital reminding you about your appointment tomorrow at such and such time. If you can't make it press...."

OK, so this time it was Innocent, but, after publicity of so many phone scams and now hospitals using auto dialing and messaging and being directed by a computer to press buttons before you even know who or what they are, there is a great danger of people, especially the old and vulnerable, falling foul of real phone scams again thinking they are official.

Not only that, but, evidently hospitals are doing this due to over booking to meet targets set by government. If you were to be out and miss the call, or worse, take the call and think it is a phone scam so put the phone down without pressing that button, you would be bumped of the queue, lose your appointment and have to start over again. One up to the hospital, it was your fault you lost your appointment so they meet their target and get their money.

Fraudsters, however, are quick off the mark and will very soon be taking advantage of this new practice.

"Hello, is that Mrs. xxx? If so press #4....."

Creative Challenge ~Salt Of The Earth~

2009-06-30T08:37:00.001+01:00

Both Alexander The Great
And Cleopatra
Gazed and walked upon this salt lake
When they visited the Oracle of Amun
At Siwa Oasis.
Yet
Next to it run fresh water springs
Bubbling up from deep within the earth
Water that one fell as rain upon
The heads of Pharaohs.
It makes its way to the lake
And leaves behind
The salt of the Earth.

Big Brother Is Watching - Important

2009-06-23T08:55:00.001+01:00

Iran's Web Spying Aided By Western Technology

The Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world's most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale.

Interviews with technology experts in Iran and outside the country say Iranian efforts at monitoring Internet information go well beyond blocking access to Web sites or severing Internet connections.

Instead, in confronting the political turmoil that has consumed the country this past week, the Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts.

The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture, confirmed. AG, the German conglomerate, and

The "monitoring center," installed within the government's telecom monopoly, was part of a larger contract with Iran that included mobile-phone networking technology, Mr. Roome said.

"If you sell networks, you also, intrinsically, sell the capability to intercept any communication that runs over them," said Mr. Roome.

The sale of the equipment to Iran by the joint venture, called Nokia Siemens Networks, was previously reported last year by the editor of an Austrian information-technology Web site called Futurezone.

The Iranian government had experimented with the equipment for brief periods in recent months, but it had not been used extensively, and therefore its capabilities weren't fully displayed -- until during the recent unrest, the Internet experts interviewed said.

"We didn't know they could do this much," said a network engineer in Tehran. "Now we know they have powerful things that allow them to do very complex tracking on the network."

Deep packet inspection involves inserting equipment into a flow of online data, from emails and Internet phone calls to images and messages on social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Every digitized packet of online data is deconstructed, examined for keywords and reconstructed within milliseconds. In Iran's case, this is done for the entire country at a single choke point, according to networking engineers familiar with the country's system. It couldn't be determined whether the equipment from Nokia Siemens Networks is used specifically for deep packet inspection.

All eyes have been on the Internet amid the crisis in Iran, and government attempts to crack down on information. The infiltration of Iranian online traffic could explain why the government has allowed the Internet to continue to function -- and also why it has been running at such slow speeds in the days since the results of the presidential vote spurred unrest.

Users in the country report the Internet having slowed to less than a tenth of normal speeds. Deep packet inspection delays the transmission of online data unless it is offset by a huge increase in processing power, according to Internet experts.

Iran is "now drilling into what the population is trying to say," said Bradley Anstis, director of technical strategy with Marshal8e6 Inc., an Internet security company in Orange, Calif. He and other experts interviewed have examined Internet traffic flows in and out of Iran that show characteristics of content inspection, among other measures. "This looks like a step beyond what any other country is doing, including China."

China's vaunted "Great Firewall," which is widely considered the most advanced and extensive Internet censoring in the world, is believed also to involve deep packet inspection. But China appears to be developing this capability in a more decentralized manner, at the level of its Internet service providers rather than through a single hub, according to experts. That suggests its implementation might not be as uniform as that in Iran, they said, as the arrangement depends on the cooperation of all the service providers.

The difference, at least in part, has to do with scale: China has about 300 million Internet users, the most of any country. Iran, which has an estimated 23 million users, can track all online communication through a single location called the Telecommunication Infrastructure Co., part of the government's telecom monopoly. All of the country's international links run through the company.

Separately, officials from the U.S. embassy in Beijing on Friday met with Chinese officials to express concerns about a new requirement that all PCs sold in the China starting July 1 be installed with Web-filtering software.

If a government wants to control the flow of information across its borders it's no longer enough to block access to Web sites hosted elsewhere. Now, as sharing online images and messages through social-networking sites has become easy and popular, repressive regimes are turning to technologies that allow them to scan such content from their own citizens, message by message.

Human-rights groups have criticized the selling of such equipment to Iran and other regimes considered repressive, because it can be used to crack down on dissent, as evidenced in the Iran crisis. Asked about selling such equipment to a government like Iran's, Mr. Roome of Nokia Siemens Networks said the company "does have a choice about whether to do business in any country. We believe providing people, wherever they are, with the ability to communicate is preferable to leaving them without the choice to be heard."

Countries with repressive governments aren't the only ones interested in such technology. Britain has a list of blocked sites, and the German government is considering similar measures. In the U.S., the National Security Agency has such capability, which was employed as part of the Bush administration's "Terrorist Surveillance Program." A White House official wouldn't comment on if or how this is being used under the Obama administration.

The Australian government is experimenting with Web-site filtering to protect its youth from online pornography, an undertaking that has triggered criticism that it amounts to government-backed censorship.

Content inspection and filtering technology are already common among corporations, schools and other institutions, as part of efforts to block spam and viruses, as well as to ensure that employees and students comply with computer-use guidelines. Families use filtering on their home computers to protect their children from undesirable sites, such as pornography and gambling.

Internet censoring in Iran was developed with the initial justification of blocking online pornography, among other material considered offensive by the regime, according to those who have studied the country's censoring.

Iran has been grappling with controlling the Internet since its use moved beyond universities and government agencies in the late 1990s. At times, the government has tried to limit the country's vibrant blogosphere -- for instance, requiring bloggers to obtain licenses from the government, a directive that has proved difficult to enforce, according to the OpenNet Initiative, a partnership of universities that study Internet filtering and surveillance. (The partners are Harvard University, the University of Toronto, the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford.)

Beginning in 2001, the government required Internet service providers to install filtering systems, and also that all international connections link to a single gateway controlled by the country's telecom monopoly, according to an OpenNet study.

Iran has since blocked Internet users in the country from more than five million sites in recent years, according to estimates from the press-freedom group Reporters Without Borders.

In the 2005 presidential election, the government shut down the Internet for hours, blaming it on a cyberattack from abroad, a claim that proved false, according to several Tehran engineers.

Several years ago, research by OpenNet discovered the government using filtering equipment from a U.S. company, Secure Computing Corp. Due to the U.S. trade embargo on Iran, in place since the 1979 Islamic revolution overthrew the U.S.-backed shah, that was illegal. Secure Computing, now owned by McAfee Inc., at the time denied any knowledge of the use of its products in Iran. McAfee said due diligence before the acquisition revealed no contract or support being provided in Iran.

Building online-content inspection on a national scale and coordinated at a single location requires hefty resources, including manpower, processing power and technical expertise, Internet experts said.

Nokia Siemens Networks provided equipment to Iran last year under the internationally recognized concept of "lawful intercept," said Mr. Roome. That relates to intercepting data for the purposes of combating terrorism, child pornography, drug trafficking and other criminal activities carried out online, a capability that most if not all telecom companies have, he said.

The monitoring center that Nokia Siemens Networks sold to Iran was described in a company brochure as allowing "the monitoring and interception of all types of voice and data communication on all networks." The joint venture exited the business that included the monitoring equipment, what it called "intelligence solutions," at the end of March, by selling it to Perusa Partners Fund 1 LP, a Munich-based investment firm, Mr. Roome said. He said the company determined it was no longer part of its core business.

UK MObile Phone Directory - Privacy and Opt Out

2009-06-22T08:58:00.000+01:00

A site has started up in the UK called 118800 which is operating a directory for mobile phones. If you have ever submitted your name and address and mobile phone number to a firm either on line, over the phone or on a physical form then it is highly likely that your details have been sold to this company. It is now easier to phone a mobile user if you don't know their number. What happens is that you go to the above site, put in the name and address of the person you want to contact, if they have the mobile number of that person they send them a text. If they reply to the text the person who is trying to contact you is charged �1 and put through.

It is still being argued over whether this is a grave misuse of the Data Protection act. You can opt out, but, it is argued by many people that you should opt in not opt out. If you wish to opt out then go HERE and enter your details...curses be upon them

David Sereda – NASA's Dilemma Caught on Tape - UFOs Aliens?

2009-04-07T09:34:00.001+01:00

UFOs is a subject I tend to stay away from mainly due to so much hype over very blurred images that could have many explanations. This video which I stumbled on, however, made me sit up and get my brain working. In fact I downloaded it, converted it into a DVD and took it around to a friends to watch and discus.

It is a presentation by David Sereda which includes his interview with Astronaut Gordon Cooper. The most startling part of it though is NASA footage of an event some years back. NASA had launched a satellite to do experiments with using the Earth's magnetic field to generate power. They lowered from the satellite an antenna 12 miles long that was designed to interact with the Earth's magnetic field much like a generator. The theory worked and the second part of the experiment was to do with charging up the antenna with electricity as this should then create ion propulsion so pushing the satellite away from Earth. The application of this was not just a means of propulsion to escape Earth's gravity, but, could also be used on space stations to keep them in orbit so saving millions of dollars of fuel. Something went wrong however.

During charging, either due to miscalculations of the Earth's electrical field of even cosmic background radiation, the antenna overloaded, fried and broke free. NASA filmed the antenna in free fall and at 72 miles distance something odd was observed. The camera used had the highest quality lens which could focus on anything close up to infinity simultaneously. It could also capture light ranging into the high ultra-violet. The spectrum we see in is quite narrow and the ultra-violet frequency is far wider than the narrow spectrum we are used to so normally we miss out on many things. This camera catches them though.

The camera shows the 12 mile long antenna 72 miles away, but, along with the antenna we see very many disk like pulsating shapes coming in from all directions. Some of these disks pass behind the antenna and as the length of the antenna is known the estimated minimum size of these disks can be measured, some are at least 2.5 miles large. Other film show them to converge and form a circle, stop and light up with a pulsating light...except for one that enters the middle of the circle almost invisible then stop and light up brightly with a steady luminescence.

David's explanation is that these UFOs are phase shifting their substance to the point where they have zero mass and that the pulsating bright disks are really the energy surrounding an object seen in the ultra-violet. He reckons that with normal mass you are restricted in what speed you can attain as any high acceleration or maneuvers would create destructive G forces at high speed. If the object were to be phased shifted to zero mass, however, high speed maneuvers and acceleration would be possible. I am not entirely convinced that what we are seeing are crafts however.

Look at the way they are maneuvering, there is definitely intelligence involved, but, the impression I get is it is the same sort of intelligence that is observed in pods of porpoise or whales especially seen during times of feeding. Looking at these videos I cannot help thinking that we are observing life forms way beyond our comprehension, life forms that see, operate and communicate in the ultra-violet wavelengths and sustain themselves by absorbing surplus energy directly. That antenna could to them have been a bright beacon advertising ample spare food in that locality. If true then many sitings throughout history including Biblical times become clearer. First contact could have been happening for millennium, but, it was too far outside our concepts for us to be aware of, or at least we gave it other explanations.

Anyway, on with the film. Note, it looks as if there is nothing happening at first, just a black screen. Have patience. Also, toward the end they forget to change video feed from DVD player to camera so you just hear audio for a while with "PLAY" across the screen, don't try to click on it :)

Hemp For Victory

2009-03-22T12:05:00.001Z

This is the story of hemp in all its forms, its history, the amazing number of products that can be made for it and its entanglement with law. It was originally legal to grow it in virtually all countries of the world including the USA and George Washington himself grew and encouraged others to grow it to make America independent from hemp imports from Europe and the rest of the world. After the alcohol prohibition came to an end there were departments in the US government with noting to do so the law to make Hemp illegal was passed. It was not only passed for that reason, but, due to new automated ways of harvesting and processing it hemp could have taken over from the cotton industry and also the high grade fuel that could be made from its oil threatened the petrol chemical industry. Paper made from it is far superior to paper made from trees and doesn't require all the dangerous chemicals used to make paper from trees. Building materials can be made from it and if it were used again not a single tree need ever be cut down again. The number of uses will become apparent in the following videos.

America is still one of the few nations to ban the growing of hemp and has to import it all from abroad. The law to prohibit its growth took 90 seconds to debate and pass and it was based on downright lies and ignorance. Yet, during the second world war the US department of agriculture wanted US farmers to grow it again.

The first short film, Hemp For Victory, was produced by the USDA during WW II, it disappeared after that and even searches of the Library of Congress didn't turn it up. It was as if it never existed. After further searches it was found tucked away in a dusty cellar of the Library of Congress.

The second film is the History Of Marijuana and its many documented uses over thousands of years.

The third film, Emperor of Hemp is mainly about Jack Herer, author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes. It is his story, the story of how the book was written and his work to overturn vicious laws to do with hemp and his research into all the thousands of products that can be made from it. Indeed, he even reckoned that the growing and use of Hemp could save the world.

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.joost.com/249i7ew/t/Emperor-of-Hemp-The-Jack-Herer-Story"&amp;amp;gt;Emperor of Hemp: The Jack Herer Story&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

Canada Bans Entery of George Galloway (For Arranging Aid for Gaza?)

2009-03-21T10:01:00.001Z

One of the most disturbing interviews I've seen took place last night on Channel 4 news. The Neo-Con government in Canada has labeled George Galloway a terrorist and banned him from entering Canada. He was due to give talks to peace organisations including invitations to talk by Christian Churches. The instigator of this ban is Meir Weinsten who is the national director of the Canadian branch of the extremist group, the Jewish Defense League. Below are to video clips, the first is the Channel 4 report, the second is the interview of George Galloway and Meir Weinsten. Toward the end of the second interview Weinsten declares that if Galloway manages to speak to anyone in Canada by any means the Canadian Government will monitor and investigate any organisation or individual including Christian Churches who aid or listen to him. I leave it to you to judge who the extremist, terrorist and opponent to free speech is in this situation.

I'm As Mad As Hell

2009-03-11T20:22:00.000Z

From the film Network which I've just finished watching. Boy what a film!

Zeitgeist: Addendum

2009-03-02T14:26:00.001Z

Two links you will find interesting, The Zeitgeist Movement and The Venus Project The Goal of The Zeitgeist Movement

The Means is the End:

We intend to restore the fundamental necessities and environmental awareness of the species through the avocation of the most current understandings of who and what we truly are, coupled with how science, nature and technology (rather than religion, politics and money) hold the keys to our personal growth, not only as individual human beings, but as a civilization, both structurally and spiritually. The central insights of this awareness is the recognition of the Emergent and Symbiotic elements of natural law and how aligning with these understandings as the bedrock of our personal and social institutions, life on earth can and will flourish into a system which will continuously grow in a positive way, where negative social consequences, such as social stratification, war, biases, elitism and criminal activity will be constantly reduced and, idealistically, eventually become nonexistent within the spectrum of human behavior itself.

This possibility is, of course, very difficult for most humans to consider, for we have been conditioned by society to think that crime, corruption and dishonesty is "the way it is" and that there will always be people who want to abuse, hurt and take advantage of others. Religion is the largest promoter of this propaganda, for the "us and them" or "good and evil" mentality promotes this false assumption.
The reality is that we live in a society that produces Scarcity. The consequence of this scarcity is that human beings must behave in self preserving ways, even if it means they have to cheat and steal in order to get what they want. Our research has concluded that Scarcity is one of the most fundamental causes of aberrant human behavior, while also leading to complex forms of neurosis in other ways. A statistical look at drug addiction, crime and incarceration statistics, finds that poverty and unhealthy social conditions comprise the life experience of those who engage in such behavior.

Human beings are not good or bad... they are running, forever changing compositions of the life experience(s) that influences them. The "quality" of a human being ( if there was such a thing ) is directly related to the upbringing and thus belief systems they have been conditioned into.

This simple reality has been grossly overlooked and today people primitively think that competition, greed and corruption are "hardwired" elements of human behavior and, in turn, we must have prisons, police and hence a hierarchy of differential control in order for society to deal with these "tendencies". This is totally illogical and false.

The bottom line is that in order to change things for the better fundamentally, you must begin to address root causes. Our current society's system of "punishment" is outmoded, inhumane, and unproductive. When a serial killer is caught, most people jump up and down and scream for the death of that person. This is backwards. A truly sane society, which understands what we are and how our value systems are created, would take the individual and learn the reasons behind his or her violent actions. This information would then go to a research department which considers how to stop such conditions from occurring through education.

It is time to stop the patchwork. It is time to begin a new social approach which is updated to present day knowledge. Sadly, society today is still largely based on outmoded, superstitious dispositions and resolutions.

It is also important to point out that there are no utopias or endings. All evidence points to perpetual change on all levels. In turn, it is our personal actions everyday of our lives that mold and perpetuate the social systems we have in place. Yet, paradoxically, it is also our environmental influences which create our perspectives and hence world views. Therefore, true change will come not only from adjusting your personal understandings and decisions, but equally from changing the social structures that influence these understandings and decisions.

The elite power systems are little affected in the long run by traditional protest and political movements. We must move beyond these 'establishment rebellions' and work with a tool much more powerful:
We will stop supporting the system, while constantly advocating knowledge, peace, unity and compassion. We cannot "fight the system". Hate, anger and the 'war' mentality are failed means for change, for they perpetuate the same tools the corrupt, established power systems use to maintain control to begin with.

The Distortion and Paralysis:

When we understand that all systems are Emergent and constantly in a state of evolution, along with the reality that we are all Symbiotically connected to nature and each other in the most simple yet profound ways, forcing the realization that our personal integrity is only as high as the integrity of the rest of society, we then see how twisted and backwards our social establishments are and how their perpetuation is largely the cause of the social instability in society. For example, the Monetary System has been long deemed a positive force in society due to its claim to produce incentive and progress. In actuality, the monetary system has become a vehicle for division and totalitarian control.

It is the ultimate form of "Divide and Conquer" for at its very core are the assumptions that (1) We must fight each other in order to survive. (2) Humans must have this reward "Incentive" to do anything meaningful.

As far as Number 1 (We must fight each other in order to survive.), this characteristic of 'competition' in the system guarantees corruption in society on every level, for the basis is "us against them". Many argue that the "free market system" is good... but it is corrupt in the modern day due to bad policies, favoritism, bailouts, etc. They assume that if a "pure" free market was allowed to flourish then it would be okay. This is false, for what you are seeing today IS the Free market at work, with all its differential advantage and corruption. No laws will ever stop the insider trading, collusion, monopoly, labor abuse, pollution, planned obsolescence or the like... this is what the competition based system produces without fail, for it is based on the premise of taking advantage of others for profit. Period.

We must begin to transition out of these oppressive ideals and move towards a system which is "designed" to support human beings... not force them to fight in order to survive. As far as Number 2, (Humans must have this reward "Incentive" to do anything meaningful.) this is just a sad and an incredibly negative perspective of the human being in general. To assume that a person must be "structurally motivated" or hence "forced" into doing anything, is just absurd. Think back to when you were a child and had no idea what money even was. You played, were curious and did many things... why? Because you wanted to. However, as time goes on in our system, that natural curiosity and self-motivation is stripped away from people, as they are forced to conform to the specialized, compartmentalized, nearly predefined labor system in order to survive. This, in turn, often creates a natural rebellion within the person due to the forced obligation, and this is how we came up with "leisure" and "work" separations. The laziness assumed to exist by the monetary system proponents (who claim it produces incentive) do not recognize this. In a true society, people would follow their natural inclinations and work to contribute to society not because they are "paid" for it, but because they have a greater awareness which recognizes that contributing to society helps them just as much as everyone else. This is the heightened state of awareness we hope to communicate. Your reward for contributing to society is the well being of that society... which, in turn, furthers your well being.

Now, putting things into perspective, it is important to understand that our world is currently run, undeniably, by a small group of dominant men in high positions of those institutions which are most dominant in society- Business and Finance. The establishment of government is in tandem with the influence and power of corporations and banks. The life blood is money, which is, in fact, an illusion that now has little relevance to society and serves as a tool for manipulation and division along a kind of social organization that guarantees elitism, crime, war and social stratification.

Simultaneously, individuals are taught that being "correct" is what creates their value as human beings. This state of being "correct" is directly related to the prevailing values of society itself. Therefore, those who accept and support the social system's views are considered "normal", while those who disagree are considered "abnormal" or even "subversive". Whether it is the dogma of a unique social tradition, or the alignment with a worldwide establishment religion, the basis is the same: Intellectual Materialism.

As we realize that knowledge and hence our institutions are always evolving, we see that any belief system which claims to "know" anything, without allowing for dispute, is a failed perspective. Religion, with its foundation in faith, is the king of this distortion, as it claims to know something definitively about the most complex and elusive origins of human kind, and this simply is not possible in an emergent universe.
That being said, it is then realized that equally as dangerous as the Establishment Power Structures, are the people who have been conditioned to completely accept the static understandings put forth by these systems... therefore becoming: "Self Appointed Guardians of the Status Quo". This applies to every system, especially political, financial and religious systems. Since people's identities become associated with the doctrines of a Country, Religion or Business ethic, it often becomes very difficult for a person to change, for his or her identity has become combined with the ideologies which have been imposed upon them.

Therefore, they perpetuate the doctrine of the institution, simply to maintain their personal integrity, as they see it.

We must break this cycle, for it paralyses our growth not only as individuals, but as a society.

The Truth and Transition

Once we understand that the integrity of our personal existences are directly related to the integrity of the earth, life and all other human beings, we then have our path predefined for us. In turn, once we realize that it is science, technology and hence human creativity which creates progress in our lives, we are then able to recognize what our true priorities are for social and personal growth and progress. These points denoted, we can then see that Religion, Politics and the Money/Competition based Labor system are outdated modes of social operation, which must now be addressed and outgrown. Our avocation is to achieve a social system which operates without money or politics, while allowing superstition to work itself out as education flourishes. It isn't the right of any person to tell another what to believe, for no human has a full understanding of anything. However, if we pay attention to the natural processes of life, we then see how we can align with nature and thus our path becomes more clear.

For example, many people are worried about population growth on the planet, while very spooky comments by despotic figures like Henry Kissinger claim that some kind of "reduction" is needed. This is, of course, very scary. However, the real question remains: Is population growth really that bad? The answer is that from a scientific perspective the earth can handle many, many times more people if need be, once high technology is harnessed. 70% of our planet is water and cities in the sea ( one of many projects by Jacque Fresco ) are the next step. In turn, education about life operations will inform people as to the ramifications of their reproductive interests and population growth will naturally slow as people begin to realize how they are related to the planet and its carrying capacity.

In fact, the only true "government" that can possibly exist is the earth and its resources. From there, all possibilities can be assessed. This is why an intellectual unification of all countries is needed, for the most important information we as a species can have is a full, highly detailed assessment of what we have on this planet. Just as you would examine the land and resources of an acre of land to see what you could do or grow on it, this is what needs to happen with the planet in order to optimize what we are capable of as a species, resource wise.

Of course, many who consider the ideas presented above will often ask: "How can we do this considering the distorted value systems which are currently in operation.? How do we make such a move or transition?" This is, of course, the most difficult question. The answer: We have to start somewhere. There are many things that can be done by a single person or community that can begin to shape this vision. The most important step is education.

On March 15th 2009, ( or "ZDAY" as it was called in 2008 ) there will be a worldwide action day to expand awareness of this sociological direction. Our hope is to have regional meetings in as many cities, states & countries as possible. We here at thezeitgeistmovement.com will work to provide materials in every language we can, while doing whatever we can to help each subgroup. We will never ask for money. We are here to help, for we understand one central truth that has been lost for a long, long time:
The more you give- the more you get.

Zeitgeist, The Movie - Remastered (Final Edition)

2009-02-28T19:16:00.001Z

Do you dare to know the truth about Christianity, religion, 9/11, 7/7, war, banking and the present financial crises? If so view on.

When the power of love, overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
Jimi Hendrix

Your Opinion on Political Correct Ideas, by Paulo Coelho

2009-01-18T09:22:00.000Z

Your Opinion on Political Correct Ideas, by Paulo Coelho

2009-01-18T09:15:00.000Z

An Introduction to Viktor Schauberger and the Secrets of Natural Energy ~Living Water~~

2009-01-14T16:17:00.001Z

I would like to introduce you to Viktor Schauberger, one of the most interesting persons this planet has ever seen. Born in 1885 he followed in his father's footsteps and became a forester. There in the forest he contemplated the streams, how they flow, how fish can remain in one place in a fast flowing stream with no effort and from nature learned that we are approaching science from a completely wrong angle. He was far ahead of his time, the first true modern ecologist, agronomist, ecopsychologist, hydrologist and to top it all discovered a completely new form of energy that could save the planet from the destructive path we are now on. Well, not really a new form of energy as it is used by nature from the microscopic to the macroscopic.

Below you will find an attachment, it is a pdf of 155 pdf pages describing his life, his findings, his experiments and his machines he invented complete with photographs and diagrams. If you have any concerns for the future of this planet whether it be ecological concerns, health concerns or very cheap, clean energy then please try to read it. Please copy and past here any part you find interesting or amazing for discussions.

A note on typos. You will come across words that seem misspelled often, the original seems to have been scanned using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) except this type of program can get confused over type faces. "tl" sometimes is seen as "d", "th" sometimes as "m", "Y" as "v" etc., but, it is not hard to follow.

Please click on the attachment link below and save to disk rather than just selecting to open in Adobe Reader.

Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction

2009-01-13T14:35:00.001Z

Today, watching the phosphorous bombs being dropped on Palestine, a weapon that doctors are saying is melting the eyes of its victims beyond any repair and outlawed as a weapon under the Geneva Convention I wondered what little thing I could do and came to the conclusion to personally boycott Israel for what good it could do. Then just now returning to my computer I received a newsletter from the author Naomi Klein, this is what it says:

Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction
by Naomi Klein, The Nation, January 7, 2008

It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.

In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—BDS for short—was born.

Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.… This international backing must stop."

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.

1. Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis. The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement." It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures—quite the opposite. The weapons and $3 billion in annual aid that the US sends to Israel is only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first non–Latin American country to sign a free-trade deal with Mercosur. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45 percent. A new trade deal with the European Union is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And on December 8, European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.

It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7 percent. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.

2. Israel is not South Africa. Of course it isn't. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves that BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, back-room lobbying) have failed. And there are indeed deeply distressing echoes of South African apartheid in the occupied territories: the color-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said that the architecture of segregation that he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was "infinitely worse than apartheid." That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.

3. Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan? Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.

4. Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less. This one I'll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus's work, and none to me. In other words, I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.

Coming up with our modest publishing plan required dozens of phone calls, e-mails and instant messages, stretching from Tel Aviv to Ramallah to Paris to Toronto to Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start implementing a boycott strategy, dialogue increases dramatically. And why wouldn't it? Building a movement requires endless communicating, as many in the antiapartheid struggle well recall. The argument that supporting boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at one another across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.

Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don't I know that many of those very high-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel's Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, the managing director of a British telecom specializing in voice-over-internet services, sent an email to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax. "As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company."

Ramsey says that his decision wasn't political; he just didn't want to lose customers. "We can't afford to lose any of our clients," he explains, "so it was purely commercially defensive."

It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it's precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.

This column was first published in The Nation

Further Information:
The only international news network covering every aspect of the war on Gaza is Al Jazeera English. The station isn't available in North America but you can watch it live in high-quality through www.livestation.com (player download is required).

Gaza Ceasefire Petition

2009-01-01T08:00:00.001Z

This is an emergency campaign urging for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Already 370 people have been killed in this escalating conflict. Now is the time to issue a demand to world leaders that the spiralling violence that has characterized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must come to an end. In 2009 let's push for real peace to be achieved between Israel and Palestine. To learn more and to take action, read the email below:

---------------------------------------------
Dear friends,

As we watch the Gaza bloodshed with horror, appalled at how the crisis is spiralling further out of control, one thing is clear -- this violence will only lead to further civilian suffering and an escalation of the conflict.

There must be another way. Over 370 are dead and hundreds more injured -- rockets are striking Ashdod deep inside Israel for the very first time, and the sides are mobilising for invasion. A global response has begun, but it'll take more than words -- the immediate violence won't end, nor will wider peace be secured, without firm action from the international community.

Today, we're launching an emergency campaign which will be delivered to the UN Security Council and key world powers, urging them to act to ensure an immediate ceasefire, address the growing humanitarian crisis, and take steps to build real and lasting peace.1 Follow this link now to sign the emergency petition and send it to everyone you know:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_time_for_peace/98.php?CLICK_TF_TRACK

After eight or more years of ineffective US and global diplomacy -- and now Gaza's bloodiest day in recent memory -- we must issue a global outcry demanding that world leaders do more than make statements if they're to bring peace to this region. The UN, the European Union, the Arab League and the USA should now act together to ensure a ceasefire – which includes an end to rocket attacks into Israel and opening the checkpoints for fuel, food, medicine and other humanitarian aid deliveries.

With a new US President taking office in less than a month, a real opportunity exists to breathe new life into peace efforts. These latest hostilities require not only an immediate ceasefire but a commitment from Obama and other world leaders that resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the very top of their agendas. As the whole world is impacted by this ongoing conflict - we should demand nothing less.

In 2006 we mobilised for a ceasefire in Lebanon. For years we've worked to encourage a just and lasting peace, taking out billboards and ads across Israel and Palestine. Now as we head into 2009, we need to come together again to demand a peaceful and lasting resolution, instead of a further escalation of violence. Follow this link to put your name forward for peace:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_time_for_peace/98.php?CLICK_TF_TRACK

All sides to the conflict will continue to act as they have in the past if they believe that the world will stand by and allow them to do so. 2009 is a year that things can be different. As we face this crisis, and the possibilities of a new year, it's time for us to demand a ceasefire and work together to finally put an end to this cycle of violence.

With hope and determination,

Brett, Ricken, Alice, Ben, Pascal, Paul, Graziela, Paula, Luis, Iain and the whole Avaaz team

AHMADINEJAD'S CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

2008-12-24T19:28:00.001Z

He is this year’s presenter of Channel 4's alternative Christmas message. The programme will be transmitted Christmas evening, and was recorded in Tehran Tuesday night.

"In the Name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful.

Upon the anniversary of the birth of Jesus, Son of Mary, the Word of God, the Messenger of mercy, I would like to congratulate the followers of Abrahamic faiths, especially the followers of Jesus Christ, and the people of Britain.

The Almighty created the universe for human beings and human beings for Himself.

He created every human being with the ability to reach the heights of perfection. He called on man to make every effort to live a good life in this world and to work to achieve his everlasting life.

On this difficult and challenging journey of man from dust to the divine, He did not leave humanity to its own devices. He chose from those He created the most excellent as His Prophets to guide humanity.

All Prophets called for the worship of God, for love and brotherhood, for the establishment of justice and for love in human society. Jesus, the Son of Mary, is the standard-bearer of justice, of love for our fellow human beings, of the fight against tyranny, discrimination and injustice.

All the problems that have bedevilled humanity throughout the ages came about because humanity followed an evil path and disregarded the message of the Prophets.

Now as human society faces a myriad of problems and a succession of complex crises, the root causes can be found in humanity's rejection of that message, in particular the indifference of some governments and powers towards the teachings of the divine Prophets, especially those of Jesus Christ.

The crises in society, the family, morality, politics, security and the economy which have made life hard for humanity and continue to put great pressure on all nations have come about because the Prophets have been forgotten, the Almighty has been forgotten and some leaders are estranged from God.

If Christ were on earth today, undoubtedly He would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers.

If Christ were on earth today, undoubtedly He would hoist the banner of justice and love for humanity to oppose warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the world over.

If Christ were on earth today, undoubtedly He would fight against the tyrannical policies of prevailing global economic and political systems, as He did in His lifetime. The solution to today's problems is a return to the call of the divine Prophets. The solution to these crises is to follow the Prophets - they were sent by the Almighty for the good of humanity.

Today, the general will of nations is calling for fundamental change. This is now taking place. Demands for change, demands for transformation, demands for a return to human values are fast becoming the foremost demands of the nations of the world. The response to these demands must be real and true. The prerequisite to this change is a change in goals, intentions and directions. If tyrannical goals are repackaged in an attractive and deceptive package and imposed on nations again, the people, awakened, will stand up against them.

Fortunately, today, as crises and despair multiply, a wave of hope is gathering momentum. Hope for a brighter future and hope for the establishment of justice, hope for real peace, hope for finding virtuous and pious rulers who love the people and want to serve them – and this is what the Almighty has promised.

We believe, Jesus Christ will return, together with one of the children of the revered Messenger of Islam and will lead the world to love, brotherhood and justice. The responsibility of all followers of Christ and Abrahamic faiths is to prepare the way for the fulfilment of this divine promise and the arrival of that joyful, shining and wonderful age. I hope that the collective will of nations will unite in the not too distant future and with the grace of the Almighty Lord, that shining age will come to rule the earth.

Once again, I congratulate one and all on the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ. I pray for the New Year to be a year of happiness, prosperity, peace and brotherhood for humanity. I wish you every success and happiness."

Devil's Bridge - Wales

2008-12-22T16:42:00.001Z

From two years ago, only just got around to stitching it. Looking at the Devil's Bridge from up stream showing the multiple bridges.

The Story

One day in the olden time, old Megan of Llandunach stood by the side of the river Mynach feeling very sorry for herself.

The Mynach was in flood, and roared down the wooded dingle in five successive falls, tumbling over three hundred feet in less than no time. Just below the place where Megan was standing, there was a great cauldron in which the water whirled, boiled, and hissed as if troubled by some evil spirit. From the cauldron the river rushed and swirled down a narrow, deep ravine, and if the old woman had had an eye for the beauties of nature, the sight of the seething pot and the long shadowy cleft would have made her feel joyous rather than sorrowful.

But Megan at this time cared for none of these things, because her one and only cow was on the wrong side of the ravine, and her thoughts were centered on the horned beast which was cropping the green grass carelessly just as if it made no difference what side of the river it was on. How the wrong-headed animal had got there Megan could not guess, and still less did she know how to get it back.

As there was no one else to talk to, she talked to herself. "Oh dear, what shall I do?" she said.

"What is the matter, Megan?" said a voice behind her.

She turned round and saw a man cowled like a monk and with a rosary at his belt. She had not heard anyone coming, but the noise of the waters boiling over and through the rocks, she reflected, might easily have drowned the sound of any footsteps. And in any case, she was so troubled about her cow that she could not stop to wonder how the stranger had come up.

"I am ruined," said Megan. "There is my one and only cow, the sole support of my old age, on the other side of the river, and I don't know how to get her back again. Oh dear, oh dear, I am ruined."

"Don't you worry about that," said the monk. "I'll get her back for you."

"How can you?" asked Megan, greatly surprised.

"I'll tell you," answered the stranger. "It is one of my amusements to build bridges, and if you like, I'll throw a bridge across this chasm for you."

"Well, indeed," said the old woman, "nothing would please me better. But how am I to pay you? I am sure you will want a great deal for a job like this, and I am so poor that I have no money to spare, look you, no indeed."

"I am very easily satisfied," said the monk. "Just let me have the first living thing that crosses the bridge after I have finished it, and I shall be content."

Megan agreed to this, and the monk told her to go back to her cottage and wait there until he should call for her.

Now, Megan was not half such a fool as she looked, and she had noticed, while talking to the kind and obliging stranger, that there was something rather peculiar about his foot. She had a suspicion, too, that his knees were behind instead of being in front, and while she was waiting for the summons, she thought so hard that it made her head ache.

By the time she was halloed for, she had hit upon a plan. She threw some crusts to her little dog to make him follow her, and took a loaf of bread under her shawl to the riverside.

"There's a bridge for you," said the monk, pointing proudly to a fine span bestriding the yawning chasm. And it really was something to be proud of.

"H'm, yes," said Megan, looking doubtfully at it. "Yes, it is a bridge. But is it strong?"

"Strong?" said the builder, indignantly. "Of course it is strong."

"Will it hold the weight of this loaf?" asked Megan, bringing the bread out for underneath her shawl.

The monk laughed scornfully. "Hold the weight of this loaf? Throw it on and see. Ha, ha!"

So Megan rolled the loaf right across the bridge, and the little black cur scampered after it.

"Yes, it will do," said Megan. "And, kind sir, my little dog is the first live thing to cross the bridge. You are welcome to him, and I thank you very much for all the trouble you have taken."

"Tut, the silly dog is no good to me," said the stranger, very crossly, and with that he vanished into space.

From the smell of brimstone which he had left behind him, Megan knew that, as she had suspected, it was the devil whom she had outwitted.

And this is how the Bad Man's Bridge came to be built.

Enigma

2008-12-22T11:28:00.001Z

To cross the bridge of dreaming
To the magic land
Where imagination rules

Liberty

2008-12-20T07:50:00.001Z

"Let's get this straight: because there's, say, a .000001% chance of me being killed or otherwise abused by the mob, the corner dope pusher, kiddie porn freaks, [overly-PC Mods], or religious-nut bombers, I'm supposed to sacrifice my privacy, freedom of speech, security, and other civil liberties? I think not."

- Stanton McCandlish

Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah

2008-12-19T13:45:00.000Z

Just a quick one before going out for the night...Leonard Cohen singing Hallelujah. IMHO better than the cover rushing up the charts as you can hear the words which are always important in Leonard Cohen numbers.

Ingwie Malmsteen Playing Icarus Dream Fanfare

2008-12-01T16:43:00.000Z

A few days ago a friend past me an advert pamphlet advertising guitar tutorial DVDs. Flicking through it I came across a style called "neo classical shred".
"What the heck is this?" I asked my mate.
"Oh, it's Ingwie Malmsteen" he replied, "he's a heavy rock guitarist that also plays classical music."
Evidently he became known in the late 70s early 80s, a period when I wasn't following music trends very much so he had slipped by me. Evidently he had slipped by many people. Today I managed to listen to his "Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra in E Flat minor Opus 1" which he played with the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra and it was breath taking...what have I been missing all these years!!!
Here is the opening piece called Icarus Dream Fanfare. You'll find more pieces from this work plus more at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN5FAcd2sbM

The Two Faces of War

2008-11-19T18:08:00.000Z

An armed conflict between nations horrifies us. But the economic war is no better than an armed conflict. This is like a surgical operation. An economic war is prolonged torture. And its ravages are no less terrible than those depicted in the literature on war properly so called. We think nothing of the other because we are used to its deadly effects.... The movement against war is sound. I pray for its success. But I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of the evil -- human greed.

M. K. Gandhi, "Non-Violence -- The Greatest force." 1926
Quoted in "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein

If you are brave enough to really want to know what is happening in the world today as far as conflicts, globalisation and the emerging global economic strategy then please read this book. However, if you do not want your fundamental beliefs to dissolve in front of your eyes by knowing the true history of the Friedman counter revolution that has taken place over the last 50 years and the way corporations whom we think of as the bastions of freedom have been deeply implicit in the support of totalitarian juntas including the use of torture in their own factories and all for the sake of rampant corporate financial greed...then please Carry on burying one's head in the sand and stay well away from this book and author.

Neil Young: Looking For A Leader

2008-11-04T07:19:00.000Z

Seems fitting to put this up today :)

Neil Young: Let's Impeach The President

2008-11-02T12:55:00.000Z

This is the official "Let's Impeach The President" video from Neil Young which is also available as a free download on his site. Unusually he has specified that all songs from his CD and videos from his DVD should be available for free download and he urges people to make coppies of his CD and DVD, put them on the Internet for all to share and give coppies of his CD and DVD that you have made away to other people. I can't fault him and will be putting up tracks both audio and video when I've downloaded them.

Is It Safe To Drink It?

2008-10-12T09:06:00.000+01:00

Jon's blog on natural food made me want to post this. I'm only looking at two products that are often difficult to avoid, aspartame and Fluoride.

Aspartame, an artificial sweetener that is now found in many products. It is an excitotoxin which basically means it initially excites the brain followed by brain cell death and such a lowered alertness that US fighter pilots have been told to drink nothing containing aspartame before flying. Other side effects are well documented:
http://www.sweetpoison.com/aspartame-side-effects.html
Rumsfeld was the main person behind the introduction of aspartame into our food and drink.

Fluoride. Another excitotoxin with similar effects on the brain as aspartame. Put in our drinking water it is sold to us as something to help protect out teeth. The truth is fluoride was first experimented with in the Nazi Concentration camps. It was not put into prisoners water to help preserve their teeth due to the Nazis being concerned with the welfare of their prisoners, it was used to make the inmates more docile. It was and is also used in the production of Sarine Nerve Gas. Some links to info on Fluoride/Fluorine:
http://www.greaterthings.com/Lexicon/F/Fluoride.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride_poisoning

As of April 7th, 1997, the United States FDA (Food & Drug Administration) required that all fluoride toothpastes sold in the U.S. carry the following poison warning:

WARNING: Keep out of reach of children under 6 years of age. If you accidentally swallow more than used for brushing, seek professional help or contact a poison control centre immediately.

Potentially fatal dose = 5 mg of fluoride per kg of body weight.

DAVID ICKE 2008: BIG BROTHER - THE BIG PICTURE

2008-10-08T09:03:00.000+01:00

I'm taking a short break from viewing this video so as to post it here. David Icke, for those outside the UK who don't know of him, is our version of Michel Moore, although Icke has had a rather bad press over time. This is a very long video of almost three hours so arm yourself with tea, cakes and/or beer and treat it like a film.

If you have problems with the video please visit David Icke's Web Site

ISIS

2008-10-06T17:25:00.000+01:00

ISIS

Queen of Heaven and of Earth,
Moon silvered, Sun reflected one,
Robed in linen, mantle black,
Studded with the scattered stars,
And crowned by floral chaplet bright;
Ether veils her lustrous mien,
That countless time collected pales not.

Her names are many, her being one,
She, best beloved of the Sun,
Awaits in serene majesty the ones,
Heads lifted up aspire to have
Or be the dream she emanates
That most forgot.

Leila Johnston

Note: This poem was sent me by a dear friend, Leila, who lives in Cairo and has given me permission to put up here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Intollerance

2008-09-23T08:14:00.000+01:00

Is it right to be intollerant of intollerance? ;))

To Buy or Not To Buy: That is The Question

2008-09-21T11:07:00.000+01:00

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous accusation,
Or to take arms against a sea of discrimination,
And by opposing end them?

This a little story of something that upset me greatly yesterday. I had to do a little shopping, only a couple of items, so I drove over to Sainsbury's as they do a good spicy chicken drumstick. I was second in queue at the hot counter and while waiting I saw the person in front of me buying every item there and every time he finished he'd have second thoughts and buy more. I gave that up as a bad job and headed for the drink isle where I wanted to buy a couple of bottles of Guinness. Couldn't find it, spent five minutes searching and came to the conclusion they had sold out. A wasted journey, only one thing to do, head for Tesco's.

I walked out defeated and headed for my vehicle. Three quarters of the way across the car park I heard someone shout out "Excuse me." I turned around and it was a Sainsbury security guard.

"Would you mind coming back with me to the shop?"

I looked at him puzzled and asked why.

"The alarm went off when you were leaving."

"No alarm went off" I said. "I know the procedure when the alarm sounds, it's normally because someone has left a security tag on something, but, no alarm went off."

"We'd still like you to come back to the shop with us."

I was amazed. "Are you accusing me of shoplifting?" I asked. There were now three of them there.

"Oh no, we are not accusing you of anything."

"Oh!" I said, "in that case I'm going." and began to walk away. After all, if I'm not suspected or being accused of anything I could see absolutely no reason why they should be demanding I return with them and waste further time there.

"Well in that case you are banned." he said.

I was flabbergasted and now getting quite upset and angry which is unusual for me.

"Look," I said, "I have just driven all the way over here to get a couple of items, at the meat counter the person in front of me bought up everything. I then go to the drinks isle and find you have sold out of what I wanted. I left after having a completely wasted journey and now I find I'm being accused of theft."

"Oh no, we are not suggesting that."

"You most definitely are. If not why do you want me to waste further time by going back with you? What are you intending to do? Give me tea and cake and a load of bonus points? And further," I said "you threaten to ban me!!! We come here every week and spend around £100 on groceries so I can tell you now that if you ban me for absolutely nothing then we will go elsewhere and not only will you lose the £100 we spend a week, but, you'll also lose custom from other members of my family and friends which would amount to around £1000 per week."

With that I walked off.

No alarm had gone off so what was this nasty little official up to? There was only two reasons I could see. One was that I walked out without buying anything so he presumed I must have stolen something. The other was that he was showing off in front of these two younger guards that it looked like he was training. As far as I am concerned if he strongly believed I was stealing then he should arrest me which in a way I was hoping he would do as once my innocence was proven I would have started procedures for wrongful arrest etc. However, this obnoxious little guard wouldn't dare because he knew I was in the right and he in the wrong and abusing his power.

So folks beware, if you pop into Sainsbury's to get a couple of items, find they haven't got them, make sure you at least buy something otherwise you may find the powers to be giving you extreme harassment.

The Music of Harry Partch

2008-09-14T18:00:00.000+01:00

I came across the Music of Harry Partch back in the 80s. He was one of the most remarkable composers that has lived taking music to new limits while at the same time taking it back to our primitive roots. He breaks with all tradition to the point of creating completely new musical instruments and even scales and pitches. His music sounds truely alien as if we are sitting at a concert on another planet yet seems to shout out to ones soul with familiarity.

This is a BBC documentary about him and his music. It is in six parts and hopefully presented sa a playlist.

The Missing Tskhinval Photos - Der Spiegel's Censorship

2008-09-03T09:24:00.000+01:00

Pavel Kassin, a photographer who has worked for Der Spiegel for 18 year was commisioned to take pictures of Tskhinval after the Georgian bombardment of the city. He was however shocked to find none of the 29 photos he submitted were published, an unpresidented event in his carreer. Most Western newspapers (and governments for that matter) are ignoring facts and are taking pro American stances. However, it seems the people of Europe are not being fooled. Die Welt conducted an opinion poll on who Europe should support in the South Ossetia conflict, 23% say Georgia, 31% say neutral. 46% say Russia.

RT Story

Warning - Microsoft Update July 9 2008

2008-07-09T09:31:00.000+01:00

A Windows Update for XP came out today July 9 2008, it was a security update to stop someone remotely taking over your PC. It definitely works, although connected you can no longer access the Internet or send and receive mail. Reconfiguring connections etc. doesn't seem to work. Only way to get reconnected is to uninstall the latest security update via Control Panel > Add and Remove Programs.

Do not install this update until Micro$hit have fixed it, give it at least a week. If you have installed it then I'm afraid you will not be able to read this advice and you will be completely on your own trying to figure it out.

Micro$hit strikes again!!!!!

ECO-PSYCHOLOGY, PART III With THEODORE ROSZAK

2008-07-02T18:15:00.000+01:00

The following is from an interview with Dr. Theodore Roszak, a leading proponent of Eco-Psychology, by Jeffrey Mishlove. It's worth more than just a link.
http://www.williamjames.com/transcripts/roszak.htm

JM: Welcome again Ted.

TR: Good to be with you Jeff.

JM: In parts one and two of this series, we talked about the deficiencies of modern psychology and psychiatry in addressing ecological issues. And we looked at systems theory and cosmology, the Gaia hypothesis, and the anthropic principle as providing a scientific context for an eco-psychology. Let's begin to look at other cultural elements. I think one of those elements that impressed a great deal is the tradition of nature mysticism that you drew upon, which has actually been a very rich tradition in Western culture.

TR: You know there's a whole wing of the environmental movement called deep ecology. And deep ecology draws many of its insights from nature mysticism, which is incidentally one of the reasons why standard environmentalists view it with perhaps some suspicion. I don't. I tend to feel deep ecology draws upon a valid perception of nature as seen from an aesthetic and religious point of view. And that perception of nature is a real one. It's had tremendous cultural influence in order for it to be honored and integrated into an environmental framework. The deep ecologists are prepared to adopt the insights of great nature mystics, poets like Wordsworth, Saint Francis and the Asian traditions like Taoism, which are very close to the natural world. My feeling is that this is again one of those sources of inspiration that eco-psychology, when it is fully matured, will have to draw upon in addressing the natural world around us. That there's a wealth of insight about the human continuity with the natural world to be found there that can be translated into therapeutic terms and into ecological terms.

JM: What is nature mysticisms?

TR: Well, of course they're many varieties of nature mysticisms. In the Western-Judaeo-Christian tradition it has always been viewed with a certain alarm and suspicion because it seems to involve deifying, sacralizing the natural world in a way that has often seen to be flirting with heathenism or paganism. There are still certain parts of the Christian community, especially in the Christian community, some suspicion that people want to address the natural world as if it's alive, vital, and sacred. Generally speaking, I would say nature-mysticism is a sacramental view of the religion of nature. It's characteristic of most primary people, the religions we think of as traditional religions among primary people-- the people that used to be called primitives, almost always based upon the perception of nature as alive and intentional and in touch with us; a nature that must be treated with respect and with reciprocity. So generally speaking, those are the characteristics of nature-mysticisms. The way this is translated into modern ecological terms is along the lines of deep ecology or eco-feminism or feminist spirituality, which are wings of the environmental movement that are seeking to draw upon a deep experience of the life and the intentions of nature, not to simply see it as a realm of resources, but has to be managed for human benefit.

JM: In our previous program, you used the concept mind at large. And it strikes me that when we talk about

nature-mysticism, I think about what anthropologists have sometimes disparagingly called animism, the idea that every rock, every tree, every animal has a kind of a consciousness that can speak to us. Are you thinking along these lines?

TR: Yes indeed. Animism is deeply rooted in human culture and in most of the religions of the human past. Perhaps all of them, with the exception of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, have within them a strong representation of animism. Indeed, in terms of an eco-psychology, I think animism is the perception of nature that's reborn in every human being. Children are naturally animistic in their treatment of nature. It's reflected in their most spontaneous response to the natural world. They address it as if it had vitality and mentality. It's reflected in children's literature, fairy tales, folk lore. My sense of the matter is that children have to almost be forced to stop being animistic in order to be normal and sane in our society. But in other cultures people matured into adult forms of animism. I think for example the ancient Greeks were as civilized as any society we might want to mention. They produced great philosophy, great art, great literature. What do you make of the fact that they look at the world around them and saw gods and goddesses inherent within it? We don't know quite what they meant by that perhaps, but we know they saw the natural world as vital and inherently mindful and purposive. They sacrificed to it, they prayed to it, the addressed it, they wrote great poetry addressing themselves to the natural world. So it's quite possible for a high civilization to be deeply animistic. So animism comes in a variety of forms. The Gaia hypothesis which we discussed already is an inherently animistic perception of nature, though for scientific nature purposes it can be cleaned up and put in perhaps biochemical terms. But the eco-feminists have come to see it as, (and that's the women's wing primarily of the environmental movement) have the Gaia hypothesis is a kind of modern animism. Animism is irrepressible because it's a valid perception of the natural world as having dignity, vitality, and mentality.

JM: The animism of the Gaia hypothesis would be that the planet itself is alive as a living consciousness.

TR: That we can understand a great deal about the planet only by thinking of it as if it were a living organism. And the whole problem is in those words, "as if it were." Because if that turns to be the only way to understand what the planet is all about, then the perception is not merely metaphorical in a reductive sense of the term metaphor, but it's a valid perception of nature.

JM: So what you're suggesting is that a eco-psychology has to reach back historically to the Neolithic understanding that people had of their unity with nature, their intimate psychological unity with nature.

TR: It has to be opened to perhaps even more than that, not only Neolithic, but Paleolithic. In a sense that-- I want to make this clear-- that there are insights in human culture going all the way back that deserve to be honored. And we should seek to understand them with all the respect we would seek to understand other cultures and their perceptions of reality. I think eco-psychology is in that sense highly comprehensive. It can draw upon modern science, a number of scientific ideas, but it must also, I think, integrate perceptions of nature that may still survive I want to emphasize in children, as they are born into the world, that are certainly represented in the human tradition. So all of that I think is the reservoir of ideas, perceptions, sensitivities that have a place in eco-psychology. This is a profoundly comprehensive vision of human nature.

JM: You also draw upon the work of the psychologist Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology, who instead of studying on healthy people, his studies were based on the healthiest human specimens he could find, and one of his findings was that these people often exhibited states that he called peak experiences which he described very much akin to the states that mystics throughout history have described.

TR: There's a lot to be salvaged out of Maslow's perception, and humanistic psychology is one of the major schools of psychiatric and psychological thought. I find a lot in Maslow. Maslow was however limited in one respect. That is, he thought that we had to find our salvation, our therapeutic breakthrough, our peak experiences, wholly within the human environment. This is something that happened only within the human mind. There's very little nature to be found in Maslow's writings. That is, he never managed to connect his therapeutic insights, his theoretical insights with the natural world around him. He more or less subscribed to the idea that I think goes back all the way to Freud, that there is a division in the world between those things that are human and social; and those things that belong to the strict natural sciences. I think eco-psychology would take issue with that bifurcation of reality, and see human culture, human nature, as part of a continuum that is deeply rooted in the whole history of time and the universe.

JM: Well, one of the figures that Maslow sighted is I recall expressing these peak experiences. One example would be someone like the great poet Walt Whitman, who wrote about a grain of sand, a leaf of grass as embodying the ultimate essence of the divinity.

TR: Yes, Walt Whitman is a good natured mystic and there's a lot to be drawn from him.

JM: What Maslow seems to be suggesting is that kind of insight is one of the most powerful, one of the highest insights that a human being can have.

TR: The great idea in Maslow-- and not only in Maslow, you can also find this in other people-- is his perception that the depths of our nature may yield reason of joy and pride and exaltation. The psychiatric tradition is by and large along Freudian lines and grounded in the idea that the unconscious is a chamber of horrors. It's filled with guilt and repressed criminality and repressed aggression, and repressed lust. That if you look deep within your self, what you find there is cause for shame and essentially what therapy involves is reconciling people to accepting that into their lives and coming to have a more mature understanding of these repressed contents. Maslow, along with Jung and others, was among those who believed that the deeper you look inside, the more reason you find for joy, for celebration; that the foundations for human nature are clean and good and innocent and creative. My feelings is that this is what I believe we would find in what I've called the ecological encounter unconscious. That is a bond with the natural world, which makes us at home in the universe and which gives reason for a positive view of life, very different from the more alienated view of life we associated with Freudian orthodoxy or existential therapy or even certain elements of Maslow's humanistic psychology, which is still alienated from the natural world in a way that makes it hard to connect.

JM: You've mentioned Jung a number of times. Jung developed the theory of the collective unconscious, and it seems to me that this may be about as close as we can find within psychology and psychiatry today for the idea that the human unconscious is somehow connected to this larger world of, well Jung referred to archetypes. But if we look earlier to the use of the word archetype, the German poet Goethe referred to the ur phenomenon that the essence of poetry is the same as the essence of nature itself.

TR: Jung was one of the major thinkers that I was able to find most promising as a resource of eco-psychology. And it is precisely his idea of the collective unconscious that I found myself able to draw upon. The only problem I have with Jung is that Jung at a certain point in his career, because he wanted to treat deeply suffering human beings, felt that if necessary he would violate the principles of science in order to treat their wishes and their needs as realities in their own right. And if necessary, if this would sacrifice has scientific respectability, so be it. My feeling is that it is not necessary to make that decision to break with science in the modern world, that there is a great deal in science, especially within the last few generations that can support human needs and aspirations and it's not necessary to do as Jung did-- to sacrifice your scientific respectability. The other aspect of Jung that was a little difficult for me to deal with is the fact that Jung's collective unconscious is an extremely ethereal, almost fleshless realm of psychological reality. It does not take on the reality of the natural world. Even though Jung himself, incidentally, in his personal life had a strong sense of nature-mysticism, of connection with the natural world, was most at home out of the city in the forest near the water, the running waters

JM: His therapy sessions were often held while walking in the woods.

TR: He had a strong sense of natural connection. That didn't always show up in his theories, which tend to be more abstract and disembodied. So my strategy in The Voice of the Earth was to interpret that voice in very physical flesh and blood terms, to integrate into Jung's collective unconscious, a sense of actual, physical nature, of anomaly and vegetation and to find that our connection with nature in its most physical and real form at the depths of our unconscious. And the ecological unconscious for me is not as an abstract idea as Jung's collective unconscious, it is much more related to our evolutionary background as children of the planet earth.

JM: Several times you've referred to eco-feminism and women's spirituality as being branches of ecology. Could you amplify on that-- the feminist perspective and what significance it has for your...

TR: It's a very deep significance. Among the issues that I think has to be seriously addressed by eco-psychology is the issue that has been raised by eco-feminism. And that has to do with the deep influence of sexual stereotypes-- gender stereotypes I should call them-- upon our culture. There is a sense in which the whole of civilized history, since the foundings of the whole river-valleys civilizations, has been strongly biased in the direction of patriarchal values, and aggressive values that treat the natural world with hostility and suspicion and significantly that natural world is usually spoken of in feminine terms-- mother earth, mother nature. Even more so in the modern Western world, modern science and technology seem to be shot through with a sense of aggressiveness, a spirit of domination, which eco-feminists has identified as a gender stereotype. That is, they're warping the foundations of our understanding of nature and of technological connection with the natural world. At some point I feel this would be a central issue in eco-psychology, to a deep analysis of the gender stereotypes that continue to operate in the world today. Take a specific issue-- the sense we have that the only way you can be secure in the world is to dominate the world, hence all the metaphors we have of conquest, conquering nature, conquering outer space. Images like that are deeply macho, their compulsively masculine. And they influence us to believe that the natural world is an enemy, that it is hostile to us and that we must take it over and manage it and subjugate it to our human needs. Hence, the intense artificiality of urban, industrial society. We live in these cities, in these structures which are man-made and man controlled and it's within that context that we seek to find a sense of security in the world. Now, from a psychological point of view what this betrays is a tremendous sense of insecurity in the natural world. And I think at some point you would have to address the fact that this has distorted our relations with nature. Is there some other way to find security in the world, other than domination. Here I'll give you an interesting parallel, which is a psychological parallel. Anyone dealing in family counseling, marriage counselling, will recognize that nothing destroys a relationship in a family or between a husband and wife man and woman more than the feeling that the only way they can relate is by dominance and submission. We readily recognize that is at the root of many broken families, broken marriages, broken relationships. What's the alternative? Well most therapists would say there has to be trust, there has to be mutual respect. Now in an eco-psychology you would take that same insight into human relationships and try to read it into our relationship with the natural world. Is there some other way to find security in our relations with nature than by way of dominance and submission? And I think the eco-feminist viewpoint, the insight is yes, by trusting. By trusting nature to be life enhancing and life supporting. You cannot at every point, in fact it's a feudal exercise to seek to dominant a force as large as the planet earth. That we would be much better advised to move within the grain of nature, sort of a Taoist insight into the nature of things. That I think would be a very deep issue in eco-psychology. A deep investigation of how we achieve security in the world-- through trust or through domination.

JM: One of the issues that you raise is very basic is calls us to question what is underlying our behavior when we engage in activities that are destructive to nature. Why do we do that, it's a lack of trust. But let me ask you this, I think I hear you saying that if we just develop a new, self-image, a new psychology, we can address that lack of trust.

TR: Well, yes, we're being very brief about this, but to spell it out fully, you know one of the deep teachings of modern environmental philosophy is really quite traditional. You cannot simply take and take and take from nature without giving. So the proper relationship between human beings and the natural world is one of reciprocity. Well, reciprocity lies at the root of all of the religious practices of primary people, of traditional societies, a sense that you cannot simply take without giving back. Now we speak of that reciprocity in terms of recycling things. Of using things with thrift of wasting very little. So we can reinterpret this in modern terms that sound abstractly economic. But underlying this is the sense that we must relate to planet as if it were an intentional personal presence with whom a relationship that involves an ethical obligation to reciprocate the generosity of the planet. And if we don't do that we distort that relationship and seek to make it one of exploitation and domination. This may very well lie at the very root of our ecological crisis in the modern world. And the solution to it is at least along that one level is a psychological of recognizing that we can gain greater security by way of trust and reciprocity than by domination and exploitation.

JM: It seems to me though that you have to go a lot further than simply saying we must trust. And I think of the next steps that you take is to rely on science and say let's look at natives peoples and let's look at species of animals that have lived for hundreds of thousands of years in harmony with the environment.

TR: Well, one of the insights of deep ecology, which is challenging and perhaps even disturbing is in fact that our culture, the culture of the modern world the urban industrial world is very recent and very young. It does not have much of a tract record.

JM: Five thousand years maybe.

TR: Well, and urban industrialism is only a few centuries old. On the other hand there are cultures that have survived for a very long period of time in conditions of trust and reciprocity with the natural environment. I don't want pretend for a moment that I'm not trying to idealize or romanticize those relations between primary societies and the natural world because there's often recognition that nature can be harsh and be severe. It can be punishing. The Gaia is an earth-mother, she can be a tough mother, a punishing mother if you want to speak in those terms. That there's a kind of mature recognition of the fact that those are the terms of life. And you don't break trust with the planet and seek to dominate it and exploit it for some short term advantage simply because the going is sometimes rough. I think many environmentalists in more scientific terms of coming to tell us that same thing, that we have to change our lifestyle and our habits of life on this planets in ways that at some points may involve sacrifice, but will nevertheless in the long term give us the capacity to survive with grace and with a adequate standard of living. So this is a very real choice that confronts us about the meaning of security-- long term security on the planet and maybe that we are presently trapped within a psychology of domination that has pretty much characterized our style of life-- the city with its heavy weight upon the planet exploiting the planet as much as possible to give us all the things we need to create a artificial environment within which we will feel a kind of perhaps false security that cannot outlive three or four or five generations. That may be the essence of our environmental problem that we are seeking security along the wrong root. But the solution is not simply an economic and social political one. It's also a personal and psychological one.

JM: I suppose the question comes down to where is your bottom line if you feel as Freudians and existentialists do that the bottom line of the human sole is alienation and a need for domination, then it's easy to justify continued ecological exploitation.

TR: Yes, and the interesting thing about all views of life that are based upon a sense of alienation, inherent and inescapable alienation from nature is that they are deeply tragic. They don't promise a nice finish. Now I don't want to suggest that what I am advocating here is the easy way to go or anything of that sort. But what I am saying is that I think there might be a deeper maturity in recognizing that after all we are living on a planet from which we evolved. We cannot therefore be so alienated from that planet that we no longer some participation in that genetic heritage, that evolutionary heritage and that ought to become part of our psychological theory.

JM: Well, it seems to me that the lesson of tragedy is that when we're faced with situations that seem unavoidably horrible, the best we can do is reach inside of us for that which is noblest and wisest and Theodore Roszak that what I hear you calling us to do. The project of eco-psychology may fail, but even if it were to fail, it could bring out the best in us.

TR: Well, I think it's a matter of asking us to respond to the ecological crisis with a sense of more than fear or dread, with a sense of acting nobly towards a planet that has nurtured us into existence and which offers us a possibility of great bounty.

JM: Theodore Roszak, thank you so much for being with me.

TR: It's good to be with you Jeff.

JM: And thank you for being with us for this third part of a third part series on eco-psychology.

ECO-PSYCHOLOGY, PART II With THEODORE ROSZAK

2008-07-02T17:31:00.000+01:00

JM: Welcome back Ted.

TR: Good to be with you Jeff.

JM: In our earlier segment we discussed contemporary psychiatry and psychology. And in a nut shell what we mainly addressed were the deficiencies in psychology as it has developed to date in addressing the connection of the human being with the world of nature at large and I think it is appropriate in this segment to look at the contribution that systems theory and cosmology can play to a larger and a deeper understanding of those ecological and psychological relationships.

TR: I introduce cosmology and some science into the discussion of eco-psychology in a very specific way. And I introduce it primarily because I am trying to follow in the foot steps of Sigmund Freud, who asked the great question how does the psyche connect with the rest of nature. Now I find myself very much in disagreement with Freud's answer to that question because he sought to answer it within a world view that I think we would now call the old scientific paradigm. The universe scene is a cold, alien, remote machine; a mechanistic view of nature. And within that model of nature, Freud could find no significant connection between life and mind and the rest of the cosmos. So he came to a very negative and despairing conclusion. At the turn into the twentieth century there was indeed an entire cult of what might be called entropy, the cult of entropy, which saw the universe as running down towards a bleak dead end. It was called the heat death of the universe. Many intellectuals of that period subscribed to the idea that the universe was destined to simply become a void filled with cold centers. A very despairing conclusion. And Freud subscribed to that.

JM: Based on Newtonian physics.

TR: Based on Newtonian physics and based above all on the great idea of nineteenth century physics which was the second law of thermodynamics-- entropy. The inevitable, inexorable increase of entropy in the universe. Freud subscribed to that and within that context he saw life and mind as an exception, as an accident, as freakish and doomed to a dead end. And so Freud developed his psychiatry within that framework. Indeed the basis of Freud's idea of death instinct is entropy. The idea that the universe is naturally a cold dead place. And the death instinct which he called the most conservative of the instincts has as its goal returning life to the inert state. That's the way he described it. That's what the death instinct is within us. This gave Freud psychology a dark, stoical character. And I think that has haunted psychiatry, psychiatric theory all the way through the twentieth century. It has been sometimes been put even more dramatically by the existentialist schools, which sees human life as inevitably alienated. Deeply alienated with the universe, which is on friendly, remote, distant and holly other. Now I decided to question that deeply in my approach to eco-psychology primarily because within just the last generation, I would say since about the 1950s the last thirty to forty years, there have been profound changes in modern, scientific thought. And most significantly a growing appreciation of the importance of systems in nature. The study of systems in nature is pretty much what science has become in our time. We have come to recognize that at the foundations of the physical universe we are dealing not with atoms that are small indivisible billiard balls that simply stick together in some convenient way, but even the very foundations of matter are deeply systematic, made of particles and forces that are highly complex. The universe as a whole is a hierarchy of systems building up from the very foundations of matter to the great galactic clusters of outer space. And somewhere in the middle of that we have the biological complexity of life on at least one planet, this planet. Where the systems have taken on vitality, life and have evolved toward mind. Our appreciation of this has become profound especially within the last generation. We have come to see the universe as an evolving hierarchy of systems within which we find our place as one of the most complex of systems in the universe. Within that world view I think Freud would have to come to a very different conclusion. Life and mind far from being freakish and exceptional, are the out growth, the natural and harmonious outgrowth of a lengthy process of evolution that takes us back to the very beginning of cosmic time and what we call the big bang. Over a period of fifteen to twenty billion years since that, all of these systems have grown out of one another in a hierarchical way, which means that they are positioned as lower and higher meaning less complex and more complex systems. And life and mind are part of that process. They are not alien from it, they are part of it. They are layered upon system after system after system in a way that gives us a entirely different vision of nature. In the late twentieth century we know that time and matter have a history. And it is an evolutionary history, an unfolding toward greater and greater net complexity in the universe, and that we find our as thinking, living creatures. And indeed all life on this planet finds its place within that evolutionary process in a way that is graceful and natural. So far from seeing life and mind as something freakish and accidental in the universe, we can know see it as having a natural, evolutionary place, a continuity with the rest of nature. I think there are deep ecological implications in that and if it is integrated with a psychology that does justice to our contemporary scientific vision of nature, the result of that would be a eco-psychology, which is deeply grounded in modern science and can treat life and mind, the psyche, as a natural part of the continuum of nature.

JM: There are growing numbers of profound thinkers in science and philosophy and in cosmology who are saying we can longer view the universe as lifeless. And a God or a divine intelligence is somehow outside and apart from the universe. For example, the anthropic principle in cosmology suggests that there are some, at least in one of its strongest forms, suggests there's an intelligence that created the universe so that we could exist in it, that if any one of a number of physical variables were modified ever so slightly human life would have been impossible.

TR: I draw upon this very speculative line of thought in my book Voice of the Earth primarily because while the anthropic principle which you mentioned is a highly controversial point in contemporary physics and cosmology. It is never the less the sign of the times, some scientists have introduced this idea. Let me try to explain it to you. What is the anthropic principle? The anthropic principle briefly put has to do with the proper place of thinking creatures in a universe. Now there are many interpretations of this principle. One of which is almost a low level and non-controversial totality. The reason things are as they are in the universe is because it is only within such a universe that thinking beings could have come into existence. Here we are as thinking beings and so everything that led up to us must have happened the way it did and could it could have happened on a purely gratuitous or chance or random basis. Nothing is remarkable about that. There is however another use of the anthropic principle which is deeply controversial. And it contends that life and mind were intended by the universe and are the inevitable outcome of that universe, that there is a purpose within the universe to produce life and mind at some point in the evolution of time. Now I want to underscore the fact the that most physics do not accept this because it smacks too much of religion and theology. And we can come back to that later on. But I want to underscore the fact that I'm not defending that idea; I'm not endorsing that idea, I'm simply observing the fact that in contemporary science there respectable figures in cosmology, physical theory that are at least toying with ideas of that kind as the only way to understand as something as complex as life and mind could have come into existence within a life span that is limited-- fifteen to twenty billion years. Can that have happened by pure chance? Well, you could never say it couldn't happen by pure chance. But there are those who can't believe that it did. And I'm talking about figures as significant as say the astronomer Fred Hoyle, who in many of his writings came to feel that there must be other principles involved that are very different than the mechanistic principles of the old paradigm. I simply observe that there scientists thinking like that, trying to make sense of highly complex systems like living creatures and thinking creatures like ourselves within a universe that has a fixed time span. And some of them are prepared to speculate that the anthropic principle may indeed the idea of a purpose to the universe as a hole. Now most scientists do not accept that, but I think interesting that the idea has appeared within scientific literature at all.

JM: Well, science as it grew out of the nineteenth century was based on I guess what might be called a mechanistic paradigm and that whole paradigm is breaking down. I think it was in the 1930s that Sir James Jeans said that the universe appears to him to be more like a great thought than like a great machine.

TR: This is an intriguing aspect of systems in nature. We now recognize that the universe can be described as an evolving hierarchy of systems. And scientists find it hard to talk about systems without introducing the language of purpose and intention. If you ask why anything in the system does what it does, it impossible to avoid saying in order to. But where does that purpose reside? Where in the system, in a purely physical system, can you find that purpose? And that's a great problem for scientists. Now many of them will simply say well, this is just a convenient linguistic device. But if you eliminate the convenient linguistic device, it turns out that they're tongue-tied. There's no other way to talk about these systems. It's amazing to me, I've collected quite a file of literature in science that uses the language the language of purpose and intention to describe systems, even systems of a tiny organic kind like why an enzyme behaves the way it does or how it describes the behavior of an enzyme or some part of the genetic material. And it always turns out to be the language of consciousness, that there is recognition taking place, there is a purpose, there is information transfer. All of things are much more mental images than mechanistic images. So I think one of the things we may find happening is science as we move into another millennium is that we will find scientists using metaphor of mind more frequently than metaphors of machinery in order to describe how nature acts. And I would take things like the anthropic principle simply to be early, perhaps very tentative assertions of the idea that purpose and intention are deeply engraved in the nature of things so that even if we find they don't accept the anthropic principle, as I suspect that will happen it will be rejected as an inadequate formulation for various reasons it will never find its way into the textbooks. Systems with their inherent purposes and attentions will become more and more what scientists study, they will become more and more used to the idea of using the language of purpose and there is no way to use that language without invoking metaphors of the mind.

JM: You yourself, I think point out that even if a scientist chooses to be very strictly mechanistic to describe a human being as nothing more than a machine, there hasn't been a machine yet that didn't have a purpose.

TR: Well, there has always been lurking in the background of every mechanistic explanation an element of purpose and intention because there is no such thing as a machine that doesn't serve a purpose. However, scientists you see have simply gotten used to the idea of using words like mechanism as an element in nature. Now there are no mechanisms in nature, mechanism is imported in from the world of technology. But we have come to associate mechanism with science so deeply that we forget that it came from outside of science. I suspect the same thing might happen with words like idea, purpose, goal, intention, recognition, language of that kind. I mean already every use of the word information in science, information transfer, in genetics for example, is imbued with elements of mentality. Aldous Huxley once said we must begin to see the universe as mind at large. And I think that maybe something that scientist will find themselves more and more drawn to. The assumption that the universe is much more like an idea, much more like a thinking mind than it is like some kind of a dead machine or simply dancing billiard balls, atoms that are nothing more than little balls of matter than simply bounce off one another and simply somehow shake into or distribute themselves into the universe as we know it.

JM: I know your wife Betty Roszak has been very eloquent in creating poetry that describes for example how our very existence is dependent upon the death of stars that took place eons ago across the galaxy.

TR: Yes, you know there's a lot more lyricisms in poetry in science these days and many scientists may recognize themselves, though many do. For example, the fact that we refer to stars as having a life span, that they are born and they die. It's coming to be more and more natural to us to see organic and mental images in nature. And Betty who's a poetry has drawn upon this to find the lyricisms poetry inherent in the new vision of science, the new cosmology. Some scientist find that actually much more appealing than they're willing to admit in public.

JM: Well, I very much enjoyed her image of a star sacrificing its self that we might live.

TR: You know, it's not so far fetched. I mean there is a kind of sacrificial death of a star. Scientist themselves refer to the death in a supernova. You know, it's not too far fetched to see this as a sacrificial acts that creates the very matter, the heavy matter carbon for example out of which our bodies living things are made. There's a great deal of poetry to that. And yes it's an intriguing new way to see poetry in the universe.

JM: Well, one of the other more poetical aspects of eco-psychology, which is very closely linked to modern science is the Gaia hypothesis.

TR: The Gaia hypothesis which is again a highly controversial hypothesis in science is deeply poetic because it uses a mythological reference. Gaia was the Greek earth Goddess. And the Gaia formulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulies. They looked around for a name to give this hypothesis. They might have chosen anything I suppose, but they finally came up with a reference to Gaia. Now the Gaia hypothesis tells us that the earth can only be understood as a total system within which living things life-- the biomass of the planet, plays a central role in controlling. So it's very basic aspects of life on earth as the atmosphere, carbon cycle a number of things of this sort have to be understood against the background of an evolving and proliferating life upon this planet. The way in which they decided to package this idea was to imagine that the earth was a living organ, a total system, and they gave it a name-- the name was Gaia. No sooner did they do this then this idea which was meant to be a matter of biochemistry a little more than that got out into the culture at large and became deeply evocative. It was a deeply poetic image of the role of life on this planet. And then again you find science perhaps almost in spite of itself bridging over into poetry and to lyrical and rhapsodic expressions. But once again I would emphasis that at the foundation of the Gaia hypothesis is a deep insight into the systemic character of life on this planet. The fact that it is an extremely complex system that has to be understood as a whole. And within which things are doing what they're doing presumably with the purpose of preserving and enhancing life on this planet.

JM: When I think of the Gaia hypothesis I think of a statement that you made which is something like this. I believe you said that the central problem of eco-psychology is not what we will do about the earth, but what the earth will do about us.

TR: That's a good way to put it I think because it challenges us to see that the earth within the terms of the Gaia hypothesis, maybe another player and the most important player in the environmental crisis of our time. If indeed the Gaia hypothesis is correct, that the planet seeks to control and to enhance the conditions of life, then in a condition of ecological that we find ourselves in the twentieth century then it maybe to ask whether the planet may not itself be asserting certain influences upon all the life forms upon it, but most importantly us as its principle challenge or irritant. Exerting an influence upon us that will transform our habits and our ways is that a possibility? Well, I think eco-psychology has to ponder the very real possibility that there is a bond that links the human psyche to the Gaia hypothesis. To the intention of the planet as a global system, to preserve and enhance life. In which case we have something to draw upon in our ecological problems which is more than simply social duty. We have deep biological necessity.

JM: Yes, one of the statements and I think many other people in the ecology movement have been quoting a lot is the statement attributed to Chief Seattle who said that one thing he knew when his people knew for certain is that we don't own the earth. The earth owns us.

TR: Chief Seattle is a bit of a problem Jeff. I've gotten a lot of mail about that quote. I didn't need it because I already know that it's apocryphal.

JM: Right.

TR: However, while Chief Seattle may never have said that, somebody said it. And it's a noble sentiment that I think has a lot of ecological relevance behind it. It's a deep insight into the systematic nature of life on earth as, well why not, a living organism. And that therefore the role we have to play in the late twentieth century early twenty-first century will be to try to recognize the effect of the call of the voice of the earth upon us, to change our ways and ecological habits. And my feeling is that if we hear that voice clearly and strongly, if it comes through to us aesthetically as well as biologically and many different levels, that we will rather gracefully move to do what is ecologically right and balanced.

JM: We've been discussing for the last twenty-five the questions of cosmology, systems theory, the Gaia hypothesis, the anthropic principle as they apply to eco-psychology. I get the impression that what you're trying to build here is an intellectual framework which points in one direction and that is that the human mind is very deeply linked to every aspect of nature from the furthest galaxies to the tiniest single cell organisms at the bottom of the sea.

TR: Well, this is I find a powerfully evocative vision of nature to see the world the universe at large as an evolving hierarchy of systems within which life and mind find their place. It means that in some sense, which is as poetic as it is scientific, life and mind were inherent in that universe from the very beginning. They have matured, they have evolved, out of it. You know like the fruit appearing on a tree. Alan Watts, I remembered once said you know the universe at a certain point-- people. In the same way in which a tree bares fruit. And that's to see life and mind as having a very different in the heavens. Deeply rooted all the way back to the beginning. It means that the universe is more of a home for us than we may have realized. Now, I'll just mention one point, ever since I was aware enough to be studying science, one of the issues that has always come up is the issue of the size of the universe. How vast it is and the vastness, the size of the universe has often been used as a measure of how lonely and alienated and puny and unimportant we are. We now know that it is only within a universe of a certain age and a certain size that life could have come into existence.

JM: That's the anthropic principle.

TR: That's right. And that therefore that universe of that size is appropriately our home. We could not have come into existence in any smaller universe in a younger universe. It had to happen in just that universe.

JM: And this is not the controversial aspect of...

TR: No, that part of it is widely accepted. That it's only after a certain period of evolution and cooling, at which point the universe reaches a certain size, that the planet like the earth could come into existence bearing life upon it. So that far from the size of the universe being something that dwarfs, that intimidates us, that overwhelms us, we should recognize. And this is for me a deep insight into the nature of the universe at large, that it is only within that universe that we could be here, that our home has to be of that size. And that gives us that size that dimension of things that magnitude of things more of a naturing quality that I would've never guessed I could have found.

JM: I gather you're also, though we don't have time to cover it, very interested and perhaps impressed by the work of people in the area of physics and consciousness who are suggesting, for example that there are properties of sub-atomic particles photons for example that exhibit qualities that might be the rudiments of consciousness itself.

TR: Well, insofar as any system holds together and all the parts are cooperating in a sense. Let me take the word cooperation. It already implies some type of mentality at work. The parts aware of one another and holding together in certain way. In so far as any of that is perceived in the universe we may be perceiving evidence of mind. And may be what we have to get over is the idea that minds can only be only located in heads. Again, I would invoke Huxley's phrase that mind at large is the nature of the universe. In the same way as that we've gotten used to the idea that a wave does not have to be embodied as it once originally was for us in a mound of water moving through the sea. We can manage waves being liberated from a physical context and appearing as pure energy in a very ethereal way in the universe at large. So it maybe important at some point to recognize that mentality does not have to reside within a skull, within a Brian, within a head.

JM: Theodore Roszak, thank you so much for being with me. And thank you very much for being with us in part two of this three part series. Please tune in again for part three in which we'll discuss further the principles of eco-psychology.

ECO-PSYCHOLOGY, PART I With THEODORE ROSZAK

2008-07-02T16:56:00.000+01:00

Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Today we are going to explore echo-psychology. With me for the first of a three part series is Dr. Theodore Roszak, a professor of history at California State University at Hayward, a leading social critic and an author of numerous books including The Making of a Counterculture, Where the Wasteland Ends, Person, Planet, and most recently, The Voice of the Earth. Welcome Ted.

TR: Good to be here Jeff.

JM: It's a pleasure to be with you. In your book The Voice of the Earth, you outline what hopefully will become an entirely new discipline which you call eco-psychology. I think the best way to introduce our viewers to this subject is to talk about what psychology has been up until now. And I think maybe the best place to start would be with Freud himself who was the founder of psychotherapy.

TR: That's where I decided to start the examination of the psychiatric mainstream. It provides a good baseline. As Freud, whatever else has to be questioned and revised his work as most of the important questions. And even though I disagree with many answers he came up with, I thought the questions where well worth addressing. And so I used Freud and his influence on later figures, positive or negative, as a starting point for a re-examination and a revisioning of the psychiatric tradition in the modern Western world.

JM: Well, one of the issues that Freud did address was the environment itself in some very limited sense wasn't it?

TR: Freud asked a question that was a pregnant question, an important one: What is the relationship of the human psyche to nature in general and to the universe at large? The question you would think every psychiatrist would want to address at some point. It's the big question-- how does the psyche connect with anything outside of the psyche in nature. Freud thought of himself as a scientist examining a scientific material called the human psyche, even though others in psychology think that he indulged in a lot of abstractions about the id and the ego and the super ego and so on. Freud himself thought he was a good solid materialistic scientist studying quite objectively a material called the psyche. When he asked the question "How does the psyche connects with nature at large," he came up with a very negative assessment. That is, he was convinced the human mind, the psyche, and life in general was a freakish development in the universe. And that decision on Freud's part haunts the practice of psychiatry and psychotherapy down to the present day. And it has led to the assumption that you can treat the psyche in isolation from the natural environment because there's no significant, meaningful, human connection. Freud went so far as to regard the human mind as freakish, as purely accidental and perhaps not natural in the sense that it would someday give a return to the unconscious state, to the inert state. Now the problem with that is that it has left us with a severely under-dimensioned psychology, a psychology in which the human mind does not connect with the natural environment. And it is therefore treated wholly within a social context, a family context, perhaps a very personal context but without any outreach to the world beyond -- the non-human world -- that surrounds us out of which we evolved.

JM: And I suppose the larger significance of this is that it's not just Freud. But he was in fact representing what was a mainstream opinion at the time he wrote at the end of the last century, one that was widely shared and is still influential in our culture.

TR: Well, I concluded that Freud's influence in this respect has been absolutely decisive. Jung, his great disciple tried to find his way around this position Freud had adopted and tried to find a more religious, a more spiritual interpretation of the psyche, which is one of the reasons Freud and Jung fell out with one another. Most other followers of Freud and the schools that followed the post-Freudians simply assumed that Freud was correct about the connection between the psyche and the natural environment. The result of this has been is that if you look at psychiatric literature as a whole, there's almost no mention in it of the non-human world, as if it just doesn't matter. Indeed you find extreme examples of this in a development following World War 2-- existential therapy for example-- it is simply assumed that human beings exist in the condition of alienation from nature. Indeed that's the key problem that you have to address yourself too: Our profound alienation as human being in an alien universe. Well, I decided to go back beyond Freud and then to place his work within a larger framework of spiritual healing, psychotherapy in the most general sense of the term because if you look beyond the modern, Western schools of psychiatry, you find that in traditional societies among primary people, the people we once used to call primitives, that it is understood that sanity and madness have to be defined always in relationship to the natural habitat; and that indeed to a very large extent, madness is understood to be an imbalance between the individual and the natural environment or between an entire tribe or a people and its natural environment. That's a much larger conception of what sanity and madness are. And so my feeling is that the indigenous cultures have a lot to offer our understanding of sanity and madness in this one significant respect-- that there has to be a balance between the psyche and the natural world around us. That I think has profound ecological implications.

JM: Well, one of the controversial issues of modern psychiatry and psychology is the whole issue of the social system itself: What happens when the social system is mad or insane?

TR: Yes, Freud also addressed himself to this issue asking the question, how do we define madness? If we decide, if we suspect that an entire culture may be embedded in what he called "collusive madness" or "communal neurosis." Where does the therapist then look for a baseline to define sanity and madness? Freud raised this issue, but he never came up with a successful answer to it. Later schools like radical therapists have. They have called into question the existing social definition of madness and sanity in ways that have profound social implications. Perhaps an entire society is mad, in which case you don't simply want to adjust people back into another condition of madness. The way in which I take this issue up is to suggest that there is a madness involved in urban industrial society that has to do with our lack of balance and integration with the natural environment and that this might be an interesting baseline to use for the definition of sanity as we move into the next century. That is, we need to recapture of being embedded in nature, being in the condition of reciprocity with nature that you do find in traditional forms of healing. I don't think we can simply adopt any other culture's conception of sanity and madness. We have to work out our own. And that I want to suggest is as much a job of the ecologist as it is of the therapist. So eco-psychology is the term I've used to try to define a common ground between two fields that have so far not been on speaking terms. Psychologists on the one side and ecologists on the other. Psychology needs ecology; ecology needs psychology. Ideally, you know, someday we wouldn't use a term like eco-psychology, psychology would be understood to have a ecological framework. But at this point, that is still to be worked out.

JM: At this point we have ecologists that are like profits in the wilderness, warning us that the course our civilization on a global basis is madness. That we're headed for self destruction. That what we are following are habitats.

TR: I've been concerned about the fact that many environmentalists have been sounding out very few notes on appealing to the public. They refer to fear, they're afraid of guilt, they seek to shock, they seek to shame. I understand why. The problems are urgent, and I accept the urgency of these problems. I don't question that at all. But it maybe important to ask at some point whether we've done too much of that in the environmental movement, which I consider myself to be a part of? And that perhaps we have to find other themes to introduce, other notes to sound that are more positive and more affirmative. At a certain point this becomes a challenge to the environmental movement. Do we believe that human beings are bonded to this planet in a way that would allow us to invoke trust, love, respect and reciprocity as positive motivations for becoming good environmental citizens? Or do we believe there's nothing more to fall back on than duty based upon guilt, based upon shame? Guilt and shame have their place. But an appeal that is exclusively related to guilt or to shame is, I think, at a certain point going to have detrimental effects. It's going to turn people off and it's going to sound terribly negative and challenging in that bad sense in which you confront people with a problem greater than they can take hold of. I would like to see the environmental movement ask it's self this question: Are we not bonded to this planet by something which is life enhancing and life affirming and which we can appeal to people to find within themselves a voice of the earth which speaks to them with a sense of love, respect and trust?

JM: I suppose ultimately the question is, which will be more effective. The environmentalists see that there's a job to be done and they're probably using the means that they believe to be the most effective right now. And I hear you challenging them.

TR: Well, one way to decide this is to simply recognize the truth for us to be told. To begin with we're dealing with problems that are urgent and life threatening and threatening the lives of other species beyond our own. You simply have to say that if it's true, it's true. Now in many cases we're not sure that it's true. We're troubled perhaps because of the uncertainty of the problem and we have to invoke prudence more than certainty in the matter. But in addition to that, even if the problem is an urgent one, you still at some point, I feel, connect with something more positive and affirmative in people. And I believe it's there. I wouldn't be saying this if I didn't believe it was there. So my article of faith is that at a very deep level the human psyche is grafted to the planet out of which we evolve, that there is what I call an ecological unconscious. Now whenever we invoke the unconscious, the depths of the unconscious, what we're essentially doing is pursuing a philosophical discussion of human nature. We're asking what makes people tick, what are the foundations of human behaviour?

And there's been of course a lot of speculation about that throughout psychiatric tradition. Some people find sexuality there, others find the archetypes of the high religious traditions there. I'm suggesting that at a certain level of the unconscious mind, what we find is ecological wisdom. And indeed, if that were not there, our species could not have survived and evolved as it has. Exactly what the ecological unconscious is and how it asserts itself and makes itself known, that's perhaps yet to be discovered once we attend to the problem. But I have floated this phrase, suggested this phrase as a hypothesis-- that at the lowest level, the deepest of the unconscious mind, we find a ecological unconscious deeper down even than Freud's ideas about sexuality or Jung's ideas about religious archetypes It's something that connects us intimately, companionably with the flora and fauna, mountains, rivers, the natural world around us.

JM: Well, it would seem to be a pretty logical and sensible thing when you think that we each carry within our bodies, the genetic codes that have evolved over billions of years on this planet and are applicable to all other living systems.

TR: Well, I think that's one way to look at it, you know, that we carry within ourselves this heritage which takes the form of a genetic code. And then the question is to what degree that affects the psyche. Is the psyche not itself an evolutionary phenomenon? I believe that it is. For that matter, even Freud believed that it was. In fact one of the things that made Freud feel most scientific was the degree to which he could rely upon Darwin and evolution. But Freud had a very skewed idea about Darwin and evolution. Freud was very much of a social Darwin. His image of early humanity was a primal horde made up of rapacious, savage, people, perhaps rather the Victorian vision of primitive people in darkest Africa. There's a lot more personal projection in that than real science. So Freud's use of Darwin, his use of evolution was kinked, it was distorted. But if we take the same tact that he did-- that the human psyche must have evolved out of that kind of a background and that it has behind it thousands of years of evolutionary development-- then it's reasonable to assume that it does connect in intimate and significant ways with the natural environment out of which we evolved; that that's there to be found; and that the essence of sanity in this case and all cases is tapping the deep unconscious. But the question is what do you find there? And in eco-psychology what you're looking for is our bond with the natural world.

JM: Well, of course Freud's idea of the horrors of the id, the aggressive and sexual instincts that we must protect ourselves from, might be thought of as a restatement of the theological notion of original sin that separated us from nature.

TR: There is a lot more religion, crypto religion, lingering in Freud than he himself might have admitted. Psychoanalysis is after all a kind of right of confession. Some people have said that psychoanalysis is a confessional for Protestants. And similarly his vision of the primal horde where the Oedipus complex was established comes very close to being another version of original sin.

JM: Now let's define for our viewers the Oedipus complex.

TR: Oh, it's Freud's conception that once upon a time, he thought of this quite historically he was very literal about this, the sons of the primal horde in some original caveman community rose up against a heavy father that dominated the clan and killed him and then lived in a condition of guilt and that condition is visited down through the ages and is repeated in the life history of every individual human being. It has to do with children.

As Freud saw it there's always lust for the mother being punished by the father. It's almost an article of folk-lore now to talk about it because it's been called so much into question. But it's interesting that the imagery here is all sexual and it's all very negative. It has to do with the foundations of the human mind being filled with guilt, with shame. And psychoanalysis, like confession in the Catholic church, is a matter of confessing your guilty secrets. And this is pretty much what psychiatry has become for many people. What I'm talking about is the possibility that deeper down than that... but deeper down than that there may be a reservoir of joyous, trusting, and loving connections with the natural world that can also be tapped and brought to the surface. And if we draw upon that, if we find ways to enliven that, to make that vital within the lives of people, then it may then be possible for them to become good environmental citizens in a way that is rewarding and is joyous. And that I think is a possibility the environmental movement could use for good political purposes.

JM: One of the fundamental points you seem to be making is that much of the damage that we human being are doing to our environment, to our habitat, is the result of some sort of an impulsive and obsessive need to cover some bad feelings and some guilt that has been drummed into us unnecessarily; that we don't understand that we're basically okay.

TR: Well, we're not basically okay within a urban industrial society. I mean that I think the environmental movement is exactly right. We have invented a culture which is deeply toxic in many ways. No, I'm not sure we have to strip the hole in that culture, but a lot about it has to change; has to change rapidly and radically. In fact, the amount of change that the environmental movement is demanding of all of us, that we're demanding of ourselves, that makes it urgently important to find the right approach-- the right way to address peoples so that they will bring about that. I don't think fear and guilt alone will do the job. What I'm calling an eco-psychology, and incidentally it's now becoming a movement of some importance in the therapeutic community, is a matter of asking quite honestly why people do what they do when they are behaving in an ecologically united or backward or destructive way. Ask that question quite seriously. If we are not good environmental citizens, why not? Why do we do the things we do? And eco-psychology would pay attention to that as an important way of understanding human nature. We are out of balance, out of harmony with the natural environment, why? What are the reasons for that? Too often environmentalists will identify some of these habits as simply wicked or greedy in an entirely negative. Then I suppose the approach we take is to scold people and try to talk them out of these bad habits, or lecture them or hector them or bully them out of these bad habits.

I'm suggesting that there might be another approach. And that is to find out why people are doing what they are doing. That is, if you start with a basic principle that there is an ecological unconscious that binds us or bonds us to this planet in a thoroughly, natural way. And if we are not in effect responding to that bond, then there must be a reason why. And we should ask in all sincerity why people are doing what they're doing that's ecologically negative. And then listen to their answers. With the same therapeutic sensitivity that a therapists listen when he asks a question about imbalance say in a family or a relationship. This is a relationship. It's a relationship between people and the natural environment. Why is it out of harmony? And listen closely to the answer. I think the answers might often be quite interesting.

JM: One of the things that you suggest is that Freud may have almost gotten it backwards when he talks about a primal crime against the father that perhaps the crime was against mother-- nature.

TR: Well, that's a rather lyrical way of putting it. But it's true. I mean usually we think of the earth as a mother figure. And what if the foundations of human madness have more to do with a crime against that mother than they have to do with any transgression against a hypothetical primordial father. At least that's what I'm suggesting might be the deepest rout of madness and that madness is most highly emphasized most crucially in a society that is becoming more and more urban and industrial and growing further and further away from the mother earth that bore us into life in the first place. So it's an interesting new image to use for understanding human nature, the nature of madness, the nature of sanity.

JM: It also raises many questions that possibly tie in these ecological issues that you raised with other injustices in our society, for example sexism. And I think many symbolic psycholinguists also view the unconscious itself-- the great water-- as being feminine.

TR: Well, there are elements here of deep sexual psychology, sexual stereotypes that have to be questioned as well. And again these are issues that did not arise prominently in the psychiatric mainstream until very recently when a feminist critique of standard psychiatry came into prominence. And that's only been very recently. That also has to be included because they are in any assessment of psychiatry and in the creation of eco-psychology because sexual ballads between the genders is an important aspect of the way in which we address the natural world.

JM: Well, I suppose one of the fundamental issues here is that psychology and psychiatry as we know them today are the products of this very same society which is damaging the planet.

JM: Yes, that's a problem you see. And I've talked with some fledgling eco-psychologists who have developed very strong reservations about the possibility of treating problems of neurosis within a urban framework. That is what if the city is itself shot through with a kind of madness. And I'm talking about something that's so apparent in the pace and tempo of our daily life that I think it's almost taken for granted that we are living a kind of crazy life. And all we have to do is be caught on the freeway in a traffic jam you know to recognize the madness of the way we've constructed the world around us. The amount of waste and the amount of stress and the amount of tension that we inflict upon ourselves. There's something crazy about that. Now my problem is, and this is what I observe in my book, The Voice of the Earth, that when we say we are crazy with what we're doing in this urban environment, this quite simply has no professional meaning. Because psychiatrists who are themselves products of an urban culture and practice within a urban context are often not prepared to call into question a context that they themselves are tied to. But the madness of cities is an important consideration in eco-psychology. And cities are becoming the only way of life left in the modern world. There's very little that's outside of the city. Now if the city is a crazy context in which people live, then there would also be a crazy context in which to carry on psychotherapy. I'm not saying there's any easy answer to that but again the question is basic. If this is true, then we have to confront that truth and make something of it.

JM: Well, I'm sure virtually every school of psychology would agree that one of the fundamental problems that people have that causes unhappiness has to do with the conflict between the social roles that we are placed in our jobs and in other artificial context that we create as oppose to you know the natural person underneath.

TR: Well, I would think so, you know urban culture is very recent, it's a very recent development. The first urban society which was England is no more than about a century and a half old. So we're talking about something very recent in human affairs that may not connect very sensibly with our evolutionary heritage. Eco-psychology has to take that historical context into account, that we are talking about a culture which is very new, very come lately. And to which human beings may not be well adapted. The fact that we're trapped in it simply means that we're capable of creating a culture that can rise up against us like a Frankenstein's monster and perhaps destroy us. While before that happens what we need is to get a grip on that culture and subject to it a sort of deep critique that I think only eco-psychology, as opposed to a mainstream psychology, could carry out.

JM: Theodore Roszak, it's been a pleasure talking to you in this first part of a three part series. We've had a chance now to identify some of the fundamental problems of culture as a whole and of the ecology movement and of psychotherapy.

TR: Good to talk with you Jeff.

JM: Yes. And thanks for being with me. And thank you for being with us. I hope that you'll stay tuned for parts two and three of this series in which we'll begin to explore further some of the anecdotes to the problems that we have described today. We'll begin to look at movements in cosmology and in psychotherapy and in culture that offer us a new ecological vision.

HAARP CBC Broadcast Weather control part 1 and 2

2008-06-29T15:14:00.000+01:00

HAARP

2008-06-29T14:50:00.000+01:00

I have uploaded this to my Video section, but, due to recent changes the original in that section can only be viewed for 30 days. Hence I am embedding it here too which means you can click on it and go through to the original on YouTube.

Turkey Blocks YouTube

2008-06-14T12:04:00.000+01:00

Evidently due to some users insulting Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, the Turkish courts have banned YouTube and all access to it from Turkey. Read about it here.

All is not lost. YouTube videos embedded in sites like Multiply can still be viewed from Turkey. Likewise using a proxy or TOR gets around the block. Read more on how to get around the YouTube block in Turkey

Save Our Bookshops and Authors From Amazon

2008-06-13T09:30:00.000+01:00

I'm sure many of you like me buy books from Amazon, but, do you realise the implications of this especially in the light of recent exposures? This morning I happened to turn on the radio and heard a news item about Amazon on BBC Radio 4 which caused me concern. Amazon have stepped up underhand tactics to maximise profit and control over publishing which, considering their already immense profits is nothing short of excessive greed. If publishers don't comply with their demands the Buy Now button is removed.

In case the above BBC radio new item and interview goes dead you can read about it on Publishing News Online Publishers rebuff Amazon

What can we do? Support your local bookshop. If you don't have one available where you live then have a close look at the page on Amazon where the book you are looking for is displayed, you'll normally see it also available from Amazon Sellers which are often small online bookshops. Instead of buying it through Amazon from them click on the link to go to one of those smaller online bookshops and buy it directly from them.

If Amazon continues down it's chosen road we will soon be seeing more real bookshops closing, Amazon getting an even greater cut of the retail price which is already 50% or more and writers getting less and less in royalties.

The Great Invocation

2008-06-10T07:08:00.000+01:00

From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of men
Let Light descend on Earth.

From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into the hearts of men.
May Christ return to Earth.

From the centre where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide the little wills of men-
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.

From the centre which we call the race of men
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.

Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.

British Bee Keeping Association Bed With The Devil

2008-06-08T08:36:00.000+01:00

Throughout Europe and particularly in Germany since 1994 many bee hives have collapsed in what appears to be suspicious poisoning. It's now ascertained that the agent involved is the neonicotinoids family of pesticides which includes imidacloprid and clothianidin. Imidacloprid and clothianidin are two of Bayer's most important products. The British Bee Keeping Association (BBKA) that are supposed to protect bees and the interests of bee keepers are evidently accepting large amounts of money from Bayer at around £20000 per anum since 2003 in return for endorsing and sponsoring their products. It's been pointed out that this is the equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous taking cash from a whisky manufacturing company for endorsing their booze as being “friendly to alcoholics if consumed in the recommended dosage.

Read more about it:
Leeds Beekeepers Association - Mass bee deaths - Bayer pesticides suspended
Official Announcement by BBKA

Pesticides: Germany bans chemicals linked to honeybee devastation

French Institutes Finds Imidaproclid Turning Up in Wide Range of Crops

A sting in the tale: 'secret deal' splits country's top beekeepers

The Jewel

2008-06-06T18:03:00.000+01:00

In a remote realm of perfection, there was a just monarch who had a
wife and a wonderful son and a daughter. They all lived together in
happiness.

One day the father called his children before him and said:

"The time has come, as it does for all. You are to go down, an
infinite distance, to another land. You shall seek and find and
bring back a precious jewel."

The travellers were conducted in disguise to a strange land, whose
inhabitants almost all lived a dark existence. Such was the affect
of this place that the two lost touch with each other, wandering as
if asleep.

From time to time they saw phantoms, similitudes of their country and
of the jewel, but such was their condition that those things only
increased the depth of their reveries, which they now began to take
for reality.

When news of his children's plight reached the king, he sent word by
a trusted servant, a wise man:

"Remember your mission, awaken from your dream, and remain together."

With this message they roused themselves, and with this help of their
rescuing guide they dared the monstrous perils which surrounded the
jewel, and by it's magic aid returned to their realm of light, there
to remain in increased happiness for evermore.

From "Thinkers of the East" by Idries Shah

Masonic Origins, Facts and Fiction

2008-06-06T16:55:00.000+01:00

Many books have been written about the origins of Freemasonry and many myths have been interwoven into them. Even Freemasons agree that its origins seem to be purposely obscured, however virtually all agree that it was brought to the West in its embryonic form by the Knights Templar after discovering something in the Temple of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

Virtually all this research and all the books written have one thing in common ~ they were researched and written by Westerners trying to make sense of the scant information available. One thing must be remembered though, prior to the capture of Jerusalem by the West it was in Arabic and Islamic control; the Temple of the Rock was the second most sacred place in Islam next to the Kaaba in Mecca; during Western occupation there was still strong Islamic influence in Jerusalem and around the Temple of the Rock, albeit underground; after Christian occupation Islam re-established itself there up to present time. Within Islam there is the Sufi, the Islamic mystics, they have always had a strong presence in the Temple of the Rock ~ the reason will soon become apparent. The Sufi are not only spiritual mystics, but, also often highly intellectual and learned. It will be no surprise then to learn that they have unbroken lines of transmission of what was really going on at that time and the key to unlock the codes found in Masonry.

So, rather than dwell on broken transmissions in the West, let us look at the Sufic transmissions of the origins of Freemasonry. Below is a reproduction of one chapter from The Sufis by Idries Shah, this chapter deals with the origins of Freemasonry and how to use Sufi knowledge to decode it.

Read on and enjoy.

The Secret Language

II. The Builders

Detach from fixed ideas and

preconceptions. And face what is

to be your lot.

(Sheikh Abu-Said Ibn Abri-Khair)

"Sufi-ism," said Sir Richard Burton, was "The Eastern parent of Freemasonry." Whether Burton was a Freemason or not, there is no doubt he was a Sufi.

Freemasonry has been upheld by distinguished people in many countries, reviled and persecuted, linked with politics, reduced to the relative informality of staid businessman's frolics, penetrated by Rosicrucianism, attacked as a Jewish imposture by the Nazis. It would not be seemly for a Freemason to engage upon a public portrayal of any part of the Craft's symbols or beliefs - indeed it is more than probable that a member would be under oath of secrecy whereby he must preserve every part of the brotherhood's workings from all who were not initiated. The source of material purporting to be Masonic for the non-members, therefore, is bound to be fairly one sided ~ the inner workings of Masonry provided by renegades and probably by opponents of the Craft.

When a study is made of all available literature purporting to contain Masonic secrets, certain definite outlines appear, which might justifiably be considered to form a reasonable amount of true information, on the no-smoke-without-fire principle. But that as it may, what interests the Sufi is the fact that, out of the material which claims to be partially or wholly Masonic, a very great deal is at once seen to concur with matters of everyday Sufi initiatory practice. Either Freemasonry is, as Burton claimed, derived from the Sufis; or else the substance of the frequent and plentiful exposes, which may not be of Freemasonry at all, are in fact exposures of a Sufic cult other than Freemasonry. For the purpose of this study we shall approach this exciting part of the enquiry from the only perspective open to us. Parallels will be sought between what the exposers claim to be Freemasonry, and what we know of Sufic schools.

One of the best methods of tracing Arabic-Sufi transmission to the West is through terminology. When a certain word is used with an esoteric significance, it is generally worthwhile studying it and seeking a parallel between the two systems. The fundamental word which we find most used in Masonic exposures is composed of the three Hebrew letters A, B, L, Transliterated into Arabic letters, this word proves to be the password of the Sufi society called the Builders (al-Banna); and the Arabic word for Mason is also al-Banna. Far from ending here, the parallels are just beginning.

As in the case of the troubadours (TRB, Arabic root), the Builders (first said to flourish under this name in the ninth century) chose this triliteral word with care, searching the dictionary for a term which would embrace as many aspects of their organization as possible. The result, analysed by inflecting the Arabic root in the normal manner, provides this list of characteristics of the school:

ABL = monk, sexton, etc.; heirophancy

ABL = to gather people together; grouping

LaBA = to stop, to halt at a place

BaLA = to give a thing, to be beneficent

BAL = heart, mind; attention; state; boldness; welfare

Even without other information which exists about this Sufi school, we can already glean something of their organization and objectives through this breakdown of their secret word. The first word intimates initiation, the second the congregation, the third the stages of the Path of the Sufis, the fourth the giving (of love and charity) which was their means of expression, the fifth various aspects of their activities and training. Why was this word written in Hebrew and not in Arabic? Some late hand has reshaped the Arabic origins of the Craft into a form more acceptable to people with a Judo-Christian tradition; and we can safely assume from the published materials that it was to just such a community that the modern form of Masonry as we know it in the West was addressed.

To the Sufi Builders, these three letters symbolized three meditation postures. The Kufic letter alif was the kneeling position. Duh'l-Nun Misri, one of the greatest Sufi teachers, is believed to have formulated it in this shape. It became powerful in Turkey during the sixteenth century. Western writers say "it is strangely like the Masons." It was illustrated by a set square, a primal symbol of the Masons. In Arabic, again, the word square is RBA ~ which summarizes meditation very well in it's alternative meaning of "waiting, restraint." The second letter, ba, is written in Arabic letters like a boat with a dot under it. This forms a fairly passable diagram of its symbol ~ the level ~ also used in Masonry. This conveys the emblematic meaning of "prostration and concentration." The final letter, lam, is likened to a rope. In shape it is very much like a hook or curving piece of rope. It means to the Builder "the rope which binds all in union."

[The following goes into Sufi symbolism which although not exactly relevant is so in a round about way so I'm including it ~ Rob].

There are, according to the Sufis, ninety-nine divine names or attributes. The development of the effect of all these names produce the complete individual. The hundredth name is secret and becomes known to the Seeker only when he has become imbued with the spirit of the others. The number 33 is used by the Builders to denote one third of the total training system which produces the first grade of enlightenment. In the numerical system of the Arabic alphabet (where every letter has a number) 33 provides: 30 = letter L; 3 = letter J. This is the only way in which the number can be split up by this system. If the letters L and J are then considered to spell a word, they constitute a password or initiatory meaning of the first third of Sufi enlightenment. Is there a word LJ or JL in Arabic? Indeed there is. There are both. LJ spells "flame," and Sufistically stands for the illumination, the burning desire of love. JL spells "illustrious." The flaming sword which is reputedly a Masonic emblem is used by the Builders to correspond with this meaning ~ the thirty-three names.

What of the hundredth name? This, strange as it may seem, seems to be the (now corrupted) original of the strange G-like symbol found within the Masonic star in items of regalia. In the cult of the Builders, this G is the Arabic letter Q, which it closely resembles. [Note ~ In Colloquial Arabic, the Q sound may be rendered, especially by non-Arabs, as G. This tendency is more marked still in some countries which use Arabic words, but themselves lack the guttural Q sound.] And Q stands for the secret, the final element. In the same Arabic letter-number notation, Q is equivalent to the number one hundred.

The method of codes within codes and using letters and numbers to convey matters which only the initiated understand is the characteristic of dervish poets; and since it occurs in too many particulars to be mere coincidence, the Masonic usage and the Sufi one are identical. Take the matter a stage further. If we add the letter Q, the hidden power, to the three letter word ALB, eliding the letter A, in Arabic we have a further panorama of hidden meaning:

Q-ABL = beforehand, first, prior (primacy of the cult)

Q-ALB = heart (Sufi symbol for contemplation and inner metaphysical contact)

L-aQB = title, honorific (the distinction of the cult)

And whether by accident or design, the three letters Q, L, B, when added together according to Arabic notation produce 132. This can be read as 32 + 1 = 33. But according to the Builders, it is an intimation of the secret teaching passed on with great secrecy by one whose name, when calculated by the same method in Arabic, provides the number thirty-three. And this is how they spell it.

M = 40 +

H = 8 +

M = 40 +

M = 40 +

D = 4

= 132

The word, spelled according to Arab orthography, is Mohammad. We are now at the stage when the Builders reveal that the Sufic lore which they practice was a part of the secret teachings of Mohammad himself.

This figure of thirty-three, or the letter Q, the Sufi Builders inscribed within a pentagram, and sometimes in a star composed of two triangles. In other esoteric traditions, these superimposed triangles are explained as standing for male and female principles, as fire and air, and so on. But to the Sufi Builder, the lower triangle is the shaped Arabic numeral seven. The upper one is the outline of the number eight. And, taken together, the six sides of the two triangles comprise the number six. This, to them, means the series 786. And 786 is the religious formula Bismillah ar-Rahmam, ar-Rahim, reduced to figures by direct substitution. The meaning of the phrase is the same as that found on a Sufic crucifix from the ninth-century Ireland ~ In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the merciful.

The Kaaba (cubical temple) of Mecca was rebuilt in 608 A.D., when Mohammad was thirty-five years old, and five years before he started his teaching. This temple was built with thirty-one courses of stone and wood [the other two courses are, of course, earth and sky, according to Sufi symbolism]. The Sufis add: "with Earth and Sky, thirty-three."

It would be improper to go any further in presenting material which both Freemasons and organized dervish fraternities posses and consider to be of high initiatory significance. But, there are incidental facts that can be mentioned, and are of some general interest. Freemasonry, according to some of its historians, came to England in the time of Aethelstan (about 894-932), the Saxon King who brought England into close contact with the rest of Europe. His life covered almost the same period as that of the illustrious Spanish Sufi Ibn Masarra (883-931) from whose illuminist school a tremendous and continuing influence upon Western thought has been traced. It was during the same century that Dhu'l-Nun the Egyptian, the Sufi and reputed founder of the dervish Order of Builders, lived and taught. Dhu'l-Nun, revered by all Sufis, is referred to as having been of Nubian ("black") origin, giving a connection with the adoption of "black" (fehm) and "knowledge, understanding" (fehm) by the dervish school of the Coalmen, which we associate with the Carbonari.

"Black" is also another word for Egypt, said to be derived from the colour of the soil. The Black Art is thought by many to mean nothing more than "the Egyptian Art," or the "Art of Understanding." By a similar process of thought, the Black Virgins of the middle ages could be translated as the "Wise Virgins." The confusion between the Black Art, the Hermetic Art and the Egyptian Secrets has appeared and reappeared throughout medieval literature. The misunderstanding exists only because of ignorance of the similarity of "black" and "wise" in Arabic by foreigners.

The connection between Black Art, alchemy and Rosicrucianism has baffled many students, who have assumed for the most part that all these things were dabbled in by Europeans of the middle ages just because of a general credulity and desire to penetrate secrets and find a hidden teaching.

The connection between the Shriners and the Masons has seemed to many observers to be absurd, or some sort of false association. A Shriner must be a Mason. His ritual is avowedly based upon a myth and ritual connected with the Holy Temple of Mecca. What possible connection, it is sometimes asked, could there be between the Mecca temple of the Moslems and the Temple of Solomon and its building? There could be a very close connection indeed. First let it be noted that charges against ancient Sufis include the terrible allegation that a mime of the Mecca pilgrimage ceremonies could be carried out anywhere with equal validity to an actual pilgrimage. Secondly, let us remember that the great Sufi teacher Maaruf Karkhi (died 815) is known as Son of David, and also as "king," a common Sufi appellation. The Son of David, by association, was Solomon. Solomon it was who rebuilt the Temple. Why Son of David? Because Karkhi was the disciple of the illustrious teacher Daud el Tai. Daud is Arabic for David.

This David died in 781. Less than a century before, about 691, the Saracens rebuilt the Temple of Solomon on the site which is now known as the Dome of the Rock. This, and no earlier one, is the Temple whose servants were the Knights Templar, accused of Saracenic leanings. It is no accident that after the dissolution of the Order of the Templars the Freemasons took on the Templar traditions.

It should not be forgotten that the Kaaba (literally, the Cube) is the foursquare temple of Mecca. The "black stone" of Mecca is set in an outer corner of the Kaaba. It is thus correctly described as the Kaaba (Cube) stone, easily rendered as the Cubic Stone. It is also called hajarel aswad (black stone). "Black" as we have noted, is rendered as "coal," and the "stone of black" can be rendered as hajarel fehm, "stone of wisdom," or even, in translation, "stone of the wise." Second only to this place for all Moslems is the sanctified spot known as the Temple of Solomon in Palestine.

Sufi tradition has it that a band of early classical Sufis were a number of men who assembled in the Mecca temple and devoted themselves to its service. On the fall of Jerusalem to the Arabs, the first act of the Moslems was to repair to the site of the Solomonic Temple to acquire it for Islam. That the Sufi tradition was continued in respect of the Dome of the Rock is evidenced by the fact that its later interior decorations contained Sufi symbolic designs. Templar churches and other indications show the influence of the Saracen version of the Solomonic Temple.

There are two lines of diffusion of this lore to the West ~ initially through Saracen Spain, with or without Jewish amalgamation of ideas (because Jews were active in co-operation with the Arab Cabalists), and again through the Crusades, when members of the cult known as the Builders may very well have found similar rituals among the dervishes of the Near East.

Finally, the darkness-and-light motif attributed to Freemasonry has dervish parallels so close that these alone would give one cause to wonder. The dervishes speak of light as truth, illumination. Black, as we have already noted, is associated with wisdom (being homonymous with it in Arabic); and white, too, stands for understanding. Knowing the true meaning of wisdom and light, of good and bad, of the real "darkness" of the ignorant is the central point in dervish activity. Sufis ultimately in this connection depend upon the Light Verse in the Koran (Sura 24, 35), which says: "Rejecters' deeds are like darkness: darkness upon darkness. No light at all has he who has not Allah's light." This theme was taken up in careful detail by Ghazali, whom we know influenced all scholastic West. He wrote a book on the subject of light and darkness ~ the Niche for Lights.

The dervish usage of the light and darkness theme carries on through the literature. A fair sample is in the Secret Garden of Shabistari, composed in 1319: "The dervish path is dark in both worlds; yet it is but the gloom that on the horizon of the desert gladdens the wayfarer and tells the tents are near at hand....Within a day of darkness shineth light."

Johnson Pasha's translation (The Dialogue of the Gulshan-i-Raz, Cairo, 1903), whether from Masonic or Builder sources, is not unknown in English literature. Pope, for instance (Dunciad, Bk. IV), could have been using a Sufi allegory when he wrote:

Of darkness visible, so much is lent.

As half to show, half veil, the deep intent.

From our knowledge of dervish usage, we can interpret the mysterious message in a curious and repeated Masons mark which appears in medieval buildings. This is a mark which looks like a figure 4. If the professional Mason's of the middle ages were connected with dervish orders in the West, as the Eastern building workers certainly were, we have a concealed message here.

The Sufi diagram known as the Magic Square of fifteen is drawn thus:

4 9 2
3 5 7
8 1 6

This square adds up to the number fifteen, whichever way the lines of figures are added up. It is used in Cabalism as a code from by means of which to convey a message. This is done by drawing lines to link up the numbers which it is intended to emphasize. The Mason's mark which we are considering looks something like this: [here I must point out that I do not have graphics to display it, but, it looks like a large 4 linked to a similar size 1 to the right of it ~ Rob]

If the figure is superimposed upon the above number frame we find that a line is drawn passing through 1, 5, 9, then from 9 to 3, then through 3, 5, 7, then through 6, 7, 2, and hence we can read off what numbers have been involved in the message. The outline crosses through all the squares of the figure, except the one occupied by the figure eight!

Eight symbolizes the number of perfect expression, the octagon, representing, among other things, the cube. The figure also covers eight of a total of nine squares. The meaning here is "The eight (balance) is the way to the nine." Nine stands in Arabic for the letter Ta, whose hidden meaning is "secret knowledge."

The outline is given additional significance when it is realized that the figure which looks like a four with a bar (sometimes a curve) attached is also a rough representation of the Arabic word hoo ~ the dervish liturgical word, chanted in order to produce ecstatic states. [I can confirm this as I have experienced it ~ Rob]

That the Masons are connected to alchemy through this sign alone is made more likely by the fact that this magic square has been found in use in China and commented upon by recent alchemical researchers, who there link it with both alchemy of the symbolic kind and the Taoist tradition. If further indications were needed, one could refer to the fact that this same magic square is used by Geber, the patron of both Eastern and Western alchemy, and (as Professor Holmyard remarks) used also by the Sufi society of which Geber was a member.

Far from an irregular and haphazard collecting of mysterious and unconnected lore, the alchemist, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Carbonari and others were almost certainly intermingled, because of Sufic symbolic constituents in their original or early objective ~ the development of human consciousness.

Footnote by me.

When the Knights Templar went to Jerusalem it was for, superficially, to protect the pilgrims. It is obviously not true as such a small group could never have done that. In Graham Hancock's The Sign and the Seal he points out that they never left the Temple and what they were really doing was extensive excavation under the Temple of the Rock. However, this tunnel has been found and opened and it is obvious that it would not have taken the amount of time that they were there to dig. The excavations are another false trail, a double loop. What were they really doing that had to be kept so secret? Why! learning the Sufi lore and Sufi science of number etc. which was then put into practice in the building of the Gothic cathedrals, the same science that was used in the building of the Temple of the Rock and the Kaaba of Mecca - the tradition was continued and eventually gave birth to the Freemasons. It is unlikely that all but a very small number of Masons know these facts as it was never written down to ensure its secrecy, but, through the study of symbol etc. the truth can be dug up. Fortunately Shah's approach to these matters turns out to be exactly the same as mine, however, he has a head start on me as he has already had the training in symbol and number as part of his tradition. Hence why I copy all this instead of writing it myself, he has done it better and more precisely than I could.

Both Freemasons and Sufi consider Thoth to be their patron...Thoth, the Master of Eight.

Gemini

2008-06-01T17:36:00.001+01:00

Music by Cosmic Sounds from their 1967 album The Zodiac

The People of The Secret - The Arise of The European Witch Cult of The Middle Ages

2008-05-30T19:35:00.000+01:00

The following is from "The People of The Secret" by Ernest Scott http://www.amazon.com/People-Secret-PBK-Ernest-Scott/dp/0863040381 It was up to a couple of years ago published by Octagon Press, but, has been withdrawn from their list last time I looked. The extract in no way negates Goddess worship or those who find they have natural powers, rather it is research drawing on little known historical events and a fair bit of the research drawing from Sufic records and history. The purpose of the chapter that this was taken from was to explain one of the reasons why secrete developmental techniques of groups can be a great danger if leaked out.

This is rather long, so if you are like me you may find it better to print it out and sit back with a cup of tea to read it.

The European Witch cult may be a further example of an activity arising from the leakage of developmental knowledge. Like the Albigenses, the witches are known chiefly from the accounts of their enemies, and it is possible that no objective assessment of witchcraft, in its inner nature, exists. Certainly modern witches do not know the origins of their practices and researchers are constantly struck by the avidity with which present day witch groups seize on "origins" found for them by academic witchologists like Margaret Murray.

Modern apologists of the cult like Gerald Gardner and Justin Glass appear to be engaged in plausible whitewashing while the traditional Roman Catholic attitude, deriving from Inquisitional material, is one of superstitious horror and vilification.

Material of the Malleus Maleficarum variety, i.e., intentional vilification, tend nowadays to defeat its own ends. Instead of confirming Satanic practices at physical level, it suggests rather a turgid excitation of the lower levels of the human subconscious: psychological rather than physical goings-on.

However, it seems undeniable that witchcraft has repeatedly shaded off into Black Magic of the most palpable kind and modern material from Huysman's Là-bas to current newspaper accounts of rural tombstone-turners confirms this.

The original nature of witchcraft remains in all probability unassessed.

Though something like the cult has probably existed since Neolithic times, the version of it familiar to Medieval Europe suggests that the original impulse obtained a high octane fuel injection from a Sufi source.

Sufic/Witch parallels are overwhelming.

The ritual knife of the witches is called Athane. The same instrument of the Saracen Two Horned cult is Adh-dhamme. The winding sheet in which the members of the Two Horned dance their rituals is the Kafan which looks very like the origin of the word coven. Members of the Two-Horned call their meeting Az Zabat ("powerful occasion") which is almost certainly the witch Sabbat.

Thomas à Becket is rumoured to have been connected with a ritual sacrifice. The legend has resemblances to disguised teaching material. Becket is said to have had a Saracen mother.

There is some connection between the Order of the Garter and witchcraft, and there are plain correspondences between Garter and Sufic ritual.

The areas in which witchcraft was were strongest were the areas most strongly under Saracen influence, Spain was conquered in A.D. 711 and was not Christianized till 1492. Arabs were in Languedoc in 759 and in Provence from 889. They were strongly established also in Savoy, Piedmont and Switzerland - all areas associated with witchcraft.

A f
Father Gualchelm of St. Albin's, Angers, reported in 1901 a great crowd passing him on the road. These, he decided, were the Harlechim "of whom I have heard but in which I did not believe". "Harlechim" may have been a corruption of Aghlaqin, a Sufic group known as The Silent Ones who wore patchwork clothes.

A tract of 1450, Errores Gaziorum, gives an account of a witch rite. Gaziorum would seem to be a Latinized version of Gazair-ites - the Arabic for "Andalusians". Errores Gaziorum re-translated into Arabic would give Ghulat al Algazairyin, "the Errors of the Andalusians" where "error" is an Arabic technical term for a sectarian belief.

The Sufic master Jalaluddin Rumi mentions "riding on a stick" which is a familiar witch idea.

A witch cult leader apprehended in Sweden during a witch pogrom of 1668 wore a turban, and like witch leaders in England before and since, was invoked with the word Antecessor. "Antecessor" in Arabic is Qadim which means both "antecessor" and "ancient".

Robin is a recurring witch name. The word in Persian is Rah-bin, "he who sees the road", and in the Berber Two-Horned sect the leader is referred to as Rabbans ("our master").

A considerable number of other links are given by Idries Shah in The Sufis. The connection between witchcraft - at any rate from the 10th century on - and some sort of Saracen cult activity seems beyond dispute.

But what was the nature of the Saracen "injection" which gave rise to or so deeply affected the Medieval witch cult of Europe? It may be that in researching for his book Witches and Sorcerers? Arkon Daraul uncovered the exact occasion. Among Arab migrants to Spain around 1460 were a sect of Berber ecstatics called the Two-Horned. From the information given in The Sufis by Idries Shah, this seems to have been a Moroccan branch of a sect peculiar to the Aniza tribe of Bedouins. They followed a teaching which had been given by a Dervish member of the tribe, Abu el Atahiyya, and, because the Arabic for goat has the same consonantal root as Aniza, they adopted the goat as their clan-badge. This poor goat has been appearing ever since, and is used to this day when the cover of a lurid paperback has to convey the idea of black magic. Incidentally, the tribal camel-brand of the Aniza was a broad arrow which has appeared all through the centuries as "the witches mark". The Aniza certainly started something.

According to Arkon Daraul, a branch of this sect moved from Morocco into Spain. They were a non-proselytizing cult and well disciplined; members could be cast out for an infringement of the rules.

About the time the Berber branch of this new sect moved into Spain, some dissident members met a leader of the Spanish Jews, Rabbi Ishaq Toledano. Ishaq was the head of a Jewish group who had come together with the idea of seeing whether they could use traditional Jewish magic to stem the tide of persecution by the Christians which was making Jewish life in Toledo all but impossible.

It would appear that the dissident members of the Two-Horned were welcomes eagerly by Rabbi Ishaq as being likely to make a knowledgeable contribution to the operation the Rabbi was trying to develop. In other words, the Two-Horned possessed genuine knowledge of the developmental technique and this could be used - or misused - for magical ends.

The combined organization which resulted, Jewish and Arabic, appears to have amalgamated many of the components which the West was later to identify with witchcraft.

Ishaq knew the dangers involved for himself and his followers if details of his magic operations against the Christian enemy leaked out, and he realized also - from the example of his Two-Horned recruits - the force that could be carried over to another organization by apostates. He devised a method of binding his group together.

The idea was to commit his members to actions so atrocious that none would ever dare confess to them. In this way the security of his "New Community" would be absolute. He required his members to perform evil actions and to destroy the persons and property of non-members - particularly Christians - as a trade test for advancement within the Community. He also introduced rituals involving sexual perversions and the eating of abominable material. Such activities were so outside the accepted tolerance of ordinary people of any religion as to put participants outside the pale of humanity. He also used poisons and drugs which "cemented the bond".

The sect worshipped an idol (unspecified), and when members of the cult were possessed of the spirit of the idol, they engaged in flagellation and the exchange of obscene kisses.

A devout Moslem writer, Abdus Salam ibn Zumairi, who was deported from Spain 130 years later, left an extensive description of the cult which he implied was still flourishing in his day. Rumour had it that members of the sect could fly.

About the time apostate members of the Two-Horned were collaborating with Rabbi Ishaq, the Dominican Inquisitor of Carcassonne, Jean Vineti, produced a tract declaring that a new heresy had arisen which was unconnected with the old corpus of rural beliefs which the church had more or less tolerated.

Trevor Roper regards this as a Dominican manoeuvre to get round Capitulum Episcopi. This was a sort of "common law" of Ecclesiastical Europe dating from the views of St. Boniface and Charlemagne in the 18th century. It said in effect that to believe in witches, much more to hunt and burn them, was an act of superstition unworthy of a Christian and should rank as heresy.

Trevor Roper feels that some zealous orders of the Roman Church felt that this seriously inhibited their efforts to extirpate heresy and the Dominicans at least intrigued with several Popes to rescind it and so provide Papal authority for large-scale witch-hunting.

The Dominicans apparently succeeded in 1484 when two of their number, Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, obtained a Bull from Innocent VIII which authorized "his beloved sons" to extirpate witchcraft in the Rhineland.

Trevor Roper sees the tract of Jean Vineti , thirty years earlier, as the vital link in the chain of events which made this celebrated Papal Bull possible. By claiming that the witchcraft of the middle of the 15th century was an entirely new heresy, Vineti removed it from the protection of the Capitulum Episcopi of seven centuries earlier.

There seems little doubt that some Church orders were intensely interested in finding a way round the Capitulum, but it may not be that Vineti was not so far wrong in claiming that something qualitatively different had appeared on the scene.

In the early part of the 15th century there was a purely local and unorganized form of witchcraft, which, with some exceptions, the Church put up with.

In the second half of the 15th century there was a witchcraft in the form which Europe was to have till 1650 and beyond.

In between there was Rabbi Ishaq and his New Community. The inference is not conclusive, but it is highly suggestive.

It is also interesting that the abominations alleged against the witches of the 15th and later centuries were in the same category as those developed for his own reasons by the Jewish black magician. The sequence of events strongly suggests that genuine developmental techniques possessed by a knowledgeable religious group were leaked by apostates to an outside source and gave rise to several centuries of evil and human suffering.

How Big Is The Universe?

2008-05-24T17:48:00.001+01:00

It's A Beautiful Day, Galileo. Do You Remember The Sun?

2008-05-24T10:14:00.001+01:00

Music from the album "Marrying Maiden" by It's A Beautiful Day. Tracks "Galileo" and "Do You Remember The Sun?" Images of stars and galaxies from the Hubble telescope, other photos taken by me.

Transcendental Experience In Relation to Religion and Psychosis by R.D. Laing

2008-05-21T19:47:00.000+01:00

We must remember that we are living in an age in which the ground is shifting and the foundations are shaking. I cannot answer for other times and places. Perhaps it has always been so. We know it is true today.

In these circumstances, we have all reason to be insecure. When the ultimate basis of our world is in question, we run to different holes in the ground; we scurry into roles, statuses, identities, interpersonal relations. We attempt to live in castles that can only be in the air, because there is no firm ground in the social cosmos on which to build. Priest and physician are both witness to this state of affairs. Each sometimes sees the same fragment of the whole situation differently; often our concern is with different presentation of the original catastrophe.

In this paper I wish to relate the transcendental experiences that sometimes break through in psychosis, to those experiences of the divine that are the Living Fount of all religion.

Elsewhere I have outlined the way in which some psychiatrists are beginning to dissolve their clinical-medical categories of understanding madness. I believe that if we can begin to understand sanity and madness in existential social terms, we, as priests and physicians, will be enabled to see more clearly the extent to which we confront common problems and share common dilemmas.

The main clinical terms for madness, where no organic lesion has so far been found, are schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis and involutional depression. From a social point of view, they characterize different forms of behavior, regarded in our society as deviant. People behave in such ways because their experience of themselves is different. It is on the existential meaning of such unusual experience that I wish to focus.

Experience is mad when it steps beyond the horizons of our common, that is, our communal sense.

What regions of experience does this lead to? It entails a loss of the usual foundations of the 'sense' of the world that we share with one another. Old purposes no longer seem viable. Old meanings are senseless: the distinctions between imagination, dream, external perceptions often seem no longer to apply in the old way. External events may seem magically conjured up. Dreams may seem direct communications from others: imagination may seem to be objective reality.

But most radically of all, the very ontological foundations are shaken. The being of phenomena shifts, and the phenomenon of being may no longer present itself to us as before. The person is plunged into a void of non-being in which he founders. There are no supports, nothing to cling to, except perhaps some fragments from the wreck, a few memories, names, sounds, one or two objects, that retain a !ink with a world long lost. This void may not be empty. It may be peopled by visions and voices, ghosts, strange shapes and apparitions. No one who has not experienced how insubstantial the pageant of external reality can be, how it may fade, can fully realize the sublime and grotesque presences that can replace it, or exist alongside it.

When a person goes mad, a profound transposition of his position in relation to all domains of being occurs. His center of experience moves from ego to Self. Mundane time becomes merely anecdotal, only the Eternal matters. The madman is, however, confused. He muddles ego with self, inner with outer, natural and supernatural. Nevertheless, he often can be to us, even through his profound wretchedness and disintegration, the hierophant of the sacred. An exile from the scene of being as we know it, he is an alien, a stranger, signalling to us from the void in which he is foundering. This void may be peopled by presences that we do not even dream of. They used to be called demons and spirits, that were known and named. He has lost his sense of self, his feelings, his place in the world as we know it. He tells us he is dead. But we are distracted from our cozy security by this mad ghost that haunts us with his visions and voices that seem so senseless and of which we feel impelled to rid him, cleanse him, cure him.

Madness need not be all breakdown. It is also breakthrough. It is potentially liberation and renewal, as well as enslavement and existential death.

There are now a growing number of accounts by people who have been through the experience of madness.(1) I want to quote at some length from one of the earlier contemporary accounts, as recorded by Karl Jaspers in his General Psychopathology (2):

I believe I caused the illness myself. In my attempt to penetrate the other world I met its natural guardians, the embodiment of my own weaknesses and faults. I first thought these demons were lowly inhabitants of the other world who could play me like a ball because I went into these regions unprepared and lost my way. Later I thought they were split-off parts of my own mind (passions) which existed near me in free space and thrived on my feelings. I believed everyone else had these too but did not perceive them, thanks to the protective and successful deceit of the feeling of personal existence. I thought the latter was an artifact of memory, thought-complexes, etc., a doll that was nice enough to look at from outside but nothing real inside it.

In my case the personal self had grown porous because of my dimmed consciousness. Through it I wanted to bring myself closer to the higher sources of life. I should have prepared myself for this over a long period by invoking in me a higher, impersonal self, since "nectar" is not for mortal lips. It acted destructively on the animal-human self, split it up into its parts. These gradually disintegrated, the doll was really broken and the body damaged. I had forced untimely access to the "source of life," the curse of the "gods" descended on me. I recognized too late that murky elements had taken a hand. I got to know them after they had already too much power. There was no way back. I now had the world of spirits I had wanted to see. The demons came up from the abyss, as guardian Cerberi, denying admission to the unauthorized. I decided to take up the life-and-death struggle. This meant for me in the end a decision to die, since I had to put aside everything that maintained the enemy, but this was also everything that maintained life. I wanted to enter death without going mad and stood before the Sphinx: either thou into the abyss or I!

Then came illumination. I fasted and so penetrated into the true nature of my seducers. They were pimps and deceivers of my dear personal self which seemed as much a thing of naught as they.

A larger and more comprehensive self emerged and I could abandon the previous personality with its entire entourage. I saw this earlier personality could never enter transcendental realms. I felt as a result a terrible pain, like an annihilating blow, but I was rescued, the demons shrivelled, vanished and perished. A new life began for me and from now on I felt different from other people. A self that consisted of conventional lies, shams, self-deceptions, memory- images, a self just like that of other people, grew in me again but behind and above it stood a greater and more comprehensive self which impressed me with something of what is eternal, unchanging, immortal and inviolable and which ever since that time has been my protector and refuge. I believe it would be good for many, if they were acquainted with such a higher self and that there are people who have attained this goal in fact by kinder means.

Jaspers comments:

"Such self-interpretations are obviously made under the influence of delusion-like tendencies and deep psychic forces. They originate from profound experiences and the wealth of such schizophrenic experience calls on the observer as well as on the unreflective patient not to take all this merely as a chaotic jumble of contents. Mind and spirit are present in the morbid psychic life as well as in the healthy. But interpretations of this sort must be divested of any causal importance. All they can do is to throw light on content and bring it into some sort of context." I would rather say that this patient has described with a lucidity I could not improve upon, a Quest, with its pitfalls and dangers, which he eventually appears to have transcended. Even Jaspers still speaks of this experience as morbid, and discounts the experipatient's own construction. Both the experience and construction seem to me valid in their own terms.

I should make it clear that I am speaking of certain transcendental experiences that seem to me to be the original well-spring of all religions. Some psychotic people have transcendental experiences. Often (to the best of their recollection) they have never had such experiences before, and frequently they will never have them again, I am not saying, however, that psychotic experience necessarily contains this element more manifestly than sane experience. The person who is transported into such domains is likely to act curiously. In other places, I have described in some detail the circumstances that seem to occasion this transportation, at least in certain instances, and the gross mystification that the language and thinking of the medical clinic perpetrates when it is brought to bear on the phenomena of madness, both as a social fact and as an existential experience.

The schizophrenic may indeed be mad. He is mad. He is not ill. I have been told by people who have been through the mad experience how what was then revealed to them was veritable manna from Heaven. The person's whole life may be changed, but it is difficult not to doubt the validity of such vision. Also, not everyone comes back to us again.

Are these experiences simply the effulgence of a pathological process, or of a particular alienation? I do not think they are.

When all has been said against the different schools of psycho-immortal analysis and depth psychology, one of their great merits is that they recognize explicitly the crucial relevance of each person's experience to his or her outward behavior, especially the so-called "unconscious."

There is a view, still current, that there is some correlation between being sane and being unconscious, or at least not too conscious of the "unconscious," and that some forms of psychosis are the behavioral disruption caused by being overwhelmed by the "unconscious."

What both Freud and Jung called "the unconscious" is simply what we, in our historically conditioned estrangement, are unreflective conscious of. It is not necessarily or essentially unconscious.

I am not merely spinning senseless paradoxes when I say that we, the sane ones, are out of our minds. The mind is what the ego is unconscious of. We are unconscious of our minds. Our minds are not unconscious. Our minds are conscious of us. Ask yourself who and what it is that dreams our dreams. Our unconscious minds? The Dreamer who dreams our dreams knows far more of us than we know of it. It is only from a remarkable position of alienation that the source of life, the Fountain of Life, is experienced as the It. The mind of which we are unaware, is aware of us. It is we who are out of our minds. We need not be unaware of the inner world.

We do not realize its existence most of the time.

But many people enter it – unfortunately without guides, confusing outer with inner realities, and inner with outer – and generally lose their capacity to function competently in ordinary relations.

This need not be so. The process of entering into the other world from this world, and returning to this world from the other world, is as "natural" as death and childbirth or being born. But in our present world, that is both so terrified and so unconscious of the other world, it is not surprising that, when "reality," the fabric of this world, bursts, and a person enters the other world, he is completely lost and terrified, and meets only incomprehension in others.

In certain cases, a man blind from birth may have an operation performed which gives him his sight. The result: frequently misery, confusion, disorientation. The light that illumines the madman is an unearthly light, but I do not believe it is a projection, an emanation from his mundane ego. He is irradiated by a light that is more than he. It may burn him out.

This "other" world is not essentially a battlefield wherein psychological forces, derived or diverted, displaced or sublimated from their original object-cathexes, are engaged in an illusionary fight - although such forces may obscure these realities, just as they may obscure so-called external realities. When Ivan, in the Brothers Karamazov, says, "If God does not exist, everything is permissible," he is not saying: "If my superego, in projected form, can be abolished, I can do anything with a good conscience." He is saying: "If there is only my conscience, then there is no ultimate validity for my will."

The proper task of the physician (psychotherapist, analyst) should be, in select instances, to educt the person from this world and induct him to the other. To guide him in it: and to lead him back again.

One enters the other world by breaking a shell: or through a door: through a partition: the curtains part or rise: a veil is lifted. It is not the same as a dream. It is "real" in a different way from dream, imagination, perception or fantasy. Seven veils: seven seals, seven heavens.

The "ego" is the instrument for living in this world. If "the ego" is broken up, or destroyed (by the insurmountable contradictions of certain life situations, by toxins, chemical changes, etc.), then the person may be exposed to this other world.

The world that one enters, one's capacity to experience it, seems to be partly conditional on the state of one's "ego."

Our time has been distinguished, more than by anything else, by a mastery, a control, of the external world, and by an almost total forgetfulness of the internal world. If one estimates human evolution from the point of view of knowledge of the external world, then we are in many respects progressing.

If our estimate is from the point of view of the internal world, and of oneness of internal and external, then the judgment must be very different.

Phenomenologically the terms "internal" and "external" have little validity. But in this whole realm one is reduced to mere verbal expedients – words are simply the finger pointing to the moon. One of the difficulties of talking in the present day of these matters is that the very existence of inner realities is now called into question.

By "inner" I mean all those realities that have usually no "external," "objective" presence -- the realities of imagination, dreams, fantasies, trances, the realities of contemplative and meditative states: realities that modern man, for the most part, has not the slightest direct awareness of. Nowhere in the Bible, for example, is there any argument about the existence of gods, demons, angels. People did not first "believe in" God: they experienced His Presence, as was true of other spiritual agencies. The question was not whether God existed, but whether this particular God was the greatest God of all, or the only god; and what was the relation of the various spiritual agencies to each other. Today, there is a public debate, not as to the trust the worthiness of God, the particular place in the spiritual hierarchy of different spirits, etc., but whether God or such spirits even exist, or ever have existed.

Sanity today appears to rest very largely on a capacity to adapt to the external world – the interpersonal world, and the realm of human collectivities.

As this external human world is almost completely and totally estranged from the inner, any personal direct awareness of the inner world already entails grave risks.

But since society, without knowing it, is starving for the inner, the demands on people to evoke its presence in a "safe" way, in a way that need not be taken seriously, etc., is tremendous – while the ambivalence is equally intense. Small wonder that the list of artists in, say, the last 150 years, who have become shipwrecked on these reefs is so long – Hölderlin, John Clare, Rimbaud, Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Antonin Artaud, Strindberg, Munch, Bartok, Schumann, Büchner, Ezra Pound...

Those who survived have had exceptional qualities – a capacity for secrecy, slyness, cunning – a thoroughly realistic appraisal of the risks they run, not only from the spiritual realms that they frequent, but from the hatred of their fellows for any one engaged in this pursuit.

Let us cure them. The poet who mistakes a real woman for his Muse and acts accordingly... The young man who sets off in a yacht in search of God...

The outer divorced from any illumination from the inner is in a state of darkness. We are in an age of darkness. The state of outer darkness is a state of sin – i.e., alienation or estrangement from the Inner Light. Certain actions lead to greater estrangement; certain others help one not to be so far removed. The former are bad; the latter are good.

The ways of losing one's way are legion. Madness is certainly not the least unambiguous. The counter-madness of Kraepelinian psychiatry is the exact counterpart of "official" psychosis. Literally, and absolutely seriously, it is as mad, if by madness we mean any radical estrangement from the subjective or objective truth. Remember Kierkegaard's objective madness.

As we experience the world, so we act. We conduct ourselves in the light of our view of what is the case and what is not the case. That is, each person is a more or less naïve ontologist. Each person has views of what is, and what is not.

There is no doubt, it seems to me, that there have been profound changes in the experience of man in the last thousand years, In some ways this is more evident than changes in the patterns of his behavior. There is everything to suggest that man experienced God. Faith was never a matter of believing He existed, but of trusting in the Presence that was experienced and known to exist as a self-validating datum. It seems likely that far more people in our time neither experience the Presence of God, nor the Presence of His absence, but the absence of His Presence.

We require a history of phenomena – not simply more phenomena of history.

As it is, the secular psychotherapist is often in the role of the blind leading the half-blind.

The fountain has not played itself out, the Flame still shines, the River still flows, the Spring still bubbles forth, the Light has not faded. But between us and It, there is a veil which is more like fifty feet of solid concrete. Deus absconditus. Or we have absconded.

Already everything in our time is directed to categorizing and segregating this reality from objective facts. This is precisely the concrete wall. Intellectually, emotionally, interpersonally, organ- izationally, intuitively, theoretically, we have to blast our way through the solid wall, even if at the risk of chaos, madness and death. For from this side of the wall, this is the risk. There are no assurances, no guarantees.

Many people are prepared to have faith in the sense of scientifically indefensible belief in an untested hypothesis. Few have trust enough to test it. Many people make-believe what they experience. Few are made to believe by their experience. Paul of Tarsus was picked up by the scruff of the neck, thrown to the ground and blinded for three days. This direct experience was self-validating.

We live in a secular world. To adapt to this world the child abdicates its ecstasy. (L'enfant abdique son extase.–Mallarmé.) Having lost our experience of the Spirit, we are expected to have faith. But this faith comes to be a belief in a reality which is not evident. There is a prophecy in Amos that there will be a time when there will be a famine in the land, "not a famine for bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord." That time has now come to pass. It is the present age.

From the alienated starting point of our pseudo-sanity, everything is equivocal. Our sanity is not "true" sanity. Their madness is not "true" madness. The madness of our patients is an artifact of the destruction wreaked on them by us, and by them on themselves. Let no one suppose that we meet any more "true" madness than that we are truly sane. The madness that we encounter in "patients" is a gross travesty, a mockery, a grotesque caricature of what the natural healing of that estranged integration we call sanity might be. True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality: the emergence of the "inner" archetypal mediators of divine power, and through this death a rebirth, and the eventual re-establishment of a new kind of ego-functioning, the ego now being the servant of the Divine, no longer its betrayer.

http://laingsociety.org/biblio/transexperience.laing.htm

Body Art New Zealand

2008-05-20T16:19:00.000+01:00

http://web.mac.com/philiptaskerpoland/iWeb/Site/Body%20Art%20New%20Zealand..html

This is the end sequence of a documentary my brother in New Zealand made over four years. I believe one of those models is my niece Hannah who also has a star part in some strange NZ TV soap, but, they're so painted up I can't recognise her :))

Sorry I can't embed it, but, it's a Quick Time movie. Give it a little time to download some and then to start you have to click on the Play triangle on the play bar.

To Confound The Wise

2008-05-16T18:32:00.000+01:00

I have been reading The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho and have come across a quite enigmatic passage. The bank manager who having recently been influenced by Athena is giving a presentation at a meeting and starts his dissertation with the words of St. Paul:

God hid the most important things from the wise because they cannot understand what is simple.

Evidently this doesn't appear exactly like this in the Bible, it could be one of two passages:

Matthew 11:25: I thank thee, O Father, thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.

or from St. Paul:

1 Corinthians 1:27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.

Well, I've always found the Bible to be a bit on the obscure side to say the least. In fact I've often found such writings as "The Secret of The Golden Flower" or even "The Taoist Yoga of Immortality" to be easier to understand....(perhaps I'm being confounded)... :) For me the bank manager's misquote seems clearer.

All the quotes speak to me of a secret knowledge, not secret insomuch that it is not told or given, but, secret in its nature as something that is so simple that the wise do not understand it yet someone with the innocence of a babe can. There are similar references in the Tao Te Ching and Sufi texts teem with references to Higher Knowledge that is beyond the learned and intellectual.

The mind loves the complex, it has this ability to take something that's been attempted to be expressed simply and add so many layers and twists that it gets buried under intellectual dissection. A child, however, has no problem with the question of what the sound of one hand clapping is.

Anyway, I would be truly interested in what others think of the above quotes and their understanding of what they mean.

Festivities In Heaven

2008-05-11T10:18:00.000+01:00

A whole band of beings that had progressed to the highest state along the Way were one day entering Heaven. As each reached the gate it opened a little so that he could pass inside, the door than closed and opened a little again to admit the next who went in as if he were quite expecting to be admitted. All this went on without any ceremony.

Right at the end of the throng came a scholar, he had a reverent beard, a majestic gait, a confident look and all the trappings of someone of high learning. As he approached the gates they opened wide, trumpets sounded and a great applause resounded from the multitudes waiting there.

A shining figure came forth to personally escort him in.

"This is most gratifying," he said to himself "to know that the learned will here no longer need to give themselves airs and graces. Here at least our importance is recognised."

To the shining figure who escorted him he asked, "Why all this ceremony and festivities?"

"Well," said the Angel "this is somewhat of an occasion. You see in all the infinite time that Heaven has existed, this is the very first time that we have had an academic among us..."

God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot

2008-05-07T15:31:00.000+01:00

God is alive, magic is afoot

God is alive, magic is afoot

God is alive, magic is afoot

God is afoot, magic is alive

Alive is afoot, magic never died

God never sickened

Many poor men lied

Many sick men lied

Magic never weakened

Magic never hid

Magic always ruled

God is afoot, God never died

God was ruler

Though his funeral lengthened

Though his mourners thickened

Magic never fled

Though his shrouds were hoisted

The naked God did live

Though his words were twisted

The naked magic thrived

Though his death was published

Round and round the world

The heart did not believe

Many hurt men wondered

Many struck men bled

Magic never faltered

Magic always lead

Many stones were rolled

But God would not lie down

Many wild men lied

Many fat men listened

Though they offered stones

Magic still was fed

Though they locked their coffers

God was always served

Magic is afoot, God is alive

Alive is afoot

Alive is in command

Many weak men hungered

Many strong men thrived

Though they boast of solitude

God was at their side

Nor the dreamer in his cell

Nor the captain on the hill

Magic is alive

Though his death was pardoned

Round and round the world

The heart would not believe

Though laws were carved in marble

They could not shelter men

Though altars built in parliaments

They could not order men

Police arrested magic and magic went with them

Mmmmm.... for magic loves the hungry

But magic would not tarry

It moves from arm to arm

It would not stay with them

Magic is afoot

It cannot come to harm

It rests in an empty palm

It spawns in an empty mind

But magic is no instrument

Magic is the end

Many men drove magic

But magic stayed behind

Many strong men lied

They only passed through magic

And out the other side

Many weak men lied

They came to God in secret

And though they left Him nourished

They would not tell who healed

Though mountains danced before them

They said that God was dead

Though his shrouds were hoisted

The naked God did live

This I mean to whisper to my mind

This I mean to laugh within my mind

This I mean my mind to serve

Til' service is but magic

Moving through the world

And mind itself is magic

Coursing through the flesh

And flesh itself is magic

Dancing on a clock

And time itself

The magic length of God

Lyrics: Cohen, Recorded By Buffy Sainte-Marie

Self Concept

2008-05-04T11:34:00.000+01:00

I came across this many years ago in a book on psychology by R. B. Burns called The Self Concept and it so impressed me I wrote it down. I've just come across the book I wrote it in so here it is.

If a child lives with criticism,
He learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility,
He learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule,
He learns to be shy.
If a child lives with shame,
He learns to feel guilty.
If a child lives with tolerance,
He learns to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement,
He learns confidence.
If a child lives with praise,
He learns to appreciate.
If a child lives with fairness,
He learns justice.
If a child lives with security,
He learns to have faith.
If a child lives with approval,
He learns to like himself.
If a child lives with acceptance of friendship,
He learns to find love in the world.

Anon

May Nuts

2008-04-30T16:04:00.000+01:00

When I was a kid we used to sing this rhyme:

Here we go gathering nuts in May,
Nuts in May, nuts in May.
Here we go gathering nuts in May,
On a cold and frosty morning.

Who will you have for nuts in May,
Nuts in May, nuts in May?
Who will you have for nuts in May,
On a cold and frosty morning.

Who will you send to fetch her away,
Fetch her away, fetch her away?
Who will you send to fetch her away,
On a cold and frosty morning?

Wills and Jack will fetch her away,
Fetch her away, fetch her away,
Wills and Jack will fetch her away,
On a cold and frosty morning.

Now I was often puzzled by this rhyme when I was a kid and later in life after studying horticulture I became even more puzzled whenever I remembered it. You see, there are no nuts to gather in May. As it's now the last day of April, May tomorrow, I found myself singing it again along with my escort while driving my bus. Once more I pondered it...this is the wrong time of the year in the Northern hemisphere to have any tree bearing nuts never mind gathering them. However, nursery rhymes are such that there is always some element of truth in them, some folk lore or historical event. What could it be?

Now this is only speculation, but, there is a tendency for mistakes to crop into these old rhymes especially when dialect comes into it, so perhaps over time and mis-singing the word "nuts" has evolved from something else. Obviously this is something to do with nature, plants and May. The word that jumps into my mind when I say "nuts" is "knots" and of course this time of year is the time when the May tree comes into full flower. So now how does it scan?

Here we go gathering knots of May,
Knots of May, knots of May.
Here we go gathering knots of May,
On a cold and frosty morning.

Who will you have for knots of May,
Knots of May, knots of May?
Who will you have for knots of May,
On a cold and frosty morning.

Who will you send to fetch her away,
Fetch her away, fetch her away?
Who will you send to fetch her away,
On a cold and frosty morning?

Wills and Jack will fetch her away,
Fetch her away, fetch her away,
Wills and Jack will fetch her away,
On a cold and frosty morning.

Now this scans much better. The May flowers even look like little knots. Then at this time of year is the May festival with the May Queen who traditionally wears a crown of May flowers. "Who will you have for knots of May?" Who will be chosen as May Queen? The Queen of May and the fertility rites.

So only one thing left. "On a cold and frosty morning." It is not normally cold and frosty at the beginning of May, well, not unless one is living in the Northern part of Britain and where the word "knot" could sound like "nut" to a child.

Anyone know the real answer?

Happy Beltane everyone :)

~ Rob

I Can Walk On Water

2008-04-29T16:49:00.000+01:00

India is a country teeming with Holy men, Gurus and God Men. It is often fiercely competitive. It also gives good entertainment as God Men engage in miracle battles trying to out do each other to the amusement of local villagers. There are even groups who go to these battles purely to expose the God Men to even greater amusement of the villagers.

One day a Holy man went to visit his friend in his friend's village. He was also a Holy man and they had battled miracles together in their youth. His friend he was visiting though had grown tired of this game many years ago and was now just into enlightenment and meditation. He had another friend in the village whom he often went out with to meditate with in some nice spot away from everyone. One morning all three met up and decided to go out and meditate together.

They walked to just outside the small village and found a good spot next to the small lake. Laying out their meditation mats they sat down to do the work. Before they had hardly begun one stood up saying "I just remembered, I left the pot of stew on the stove, I'd better go back to take it off before it boils dry and burns. I won't be long." He then walks to the lake and to the amazement of his visiting friend walks over the top of it. A few minutes later he walks back from his house over the lake again with hardly a drop of water on him and sits back down to meditate as if nothing unusual has happened.

A couple of minutes later the other Holy man gets up and says "Oh dear, I did not put the washing out as my wife asked me to and she will be at the market all day selling her eggs. I'd better nip back and do it or I'll never hear the end of it. Won't be long." He too proceeds to walk over the water of the lake and twenty minutes later the visiting holy man sees him walk back again over the water, sit down and start to meditate.

The visiting Holy man, not to be out done exclaims "I can do that too. Watch this."

He then walks to the lake, steps onto it and promptly sinks up to his chest. He scrambles out, regains his composure, chants a couple of words, steps onto the lake and sinks up to his chest again.

Three times he does this with the same result while the other two Holy men look on. As he is about to attempt it for the fourth time one of the other Holy men leans over to his friend sitting down and says quietly to him, "Do you think we should tell him about the stepping stones?"

Virgin Media - Time to Say Goodby.

2008-04-28T19:42:00.000+01:00

Some of you may remember a blog I did about my IP Virgin Media called Virgin Media - A Deceptive IP, well it looks like it's coming to a head. I've tried to keep throughput down during peak time of 1600 - 2400 Hrs weekdays and all weekend, but, they've changed the goalposts again. Getting speeds of 75Kb/s down, 375Kb/s up!!! Looks like their original not lower than figures of 512Kb/s if TMed which I based my decision to sign up with them were wrong, they've now changed their info to 80Kb/s and that's shared. The round about 5GB during peak times has now become 2GB which in my opinion is definitely not heavy usage. Just doing nothing on the PC and leaving it connected gives a background reading of around 36.5MB per hour throughput. Do they expect to sell an 8MB connection to someone as long as they only use it for a little light surfing and polling their mail now and again.

So, after being TMed yet again I have put in an official complaint via the ISPA accusing Virgin Media of gravely misleading information and a very bad contract not to mention speed and mail issues. I've had it with them, time to get out of the contract and go with a reputable IP that makes conditions clear and sticks to what they say. So, if I disapear for a while you'll know I'm in the middle of changing. Below are my latest speed figures.

~ Rob

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 81

2008-04-25T12:43:00.003+01:00

Below is the chapter from two excellent sources along with the original Chinese text. The first source is from a translation by D.T. Suzuki and Paul Carus in 1913 followed by a translation by Stephen Mitchell in 1988.

Chapter 81

1. True words are not pleasant; pleasant words are not true. The good are not contentious; the contentious are not good. The wise are not learned; the learned are not wise.

2. The holy man hoards not. The more he does for others, the more he owns himself. The more he gives to others, the more will he himself lay up an abundance.

3. Heaven's Reason is to benefit but not to injure; the holy man's Reason is to accomplish but not to strive.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

True words aren't eloquent;
eloquent words aren't true.
Wise men don't need to prove their point;
men who need to prove their point aren't wise.

The Master has no possessions.
The more he does for others,
the happier he is.
The more he gives to others,
the wealthier he is.

The Tao nourishes without forcing.
By not dominating, the Master leads.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 80

2008-04-25T12:29:00.003+01:00

Chapter 80

1. In a small country with few people let there be aldermen and mayors who are possessed of power over men but would not use it. Induce people to grieve at death but do not cause them to move to a distance. Although they had ships and carriages, they should find no occasion to ride in them. Although they had armours and weapons, they should find no occasion to don them.

2 Induce people to return to [the old custom of] knotted cords and to use them [in the place of writing], to delight in their food, to be proud of their clothes, to be content with their homes, and to rejoice in their customs: then in a neighboring state within sight, the voices of the cocks and dogs would be within hearing, yet the people might grow old and die before they visited one another.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If a country is governed wisely,
its inhabitants will be content.
They enjoy the labour of their hands
and don't waste time inventing
labour-saving machines.
Since they dearly love their homes,
they aren't interested in travel.
There may be a few wagons and boats,
but these don't go anywhere.
Thjere may be an arsenal of weapons,
but nobody ever uses them.
People enjoy their food,
take pleasure in being with their families,
spend weekends working in their gardens,
delight in the doings of their neighbourhood.
And even though the next country is so close
that people can hear its roosters crowing and its dogs barking,
they are content to die of old age
without ever having gone to see it.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 79

2008-04-25T12:18:00.003+01:00

Chapter 79

1. When a great hatred is reconciled, naturally some hatred will remain. How can this be made good?

2. Therefore the sage keeps the obligations of his contract and exacts not from others. Those who have virtue attend to their obligations; those who have no virtue attend to their claims.

3. Heaven's Reason shows no preference but always assists the good man.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Failure is an opportunity.
If you blame someone else,
there is no end to the blame.

Therefore the Master
fulfills her own obligations
and corrects her own mistakes.
She does what she needs to do
and demands nothing of others.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 78

2008-04-24T13:16:00.004+01:00

Chapter 78

1. In the world nothing is tenderer and more delicate than water. In attacking the hard and the strong nothing will surpass it. There is nothing that herein takes its place.

2. The weak conquer the strong, the tender conquer the rigid. In the world there is no one who does not know it, but no one will practise it.

3. Therefore the holy man says:

"Him who the country's sin makes his,
We hail as priest at the great sacrifice.
Him who the curse bears of the country's failing.
As king of the empire we are hailing."

4. True words seem paradoxical.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.

Therefore the Master remains
serene in the midst of sorrow.
Evil cannot enter his heart.
Because he has given up helping,
he is people's greatest help.

True words seem paradoxical.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 77

2008-04-24T13:01:00.003+01:00

Chapter 77

1. Is not Heaven's Reason truly like stretching a bow? The high it brings down, the lowly it lifts up. Those who have abundance it depleteth; those who are deficient it augmenteth.

2. Such is Heaven's Reason. It depleteth those who have abundance but completeth the deficient.

3. Man's Reason is not so. He depleteth the deficient in order to serve those who have abundance.

4. Where is he who would have abundance for serving the world?

5. Indeed, it is the holy man who acts but claims not; merit he acquires but he does not dwell upon it, and does he ever show any anxiety to display his excellence?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As it acts in the world, the Tao
is like the bending of a bow.
The top is bent downward;
the bottom is bent up.
It adjusts excess and deficiency
so that there is perfect balance.
It takes from what is too much
and gives to what isn't enough.

Those who try to control,
who use force to protect their power,
go against the direction of the Tao.
They take from those who don't have enough
and give to those who have far too much.

The Master can keep giving
because there is no end to her wealth.
She acts without expectation,
succeeds without taking credit,
and doesn't think that she is better
than anyone else.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 76

2008-04-24T12:49:00.003+01:00

Chapter 76

1. Man during life is tender and delicate. When he dies he is stiff and stark.

2. The ten thousand things, the grass as well as the trees, while they live are tender and supple. When they die they are rigid and dry.

3. Thus the hard and the strong are the companions of death. The tender and the delicate are the companions of life.

Therefore he who in arms is strong will not conquer.

4. When a tree has grown strong it is doomed.

5. The strong and the great stay below. The tender and the delicate stay above.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Men are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 75

2008-04-22T12:49:00.003+01:00

Below is the chapter from two excellent sources along with the original Chinese text. The first source is from a translation by D.T. Suzuki & Paul Carus in 1913 followed by a translation by Stephen Mitchell in 1988.

Chapter 75

1. The people hunger because their superiors consume too many taxes; therefore they hunger. The people are difficult to govern because their superiors are too meddlesome; therefore they are difficult to govern. The people make light of death on account of the intensity of their clinging to life; therefore they make light of death.

2. He who is not bent on life is worthier than he who esteems life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When taxes are too high,
people go hungry.
When the government is too intrusive,
people lose their spirit.

Act for the people's benefit.
Trust them; leave them alone.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 74

2008-04-22T12:39:00.003+01:00

Chapter 74

1. If the people do not fear death, how can they be frightened by death? If we make people fear death, and supposing some would [still] venture to rebel, if we seize them for capital punishment, who will dare?

2. There is always an executioner who kills. Now to take the place of the executioner who kills is taking the place of the great carpenter who hews. If a man takes the place of the great carpenter who hews, he will rarely, indeed, fail to injure his hand.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you realise that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you aren't afraid of dying,
there is nothing you can't achieve.

Trying to control the future
is like trying the take the master carpenter's place.
When you handle the master carpenter's tools,
chances are that you'll cut your hand.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 73

2008-04-22T12:19:00.003+01:00

Chapter 73

1. Courage, if carried to daring, leads to death; courage, if not carried to daring, leads to life. Either of these two things is sometimes beneficial, sometimes harmful.

2. "Why ’t is by heaven rejected,
Who has the reason detected?"

Therefore the holy man also regards it as difficult.

3. The Heavenly Reason strives not, but it is sure to conquer. It speaks not, but it is sure to respond. It summons not, but it comes of itself. It works patiently, but is sure in its designs.

4. Heaven's net is vast, so vast. It is wide-meshed, but it loses nothing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Tao is always at ease.
It overcomes without competing,
answers without speaking a word,
arrives without being summoned,
accomplishes without a plan.

Its net covers the whole universe.
And though its meshes are wide,
it doesn't let a thing slip through.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 72

2008-04-22T12:08:00.003+01:00

Chapter 72

1. If the people do not fear the dreadful, the great dreadful will come, surely.

2. Let them not deem their lives narrow. Let them not deem their lot wearisome. When it is not deemed wearisome, then it will not be wearisome.

3. Therefore the holy man knows himself but does not display himself. He holds himself dear but does not honor himself. Thus he discards the latter and chooses the former.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When they lose their sense of awe,
people turn to religion.
When they no longer trust themselves,
they begin to depend upon authority.

Therefore the Master steps back
so that people won't be confused.
He teaches without teaching,
so that people will have nothing to learn.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 71

2008-04-22T11:57:00.004+01:00

Chapter 71

1. To know the unknowable, that is elevating. Not to know the knowable, that is sickness.

2. Only by becoming sick of sickness can we be without sickness.

3. The holy man is not sick. Because he is sick of sickness, therefore he is not sick.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not-knowing is true knowledge.
Presuming to know is a disease.
First realise that you are sick;
then you can move toward health.

The Master is her own physician.
She has healed herself of all knowing.
Thus she is truly whole.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 70

2008-04-21T12:24:00.003+01:00

Chapter 70

1. My words are very easy to understand and very easy to practise, but in the world no one can understand, no one can practise them.

2. Words have an ancestor; Deeds have a master [viz., Reason]. Since he is not understood, therefore I am not understood. Those who understand me are few, and thus I am distinguished.

3. Therefore the holy man wears wool, and hides in his bosom his jewels.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My teachings are easy to understand
and easy to put into practice.
Yet your intellect will never grasp them,
and if you try to practice them, you'll fail.

My teachings are older than the world.
How can you grasp their meaning?

If you want to know me,
look inside your heart.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 69

2008-04-21T12:10:00.003+01:00

Chapter 69

1. A military expert used to say: 'I dare not act as host [who takes the initiative] but act as guest [with reserve]. I dare not advance an inch, but I withdraw a foot."

2. This is called marching without marching, threatening without arms, charging without hostility, seizing without weapons.

3. No greater misfortune than making light of the enemy! When we make light of the enemy, it is almost as though we had lost our treasure--[compassion].

4. Thus, if matched armies encounter one another, the one who does so in sorrow is sure to conquer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The generals have a saying:
"Rather than make the first move
it is better to wait and see.
Rather than advance an inch
it is better to retreat a yard."

This is called
going forward without advancing,
pushing back without using weapons.

There is no greater misfortune
than underestimating your enemy.
Underestimating your enemy
means thinking that he is evil.
Thus you destroy your three treasures
and become an enemy yourself.

When two great forces oppose each other,
the victory will go
to the one that knows how to yield.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 68

2008-04-21T11:51:00.003+01:00

Chapter 68

1. He who excels as a warrior is not warlike. He who excels as a fighter is not wrathful. He who excels in conquering the enemy does not strive. He who excels in employing men is lowly.

2. This is called the virtue of not-striving. This is called utilizing men's ability. This is called complying with heaven-since olden times the highest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The best athlete
wants his opponent at his best.
The best general
enters the mind of his enemy.
The best businessman
serves the communal good.
The best leader
follows the will of the people.

All of them embody
the virtue of non-competition.
Not that they don't love to compete,
but they do it in the spirit of play.
In this they are like children
and in harmony with the Tao.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 67

2008-04-21T11:34:00.003+01:00

Chapter 67

1. All in the world call me great; but I resemble the unlikely. Now a man is great only because he resembles the unlikely. Did he resemble the likely, how lasting, indeed, would his mediocrity be!

2. 1 have three treasures which I cherish and prize. The first is called compassion. The second is called economy. The third is called not daring to come to the front in the world.

3. The compassionate can be brave; the economical can be generous; those who dare not come to the front in the world can become perfect as chief vessels.

4. Now, if people discard compassion and are brave; if they discard economy and are generous; if they discard modesty and are ambitious, they will surely die.

5. Now, the compassionate will in attack be victorious, and in defence firm. Heaven when about to save one will with compassion protect him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some say that my teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
this nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
this loftiness has roots that go deep.

I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simplicity in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 66

2008-04-21T11:17:00.004+01:00

Chapter 66

1. That rivers and oceans can of the hundred valleys be kings is due to their excelling in lowliness. Thus they can of the hundred valleys be the kings.

2. Therefore the holy man, when anxious to be above the people, must in his words keep underneath them. When anxious to lead the people, he must with his person keep behind them.

3. Therefore the holy man dwells above, but the people are not burdened. He is ahead, but the people suffer no harm.

4. Therefore the world rejoices in exalting him and does not tire. Because he strives not, no one in the world will strive with him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All streams flow to the sea
because it is lower than they are.
Humility gives it its power.

If you want to govern the people,
you must place yourself below them.
If you want to lead the people,
you must learn how to follow them.

The Master is above the people,
and no one feels oppressed.
She goes ahead of the people,
and no one feels manipulated.
The whole world is grateful to her.
Because she competes with no one,
no one can compete with her.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 65

2008-04-20T16:07:00.003+01:00

Chapter 65

1. The ancients who were well versed in Reason did not thereby enlighten the people; they intended thereby to make them simple-hearted.

2. If people are difficult to govern, it is because they are too smart. To govern the country with smartness is the country's curse. To govern the country without smartness is the country's blessing. He who knows these two things is also a model [like the ancients]. Always to know the model is called profound virtue.

3. Spiritual virtue, verily, is profound. Verily, it is far-reaching. Verily, it is to everything reverse. But then it will procure great recognition.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The ancient Masters
didn't try to educate people,
but kindly taught them to not-know.

When they think that they know the answers,
people are difficult to guide.
When they know that they don't know,
people can find their own way.

If you want to learn how to govern,
avoid being clever or rich.
The simplest pattern is the clearest.
Content with an ordinary life,
you can show all people the way
back to their own true nature.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some notes on this. When it's said "The ancient Masters didn't try to educate people..." it would probably be clearer to read it as "...didn't try to fill them with concepts, but to empty them of concepts..." This passage is also very similar to one found in a Sarmoun Recital:

He that knows and does not know he knows: he is asleep.
Let him become one, whole. Let him be awakened.

I will put up the full recital at a later date.

The Canopian Journal

The Codex Gigas (AKA The Devils Bible)

Thae Voynich manuscript - The Most Mysterious Manuscript In The Worl.

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward | Official Trailer- [ Extended ] Zeitgeist

The Official UK UFO Files From The National Archives

GMail Goes "https-only" By Default

Virtual Reality Transcends To Reality - A Second Life Saga

ID Cards - a World View

The Love Police

WE WANT NIGEL, WE WANT NIGEL, TURN THEM ON NIGEL!

Water - A Fascinating Video of How Water Has Memory

twtfast Phishing Scam on Twitter

Picture Perfect - Memories: ~The Tomb of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, Konya~

Sand Art

A Talk By Naomi Klein on Her Book "The Shock Doctrine"

!!!Warning - Monsanto...GM Crops...Pesticides...Conspiracy - Warning!!!

Nostradamus - Al Stewart

The Missing Apollo Videotapes And Data

Alarming New Hospital Phone Practice

Creative Challenge ~~~Salt Of The Earth~~~

Big Brother Is Watching - Important

Iran's Web Spying Aided By Western Technology

UK MObile Phone Directory - Privacy and Opt Out

David Sereda – NASA's Dilemma Caught on Tape - UFOs Aliens?

Hemp For Victory

Canada Bans Entery of George Galloway (For Arranging Aid for Gaza?)

I'm As Mad As Hell

Zeitgeist: Addendum

The Truth and Transition

Zeitgeist, The Movie - Remastered (Final Edition)

Your Opinion on Political Correct Ideas, by Paulo Coelho

Your Opinion on Political Correct Ideas, by Paulo Coelho

An Introduction to Viktor Schauberger and the Secrets of Natural Energy ~~~Living Water~~~~

Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction

Gaza Ceasefire Petition

AHMADINEJAD'S CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

Devil's Bridge - Wales

Enigma

Liberty

Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah

Ingwie Malmsteen Playing Icarus Dream Fanfare

The Two Faces of War

Neil Young: Looking For A Leader

Neil Young: Let's Impeach The President

Is It Safe To Drink It?

DAVID ICKE 2008: BIG BROTHER - THE BIG PICTURE

ISIS

Intollerance

To Buy or Not To Buy: That is The Question

The Music of Harry Partch

The Missing Tskhinval Photos - Der Spiegel's Censorship

Warning - Microsoft Update July 9 2008

ECO-PSYCHOLOGY, PART III With THEODORE ROSZAK

ECO-PSYCHOLOGY, PART II With THEODORE ROSZAK

ECO-PSYCHOLOGY, PART I With THEODORE ROSZAK

HAARP CBC Broadcast Weather control part 1 and 2

HAARP

Turkey Blocks YouTube

Save Our Bookshops and Authors From Amazon

The Great Invocation

British Bee Keeping Association Bed With The Devil

Pesticides: Germany bans chemicals linked to honeybee devastation

A sting in the tale: 'secret deal' splits country's top beekeepers

The Jewel

Masonic Origins, Facts and Fiction

Gemini

The People of The Secret - The Arise of The European Witch Cult of The Middle Ages

How Big Is The Universe?

It's A Beautiful Day, Galileo. Do You Remember The Sun?

Transcendental Experience In Relation to Religion and Psychosis by R.D. Laing

Body Art New Zealand

To Confound The Wise

Festivities In Heaven

God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot

Self Concept

May Nuts

I Can Walk On Water

Virgin Media - Time to Say Goodby.

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 81

Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu Chapter 80

Creative Challenge ~Salt Of The Earth~

An Introduction to Viktor Schauberger and the Secrets of Natural Energy ~Living Water~~