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The 20 Smartest Foods on Earth

2011-05-31T23:06:00.000Z

By Sara Ost
August 19, 2008

Simply put, your brain likes to eat. And it likes powerful fuel: quality fats, antioxidants, and small, steady amounts of the best carbs.

On a deadline? Need to rally? Avoid the soda, vending machine snacks and tempting Starbucks pastries and go for these powerful brain boosters instead. The path to a bigger, better brain is loaded with Omega-3 fats, antioxidants, and fiber. Give your brain a kick start: eat the following foods on a daily or weekly basis for results you will notice.

20 foods that will supercharge your brain:

1. Avocado

Start each day with a mix of high-quality protein and beneficial fats to build the foundation for an energized day. Avocado with scrambled eggs provides both, and the monounsaturated fat helps blood circulate better, which is essential for optimal brain function. Worst alternative: a trans-fat-filled, sugar-laden cream cheese Danish.

2. Blueberries

These delicious berries are one of the best foods for you, period, but they're very good for your brain as well. Since they're high in fiber and low on the glycemic index, they are safe for diabetics and they do not spike blood sugar. Blueberries are possibly the best brain food on earth: they have been linked to reduced risk for Alzheimer's, shown to improve learning ability and motor skills in rats, and they are one of the most powerful anti-stress foods you can eat. Avoid: dried, sweetened blueberries.

3. Wild Salmon

Omega-3 fatty acids are essential for your brain. These beneficial fats are linked to improved cognition and alertness, reduced risk of degenerative mental disease (such as dementia), improved memory, improved mood, and reduced depression, anxiety and hyperactivity. Wild salmon is a premium source, but we'll highlight a few other sources on this list for vegetarians and people who just don't like salmon. Avoid farmed (read: sea lice infested) salmon.

4. Nuts

Nuts contain protein, high amounts of fiber, and they are rich in beneficial fats. For getting an immediate energy boost that won't turn into a spike later, you can't do better than nuts. The complex carbs will perk you up while the fat and protein will sustain you. Nuts also contain plenty of vitamin E, which is essential to cognitive function. You don't have to eat raw, plain, unsalted nuts, but do avoid the ones with a lot of sweetening or seasoning blends. Filberts, hazelnuts, cashews, and walnuts are great choices, with almonds being the king of nuts.

For those avoiding carbs, macadamia nuts are much higher in fat than most nuts. By the way, peanuts just aren't ideal. Aside from the fact that many people are allergic, peanuts have less healthy fat than many other types of nuts…maybe that's because peanuts are not actually a nut! They're still much better than a candy bar, however.

5. Seeds

Try sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, flax seed, and tahini (a tangy, nutty sesame butter that tastes great in replacement of mayo and salad dressing). Seeds contain a lot of protein, beneficial fat, and vitamin E, as well as stress-fighting antioxidants and important brain-boosting minerals like magnesium.

6. Coffee

Thine eyes do not deceive (even if you are in the midst of a sugar crash). Coffee is good for your brain. Did you know coffee actually contains fiber? That's going to help your cardiovascular system. Coffee also exerts some noted benefit to your brain in addition to providing you with a detectable energy boost.

The trick is not to have more than a few cups. But you can safely enjoy 2-4 cups daily – we are talking about supercharging here. Just please don't go ruining a good thing by loading it up with sugar! Espresso beans are actually a phenomenally healthy snack, by the way.

7. Oatmeal

Nature's scrub brush is one of the best foods for cardiovascular health, which translates to brain health. Additionally, oatmeal is packed with fiber, a reasonable amount of protein, and even a small amount of Omega-3′s. It's a good grain that will sustain you throughout the morning so you aren't prone to irritability or an energy crash.

8. Beans

One more for carb-lovers. (The brain uses about 20% of your carbohydrate intake and it likes a consistent supply.) Beans are truly an amazing food that is sadly overlooked. They're humble, but very smart. Not only are they loaded with fiber, vitamins, minerals and protein, they're ridiculously cheap. An entire bag of beans usually costs only a few dollars and will provide many meals. Beans provide a steady, slow release of glucose to your brain – which means energy all day without the sugar crash. Don't go eating a whole platter of frijoles, though – just 1/4 of a cup is fine.

9. Pomegranate

Opt for the fruit over the juice so you get more fiber. Pomegranates contain blueberry-like levels of antioxidants, which are essential for a healthy brain. Your brain is the first organ to feel the effects of stress, so anything you can do to offset stress is a smart choice.

10. Brown Rice

Brown rice is a low-glycemic complex carbohydrate that is excellent for people sensitive to gluten who still want to maintain cardiovascular health. The better your circulation, the sharper your brain.

11. Tea

You have to brew tea fresh or you won't get the benefits of all those catechines (antioxidants) that boost your brain. Because tea has caffeine, don't have more than 2-3 cups daily.

12. Chocolate

Things are looking increasingly better for chocolate. It's got brain-boosting compounds, it's loaded with antioxidants, and it has just the right amount of caffeine. Chocolate sends your serotonin through the roof, so you'll feel happy in short order. Dark chocolate is also rich in fiber. (Remember, fiber = healthy cardiovascular system = healthy brain.)

13. Oysters

Oysters are rich in selenium, magnesium, protein and several other nutrients vital to brain health. In one study researchers found that men who ate oysters reported significantly improved cognition and mood! Not all shellfish are good for you but oysters are a sure bet.

14. Olive Oil

Though we know the brain does need a small, steady supply of glucose, don't overlook fat. Studies have consistently shown that a low-fat diet is not the health boon we hoped it would be (remember the 90s low-fat craze?). In fact, avoiding fat can increase foggy thinking, mood swings, and insomnia. A diet rich in healthy fats is essential to clear thinking, good memory, and a balanced mood. Your brain is made of fat, after all.

One study of men found that those who relied on the processed vegetable fats found in salad dressings, snacks and prepared foods had 75% higher rates of mental degradation (dementia, memory loss) than men who ate healthy fats. Most processed foods and fast foods use corn oil, palm oil, soybean oil and other Omega-6 fats. You don't want Omega 6 fats. Even saturated fat is safer than Omega 6′s.

Choose healthy fats such as those present in olive oil, nut butters, nuts and seeds, flax, oily fish, and avocados. Avoid processed fats found in pastries, chips, candy bars, snacks, junk food, fried foods and prepared foods. Eating the wrong fat can literally alter your brain's communication pathways.

15. Tuna

In addition to being another rich source of Omega-3′s, tuna, particularly yellowfin, has the highest level of vitamin B6 of any food. Studies have shown that B6 is directly linked to memory, cognition and long term brain health. Generally, the B vitamins are among the most important for balancing your mood. B6 in particular influences dopamine receptors (dopamine is one of your "feel good" hormones along with serotonin).

My personal cocktail: SAMe (nature's happiness molecule) and a mega-dose of B-complex keeps me humming even when I've got a mountain of work to do. Which, like you, is all the time.

16. Garlic

Garlic – the fresher the better – is one of the most potent nutritional weapons in your arsenal. Eat it as much as your significant other can stand. Not only is it fabulous for reducing bad cholesterol and strengthening your cardiovascular system, it exerts a protective antioxidant effect on the brain.

Avoid: I know it makes life easier, but don't even think about buying the chopped or peeled garlic. Nutritional benefits = zero.

17. Eggs

Eggs contain protein and fat to provide energy to your brain for hours, and the selenium in organic eggs is proven to help your mood. You really needn't worry about the overblown cholesterol fears. (I have quite a bit to say on this topic but I'll restrain myself for once.)

18. Green Leafy Vegetables

Spinach, kale, chard, romaine, arugula, lolla rossa – whatever green you like, eat it daily. Green, leafy vegetables are high in iron (slightly less "green" iron sources include beef, pork and lamb). Americans tend to be deficient in iron, which is too bad, because the deficiency is linked to restless leg syndrome, fatigue, poor mood, foggy thinking, and other cognition issues.

19. Tomatoes

Go figure, but tomatoes don't usually make the brain-boosting food lists. (Thank goodness I found the one that did so I'm not the only one.) Tomatoes contain lycopene, an antioxidant that is particularly good for your brain – it even helps prevent dementia. You have to cook tomatoes to get the lycopene – take that, raw foodies! Just kidding. But this does mean that ketchup is good for your brain. Although because of the sugar in it, you should look to other sources for most of your lycopene intake, such as fresh tomato sauce.

20. Cacao nibs

That's right, I'm putting chocolate on this list twice. My boyfriend knows I need it. I eat chocolate or cacao nibs daily and I think you might want to consider it, too. Cacao nibs are among the top five most powerful brain foods, right next to wild salmon and blueberries. My girlfriends and I like to mix cacao nibs with frozen blueberries and a generous splash of organic heavy cream while we watch really bad television on Sunday nights.

Things that drain your brain

Alcohol kills your brain cells outright! Alcohol also interferes with dopamine production. Moderate amounts of alcohol, particularly resveratrol-rich red wine, can help improve your health, but anything beyond a glass or two of wine daily is a recipe for reduced brain function and energy loss.

Corn Syrup and Sugar lead to health problems like diabetes and obesity, and they’re terrible for your brain. Don’t eat sugar except on special occasions or as an infrequent treat. If you can’t cut back that much, try to limit yourself to just two bites of whatever tempts you daily.

Nicotine constricts blood flow to the brain, so while it may “soothe” jittery nerves, smoking will actally reduce your brain function severely – and the effects are cumulative.

A high carbohydrate lunch ,will make you sleepy and slugish. Opt for a meal

with some quality protein, such as a salad with grilled chicken breast or vegetables and hummus or wild American shrimp and avocado.

– with additional reporting by Sarah Irani

For more healthy diet and nutrition tips, check out these popular articles:

Source: http://ecosalon.com

Wake Up and Transform Your Life

2011-05-31T22:55:00.000Z

By Steve Pavlina
Source: StevePavlina.com

What does it mean to wake up and become more conscious? Let me share some perspectives that should make it easier to understand the process of waking up.
The Cellular Perspective
From the cellular perspective, you can see yourself as an individual person interacting with other individuals. You're like a single cell in the larger body of humanity, which is comprised of billions of other people-cells.

For example, I could say that I'm a guy (a cell) who's dedicated to helping people (other cells) live more consciously. I may communicate with many people during my lifetime, but each person is a unique individual, so the impact is different for everyone. We may all be part of some larger body of humanity, but our interactions mainly occur at the individual cellular level.

This is similar to one of the cells in your body noticing the other cells around it and deciding to do what it can to be of service to those cells. It may help a lot of cells, but it still regards itself as an individual cell helping other individual cells. And it won't help all cells equally, nor could it do so even if it tried.
The Holistic Perspective
From the holistic perspective, you see yourself as an integral part of the universe as a whole. The overall intent is to help universal consciousness grow and evolve, particularly the human consciousness of which you're a part.

This would be like one of the cells in your body recognizing that it's part of a larger physical body, whereby it stops thinking of itself primarily as an individual cell and begins to see itself as being of potential service to the greater whole. Its fate isn't as important as the fate of the larger body.

So with this perspective, instead of thinking of myself as a guy who helps people live more consciously, I can see myself as a servant of humanity helping to create a more conscious humanity, or as a servant of universal consciousness itself. My primary role here is to serve conscious evolution, which isn't necessarily what's best for any particular individual human in the short term.
Other Perspectives
Of course there are other perspective too. We could discuss identification with community, nation, all life, the cosmos, etc. These perspectives are equally valid, but exploring them would add complexity without adding much substance to the core ideas. So for now I want to keep this simple.

On the atomic side, you're an individual, and other people are individuals too. On the holistic side, we're all part of a greater whole.

I'm not suggesting that any one perspective is best. All of these perspectives are valid. But I will suggest that it's important to integrate the holistic perspective more fully into your life if you wish to experience a healthier flow of abundance.

"Waking up" basically means that you consider and integrate the holistic perspective as part of your daily life. Of course there are degrees of waking up, depending on how aware you are of the holistic perspective and how fully you've integrated it into your life. In the same manner, the cells in your body may have varying degrees of awareness that they are in fact part of a larger human body.

Alternatively, to be "asleep" is to be unaware of the larger holistic perspective. We could also define this behaviorally by saying that someone is asleep if they're aware of the holistic perspective, but they don't attempt to act congruently with it. In terms of semantics, I'd say that the first group is asleep, while the second group is trying to sleep.
Fairness
At the individual level, fairness seems to be about equality. But of course we don't see that much genuine equality in the world. It's quite obvious that some individuals have more resources than others. Some people seem to be luckier too.

Does your own human body care about fairness when it doles out resources like oxygen and sugar to its individual cells? To an extent, sure. When resources are abundant, there's plenty for all, but even then the distribution isn't perfectly equal. And when resources become scarce, the body will starve cells that are less important to its survival to divert more resources to the most crucial cells.

So the question is, are you an essential cell in the larger body of consciousness? Or are you superfluous? Well… look at the resources that life sends your way. Do you feel all your needs are well met — your physical needs, emotional needs, social needs, self esteem needs, etc? Are you a highly self-actualized individual? Or do you have strong unfulfilled cravings for things that are important to you? Have you possibly given up on meeting some of your needs? Are your flourishing, or are you stuck?

If you're struggling to get your needs met, that's a hint and a half that life itself isn't particularly concerned with your well-being. Don't fret though if this describes your situation. It's a problem that can be fixed. Just don't try to fix it by clamoring and complaining — that doesn't work and will often backfire.

This may not seem fair, but in a way it is reasonable. You may be a very nice, kind, and generous person, but if your focus is at the cellular level, you're probably missing so much of the big picture that in the grand scheme of things, your contribution just doesn't matter that much, at least not from the perspective of universal consciousness.

You may be doing what could just as easily be done by someone else, which means you're highly expendable. You may be playing follow the follower. You may be genuinely helping, but only at the cellular level. You may be doing nothing much, which makes it easy to ignore you.

If you live in such a way that doesn't really contribute much, don't be too surprised if it seems like life is starving you for resources. After all, life doesn't need you as much if you aren't actively helping with its expansion and growth.

Consider the cells in your own body. You may scratch an itch on your arm and kill lots of cells in the process without even thinking about it. Individual skin cells just aren't that important to your overall survival. But you're less likely to scratch off a patch of critical brain cells. A cut on your finger is no cause for alarm, but a cut on your eyeball is something you'd do more to avoid. Your body is even designed to protect some parts more than others. If something flies at your face, you'll automatically throw up your arms to protect your head. But you won't normally use your head to protect your arms.

Do you think you're among the critical humans that the larger body of humanity would move to defend and protect? Or are you among the sacrificial parts?
What Does Consciousness Want?
What do you want as a human being? Think about your goals, dreams, and aspirations for a moment.

Now consider what an individual cell in your body would want. It wants oxygen and sugar. It wants to eliminate waste. Is this on the same level as your goals? Do you aspire to breathe, eat, and take dumps as your primary goals for the year?

Hopefully not.

Now look at this from the other side. From the perspective of the consciousness itself, your human-level dreams and goals seem petty. It's important to keep people happy to an extent, but the fate of any one human is largely insignificant.

Universal consciousness really doesn't care if you have a job or an income, if you get the house you want, if you have a good relationship or not. It doesn't care if you get laid or remain a virgin.

Well, it cares a little, but it's not a major concern, just as you aren't overly concerned about the fate of any individual cells in your body. It's the body's overall status that matters. And you probably identify more with your mind (your collective cellular intelligence) as opposed to your physical body anyway.

Similarly, universal consciousness is more concerned with the evolution of consciousness itself (our collective consciousness) as opposed to the fate of any individual human or even of humanity itself. Now the loss of humanity would probably be a setback, but consciousness may eventually recover in other forms.

What does consciousness really want? Like you and like your individual cells, it wants to get its needs met, and it wants to grow and evolve. But the level on which its capable of doing this goes way beyond what you're capable of as an individual.

Look around at all the amazing — and accelerating — achievements of consciousness. It's expanding in many directions simultaneously. Consider what's evolving on earth. Humanity itself is becoming smarter and faster and more connected. And it's having some health issues to deal with as well. And consciousness wants to keep going.
Living Small or Living Large
You can spend your life fussing over your own piddly cellular needs, but in the grand scheme of things, it won't be anything to write home about. No matter what you do or don't do as an individual, it's just not going to matter that much.
The same can be said of any cell in your body. At the individual level, a single cell isn't particularly important.

Imagine asking a cell in your body what he's doing with his life, and he talks about the Bloodstream Marketing course he's taking and how excited he is about all the extra sugar he'll earn from his efforts. Oh boy!

But will his efforts pay off? Probably not. If he isn't getting his needs met, there's probably a good reason for it. The larger body will see that his needs are well met if there's a good reason to do so. Otherwise it will divert resources where they're needed.

This is how silly we humans appear to universal consciousness. It still cares about us and wants to see us happy for the most part, but it finds our cellular perspective to be rather limiting. If you push to get your individual needs met, but you do so in ways that the larger body doesn't care about or which may interfere with its bigger plans, it will either ignore you, or it will swat you down like a mosquito.

Imagine if a cell in your body said, I just want to eat food and reproduce like crazy. That might seem fun from his perspective, but then the larger body has a tumor to deal with. Send in the white blood cells.

If you feel like some greater force keeps knocking you back down every time you try to get ahead, you're not imagining it. It really is knocking you back down, and it will continue to do so until you stop trying to get ahead like a cancer cell would.

Have you ever noticed, for instance, that as soon as you try to make progress on cancer-like projects, you keep getting distracted, so your attention has to turn somewhere else.

Quite often we cry "Life is so unfair" when from a larger perspective, it's a no brainer that life is either going to ignore us or attack us. Humanity's white blood cells will come after us and make life unpleasant for us when we forget that we're part of a larger whole and that its well-being is more important than our individual well-being.

Now imagine if an individual cell in your body said to you, "Wait a minute. I get it. I may be just a tiny cell, but I'm a part of this whole body. That's cool. Is there anything I can do to help?"

What would you say to it? You might wonder what one conscious cell could do for your whole body. Not much most likely. But then you might think, What if this cell could wake up many others, and what if those cells could awaken still more? Eventually you could have a body filled with cells that were aware of the whole body and seeking to serve it. This would fix a lot of your problems. You'd have much better health for starters. Cancer wouldn't be able to take root. Most diseases would be eradicated easily. You'd always be able to maintain your ideal weight.

So you might tell that one conscious cell, "Go around and wake up more cells. Gather them together. Then we'll talk."
Being a Conscious Human
A conscious cell is aware of the whole body and realizes that the body matters more than any individual cell. The cells are there to serve the evolution of the body and mind, not merely themselves. There's obviously a connection between the good of the cells and the good of the body, but it's easier to have a healthy body if on some level, the cells are aware that the body's health is more important than their own. A cell that works against the health of the body is a disease cell.

A conscious human being is aware of the larger body of humanity and has a sense of a greater consciousness that's unfolding and evolving at a much higher level than any individual human can.

There is value in the lower level perspective. It's not a perspective to ignore but rather to integrate with the holistic perspective. For example, through relaxed meditative breathing, we can connect with the lower level perspective of our own cells. Breathe in. Breathe out. We're getting plenty of oxygen. Life is good. This cellular level perspective can help to ground us. Many meditations are essentially about tuning back in to this cellular perspective, while other meditations involve expanding to a more holistic perspective. The ideal is to be able to consider all of these perspectives as valid.

If our cells aren't healthy, our bodies can't be healthy, and so humanity itself can't be healthy. And of course the opposite holds true as well. But there are ways of meeting our needs on different levels that are in alignment with all of these perspectives, and there are other ways that are out of alignment. To live consciously, we need to shift towards the ways that are in alignment, so we can meet our needs as we also meet the needs of the cells in our bodies and of the greater body of humanity.

I'm certainly not the first human being to have the experience of "waking up" and becoming aware of this. Other conscious humans helped wake me up and continue to help me stay awake… or to reawaken me when I lose that perspective. I also endeavor to do my part and help other people wake up to the realization that jobs and money and marriage and retirement just aren't that important. There are more important things to attend to here. Meeting our cellular needs is still important, but we don't want to fuss at that level too much. We have more significant work to do here, and we could be experience life at a much higher level of existence.

Living your life as a part of humanity will take your experience to a level that's far beyond life as an individual human being. Even if your intention is to help people, try expanding it to a vision of helping humanity, as if humanity itself is a conscious entity. It's a whole different level of being.

Now what I'm seeing is that the gathering phase is well underway. Many years ago, it seemed like conscious people were very isolated. Now they're coming together in bigger and bigger groups. I'm involved in multiple groups of this nature, and it seems like every few months I'm hearing about new groups forming. The conscious humans are clustering, and these clusters are growing larger and more organized. It's as if new organs are incubating with the larger body of humanity. Something is definitely happening, and its a wondrous thing to behold.

Consequently, while I know some people are worried about where humanity is headed, I'm not worried at all. In fact, I'm excited about it. I have the privilege of being able to see what many of these conscious people are up to, and they're starting to create transformational ripples. If you're reading this article, then these ripples have already reached you, and you're being impacted by them.

Some conscious cells are still isolated, however. Others are in very small groups only. And of course there are lots of people who still primarily think at the cellular level (go Bloodstream Marketing). But this is changing.

Perhaps the simplest way I can explain what's happening is that humanity's Power has been increasing by leaps and bounds, and now its alignment with Truth and Love desperately need to catch up. Otherwise humanity will eventually crash and burn. For instance, the first atomic bombs were dropped only 66 years ago, yet now we must somehow ensure that they're never used on a global scale, not even 1000 years from now. One serious mistake or lapse during any minute that we have nukes, and it's a major setback for us all. That's a tall order that cannot be satisfied at the cellular level of consciousness. We've had too many close calls already. The larger body of humanity is aware of this challenge, and it recognizes that we need more people who are Truthful, Loving, and Powerful to deal with this existential threat.

You're going to start picking up on this at the individual level, if you haven't already. For instance, you're going to feel far less tolerant of political leaders who lie to you. We're going to see different kinds of leaders emerge, the kinds of leaders we truly need in this day and age. There are plenty of people like that, but in order for them to become popular enough, we just have to continue waking up more individual people. Once enough people are awake (or stop trying to sleep), we'll see some major shifts. These shifts are already happening in the world of business, where popularity with the masses isn't as necessary.

The Flow of Abundance
What we're seeing is that on some level, this higher consciousness is taking note of what's happening, and it seems to be assisting and accelerating the process. It wants human beings to wake up because a body of conscious cells can do much more than a body of unconscious ones. So if you're concerned that there are too many crises in the world, recognize that there's an upside. These major challenges are helping more and more people to finally wake up. We can't even begin to address these challenges with cellular-level thinking, so we have to wake up in order to solve them.

There's a lot of rebalancing that's occurring as universal consciousness and individual human consciousness communicate with each other about how to best meet each others' needs. How can humanity continue to evolve and expand while keeping individual humans happy and healthy? For humanity to be at its best, enough individual humans need to be at their best as well. You're going to see this reflected in your own life too, as you grapple with the challenge of how to serve some greater life purpose while also making sure your individual needs are satisfied. In a way, you're helping humanity experiment in order to find good solutions, which it can then spread to other cells. This is why cells like me feel an undeniable urge to pass on what we've figured out thus far.

As I've seen in my own life, this higher level consciousness is clearly listening. Somehow it can perceive the level at which we're thinking, and it responds in kind. If you keep thinking at the cellular level, this higher consciousness will keep trying to wake you up. You may lose your job and other possessions, for instance, until you finally realize that those things don't matter. We have more important things to deal with right now.

I'm far from perfect in this area, but I'm gradually getting the hang of it. I'm noticing that whenever I slip back down to cellular level thinking, I get a good smackdown. I feel like everything slows to a crawl. And when I shift back up to a higher level perspective, it's like I'm back in the flow again. The phone rings with fresh opportunities, money just shows up, loving relationships flow into my life, and more. Fortunately perfection isn't necessary. We just have to shift the balance far enough to achieve critical mass.

For those who are stuck at the cellular level of thinking, I suspect that life is going to become increasingly difficult for you. You're going to see your worries, fears, and frustrations magnified. Life will seem to be getting worse. It may seem like important aspects of society are falling apart around you. This is happening for a reason though. These old systems are going to be dismantled. That's actually a good thing. They'll be replaced with better things.

For instance, you may be worried about debt, either your own or your countries or someone else's. But from the larger perspective of humanity, debt is meaningless.

Humanity really doesn't care if our financial system collapses or not. In fact, it may be better for it to collapse and be replaced by something else. So if you're really attached to the current system and the money in your bank, you may get scared. But if you're looking at the big picture, you'll probably feel excited instead.

Be willing to lose what doesn't matter, so we can all gain what does matter. Jobs don't matter, but creativity does. Paying our bills doesn't matter, but keeping our bodies healthy does. Getting good grades in school doesn't matter, but preserving and passing on our collective knowledge does. Start reorganizing your life around what matters, and be willing to shed what doesn't.

Try not to be too attached to remnants of the old cellular consciousness, like the money you have, the job you do, and the home you live in. The more you cling to those things, the more stressed out you'll be. Just notice that these are all artificial cellular level concerns. What's important is that humanity is evolving in a very positive way. You can resist that change and see your old goals fall apart, or you can flow with it and actively participate in the process of change.

For those who are waking up, life is going to become much easier in a way. Your life will explode with opportunities to learn, love, share, and grow. The good stuff will come from your alignment with the expansion of universal consciousness. But it's important to keep the perspective of what really matters. Money doesn't matter. Bloodstream/Internet Marketing is pointless and shallow. Waking people up and consciously co-creating something amazing is what matters.

When you align yourself with this higher level consciousness, abundance will flow through your life with relative ease. However, this type of abundance will be universal level abundance, not human level abundance. It doesn't mean you'll necessarily have more money, a more luxurious home, or more possessions. That kind of stuff just doesn't matter and represents artificial needs, not real needs.

This level of abundance means that you'll be experiencing the benefits of being in a healthier body. You'll get more of what really matters — more growth opportunities, more love, more joy, more inner peace.

Focus on your true needs. What do you need to feel abundant? You need to keep your body healthy with healthy food, sunshine, and clean air and water. You need a reasonable degree of safety. You need love and belongingness. You need self esteem. You need an outlet for your creativity. Your true needs are quite simple in fact, and they're easier to satisfy than your artificial needs. You don't need the latest tech gadget. You don't need a job or an income. You don't need to get married. You don't need to master Bloodstream Marketing.

Your artificial needs may not align well with humanity's larger concerns. But your true needs certainly do align. It's in humanity's best interests to keep its best servants healthy, happy, and prosperous. In that sense, it you dedicate yourself to serving this greater body, it will surely watch your back.
Aligning With Higher Level DesiresIn order to tap into this greater flow of abundance, you have to tap into higher level desires.

First, recognize that your human level goals are beginning to bore you. No matter how important you try to make them, you can't get motivated to work on them. You just can't get that worked up about making money beyond a certain point. People may tell you it's important to have specific financial goals, but when you try to do this for yourself, it makes you feel yucky inside. You can't get motivated to work on those kinds of goals. They don't inspire you. And so you procrastinate and then beat yourself up. It's time to end this cycle. It's time to re-align your desires with something that actually matters to you. You can set better goals than the human equivalent of stockpiling oxygen and sugar.

Stop thinking about what you want for yourself as an individual. Start thinking about what you want for humanity as a whole.

In the past, you may have been hesitant to even think at that level. Start thinking at that level now.

What do you want for humanity itself? Where would you like to see this larger body go during your lifetime and beyond?

Do you want us to clean up the planet? Explore outer space? Improve our educational systems? Stop fighting wars?

Let yourself dream about what's possible for humanity. Notice that these dreams are much more impressive than anything you could possibly do as an individual.

Become a billionaire? Who cares? Start a charity? Big deal. Discover a new planet? Nice try. When will you be ready to work on a real goal, a goal for humanity itself?
Receiving Guidance
The best part is that you don't even need to figure this out yourself. All you need to do is wake up to this higher level perspective, and then simply ping this universal consciousness to tell it you're awake and ready to serve. Ask it for guidance, and guidance will come.

Just be aware that universal consciousness is frakkin powerful. It's way more powerful than human level consciousness. When you tap into this resource and align yourself with it, your life is going to speed up. At first it may seem like drinking from a firehouse. It will take some time to get used to it.

If you feel that the flow is too much for you, you can ask it to slow down. I do this all the time. When I'm feeling overwhelmed, I say to the universe aloud, "Okay… this is too fast. Let's slow this down for a week or two and give me a chance to catch my breath." Then when I'm ready, I ask it to speed up again.

With practice you'll get used to this faster pacing. You'll get used to things showing up when you need them. You'll get used to experiencing synchronicities almost every day.

A synchronicity is no accident. Universal consciousness knows what you need, perhaps even better than you do. You really don't even have to ask for your specific needs to be met once you ask to be a better servant of humanity. As Jesus said, just say, "Not my will, but thy will be done."

Lately I've been holding off on setting specific goals for myself. Instead I've been saying to the universe, "Bring me what you want me to work on, and also please bring me whatever you know I need for optimal health, happiness, and flow." And then I do my best to remain open-minded and detached from outcomes. I let the universal consciousness guide me instead of having to set specific goals and intentions. I still have an intention, but it's simply to do what's best for humanity as a whole.

Partly I'm doing this because I've reached the point where any individual-level goal would bore me, and I wouldn't be able to motivate myself to work on it. I just don't care that much about oxygen and sugar to make it the central focus of my life. So I'm willing to risk things like losing my money, losing my home, having my relationships disrupted, etc. just for the opportunity to see where this flow leads. And yet somehow when I move past this fear of losing stuff, I seem to gain much more than I lose. As far as meeting my human needs goes, they're all nicely satisfied and then some. Bloodstream Marketing just can't compare.
Effect on Relationships
When you begin to align yourself with the perspective of higher level consciousness, your relationships with other people will shift. Try not to be too attached to what happens here. Your pairings with any one or more individuals aren't necessarily going to be stable. It's how your relationships affect the whole of humanity that matters. What ripples are you and your relationships co-creating?

People who aren't compatible with this new perspective will fade from your life. At first you may fear that you're going to end up alone, but there's no cause for alarm. New relationships will come into your life, relationships with people who have a similar perspective. And these relationships will be much better for you than the old ones. They'll help you hold the new perspective.

These new relationships will be different than what you're used to, however. There will be less rigidity and more flexibility in this part of your life. Such relationships may defy traditional labels. You may feel a bit ungrounded in this new space. It takes time to get used to it.

Eventually you'll realize that happiness and love can come from anywhere. You may have your emotional needs met equally well by a long-time partner or with someone you just met. Universal consciousness will guide you to whatever it is that you need to sustain your emotional health, as long as you don't get too attached to how it shows up. If you remain open and flexible, your emotional needs can satisfied with relative ease. Trust that universal consciousness knows just what you need, and it will deliver it right to you if you're ready to accept it. Again, you don't even have to ask once your on this path. It will satisfy your emotional needs because doing so makes you a better servant. You can't serve humanity so well if you're feeling lonely and disconnected. You'll be more motivated if you have love in your life, so love will be delivered unto you.

Compared to where I was a few years ago, my relationship life might seem a bit strange these days. I have many relationships that would be difficult to label, but they seem to be healthy and flourishing in ways that are hard to get my head around. I can't really define what they are, and I can't predict where they're going.

But it seems like these connections are good and healthy for all involved. My biggest relationship challenge is unloading the traditional-minded baggage that nudges me to lock down and label each relationship, so I can feel like I understand it. But whenever I fall into that pattern, things get worse, not better. Conscious relationships don't seem to like being locked down and labeled. They require more freedom and flow.

At first this sort of situation could make a person feel insecure. You may be accustomed to having a sense of security based on the stability of predictable interactions with people close to you.

However, when you align yourself with universal consciousness, you're likely to move around a lot more relationship-wise. You're going to meet and interact with a lot more people than you're used to. Your social life will be rich and varied. Your stability has to come from trusting that no matter where you are, your emotional needs will still be satisfied. You'll have the opportunity to share love, intimacy, affection, etc., and it can be more abundant than what you experienced at the individual level of being. I assure you that you won't have to go it alone. This isn't a lonely path — it's actually an incredibly social path.
Effect on Work
Your work life will be transformed as well. You'll probably need to stop thinking of your career in terms of having a stable job and earning a set income. Serving humanity requires a lot more flexibility and flow than a traditional job can provide. Thinking of starting or running a business is equally limiting. This is human level thinking. What does humanity need?

Humanity is more concerned with things like creativity, purpose, and expansion. It would love to see you contribute to the ongoing expansion and evolution of consciousness. That's what matters. The other stuff is too trivial to fuss over.

I don't really have a job title. Sometimes I make one up like President or CEO when it's required for social convention, but the title is meaningless to me. When people ask me what I do for a living, I don't really know what to say. I don't do anything for a living. I just live. In certain situations I might say that I'm a blogger, author, or speaker, but that's mainly what I say to people who are asleep and I don't have time to wake them up in that particular moment. If I'm talking to someone who's awake, then either they won't ask such a silly question, or they'll understand my honest answer… and they'll probably share a similar feeling about job titles.

My business cards have the wrong address because I haven't updated them in 5 years. My website obviously isn't the prettiest one out there. I've never spent money to market or promote my website, book, or workshops. I don't think it would be a bad thing to do so; it just hasn't ever been necessary. Humanity takes care of all my marketing and does a better job that I could.

Last year I uncopyrighted all my blog posts and podcasts, so you have just as much ownership of this article as I do. From a cellular level, that might seem like a foolish decision. But that isn't the level at which I made the decision. What does a copyright mean to humanity? Of course it's meaningless. What would you think if one of your cells tried to patent the Krebs Cycle? Silly cells…

Some people are repackaging and selling my work for money. Does that bother me? Of course not. Even though they may be operating at an individual level of consciousness, they're actually helping. They're spreading ideas that humanity wants to spread; after all, humanity gave me those ideas to share in the first place. They're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. I think some of them have been donating back to me as well, since I've seen a modest increase in donations lately. But I didn't do this to get more donations. I did it because it should help the ideas spread and get more people thinking about living consciously. It really doesn't matter which humans get credit or make money from it.

I think my business actually works better because I don't manage it with a cellular mindset. Millions of people have been drawn to my work, and it's been translated into more languages than I can track. People keep sharing it, with or without my permission. New opportunities keep showing up. Money keeps flowing. Everything works. Well, aside from my web server, which I may have to upgrade yet again due to traffic growth. But that's a good problem to have, isn't it?

Why does my business work? Because it's not really a business. It's a service, not primarily for individual humans, but for humanity itself. The purpose is to help enough people wake up and live more consciously, so that humanity itself may continue to survive and thrive. And by performing this service for humanity, it takes care of all my needs. It's really good at it too. I barely have to lift a finger to attend to such things. I rather appreciate that.

Individually speaking, there are some humans out there who don't particularly like my work. But that's largely irrelevant because humanity as a whole has made it abundantly clear that it appreciates what I'm doing and wants to speed things along with further expansion. These days I largely ignore cellular level feedback because it comes from people at varying levels of wakefulness, so of course they won't all agree. But I pay close attention to feedback from universal consciousness, such as whether my life is flowing well or not. These days it's flowing amazingly well, so I figure I'm on the right track.

Is humanity making it abundantly clear that it appreciates what you're doing? If not, any guesses as to why? Could it be that you've been ignoring humanity's needs, and thus it's been ignoring your needs? Try doing the opposite and see what happens. I think you'll like it.
Conscious Business
Recently I've been listening to an audiobook about the history of Google. Google began as a fairly idealistic company with the grand mission of organizing and providing access to all the world's information. Does that sound like an individual level goal or a goal for humanity itself?

Of course Google has since become a giant, besting all other search companies. Interestingly, one of the reasons it succeeded is because it attracted some of the brightest minds in the world, people who were inspired by its mission and who would not have worked for the company if it was just about the money. You could say that humanity diverted the best resources to Google because Google's mission served the best interests of humanity. In fact, Google has helped to create a smarter, more self-aware humanity.

Microsoft used to be a similar purpose-driven company, with the mission of putting "a computer on every desk and in every home." That was an expansive goal that served humanity. But a lot of people now believe Microsoft has lost its way, and sometimes it acts more like a cancerous tumor than a servant to humanity. Do you believe that Microsoft is here to serve humanity, or mainly itself? Is it working with the expansion and evolution of humanity, or is it working against it? Probably a bit of both. Hence its mixed results and recent stagnation. Microsoft needs a new mission that aligns with humanity's expansion. So far its current attempts at a new mission have been fluffy and noncommittal. It wastes too much energy on trying to defend its turf, failing to recognize that there's only one turf, and it belongs to universal consciousness. If you happen to work for Microsoft, do what you can to wake more people up within your company, and eventually the culture will shift, as will the company's results.

The irony is that companies that care less about quarterly returns and more about service to humanity can often achieve amazing growth. Why? Because humanity wants those companies to succeed. It sends them whatever resources they need to succeed.

Notice which companies appear to be serving the expansion and evolution of humanity and which are only here to serve themselves and their stockholders. If you were a genius, which kind of company would you want to work for? If you were humanity itself, which companies would you support? Which would you ignore? Which would you wish to tear down or transform? Now what kind of company do you currently work for?

Martin Luther King, Jr. said that we have guided missiles and misguided men. Let's change that. Guidance is available to you whenever you want. You just have to be reasonably awake to receive it. Then you'll have all the inspiration you could possibly want.

Read related articles:

Source: http://www.stevepavlina.com

Orgasms Unlock Altered Consciousness

2011-05-31T22:44:00.001Z

May 2011
by Kayt Sukel

Our intrepid reporter performs an intimate act in an fMRI scanner to explore the pathways of pleasure and pain

With a click and a whirr, I am pulled into the scanner. My head is strapped down and I have been draped with a blanket so that I may touch my nether regions - my clitoris in particular - with a certain degree of modesty. I am here neither for a medical procedure nor an adult movie. Rather, I am about to stimulate myself to orgasm while an fMRI scanner tracks the blood flow in my brain.

My actions are helping Barry Komisaruk at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, and colleagues to tease apart the mechanisms underlying sexual arousal. In doing so, not only have they discovered that there is more than one route to orgasm, but they may also have revealed a novel type of consciousness - an understanding of which could lead to new treatments for pain.

Read more here at http://www.newscientist.com

Masonic Tracing Boards and the Western Metaphysical Tradition

2011-05-31T22:22:00.000Z

W. Kirk MacNulty

Introduction

Masonic Tracing Boards are training devices. They depict Masonic symbols in pictures which can be interpreted to reveal the teachings of Masonry. The Boards which we considered at the Forum were drawn by a Mason named J Harris in the 1820s and 30s. They are references to a vast body of literature and philosophical doctrine which is at the core of Renaissance thought. Many of the ideas are kabbalistic. Someone who really wants to understand the Tracing Boards (and Masonry itself) must read into and understand those doctrines; and the presentation to the forum considered the Tracing Boards from this point of view.

I have to make a disclaimer: the ideas expressed here are my own. They do not represent the attitudes or teachings of any Grand Lodge or Private Lodge.

Metaphysics

There are many metaphysical systems in use throughout the world; for the last 2000 years those in the West have been dominated by a metaphysics based on some variant of Judeo-Christian monotheism. The Renaissance was no exception, although it was also characterized by a revival of interest in the Classical world (in particular the Greek and Roman civilizations) and its thought.

Medieval scholars had been interested in Classical Philosophy from the point of view of reconciling it to Christian doctrine. Renaissance thinkers were interested in Classical Philosophy for what it said about man, himself. These Renaissance philosophers incorporated a good many hermetic and kabbalistic ideas into their orthodox Christian thought. Frances Yates has called this fusion of classical and Jewish philosophy the ‘Hermetic/Kabbalistic Tradition,’ and after it had been interpreted in the context of orthodox Christian doctrine it became fundamental to the thought of the early Renaissance. Speculative Masonry dates from the end of the Renaissance (the mid-to-late 17th century), and it seems to me that Masonic symbolism reflects this Renaissance tradition.

Three fundamental ideas seem to characterize the Renaissance view: First, the Deity was considered to be without limit. This resulted in a view of all existence as a single, tightly integrated unity centered on the Deity. A particularly clear statement of this view comes from the Hermetica:

‘… for God contains all things, and there is nothing that is not in God, and nothing which God is not. Nay, I would rather say, not that God contains all things, but that, to speak the full truth, God is all things.’1

Second, earthly experiences were considered to reflect events in the heavenly realms; the succinct statement of this idea is, ‘As above; so below.’ There must be a correspondence between that which occurs in the higher (heavenly, causal) levels and that which occurs at the lower (earthly) ones.2 Third, knowledge of the ‘higher,’ or more subtle, aspects of the Universe was thought to be available only by experience (i.e. by one’s own revelation); certainly not by logical argument, nor, ultimately, by faith in the authority of another’s revelations I think that the Masonic symbolism, as represented on the tracing boards, reflects these principles which make up the Renaissance world view.

The First Degree Tracing Board

The picture, which looks at first glance like a collection of heterogeneous objects, is, I think, a representation of God, the Universe, and Everything. It is also a picture of a human being standing in a landscape. Neither of these images is immediately obvious; but I hope I can convince you that they are, at least, reasonable interpretations of the data.

Ornaments

A central idea which was fundamental to Renaissance thought was the unity of the system and the consequent omnipresence of the Deity. For me, this idea is represented on the First Degree Board by a group of three symbols which are called, collectively, the ‘Ornaments of the Lodge.’

The fact that the Masons who formulated our symbolism gathered these three objects into a single group seems to require that we consider them together. The Ornaments of the Lodge are the Blazing Star or Glory, the Chequered Pavement, and the Indented, Tessellated Border, and they are all intended to refer to the Deity. The Blazing Star or Glory is a straightforward heraldic representation of the Deity. On the Great Seal of the United States the Deity is represented in the same manner. The Blazing Star, shown in the Heavens, represents the Deity as It is, in all Its Glory, as It projects Itself into existence. The Chequered Pavement represents the Deity as It is perceived to be at the opposite pole of consciousness, here on Earth in ordinary life. The light and dark squares represent paired opposites, a mixture of mercy and justice, reward and punishment, vengeance and loving kindness. They also represent the human experience of life, light and dark, good and evil, easy and difficult. But that is only how it is perceived. The squares are not the symbol; the Pavement is the symbol. The light and dark squares fit together with exact nicety to form the Pavement, a single thing, a unity. The whole is surrounded by the Tessellated Border which binds it into a single symbol. In this representation on the Tracing Board the Border binds not simply the squares, but the entire picture, into a unity.

Columns

Except for the Glory, the idea of duality occurs throughout the Board – from the black and white squares at the bottom to the Sun and Moon, an ancient symbol for the paired opposites of masculine and feminine, at the top. In the central area of the Board duality is represented by two of the three columns; but here the third column introduces a new idea. The striking thing about these columns is that each is of a different Order of Architecture. In Masonic symbolism they are assigned names: Wisdom to the Ionic Column in the middle, Strength to the Doric Column on the left, and Beauty to the Corinthian Column on the right. How shall we interpret these Columns and their names?

Consider the Columns in the context of the ‘Tree of Life.’ In the Tree the column on the right is called the ‘Column of Mercy,’ the active column. That on the left is called the ‘Column of Severity,’ the passive column. The central column is called the ‘Column of Consciousness’ the column of equilibrium which keeps the other two in balance. The three columns all terminate in (depend on) Divinity at the top of the central column. Look again at the columns on the Tracing Board. The Corinthian Pillar of Beauty is on the right, and in the classical world the Corinthian Order was used for buildings dedicated to vigorous, expansive activities. The Doric Pillar of Strength is on the left, and the Doric Order was used for buildings where discipline, restraint and stability were important. TheIonic Pillar of Wisdom is in the middle. The Ionic Order was used for Temples to the rulers of the gods who coordinated the activities of the pantheon. The Three Pillars, like the Tree of Life, speak of a universe in which expansive and constraining forces are held in balance by a coordinating agency.

Four Worlds

The Universe as it was perceived by the Renaissance philosophers consisted of ‘four worlds.’ Kabbalah has the same division. They are the ‘elemental’ or physical world, the ‘celestial’ world of the psyche or soul, the ‘supercelestial’ world of spirit, and the Divine world. We see that these same levels are represented on the board. The Pavement represents the physical world, the central part of the Board including the columns and most of the symbols, represents the psychological world, the Heavens represent the spiritual world, and the Glory, represents Divinity. In this way the picture represents the metaphysical structure of the universe. That is the ‘landscape.’ Where is the man?

The Man

Remember the idea that the universe and human beings are structured using the same principles (both having been made ‘in the image of God’), and that there is always a correspondence between activity in the greater and lesser worlds. We have seen that in the Hermetica, ‘As above, so below.’

Thus far we have not spoken of the Ladder. It extends from the Scripture open on the Pedestal to the Glory which represents the Deity; and in the Masonic symbolism it is said to be Jacob’s Ladder. We considered the ladder together with another symbol, the Point-within-a-Circle-Bounded-by-Two-Parallel-Lines which is shown on the face of the Pedestal. We considered these two symbols together because in some early Masonic drawings they appear together as if they have some connection. The Two Parallel Lines, like the Doric and Corinthian columns, represent paired opposites, active and passive qualities. Why? Because in Masonic symbolism they are associated with the Saints John, and the Baptist’s Day is Mid-summer, and the Evangelist’s Day is Mid-winter. In English Masonry the lines represent Moses (the Prophet) and Solomon (the Lawgiver), which is substantially the same idea. The ladder with its ‘three principal rounds,’ Faith, Hope, and Charity, rises to the Heavens between the two parallels.

Now, when you look at this Point-within-a-Circle-Bounded-by-Two-Parallel-Lines together with the Ladder and its three levels you see a pattern very similar to the three columns. There are three verticals, two of which relate to active and passive functions while the third, the Ladder between them, reaches to the heavens. The ladder, a representation of individual consciousness, has ‘three principal rounds,’ represented by Faith, Hope and Charity, which correspond to the three lower levels of the four-level Universe we observed earlier. Both the Macrocosmic ‘Landscape’ and the Microcosmic ‘Man’ share the fourth level of Divinity, represented by the Blazing Star, or Glory. Taken together the Ladder and the Point within a Circle bounded by Two Parallel Lines represent the human individual, made ‘… in the image of God,’ according to the same principles on which the Universe is based.

East-West Direction

There is one more idea we should touch on before we leave the First Degree Board. A Mason is sometimes called ‘a travelling man,’ and one of the Masonic catechisms gives us a little insight into this seldom used epithet.

Q Did you ever travel?

A My forefathers did.

Q Where did they travel?

A Due East and West.

Q What was the object of their travels?

A They travelled East in search of instruction, and West to propagate the knowledge they had gained.

The cardinal points of the compass on the Border of this Tracing Board define the East-West direction as it is to be understood in terms of Masonic Symbolism and thus describe the journey which the new Mason apprentices himself to undertake. That journey from West to East is represented, symbolically, by the progress through the Masonic Degrees; and it is, in fact, the ascent up Jacob’s Ladder – one of the ‘Principal Rounds’ for each Degree. We looked then at how these ideas are represented in the Second Degree.

The Second Degree Tracing Board

The Second Degree Board is an illustration of an interior, in marked contrast with the previous Board which seems to be an exterior. It suggests that the Mason who embarks on the Second Degree comes from the outdoors and enters the building for that purpose.

Notice that here (once again) we have two columns (also, as we will see, representing opposites) with a ladder (it has become a staircase) between them. I think the Second Degree Board is a detailed drawing of the ‘person’ we saw in the previous drawings. This suggests that the individual who embarks on the Second Degree is about to undertake some interior journey, an ascent through the soul and spirit.

The Masonic Lectures assign characteristics to these two pillars which suggest they represent paired opposites: first, they are said to be a memorial of the Pillar of Cloud and the Pillar of Fire that guided the Children of Israel (by day and night, respectively) during the Exodus; and second, on their tops they have representations of the Celestial and Terrestrial Spheres. Like Jacob’s Ladder on the First Degree Board, the Staircase forms the central column of this ‘three pillar model.’ The Mason is expected to ‘climb’ this symbolic staircase in the course of his life as he does symbolically during the ritual.

Masonic Lectures relating to the Staircase associate a good deal of information with each of the various steps; specifically, the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences are related to the seven steps and the Five Classical Orders of Architecture are related to the top five. These subjects comprised the formal educational curriculum of the Renaissance, and there is a large body of literature associated with each. The intent of that curriculum was certainly to give the student the sort of contemplative intellectual work we are discussing. If we consider the Staircase to be a representation of levels of consciousness through which the individual must ascend, we can see that the symbol refers the Mason to information about each step, or level of consciousness, through which he must pass along the way. The Masonic explanation of the Staircase also associates the seven Officers of the Lodge with the seven steps. That association assists in the understanding of progress through the positions of the Of ricers of the Lodge.

The Staircase leads to a room called the Middle Chamber where Masons were said to go to receive their wages. In that interior room (interior to the Mason himself) the individual is able to see a representation of the Deity. He also has access to a Perfect Ashlar. A Perfect Ashlar is a building stone which has been completed and is ready to be placed in the building. It is found in the Middle Chamber ‘… for the experienced Craftsmen to try and adjust their jewels (tools) on.’ I don’t want to talk about working tools at this time, but Masons will recognize that the Fellowcraft’s tools are tools of measurement and testing, that two of them measure against absolute criteria which are opposite one another, while the third defines the relationship between the other two. Given an environment in which paired opposites are held in balance by a coordinating agency, those tools sound to me like a functional model of morality. Tools of morality, together with the Perfect Ashlar, a standard against which to calibrate them, all found in an interior Middle Chamber seems to me to be a pregnant idea. All this happens in the place where one ‘… receives his wages …;’ that is, where he gets what he deserves.

The Third Degree Tracing Board

The Grave

I do not think that the images in this Degree refer to physical death. During the renaissance there was a good deal of discussion about the nature of the biblical story of ‘the Fall of man’ and its effect. ‘The Fall’ seems to have referred to some event by which human beings, who were at one time conscious of the Divine Presence, lost that consciousness. They thought that ordinary human life (that is, life after the Fall) is ‘like death’ when compared to human potential and to a life lived in the conscious awareness of the presence of God. It seems to me that one interpretation of the grave suggests such a ‘death’ to be our present state.

The view of the Temple shows ‘King Solomon’s Porch’ which is said to be the entrance to the ‘Holy of Holies.’ In the picture the veil is drawn back a little offering a glimpse into that sacred chamber where the Deity was said to reside. This suggests that at the end of the journey from West to East some process analogous to death enables the individual to experience the presence of the Deity. After this process has occurred he lives once more at his full potential. Again, I think that this refers neither to a physical resurrection after physical death nor to a life after physical death; both of which are the concerns of religion. It seems to me that this refers to a psychological/spiritual process which can occur within any devout individual who seeks it earnestly and which I believe it to be the business of Freemasonry to encourage. After all we claim to be Freemasons, and this is that Truth the knowing of which ‘make(s) you free.’

Points of the Compass

There is one last thing we should note. We saw earlier that Masons ‘travelled’ from West to East: ‘They travelled East in search of instruction, and West to propagate the knowledge they had gained,’ as the Lecture in the First Degree has it. Notice that on this Board the cardinal compass points have been reversed, and West is now at the top where East was on the First Degree Board. It suggests that the Master Mason (Master in fact, not in titular rank), the individual who is represented by the symbolism depicted here, has changed his orientation and started his Westward journey. It is a journey involving the teaching and charitable nurturing of those who follow – with all the obligations that sort of thing implies.

References

1 Hermetica, translation Scott W, (Boston, Shambhala, 1993), Libellus ix, p185

2 Hermetica, The Emerald Tablet

3 Reuchlin J, De Arte Cabalistica (1517, reprint University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1993), Book Two, for example.

Source: http://www.kabbalahsociety.org

Why I am not a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist

2011-05-31T20:33:00.000Z

by Peter Meyer

Why I am not a Christian

I was born in a nominally Christian country, and at an early age attended "Sunday school", where well-meaning people tried to indoctrinate me in the Christian religion. It never made any sense to me.

My parents were not religious. My mother occasionally attended church because she had a good voice and liked to sing in the choir. As I recall, my father never set foot in a church except for the occasional wedding. My paternal grandfather had no time for religion, but my paternal grandmother was a devout Protestant. When I was about nine years old she gave me books with many pictures illustrating biblical themes. Being a curious lad I read these, but they made no great impression on me. My grandmother died when I was thirteen and her religious influence upon me, such as it was, promptly ceased. Thus the religious indoctrination of children by their parents, which warps the minds and blights the lives of so many innocent children, was not practiced upon me as a child, thank God.

The nearest church to where we lived (in a large city) was just down the road — it was a Methodist church (though even now I have no idea of what distinguishes Methodists from, say, Presbyterians, and really couldn't care less). Since it was the closest, I was sent (at a young age) to church there each Sunday, until at the age of twelve I announced that I wasn't going anymore. My mother was only slightly scandalized, and after a token objection said no more about it. My father only smiled at my announcement and, I suppose, felt pleased that his son was no fool.

Thereafter I had only the usual exposure to Christianity that anyone coming of age in a modern, largely secular, Western society has. The occasional visit at the front door by a Jehovah's Witness, earnestly seeking to save my soul, produced in me only disdain for that sect. I did feel a yearning for spiritual truth but found nothing satisfying in Christianity, except in the writings of the Christian mystics, in particular, Meister Eckhart (who was regarded as a heretic by the Catholic Church in his time). But the more I learnt of Christian doctrine the less that religion appealed to me (not that it ever did), and I can truthfully say that I was never a Christian.

A good word, however, should be put in for some forms of art of a Christian nature. Renaissance Italian art is full of Christian scenes, and much of the music of J.S.Bach (e.g., his St. Matthew Passion and his exquisitely beautiful Cantata BWV82, "Ich habe genug") has explicit Christian content. But, of course, the beauty of the art created within a particular religious context does not imply the truth of the doctrines of that religion. The artists would have created their art with or without benefit of religion, provided that they were not prevented from doing so by political repression (as happened in Stalinist Russia).

Unfortunately much of Christian art consists of depicting the sufferings and agony of Jesus on the Cross. This reflects the obsession of Christianity with the Crucifixion, so much so that Osho referred contemptuously to Christianity as "Crosstianity". The obsession with "our sins" having been "washed away by the Blood of the Lamb" would be regarded as evidence of a serious mental illness in an individual within any sane society, but when this is an obsession of millions of people it becomes "religious faith", held by many others (curiously) to be something that should never be criticized.

My (fortunately) few conversations with Christians about their faith usually left me with the impression that (a) it was desperately important to them for some reason that others shared their beliefs and (b) that they were insane. Their favorite strategy is to assume that the Bible is literally true, and then justify their beliefs because "God says so in the Bible". If so, God contradicts himself, as in the inconsistencies in the Gospels regarding the birthplace and ancestry of Jesus. Christians conveniently forget (if they ever knew of them) many passages in the Old Testament which are repugnant to ordinary moral sense, such as that if a woman marries and is found not to be a virgin at the time of her marriage then she is to be killed (Deuteronomy 22:13-21). But you can't argue with someone who has faith because for them there can be no possible refutation of what they believe, so rational argument is entirely useless. They cling to their belief so strongly that they make no distinction between who they are and what they believe.

If a Christian were to suggest to me that the only way to save my soul from eternal damnation was to embrace the Christian Faith, I would not point to all the murders and genocides which have been committed in the name of the Christian God (and there are so many that it should be enough to make anyone who is aware of them ashamed to call themselves a Christian). Rather I would reply as follows.

Christianity these days comes in many varieties, but all trace their roots to the Nicene Creed, which was produced by the Council of Nicaea. If a person does not subscribe to the Nicene Creed then they are not a Christian, in the sense of being a member of the Christian Church, although someone who admires Jesus Christ greatly might call themselves a Christian, just as someone who admires Richard Wagner greatly might call themselves a Wagnerian.

The Nicene Creed is:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

What evidence is there for any of this? Only the first sentence (minus the metaphorical "father" and "maker") might contain some truth, insofar as it makes some sense to posit a source for all existing things, a "ground of being".

But the remainder of the Creed is ridiculous. How can any sane person believe this stuff? It has not even been established to the satisfaction of modern historians that the Jesus of the Bible ever existed as a person. Even granting that there was such a person, the claims made regarding his "being of one substance with the Father" who "came down from heaven", died, "rose again" and now "sits on the right hand of the Father" are (if they make sense at all) highly implausible assertions with absolutely no supporting evidence. That many millions of people have believed these absurd claims provides no evidence that they are true.

Furthermore the Creed explicitly asserts what is repulsive, namely, that we are all inherently sinners (in other words, criminals in the eyes of God), that we are in need of salvation, and that Jesus Christ sacrificed himself (in a most horrible manner: crucifixion) so as to save us (why was such a sacrifice necessary at all?). Implied is that anyone who does not believe this will be condemned (after death and subsequent bodily resurrection, despite one's body having rotted in the grave, if not destroyed entirely by fire) by Christ himself to eternal damnation and torment. Such a doctrine, which is clearly pathological, can only have been formulated and propagated by sick minds (foremost among whom was womanizer-turned-"saint", Augustine of Hippo).

There is no point in examining the curious details of the Creed (e.g., that Christ was "begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father") because the Nicene Creed is simply a statement of faith (as it was intended to be) and there is absolutely no reason to suppose that it is true (in fact, since it is absurd it is very likely to be false). One is asked to believe but no reason is given, or evidence presented, for why one should believe.

(Understandably not, because there is usually an ulterior motive underlying any admonition to believe something. In the case of religious belief the ulterior motive is usually social control or the financial benefit of some part of an organized religion.) Believing with no evidence to support belief is not a virtue but rather a sign of stupidity. Anyone who says, as Barack Obama did in August 2008 at a "Faith Forum" in California, "I believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins, [and] that I am redeemed through him", or as John McCain said at the same event in response to the question of what his Christian faith means to him, "It means I'm saved and forgiven" (for bombing, strafing and terrorizing Vietnamese peasants?), is either mendacious or intellectually deficient.

It is true that there are people whose intellectual abilities are such that we cannot say they are unintelligent and yet who regard themselves as Christians. This is because, although there may be no reason to believe the Nicene Creed, there are conditions under which a person will accept and cling to it. This may be the occurrence of some emotional "crisis" but mainly results from childhood conditioning, in which parents with Christian beliefs inculcate these beliefs in their innocent and unsuspecting children, before the minds of those children have developed to the point where they can intelligently decide about the truth of what they are being told. (The same thing happens, of course, in all religions.) If a person values their upbringing by their parents then they will be inclined to maintain the faith taught to them by their parents, unless they are sufficiently intelligent to be able (upon mature reflection) to distinguish between the love and support that they received from their parents and the false teachings that were given to them before they had developed the mental ability whereby to accept or reject those teachings.

Oh ... about prayer. A scientific study (reported in the American Heart Journal, April 2006) discovered no beneficial effect of prayer, but rather the contrary: that sick people who know they are being prayed for tend to fare significantly worse than sick people who are either not being prayed for or who are unaware that they are being prayed for, with no difference between these last two groups. However, like paranormal phenomena, the efficacy of prayer is unlikely to be demonstrable in the laboratory. But many people claim to believe their prayers are answered, and that they believe in "God" because (they assume) "God" answers their prayers. But even assuming that their prayers are answered, this does not show that the biblical "God" answered them. Fact is, the universe is a magical place, although this is denied by the modern scientific view of the world, which assumes that reality consists only of atoms, molecules, radiation and their interaction. But this view, known as physicalism is a false view of the world. The universe is more like a vast, super-intelligent, living being (on many levels) — call it (with Einstein) "God" if you wish, just don't confuse it with the Christian "God".

Sometimes the universe, or some part of it, in its limitless artistic creativity, mysteriously accords with our wishes, and desirable things happen which were rather improbable. To attribute this to a biblical "God" answering one's prayers is not only unjustified but also displays a lack of imagination and a very limited mentality.

Why I am not a Jew

The main reason I am not a Jew (apart from the fact that I would never wish to be one) is that I was not born a Jew. Whatever (if anything) defines a race, it is certainly some quality which is passed down from mother to child. The usual criterion for being a Jew (not necessarily an orthodox Jew) is that one's mother was a Jew at the time of one's birth. For this reason Judaism could be characterized as a "racist" religion, or perhaps better (since "racist" is a pejorative term) as an "ethnic" religion (as is Hinduism, see below).

Judaism is, however, in fact a racist religion, in the sense of 'racist' as 'supremacist', because it holds that Jews are superior to non-Jews, pejoratively called goyim (a word which has associations with "cattle"). Some (perhaps not all) orthodox male Jews recite each day this prayer to their God: "I give thanks that I was not born a goy, was not born a woman and was not born a slave." On passing a Christian church it is traditional for an orthodox Jew to spit in disgust (sometimes, in Jerusalem at least, to spit on Christians themselves).

Racism (the belief that members of one's race or in-group are superior to all others) has always been endemic to mankind, but enlightened thought regards it as indefensible.

Orthodox Jews, however, are immune to this influence, and persist in their racist, supremicist attitude to all others. No-one of moral sense, then, could consider becoming a Jew. Those who do so presumably seek to remove their sense of inferiority by identifying with a group which considers itself superior to all others (and actively opposes assimilation of its members to the wider society).

That orthodox Judaism considers Jews to be superior to, and to have no moral obligations toward, non-Jews (or at least little more than they have toward animals) is shown by the words of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook (1865-1935):

The difference between the Jewish soul ... and the soul of all the Gentiles ... is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal.

Those seeking a fuller understanding of Talmudic Judaism should visit the website Come and Hear (from which this quotation is taken).

A word of defense shoud be added for those unfortunate enough to have been born of Jewish parents (and thus regarded by many others as Jewish) but who have freed themselves from their childhood conditioning and from the Jewish assumption of superiority over others. A man may have been born a Jew but have come to see the defects of the religion, and perhaps feel something like shame for his former close, if involuntary, association with it.

Orthodox Judaism, like Islam (see below), is a totalitarian religion. Those who succeed in converting to orthodox Judaism have to learn many rules. You will have to wear less revealing clothing all year round (which in the summer can make you feel hotter); you will have to be concerned wherever you go about the food you can buy and eat; you will have to make sure that you don't carry anything in your pockets outside your home on the Sabbath, and many other considerations. You will need two sets of dishes, two sets of pots and pans (and at least one more set for Passover), and you will have to keep different types of food separate. You will have to wait six hours after eating meat foods before eating dairy foods. Judaism will guide your steps and your thoughts every moment of your waking life. —

Becoming Jewish

The principal defect of the Jewish religion (apart from its assumption of the moral superiority of Jews over non-Jews) is that the God worshipped by the Jewish people is a jealous, vicious, bloodthirsty, psychopathic tyrant. Richard Dawkins (in The God Delusion, Chapter 2) has well described YHWH as follows:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

The following, from Deuteronomy, Chapter 20, reveals YHWH as a psychopath:

20:10 When you come to a city to fight against it, then first proclaim peace toward it.

20:11 If it answers for peace, and opens its gates to you, then all the people found therein shall be your slaves, and they shall serve you.

20:12 If it won’t make peace, but will make war against you, then you shall besiege it.

20:13 And when the LORD thy God has delivered it into your hands, you shall kill every male inside with the edge of your sword.

20:14 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the fortunes inside, shall you take for yourself; and you shall eat all the good things of your enemy, which the LORD thy God has given you.

20:15 Thus you shall do to every city even faraway which are not among your chosen nations.
20:16 In these cities, which the LORD thy God gives you for an inheritance, you shall leave nothing left alive ...

In response to this section an adherent of this religion wrote: "And in defense of G-d, during the time He was given to ‘fits of rage’ paganism was prevalent and He showed the world the seriousness of the sin of idolatry." But any entity, divine or otherwise, who is subject to fits of rage (as Adolf Hitler was) is a morally repulsive entity, quite unworthy of respect.

What sort of person would worship such a God? The person who worships such a psychopathic homicidal God must surely believe that the qualities exemplified by that God are in some way admirable (after all, he is the Creator of the World and the Divine Authority), and thus that it is excusable to deceive, enslave and even kill all who follow another (or no) religion — after all, according to Rabbi Kook they are little better than animals. Can such a person be held to possess any moral consciousness? Are those who identify with this religion not rightly to be regarded as themselves psychopathic?

Why I am not a Muslim

As a young man, since I was a seeker after spiritual truth, I read much about religion and the various religions. Naturally I discovered Sufism (or at least, that there was a spiritual tradition of that name), and read about the Sufi quest for union with the divine, which appealed to me (and which is considered heretical by orthodox Muslims).

I also discovered the beauty of Islamic art. The geometrical designs found in Islamic art and architecture are a wonder, and some grand mosques (especially when illuminated at night) appear sublime. However, as noted previously, the beauty of the art (and architecture) of a religion is not evidence of the truth of its doctrines.

When one examines how Muslims live and act there are are good and bad features. The good is that there is a strict code of ethics, according to which good Muslims are honest, reliable, fair, generous and considerate of others; they do not lie, cheat or steal. Fine. I wish everyone was like that.

On the other hand, Muslims act this way (if they do) because they are are following a strict code of conduct (not just a code of ethics) which tells them how to act in all situations. There is not just a Muslim way to pray (which, in the case of the Sunnis, is the same in all mosques from Casablanca to Jakarta) there is also a Muslim way to do anything (including defecating).

This code of conduct, which regulates the behavior of a strict Muslim in every way (Islam is thus a totalitarian religion), is modeled on the life of the Prophet Muhammad and subsequent Muslim religious leaders. If Muhammad did something in a certain way then that must be the right way to do it and as a good Muslim one must do it that way. Thus in Muslim societies cats are looked upon with favor but dogs are not (consequently cats far outnumber dogs) because Muhammad supposedly liked cats but disliked dogs.

As another example, in September 2008 a Moroccan mullah approved the marriage of a man to a 9-year-old girl, on the grounds that one of Muhammad's wives was nine years old when he married her. So if Muhammad is to be taken as a role model for all Muslim men, then it is OK for them to marry 9-year-old girls (presumably for reasons other than the welfare of the girl). In fairness it should be mentioned that other Moroccan mullahs condemned this decision. However, this example shows that it is (at best) ridiculous to model your life upon the behavior of someone living in 7th C. Arabia, as if the world had not changed in over a thousand years.

A characteristic of all contemporary Islamic societies is their repression of women. Drawing attention to this can be fatal. In 2008 an Afghan student of journalism, Parwez Kambakhsh, was convicted of blasphemy, and sentenced to death, for asking questions in class about women's rights under Islam and for distributing an article on this subject which he had obtained from the internet. In October 2008 an Afghan appeals court commuted his sentence to 20 years imprisonment.

The repression of women in Islamic societies is most clearly apparent in the attempt (by strict Muslim women as well as men) to force all Muslim women to wear the head scarf (hijab). Supposedly Allah has decreed that women should cover their hair and wear clothing that conceals any indication that they possess breasts (and thus are women). Wearing of this attire is said to be an "obligation to Allah", and women who wear this attire are said to show "gratefulness to Allah" (for what? for living in a society where they are not free to do as they wish and must continually conform to the demands of others?). Thus women who do not wear the head scarf, or who wear clothes revealing, not the form of their breasts, but any sign that they even possess breasts, are considered by strict Muslims to be breaking "an obligation to Allah" and to be "ungrateful to Allah". This would be merely ridiculous (since Allah is a fictitious entity) were it not for the fact that women in Islamic societies are, if not forced, then seriously enjoined, to conform to this custom. It is sad to see a society in which no women are permitted to reveal their hair (they have to keep it covered entirely with the hijab) and are afraid to wear any clothing which reveals that they are women. This prudishness (this enforced prudishness) is one of the qualities of Islam which make it less than admirable.

But you don't have to be a Muslim to view the tendency of some Western women to flaunt their breasts (there's a saying, If you've got 'em, flaunt 'em) as a cheap way of attracting the attention of men as little short of shameless.

No danger of this in Muslim countries. Even in "moderate" Muslim countries such as Malaysia it is not uncommon for a man never to allow his wife to leave the house unless she is covered from head to toe in a black chador, with only a narrow slit revealing her eyes, so she can walk. Does the husband look upon his wife at home naked, and gloat that he, only he, can ever view any part of her body apart from her eyes, hands and feet? In Afghanistan, and in some parts of North India, Muslim women are generally not allowed out in public unless they are wearing a burkha which does not even have a slit for the eyes; instead the woman must view the world through a small mesh. This is an inhumane, barbaric, disgraceful and shameful imposition upon women in Muslim countries, and (since there is no distinction in Islam between religion and society) reveals Islam as a religion which degrades women to mere property owned by men.

Muslims generally are presented in the Western media in a bad light (in contrast to the taboo against any criticism of Israel). This says less about Muslims than it does about the Western media, namely, that is is controlled by Zionists (who wish to demonize Muslims so as to whip up American hysteria for Middle Eastern wars against countries perceived to be a possible threat to Israel). Muslims, as with Jews, Christians, etc., should be free to practice whatever religion they wish (or none, if they can finally overcome their childhood conditioning). My observations concerning Islam presented in this article are not meant to encourage anti-Muslim sentiment; they are presented simply to explain why I am not a Muslim (and would not wish to become one).

Muslims believe that the prescription for an ideal human society has been revealed by Allah in the Koran. Thus there is, and can be, no distinction in Islam between "sacred" and "secular" or between "church" and "state". This distinction is fundamental to modern Western society. Thus the political values of the modern West and of Islam are irreconcilable. It is not possible, e.g., to uphold the values of French society and to be a Muslim at the same time. Many Muslims in Europe aspire to the creation of enclaves under the rule of sharia law. These would be no-go zones for non-Muslims, and in effect mean the loss of territory to the host state. By allowing millions of Muslims to settle in Western Europe — originally at the request of Western capitalists (no doubt accompanied by financial inducements to legislators) for an ongoing supply of cheap labor — European governments have imported a time bomb which may ultimately destroy European society.

Today, the long clash between Christendom and Islam is still evident in the political and ethnic geography of Europe ... Today, the borders of many European countries, Canada, and the United States are practically wide open, and the old enemy is invited to come in and make himself at home. And many 'Christians' in the West are just too busy enjoying their material prosperity to be bothered with unpleasant history. But the enemy has not forgotten history. He remembers it all too well, and he is still deadly serious about his religion. His goal over the years has not changed in the slightest, and he is very patient. The enemy within is now smiling, just biding his time. ... The final chapter, it seems, has yet to be written... — Robert McMullen, Remember Lepanto!

Muslims often claim that Islam is "a religion of peace". This is not true. There are some passages in the Koran which suggest this (presumably in the suras delivered before Muhammad's new religion ran into significant opposition) but later passages suggest that recalcitrant unbelievers should be dealt with harshly. And it should not be forgotten that Buddhism was destroyed in India around 1300 CE largely as a result of wholesale slaughter of Buddhist monks (with destruction of monasteries and burning of libraries) carried out by fanatical Muslim invaders from Afghanistan.

"Islam" means "submission", more exactly, submission to the will of God (Allah), and a "Muslim" is "one who submits". One who submits has thus given control of his life over to something else, in this case, to the decrees of the mullahs who interpret the Koran and to the social customs characteristic of Islamic societies. A Muslim is thus not a free person. It is thus hard to see how anyone who values their freedom could remain a Muslim, still less convert to that religion.

Muslims are fatalists, since they believe that everything happens according to the will of God, and nothing happens unless God wills it (Inshallah). This is a prescription for the abrogation of personal responsibility. Strictly speaking, one cannot be held responsible for one's actions if everything happens because Allah wills it to be so. (Of course, this does not prevent thieves being punished under Sharia Law by having their right hand cut off — actually quite a deterrent to potential thieves.) And if something doesn't go according to plan, well, it's the will of Allah. Maybe tomorrow, Inshallah.

Islam is a grim religion. Of the five religions considered here, Islam is the most intolerant and the most puritanical. (A puritan is someone who worries constantly that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time.) In January 2010 Malaysia's "Islamic morality police" arrested dozens of Muslims for the crime of "khalwat", or "close proximity", under a sharia law that prohibits Muslims from being alone with a member of the opposite sex before marriage.

It is not just the Taliban that seeks to ban singing and dancing. When Muslims gained political power in the Malaysian state of Kelantan in the 1990s they banned several forms of traditional performing arts, including costumed dance/drama and shadow puppetry (mostly based on themes from the Hindu Ramayana), on the grounds that these were non-Islamic, thereby depriving a generation of Kelantanese of their own cultural traditions.

Then there is Ramadan. During the month of Ramadan a Muslim must not eat or drink between sunrise and sunset. This is especially burdensome when Ramadan occurs during the summer in hot countries. This religious requirement forces Muslim families to get up at 4 a.m. in the morning so they can have breakfast before the sun rises. It disrupts whole societies for a whole month. The reason, it is is said, is so Muslims can appreciate the plight of the poor who have little to eat. While fasting for a day or two from time to time may be a good thing, this month-long self-denial of food and drink during the daytime is imposed on everyone (except those excused due to ill-health). Muslims do not have a choice whether to fast during Ramadan; they must do it, or else face censure from other Muslims. This is an example of the totalitarian nature of Islam. There is no place in Islam for individual freedom. A Muslim's every deed, word and thought is determined by his submission to the religion. To someone who values the idea of individual liberty, this is repulsive.

The preceding is sufficient to explain why I am not a Muslim. But basically I am not a Muslim because to be a Muslim it is both necessary and sufficient (regardless of which Muslim tradition a person belongs to) to believe two things: (i) There is a god (who calls himself "Allah"), and just one god, who created mankind and who decreed how people should live their lives. (ii) A 7th C. Arab named "Muhammad" was the messenger who conveyed to all of mankind the decrees of Allah. I believe neither of these.

There is simply no evidence of the existence of Allah beyond the assertions of Muhammad and the claims of all those since him who have believed what he said. It is said that Muhammad received revelations, claimed to be from Allah. These were spoken to Muhammad by an entity named "Gabriel" and subsequently codified in the form of the Koran. (Actually, on his first appearance, Gabriel showed Muhummad a book, and asked him to read. But apparently Gabriel or Allah was not aware, or had forgotten, that the future Prophet was illiterate. So Muhammad had to memorize what Gabriel said to him.) But if all who hear voices were to found religions then we would have more religions than we could count.

And assuming that Muhammad actually did hear a voice speaking to him, one which was totally convincing to him (so that his level of conviction was enough to convince others), what do we know of the origin of this voice? It might have been some malevolent spirit, who actually wished to do harm to mankind by subjecting humans to limiting and stultifying beliefs. It might have been an extraterrestrial intent upon foisting upon mankind an ideology by which to control humans (as has been suggested by William Bramley in his book The Gods of Eden), to make them into little more than manipulable robots whose programmed behavior is entirely predictable. Thus even if Muhammad was a messenger, and even if the source of that message was something outside of Muhammad's own mind, we do not know what the source of that message was. Would you believe just anyone who came up to you and delivered the contents of a "revelation" that they had received?

But, of course, Muhammad was not "just anyone". But then neither was Jesus (if he existed), Zoroaster, Moses, John of Patmos (Revelation), John Dee (Enochian Keys), Emmanuel Swedenborg (Heaven and Hell), Baha'u'llah (Bahai), Joseph Smith Jr. (Mormonism), Aleister Crowley (Thelema), Alice Baily (Ascended Masters), Benjamin Creme (more Ascended Masters), L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology), J. Z. Knight (Ramtha), Ken Carey (Starseed Transmissions), the authors of the Urantia Book and many others who have claimed to have received messages from a supernatural source. They can't all be right.

But even assuming the existence of "Allah" — the entity who authored the messages delivered to Muhammad (which were later written up in the Koran) — there is reason to believe that this entity is not great, supremely intelligent, all-powerful, merciful and compassionate, as Muslims believe. Intellectual incompetence is suggested by the nature of the Islamic Calendar (traced back, as all things Islamic, to the Koran, in this case, surah 9, verses 36-37), whose years (each consisting of twelve lunar cycles) are shorter than seasonal years (by about eleven days). In every 100 years of the Islamic Calendar the summer solstice occurs only 97 times. This calendar is (to put it kindly) seriously flawed.

That "Allah" is either incompetent or malicious is suggested by the fact of the sectarian division between Sunnis and Shias. If everything happens according to the will of Allah, then it was Allah's will that the third Caliph, Uthman, be murdered while at prayer. And it was Allah's will that Uthman's successor Ali (the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet) be murdered by one of his own soldiers. And it was Allah's will that Ali's sons, Hassan and Hussein, be killed at the Battle of Karbala. And it was Allah's will that these murders (and related events) gave rise to a split within Islam which has resulted in centuries of hatred and conflict, and in recent memory the Sunni vs. Shia Iraq-Iran War of 1980-88 (somewhat inconsistent with the idea of Islam as "a religion of peace"). Every year at Ashoura Shias conduct hate-fests in which they remember the murders of Hassan and Hussein and denounce "the treacherous Sunnis". If all this was Allah's intention (and since he created and ordains everything then it must have been) then it seems he is not the great and compassionate being that Muslims believe.

But lest I should be misunderstood, I wish to make it clear that I do not regard Allah as either incompetent or malicious. Rather Allah is a figment of the Prophet's imagination which has been propagated down through the centuries through the minds of millions of believers — with huge (and unfortunate) effects on the societies in which most of those believers lived and live today.

Of course, something very similar is true of the Judeo-Christian God, the main difference being that this figment of the imagination did not originate with just one man but with many over a period of centuries.

Why I am not a Hindu

In India when a man opens his business in the morning he may, if he is a Hindu, perform a small ritual honoring Lakshmi, Ganesha or some other god or goddess, say a prayer while standing before an image of the deity, and recite a mantra a few times. He believes (or at least hopes) that this will induce the god or goddess to look favorably upon his business for that day. (Chinese do something similar each morning with Chinese gods and goddesses.) Very nice, endearing even. And all over India hundreds of millions of people revere these deities, which are also admired by many Westerners who have travelled in India (and among my few personal possessions there are pictures of Ganesha, Lakshmi, Shiva, Parvarti and Saraswati). But there is about as much evidence for their existence (other than in the minds of their devotees) as there is for the existence of the Christian god, which is to say, very little. But there is an important difference. Devotion to Ganesha, Lakshmi, etc., has few, if any, harmful effects, and perhaps has positive ones. In contrast, devotion to the Christian god (and to the Jewish god as well) has justified many men (so they believed) in the murder of many others.

Whatever Jesus is alleged to have taught in the New Testament, the historical fact is that Christianity is a genocidal religion.

Hinduism, however, although it has a pronounced xenophobic character, is not known to have been used as a justification for purges and genocide. Hindus may regard non-Hindus as lacking proper spiritual understanding, but feel no need to convert them, still less at the point of a sword.

That's not to say that Hinduism is all sweetness and light. The original thugs were Hindus who worshiped the goddess Kali by garrotting people they found travelling in isolated places (a practice known as thugee, rightly viewed by the rulers of British India with horror, and they succeeded in suppressing it, along with the gruesome custom of suttee). And animal sacrifice was, and still is, common in India. (Of course, the number sacrificed is very small compared to the millions of chickens, pigs, sheep and cows slaughtered daily, without so much as a prayer, in the slaughter-houses of Western countries.)

To be specific, the main reason I am not a Hindu (apart from no great desire to be one) is that I was not born a Hindu. Hinduism, like Judaism, is an ethnic religion, and, strictly speaking, the only way to become a Hindu is to be born a Hindu.

Also I'm not fond of superstition, and Hinduism is 95% superstition: beliefs and practices which have been handed down, carried over, passed on, transmitted, from one generation to the next for many centuries, but which have no basis other than this. One of the least-admirable Hindu superstitions is the belief in caste, that a person is born into a certain caste as reward or punishment for actions in previous lives. (That does not mean that high-caste Hindus always have an easy life; there are plenty of rickshaw drivers in India who are brahmins.)

The belief held by caste Hindus that they are superior to "outcasts" (previously called "untouchables", then "harijans", now "Dalits") is rife in India, and is a form of racist bigotry.

Caste Hindus were recently reported as demanding that Dalits remove their shoes in the presence of those caste Hindus, beating them if they refused. These caste Hindus regularly attack Dalits, and drive them from their homes, with impunity (the police in India do nothing to stop this). Dalits (which include millions of "tribal people", the original inhabitants of India) are now fighting back, as we see in the Naxalite insurgency in Central India.

In village India girls are engaged to be married before they are old enough to speak. Traditionally they were married off at the age of 8 or 9, but now (due to government intervention) it's usually 12 or 13. No consideration is ever given to what the girl thinks about it. And, once married, she is, according to Hindu tradition, her husband's slave.

Although the gruesome practice of casting a widow upon the funeral pyre of her dead husband ("suttee") was suppressed by the British in the 19th Century, there are customs still common in Hindu India that are equally barbaric. For example, the practice of killing one or both of a boy and girl from the same sub-caste ("gotra") who marry. As one traditional Hindu woman said: "What can you do with a girl who insists on marrying within her gotra other than kill her?" India is a land of horrors. Anyone who spends a few months reading the daily newspapers (at least in India the press is free and thriving) will obtain ample evidence of this.

However, Hinduism does have a few things in its favor, the major one being the value given to actual spiritual experience (which is denigrated in Christianity and Islam in favor of faith and subordination to authority). The "holy men" of India are revered not because they hold some position in a church hierarchy but because they are believed to have (or have had) actual experience of a divine reality which transcends everyday physical reality, a state of consciousness in which the ego is snuffed out and there is awareness only of an undifferentiated universal unity. The possibility of this is viewed with skepticism in the mainstream Western view of the world (which regards all reality as physical, a belief which is the root cause of the present mass insanity afflicting the West).

There are some similarities between Hinduism and traditional Chinese religion, since both have a pantheon of deities, to whom offerings and prayers are made daily (though Hinduism lacks the ancestor worship which is a major part of Chinese religion). Offering incense and prayers to Lakshmi or Kuan Yin would seem to be a harmless practice, and to my knowledge no-one was ever murdered because they refused to do so, in contrast to the Abrahamic religions, where at various times and places your refusal to acknowledge the Jewish, Christian or Muslim "God" — as the one, true "God" — would result in your being killed.

Why I am not a Buddhist

During my first year at university, when I studied natural science and mathematics, I came to regard myself as an atheist. But then I began to read about Buddhism, and I felt attracted by this religion (though some would deny that it is in fact a religion). I read books by Christmas Humphreys and Edward Conze, and, unlike Christianity, the doctrines of Buddhism at least made sense: This world is a place of suffering; all beings seek to escape from suffering; a sage appeared in India about 2500 years ago who discovered a path to freedom from suffering; he taught this path to others; this teaching was propogated and expanded into many lands and became what we know today as Buddhism.

Later, along with many other young people in the psychedelic sixties, I read the books of Lama Anagarika Govinda, Evans-Wentz, John Blofeld and others (but not Lobsang Rampa), and I was particularly attracted by Tibetan Buddhist art, with its marvellous depiction of various tantric deities. As with Islam, Christianity and Hinduism, the art of a religion is something that attracts people, but the beauty of the art does not entail the truth of the doctrine.

Buddhist art, however, did not emerge until many centuries after the enunciation of the doctrine by the historical Buddha, known as Shakyamuni ("Shakya" was the name of his family and "muni" means a sage). Texts recording his life and teachings were also not written until some centuries after the death of Shakyamuni. These texts have passed through the hands of editors for two millennia and what the Buddha did and taught over two thousand years ago cannot now be known exactly.

It seems he was born into a minor royal family, given the name Siddhartha Gautama, and had a privileged upbringing. He was protected from awareness of the usual sufferings of life — illness, old age and death — until, as a young man (having by this time married and fathered a son) he ventured outside the palace walls and came upon instances of all of these at first hand, an experience which appalled him. (This should alert us to the possibility that this story is not quite accurate; did no-one ever get sick, grow old or die within the palace walls?) Thereafter (so the story goes) Siddhartha concluded that this world was so full of suffering that escape from it (permanently, not just at death, since it was then widely believed that this led to rebirth) was the thing most worth seeking. Accordingly he left his wife and child, forsook his comfortable palace life, and became a wandering ascetic, living in the forest, seeking those who could teach him how to escape the sufferings of this world. For six years he practiced yoga and austerities, but his quest was futile, and he then decided to abandon the extreme asceticism which had reduced him to skin and bones.

At this point there appears a girl, named "Sujata", who is said to have tended cows, and was no doubt familiar with the psilocybin-containing mushrooms which grow on cow dung. Or perhaps she was not in fact a cowgirl but a reference to cows is made as a veiled allusion to such mushrooms. Whether Siddhartha sought her out (if psychedelic mushrooms were used in ancient India, as seems likely, then of course he would have known about it) or she (taking pity on his hitherto fruitless quest) approached him is not known, but he accepted from her a bowl of milk or something made with milk. His experience following drinking the milk was (as sometimes happens with strong psychedelics) at first somewhat hellish (he was attacked by demonic entities), but his courage allowed him to pass through this difficult phase and he attained a state in which egoic identity was abandoned and a profound spiritual awareness supervened; thus was his quest at last fulfilled, his goal attained.

The textual tradition, however, presents Siddhartha's Enlightenment as the result of an elaborate reasoning process: What is the cause of old age, sickness and death? Answer: Birth. What is the cause of birth? Existence. What is the cause of existence? Attachment. And so on: Attachment is caused by desire, which is caused by sensation, which is caused by contact, which is caused by the six senses, which is caused by 'name-and-form', which is caused by perception, which is caused by impression, which is caused by ignorance. Thus the removal of ignorance removes impression, whose removal removes perception, etc., up to removal of old age, sickness and death. Wonderful! (But how is ignorance removed?)

Thus, it is said, did the Buddha conquer old age, sickness and death! But, strangely, he grew old, got sick and died (as have hundreds of millions of his followers since his time), which would seem to somewhat undermine this claim.

Siddhartha's Enlightenment, although traditionally presented as a process of analytical reasoning as given above, is also presented as an event of cosmic magnitude, whereby he attained omniscience and (at least according to the Mahayana doctrine, wherein the Buddha is represented as god-like, or as an incarnation of a divinity superior to any particular god) a state beyond all limitations. It may have been something like the enlightenment experience of the shaman's apprentice described in the second "Life" by Knecht in Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game:

A strange tremor passed through the young man, an intimation of many links and associations, repetitions and crosscurrents among things and events. ... For a moment it seemed to him that the mind could grasp everything ... There must, it seemed to Knecht at this moment, be a center in the vast net of associations; if you were at this center you could know everything, could see all that had been and all that was to come. Knowledge must pour in upon one who stood at this center as water ran to the valley ... He would be the perfect, wise, insurpassable man.

This sort of experience (which certainly does occur) is clearly at a higher level than that of ordinary consciousness, and is very different from the rational analysis presented in the monastic texts as the content of Siddhartha's "Enlightenment".

But granting that Siddhartha did attain this state of profound illumination, he could not have done so merely by discursive thought, since then his insight could be presented conceptually (as given above: attachment is caused by desire, and so on) and anyone of sufficient conceptual ability could follow it and reach the same state. Thinking, though much to be encouraged, cannot produce Enlightenment. Really no explanation is given for how it happened that Siddhartha attained this supreme accomplishment at this point in his life.

This event, as described in the texts, is miraculous. It is curious that some people, calling themselves Buddhists, who would normally be skeptical of miracles (as claimed, e.g., by the Catholic Church with the virgin birth and so on) readily accept what appears to be the miracle of the Buddha's Englightenment. But, of course, for faith there are no obstacles, and nothing is too improbable to be believed.

Some weeks later, according to the received tradition, Shakyamuni met some ascetics with whom he had previously practiced austerities and he mentioned his insights to them. What he actually said to them we can never know, but according to the teachings of the monastic tradition he taught the "Four Noble Truths" and the "Eightfold Path". The Eightfold Path consists of practical injunctions, such as gaining one's livelihood without harming others, which are entirely admirable. The Four Noble Truths assert that this worldly life is full of suffering, that the cause of suffering is attachment, desire and ignorance, that there is a way to free oneself from these "mental defilements" (namely, the Eightfold Path), and that diligent practice of this will result in a state of complete ataraxia and non-attachment (including a realization of the illusory nature of the ego), with the all-important boon of the cessation of rebirth (and thus of old age, sickness and death).

Since rebirth, that is, reincarnation, has not been a commonly held belief in the West since Christianity rose to prominence in the 4th Century, and since Buddhism hardly makes any sense except in the context of escaping from rebirth, it is curious that it appeals to Westerners. If one does not believe in rebirth then it makes no sense to try to escape rebirth.

Westerners who adopt Buddhism apparently accept the doctrine of reincarnation as part of the territory. But if one previously (before becoming a Buddhist) did not believe in reincarnation, what could lead one to do so? Perhaps Western Buddhists are actually less interested in escape from rebirth (in which they do not really believe) than in attaining "Enlightenment" (which, according to the Vajrayana, is possible in this lifetime, though according to the Mahayana generally thousands of lifetimes, and thus rebirths, are required).

Buddhist teaching does include some important insights, such as that everything which is compounded will eventually decay into its component parts (thus one shouldn't become too attached to anything), and that in fact everything is compounded (apart from Nirvana, the state of awareness which is beyond all distinctions) and has no real self-existence (this includes one's own ego).

However it is a central teaching of Buddhism that worldly life is basically one of suffering, and for the wise person the only goal should be to escape from it. Thus Buddhism is world-denying and life-denying. It sees no value in the things of this world, except as a means of escape from it. And it's not just material things that are devalued; all things are devalued, including love of wife and children (as Shakyamuni demonstrated when he abandoned his family in order to practice austerities in the forest, leaving his wife without a husband to care for her and his son without a father to raise him). For me, however, this worldly life has value, not as a means (as it is for some people) for pursuing fame, wealth or power over others, but as a venue for experience and action — the experience of friendship, love, beauty, exploration, adventure, the gaining of understanding and knowledge (including spiritual knowledge), and engaging in creative activity (as well as just having a good time occasionally).

A lot of people learn about Buddhist ethics, as expressed in the Eightfold Path, and decide that this is a good guide for how to live one's life. Thus they become sympathetic to the doctrines of Buddhism (which, as elaborated in Mahayana Buddhism, go way beyond the simple doctrine of Shakyamuni into some abstruse philosophical doctrines, though the dubious claim is made that all such doctrines can be traced to "the Buddha", if not to Shakyamuni then to some "celestial" Buddha or to a deity said to be a manifestation of "Buddhahood", none of whom was ever mentioned by Shakyamuni).

But a distinction should be drawn between being sympathetic to Buddhism and being a Buddhist. The latter occurs only after one has "taken refuge". This step, said by its advocates to be "very important", is done by reciting three times something along the lines of: "I go for refuge to the Buddha, I go for refuge to the Dharma, I go for refuge to the Sangha." (The Dharma is the doctrine and the Sangha is either the community of Buddhist monks or of all Buddhists.) One is admonished to recite this "from the heart". Then having taken refuge, one continues to recite the refuge formula daily as a mark of commitment to achieving Enlightenment (which, unfortunately, never seems to happen). In Tibetan Buddhism one is encouraged to recite the refuge formula 100,000 times as part of the so-called "preliminary practices" (preliminary, that is, to the really interesting teachings). One who has spent the two or three years needed to do this (together with the 100,000 prostrations, the 100,000 mandala offerings, etc.) is unlikely ever to acknowledge it as simply a form of self-indoctrination (viewable in hindsight as pathetic).

Explanations of the refuge formula expound on the meaning of the words "Buddha", "Dharma" and "Sangha" — exoterically the historical Buddha, his doctrine and the community of monks or of Buddhists (though there are esoteric interpretations as well). But rarely, if ever, is anything said about what "going for refuge" actually means. It is usually explained metaphorically. In a non-religious context one "takes refuge", for example, by finding shelter in a solid building while a storm is raging. Since Buddhism is presented as a path to escape from the sufferings of worldy life and to attain "Enlightenment", perhaps "taking refuge" provides shelter from those sufferings. Or perhaps one finds shelter from the effects of the three so-called "root defilements" (of the mind): ignorance, greed and hatred (nothing is ever said about desire for control and manipulation of others for one's own benefit). But this is stretching the metaphor, and in any case one should ask: What is the practical consequence of "taking refuge". The short answer is that it means giving control over your thoughts and actions to other people.

Of course, those expounding the Buddhist doctrine do not present it in this way, but in a more positive light. Taking refuge is said to "open the door" to all the practices in the Buddhist tradition and to give one "a definite positive direction" in which to move. Thus, it is said, it creates the conditions for the realization of "countless benefits" and gives one safety from rebirth in the lower realms. Ignoring the usual hype of "countless benefits", and the dubious claim of protection from undesirable rebirths (which is impressive only if you already believe in the danger of rebirth "in a lower realm"), this amounts to saying: "Now you can adopt the ways of thinking and daily practices which those whom you regard as your teachers say you should adopt, and think and act accordingly." In other words, one who has "taken refuge" says in effect: "Tell me what to do."

Perhaps we should put it more kindly: One who has "taken refuge" says: "I have faith (because I was told that 'the most important thing is faith') that the historical Buddha attained complete Enlightenment and taught a method whereby others (such as me) can attain Enlightenment also (if I practice diligently), so please tell me what to do to achieve this goal."

But what is the basis for this "faith"? As noted above, the historical Buddha lived about 2500 years ago, his teachings were not written down until long after his passing, and since then (like the Bible) have passed through the hands of many editors (many with a vested interest in obtaining "followers", especially those inclined to be generous when the construction of new monasteries — or in Western countries, "dharma centers" — is contemplated). If the teaching of the historical Buddha provided a path to Enlightenment then surely there would be, even now, at least a few Enlightened people around. Have you met any? Of course, there are many Buddhists who are admirable in one way or another (the same is true of many non-Buddhists). But to my knowledge none has attained "Enlightenment" (though there are some who have occasionally attained the unitive state sought by mystics). So why should one believe (have faith) that there is a method, which can be learnt, for attaining the goal of "Enlightenment"? Is not this goal actually a pie-in-the-sky come-on which benefits mostly those who have made a career out of teaching the so-called path to attain it?

It is the same in all religions. One who is a Christian, a Muslim or a Buddhist has abandoned any attempt at thinking for themselves, has adopted a faith (because there are short-term psychological benefits in doing so), and has accepted a self-imposed obligation to think and act as "good" Christians, Muslims and Buddhists are supposed to think and act. Of course, this is not the same in all religions. A strict Muslim prays to Allah five times a day, but a Buddhist need only recite the refuge formula. A Buddhist avoids killing any living creature but a Muslim may kill an unbeliever if this is permitted by the judgment of some mullah. A strict Muslim shuns alcohol but a Catholic drinks wine during the Mass (believing, if they are a good Catholic, that they are drinking the blood of Jesus Christ — a pale imitation of the original practice of drinking an infusion, of red color, of the psychoactive Amanita mushroom).

And how are the followers of any particular religion "supposed" to think and act, if they are to be "good" Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists? They follow the dictates of authority. That authority usually manifests in the form of priests, pastors, bishops, rabbis, mullahs, pandits, lamas and any person learned in the textual tradition of the religion. Such people "shepherd" the faithful along "the true path", and those who are shepherded are actually just like sheep, who cannot think for themselves. (There is actually a small book written for such people; it is called Buddhism for Sheep.)

In fact, such people are worse than sheep. A sheep is what it is and cannot be more or less than what it is. But a human being has the ability to observe intelligently, to think, to judge something in the light of past accumulated experiences, and (whether or not this is "permitted") to seek new experiences in order to widen their knowledge. Those who adopt some expression of faith and then say, "O great lama (priest, rabbi, mullah, whatever), tell me what to do!", are allowing themselves to be controlled by others and are choosing not to exercise their full human potential.

It is not surprising that governments everywhere (even in China) are tolerant of, or even supportive of, Buddhism (as shown by the large number of Tibetan Buddhist "dharma centers" which have sprung up in Western countries in recent decades). Those people who wouldn't hurt a fly, or at least, have "compassion for all sentient beings", are unlikely to present much threat to authoritarian and tyrannical regimes. Buddhist doctrine does not encourage resistance against social injustice, because (following the ideal of the historical Buddha) society is something to be abandoned, left behind, so as better to practice renunciation of the world and attainment of "Enlightenment".

Although it may be useful to talk with those who have spent time seeking spiritual knowledge, the best teacher is experience. Those who desire to increase their knowledge of spiritual reality have only to strive for this any way they can, always relying on their own innate intelligence, and lessons will be provided. As the historical Buddha is reported to have said (his last words to his followers), "Seek out your own salvation with diligence." One way to interpret this is: You have to follow your own path (always being true to yourself), not some path laid down for you by some "authority", however much surrounded by the elaborate trappings of high office or venerated by thousands of gullible genuflecting devotees.

Oh ... about merit. This is allegedly acquired by performing good deeds, especially making offerings. It is supposedly gained by performing practices conducive to spiritual advancement, such as making offerings to Mahayana deities, meditating on their qualities and requesting blessings. Acquisition of merit allegedly produces a happier life and a better rebirth. It is customary among Mahayana Buddhists, at the conclusion of such practices, to "dedicate the merit", which is a transfer of merit to other beings in order to help them on their spiritual path. But in the ordinary meaning of the term, merit is in the eye of the beholder, it does not exist substantially. So who keeps track of the amount of merit one has gained? Who keeps track of the transfer of merit when it is "dedicated"? Is there some bodhisattva whose task this is? Since Buddhists believe in countless beings existing in countless worlds, this would seem to be a very difficult task. Or is this concept of merit really fictitious? And has this fictitious concept been promoted by the monastic hierarchy because it encourages Buddhists to make offerings to that hierarchy, thereby ensuring that the monks can eat, live in monasteries, and occupy themselves in performing rituals and chanting scriptures (leaving it to others to do the manual work)?

Finally, I am not a Buddhist because a Buddhist cannot say "I am a Buddhist" without in effect denying a central tenet of Buddhist doctrine. When someone says "I am a Buddhist", they implicitly assert the existence of something to which the word "I" refers. This contradicts a central theme of the teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha, namely, that "the ego" is an illusion, that there is no "self" which exists apart from and as the object of that form of consciousness which we know as "self-awareness".

When religious people say "I am a Buddhist", "I am a Christian", etc., what they are really doing is asserting self-identity. They are identifying themselves (or their selves) in a particular manner. They are not content simply to experience the world (outer and perhaps inner) and to act. No, they must be something. And something important. They must be "a believer in Christ" (the Son of God the Father and the Redeemer of our Sins), or "a follower of the holy Prophet Muhammad" (to whom Allah delivered his Message to Humanity), or "one who has taken refuge in the Buddha" (who attained Supreme Enlightenment for the benefit of all beings). This is really pathetic. It is just a form of egoism. Such people cannot live without the crutch of the illusion, not only that they are really self-existent entities, but that their lives are significant because they are following devoutly the teachings (or alleged teachings) of some historical or quasi-historical personage to whom is attributed divine, semi-divine or nearly-divine status. Who needs it?

Concluding remarks on religion

In his book The God Delusion Richard Dawkins argues very well (within the limitations of his erroneous physicalism) that the concept of a supernatural personal God who designed and created the universe, watches over it (and us), and intercedes occasionally, is a delusion.

More exactly, religion, or rather each of the five religions considered in this article, is a collective delusion: a delusion held in common by many people (the belief of each of them reinforced by their seeing that many others believe the same thing). Some collective delusions are harmful to their followers (e.g., Scientology) whereas some are relatively benign (e.g., the ancestor worship of China and Vietnam). In no case, however, should any religion be granted any respect unless there is clear evidence that it has beneficial effects for its followers (rather than its proponents), and certainly no religion should be granted any social or political privilege simply because it calls itself a religion. No representative of any religion (no monk, priest, pastor, rabbi, mullah, swami or lama) deserves any respect other than what is due to them as scholars, artists, entertainers, dispensers of wisdom or by virtue of their personal qualities as human beings. Absurd, ridiculous, harmful, pernicious and morally reprehensible beliefs, attitudes and practices should be exposed as such, and not granted any respect simply because they are part of some religion. And religion should absolutely have no part in education (except as a subject for study), politics or the administration of society. Free inquiry, open debate, publication and dissemination (e.g., via the internet, if it remains free) of the results of that inquiry and debate, and the freedom and opportunity for people to educate themselves and to engage in discussion, will do more good for humanity than slavish adherence to the teachings, admonitions and strictures of any religion or all of them.

Organized religion, like war, is a racket. A priestly caste makes a living from it by exploiting aspects of human psychology, such as the fear of death, human propensities toward guilt and shame (a speciality of the monotheistic religions), the desire for "freedom from suffering" and for "salvation", and the (entirely commendable) aspiration for spiritual knowledge.

While there is nothing wrong with providing financial or other support to someone who provides a benefit, e.g., a shaman in a traditional society who is able to heal as a result of his journeys into the spirit world, one does best to avoid any religious teacher who requires payment for the granting of some alleged spiritual benefit (such as an "initiation"), though one might willingly pay to acquire the pleasurable conviction of having received such a benefit, or to be entertained by some exotic performance involving the uttering of mantras and ringing of bells. Of course, there's nothing wrong with a financial contribution toward food for a collective meal after a satisfying evening of singing hymns in praise of Lakshmi or other deities, but suspicions should be aroused when many people (sometimes hundreds) are required to pay a hefty fee (like $50) for the bestowal of some alleged spiritual benefit and no accounting is ever given (except in vague terms) of where the money goes.

Some exponents of religion say: "The most important thing is faith! (In our religion, of course.) If people don't have faith, and follow our moral teachings, then what's to stop them from lying, stealing and killing each other?" Firstly, this position assumes what is false, namely, that humans are inherently vicious and must somehow be restrained from evil actions. Secondly, religious faith has never stopped religious people from lying, stealing and killing, even killing others of the same religion (examples could fill many pages). Thirdly, if some religious people do not lie, steal and kill, why assume it is due to their religious faith rather than to their inherent moral awareness?

Proponents of a religion often try to justify it (as above) as providing moral guidance, but what is offered is actually just the assertion of some supposed authority — Jehovah, Jesus, the Buddha, Allah or whatever. And these "authorities" differ, so on what basis is a decision to be made as to which moral precepts express true morality? If there is such a basis for deciding among them then those precepts themselves are not needed. And there is such a basis: Ethical conduct is that which seeks to avoid inflicting actual (not supposed or imagined) harm upon others (both other humans and other forms of life); where alternative courses of action all involve some actual harm to others then the moral choice is that action which results (or is likely to result) in the least harm. This is sufficient as a basis for moral action. No faith in Jesus, Jehovah or any other "authority" is needed in order for this basis to be quite clear. And one important implication is: If an action does not result in actual harm to any other living being then it cannot be considered immoral (and if it is not immoral then it should not be illegal).

Though human dignity entails leading an ethical life, there is absolutely no need to lead a "religious" life, and one who wishes to free themselves from delusion will not do so. It is sufficient to live so as to do no harm to others (except to prevent harm), to live honestly, to face life with optimism, courage and curiosity, and to endeavor to improve oneself and contribute something of worth to humanity, while at the same time always seeking to free oneself from false beliefs acquired unconsciously, and to understand how the world really is (at various levels) and whether there may not be a path beyond the death of the body to some place unconstrained by the limitations of this physical world.

All major religions arose many centuries ago, when human mentality was comparatively undeveloped and was characterized (at least among most people) by simple-minded thinking.

Those religions developed when humanity was still in a childlike state, with people ready to believe whatever they were told by authority figures. In recent centuries our species has advanced beyond childhood into adolescence (but not yet adulthood). The stories that are still told by religion, which are fit for children, are no longer fit for intelligent people in the 21st Century. This does not mean that materialism or physicalism should be embraced.

Rather we need (for the survival of the human species) to attain a widespread understanding of how the world really is, including its spiritual dimension as well as its physical. As Stanislav Grof has said, through psychedelic (and similar) experiences "it is possible to obtain profound revelations concerning the master blueprint of the universe designed by cosmic intelligence of such astonishing proportions that it is far beyond the limits of our everyday imagination." Indeed. It is now possible (as it was 2000 years ago, before the sacred rites of Eleusis and similar initiatory practices were forcibly suppressed by the Huns and those of a similar barbaric mentality, a mentality which persists even today among those politicians and lawmakers maintaining their pernicious "war on drugs") for anyone to obtain a realization that our everyday world is just a part of a far larger spiritual universe whose nature utterly transcends our ability to understand it, and in comparison with which the materialist and self-centered concerns (beyond survival) of most people — still stuck in our species' adolescent condition — are unworthy of our human potential.

A copy of the Serendipity website is available on CD-ROM. Details here.

Source: http://www.serendipity.li

Beneath today's Jerusalem, a subterranean city brings the ancient past to life

2011-05-31T19:15:00.000Z

May 30, 2011

by Matti Friedman

Underneath the crowded alleys and holy sites of old Jerusalem, hundreds of people are snaking at any given moment through tunnels, vaulted medieval chambers and Roman sewers in a rapidly expanding subterranean city invisible from the streets above.

At street level, the walled Old City is an energetic and fractious enclave with a physical landscape that is predominantly Islamic and a population that is mainly Arab.

Underground Jerusalem is different: Here the noise recedes, the fierce Middle Eastern sun disappears, and light comes from fluorescent bulbs. There is a smell of earth and mildew, and the geography recalls a Jewish city that existed 2,000 years ago.

Archaeological digs under the disputed Old City are a matter of immense sensitivity. For Israel, the tunnels are proof of the depth of Jewish roots here, and this has made the tunnels one of Jerusalem's main tourist draws: The number of visitors, mostly Jews and Christians, has risen dramatically in recent years to more than a million visitors in 2010.

But many Palestinians, who reject Israel's sovereignty in the city, see them as a threat to their own claims to Jerusalem. And some critics say they put an exaggerated focus on Jewish history.

A new underground link is opening within two months, and when it does, there will be more than a mile (two kilometers) of pathways beneath the city. Officials say at least one other major project is in the works. Soon, anyone so inclined will be able to spend much of their time in Jerusalem without seeing the sky.

On a recent morning, a man carrying surveying equipment walked across a two-millennia-old stone road, paused at the edge of a hole and disappeared underground.

In a multilevel maze of rooms and corridors beneath the Muslim Quarter, workers cleared rubble and installed steel safety braces to shore up crumbling 700-year-old Mamluk-era arches.

Above ground, a group of French tourists emerged from a dark passage they had entered an hour earlier in the Jewish Quarter and found themselves among Arab shops on the Via Dolorosa, the traditional route Jesus took to his crucifixion.

South of the Old City, visitors to Jerusalem can enter a tunnel chipped from the bedrock by a Judean king 2,500 years ago and walk through knee-deep water under the Arab neighborhood of Silwan. Beginning this summer, a new passage will be open nearby: a sewer Jewish rebels are thought to have used to flee the Roman legions who destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D.

The sewer leads uphill, passing beneath the Old City walls before expelling visitors into sunlight next to the rectangular enclosure where the temple once stood, now home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the gold-capped Dome of the Rock.

From there, it's a short walk to a third passage, the Western Wall tunnel, which continues north from the Jewish holy site past stones cut by masons working for King Herod and an ancient water system. Visitors emerge near the entrance to an ancient quarry called Zedekiah's Cave that descends under the Muslim Quarter.

The next major project, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority, will follow the course of one of the city's main Roman-era streets underneath the prayer plaza at the Western Wall. This route, scheduled for completion in three years, will link up with the Western Wall tunnel.

The excavations and flood of visitors exist against a backdrop of acute distrust between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims, who are suspicious of any government moves in the Old City and particularly around the Al-Aqsa compound, Islam's third-holiest shrine. Jews know the compound as the Temple Mount, site of two destroyed temples and the center of the Jewish faith for three millennia.

Muslim fears have led to violence in the past: The 1996 opening of a new exit to the Western Wall tunnel sparked rumors among Palestinians that Israel meant to damage the mosques, and dozens were killed in the ensuing riots. In recent years, however, work has gone ahead without incident.

Mindful that the compound has the potential to trigger devastating conflict, Israel's policy is to allow no excavations there. Digging under Temple Mount, the Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg has written, "would be like trying to figure out how a hand grenade works by pulling the pin and peering inside."

Despite the Israeli assurances, however, rumors persist that the excavations are undermining the physical stability of the Islamic holy sites.

"I believe the Israelis are tunneling under the mosques," said Najeh Bkerat, an official of the Waqf, the Muslim religious body that runs the compound under Israel's overall security control.

Samir Abu Leil, another Waqf official, said he had heard hammering that very morning underneath the Waqf's offices, in a Mamluk-era building that sits just outside the holy compound and directly over the route of the Western Wall tunnel, and had filed a complaint with police.

The closest thing to an excavation on the mount, Israeli archaeologists point out, was done by the Waqf itself: In the 1990s, the Waqf opened a new entrance to a subterranean prayer space and dumped truckloads of rubble outside the Old City, drawing outrage from scholars who said priceless artifacts were being destroyed.

This month, an Israeli government watchdog released a report saying Waqf construction work in the compound in recent years had been done without supervision and had damaged antiquities. The issue is deemed so sensitive that the details of the report were kept classified.

Some Israeli critics of the tunnels point to what they call an exaggerated emphasis on a Jewish narrative.

"The tunnels all say: We were here 2,000 years ago, and now we're back, and here's proof," said Yonathan Mizrachi, an Israeli archaeologist. "Living here means recognizing that other stories exist alongside ours."

Yuval Baruch, the Antiquities Authority archaeologist in charge of Jerusalem, said his diggers are careful to preserve worthy finds from all of the city's historical periods. "This city is of interest to at least half the people on Earth, and we will continue uncovering the past in the most professional way we can," he said.

Source: http://www.startribune.com

The Cipher of Ollin

2011-05-13T21:08:00.000Z

by JLL
2 August 2007
Flanders

AFTERWORD to the Endtime Articles

I don't know if it's working on a computer, getting "old" (of which I complained lately, only to have a long-time friend reply, "Ah, shuddup, you're as old as it gets, and you always were."), what I'm eating, what's eating me, or a massive shift in the galactic ethers, but I can hardly remember what I've written from one article to another on this site. This is particularly so for the series of articles I have just completed on the 2012 endtime. I have to print them out and go over them with a fine-tooth comb, listing the ideas and associations I've covered. Whew! If this is what the author has to do to get a handle on his own material, what must it be like for the readers?

2012 Overload

Of course, the overload here is partly due to the subject. 2012 is a catch-all for rabid speculation and ripe nonsense in boundless measure. Going through Goeff Stray's comprehensive survey, I stopped counting the items associated with 2012 when I got to fifty. But who am I to point the finger at excess?

The themes and ideas I've developed in these articles may well run into the same figures: the timing of Kali Yuga, Krishna and Osiris, the Antares-Aldebaran axis, phylogenetic rites at Dendera, the battle to end patriarchy, nodal moments in the theocratic agenda, resistence to Islam and the People of the Book, breaking the spell of Biblical narrative, the end of faith and intimidation by the faithful (all in Countdown to 2012); the follow-through of the Romantic movement, emergence of the tribes of the Next World, DNA shift (Ollin), Originals, Orgiastics, Sustainers, Evolvers, Visioneers, the interactive model of Gaian symbiosis, male-mind theories of planetarization, biomimicry, the phase-out of New Age spirituality (in The Discovery of the Next World); free-lance wizards among the tribes, the twin of Quetzalcoatl, Gnostikoi and the serpent power, paranormal faculties, technologies of the sacred, Kali as world-destroyer, anesthetic shock among the masses, spiritual emergencies (Grof), meltdown of the Greenland iceshelf, reversal of the magnetic field of the planet, return to Paleolithic shamanism, magical realism in Castaneda, the quest for a master narrative, Melville, Moby Dick and Mardi, power surge from the galactic core, the Quest for the Holy Grail, Maya Blue Face, epiphany of the White Lions, the coming Ice Age, bilocation for a lucky few and NDE for the entire human species (in The Party of Xolotl); Aztec timing in Mexico Mystique, location of the galactic center in the Zodiac, Stellar and Sign Zodiacs contrasted, the shift of the VP in the Fishes, parameters of the Piscean Age, midnight hour of the Kalpa, the aim of the Archer, phylogenetic transfer in Quest for the Zodiac, spiritual embryogenesis in Oliver Reiser and John Major Jenkins, Sophia's correction in 2102 perspective, conscious orientation to the Gaian mind (in Stars on the Endtime Horizon) - this is only halfway through the series. Well glory be, I think I'll leave it at that.

Having completed the eighth article last week, I found myself wondering if I could specify a single theme of paramount importance in all that I had written on 2012. As it turns out, this is not difficult, for this theme was in the forefront of my mind from the outset: "movement," depicted in the cipher of Ollin.

You may recall the Aztec glyph Ollin from the second article, The Discovery of the Next World. This item of 2012 folklore has not been widely treated so far. Geoff Stray barely gives it a mention. With the emphasis on Maya cosmology, the worldview of the Mexica of Tenochtitlan takes a distant second place to their Yucatan neighbors. To my knowledge, no one has written a book called The Aztec Factor, even though the Feathered Serpent legend belongs to that culture complex, and not to the Maya. (I regard the refuge of Quetzalcoatl among the Maya, following his humiliating defeat by the sorcerer Tezcatlipoca, to be a spurious script tacked on to the main plot by poncy scribes assigned to pretty up the story.)

The fact is, the horrific reality of Aztec civilization—a cannabilistic warrior society organized along the lines of Stalinist Russia as imagined by Edgar Allen Poe—and the improbable events around its downfall, remain totally unexplained. Yet that story with its themes of religious genocide and morbid intoxication through substance abuse may conceal the determining mythological imperatives of our Western society.

Monumental head of Aztec moon goddess, Coyolxauhqui,
"Lady of the Golden Bells"

My conclusion: the Quetzalcoatl legend, interpreted in terms of a curse laid on the Aztecs by the Toltecs, explains the historical end of Aztec civilization, but Aztec culture in its religious obsession with sacrifice and intoxication reflects the terminal pathology of our civilization, and may well portend its ending.

I wonder if the Mayan emphasis may not be largely a distraction as far as the gruesome reality of the endtime goes, although there are some instructive factors in Mayan cosmology, to say the least, and an encounter with the Blue Face healers of Palenque is always possible... I wish it for you, my fair-eyed friends.

Histones Moving

In Aztec calendrics the current world age is called Ollin, pictured in various gllyphs (above). Ollin designates the Fifth Age or "Fifth Sun" in Mexican cosmology. It is thought that this Age will end with "movement," meaning earthquakes, crustal shift of the earth´s mantle, the collapse of ice sheets, rising of sea levels, etc, but also "a shift of consciousness, mind movement." I have pointed out that the glyph for Ollin resembles intertwining strands of DNA. It uses a three-prong, four-notch motif suggestive of three-letter codons composed of four bases. It also brings to mind, perhaps more vividly, the structure of paired chromosome chains (below, from Wikipedia: "the eukaryotic chromosome seen as it appears in cell division").

The "movement" implied, then, would be the shifting of histones, a mysterious biochemical process thought to be involved in the rescripting of RNA, which in turn allows the reprogramming of DNA.

To my mind, this is the single most significant prospect in the constellation of themes around 2012: the role of histones in the DNA-RNA circuit. Investigation of this phenomena leads directly into epigenetics, a new paradigm in biological science that allows for reprogramming of the DNA blueprint by a molecular mechanism, reverse transcriptase.( See The Biology of Belief by Bruce H. Lipton.)

Reprogramming at the genomic level is Ollin, the movement of the histones. Is this the secret of transpeciation, the way Gaia selects the genetic signatures that she will resurrect after extinction? I have often wondered how Gaia could make a whole species from a single specimen. How she can, for that matter, select an individual to prefigure an emergent species. It is no joke that in the experiment at La Chorrera (True Hallucinations), the entheogenic genius demanded that the subject of the experiment, Dennis McKenna, be addressed as if he were, not a mere individual, but a species, and it seemed that Dennis could really articulate as a species. Ponder on this.

Histone shift is what I make of the Ollin theme, regardless of how the Aztecs understood it.

Applied Creative Mythology 101: The mythic symbology inherited from any race or culture in the past carries a message from the collective psyche then to the collective psyche now, regardless of what the symbol originally meant in the time and setting that produced it. Every symbol morphs over time to register in the collective psyche a navigational cue about where the human species is heading, just as it's getting there. This directive process of symbolic transmutation through time is the equivalent of epigenetic rescripting within the psyche rather than in the genes—that is, in imaginative rather than biochemical terms.

Histones are proteins in chromatin that act as spools for winding DNA, thus keeping genes in place. DNA is wound around eight histones at a time, allowing high compaction of genomic sequences within cell nuclei. The core histones form one octameric nucleosome unit by wrapping 146 base pairs of DNA around the protein spool in a left-handed super-helical turn (shown above, from Wikipedia article). The "linker histone" H1 binds the nucleosome at the entry and exit sites of the DNA, locking it into place and allowing the formation of higher order structure. Make of this what you can.

The trick here is, histones lock or seal the genetic code, and when they move they unseal it. These protein molecules are highly water-soluble—chalk up yet another Aquarian motif. Histone shift correlates to the mythological concept of the apocalypse, "the lifting of the seal." Biologists are uncertain what makes histones shift, or precisely how this might happen in individual cases, or for the entire species. Thinking in terms of Stan Grof's "spiritual emergencies," which I expect to increase dramatically in the endtime, histone shift might occur due to the traumatic impact of life-threatening events—indeed, the threat of total extinction for our species.

Bear in mind that 95 percent of all species that have existed on this planet are now extinct. In Gaia's way of life, extinction is the rule, survival the exception. Take that for whatever consolation it offers!

3.7 million year old footprints in volcanic ash. Laotoli, Tanzania.

Lessons in the Sky

The daysign Ollin is associated with Xolotl (Sho-LOW-tul), the daimonic twin of Quetzalcoatl. In one version of the Feathered Serpent legend, Quetzalcoatl sacrifices himself on a pyre and becomes transformed into the morning star, Venus appearing before sunrise. The celestial dance of his twin Xolotl is different, taking place in the west at sunset. Over the last few months as I have been writing these 2012 articles, Venus has been the evening star, Xolotl, and now that planet has sunk low on the horizon, disappearing as it makes it pass between the earth and the sun. We can observe the evening star every couple of years, by the recent cycle involved a relatively rare display of venus with jupiter and saturn.

Left: Cross-section of a conch shell cut to reveal the Venusian star-motif generated by the logarithmic spiral based on phi, the golden ratio 1/.618. Aztec symbol of the Feathered Serpent as "Lord of the Wind".

All through the summer venus appeared remarkably high in the sky at dusk, at maximum elongation from the sun. During July she approached saturn, just then moving from the Crab into the Lion. (Readers may recall that I wrote the series on "The Alternative History of the Grail" while saturn was in transit through the constellation of the Crab, a movement cited by Wolfram von Eschenbach as signalling Parzival's attainment of the Grail.) By mid-July, even casual observers of the sky would have noticed a remarkable display: venus close to saturn high in the west at sunset, with jupiter shining high in the east, near Antares in the Scorpion. You could scan right to left from venus and saturn in the Lion to jupiter in the Scorpion, a distance of about 120 degrees, one third of the entire Zodiac. With the new moon of June 15, the skywriting presented a stunning vision: the crescent moon, venus, saturn and Regulus, the heart-star of the Lion, in a straight-arrow alignment. At the next new moon (July 14, the 6th lunation of the endtime, counting ahead to 72), Venus then passed very close to saturn as it began to drop back from its extreme elevation and commence its "descent into the underworld" (invisibility, inferior conjunction with the sun).

Xolotl. the evening star, is the Lord of the West, a shapeshifter, sorcerer and master of occult powers, siddhis. He is the archetype of the shaman, by contrast to Quetzalcoatl who, although also a shamanic figure, conforms more closely to the archetype of the messiah.

In The Discovery of the Next World, I wrote:

We are deep into a mythogenetic moment when human potential is arising in new expressions, simultaneously with the dissolution of old expressions, and this dynamic, two-way escalation, up and down (Ollin), is revealing the outlines of the Next World when the planet earth will be inhabited by the endtime tribes. Mythological figures such as the Gnostic Sophia and the Aztec Xolotl loom over the emergent tribes and in some manner preside over the birth of a transmuted, transmigrant humanity.

Each such mythogenetic moment holds in solution a constellation of powerful choices, but the magic of the moment only becomes real when these choices are actually defined and made, one person at a time.

One way to interpret the skywriting of this summer would be to say that Xolotl, having devoloped some saturnian insights on cosmic and historical timing, and absorbed some jupiterian lessons on intoxication and extinction, is now taking this knowledge down into the collective unconscious to disseminate it through the range of symbolic directive codes. Consciously or not, humanity is on the verge of processing some deeply disturbing information on the master themes of cosmic timing and extinction. Growing interest in the 2012 endtime—extending into the mainstream, as suggested by a recent feature article in the New York Times—is a reflection of what's on top of the species' agenda, or just ahead on the phylogenetic learning curve. As without, so within.

The Entheogenic Question

My final observation on 2012 would be that the serious interest in shamanism, building since the 1960s, will peak out and morph into something else. In part, it will dissipate in overpopularization, and the radical impact of the shamanic revival will largely be lost in cooptation. This enormous breakthrough will be trivialized and degraded into a cliche. As it looks right now, anyone who cares to do so can claim to be a shaman, and be taken as such! The awful lurch from shamanizing to shamming is inevitable, but the core factor of the breakthrough will remain intact. I would define this core factor as the entheogenic question—which can be formulated in a number of ways.

The entheogenic question is intimately related to the theme of histone shift. One way to formulate the question would be: What is the purpose of entheogenic practice in the 21th century? One answer might be: To engage histone shift.

I link the theme of entheogenic practice with Ollin because, as far as I know, ritual use of psychoactive plants is the best way to learn how DNA works, and possibly even to affect its workings. While writing Dendera Decoded, I came up with the term "sacred biology" for knowledge of nature acquired by direct access to biological and molecular processes in visionary trance. I distinguish sacred biology from conventional biology that relies on instruments such as the microscope, as well as classification of specimens, lab analysis, abstraction from the phenomena to "natural laws," etc. In sacred biology, the investigator interacts directly with Shakti, the animating, formative power of the natural world, the basis of all that is truly sacred in the sense of being more powerful than anything it supports.

The Hindu Devi Shakti may be equated with the Divine Sophia of the Gnostics. Put in imaginative terms, the Shakti endows us with the faculties to know her most intimate operations in our own minds, in our bodies, and across the sensory continuum of the entire biosphere. My studies with the DZ (coinciding with a tour to Egypt with the Marion Institute in February 1999, with venus racing past jupiter and saturn in the Fishes) convinced me that the Egyptian seers had evolved the faculties that allowed them direct access of this kind, and possibly even to induce changes at the genetic level (the resurrection rites of the "grain-god" Osiris).

It is by now rather old news to some people that ayahuascueros have the siddhi or occult faculty to perceive at the molecular level. In Twins and the Double, I proposed that traditional shamanic access to "the realm of the ancestors" was a way of describing clairvoyant vision at the genetic level. Jeremy Narby made a similar claim in The Cosmic Serpent, citing the testimony of Peruvian shamans that the plants in the jungle teach them how to use the plants. More recently, Graham Hancock has popularized this idea in Supernatural. I consider it to be one of the most significant topics of our time.

Omphalos of Delphi, showing chromosome- and
ribosome-like units perceived in visionary trance.
(For commentary, see Gnostic Gallery Two)

The entheogenic question (in another form) asks, What do we do once we know that we can access the most intimate secrets of life without the aid of mechanical instruments? In considering this question, bear in mind that such access does not come in ordinary consciousness, but in the non-ordinary trance induced by psychoactive plants. So the question in yet another version is, Do we want to use entheogenic practice to access and develop intimate knowledge of nature, or not?

Visionary Instruction

The entheogenic question is about accepting visionary instruction from nature, as it might be called. In Not in His Image, I show that the Pagan Mysteries of pre-Christian Europe belonged to a millennial tradition of trained seers, the telestai, "those who are aimed" —so called because they saw the purpose of life as cultural coevolution guided by what the Gaian intelligence taught them. Instruction by the Organic Light was their method. Their teacher was Sophia, not any human person. With the shamanic revival now at a crossroads, if not a dead-end, we have the advantage of hindsight plus intensive understanding of the cognitive dimensions of visionary trance. Given what we've learned in 50 years, the telestic method can be ours once again. If we choose to reclaim it.

In my case for the Pagan Mysteries, I insist that visionary access to the secrets of the biosphere (the planetary body of the Goddess Sophia, if you will) cannot be had except by egodeath and ecstatic immersion in nature. Confined to the normal egobound state of single-self identity, no one can either enter or sustain the high somatic concentration of instruction by the Light. Such concentration (dhyana) involves the meltdown of egoic boundaries leading to open-field psychosomatic illumination, full-spectrum body-knowledge. Gnosis is rapturous knowing of the Other in the lucid state of no-self. Paradoxically, it is not the self that encounters the Other as not-self, it is the no-self that encounters the not-self.

Perhaps the signal development leading into the 2012 endtime is the world tour of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers with their basket of psychoactive plants, including iboga, peyote, and psilocybin mushrooms. The Grandmothers are appealing to humanity to return to the wisdom practices that rely on instruction by the plant-allies, who are also powerful healers. Both for our enlightenment as a species and the healing of our sick society, traditionaly psychoactive plants are indispensible. Such is the Grandmothers' message. This is also the overriding message of this site.

Having made this case, let me say that I am the last one on the planet to convince anyone to undergo entheogenic initiation with psychoactive plants. My argument stresses the necessity of that practice, but I am not here to persuade anyone on an individual basis to undertake it. All I can say in that vein is this: as someone who has had direct access to molecular and genetic levels of nature, and received visionary instruction from nature, I don't know any experience in this world that could be more profound, or more interesting, inspirational, and educational. It is also fabulously entertaining.

Detail of "The Powers of the Mariris," showing shamans receiving
visionary instruction from the spirits of nature. Painting by Pablo
Amaringo in Ayahuasca Visions by Luis Eduardo Luna and
Pablo Amaringo, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA, 1991

But visionary instruction from nature does not come with recreational use of psychoative plants, not is it consistently available in the traditional modes of shamanic ritual preserved by indigenous peoples. In short, we lack the method for it. Okay, here I am back to my pet peeve: the destruction of the Mysteries. The telestai had a method, consistent and time-tried, simple and transmissable. Can we learn the ways of coevolution from Gaia-Sophia in the scope and depth that those ancient seers learned them, if we do not follow that method? Perhaps we can, but you'll have to show me how.

So, Ollin is about movement ahead, and movement back. Going into the sixth extinction, we have to look back to the primal learning resource of our species, the entheogenic path of wisdom, and discover ways to re-invent that path. The religious phenomenon of shamanism as it is understood so far has gotten us to the threshold. What will get us across the threshold lies beyond shamanism and depends almost totally on the daring of human imagination, not to exceed or replace nature, but to defend it, revere it, imitate it, and lovingly follow Her instruction.

Lickie Nollier, "Woman entwined with a snake." incised
pearl shell, Western Australia, 1978. In Dreamings -
The Art of Aboriginal Australia, ed. Peter Sutton et al.,
Geroge Braziller Publishers, New York, 1988

Written in the 6th lunation of the endtime, the 67th counting down from 72 (winter soltice, 2006: new moon conjunct pluto at the galactic center)

Read the Endtime Articles

Source: http://www.metahistory.org

Sacred Love, Sacred Light

2011-05-01T20:54:00.000Z

by jll
May-June 2006
Flanders-Andalucia

How the Girl and the Grail Came Together

Both in its historical origins and its literary dimensions, Arthurian legend is a reflection of the survival of knowledge and practice from the Mysteries, though not of the Mysteries themselves. The Mysteries were institutions of initiation and education derived from a long tradition of shamanic practices in Europa and the Near East. In structure and function, they may be compared to a modern university system. Imagine that all the classrooms, libraries, educational and training facilities, laboratories, lecture halls, faculty offices, etc. of such a system were destroyed. The collegial network for higher education in the classical world was totally eradicated with the rise of Christianity. With it went the ancient network of Mystery cells, and the method of shamanic initiation practiced in those cells.

Typical Mystery School campus with central temple, classrooms,
hostel, gymnasium, auditorium, and studios. (Reconstruction of the
Greek temple of Jupiter Olympus, c. 350 BCE)

Some people who carried the sacred knowledge that informed and guided the Mysteries did survive, however. At the very moment when the Roman Empire was crumbling, a Druid in Wales advised a local chieftain to set up a militia to protect the diaspora of initiates from those ancient institutions. The refugees had been arriving for some time. They first fled the ruined sanctuaries in the 3rd century, and the diaspora continued for 200 years. With the murder of Hypatia in 415 AD, the plight of the refugees intensified. 415 is a threshold date, denoting a precise moment of abrupt and profound change, a momentous shift.

The nodal dates 281 and 453 are also important in the parallel history concerning the diaspora of the Mystery initiates. By contrast to a threshold date like 415 AD, which marks a vast and abrupt shift, a watershed, a nodal date is a vortex moment around which contrapuntal developments occur. In the tumultuous swirl of the nodal moment, certain events and conditions dissolve, sucked away into the depths of time, and other events and conditions unfold, forming new patterns of experience. We will occasionally apply the concept of nodal dates and nodal timing as these lessons proceed.

Feudal Shutdown

Chivalry illustrates in a vivid manner the dissolving and upbuilding currents of a nodal moment in history. Chivalry was the product of a new cultural order, feudalism, that emerged in Europe with the breakdown of the Roman Empire and the reversion of social organization to local levels. With the invasions of the 5th century, law and order could no longer be maintained by totalitarian measures proceeding from a central controlling authority. The defenses of the Empire were breaking down, Huns and Goths poured across Europe, and people in each region had to fend for themselves. Landholders took up arms or hired men to protect their property. Roman slavery broke down and underwent a conversion into serfdom. With the new military organization came the idea of fealty to a feudal lord. The knight who swore fealty vowed to protect the material and familial interests of his lord and master.

At the nodal moment of 453, the old imperial structures of command and control were dissolving, and a new social order taking shape—such is the contrapuntal dynamic of nodal timing. Simultaneous breakdown and build-up of social and cultural patterns was evident all across the former Empire. In this turbulent swirl of events the Dark Ages began.

Feudalism is not a particularly interesting subject, but it may soon become more relevant if certain parts of the "global community" plunge into chaos comparable to the last years of the Roman Empire. (It is fascinating to consider that the "New World Order" which seems intended to create a global totalitarian system is in fact driving the world more and more into feudal-like fragmentation. It shatters rather than unites the global community. But might that be precisely what it is intended to do?) The organization of patriot groups in the US is a feudalistic trend. Gangs in urban ghettos are feudalistic units. The tendency—indeed, the necessity—of the rich to confine themselves in walled compounds protected by surveillance cameras and battalions of security guards is feudalistic. So is the reduction of regional populations (in India, for instance) to serfdom in the IT industry. And, of course, the greater part of the Islamic world is still innately, rigidly feudal.

The aspect of feudalism that interests us most in parallel history is the sexual morality that arose within it. Because the Dark Ages in Europe were the dawn of Christian civilization in the West, feudal society was deeply molded by narratives of sin and guilt. A hateful and condemning view of sex and nature marks the Christian tradition in Europe. It is a truism that people in the Middle Ages were told to believe that woman, represented mythologically by Eve, was the instrument of the Devil, and that nature was evil. The proposition sounds so ridiculous that we tend to dismiss it, but to do so is a serious mistake. It would be no exaggeration to say that Christian mores poisoned human relations in the feudal age, and condemned every spontaneous instinct that connects humanity to the natural world.

The condemnation of nature as demonic was especially nefarious.(Read the entry on the Dark Ages in The Woman´s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara Walker to get some idea of this mindset.) In the Pagan sense of life, nature was sacred and animated. In Chapter 3 of Not in His Image, I wrote:

In its reverence for nature the Pagan religious outlook honored and encouraged empathic bonding of person to place, not divinely ordained possession of the land. Mountains, hills, grottos, wells, rivers, all were sacred, not because any doctrine declared them to be, but because the experience of the peoples native to a particular locale was grounded in a direct and sensuous revelation of divinity. Theirs was a mystical participation in the Other, free of intellectual or doctrinal filters. Ancient bioregionalism, in Europa as well as in the Americas, was not superstitious folly, but a genuine, lived animism. Theirs was a world in which, as the initiate Plutarch wrote in his essay, The Sign of Socrates, “every life has its share of mind and there is none that is wholly irrational or mindless.”

Pagans participated in the "complementarity of mind and nature," and the "pattern that connects," to borrow a couple of terms from Gregory Bateson. Empathic connections between the indigenous Europans and their environment were not instantly shattered by the imposition of Christian values, of course. In fact, there was enormous resistance among Pagans to the imposition of a nature-hating mindset. Policies of repression introduced in Hypatia´s time (375 - 415) led to the Inquisition and the Witch Hunts a thousand years later. Christian values ran so violently against human inclinations that they had to be continually and brutally reinforced. The ages-long Christian war against nature finally triumphed in the Enlightenment when science totally desacralized the natural world. Roszak has pointed out that the scientism of the 17th Century is totally consistent with the religious dogmas that preceded it. All the pioneering men of the Enlightenment, such as Descartes and Newton, were devout Christians.

Ecofeminism asserts that the view of nature and the social treatment of women are always intertwined. In the Middle Ages, women were regarded on the one hand as property, and on the other as dangerous animals to be feared, confined, and controlled. The image of women in feudal times is a cliche, but not an entirely inaccurate one. Chastity-belts were more than symbolic icons of the day. We are told that women were locked into these devices when their husbands went off to the Crusades. This happened of course rather late in the Middle Ages. The Crusades were mounted around a nodal moment, 1202. In preceding centuries, the confinement of women had not been so extreme, but it became more and more brutal and rigorous as the power of Christianity advanced.

The opposition of sexuality to spirituality is an anomaly of Judeo-
Christian-Islamic religion not found in many other cultures and
spiritual orientations. (The Temptation of Saint Hilarion,
D. L. Papety, 1843. Wallace Collection, London)

In fact, the Dark Ages were all about shutting down. Feudal shutdown was evident in all aspects of the life of those times, but especially in sexual mores. The amorous, hedonistic lifestyle of Pagan Europa was literally "foreclosed," as happens when property is reclaimed. Christianity seized upon womanhood as material property, but made women the least valued property of the mundane order ruled by the Church. This takeover of the feminine followed from the repression of the Sophianic vision of the Mysteries, and the wholesale destruction of Pagan civilization.

Feminine sexuality was the primary target of feudal shutdown. But it was also the issue on which the Pagan spirit rallied valiantly and tapped deep inner resources to resist the repression of salvationist religion.

Unrequited Love

Chivalry arose during the breakdown of the command and control systems of the Roman Empire, as noted. The inceptive nodal moment was 453 AD (second half of the 5th Century, Arthur the warrior chieftain, formation of the "Round Table"), and the concluding nodal moment was 1456 (Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur)—almost exactly a full millennium. During these ten centuries Europe saw the development of the code of knighthood, and in the later centuries, the technology of warfare emerged. With the invention of firearms in the 15th century, the reign of chivalry ended. The first cast-iron gun was introduced in 1430, and Malory wrote his classic around 1470. (The key developments associated with a nodal moment may occur precisely at that moment, but more often they arise around it, the way ripples spread around a stone thrown in a pool.)

What is truly remarkable about chivalry is how it provided a vehicle for a revolution of sexual mores at the same time that it served militaristic ends. But not exclusively militaristic ends, of course. We know from Lesson 6 that the Round Table had in addition to its military function a spiritual mission: to protect the survivors of the Mysteries, the guardians of the Sacred Light. The Arthurian matter reveals the continuation of the Mysteries, and, at the same time, it reflects the culture of amour courtois, courtly love.

So, in Lesson 7 of this course we come to a great and compelling triangulation: Grail - Warrior - Woman. This correlation implies the mystical identification of the Grail and the Girl. In the cult of amor, the warrior-lover moved between the lure of the Wisdom light emanating from the Grail and the alluring radiance of Woman. In parallel history, the preservation of the Sacred Light was intimately linked to the experience of Sacred Love, consecrated passion that unites man and woman in a death-transcending bond.

Amour courtois has been praised as a revolutionary and revelatory shift in social mores unparalleled in history, but such praise is usually tinged with damnation. The single most comprehensive book on the subject, Love in the Western World by Denis de Rougemont, constantly emphasizes the negative character of "unrequited love." De Rougemont goes all out to prove that the devotion of the knight to his lady, or of troubadour (wandering minstrel) to chatelaine (the lady of the castle), was unconsummated, and could not be consummated in this world, because it represented a transcendent relation only to be achieved in death, i.e., in disembodiment.

But de Rougemont got it badly wrong, as I now wish to show.

To clarify this issue, I would offer an initial correction concerning "unrequited love." I propose that it may be understood, not as love that is not returned and so remains tragically unreciprocated (de Rougemont's pitch), but as love that does not ask to be returned. Love that does not need to be returned. What kind of love neither asks nor needs to be returned? Might this not be called self-fulfilling love? It is the kind of love that transforms the one who loves, regardless of how it effects the beloved. If transformation of the lover was the true dynamic of "unrequited love," rather than the non-reciprocation so often proposed, then it must have been a transcendent force of immense power in society and spiritual life. A purely secular power, intimate and transcendent, personal and transpersonal at once. All the evidence of the revolution of sexual mores the Middle Ages indicates this to be so.

In parallel history it is this transformative force, Sacred Love, that humanized the European world in the Middle Ages, not the repressive salvationist morality that Christianity forced on that world. Repression cannot elevate; it perverts what it would improve. Sublimation cannot transform; it merely substitutes a less genuine experience for a more genuine one. From the time of Saint Paul, Christian religion demanded the separation of sexuality and spirituality for the salvation of the soul, but amour courtois defied and reversed this taboo. In unrequited love—not excluding the face-to-face sexual embrace, as we shall see—humanity in the West acquired soul. amour courtois was the alchemy of soul-making. Both the passionate gaze (or even the glance) and the carnal embrace fostered intimacy and nurtured the authentic sources of humanitas. I maintain that almost everything that has been attributed to Christian religious tradition by way of elevating and refining the human spirit was actually achieved by the experiment of Sacred Love in the Middle Ages. The cult of amor was the hidden tap root of Renaissance humanism. The inspirational model for Sacred Love developed in the same social genre as the Grail Legend: the Arthurian world of knights in shining armor and damsels in distress, and the closely associated world of troubadours, jongleurs, and conteurs.

Sacred Love eventually produced the humanist spirit in Europe, but the phenomenon itself did not originate in the medieval European setting. The cult of amor that flowered in the world of the troubadours and the Round Table originated in far-distant Asia. Its roots were Oriental, and ultimately Tantric. The immense and subtle cultural-spiritual transmigration required for the Asian love sacrament to pass from East to West is one of the most exciting chapters in parallel history.

The Sufi Connection

No scholar so far has traced this far-reaching feat of transmigration. Despite its frustrating negative tone, De Rougemont's book did present some tentative clues. He suggested that the cult of amor in Europe was inspired or inseminated by "Arabian mysticism." This is a puzzling notion, however. The gist of it seems to be that early in the Middle Ages Moorish culture in Spain produced the first troubadours as a secular offshoot of contemplative mysticism centered on "the Beloved," i.e., the Divine Feminine. This obscure development stems in some manner from the Sufi movement, a heretical or underground aspect of Islam. It is more than likely that Sufi is an Arabic version of the Greek Sophia. Sufism, then, would be (or would have been, originally) a devotional or bhakti path centered on the figure of the Divine Sophia.

This is intriguing, of course, because the goddess Sophia is the central figure in the Western Mysteries. Was there then, in some manner, a fortuitous collision of Eastern-Arabian devotionalism centered on Sophia with the telestic tradition of Sophianic Mysteries that had taken refuge in the Western Isles? Whatever the case, the setting for this linkage was Moorish Spain, particularly Andalucia. The time was the 7th Century. This much is known, but it remains to be seen how this wonderful convergence took shape.

Needless to say, it is rather difficult to imagine a resurgence of the Divine Feminine coming out of Islam. If this is actually what happened, no scholar can say exactly how it happened. It seems that an Arabian practice of blissful contemplation of "the Beloved" (read: Divine Feminine, Divine Wisdom, Sophia) morphed into a cult of woman-worship in Southern France. De Rougemont established the notion that Sufi theophany stands behind the cult of amor in which troubadours lavished extravagant praise upon a woman they could not touch, and many have followed his lead.

But there are several kinks in this theory.

In the first place, Arabian sexual mysticism was largely, if not entirely, homosexual. In theory, the mystic may have contemplated a virginal young woman who represented the Divine Sophia, but in practice it was beardless boys who caught the eye of the adepts. In Sacred Drift, Peter Lamborn Wilson explains the arcane spiritual practice called the "Witness Game," which used "imaginal yoga to transmute erotic desire into spiritual consciousness" (p. 61, his emphasis). The point being, that physical desire is not denied or overcome, but transmuted, as lead into gold. The practice included "poetical and musical improvisation, dance, and 'gazing' chastely at beautiful boys (whence the practice was also known as "Contemplation of the Beardless")."

All these elements occur in troubadour and chivalric romance, but strictly free of homosexual connotations. The troubadours were masters of poetic and musical improvisation, and even borrowed Arabian musical forms (much later preserved in Flamenco riffs). The motif of the gaze (which Loomis shows to derive from Celtic lore) occurs prominently in Parzival when the hero sees three drops of blood in the snow and falls into a trance, contemplating the color of his beloved's complexion. In some cases, the gaze is merely a glance, the most famous instance being Petrarch´s encounter with Laura. For Dante, the gaze of Beatrice becomes like a guiding beam that leads him to spiritual heights. In the poetry of John Donne, the gaze on which the lovers are "threaded" assumes all the potency of carnal intercourse. Donne´s poem, "The Ecstasy," is the consummation of a long tradition of amorous gazing that runs back through Parzival to archaic Celtic origins.

If we rely on the Sufi connection, it would appear that the troubadour gaze derives from the Witness Game. But Wilson pointedly notes that "the 'Feminist Principle' is notoriously hard to locate in Islam" (p. 71)—I would add, even in the esoteric or underground Islam of Sufism. "From the essentially masculinist view that permeates the Koran...women are seen as themselves with individual souls, but as virtual property in relation to men." Moreover, "although all sorts of hints and echoes of the Anima are found," for example, in "the cult of Buraq, the cult of the Beloved in Persian poetry," Wilson concludes that "women are simply repressed" in Islam, now as then (p. 71).

In amour courtois, women were not only not repressed, they were the inspiration for the spiritual liberation of the "armored" men who adored them. Nothing comparable exists in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, except perhaps the Song of Solomon. This is a psalm of sacred love perhaps inspired by the Queen of Sheba, who figures as a representation of the Divine Feminine in Arabian mysticism. (The Queen of Sheba from Bellifortis, by Conrad Meyer, Bohemia, c. 1405.) There may be some great love stories in Arabian folk lore, but, on the whole, Islam does not permit the concept of romantic love with a religious dimension, such that it could become a religion in its own right.

Evidently, there is something murky in the Sufi connection that makes it deeply incompatible with the model of heterosexual chivalric love.

Mystical-Erotic Ambiguities

Homosexuality is a capital crime in Islam, but this fact only adds to its heretical appeal, Wilson observes. How to account for the homoerotic element in Arabian mystical tradition? It is well known that the Arabs preserved Greek science during the Dark Ages. It may well be that they also inherited the Greek tradition of pedagogical homosexuality, the cult of beautiful, smart young boys. To my knowledge, no scholar has so far proposed this connection, but R. K. Dover´s incomparable study, Greek Homosexuality, supports it. Dover showed that the erastes, the beautiful boy beloved of the older man, represented not only a lure of sexual purity but a pristine intellectual ideal. (The lure was attainable, but not always claimed, Dover explained. Even when it was claimed, custom required that intercourse was "intercrural," between the thighs.) The atmosphere, esthetics, and ethics of classical Greek homosexuality fit the Witness Game rather neatly, I would say.

Moreover, let´s bear in mind the lesson more recently illustrated by the life of T. E. Lawrence, namely, that Islam is a male warrior feudal society. And always has been. The date of the Hejira, the founding moment of Islam, is 622 AD. This is a nodal moment, but not merely for the rise of militant religion. It is also the time of the first chivalric romance, Antar, written in Andalucia in the first half of the 7th century, according to Reni Nelli, the leading scholar of Occitanian literature. The feminist idealism of chivalry arose simultaneously with Islam, but I do not advise that we regard these phenomena in any sense as twins.

Wilson says that the Witness Game "was perfected in the centuries after Ibn 'Arabi´s death" (p. 61), which puts it into the 13th century. The nodal date of 1136 AD, cited by de Rougemont and others, marks the initial flowering of troubadour poetry with Guillaume IX of Poitiers, grandfather of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Ibn 'Arabi was born a generation later and thrived at the time Wolfram von Eschenbach was writing Parzival, and Gottfried of Strasbourg was writing Tristan. Of all the Iranian, Arabian, Persian and Sufi mystics, Ibn 'Arabi came closest to the theology of romantic love celebrated in the West. His mystical devotion to woman began at the Kaaba in Mecca where patriarchal and masculine values dominated, needless to say. But for the love-hungry Persian all that mattered was the glance he got of a young girl who was circumambulating the shrine. When he published The Interpreter of Desires, a book of poems celebrating his unrequited love for this unknown damsel, the mullahs cried blasphemy. The poet immediately fled to Syria (ever a stronghold of Gnostic and Sophianic diehards, by the way), where he "defended his mystical-erotic ambiguities with dazzling scholasticism" (Wilson). All this happened in the near East while chivalric literature was blossoming in France. The heretical cult of amor was peaking.

Ibn 'Arabi´s troubles with heresy went on for decades. Authorities in Egypt banned his writings. Scholars and mystics of orthodox Sufism blamed him for ruining their tradition. He was a heretic even to the heretics! Wilson summarizes Ibn 'Arabi´s blasphemous message:

Love is declared the equivalent or perhaps even superior to religion; the human beloved becomes a Witness (shahed), a theophany of the Real. Again, the poets received from Ibn 'Arabi a language of discourse with which to expand their comprehension of a complex already central to their very being: eros, desire, and the borderland between erotic and mystical consciousness.

The same elements were expressed in troubadour poetry and the chivalric code, and lived out dramatically in the sexual and social mores of the real-life exemplars of Arthurian legend. Gottfried of Strassbourg barely escaped the Catholic enforcers for comparing the passion of Tristan and Isolde to the sacrament of Holy Mass. (He went into hiding and left the completion of his story to another poet, Thomas of Britain.) The idea that personal and carnal love is a religious force superior to any religion is the ultimate heresy on this planet, not to mention the ultimate challenge to the Paternal Lie. If we can realize through personal love all those assurances that religious faith alone can give us (so its proponents claim), what use would we have for religion and all that comes with it? If the religion of love carries a transcendent power superior to what is found in religious doctrines and institutions, why would anyone bother to uphold those doctrines and institutions? With human love for a divine sacrament, who needs a massive hierarchy to perform Holy Mass?

For human love to assume a religious dimension, the transactions of power between the sexes had to be totally renegotiated. In the code of the Arthurian knights, the warrior went to tournament or to battle after requesting that his beloved witness his act, and by doing so, legitimate, and even consecrate, his use of violent force to demonstrate his moral worth. His actions were only real if seen by the Witness. This is why the knight often looked toward the spectator gallery to be assured of the gaze of his lady when he went into the joust. (Lady handing a lance to a knight. Manasseh Codex, colored illustration on parchment, Zurich, c.1310. University Library, Heidelberg.)

At the same time that woman acted as the empowering agency for the warrior—this motif first occurs in Antar, according to Reni Nelli in L´Erotique des Troubadours—she was also the object of his mystical-erotic longing, and, on some occasions, the source of its carnal satisfaction. Arthurian knights such as Gawain traditionally went into contest with some article of clothing of the Lady attached to his armor. A scarf or her "shift," the medieval text usually informs us. I reckon it was more likely to have been a rather more intimate accessory of the Lady´s wardrobe.

Sexual morality in the Middle Ages played out in the battle-ridden zone between the wasteland of the chastity belt and the wonderland of wet panties.

Dawn Song

"Ordinary morality" may be felt as simply a mask for sexual hysteria—a burden which no human deserves to bear. "Sexual freedom" within an ethics of love would then be seen as a gift bestowed on all true lovers of the true beloved. - Peter Lamborn Wilson, Sacred Drift

Introducing the theme of "unrequited love," I proposed a new spin on the widely held view that it represented male sexual-mystical obsession with an unattainable woman. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and troubadour poetry attests to my interpretation far better than it does to the conventional view.

Love that seeks no return fulfills itself. It transforms the one who loves, no matter what it does for the Beloved. Such is the power of the Beloved, who is both the recipient and the reflecting lens of love´s own transformative power. This transaction has to be deeply personal so that it can take its participants beyond personality. It has been argued that in the Sufi theophany of the Beloved the individual woman was merely a lens for Divinity. But this was certainly not the case in amour courtois. In his lecture of 1967, "The Mythology of Love," Joseph Campbell indicated the difference:

In the various contexts of Oriental erotic mysticism, whether of the Near East or India, the woman is mystically interpreted as the occasion for the lover to experience depths beyond depths of transcendental illumination—much in the way of Dante's appreciation of Beatrice. Not so among the troubadours. The beloved to them was a woman, not the manifestation of some divine principle: and specifically, that woman. The love was for her.

If, in any instance, devotion to that particular woman was unconsummated sexually, the transformative dynamic of unrequited love still applied. The lover did not ask his love to be returned by intimate favors. But when the lover´s passion was consummated, the dynamic applied in yet another way. Unrequited love did not demand carnal intercourse, but it did not deny and exclude it, either. This is what "sexual freedom" meant to some people in the Middle Ages.

Now it might be protested that I am making amour courtois out to be what I want it to be, regardless of the evidence. The fact is, many troubadour poems insist that the poet does not have the intimate favor of his lady. She belongs to another. He can't even touch her with a ten-foot pole. The troubadours both lament and celebrate the unattainability of their supreme object of desire, it seems. Time and time again, the poets tells us that the Lady they celebrate and adore is unattainable. L'amour de loitain, love at a distance, is the recognized mark of troubadour poetry.

Scholars have taken the poets on their word, but I propose that scholars have been duped, just as the people of the courts where the troubadours sang were duped. The point of singing praises to the unattainable lady was to make her husband and his courtiers believe that she had not given the poet exactly what he lamented not getting from her. It was the obvious way to protect the illicit, extramarital passion celebrated in amour courtois. There was nothing ethereal and unconsummated in troubadour romance, but the sexual encounter had to be disguised. In short, the bards were faking it.

Yet this tactic was not initially required. The first surviving troubadour lyrics, attributed to Guillaume IX of Poitiers, around 1136, convey the ethos of the locker room. The sexual drive is raw and undisguised, and the poet gets exactly what he goes for. Then he goes elsewhere for some more. Guillaume´s notorious exposition of the lois de con—I won´t translate, this essay is probably already too dicey for some tastes—reflected the sexual appetites of medieval machismo infatuated with variety and conquest. Only with later poets does refinement occur, and genuine religious sentiment toward sex comes into play.

Yet amour courtois never lost its erotic edge. The alba, or dawn poem, is one of the most beautiful forms of troubadour lyric. It celebrates the moment when the poet must part from his lady in secrecy, so that their all-night liaison is not suspected. Surely, this precaution would make no sense if they had not been sexually intimate. Some poems openly celebrate the beauty of woman's body naked in the dawn light. The soft luminosity of the adored form exudes mystical radiance, as if embedded in a supernatural glow. Ezra Pound, who translated many troubadour poems, noted that "the 'Lady' in Tuscan poetry has assumed all the properties of the Alchemist's Stone" (The Spirit of Romance, p. 90). In the cult of amor the lady´s body was regarded with the same wonder as the Grail. In some way, and not just metaphorically, the carnal form of woman was an epiphany of the Sacred Light.

In some moments, in some moods, the Girl and the Grail were one.

* * * * *

For troubadours and Arthurian knights alike, a particular woman was always the catalyst to the experience of the Divine Feminine, but in being so, that woman was not merely the lens for a theophany. She was not merely a means to an end. Love for her was an end in itself. It was, if not the equivalent, then surely the perfect complement to spiritual love for Sophia, whose name is Wisdom, whose body is the Earth.

In some subtle way discovered in the Middle Ages, which we are still in the process of exploring, love for the physical beauty of the Earth commingles with the love that may be felt in carnal intimacy. Tantrics in Asia assert that the Godhead of Nature, Shakti, manifests spontaneously in the sexual embrace. The cult of amor seems to have been an inheritance and deepening of the Asian Tantric experience, rather than a modification of Sufi theophany. Yet it may have passed via the Sufi connection from East to West. By an amazing transposition, the Tantric mystique of Asia inseminated the religion of romantic love in the West. In an even more amazing twist of history, this heretical religion was nurtured in the cult of the warrior, the Arthurian knight.

In Sacred Love, Sacred Light found its reflecting ground. In some manner, the Organic Light of the Mysteries played around the figure of the Lady, and rayed out from her physical aura. This aura of carnal luminosity is truly mysterious, and may not be fully explained in written form because it belongs to an unspeakable and inviolable dimension of the Sophianic revelation.

Source: http://www.metahistory.org

Pain in the Brain

2011-05-01T20:37:00.001Z

By John Kaminski

Footprints of the elephant in our living room

The last four or five attempts I've had to promote my views via radio or television (New York, Tehran, Austin) I haven't been able to get my point across sufficiently to change the establishment nature of the program. It's frustrating.

Over and over I keep repeating: It doesn’t matter who gets elected. All that stuff is a waste of time. America will continue to bomb and poison the world no matter who’s in the White House.

Most recently on Jack Blood's Genesis news radio program I attempted to talk about what I believe are two key issues — side streets ... and the elephant in our living room.

As I took a deep breath to explain them more clearly, I was deflected by either commercials, telephone callers, or the unwillingness of the host to "go" to certain places. Of course, that's exactly where the elephant is, in those certain places. Finally, an explosion down the highway on which I was driving forced me to abandon the conversation and navigate through a traffic jam.

So what do I mean by 'side streets'?

These are pressing but not central issues. The conversation on the radio show was about peace demonstrations. I commented that large peace events were nice for meeting people, but didn't accomplish anything, except reinforce the hollow illusion that we have free speech in the USA.

Yet when I make these statements, people turn away. I'm getting to be the most banned writer on the Internet because I say things that others won’t. Others of ability far superior to me have suffered much the same fate over the years. Someone even nominated me for Ezra Pound's cell at St. Elizabeth's and I said I'd be honored.

Ask yourself why I'm not included on certain websites just because I wrote The Jewish war on freedom of speech [also here, here and here]. And then ask yourself how much that means in the context of your own life, not to mention your own free speech. Then study the list of who owns what media.

There is a place now in public discourse where people are not allowed to go, and it is reinforced by laws in many countries that prohibit critical commentary about Jews, Zionists and Israelis.

What we’re seeing is that some of the finer websites on the Net are limiting themselves as to where they can go in regard to freedom of speech, because they don’t want to jeopardize their Jewish financing, or run afoul of mind-locking Holocaust laws that eat away at everyone’s free speech. Amy Goodman and Noam Chomsky fell down this rabbithole long ago, and haven’t been heard from since.

This place where we can’t talk about certain subjects is the same place where the carnage is created. The Iraq war and 9/11 are only the latest manifestations of the same behavior by the same stratum of people who have done this for years, and are now obviously engaged in a fire sale of the planet. What will your street be worth when they’re done with it? Ask an Iraqi now!

Side streets are issues such as chemtrails, global warming, government-issued AIDS, aspartame, anthrax, thimerosal, bogus voting, holographic aircraft, and biotech food that are all worthwhile areas of study, but the problem with them is they take you away from focusing on identifying the culprits, and possibly eliminating the cause of our misery. The time you spend on these side streets takes you away from the time you can spend taking effective action to reverse this course of misery we have been ejected upon by the people who control the money. And the No. 1 task is identifying the perps and bringing them to justice.

Stay focused. Keep your eye on the ball

Ever since the original 9/11 skeptics movement vaporized in a huff of aspersion and paranoia, I've been more focused on why the public doesn't and maybe can't receive valid empirical information, and to that end will inject some perspectives on that frightening phenomenon right now.

I've not sufficiently shown the gratitude I have for the many thousands of wonderful e-mails and letters I've received these past four years in response to my humble efforts to describe what is actually going on in the world. 'Bout time I did. Here are a few recent ones that beautifully pertain to the subject at hand.

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Hi John, I'd like you to have a look at a new 9-11 expose in PDF format designed to simplify the most irrefutable 9-11 facts. It was written for members of the choir who need an additional tool to educate their friends and family members suffering from cognitive dissonance.

See it here: www.tyrannyalert.com

You were one of the inspirations for this body of work, and for that I thank you.

Regards, Ross

And finally this poignant slice of Americana from a thoughtful mind who in this brittle and thoughtless age dares not speak his mind in the company of certain people...

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John, I’m working as a doctor in a typically conservative Pro-Bush area. I can’t publicize my views. But I can pay you to do so. I need to make sure my children have me around for a long time and don’t get carted off by one of our gestapos.

No need to mention the Talmud — just tell Christians to get their Bibles and read the Old Testament again — from start to finish. Then think about the mindset of people who consider ... they are the Israelites. Tell them to read Deuteronomy 20:10-20. There they’ll find Jehovah’s marching orders to the Israelites.

Remember always to emphasize that the source of the problem is the IDEAS of the O.T. — not “Jews” per se. Jews are those most affected by those ideas — but so are Christians and Muslims.

Read the pseudonymous essay at www.geocities.com/gergae2004/Writings/Pentateuch.htm

Memes — mankind is the victim of sick ideas that glorify force and thus crowd out ideas that glofiry love and cooperation.

The O.T. must be rejected — and with it Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Needless to say, in these dark days in America, a nation now suddenly proud of its torture practices, this writer remains anonymous, as does freedom for most people. Freedom, a concept no longer relevant in the profitable scheme of things. It’s a real pain in the brain.

John Kaminski (skylax@comcast.net) is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida whose Internet essays are seen on hundreds of websites around the world.

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Footnote: Deuteronomy 20:10-20 20:10 When you come to a city to fight against it, then first proclaim peace toward it.

20:11 If it answers for peace, and opens its gates to you, then all the people found therein shall be your slaves, and they shall serve you.

20:12 If it won’t make peace, but will make war against you, then you shall besiege it.

20:13 And when the LORD thy God has delivered it into your hands, you shall kill every male inside with the edge of your sword.

20:14 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the fortunes inside, shall you take for yourself; and you shall eat all the good things of your enemy, which the LORD thy God has given you.

20:15 Thus you shall do to every city even faraway which are not among your chosen nations.

20:16 In these cities, which the LORD thy God gives you for an inheritance, you shall leave nothing left alive:

20:17 But you shall utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God has commanded you ....

Etc. at http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/kjv/deu020.htm#010

Comment by Peter Meyer, 2006-02-08:

The last message in the article above says:

Remember always to emphasize that the source of the problem is the IDEAS of the O.T. — not "Jews" per se. Jews are those most affected by those ideas — but so are Christians and Muslims. ... The

O.T. must be rejected — and with it Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The Old Testament should certainly be rejected, holding up to glorificaton, as it does, a vicious deity who imbues a small group of humans with the idea that they are destined to become the Master Race by exterminating all those who will not submit to their rule. And certainly the O.T. has had a profound effect on Christians, as a result of being part of the Christian Bible. But the O.T. is much less important for Muslims. Muslims never quote, or appeal to, the O.T. For Muslims the word of (their) God is contained solely in the Koran. And the Koran, though it speaks of fighting against the unbeliever, certainly does not advocate the wholesale slaughter and enslavement recommended by the psychopathic Yahweh to his deluded followers.

The writer of the message also speaks of the "rejection" of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Again, a reservation is in order. There appears to be an effort to foment war between the (now only partly) Christian world and the Islamic world, well exemplified by the recent international row regarding the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (quite unnecessarily republished in several European newspapers recently). War between the European and the Muslim countries can benefit only Zionists, warmongers and American imperialists, and it is unhelpful to speak of "rejecting" entire religions.

While there is little in Judaism worthy of admiration, the Christian and Islamic religions have both produced great art (music, architecture, etc.). Unfortunately the authoritarian and patriarchal nature of all three religions has had, and continues to have, pernicious effects on the societies shaped by them. Everyone should be free to live as they wish, and believe whatever they choose to, but this does not mean that anyone should be free to cause harm to others who live or believe differently. The problem is not what other people believe, it is what they do. When people act so as to cause actual harm to others (including the impoverishment of their lives, as is happening now in Palestine and many other countries) they must be exposed and opposed, before they can do more harm. To remain silent and do nothing despite perceiving what is despicable is to betray humanity, and one's own humanity.

For more on the insanity of the god of the Old Testament see John Lash'sThe ET Deception: Knowing Who the Gods Are, and Who Are Not Gods

And with regard to this matter of the Muhammad caricatures, it is worth quoting this from the Iranian journal Hamshari:

The important question for Muslims is: Does the freedom of opinion of the West permit the consideration of questions like the crimes of America and Israel or an event like the Holocaust? Or is freedom of opinion only good for insulting the holy values of religions?

Source: http://www.serendipity.li

What Happened 3600 years Ago?

2011-03-18T23:35:00.000-01:00

March 2011

In the July 15, 1999 paper published by the journal, Geophysical Research Letters, the Sahara desert's arid climate change occurred quickly and dramatically 4000 to 3600 years ago.

A team of researchers headed by Martin Cluassen of Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research analyzed computer models of climate over the past several thousand years. They concluded that the change to today's desert climate in the Sahara was triggered by changes in the Earth's orbit and the tilt of Earth's axis. The switch in North Africa's climate and vegetation was abrupt. In the Sahara, "we find an abrupt decrease in vegetation from a green Sahara to a desert scrub land within a few hundred years" scientists reported. No longer were grasses and other plants collecting water and releasing it back into the atmosphere; now sand baked in the stronger sun and rivers dried up. The scientists do not say what caused the change in the tilt of Earth's axis.

An unknown civilization with an alphabet that has yet to be deciphered lived in the Indus Valley (W. Pakistan). Around 1550 BC they disappeared.

In the twenty-ninth year of King Chieh [the last ruler of Hsia, the earliest recorded Chinese dynasty], the Sun was dimmed... King Chieh lacked virtue...

The Sun was distressed... during the last years of Chieh ice formed in [summer] mornings and frosts in the sixth month [July]. Heavy rainfall toppled temples and buildings... Heaven gave severe orders. The Sun and Moon were untimely. Hot and cold weather arrived in disorder. The five cereal crops withered and died. Written during the reign of Emperor Qin c.1600 B.C.

- Around 1500 BC a civilization arose on the banks of the Hwang Ho River in north central China.

- The 1st dynasty of Babylon ended in 1595 BC.

- In the Semitic culture, Hyksos was deposed in 1570 BC, and the Jewish exodus led by Moses happened shortly thereafter. This featured a river Nile filled with "blood" and water they could not drink.

- The Cycladic settlement on the Island of Thera was destroyed by a great volcanic eruption about 1600 BC.

- Hittite internal strife caused great disorder and ended in 1525 BC with King Telipinu.

- China gave birth to one of the earliest civilizations and has a recorded history that dates from some 3,500 years ago.

- Pottery pieces found in Fiji suggest the islands were settled in the west from Melanesia at least 3,500 years ago.

- Iron manufacturing originated about 3,500 years ago when iron ore was accidentally heated in the presence of charcoal.

- The Tongon and Samoan islands were probably settled from Fiji about 3,500 years ago.

- The Santorini eruption (about 1500 BC) was several times greater in scope than the 1883 Krakatoa eruption.

- Research by W. A. Johnston of the Niagara River bed disclosed that the present channel was cut by the falls less than 4000 years ago. Careful study of the Bear River delta by Hanson showed the age of this delta was 3,600 years.

- A study by Claude Jones of the Great Lakes showed that these lakes have existed only 3,500 years. This is confirmed by several geographic historical maps of Michigan available in Michigan libraries. Gales obtained the same result on Owen Lake in California. Van Winkle obtained the same result on Albert and Summer lakes in Oregon.

- Radiocarbon analysis by Libby also indicates that plants associated with mastodons in Mexico are probably only about 3,500 years old. Similar conclusions concerning the late survival of the Pleistocene fauna were drawn by various field workers in many parts of the American continent.

- From observations on beaches throughout the world, Daly concluded that there was a change in the ocean level, which dropped sixteen to twenty feet 3,500 years ago. Kuenen and others confirmed Daly's findings with evidence derived from Europe.

- According to Basil Davidson, author of Lost Cities of Africa, new types of humanity appeared in Africa around 5,000 BC

- According to Ancient Europe by Stuart Pigget, stone using agricultural peasantry began in Europe near 5,0...00 BC

- According to December 17, 1996 New York Times article titled Black Sea Deluge May Be Tied to Spread of Farming in Europe, an international team of geologists and oceanographers reconstructed the history of a catastrophic flood from data gathered by a Russian research ship in 1993. Seismic soundings and sediment cores revealed traces of the sea's former shorelines, showing an abrupt 500-foot rise in water levels. Radiocarbon dating of the transition from fresh water to marine organisms in the cores put the time of the event at about 7,700 years ago (5,500 BC).

- According to the September 10, 1996 issue of the Seattle Times: the research ship JOIDES (Joint Oceanographic Institutions for the Deep Earth Sampling) Resolution "could easily see the light colored ash deposited from the eruption of Oregon's Mount Mazama 6,950 years ago. That titanic eruption created Crater Lake and threw out at least 40 times as much magma as Mount St. Helens did in 1980 and serves as a useful marker to date mud layers. JOIDES is a Hubble telescope for the ocean, the most advanced drilling vessel in the world". It has 12 laboratories, more than 100 research computers and can drill in water up to 27,000 feet deep. "The planet appears to operate in a quasi-stable mode and pops up to a new state," said NSF's Corell.

- A giant wave flooded Scotland about 7,000 years ago, a scientist revealed on Friday. The tsunami left a trail of destruction along what is now the eastern coast of the country. Scientists believe a landslide on the ocean floor off Storegga, southwest Norway, triggered the wave. Speaking at the British Association Festival of Science in Glasgow, Professor David Smith said a tsunami could strike again in the area but the probability was extremely unlikely. Radiocarbon dating of sediments taken from the coastline of eastern Scotland put the date of the event at about 5,800 BC. At the time, Britain was joined to mainland Europe by a land bridge. Settlers at the time would have had little warning of the disaster, scientists believe. But a scattering of tools found in the sand at a hunting camp in Inverness yields some clues. 'Very destructive' "It looks as if those people were happily sitting in their camp when this wave from the sea hit the camp," Professor Smith of the department of Geography at Coventry University told BBC News Online. "We're talking about two, three or four large waves followed by little ones, that would have been 5-10 meters high. "These waves do strike with such force that they are very destructive," he added. "It's like being hit by an express train."

The research provides an opportunity to assess the hazard of tsunamis in more detail. They occur frequently in the Pacific Ocean due to underwater earthquakes, landslides and volcanic explosions. Long, uncertain history Scientists hope to find more evidence of similar past tsunamis in eastern Scotland to predict the frequency of the destructive waves. Studies of coastal sediments show that it may be possible to develop a record of past tsunamis extending back several millennia. Dr Ted Nield, of the Geological Society of London, said: "These events have a long and uncertain time scale. While there is no reason for mass panic, the possibility exists that the Storegga slide will go again, and it would be imprudent to ignore that fact." 10,800 Years Ago

- The discovery of a forest 11,000 years old buried intact in Michigan, with treetops poking through the sand, has raised alarm about the possible speed of global warming. The five-acre forest of hundreds of spruce, just over ten miles from the shore of Lake Superior, was covered with sand and water when a nearby glacier melted at the end of the Ice Age. What has shocked scientists is that analysis of the tree-rings shows that the climate warmed so rapidly that it left no mark on the normal growth of the trees before they were flooded. "It's kind of scary. The conclusion, based on the tree rings, is that there was no real warning of the dramatic warming that caused the glacier to melt," Theodore Bornhorst, Professor of Geology at Michigan Technological University, said. "The question today is whether we would get no warning of a real dramatic warming. "What it says is that, in 50 years' time, we could have a dramatic shift in climate," he said. "If the ice cap started melting, sea levels would rise dramatically, with major problems for coastal cities."

- The heyday of the woolly mammoth was the Pleistocene Epoch, stretching from 1.8 million years ago to the end of the last ice age 11,000 years ago. Mammoths thrived particularly well in Siberia, where dry grasslands once stretched for hundreds of miles, supporting a vibrant ecosystem of mammoths, bison, and other jumbo herbivores. The mammoth fossils on Wrangel Island are the youngest that have ever been found. It was there, apparently, that mammoths made their last stand. They died out only 3,800 years ago.

It had always been thought that the mammoth died out about ten thousand years ago, with the end of the ice age, but the tusk appeared to be 7,000 years old. It was so unlikely, so Buttanyan tested five more tusks, but the new dates pointed to an even more remarkable conclusion. Hidden up here [Wrangel Island] in the Arctic, the mammoth hadn't just survived the end of the ice age; it was walking these hills at the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs, only 3500 years ago. This discovery has led to the re-examination of the complex chain of 'cause and effect' that made mammoths die out everywhere else, and in the process has revitalized the whole debate about how species might avoid extinction.

Source: Visualize Heaven

John Harris: It's An Illusion

2011-03-18T22:21:00.002-01:00

24 Jan 2009

John Harris gives us his perspective on what's going on. He describes how we are economic slaves to a debt dependant system, notably achieved through the deception of the birth certificate and the creation of a legal fiction known as your 'PERSON'. It is this PERSON that the government then wields it's control upon. Although John points out that this arrangement only works when we consent.

Unfortunately inaction is taken as consent, hence we have unwittingly surrendered our inalienable rights through identifying with the PERSON. Remember you are a human being with god given rights, all you have to do is claim them.

Also the difference between a policeman and a police officer is described.

Filmed at the The British Constitution Group Lawful Rebellion Conference in Stoke-on-Trent on the 24th January 2009.

Catch the full presentation here:

http://bbc5.tv/eyeplayer/articles/john-harris-its-illusion

or in parts here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0IM7Hobd_k&feature=related

Source: http://www.youtube.com
& http://bbc5.tv

Camera's lossen niet alles op!

2011-03-18T21:09:00.001-01:00

Maart 2011

Rijswijkse burgemeester wil geen wereld vol camera’s op straat:

“Ik heb een hekel aan mensen die vanaf de zijlijn commentaar leveren”

Ineke van der Wel-Markerink is burgemeester in Rijswijk. Onlangs laaide de discussie over camera’s in het oude centrum van de stad weer op na een overval op een horecaondernemer. Metro sprak met haar over cameratoezicht, kritiek op het burgemeestersschap en de houdbaarheidsdatum van een burgemeester.

Waarom kunnen er geen camera's op straat worden opgehangen om overvallen te voorkomen

“Mensen denken dat je als burgemeester camera’s kunt ophangen en dat je die kunt gebruiken in het strafrecht. Dat kan dus niet, dat kan alleen het Openbaar Ministerie. Ik vind ook dat teveel verondersteld wordt dat je daar iets mee redt. Je lost er niet direct iets mee op; de daad moet op de camera staan. Het is vaak veel beter als iemand zelf in z’n zaak een camera heeft.”

“In het kader van openbare orde zou ik wél camera’s mogen plaatsen; bijvoorbeeld bij lastige groepen die op straat voortdurend de boel onveilig maken. Maar ófwel het heeft geen effect, óf het verplaatst zich naar gebieden waar geen camera hangt. Dan kun je de hele wereld volhangen en in zo’n wereld wil ik niet leven, dat is ook de reden dat ik zeg: doe het anders.”

Het is makkelijk roepen als je zelf geen burgemeester bent

“Ik heb een hekel aan mensen die commentaar van de zijlijn leveren. Als je wilt dat dingen anders gaan, dan moet je ook je nek ervoor uitsteken en je verantwoordelijkheid willen nemen. Dat heb ik gedaan via vrijwilligersorganisaties, opbouwwerk en een oudercommissie van school. Zo kwam ik in contact met het gemeentebestuur en toen dacht ik: nou, dan moest ik maar eens in de gemeenteraad gaan zitten.”

“Wat ik zelf heel belangrijk vind in de functie van burgemeester, is dat ik een goed zicht heb op het hele plaatje. Kijk welke andere verbindingen er zijn om een probleem op te lossen, in plaats van: ik doe dit en dan is het klaar. Ik ben heel erg iemand van de breedte. Kijk over je eigen schutting heen en zie dat er geen eendimensionale oplossing is.”

Compromissen sluiten is het begin van het einde.

“Hoe meer partijen er zijn, hoe meer ook blijkt dat mensen niet bereid zijn om compromissen te sluiten. Iedere nieuwe partij denkt: die bestaande partijen doen het niet goed, het gaat vanaf nu zoals ik het wil. Je ziet dat mensen soms zelfs niet binnen één partij naar compromissen kunnen zoeken. Dan vraag ik me weleens af of ze het buiten die partij wel kunnen.”

“Ik zou altijd een beroep willen hebben waarin je mensen dingen kunt laten zien, zodat ze zelf in de gaten krijgen hoe het werkt. Onderwijs is bijvoorbeeld zo’n plek waar je dat kunt doen. Journalistiek heb ik ook heel graag willen doen, maar dat vind ik nu minder interessant; de journalistiek staat sterk onder druk. Ja, iedereen denkt dat ie het kan en dat is niet zo. Dat vind ik echt treurig hoor; je moet toch echt de goede ‘wie, wat, waar en hoe’-vragen stellen en ook tijd hebben om dat uit te zoeken. Want het heeft wel enorme impact.”

Burgemeesters moeten meer naar zichzelf kijken

“In de loop der jaren is het vak van burgemeester zó breed geworden. Daar moet je niet de politieke waan van de dag overheen laten gaan. Ik ben dus niet zo voor het kiezen van een burgemeester. Ik denk: laat er nou nog één figuur zijn die niet onder de druk staat van: er moet op mij gekozen worden en daarom kiest voor makkelijk bekkende oplossingen, een mooi verhaal. Iemand ook die niet hard meeloopt in dat spel, maar die gewoon zegt: ‘laten we nou eens even gaan zitten’ en dat kan doen omdat ie niet afhankelijk is van het kiezersmandaat. En z’n functie is toch al transparant en kwetsbaar; een burgemeester moet echt weg als mensen hem niet meer zien zitten.”

“Zolang je de regierol gegund wordt, kun je daarin een rol vervullen. Maar als je het gevoel hebt of zelfs gezegd wordt van: ‘het is nou wel klaar of er zijn anderen die dat mogen doen’; dan moet je zelf denken: ‘volgens mij is dat moment nu wel gekomen’. Ik heb het nog niet gehoord, gelukkig.”

Source: http://www.metronieuws.nl

Is de verloren stad Atlantis gevonden?

2011-03-18T13:59:00.003-01:00

16 maart 2011

Een internationaal team van onderzoekers, waaronder drie Canadese wetenschappers die gespecialiseerd zijn in de beeldvorming en Archeologie zegt dat waarschijnlijk de legendarische verloren stad van Atlantis in het afgelegen moerasgebied van het zuidwesten van Spanje is ontdekt.

Alberta geofysicus Paul Bauman, heeft samen met twee collega's uit Calgary, verschillende ondergrondse structuren gevonden. Dit door de VS geleide onderzoek is gericht op het oplossen van een van de meest duurzame archeologische mysteries van de wereld. Nu we in deze tijd veel tsunami's en aardbevingen meemaken op aarde, komen deze wetenschappers tot de conclusie dat Atlantis door een zeebeving en een grote tsunami omver is geworpen en dat op Europees grondgebied.

De vermeende identificatie van Atlantis op het vasteland van Europa zal in een National Geographic-televisie special worden weergegeven via de mythe van de Griekse filosoof Plato die deze gebeurtenis 2.400 jaar eerder beschreef. Ondanks het eeuwen lang speculeren over de vraag of Atlantis echt bestaan heeft of dat Plato's ontdekking van een mythische koninkrijk "opgeslokt door de zee", hebben tal van theorieën over de mogelijke locatie van de overstelpte stad werden de verhalen verspreid en in de moderne tijd is de optie door gerenommeerde onderzoekers en secundaire pseudo-geleerden altijd open gebleven.

Atlantis op Spaans grondgebied

De laatste poging om de verloren stad te vinden is in 2004 begonnen, toen de Duitse natuurkundige Rainer Kuhne afwijkende eigenschappen in satelliet-foto's vond van het wad bij de monding van de rivier Guadalquivir in Spanje, ten noordwesten van de hedendaagse stad Cadiz had gespot. Het gebied ligt dicht bij de Straat van Gibraltar, wat de geleerden hebben aangeduid als de "Zuilen van Hercules" die werden door Plato beschreven over de locatie van Atlantis. Het grondbewijs op de Spaanse websitesite, geleid door de Universiteit van Hartford archeoloog Richard Freund, vond de plaats in de afgelopen jaren en er werd een National Geographic documentaire gefilmd. De plek is "de best mogelijke kandidaat die ooit is ontdekt met de meeste aanduidingen van het bewijs," Freund vertelde dat de Hartford Courant van vorige week.

Een overvloed aan archeologische schatten

Hij heeft ook gewezen op intrigerende voorwerpen die ontdekt zijn ten noorden van Spanje, waar vluchtelingen uit een ondergelopen kustplaats zich zou hebben verplaatst en de kunstwerken van een "monument" in de natuur, misschien ter herdenking van een verloren stad zijn opgegraven. Bauman vertelde de Postmedia News dat hij werkte met Freund op ongeveer 20 historische locaties in het Midden-Oosten en elders, maar niets komt zelfs nog in de buurt van deze opmerkelijke vondsten. Bauman zei dat zijn team werken met grond-radar en magnetometers en elektrische scanners gebruikt om thermische of chemische "handtekening" te detecteren. De objecten liggen begraven in sedimenten van de mug-besmette rivierdelta onder extreem warme en vochtige voorwaarden. Onder de bevindingen van de Canadese team was een sensor lezing van wat leek op een gemeenschappelijke oven die nu begraven ligt in moerassige sedimenten ver van alle bekende oude nederzetting. Er waren ook uitgebreide structuren te zien die grachten kunnen vertegenwoordigen, heeft Bauman gezegd.

"Het meest spannende moment was toen ze een beeldje wat duidelijk zeer verschilde van andere culturen in het gebied opgraaft, wat vergeleken is met andere stijlen van houtsnijwerk en figuratieve kunst van de Bronstijd-de periode," aldus Bauman. "Toen vonden ze een tweede beeldje. U kunt alle indirecte bewijzen en geofysische handtekeningen hebben, maar er gaat niets boven het vinden van een artefact wat door mensenhanden is gemaakt."

De Universiteit van Hartford vond de samenvatting van Freund's bevindingen over hoe deze beschrijft hoe de Guadalquivir wad in de Spaanse Dona Ana, een "vreemde geometrische schaduw van waar het op lijkt de restanten van een geringde stad te zien is" en er kwamen andere hints aan het licht, dat daar een eens zo bloeiende beschaving begraven lag onder meters en meters oceaan en modder. Bauman, 51, een in Boston geboren wetenschapper die in Calgary woont, vertelde zijn vrienden over de komende tv-special met de Spaanse ontdekkingen."Maar na de tsunami en de zeebevingen in de wereld nu, wordt dat met gedempt enthousiasme gepresenteerd."

(vrije vertaling)

Bron: VanCouver Sun

Source: http://www.free-spirit-insight.nl

Fraude in de Wetenschap

2011-01-31T23:59:00.000-01:00

Januari 2011

Tim Kraaijvanger

Karl Popper beschreef wetenschappers ooit als goden. In zekere zin waren zij dat vroeger ook een beetje. Weinig mensen wisten wat er afspeelde in laboratoria en universiteiten, maar er werd in ieder geval goed werkt verricht. Tegenwoordig moeten wetenschappers zichzelf bewijzen. Maar klopt dat bewijs wel altijd? Dit artikel uit de oude doos bewijst van niet!

Hoeveel wetenschappers plegen bewust fraude? Volgens schattingen 0,1 tot 1 procent van alle wetenschappers, maar het werkelijke aantal kan hoger liggen. Tien tot vijftig procent van alle wetenschappers doet wel eens mee aan wetenschappelijke onderzoeken die op de rand van goed en fout balanceren.

Opinie

Het is belangrijk dat fraude uit wetenschap wordt gezeefd. Niet in de eerste plaats om het feit dat foute wetenschap voor foute antwoorden zorgt, maar juist omdat het uitlekken van foute wetenschap ervoor kan zorgen dat de publieke opinie over wetenschap verandert. “Het vertrouwen van mensen in de wetenschap kan door enkele fraudezaken wegvallen”, vertelt Dr. John Marks van het European Science Foundation in een interview in 2008. “Op dit moment vertrouwen mensen dat wetenschappers eerlijk zijn. We kunnen niet toestaan dat dit beeld verloren gaat”, vult professor Juan Jose de Damborenea aan. Wanneer het publiek negatief tegenover wetenschap komt te staan, kan dit ervoor zorgen dat wetenschappers minder subsidies krijgen, waardoor er minder onderzoek wordt gedaan. Dit kan de ontwikkeling van bijvoorbeeld nieuwe medicijnen of nieuwe technieken benadelen.

De reus uit Cardiff wordt opgegraven.

Uit de praktijk – De reus uit Cardiff

George Hull had ooit een discussie met iemand over reuzen uit de Bijbel. Hull was er van overtuigd dat er ooit reuzen op de aarde liepen. Om zijn gelijk te halen maakte Hull een groot houten mensfiguur van ruim drie meter hoog. Hij verbrandde de houten creatie en begroef het in de grond.

Een jaar later – in 1869 – huurde Hull mensen in om archeologische opgravingen te doen. Uiteraard werd de ‘versteende reus’ gevonden.

Al snel werd het als hoax bestempeld. Hull gaf uiteindelijk toe dat het beeld niet echt was. Lullig voor P.T. Barnum: hij stelde een fossiel van een reuzenmens tentoon in een museum. Dit bleek een hoax van een hoax te zijn. Snapt u het nog?

Nauwkeurig

Het uitvoeren van wetenschap is een complexe zaak. Alleen het opzetten van een experiment moet al nauwkeurig gebeuren. Het is vaak erg moeilijk om data nauwkeurig te interpreteren. Een voorbeeld: in de jaren ’30 en ’40 van de vorige eeuw droegen veel mensen hoeden, daarna veel minder. Toevallig was er ook veel armoede in Europa in de jaren ’30 en ’40.

Conclusie: het dragen van hoeden zorgt voor meer armoede.

God

Maar er is meer. Stel, u bent wetenschapper en gelooft in God. Voor een onderzoek bent u op zoek naar bewijzen dat God bestaat. U vindt bewijzen, maar ook bewijzen die het tegendeel beweren. Omdat u gelooft in God besluit u de tegenargumenten weg te gooien. Dit maakt uw onderzoek – in zekere zin – sterker, en u krijgt meer lof van collega’s. Daarnaast krijgt u misschien in het vervolg meer geld van christelijke universiteiten om onderzoek te doen. Een andere conclusie en uw geldpotje zou misschien minder goed gevuld kunnen worden. En dat terwijl u thuis een vrouw en twee kinderen hebt zitten.

Nep

Ook het vervalsen van bewijs is een veelvoorkomende manier om fraude te plegen. In de archeologie gebeurt dit relatief vaker dan in andere wetenschappen. Zo vonden wetenschappers begin deze eeuw een schedel in Engeland: de eerste link tussen de aap en de mens. Opvallend genoeg sloot de uitslag van dit archeologisch onderzoek goed aan bij de visie van de paleonantropoloog Sir Arthur Keith. De schedel werd onderzocht en bleek nep te zijn. Keith hoopte waarschijnlijk op veel respect in de wetenschappelijke wereld, maar kreeg dat niet.

Uit de praktijk – Fossielen zijn nep

Begin achttiende eeuw vond Dr. Johann Beringer fossielen van manen, sterren, kevers en vogels: het bewijs dat fossielen verzinselen zijn van God. Hij publiceerde het boek Lithographia Wirceburgensis in 1726 met zijn bevindingen. Kort daarna vond hij een tablet in de grond met zijn eigen naam. Toen wist hij dat hij in de maling was genomen. De fosielen waren door twee gelovige collega’s in de grond gestopt. Beringer probeerde alle exemplaren van zijn boeken zelf te kopen, maar het was al te laat. Door de hoax is het boek een bestseller geworden.

Geen goden

Eerlijk is eerlijk: wetenschappers zijn net mensen.

Ze zijn dus geen goden, zoals Karl Popper ooit beweerde. Sommige wetenschappers zijn op zoek naar macht, aanzien en rijkdom. Zij hebben er alles voor over om dit doel te bereiken: zelfs het vervalsen van informatie.

Lastig

Het is erg moeilijk om fraude in wetenschap aan de kaak te stellen. Onderzoeken zijn vaak zeer complex. Om te bewijzen dat een wetenschapper fraude heeft gepleegd, moet een heel onderzoek opnieuw uitgevoerd worden. Dit is tijdrovend en geldverslindend. Soms wordt er fraude ontdekt, maar dat gebeurt omdat er twee felle partijen zijn. Zo zijn er voor- en tegenstanders van de theorie over klimaatverandering.

Als voorstanders met een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde conclusie komen, proberen tegenstanders het tegendeel te bewijzen. Hierdoor werd ontdekt dat er klimaatwetenschappers zijn die sommige getallen niet hebben meegenomen in de statistieken.

Filteren

Is fraude uit de wetenschap te filteren? In het paper Scientific fraud and the power structure of science concludeert wetenschapper Brian Martin dat dit niet mogelijk is. Fraude zit volgens hem ingebakken in het systeem van de huidige wetenschap. Zolang wetenschappers verantwoordelijkheden hebben en afhankelijk zijn van verschillende partijen, zal fraude altijd voor blijven komen.

Uit de praktijk – Koude fusie

Nucleaire fusie zorgt voor vrijwel eindeloze hoeveelheden energie met weinig schade voor het milieu. Er is één probleem: er is veel energie nodig om kernen te fuseren. In 1989 ontdekten Stanley Pons en Martin Fleischmann koude fusie: een manier om fusie op gang te brengen met weinig energie. De wetenschappelijke wereld stond even op z’n kop. Even. Al snel trokken Pons en Fleischmann hun paper in en weigerden ze vragen te beantwoorden. Waarschijnlijk waren hun bevindingen vals.

Voorzichtig

Natuurlijk kan fraude wel verminderd worden. Tegenwoordig hebben universiteiten en onderzoeksinstellingen de regels aangescherpt als er fraude wordt ontdekt. Daarnaast zijn wetenschappers voorzichtiger geworden met het plegen van fraude, omdat het de laatste jaren breed in het nieuws is geweest. Ook is de pers tegenwoordig meer betrokken bij wetenschap.

Toch verdwijnt fraude niet.

Net zoals wielrenners stiekem doping gebruiken om betere resultaten te gebruiken, doen wetenschappers dit ook. Bij wielrennen is een simpele dopingtest genoeg om fraude aan de kaak te stellen. Bij wetenschap werkt het gewoon niet. En hoe irritant dit ook is: misschien moeten wij mensen er maar gewoon mee leren leven.

Source: http://www.scientias.nl

Evergreen Aviation Admits to Chemtrail Contracts with USAF

2011-01-31T22:38:00.001-01:00

January 2011
by Joan Biakov

Evergreen Industrial Film & Complete Report with Timeline

Evergreen Aviation, one of the worlds largest private aviation companies admits to weather modification service.

On their own website in the Markets section for their New Super Tanker they state Weather modification among other interesting service markets.

Content copied directly from Evergreen Aviation website:

The Evergreen Supertanker is not just limited to fighting fire . It will be a true utilitarian aircraft with the capability to configure to different applications on short notice. This multimission aircraft can support sensitive security and environmental missions. The aircraft’s exceptional drop capabilities, loiter time and size make it an ideal tool to perform challenging homeland security missions, able to neutralize chemical attacks on military installments or major population centers, and help control large, environmentally disastrous oil spills.

In addition, the upper deck of the Boeing 747 provides over 200 square feet of space that could be assigned as a command and control center. EIA possesses an FAA exemption number 1870C that permits the carriage of up to five individuals that are not crewmembers in the upper deck. This area is capable of providing space for command and control components that would assist in sophisticated mapping, incident monitoring and video/communications downlink relay that might require additional personnel over and above the required crew.

MARKETS:

• Firefighting
• Oil Spill Containment
• Weather Modification
• Biochemical Decontamination

What airports will Evergreen operate the Supertanker out of? Evergreen will operate the aircraft from any major airport with sufficient ramp space to load the aircraft. These include civilian bases, joint use civilian/military bases and accessible military bases. Generally, the runway requirements for the Evergreen Supertanker are 8000 feet.

Can the Supertanker fight fires at night, while they are most vulnerable?The Supertanker utilizes advanced avionics and flies at higher, safer altitudes, which will enable fire agencies the option of fighting fires at night, while they are dormant.

Are there any other markets for the Evergreen Supertanker? Can it operate globally?
Evergreen is studying other applications for the Supertanker. Oil spill containment, chemical decontamination and weather modification are all potential markets for this aircraft. Because the aircraft is pressurized, the Evergreen Supertanker has the capability of any long-range Boeing 747 passenger aircraft. This allows the aircraft to deploy to any international location.
If you want to read up for yourself on this, just go to gibiru.com, do a search on “Weather Control”, and then start clicking through the links that come up. You might find it as surprising as I did. Here is the bottom line:

Is weather control real?Yes.

Do we have the technology to create a hurricane, or tornado, or earthquakes?Yes.

Who has this technology?The US and Russia. But Russia has been offering the technology for sale.

What specific technologies/techniques can be used to alter the weather and create storms?Several.

High-energy lasers can be directed into the atmosphere which creates free oxygen (O2), this combined with hydrogen to create H2O – water. Space based lasers are even more effective, and can also create O3 (Ozone) in the process of creating water in the atmosphere. Water is the most essential element in weather. The amount of it at a given point in time at a given location can create wind shifts, rain, (obviously), snow, but a clever use of it can create a tornado, or, over water, a hurricane. Over warm ocean water, it creates a very powerful hurricane, and if created in the right position at the right time, prevailing winds will carry it where you want it to go.

But far more effective than that technology is the HAARP project in Alaska. This uses VLF (Very low frequency) energy pulses bounced off the ionosphere to create extreme weather conditions anywhere in the world they wish to direct it. The Earth has a fundamental resonant frequency of 7.83 hz. Anything that operates at that frequency risks disturbing all aspects of the earth. Weather, earthquakes, etc. It depends upon the amount of power produced. HAARP produces 1.7 gigawatts.

Here are a couple of interesting quotes about it I found on one of the websites I visited:

"The $30 million [Pentagon] project, euphemistically named HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), is made to beam more than 1.7 gigawatts (billion watts) of radiated power into the ionosphere -- the electrically charged layer above Earth's atmosphere. Put simply, the apparatus is a reversal of a radio telescope -- just transmitting instead of receiving. It will 'boil the upper atmosphere'. After [heating] and disturbing the ionosphere, the radiations will bounce back onto the earth in for form of long waves which penetrate our bodies, the ground and the oceans." ["Angels Don't Play This HAARP", page 8]

Let us allow Dr. Begich explain this concept. "... this invention provides the ability to put unprecedented amounts of power in the Earth's atmosphere at strategic locations and to maintain the power injection level, particularly if random pulsing is employed, in a manner far more precise and better controlled than heretofore accomplished by the prior art ...." [Page 28]

"... the goal is to learn how to manipulate the ionosphere on a more grand scale than the the Soviet Union could do with its similar facilities. HAARP would be the largest ionospheric heater in the world, located in a latitude most conducive to putting Eastlund's invention into practice." [Page 29]

Furthermore, from this northern latitude, the energy could be aimed into the ionosphere so that it would bounce back down to the earth so it would come down wherever the scientists wanted it to come down. The secret was to learn how and where to aim it to hit the earth where they wanted it to hit, creating the type of disaster or weather they desired.

In NEWS1198, "U.N. Treaty Proves Weather Control Is Real", we report news articles that Malaysia actually contracted with a Russian Weather Modification company to create a hurricane that would be directed close enough to clear the smoke and smog from Malaysia's cities without actually coming on to land to create devastation. This Russian company delivered, and Malaysia had clear skies.

Our information also tells us that, not only can hurricanes be created, they can be dismantled should scientists so desire. And, they certainly can be driven on the ocean much like we drive our cars on roadways. Therefore, one has to ask why American scientists have allowed unprecedented hurricanes, like Andrew, to ever come on shore. Why are American scientists allowing extensive damage and lives lost to recent unprecedented storms, since they have the capability to keep these storms away from us?

HAARP can create nuclear-sized explosions without radiation! [Page 38, 62]. This process is protected by patent 4,873,928.

The greatest concern of New Age scientist Nick Begich, in his book, "Angels Don't Play This HAARP", is that scientists and the military are so very arrogant in their ignorant, reckless use of focused energy into the ionosphere. Military scientists talk about "kicking this thing in high gear to see what would happen"! This attitude is complete arrogance.

What if they set off an unintended reaction in the atmosphere that cannot be controlled or stopped?
Well, if a country can deliver nuclear-like explosions anywhere in the world they wish, without using ICBM missiles and other nuclear delivery systems, then I suppose that makes traditional nuclear weapons arsenals obsolete for warfare purposes, and mostly only good for political posturing and negotiations. That would explain why both Russia and the US were willing to agree to disarmaments, and reductions in their nuclear proliferation. I think maybe that was the first time in human history that countries voluntarily chose to disarm themselves and reduce their ability to conduct war. Given the nature of mankind and his history, it would make much more sense if they had a better card up their sleeves.

Judging by the apparent irresponsible arrogance of the people in charge of it as suggested by Begich, I wonder who should be in charge of decision-making for this technology. Once a technology is invented, it cannot be ‘un-invented’. It is now there, and some people will try to use it. Most will try to use it to their personal advantage and to support their agendas. Always, it seems that those that want to act in the interest of all mankind lack the same level of energy and determination of those acting in self interest, and so the people that push their way to the top into positions of power and authority rarely act responsibly or altruistically, but rather they act to gain power and wealth to themselves.

Having said that, if we follow the line of reasoning logically, if we accept that current technology allows us to create a hurricane, then we have to ask ourselves who might have started a hurricane like Katrina that specifically destroyed the area where most of our oil refineries are? In whose interest does this serve? Who benefits from this?

Another interesting question: Since we apparently not only have the ability to create a hurricane, and steer it, and even stop it – why did we choose not to stop Katrina from doing the damage it did? Is the information incorrect? Can we start them, but not stop them? Or is there some other reason that Katrina served the purposes of some people? I honestly don’t know. I’m wondering myself.

Here is a chronology of the technological advances that contributed to weather control. The comments are not mine but come from that website that I found. I have to admit – as much as I would like to go back to thinking that the weather is not controllable, It’s hard to ignore this much information on the subject.

TIMELINE

1900: "Tesla applies for patent on a device to 'Transmit Electrical Energy Through the Natural Mediums." In 1905, the U.S. Patent Office issue Patent #787,412 for this purpose. I bet it is news to everyone that the technology to transmit electrical power without wires exists, and exists so that the generation and transmission of electricity can be both bountiful and FREE! Of course, a lot of dollars of sales and profit would immediately vanish, so Tesla's discovery was never made public.

1924: "Confirmation that radio waves bounce off 'ionosphere 1' (an electrically charged layer starting at an altitude of 50 kilometers)."

1938: "Scientist proposes to light up night sky by electron gyrotron heating from a powerful transmitter." The fact that untold numbers of powerful electron heaters are pouring tens of millions of watts of electricity at Extremely Low Frequencies to effect this Weather Warfare is the major reason we are experiencing Global Warming! This warming has nothing to do with any Industrial pollutants or emssions, and certainly not from cow flatulance, as New Age extremists have claimed. New World Order planners are able to make dire predictions and then technologically deliver them!

1940: "Tesla announces 'death ray' invention." Our military evidently has the capability to create a defense shield over our continent by aiming these electron heaters correctly.

1945: "Atomic bomb tests begin -- 40,000 electromagnetic pulses to follow."

1952: "W.O. Schumman identifies 7.83 Hertz the resonant frequency of the Earth".

1958: "Van Allen radiation belts discovered (zones of charged particles trapped in earth's magnetic field) 2,000+ miles up. Violently disrupted in the same year."

1958: "Project Argus, U.S. Navy explodes three nuclear bombs inside Van Allen belt."

1958: "White House advisor on weather modification says Defense Department studying ways to manipulate charges of 'earth and sky, and so affect the weather'." Wow! Did you know that such a department as "Weather Modification" existed in the White House way back in 1952? The mere existence of such an office strongly implies the technology to modify and control the weather existed.

1960: "Series of weather disasters begin."

1961: "Scientists propose artificial ion cloud experiments. In 1960's the dumping of chemicals (barium powder, etc.) from satellites and rockets began."

1961-62: "U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. create many electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) in the atmosphere. 300 megatons of nuclear devices deplete ozone layer by about 4%." Hmm, ozone layer depletion was intentionally created by both Russian and American governments by nuclear detonations? They not only knew about it, they measured the extent of the depletion and the time it lasted. Therefore, do you think it just might be possible that, once again, we have the situation where a dire prediction is made, with the knowledge that their scientists can actually make it happen?!

1962: "Launch of Canadian satellites and start of stimulating plasma resonances by antennas within the space plasma."

1966: "Gordon J.F. MacDonald publishes military ideas on environmental engineering."

1960's: In Wisconsin, U.S. Navy Project Sanguine lays extremely low frequency (ELF) antennae." We are told that the Navy needed this ELF capability to communicate with their submarines in a way that would be secure from enemy attack, a claim with which we do not argue. However, is it also possible that this ELF antennae may serve a dual purpose, of also helping to control the weather?

1968: "Moscow scientists tell the West that they have pinpointed which pulsed magnetic field frequencies help mental and physiological functions and which frequencies do harm." The very idea that a wicked totalitarian government serving Antichrist could know how to manipulate thought processes by the use of electromagmetic pusles is one of the most frightening thoughts imaginable! This little incident also shows the unusual cooperation between Russia and America at the height of the Cold War! Such cooperation constitutes proof of our claim that Russia has cooperated with the Western Powers since the beginning, in 1917, to stage the mock battle of Thesis battling Antithesis to produce the Synthesis system of Antichrist called the New World Order.

1972: "First reports on 'ionospheric heater' experiments with high frequency radio waves at Arecibo [Alaska]. A 100 megawatt heater in Norway built later in the decade can change the conductivity of the auroral ionosphere." Now, you are getting close to being able to control the weather. When you can manipulate the conductivity of the auroal ionosphere, where weather systems operate and originate, you are close to controlling the weather. Note the date here, at which time this technology was realized: 1972.

1973: "Documentation that the launch of Skylab 'halved the total electron content of the ionosphere for three hours' (by rocket exhaust gases)."

1974: "United Nations General Assembly bans environmental warfare." We reported on this terrible treaty in NEWS1196, "U.N. Treaty Proves Weather Control Is Real". You do not need a treaty banning Weather Warfare unless such technology already exists and has been proven effective. This means that this Weather Warfare technology has been fine tuned for 24 years.

1974: "High frequency experiments at Plattsville, Colorado Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and in Armidale, New South Wales. These experiments heated the 'bottom side of the ionosphere."

1974: "Experiments -- airglow brightened by hitting oxygen atoms in ionosphere with accelerated electrons."

1975: "Stanford professor Robert Helliwell reports that very low frequency (VLF) from power lines is altering the ionosphere." I remember this report well, as I scoffed at the idea that power lines could have that kind of effect on this huge earth. I never thought of the fact that the reason they could have this kind of effect is that they are just the right kind of frequency to affect the earth.

1975: "U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson forces the Navy to release research showing that extremely low frequency (ELF) transmissions can altar human blood chemistry." Once again, this technology begins to hit very close to home, does it not? When an enemy can altar my blood chemistry by aiming ELF transmissions at me, I can be destroyed with no knowledge of what is happening to me, or who is doing such lethal damage. Can you also sense the possibilty of control of an entire population, without the people ever being aware they are being manipulated?!

1975: "U.S. Senator Pell, Senate Subcommitted, urges that weather and climate modification work should be overseen by a civilian agency answerable to the U.S. Congress. Didn't happen." In NEWS1196, we report that Senator Pell urged the United States to sign this United Nations treaty banning Weather Warfare. It sounds like Pell was very concerned about the use and misuse of this technology, even though he is fully aware of the New World Order Plan and has acted to support it for many years.

1975: "Soviets begin pulsing 'Woodpecker' extremely low frequency (ELF) waves at key brainwave rhythms. Eugene, Oregon, was one of the locations where Woodpecker was aimed, and where people were particularly affected." Once, again, I am extremely agitated to discover that an enemy can destroy me either biologically or mentally from a distance, without me being aware of it.

1976: "Drs. Susan Bawin and W. Ross Adey show that nerve cells are affected by ELF fields."

1979: "Launch of NASA's third High-Energy Astrophysical Observatory causes large scale, artificially induced depletion in the ionosphere. The plasma hole was caused by 'rapid chemical processes' between rocket exhaust and the ozone layer. The ionosphere was significantly depleted over a horizontal distance of 300 km for some hours."

1985: "Bernard J. Eastlund applies for patent 'Method and Apparatus for Altering a Region in the Earth's Atmosphere, Ionosphere and/or Magnetosphere'. (First of three Eastlund patents assigned to ARCO Power Technologies, Inc.)"

1986: "U.S. Navy Project Henhouse duplicates the Delgado (Madrid) experiment -- very low level, very low frequency pulsed magnetic fields harm chick embryos."

1980's: "In the latter part of the decade, the U.S. begins the network of Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN) towers, each to generate Very Low Frequency (VLF) waves ..." IN NEWS1196, we reported that the GWEN towers created a high level electromagnetic dam in the atmosphere in the American Midwest that created the rain for 40 days and nights in 1993. GWEN towers were located right where the rain came down in such a Biblical type deluge. Furthermore, we showed a map of the United States where you could see the GWEN towers and where they were located. We found it extremely interesting that these towers were also located along the San Andreas fault in Califormai and Nevada, where all these earthquakes of the past decade have been occurring!

1987-1992: "Other ARCO Power Technologies Incorporated (APTI) scientists build on Eastlund patents for development of new weapon capabilities."

1994: "Military contractor E-systems buys APTI, holder of Eastlund patents and contract to build the biggest ionospheric heater in the world, the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP). Even though construction of HAARP towers in Alaska began before this date, this was the time the decision was made to make it as large as it is now today, over 40 acres of ELF towers.

1994: "Congress freezes the funding on HAARP until planners increase the emphasis on earth penetrating tomography uses, for nuclear counterproliferation efforts." Once again, we have to wonder if this technology might be used to create earthquakes, as well as monitor compliance with nuclear test ban treaties.

1995: "Congress budgets $10 million for 1996, under "nuclear counterproliferation' efforts for HAARP project." At least now we know that the U.S. Government is in firm control of HAARP, the same government driving us full speed into the global government of Antichrist, known as the New World Order.

1994-6: "Testing of first stage of HAARP equipment continues ..."

1996: HAARP planners to test the earth penetrating tomography applications by modulating the electroject at ELF frequencies." Let's see, were there any severe or unusual earthquakes, or series of earthquakes, in 1996? We shall study this and get back to you.

1998: "Projected date for fully operating HAARP system." We have had the most unusual severe weather in 1997 and 1998. It is no coincidence that the onset of this unprecedented weather coincided with the completion of the HAARP system. Now, scientists can create and control all types of weather, especially disasters.

Evergreen Aviation has a long history of government contracts, ranging from the USPS to unmanned flight operations for the USAF.

Source: http://www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com

Why Flamingoes Don't Get Osteoperosis

2011-01-17T10:50:00.000-01:00

January 2011
by Jacob Schor, ND

There is a surprising new therapy to increase bone density that may decrease the odds of fracturing a femur or hip as one gets older. Recall the movie, Karate Kid, and download from your memory the image of the kid, balancing on one foot on a log at the beach, seagulls flying overhead.

Now imagine an older person in a nursing home, slowly moving about with the aid of a walker doing an imitation of the Karate Kid. What you've got is Dynamic Flamingo Therapy, the invention of researcher, Keizo Sakamoto from Tokyo, and likely the least expensive and least intrusive intervention ever described in the medical literature for preventing hip fractures.

In October 2006, writing in the Journal of Orthopedic Science, Sakamoto described the effect of what he called “unipedal standing” on the frequency of falls and hip fractures in an elderly population. His unipedal standing balance exercise was simple. Stand on one leg for a minute (alternating legs) with your eyes open three times a day. If you need to, hang onto something so you don’t tip over.

Bone density and bone strength is improved by mild stress to the bone, that’s why we make all the fuss about weight bearing exercise. By Sakamoto’s calculations, standing on one foot for a minute would have an effect on bone density equivalent to walking 53 minutes.

Repeating his exercise three times a day would be equivalent to taking three almost hour long walks a day. For older people who are not that mobile, unipedal standing is an interesting option. It improves balance enough that it decreases spontaneous falls by about a third. It also puts mild strain on the bone, strengthening it and decreasing the chance of fracture if the person does fall.

In his first experiment, Sakamoto recruited subjects, averaging 82 years old, and randomized them, some to serve as controls and some to “exercise.” Falls and hip fractures for a sixmonth period were counted. Data was collected for 315 unipedal standers and 212 control subjects that presumably rarely stood on one foot.

The 315 subjects in the exercise group recorded 118 falls in the six-month test period. The 212 control subjects recorded 121 falls. There was one hip fracture in each group. The difference in number of falls was statistically significant, but the number of fractures weren’t enough to generate accurate statistics.

A more recent paper was published by Sakamoto in the November 2008 issue of Clinical Calcium that lends greater weight to unipedal standing; only the treatment has been renamed. No longer is standing on one foot called unipedal standing, now it is “Dynamic Flamingo Therapy.”

In this paper, Sakamoto describes a group of women doing his exercise for a period of ten years. Starting in 1993, he recruited 86 women to do his flamingo exercise, the same standing on one foot at a time for a minute three times a day. The women were tested regularly to evaluate bone density. At the start of the program, the average age was just under 68. Sakamoto summarized the results as the percentage of participants showing increased bone mineral density (BMD) compared to their levels when they enrolled in the study.

After three months 63 percent of the study participants had increased bone density. This isn’t as exciting as it sounds, as there is a seasonal variation in bone density, increasing over the summer months as production of vitamin D increases with greater sun exposure. But after six months 41 percent still had denser bones than when they started; after one year the number increased to 58 percent. This is exciting. There was a drop at the three year mark, down to 32 percent. This increased after five years back to 54 percent. After 10 years of performing this exercise, 33 percent of the women still had increased bone density compared to their initial scan.

There was no control group but increasing bone density as a woman ages from 68 to 78 is clearly unexpected. None of the women who continued the exercises fractured a hip during the ten year period. This also stands out.

For people too frail for rigorous workouts or even walking to build bone density, this therapy offers an alternative ‘exercise.’ Even for those of us who do exercise routinely, a few minutes on one foot may still provide added advantage.

Source: http://www.naturalgrocers.com

Rosslyn Chapel: Is the god of Nature symbolized by the Goat's head?

2011-01-17T10:45:00.000-01:00

January 2011

by Carolyn Shield

I have written a number of articles on the towers or steeples of Rosslyn chapel. I came across an interesting steeple that appears to have a goat’s head carved in stone on a steeple. A goat’s head would be important because of it’s symbolism to the freemasons.

Rosslyn chapel steeple by Carolyn Shield

Rosslyn chapel steeple which appears to look like a goat's head by Carolyn Shield

One of the Masonic initiation rituals is called “riding the goat” The goat has symbolism linked with Pan and Dionysius or Bacchus. Pan is god of shepherds, hunting, wild mountains, and nymphs.

Pan is symbolism of fertility, spring and his home is Arcadia. The god Zeus suckled goat’s milk when a child by Almathea his foster mother. Capricorn is the constellation of the goat. It starts around December 22 and ends around January 22 which is the timebirth in the church calendar.

Saturnalia was celebrated by the Romans. It is celebrating the birth of the sun with winter solstice. John the Baptist birthday was celebrated during the Summer solstice.

In Neopagnism Pan is associated with male sexuality and virility. “In 1933, the Egyptologist Margaret Murray published the book, The God of the Witches, in which she theorised that Pan was merely one form of a horned god who was worshipped across Europe by a witch-cult(1)” Wicca has Pan connected with the horned god Cernunnos and India’s Pashupati.

Cernunnos is a celtic horned god of nature and fertility. In the chapel below is the green man entwined with vine and leaves throughout the church possibly in reverence to Cernunnos or Pan. of Jesus’s

Pan and the magical flute

Francisco Goya, le Sabbat des sorcières (the Sabbath of witches). Oil on canvas, 44 × 31 cm. Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid

Greek Dionysus is the god of winemaking and harvest of the wines. Roman Bacchus is carried a fennel wand with a pine cone. Many Dionysian cults which expressed freedom conducted rituals in which it was said members were empowered by the god himself. Dionysus is the cult of the dead in which he is the communicator between the living and the dead.

Albert Mackey in his Encyclopedia of Freemasonry (1873) cites the Rev. Dr. George Oliver in recording a common belief of the early nineteenth century that freemasons practiced some form of witchcraft:

"Doctor Oliver says, it was in England a common belief that the Freemasons were accustomed in their Lodges "to raise the Devil."

So the riding of the goat, which was believed to be practised by the witches, was transferred to the Freemasons; and the saying remains to this day, although the belief has long since died out."⁴ (2)

The legend of the Templars and Baphomet is connected with the word. Alleged name of the idol which the Templars were accused of worshipping. (According to l'Abbé Constant, quoted by Littré,¹ this word was cabalistically formed by writing backward tem. o. h. p. ab., abbreviation of templi omnium hominum pacis abbas, 'abbot' or 'father of the temple of peace of all men.') Hence Baphomet·ic a. Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984 (23rd Printing) p. 659.

Hugh De Payens established the Knights Templar on September 13 and who came to Balantravach (Midlothian) Scotland. It became the first land dedicated to the Templars by Royal charter. It is located a few miles from Rosslyn chapel. The Pope and King of France arrested the Templars. “Out of 231 templars tried only 12 admitted under torture admitted to knowing anything about the icon (Baphomet)”.

Ammon of Mendes was a ram headed Egyptian god who was later changed to a goat head. Mendes is a town on the Nile. Ammon (the concealed) was associated with the divinity of nature. Reproduction and cyclical regeneration. The Greeks later named him Pan. Ammon was for many ages the main god of Egypt . The light giving sun god is Amen Ra (the hidden One). Amen is said after many prayers.

Rosslyn Chapel was called Saint Matthew's Chapel originally. An interesting line pertains to goats and sheep in St Matthew. Goats tend to be more aggressive and wanting freedom verses sheep who are passive and follows obediently with the fold. It is interesting that the goat's head was carved on the steeple by the masons of Rosslyn.

Matthew 25:32-33

All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. ³³ And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left

Rosslyn Chapel is a tribute to nature with it's sky of pentacles, flowers, vines, and green men. The goat's head is a tribute to the god of nature, fertility, and light. "Riding the goat", a saying by freemason's referring to one of their rituals.

Saint Clair was named Grand Master Mason of Scotland. William Schaw is looked upon as the founding father of freemasonry. It moved from an organization of masons to include later those who were not . The symbolism of the goat seems to have been important to the masons of Rosslyn. This goat has climbed to one of the highest points on Rosslyn steeple.

Sources

http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/goat.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_%28mythology%29

http://www.freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/baphomet.html

http://www.experiencefestival.com/mendes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_%28god%29

Rosslyn Chapel Revealed by Michael T.R.B. Turnbull

Source: http://www.ufodigest.com

Area Still Has Ancient 'Race of Giants' Mutation

2011-01-12T23:15:00.002-01:00

January 2011

He stood about 2.4m tall, earned his living from street shows and died at 22. Now researchers have found that Charles Byrne, the most famous giant in medical history, sprang from a mutant gene that first appeared 1500 years ago and is still causing excessive growth in families in the same area of Northern Ireland where he was born.

The current "race of giants" is concentrated in a small area, but researchers requested its location not be disclosed to protect residents from curious onlookers.

After the discovery, doctors screened four families from the area found to carry the same genetic mutation and identified three patients in the early stages of excessive growth who had not realised they were affected.

Read full story at nzherald.co.nz