Auditory reassurance can take the form of our own voice, or it can take the form of other people’s voices and can influence the way we act. If you don’t know which little voice I am talking about, it is the little voice which is reading this text aloud in your head. Now it might also be saying “oh, that little voice!”

When making a decision about how to deal with a friend for example, it is possible to play out the scene when planning what to do and say to the friend. It is not uncommon to hear the friend’s voice playing out the part of the friend in the pre-enactment. In Western society we tend to ignore the fact we do this because of a fear of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is really badly portrayed in modern story telling. Anything written by Stephen King for example is wildly inaccurate. Schizophrenia is not so much about hearing voices as much as it is about not recognising the difference between imagination and reality.

If I think about a conversation with a friend I may well be able to imagine them saying “Wow Tinley, that’s amazing!” but when I see that friend I am aware I have not actually had the conversation. A schizophrenic might not know the conversation had only taken place in their imagination.

So this actually is an invitation to hear voices. To recognise the characters which play out your life before and after it happens. To hear those voices play out the way you imagine things will go and to catch them talking in your judgements about the way things went.

Discuss!

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

The whole thing is terrifying!

I smoked when I was a kid and the virus got out the way

When I stopped being high the virus came back and wanted to OWN that space

Smoking after that caused a panic attack, the virus was too afraid of losing control

But maybe the loss of control is the control the body/mind seeks

I took a pill when I was in my twenties and it was such a shock the virus went missing

When I stopped being high the virus came back and wanted to OWN that space

Every pill after that caused a struggle with the virus which looked like psychosis

In a sense the virus knew it was beaten, so any sense of loss of control caused a panic attack

Curing the panic attacks became the focus

But behind all the new age thinking that cured panic attacks

Another message?

The virus isn’t real…

It has no substance to it…

The virus goes on, with the sense that its life is over

And it is afraid

And fear is its control, it snaps right back into being with fear

Now matter what has been seen

If there is fear, there is probably more to do on it

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

TVMania

As well as doing my own podcast The Creative Catalyst and public speaking, from time to time I enjoy presenting other podcasts and radio shows.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Nick Rhodes and Warren Cuccurullo about the TVMania project I recorded with them back in 1995 (which was recently released by The Vinyl Factory).

The following program aired on the Sonic Talk Podcast, on April 10^th 2013. With permission of the copyright holder, here is the transcript. The article was transcribed by Krystalin Schamber.

Mark Tinley: Hello.

Nick Rhodes: Hello Mr. Tinley.

MT: How are you then?

NR: I’m perfectly acceptable for this time of night. You?

MT: I’m alright. Okay, let’s see. So Anthony and I did an interview with Nick Batt last week and talked a bit about production and technology and I really wanted to get your take on it and Warren’s if possible but it’s probably easier if I call him separately.

NR: Well I can obviously talk about keyboards and stylophone and things like that, but the actual, you know, what we recorded on and everything, I think it’s probably best if you just deal with that.

MT: Perfect. So I think what might work is if you tell the story, once we’ve got into the story of it, then I guess questions will just kind of naturally come about and we can go from there.

NR: I see, Mr. Tinley. Yes, we just need to get into a few areas I guess of the things that you think we should be talking about.

MT: Take us back into the past and just tell us a story.

NR:  Back to 1995-96, I remember the day that you and Warren and I were sitting down watching this Planet Fashion show on TV that used to be on when we got into the studio every day. And we were all sat there watching it and I said, ‘Look.  They’re talking in lyrics!  They’re talking in song titles!  Everything they say could be the title of something.’ And that’s really what happened.

MT: What strikes me immediately when I listen to that record now, is that it’s almost visionary? It’s bizarre in that what it’s about, the whole reality TV thing; it’s just, we made that record in 1995-96. And it’s about now!

NR:  Yeah, I think the thing was that during that time period, we had just finished the Thank You album, which was a Duran Duran cover version album. And we were embarking on a new studio album project, which ended up becoming Medazzaland. But it was quite a difficult album to make because Simon really hit a brick wall with lyrics and he asked for some time to spend searching for some inspiration, which of course was understandable and we said, fine. But as Warren and I didn’t really want to stop working, we stayed in the studio and had to invent something new to do. And we had recently been working with an opera set designer, Stefanos Lazaridis, who sadly is no longer with us. But he was hugely creative and worked with us on the Wedding Album tour. And he said to Warren and I, “I would love to collaborate more, can you possibly come up with something that we might be able to work on together?” So we were thinking in a very visual sense. And it sort of all came about by us discussing what we might want to write about or create a project around. And I had this vision in my head of a dysfunctional family, but real stereotypes. So, for example, the mother was on pharmaceutical pills, the father was a religious freak, the son was a computer hacker and obsessed with online games, and the daughter was incredibly beautiful and just wanted to be famous for any possible reason but didn’t really know why. And it seemed like they were the archetypal modern family with all the things that we were viewing at that stage, because not only was the internet developing rapidly, we were also overwhelmed with surveillance cameras everywhere we went, London being the most surveilled city in the world. And we also were sort of at the birth of new pharmaceuticals such as Prozac, and anything that sounded like an alien in Star Trek…Vicodin. You know, those kinds of things. And so, I think that that all coloured the way we were looking at things. And I really wanted to do a sort of pop culture piece. And we’d never written a concept album. And in some ways, it’s sort of a dirty word because you think of those triple concept albums from the Seventies with drawings of goblins and pixies on the covers. That wasn’t what we were thinking at all. It was something high-tech, modern, and relative to the fabric of our society. And so that’s where we started. And once I got this idea of this family, Warren and I threw the ideas around a lot and came up with this concept that there was a family who were so perfect for the media, that they were discovered by scientists who said look, we need to study them. We need to find out what’s going wrong in the world and find out why families are ending up like this. So they were going to take them and put them in a house and seal them so they couldn’t get out, and they would just film them 24 hours a day. Now, this all sounds rather familiar at this point. But when we came up with this idea, there was nothing, no Big Brother, no Survivor,  and there wasn’t the Truman show either. So we literally based everything on this family and developed the story to the point where we even said, well the family are going to be in there. They’re not going to know what’s going on. The scientists are going to be looking at it and they’re going to realise the enormous potential that this could be broadcast live on the internet and around the world. And they’re going to sell the rights without the family even knowing what they’re doing. And that everybody is watching what they’re doing. So that’s how developed it was.

MT: Well you gave me a script. I remember this huge script that you came in with and said, there’s the outline to the story.

NR: Yeah, well we printed pretty much the same thing in the album packaging. Because I think in retrospect, it’s much more interesting. The reason we dropped that back then in ‘96 is we saw The Truman Show about six-nine months after we finished the album. That came out, and Warren and I just looked at each other and said, wow, well there goes that idea. It’s too close. There are a lot of other people obviously thinking the same things because that technology is out there, it’s in the atmosphere and it’s bound to happen. And a few months later, there was Survivor and Big Brother and everything else.  We know the history.  But what we did have is the music, that we created inspired by that idea of the family.  So when we found samples for things “Beautiful Clothes” or “I Wanna Make Films”, they were for the daughter.  And when we found “Using A Hidden Camera”, that was for the son.  And when we found things for “Euphoria”, that was for the mother.  “What About God?” was for the father.  So it all pieced together and sort of made sense for us.  It’s good to look for inspiration in different places, otherwise we’re back to the same place we we started talking about earlier where everything starts to sound the same.  All the same.

(Laughter)

NR: I think the thing was that during that time period, we were locked into a little room in Battersea for quite a bit of time.  And we were soaking up what was going on in the world around us, listening to the music that was out there, watching things on TV, and more importantly, watching the development of the internet, which was so extraordinarily exciting in the late ‘90s.  And I think everyone involved in the TV Mania project realized the significance of the internet.  I know you were way ahead of most people, Tinley, when you were looking at it and knowing where it was going to go.  What I was curious about was how quick the proliferation would be and how people would adopt it and use it for their own purposes in their lives.  For us, obviously music was a simple transition.  Once I saw Napster, I knew the future was never going to be the same again.  In fact, in ‘97, Duran Duran became the first band to ever sell a legal download online with the song Electric Barbarella. I pushed the button myself, at Abbey Road.  And that was kind of a monumental moment looking back at it, because we all knew you could transfer files and Napster was exploding.  But the fact that you could sell them to people, to honest people out there, and potentially there was a future for the music business online, that was the first time we realized that.  And that was ‘97 and I don’t think iTunes happened for another six years.

MT: No, it didn’t because I was ran that digitisation company and we were doing that in 2000 I think.  And we were a business to business provider. And Apple wasn’t even in that business model at that point.  So I don’t think that happened until after that company folded in 2001 I think.   So Apple didn’t come on the scene till about 2002 maybe?

NR:  Obviously the brand was around a long time but iTunes was launched 10 years ago; yeah, 2003.   It’s amazing what happened in that six year void to me, that nobody really jumped on it.  Of course I think the labels handled it extraordinarily badly, in hindsight.  Because of course instead of trying to smash up this incredible technology they should have embraced it.  Easy to say now, but even then, I did think it was completely the wrong way to look at it, hence we did do the first download with “Electric Barbarella”.  But given the background of that and what we were looking at,  and the technology that was available then, and how we’d moved much more toward digital, we were recording digitally, not into the computer I believe. We were using digital tape machines.

MT: Yeah, we were doing four tracks at a time into the computer.  So we were recording things into the computer and cutting it all up.  And then after using all four tracks in the computer we’d run out of tracks so we’d have to bounce it onto the DA88.  So we were kind of bouncing stuff back and forth between four tracks on the computer and digital tape machines.  So we had 24 tracks of digital tape, but then I had all those samplers as well, hundreds of the damn things…

(Laughter)

NR: Yeah, I think there’s a strange parallel to how people were working in the sixties, particularly The Beatles when they were recording on 4 track, and then I think on 8 track for Sgt. Pepper’s. They had to constantly bounce things and to put tracks together so they could make space for the next thing.  Bizarre that we chose to do it that way rather than tape, but I suppose also it was much more convenient because we were in a tiny room and we couldn’t have had some great big 24 or 48 track tape machine and all the servicing that you would need to make that work properly.

MT: The other technology that seems to be really common and absolutely all over everything now is the vocoded vocal style, the thing we did on “Euphoria” with Madeleine’s voice.  The digitech vocalist.  Now everything sounds like that.  Nearly every record in the charts has that kind of slightly robotic sort of feel to it.

NR: Often for the wrong reasons.  Most people can’t sing.

(Laughter)

NR: Mind you, there are lots of people that can sing perfectly well and use it as an effect.  Yeah, I mean, for us, we have always tried to use the latest technology in the best possible ways to adopt it for our sound.  So when a new box arrives that does something that we haven’t discovered before, of course we want to explore.  And I think the Digitech vocalist, on that, was one of those prime examples where we got it out, didn’t even read the book properly, and started playing with it to see what we could do.  I think it’s held up well on “Euphoria”.  I think Madeleine’s voice sounds great. But also all the stuff at the beginning with all the harmonies on it, you haven’t heard that sound.

MT: No, people don’t use it for harmonies very much and it does do that remarkably well.  But I guess that’s because people are using Auto-Tune or Melodyne or some other kind of tuning method and then maybe they are not thinking so much about the harmonies.

NR:  Yeah, quite possibly.  And I think it’s a fashion, that’s what’s happened to the sound.  It’s something that people are used to and it feels familiar and good to a generation of people.  Actually I’m to the point where if somebody doesn’t start using it differently I’m going to have to block all new music out of my life I think because I have to confess it does drive me a little crazy.

MT: Yeah, me too.  I think the antidote is to go listen to Iggy Pop And The Stooges, if you listen to some of that early stuff.

NR:  And how unbelievably new does it sound when you parallel it to the homogenized sound that is so ubiquitous now.

MT: But he’s such a raw kind of cool; out of time and out of tune, that he’s almost not in the same arena as the band.  It just sounds really energetic and fresh. Like, human!

NR:  People used to want to capture a performance.  We appear to have gone backwards in many, many ways.  You’ve got to make decisions, intelligent decisions about how to use it.  Because if you just let it take over, you say well anyone can make a record now; you push all these buttons, you go onto a Garage Band, you do what you want, there are plenty of nice sounds in there, and that’s why everything sounds the same.

MT: Even to the point where like all the plug-ins pretty much sound the same, actually.

NR: Well it was inevitable.  It’s become like fast food.  It’s pre-prepared meals; that’s what people are making songs out of.  And occasionally somebody comes along and says, ooh, I’m going to make a sound myself that’s different from those other sounds, and actually, I’m going to use a completely different arrangement and I’m not going to use the same beat we all have to listen to, ad nauseum, every day.  And you end up with something more interesting.

MT: I think my brother is a good example of that actually.  His Neo-Waltz thing is extremely interesting.

NR: Yes, indeed.

MT: I went to one of his evenings and there were a whole load of people dressed up in really over the top fetish wear and crossed with Victoriana, all waltzing.

NR: Sounds perfectly normal to me. I think it’s important to always try and keep a perspective on music.  What’s great about what’s happened on iTunes and digitally for all of us is that you can discover lots of different types of music.  Pretty much everything is now available on iTunes or Amazon or wherever you go.  And you can find things really quickly.  You can have it there in a second.  What more could you possibly hope for? When we were kids, if someone said look, you just click something and it gets delivered to you immediately, in the middle of the night from wherever in the ether…  We would never have believed it possible, of course.  But now everyone takes it for granted.  I have to say, on another angle, I keep talking about the past here which I don’t very often.  But I must say I’m very happy to see the rise of vinyl again.  It’s a shame about HMV here in the UK being the last great record store chain to close down. But great news about vinyl.  When we were releasing the TV Mania project I absolutely was insistent that we put it out on vinyl because I wanted to have the most amazing sounding fidelity experience that you could.  And it worked out incredibly well, we did it with the Vinyl Factory here who are absolutely brilliant.  Really, the future of music, bizarrely being vinyl.  And obviously, downloads.

MT: I’ve noticed this happening on Facebook, everyone discussing vinyl.  And in people’s Twitter feed.  People are saying they went out and bought a record player.  And then people are going out and buying records and having vinyl parties.  They’re getting hold of loads of old records and getting together and playing records.  How cool is that?

NR:  Absolutely.  I agree.

MT: So I guess ours will be amongst that.  People will be able to play ours while they’re having vinyl parties.

NR: I hope so.  Because I am thrilled that it’s out in that format.  I still think it’s the most valid audio experience format out there.  We were all completely conned by people saying that CDs were actually better quality; less noise. Maybe less noise, but of course, we like the noise.  That’s the other thing that everything sounds so clean and perfect now.  I spend most of my life in the studio, if I’m dealing with anything digital, smashing it up so that it doesn’t sound like that.

(Laughter)

MT: We did that with the K2000 though because I seem to remember running everything that was in the K2000 through your AKS Synthi. So everything had that filter on it.  Everything got kind of processed with Spring Reverb and the old fashioned 24 pole filters.

NR: Well as you know, I’m a big fan of processing things to try to see what you can do.  I very much look at making music like making a painting.  And you have lots of different things available to you.  Lots of brushes, lots of paint, lots of different dust you can throw all over the paint.  And if you choose carefully and you develop your technique, that’s when you find the most interesting things.  All the records that I like have that element to them.  New records, there are some of course, but thinking of when dance music was changing again. When the trip hop thing happened and Massive Attack and Tricky and Portishead. It was the last time I actually remember thinking, wow, okay. That’s really interesting because they’ve done something very different with what we had available.  And obviously, Hip Hop; I think a very significant album is Fear of a Black Planet by Public Enemy.  I think that was around 1990.  So that was 5-6 years before we started the TV Mania project.  And the way they used samples, which were not from television but from other people’s records.  But they used so many, and they really cut things up in a very new way.  And I feel that they were way ahead of their time.

MT: So tell me about the franchise. Because I actually think that sounds like a really innovative idea.  And it sounds like something which can be a very interesting way for people to get involved in the music industry and to promote their own ideas within TV Mania as an existing brand.  How does that franchise thing work?

NR: It was actually a very simple idea I had.  Because of the way we made the TV Mania album which was using samples from television and old rhythm units, some analog gear and a few other samples and processing a lot of stuff and building the tracks up together.  It was almost like a junk shop of bits and pieces that we had.  But a beautiful junk shop, where you can find gems.  And we used to, as you know,  lay the samples out over the entire keyboard and you’d just let Warren and I play.  And sometimes he’d be at one end of the keyboard and I’d be at the other one.  And he’d be playing some of the more rhythmic parts and I’d play the samples that I wanted to become the lyric, or vice-versa. And so because we made it in that sort of scrapbook way, it was very hands on.  Almost William Burroughs cut ups but made out of music, the whole thing, all the samples.  I felt that what’s happened since we’ve made the record is that music has moved more in that direction except that it’s become more formatted and more traditional in that people use samples.  You don’t hear people singing a whole song anymore.  You just sort of hear them sing a chorus and it gets repeated and copied and pasted into the next one.  And the technology I was hoping would be used more for experimentation has been used more to make the same pattern time after time.  But, having said that, I’m sure there are a lot of creative people out there, some who are already musicians or DJs or artists, others who have never touched anything.  And I would say to all of them, you should try to make something if it’s appealing to you.  And you’d be surprised with the technology if you’re not familiar how easy it can become.  And don’t be afraid of doing something that you think might be wrong.  That’s probably the best thing to do.

MT: Yeah, absolutely.

NR: And explore something and try to find ways to make something that is appealing to you.  So, what the franchise was really about was to say look, TV Mania is not an active band.  In fact, we sort of sadly disbanded seventeen years ago after we made this record.  Of course Warren and I still know each other and we communicate and we had a lovely time when we launched the project in London together.  But we’re not going to be going out playing shows.  It seems a shame to not have this TV Mania mentality out there in the world.  So I just thought, well, if there was anyone who wants to make something and would like to find a channel to put it up online, if they follow the simple manifesto that we’re going to put up on the website, tvmaniamusic.com very shortly, the idea is going to be, here are some rules.  You can break rules, that’s what they’re there for. But it’s just some guidelines to give people some ideas of what it’s about.  For example, use analog rhythm units.  Sample people talking.  Use any kind of sounds that you find that you think will work with what you’re doing.  It’s just a few guidelines of how we made TV Mania and a few interesting ideas and principles.  We’re trying to encourage people to make what they want and upload it to our site and put them all together.  So you can get a TV Mania franchise.  For example if you happen to live in Mumbai, you can apply for the franchise for TV Mania Mumbai, or equally for TV Mania Adelaide  or TV Mania Hong Kong. If these start springing up in different countries or areas, we may have a mini-genre of our own of people who make this kind of music out of the things we’re going to provide as options because well, you prepared, Tinley, a fantastic selection of sounds that we actually used on the album.  So people have that, and they can use that.  Or they can use whatever they want.  One thing I must make very clear is that if you’re using a sample of anybody you must try to clear that sample before you can use it for anything commercial at all.  But otherwise, it’s quite an open book.  And I like the idea of different people from different areas of life and culture creating something when they haven’t necessarily done this before.  So we’re just sort of opening the doors and saying, please come in.  Send something in.  Of course whatever you make you own the copyright on and you never know what might come out of it.  It’s a bizarre new way of trying to make a reality project creative, rather than trying to find the same thing again and again.

MT: It takes the concept of remix to a completely new level.

NR: Yes. I think that particularly the samples that we’ve made available, you could make a remix of several of the TV Mania songs, but make a new version of it. For sure, because you have all the original parts that usually would only go to selected remixers.  We’re making them available because I think it would be interesting to see what people would do.  Nothing more than that.

MT: We haven’t spoken about Warren very much have we?  Anthony and I have spoken but Warren hasn’t  really been involved in this conversation.

NR:  I’m sure he’d love to be.  Call him and I’m sure he’d talk with you.

MT: Warren used to record it on cassette I think.

NR: Yes, on VHS videotape.  That’s we had at the time.

MT: And then I used to sample it off the videotape.  And cut it up into hundreds and hundreds of samples.  I’ve got a thousand samples!

NR: How much fun is that?  That’s the next three concept albums.

MT: Yes, exactly.  (Laughs)  All the keyboards you had that had MIDI on them had the MIDI out routed into the computer somehow so there was a set of samples on about four or five different sets of keyboards maybe all around the room.

NR: Yeah, it was a sample factory for sure.  I remember it incredibly fondly. Because it was pure exploration and experimentation.  And I’d be the first to say to write a really beautiful song that means things to people, that touches a nerve, that’s skill that you need to develop.  You need to think about it and you need to really have something to say and craft the song very carefully.  But once you move away from that for a minute and say, right, we’re going to create something that is very different.  There aren’t any rules, we’ll just do what we want.  It doesn’t have to go, intro, verse, bridge, chorus.  You can just put whatever you like on the canvas. And that’s what we were doing.  And I think that even though it’s seventeen years late in its release,  it’s held up much better than I could have imagined.

MT: I mean even to the point with what Anthony did with some of those sounds, it was incredible.  If I listen on my laptop, I look at my laptop and I look at where the sound is coming from and I think, why is the sound coming from over there?  It doesn’t sound like it’s coming from the laptop at all. It actually sounds like it’s coming from two feet either side of the laptop.  It’s just such a huge, wide sound.

NR: Yeah.  Well it’s extraordinary.  What was interesting about that was if you remember when we finally found the tapes and we’d mastered everything, you and Anthony and Warren were all saying the master sounds amazing.  And I was listening to it saying, no no no, there’s something really wrong with this.  The vocals, they’re just not right.  And I couldn’t understand why.  Because everyone else seemed so clear.  And I thought, surely people are hearing this!  And you were the one that actually figured out the MacBook Pro I had, that particular model…

MT: Yeah, you have the one with the dodgy subwoofer haven’t you?  (Laughs)

NR:  Well it had a problem with processing that sound. Therefore it wasn’t sounding the same as it was when I listened on someone else’s Mac that was at time three months newer than mine it sounded perfect.  But on mine it sounded horrendous.  So there goes technology for you.  That’s what happens when you change the format every 5 minutes.  I have to say I’m very happy with my new MacBook Pro.

MT: Have you got an iPad yet?

NR:  An iPad?  Yes, I do of course.  I’ve got the MS-20 it’s fun. Have you got that? It’s fun.  There are so many great things on the iPad. It’s joy. New joy to our lives Mr Tinley.

MT: Yeah, I have. Because I can touch it with 10 fingers at once, it means that I can kind of take a sound and do something really expressive with it.  Which I can’t do with a guitar and I can’t do with the keyboard.  So then of course it has the motion sensor and all the other stuff in it.

NR:  Fantastic. Excellent, Mr. Tinley.  Right.  I believe I better go.  So I hope you have enough there.

MT: I’m sure I have.

NR: Alright, Mr. Tinley.  Lovely to speak to you.  Talk to you soon.

MT: Cheers.  Bye.

Warren Cuccurullo: Hello.

Mark Tinley: Warren.

WC:  Mr. Tinley.

MT: Hello, I’ve finally overcome dyslexia and dialed the right number. Having dialled the wrong number several times.

WC: Jesus Christ! Alcohol does that to you too.

MT: Well I haven’t been drinking alcohol, I’m just dyslexic.  (Laughs) So how are you?

WC:  I always say the worst thing anyone could ask Warren Cuccurullo is, so how’s it been going?  What’s been going on?

MT: So what has been going on?

WC:  Anyway, how did it go?  Nick’s in rare form, isn’t he?

MT: Yeah, so I’ve done two things.  I’ve done the recording with Anthony and we did that on video and that’s gone on YouTube and it’s gone on SonicState.com And we talked about the franchise and we talked about all the technology we used.  And then I phoned Nick last night and we had a conversation on basically how the project started again, some of the technology we used.   I don’t know how you want to do it, if you want to answer the same kind of questions or just talk about the TV Mania project…

WC: Yeah, sure.  Let’s do it.

MT: There’s this woman called Diana Deutsch and she’s a musical psychologist.  And she has identified that if you repeat dialogue over and over again, there’s something the brain does in that it starts to hear it as music.  I think you’re very good at picking out musical hooks that are naturally in the way people intonate.  I think your brain must be wired to heart that stuff way quicker than everyone else…

WC:  See, people who think they’re not talking in melodies are actually wrong.  People who think they’re not talking in rhythms are actually wrong.  Because everything you say or hear is a melody and a rhythm.  There’s just no way around it.  Some of them are more interesting than others and some of them will certainly pop out, just like a thunder-clap does.  That’s how it is to me.  I mean, same thing with phrases; it’s not just the actual sound of the sample, it’s just the phrase that somebody could say. You know you have to have the kind of a Tarantino radar on all the time. It’s like anything you hear anyone say might be worth writing down.  Zappa was a big one on that.  Anything you think of that you think is okay, write it down.  Because you’re going to forget it.  My thing was always. I don’t want to write it down because I want to work on it in my head and make it worth remembering and unforgettable.  And if I forget it, it wasn’t worth working on.

MT: So it must be different for you now because I remember with the TV Mania record when we were doing that, we had four tracks of computer recording and we had 24 tracks of digital audio.  But I  seem to remember you being forever frustrated because I could never make those machines work as fast as you could think, so it was always like, hang on, I’ve just got to back all of this up to CD!  Because we only had that tiny little hard drive, and hardly any memory or anything!

WC:  I know, but you know what that’s helped me with?  I just brought this up yesterday to Eric, who I was working with at his studio.  That has given me an unbelievable amount of patience.  Even when it becomes like the DMV, (laughs) because when we were working together, which I always thought were miraculous times, we always just came up with the most incredible stuff.  And it was a great, creative environment.  But the computers were so slow.  And you were one of the only guys I knew, you and John Jones and Eddy Clothier were the only three people I knew who knew how to do something with the computer.  I was just always so anti-it.  Now things can take a long time too.  One because, yes, I do think very quickly, and I like to spit out an idea.  And I don’t want to sit for 25, 35, 45 minutes with the idea in my head, and I might even get bored of it by the time I get to try it out.  And that makes work a little more stressful.  But because of what we did back in the early days, I’m just kind of used to sitting on the couch, and kind of waiting.  Maybe work on something else, but in the meantime, don’t want to forget this one.

MT: Music is a language, music is a sort of series of words, phrases that we learn as musicians, that’s our repertoire of language that we can then construct music from.  I suppose you finding music in language is a very interesting twist on that.

WC: Yeah, I remember back years ago, Frank had a song called “The Dangerous Kitchen” and he was just kind doing his funny kind of talking, but he had Steve Vai transcribe it exactly and play it on the guitar. (Laughs)

MT: Well of course you can do that on the computer now, can’t you?  I can put dialogue into the computer and turn it into MIDI notes, which is kind of weird.

WC:  It’s really important to write stuff down.  So it’s not just developing a tune in your head.  I can get a track going in my head from like a germ, and it will just develop and develop.  Since I’m not really a technical guy, you know, I can play an instrument but I’m not really good with machines that are used for recording.  I’ve never really got into being a guy who can record himself.  I just never wanted to get into it.  Now, what I’m doing, is I feel more like a fashion designer trying to get the Spring line ready, just on one song, it’s like that.  Or a movie director who knows he has to get a million things together, but it’s gonna be done on this day and we’re going to have it.  I feel more like that than a “guitar player”.   And I love playing guitar.  To me it’s like one of the ultimate ways to express.  But there’s something about kind of directing a project, it’s more like being  a designer.

MT: See, I’ve never understood that with grooves. You know like when you get a groove going, and then someone says oh you’re going to change all the chords for the chorus.  I’ve never got that. That’s why I love “I Wanna Make Films” because it just doesn’t change.  That bassline.  That’s the groove.  You don’t lose the groove anywhere in that song by going, oh, I’m going to have to change some notes so I can do some different chords.  And I suppose I tend to write basslines that stay the same all through the song and will work through a different set of chords. Which is sometimes limiting, but it’s the reason why I always want that groove to always be there.

WC:  Yeah.  But, that’s where Trance came from, baby.  (Laughs)

MT: Yeah. I guess so.

WC: Well that’s what it is.  It’s just hypnotic.  You know, just stay in key.  Indian music, drones.  You know, it would bring you into another place, wouldn’t it?  A lot of droney music does that.

MT: I like those kind of sort of beyond blue notes they do in Indian music.

WC: Do you know who invented Auto Tune by the way?

MT: The company is called Antares.  Whether they invented the first automatic tuning program, I don’t know.  But Auto-tune came after the DigiTech vocalist, didn’t it?

WC: Do you have to do it completely out of tune for it to do its most radical thing?  Or can you just sing it and correct it?  Because like with Emma, she’s so in tune.  When I try to get a robotic effect on her voice with AutoTune on Melodine? even, it’s not correcting it at all because she’s so spot on.

MT: You may need to get another vocalist.  Not another vocalist as in a physical female vocalist, but as in one of those rack units.  Because you are able to plug the MIDI keyboard into the back of that unit and play it.

WC: Play it, yeah.  But you’d be doing that anyway with the mouse.  You’re telling it play this note, play that note.

MT: There’s a lot of parameters to change doing it like that. It’s much quicker to play it in from keys.

WC: I’d rather play everything in from keys.

MT: Yeah, well the thing with the Melodyne, there’s three or four different things happening so there’s the note correction, and it doesn’t always do like absolutely hard note corrections so you have to go and manually edit it. Then you’ve got modulations, and then there are slides between notes, and you’ve got to edit all these things.

WC: What I’m saying is with all the tweaking I have not heard it do what I’d like it to do yet.

MT: I think you should buy another Vocalist Rack? then. I am sure you an do that with a TC Helicon as well though.

WC: I want to start thinking about those other two TV Mania albums.

MT: Yeah, where are they though?

WC:  I’ve got the multi-tracks.  So the Blondie songs we did at the end of the tape, those are on there as well.

MT: Well there are about 50 songs aren’t there?

WC:  Yes, it was quite a lot.  It was a trilogy, the album.  So, if we do want to get it to Broadway at some point in time, it would be good to finish these songs lyrically.  These are the songs that will lend themselves to explaining more of what’s going on.  They were prettier, more song-like traditionally.  And those songs will be used to flesh out the characters in the storyline.  Now that TV Mania actually exists and we’re getting feedback, it makes me wonder if we should complete the other two as part of the show.  So that we have all of the material needed to flesh it out.

MT: It does sort of make sense, especially now that we don’t have to rely on ISDN and dodgy internet connections…I can send you a gigabyte of data in about thirty minutes probably… And everybody is in the same kind of game now rather than we need it in this format or that format otherwise it won’t work…

WC: Yeah, we’ve been through some stuff in the nineties. It’s unbelievable.   And we thought we were in the future then!

MT: I do keep harping on about this but I just got an iPad mini.  And I’ve just been playing around with that this evening.  Can you remember the guy who came to the studio with that box with hexagon shaped buttons on it?

WC: Dude, I bought one for Paul Allen.

MT: Ever since that guy came I’ve always wanted one of those.  I just bought an iApp and it does wireless MIDI, and I can walk around my house and play the iPad, and it comes out of my computer!  I know how it’s working but it just seems incomprehensible compared to what we’ve done with the TV Mania thing.

WC: It’s almost like for me, on many levels, TV Mania really couldn’t have come out at any other time than now.  It’s a bizarre thing, but it just feels completely right right now for some reason, where maybe 2002, 2003, 2004, maybe it wouldn’t have.  Because it has blown up, this social networking thing.  It’s a bit much, I know.  I don’t participate in it in any way, shape or form.  But dude, I love the idea of being able to write an album and a billion people can buy it on their phone.  We couldn’t say that in the 90s.  They don’t even have to go to the shop, they can just do the whole thing like in the song, “Paramount”, right there, just point, buy the track, done.  Strange.

MT: So then again, that’s all part of what TV Mania is about, isn’t it?  About people losing their lives into a system.

WC:  Yeah, it certainly was.  It’s was about a scary future scenario that came all too soon, didn’t it?  A lot of people were thinking about it and writing about it.  Like the script writer for the Truman Show, all the reality shows.  I remember when we were working on this stuff in Privacy.  We were talking about something that was going on in Japan, some guy that wouldn’t come out of his room or something.  And something else going on in Holland based on this kind of filming and unusual circumstance.

WC: Well dude, I think I’ve got to…

MT: Yeah, I was going to say, I think we’ve come to a natural conclusion.

WC:  Yeah, awesome, dude.  I’ve enjoyed it.

MT: Okay cool. Thanks so much.

***

I hope you got some insights into the technology we used to make the TV Mania album.

You can find out more from tvmaniamusic.com

You can find out more about Nick Rhodes from duranduran.com

You can find out more about Warren Cuccurullo from cuccurullo.tv

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty Wharton (AKA Tinley)

I need advice about where I could live and find these qualities…

It can be anywhere in the world. If you live in a place which has any of these qualities, please tell me about it.

I want to live somewhere contemporary with good travel connections with broad minded / open minded people.

A community atmosphere is important and I would like people to be friendly.

It needs to have a great local authority and to be healthy and safe.

I want to find efficient people who do what they say they will do when they say they will do it.

Please give me your top three suggestions.

Thank you.

Mark.

I have teamed up with Robyn Steward, international speaker and autism consultant, to release a single to celebrate world autism awareness day.

Together we are known as ARRAY.

Available from all good digital outlets from April 2nd the single “Space Cadet” tells the story of a bullied dalek who grows breasts, becomes good and flies off to save the world.

What makes the project unique is that both Robyn and I have been diagnosed with a form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome.

I notice a lot of people who have autistic traits working in the music industry. They are often in supporting roles, helping other artists. They may not always be willing to take to the limelight to entertain us, but autistic people can be incredibly innovative. Take Robyn and myself as an example. We aren’t really interested in following the mainstream and we are planning to do an album where we draw on all sorts of influences, from places you wouldn’t really expect, it’s going to be fun.

This double A side is taken from our forthcoming album and features two very different versions of the song. One darker and more melancholic, the other a trip hop – hip pop rendition with a quirky animé vocal influenced by Japanese vocaloid artist Hatsune Miku.

The single (released on Delektra delektra.com) will be available from iTunes and other digital outlets from April 2nd, 2013.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

Now this can happen when asked to consider the following. It may be that this only happens for a moment, yet in another sense, a moment is all we are.

Consider the phrase “my body” and what it means. Look for an obvious sense of separation between this body and something which is claiming to own this.

So who does this body belong to?

“My Body” really does imply there is something else, something other than the body which can own it.

Yet no such thing exists, it is nowhere to be found, look…

There is only a body.

Perhaps consider there is a mind? Then it can be possible to consider the mind is not the body.

Maybe the mind is the owner?

But what is this mind, other than a collection of thoughts?

And if they are “my” thoughts, then where still is this “me” which is having thoughts?

Again there is no such “me”, it is nowhere to be found, there is only a body. The rest? All smoke and mirrors of imagination.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

iOS Alphabet by @joekissell

I ReTweeted this earlier because I thought it was cute.

But think about it…

Why on Earth do we still arrange our alphabet in this order?

I know I have mentioned this many times before, but I think it is important.

Consider that even children in school are more likely to to the QWERTY alphabet (well technically it is a Qoppabet) first.

In fact I can’t think of any good reason why we should not teach children the characters in this relatively new and more efficient order.

RT @joekissell: The iOS alphabet. Because someone had to do it. twitter.com/joekissell/sta…

— It’s Tinley Man! (@mark_tywharton) March 7, 2013

What do you think?

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton.

Simon Tinley

My father was once a young man, I have fond memories of him…

Dad used to put me to bed and tell me these wonderful stories when I was a child. Did you know my father once rode a motorbike into a horse on a dark and unlit moor, it’s a fabulous tale.

And there are these impossible things that only Dads can do, I swear he must have used magic. He even created the illusion of time travel, I once went to bed in Pennington, Hampshire and woke up in France.

Still not sure how he did that trick but going on those holidays was very special. There was the lingering smell of Barfleur and the taste de l’orange givrée.

As human beings you tend to have two kinds of long term memory. When something bad happens, vivid mental pictures can stay with you for the rest of your life. Conversely, when something truly amazing touches you, that moment can leave you with happy memories rich with content.

I guess at that time I was the same age that my youngest son is now. Dad used to let me light his cigars, but of course that was in an era before tobacco was dangerous.

My Dad was like a James Bond super hero and we were on some kind of a mission to outrun pirates. He would encourage me to write in the ships log. We went crabbing in pools, my mum Carol (also pictured) didn’t have grey hair. And then in time I grew up and left home.

As a young adult it can be ever so easy to lose touch with your parents. Parents seem like alien creatures when we become independent but I think it is our job as their children to then, try and find that connection again. To give up any story about our parents getting the whole thing wrong.

Our parents helped shape us into who we are now. In that sense, they are the perfect parents, indeed, they gave us the gift of life. Inside these aliens the parents are still there, you just have to know where to look.

In the end I found my Dad after having a conversation with one of his friends. We were at dinner and I was sitting next to her. She poked me in the ribs and she said.

“I love your Dad, he’s got such a wonderful sense of humour”

And I was thinking ‘who?’ ‘what?’

Then it slowly dawned on me that the woman knew my father infinitely better than I did at that time, so I decided to open my eyes to her point of view.

To my surprise, the magical man who was there throughout childhood was still sitting right there in front of me. As he is now.

So it is my pleasure and privilege to invite you to find and raise a glass and take a hearty swig to celebrate one of my favourite people.

My father, Simon.

That’s The Way The Cookie Crumbles

For the past couple of days there has been a conversation about “in another universe this is happening Dad” with my seven year old son while driving him to school.

I asked “is it a distant universe or a parallel universe?”

Then after defining parallel universe together we played with the reality of it.

This morning, I had the wipers on because it was raining cookies. We were opening the windows and grabbing them and eating them.

My son and I were engaged in powerful imaginative story telling.

The wheels were getting stuck in melted chocolate and in my mind’s eye at least it could all be seen happening.

On return to the real universe, there was a thought that THIS (what is happening, seen and heard in the real universe) is also just make believe.

There was a real experience of “so called reality is also imagined.”

Reality is made up by the brain in response to stimuli.

It is just richer in experience and has more content than what is seen in the mind’s eye.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

Neve VR60

I remembered an optical illusion (which features in a chapter of my forthcoming book) which I would like to share with you. I discovered this when I was in my teens.

I woke up one day with my hand on the wall beside my bed and noticed I could put my hand underneath the pattern on the wall paper. It was kind of freaky but it consistently worked. I found out why years later from a fellow sound engineer.

How to do it with a mixing desk:

Notice a mixing desk has lots of identical channel strips, all laid out with the same detail, side by side, a couple inches apart. Much the same as wallpaper in fact.

Notice it is possible to cross the eyes such that adjacent strips of pattern can be made to overlap and occur to the brain as one coherent image. This works with any horizontal pattern which can be framed in view.

The game in the studio was to get some unsuspecting person (particularly a drunk person – in this case me) to look at the mixing desk and to cross their eyes and overlap adjacent channels. I was encouraged to overlap as many as possible.

Let me see if I can bring this to life for you.

I am standing looking at a mixing desk and Stuart, the tracking engineer on Duran Duran’s Astronaut, is instructing me to cross my eyes and move channel strip numbers to overlap them.

The mixing desk channels are visually consistent apart from these numbers. I am looking directly at 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 etc.

It is a beautiful old Neve VR60 desk with bright red and blue coloured knobs and long steel flying faders.

I manage to cross four strips over and create a single fairly stable image, such that the numbers 21 and 24 are sitting on top of one another.

It’s looking all a bit like something that has been shot with a fish eye lens, my eyes are watering and the perspective is really something, a very strange larger than life depth of field.

Then it happens…

Stuart throws a reel of gaffer tape into my field of view and it disappears into a void beneath the mixing desk.

It is just hovering in a nowhere underneath the knobs.

Then I remembered being a teenager.

The hand and the pattern.

And then I fell over

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

Imagination, The Power Of Creation

We talked about water and oceans.

Osho’s explanation that we are like a wave has probably outlived its usefulness, because it becomes a beautiful concept.

What is being pointed to here is its exact opposite.

This is about destroying the imagination.

Here is a puzzle.

Can you solve it?

If Tom has three times as many apples as Susan and Susan has one-fourth as many as Joe, who has four, how many does Mary have if Mary has two more than Tom?

Take your time.

Okay?

If Mary has five apples and you take two how many apples does Mary have?

How clear were the pictures? What came to mind?

Picture Tom? with his apples?

Can you see Susan? or Joe? and Mary?

What is it about Mary? Can you imagine Mary standing there with her little basket of apples, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and her ruby slippers, so far away from Kansas?

And you? Can you picture you? Taking two apples?

What is it about you? Are you any more real in this than Tom, or Susan, or Mary, or Joe?

That is all this seeking is about.

However that internal feeling, image, qualia, sense, vision of you presents itself, it is just imagination.

Not your imagination either, because this is how you occur for yourself in thinking.

It’s just a game of smoke and mirrors. Nothing to see here.

Let’s say you are in touch with the inner you?

Are you really? as clearly as Mary or apples? or Dorothy, with her little dog?

You see, unlike the Wizard, there is nobody behind the curtain, only a curtain.

And what if that wave has a spirit or soul when it merges with an ocean?

How many souls does an ocean have?

How many souls in a universe?

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati (be in love).

Player’s Navy Cut

I have never been that hot on New Year Resolutions, it seems there is something incredibly insincere about them. As a child observer, the adults seemed afflicted by a kind of madness. Perhaps it was my Uncle “just finishing the pack” of Player’s Navy Cut cigarettes after midnight? Then clawing the wax off the table over New Year Day luncheon, that made it all seem just a little trite.

It all seemed contrived, if not a little manic. I am sure he smoked MORE cigarettes “just finishing the pack” than he would have, had he not made the resolution to quit.

While the turn of a calendar year provides a psychological pivot point for a new beginning, it seems to be another false hope armistice for a part of life that plainly doesn’t work and provides no lasting solutions.

More Polly Anna than problem solved perhaps, the silver bullet misses the mark. While positive thinking may work over time, it makes more sense to take an action that will deliver a meaningful result.

Giving up smoking because you really really want to, will end in a mad sweaty dash to the newsagent before it closes on New Year Day afternoon. I know, I have been there.

This made me think of my friend, who is a hypnotist.

Believe it or not, I am actually trying to start smoking again. I think nicotine might help me with concentration when writing. But I just can’t get into it. And yes, I was hypnotised so I could give it up and now I guess I am stuck with not being able to smoke.

Then this made me think of tithing.

My friend takes some of the money they make and tithes. Traditionally tithing is where one tenth of your income is paid to a religious organisation as a contribution, sometimes a compulsory tax to the government. My children had a Steiner education and the school fees were based on similar principles. In theory I paid the school a tenth of my gross income. In practice I ended up paying more, because like everyone else, the school assumed I was making a ton of money.

I love the idea of free will offerings and it has that Ghandi kind of ring to it. It is certainly a benefit for the person doing the tithing. When we support ourselves, we are driven only by what might be good for us. When we support a community, what matters changes. It’s a fabulous motivator. For example if I tithe to a children’s home, if I don’t bother to go to work, the children starve.

It also creates new possibilities. The stock answer to “why do you go to work?” will probably be “to pay the bills” but with tithing, you could just as easily answer “to save the starving children” – you can feel it lift the heart can’t you.

Then I read something truly inspiring in a magazine about a man and a pair of shoes. The founder of Toms Shoes gives a new pair of shoes to a child in need. I liked that.

And all this, on New Year Eve…

I am a member of various Asperger’s communities. Some New Year Resolutions were flying around on Twitter. While for the reasons discussed I don’t like half hearted resolves but resolve I have.

A few years ago I tried to start a business and charity to help people with autism. I am very driven by altruism and truly believe in fairness. Perhaps it was the tale of the good Samaritan at school? Maybe my philanthropic nature is a plea for love? I don’t know why, I just want to do something good. The problem in the past has been a lack of structure.  I am guilty of saying “don’t worry about it” to people who are in a position to pay far too often. When you work all hours and don’t get paid, there is nothing to tithe, not even time.

The shoes idea was really clear to me, just structure to make it possible.

I decided on the following:

For every hour I get paid, I will work for an hour for someone diagnosed with autism for FREE. It’s brilliant, it provides a structure for billing and if I don’t get paid, I can’t help anyone. It motivates me to save the world by working. It’s very simple, logical, fair and manageable.

Anyway enough talk about me. You can see how this works and why this works.

If you don’t already tithe, then I want you to consider the possibility. Think about your communities, family, friends, local organisations and such. Who really needs a helping hand? Where you can donate and make a difference? It needs to be something that inspires you, a call to action.

Imagine yourself some way off in time, the you of New Year yet to come, looking back at this moment. And someone asks “why do you go to work?” and you reply…

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

The Magic Of Reality? Nothing new to report here I am afraid. It is the same old argument backed up by well researched and quite frankly rather annoying scientific facts.

Why Richard and Lalla cannot see that what they are doing is no better than religion I don’t understand. It is why I don’t like humanism, or the way humanists portray what they stand for.

Nobody REALLY knows what is happening on Earth and in a Science is the new God world, let’s not get lost on subtly making others wrong while following a pretence of inclusion of their views in the argument.

Reality is of course magical. But there is no VERY FACT about it.

As an argument against religion, this book makes a reasonable case.

As a pro life argument, this book is boring, depressing dry and somewhat lacking in love.

If you want the nuts and bolts of it then maybe this is for you.

My investigations in life go deeper.

I thank Richard and Lalla for shedding some light on the subject, but they really are the annoying Aunt and Uncle at a dinner party who appear to think they know everything in their delivery of this subject and frankly, it wasn’t very entertaining.

I actually want to get involved in some real magic now, some mythology and ritual.

Having read several of Dawkins’ books I think I have come full circle and fancy being part of a religion with a few colourful characters.

Richard Dawkins Magic Of Reality was just a shade too grey for me!

Kind regards…

iPhone Frequency Response Comparison

I used to record the podcast on an iPhone 3G.

I was always happy with the result but somewhere along the line there was a subtle shift in enthusiasm, something went off and I could never tell what.

I simply stopped enjoying recording the podcast.

Now I know why.

I upgraded my phone from an iPhone 3G to an iPhone 3GS.

I just read this article http://blog.faberacoustical.com/2009/ios/iphone/iphone-microphone-frequency-response-comparison/

I can immediately see that my voice sound would have changed quite dramatically when I switched phones.

I probably didn’t notice it at the level of cognitive reasoning, but there will have been an underlying unease, with the loss of low frequency information which is identified with a full warm sound.

My digital empathy was murdered by Apple.

Perhaps I can find another way to record?

I will see what I can come up with for the new year.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

Write a seasonal hit.

I have been trying to write a Christmas song for years, starting the year after working with Ray in 1988.

I made a record called The Garden Of Eden with Kiss FM DJ Steve Jackson, fashion designer Pam Hogg, Wild Colonials front woman Angela McCluskey and my friend Darrel.

Yes, you guessed it, one of my contributions as a producer was that it must feature Christmas bells.

It did actually chart, but I think I underestimated the power of Cliff Richard’s charisma, label, marketing and so on. This was in the days when records sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but our record fared remarkably well and sold enough copies to get to number 98 and is still available in the iTunes music store.

So, I have been planning to write another Christmas song. I am just not the happy summery kind of guy, Ray’s idea ‘In The Summertime’ just didn’t appeal.

Spring? Well perhaps.

Autumn? Yes, that’s my kind of season, things getting ready to crawl away and die.

Every time I sat down in front of the computer, I would get to the point where I had to write a lyric and putting pen to paper just fell flat of my true sensibilities.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Christmas. I think the Christians have cobbled together something that works quite well and creating the Santa legend for the kids has been fun.

What I do object to is insincerity.

The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
- Soctrates

Ever get that feeling deep in the pit of your stomach that life is not all it should be?

Perhaps you have considered ending it all?

The problem with these darker feelings is we try to gloss over them with a smile. Christmas is advertised as good will to all men and most of us are faking it.

I decided to write from the heart, about a subject I feel is important, so I wrote a Christmas Sucide Song.

Intrigued? Well I am not going to tell you anything else about it here.

I really want you to visit the song’s website to read more about it.

You will be able to hear the song and click on a link to buy it.

A portion of the proceeds from the song are being donated to charity.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

PS comments are open, go ahead, have your say on this!

It came in waves and he couldn’t get to the bottom of why he was feeling like this. He should just leave her right? This gnawing fucking pain, think man think. Was it pain?

In the traditional sense of a pain, it wasn’t a pain, just maybe an ache. It was more like he had eaten something bad but it seemed to be messing with a part of his stomach he didn’t think food could enter. Maybe he should just kill himself? The thought certainly alleviated the pain to an extent. Plan his own suicide, make it look like a car accident and nobody gets hurt.

Remember that guy Ralph, his dad died when he was a kid, he’s a nervous wreck… Then what about that girl Annette, who pretended to be called Lilian, then said she was an orphan, do you want your kids to be fucked up like that?

“Oh just shut up.”

His voice echoed around the empty woods. Nobody here to listen. Just him, his thoughts and the wind. Then he hit his head abruptly to stop the noise. Was everyone’s inner dialogue like this?

“Birthdays, I hate fucking birthdays.”

The trees whispered his words back to him, parts of words, distant changed words as if someone had an answer for him deep into the forest.

It was cold now, fucking cold.

He liked it when things went smoothly, when people did what they said they would, when nobody complained, when routines went uninterrupted and things were as expected.

He shook his pocket for change, it always seemed appropriate to start smoking at times such as these. Problem was, this would involve driving to town to get cigarettes in this rather anxious state.

Then he remembered the ticket. He had been standing at the counter. She had asked for the money and as he paid her “what did you say?”

Helix had looked blankly.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Sorry, I thought you said something.”

She looked annoyed, cheeks flushed.

What if he had just called her a fucking bitch?

And in an instant he was in the grip of that strange fear again.

Panic attack, the doctors were calling it.

When he was alone, living out here by the woods in the Glens, it was fine. When he was at a party without a beer there was a whole other dimension to deal with. Then there was Zoe, if she found out about him sleeping with Zoe in the hotel, especially as Zoe was local, prettier, not to mention her old rival.

“Oh shit!”

No panic following that, only trees listening, still a concern. Really, what if he were to say something from deep within the recesses of his reactive mind aloud? Could give it all away in an instant.

Or “Nice tits” he might mention to the girl in the Co-op, she was gorgeous and apparently she had this thing about stealing other women’s men. Maybe she would steal him, steal him away and fuck him right here in the woods. Or maybe he should just call Zoe again, or maybe not?

He walked down the steep slope from where he had been sitting these past two hours, to the light blue Jeep in the lay-by. Ten miles into town, it was late now, might just make it in time. Helix drove fast.

He didn’t really drink or smoke any more and it always worried him to do either. After all, it had taken him ten years to stop. At the check out Helix found himself shaking slightly, his voice quavering as he asked for tobacco.

“And a bottle of Gin”

“I dinnae need to ask you your age” the girl giggled and smiled.

He scrolled through his address book to an entry marked Studio Spares.

“Hi, Zoe, it’s me.”

I fold my arms and shrink into my boots. I want to remain un-noticed. I don’t want them to know I came on my own. Single men at events where children gather are viewed by my mother with suspicion and the last thing I ever want to be is one of those guys my mother views with suspicion.

I am a big guy, in my big coat with my belly and muscle. I am six foot and proud, I expand. Perhaps intimidation will keep me safe? If I look scary enough they will leave me alone and those creeps my mother always points out seem to shrivel into their greasy coats as if they have something to be abashed about.

I actually don’t have anything to be abashed about. Fucking children is really not my thing, the idea of having sex with anyone under the age of forty is pretty unpalatable. What really fascinates me is the children I once knew all have beards and curves and it is a delight to stare and puzzle over how once they were mere babes in arms.

So I continue to expand, like a wrestler ready to strike his opponent. Yes, this is the way to feel safe. Then it happens. BUMP! I crash into the annoying thirteen year old kid who has more H in his ADHD than a kitten rolling in catnip.

GRUNT!

Well clearly that hasn’t worked either. Is there no middle ground? No way I can just be comfortable in my own skin. I drop my shoulders again and allow my arms to hang by my sides. Tai Chi straight… I let go of my belly. I don’t know these people and they don’t care if I am Rocky or Horror.

I bend my knees and relax. That’s it now, I am neither here nor there. I am just me in a sea of crowd listening to the old lady’s tale about her gardner. Grumpy mud whuck with a shovel, you know the type.

I watch the kid cry that wants daddy to elevate him to his shoulder to see the display. And then the display. Something happens. I experience the display as it is and not through the paradigm of ‘how do I make this fun for my child’.

He is away.

It’s shit. Really it’s shit. Partial satisfaction with the feeling that I would be fully satisfied had I not missed the bit where I was looking after my son is I have to say considerably better than actually seeing all of it and noticing it’s rubbish.

I recommend taking children to all displays. I recommend engaging with them and believing you missed something amazing. I recommend watching them grow up and smiling when they dance. Above all I recommend not playing small and not playing big. I recommend having the grace to accept yourself as you are.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

All addictions lead to altered states.

The addict has it’s own persona.

All aspects of personality are habitual.

Some habits are more useful than others.

Cease to identify with the characters which play out your life.

Design a new identity in language, create a constitution. Only take actions which are in alignment with the identity which you create. If taking an action causes you to vary from your created identity too much, then don’t take the action. If you take a negative action remember it wasn’t you that took it. That is not to say that you absolve responsibility, more that in a world where you are who you say you are then you do not identify with who you are not.

How Does It work?

The body is a biogenetic machine.

The mind is the machine code.

All thoughts that arise in the machine’s code are habitual.

Some habits are more useful than others.

The next thought that comes to mind will be THE predominant thought YOU have always had about this. The reaction you have will be the thought you have always had about these words. You are not your thoughts. You can alter your thoughts by stimulation of experience. You therefore have control over who it is that you are in the world.

But What About My Addiction?

If I talk about drugs you have always had the same thoughts.
Take a look at these words:

Adrenalin, Alcohol, Betting, Computer Games, Depression, Drugs, Food, Gambling, Laziness, Internet, Masturbation, Pornography, Prostitution, Sex, Smoking, Sugar, TV, Working Out.

What do these words trigger? Are the thoughts that come to mind thoughts you have always had about these things? When did you first think them? Are they your thoughts or did you inherit them? Who from?

And thoughts are based on logical decisions, so the logical decisions that were made at the time of the decision were based on a set of circumstances which made perfect sense and now may or may not still exist. What was right for you then (whatever the reasoning) may no longer be appropriate for you now.

Why Does It Have Such A Hold Over Me?

The habit was formed around something which may no longer be there but the habit seems as if it remains relevant. Partly because these things get written into muscle memory, a cycle of adrenalin or anticipation for the addictive event followed by a period of relaxation or an altered state.

Once something is in this kind of memory it becomes a reflex. When things are driven by feelings in the body it is sometimes hard to tell what the drive to do certain things is. You can get to the core addiction by eliminating toxic habits from your immediate environment and then seeing what is left.

Someone whose core addiction is gambling may associate smoking with gambling and find it hard to stop. It is a case of discovering which one comes first and eliminating the need to do it.

Familiars

Identity is stitched together with familiar objects. Familiar objects trigger memories and memories lead to repeating certain actions. To break identity you can get rid of familiar objects. Anything that provides a trigger for a mental or physical state can cause actions consistent with a habitual action.

Binge eaters should change their saucepans, compulsive smokers should get rid of lighters and ash trays, wankers throw out your copies of Penthouse and switch off your Internet.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

Hair Today, Gone To Myopia

I admit it, I am going bald.

But long before the reality of the fine mist of baby hair which once covered my shower of manhood, when my bald spot was just an apple in my mind’s eye, I visited a Chinese apocathery for some advice.

I bought some hair tonic at something like fifty pounds a bottle and started to apply it to my crown and cranium.

Jump forward more years than I care to mention and for some God forsaken reason it is still in the fridge, behind various other items too numerous to list which are growing things other than hair.

“Tidy up while I am away” she said and left me in the rain while she basks in sunnier climes. The Canary Islands I hear are rather good at this time of year?

On discovery, it seemed like a good idea to empty the contents into the sink, then put the container in the recycling. After all, it is plastic and that is what good citizens do these days, save the planet.

There is a fine nozzle on this container and it is designed to dispense the afore mentioned liquid topically and in small quantites.

I squeezed and things were going slower than expected.

I squeezed a bit harder, much better.

Just a bit harder then BANG!

I should have known Chinese plastic would go brittle after years of containing a substance which smelled rather like brandy and something else, what was it now?

I am putting my money on burnt bakelite. All those war time electrical plugs ground into a fine paste?

So the story here is about two things. Hairy eyes and the miraculous.

The fluid made a b line for my face and narrowly missed the cat, he is still looking a bit puzzled now.

My eyes closed and hopefully the stinging was from the fumes in my eye lashes and not from the actual liquid in the eye, or sometime soon, I will have to take up shaving them.

I acted quickly and washed as much as I could from my face and ran upstairs and jumped in the shower.

Lord knows what it will do to my beard because despite vigorous washing I can still smell it.

I am also hoping it is not in my ears because that is the last place I need to encourage hair growth.

So the miracle is human reflexes. The person I know myself to be had no say in the matter. The eyes simply closed.

It really makes sense of that phrase ‘in the blink of an eye’.

But imagine if we could invent a field of psychology which could make changes at that level?

I have no idea how fast the fluid was travelling, but my eye saw it and made a decision to close.

If only we could tweak aspects of persona before we had a say in it.

Think of the repercussions for things like anxiety and depression.

If doctors could go in and fine tune, we could even end anger and war.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

Neo-Waltz

So what is Neo-Waltz?

As I was in London on Saturday, I took a trip down memory lane to a club I once frequented in the early eighth decade of the last century to take a peek.

I always find it extraordinary that I can drive to Hampstead in under an hour and yet travelling eight miles across London can take almost as long.

I left my meeting at five hoping to arrive in time for free dance lessons, going by way of Shoreditch and boy has that changed.

The only familiar thing was a bus stop near what used to be a gay bar called The London Apprentice where once upon a time I was regularly chatted up while I waited for a number 55 bus.

On arrival parking was way more complicated than you can ever imagine. What was once the Eastern Hospital is now the much busier and larger Homerton University Hospital, so be prepared to walk a bit.

I discovered a side street a few blocks away where restrictions weren’t in force. However I recommend parking Clifden Road. Neo Waltz runs again on 1st December.

The best part of the journey was wandering down Brooksby’s Walk, which is a vibey melting pot of cultures, hair salons and fast food. I indulged in a doner kebab without the garlic sauce and bought mints with my would be dancing partner in mind.

My eTicket worked at the door and afforded me entry to the bar and the hall. I was very early and there were no familiar faces.

Thank God for Orange Carriera!

Why can’t all human beings be like this? She greeted me like a person she knew well and made me feel instantly comfortable.

Dancing is one of the things I do least well. I am dyspraxic, clumsy and wooden and hideously embarrassed about the whole thing. I think it harks back to a time when Miss Bennett, our heartthrob PE teacher had to teach me to dance for my part as the Tin Man in the school play. I think my mates looked on and laughed, while of course they secretly wished they were holding hands with her. But worse, the girl I really fancied was watching too and I looked like a total idiot.

And it is these kind of memories that drive us and stop us from being self expressed. And it is these kind of memories that need to be set aside when we want to try new things, to experiment with life and see what’s there for us.

Then it God weird.

What I haven’t told you yet is that the star of this show is Adamski, my younger brother.

The dance lessons started with Les Child and Orange Carriera instructing us and my brother’s daughter and I decided to partner.

This clearly wasn’t going to work, because learning dance steps involves looking at your feet, or in my case worrying about accidentally looking straight down my twenty one year old neice’s top.

We switched partners, so instead I danced with a young lady who claimed to be Adam’s number one fan and I looked down her top instead. It was of course reflexively male of me but a whole lot less embarrassing.

But that’s not Neo-Waltz!

Adam has invented a new style of music and not only did he DJ several hours of it, there were live sets with Guy Sigsworth, David McAlmont and the wow of the evening Viktoria Modesta.

This is a woman with a voice. She has curves to die for, the longest lashes I have ever seen and all graced with a victory rolls hair do.

People I have known forever were here now.

My best friend from school and her brother who I have not seen in years, Mr Monday creator of the classic house track Future (throw your arms in the air) and Mark Moore along with their various husbands, wives and mothers and children.

While I didn’t waltz with my niece, I waltzed with my friend’s mum Sue, who is sixty seven and clearly much better at it than I am.

So what is Neo-Waltz?

It’s clearly an entire musical revolution. Like you, I have been sick of four on the floor dance beats for years, even dub step comes back to it after the break downs so if you are bored of the obviously predictable then this is for you.

So what’s in it for you?

Here’s the biggest perks of the deal as I see them.

You get the warmth and personality of Orange Carriera, the magnificently constructed music of number one hit musician Adamski with a compelling twist, the stunning looks and powerhouse of a voice that is Viktoria Modesta and an evening that makes sense whether you are twenty or seventy.

Adam is inspiring others to follow his lead. There were a couple of guest appearances and another DJ set by Minty.

So as I said to my friend Sharon on Twitter, I might just have to make some Neo-Waltz myself.

See you on the other side of the looking glass

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

I would love to have been able to refund your money at this point, but because of the way it is set up I have been trapped.

I promise to complete the book one way or another and send out the perks.

While I did not meet my $5,000 target to pay an editor to work on my book with me, all this will go some way towards the cost.

What you will be dismayed to know is, if you paid by credit card, Indiegogo absorbed 75% of your donation.

If you paid by PayPal, the fees weren’t so bad, but given that Indiegogo have a PayPal account, why on earth couldn’t they convert the credit card payments into a single PayPal payment?

If you are thinking of using Indiegogo as a fund raising platform, you may want to read the email they sent me below before doing it.

I recommend fund raising with someone else.

Again, if you made a donation, thank you very much and I will make sure you get your perk.

Thank God I didn’t reach the goal or they would have taken another 5%.

See you on the other side of the looking glass

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

* *

Dear Mark,

Congratulations on raising funds for your Indiegogo campaign, Snails In Hyperspace. Today, Fri Nov 02, we triggered a disbursement of $10 to your Barclays PLC bank account.

We estimate that you will receive the funds by Fri Nov 09.

If you have not received your funds by Fri Nov 09, your disbursement may have been rejected due to incorrect bank account information.

Summary of Funds Raised on ‘Snails In Hyperspace’:

Total Amount Raised: $386

$40: Amount Raised by Credit Card

• $3: Indiegogo Platform fee (9.0%)
• $1: Payment processing fee (3.0%)
• $25: International wire transfer fee

+ $0: Credit Card Goal Completion Refund (5.0%) = $10: Net Credit Card Funds

$346: Total Amount Raised by PayPal

• $31: Indiegogo Platform fee (9.0%)
• $10: Estimated payment processing fee (3.0%)

+ $0: PayPal Goal Completion Refund (5.0%) = $304: Estimated Net PayPal Funds

Funds raised by PayPal are sent to your PayPal account at the time of transaction, minus our 9% Indiegogo Platform fee and PayPal’s payment processing fee of about 3%. For a list of your PayPal contributions and the dates that they were sent to your PayPal account, please see:

If your campaign has met its goal, we disburse your PayPal Goal Completion Refund to your PayPal account in a separate disbursement. Please check your email for a separate disbursement confirmation from Indiegogo titled “Indiegogo Disbursement Confirmation for PayPal Goal Completion Refund ‘Snails In Hyperspace’”.

For more information about how disbursements work, please see:

For more information about fees, please see:

Once again, congratulations on your success!

Cheers,

The Indiegogo Team

Not finding what you need? Visit our Help Center:

I think the bottom line has to be without following the framework outlined in the book, I would not be taking actions to do anything much other than potter around at home in some misguided fantasy that I am a professional writer because I have a couple of books out there.

But as a writer, who feels compelled to tap away at the keyboard of an ancient Powerbook and voice some of the disparate, contrary even paradoxical trains of thought that rattle around awareness and experience, I feel somewhat compelled to share.

Let’s face it, the washing up pales in comparison to the silver and illuminated ASCII keys of an Apple Macintosh. Had Steve Jobs been a domestic engineer, I am sure we would have had ergonomic nylon brushes for cleaning saucepans and equally innovative washing up liquid containers.

Oh and if they exist, please do send me one.

So like it or not, I just wanted to check in with you and tell you how the Think And Grow Rich study group is going. And by the way if you love it, hit the donate button, the dishwasher is on its way out, not to mention the car and house.

Ha, so how is it going? Thinking and Growing Rich? Here I am with a complaint about a worn kitchen appliance and a method of conveyance which is looking more than a little jaded after some 130,000 miles so how rich am I?

Erm…

I’m broke!

All writers are broke, it’s a belief system inherited through selective perception, I probably overlooked a dozen opportunities already today just so we could be together, you, I and the tatty old Mac (not the pervy kind I hasten to add, I can think of much more exciting ways for consenting adults to have fun

The book?

Yeah…

We have read and discussed the following:

Author’s Preface, Introduction, Chapter 2 — Desire: The Turning Point of All Achievement, Chapter 3 — Faith: Visualization of, and Belief in Attainment of Desire, Chapter 4 — Auto-Suggestion: The Medium for Influencing the Subconscious Mind, Chapter 5 — Specialized Knowledge: Personal Experiences or Observations, Chapter 6 — Imagination: The Workshop of the Mind and Chapter 7 — Organized Planning: The Crystallization of Desire into Action…

Currently we are reading:

Chapter 8 — Decision: The Mastery of Procrastination and because it is a short chapter, Chapter 9 — Persistence: The Sustained Effort Necessary to Induce Faith.

My burning desire is to be the kind of author who has the pleasure of being a philanthropist. I am driven by the idea that I may in some way be able to create projects to help autistic people flourish, or to help people who are artistic to have a career that does not involve selling out, commercialising and homogenising their unique contribution to the world.

We are more than half way through the book.

I am more than half way through MY book project, which you can find out more about here:

http://indiegogo.com/whoareyou

What really counts it seems, is to keep on going when it seems as if life has you stopped.

The human mind seems to have a unique ability to create a story about life that says something along the lines of “this isn’t it” and the mechanism is to step back from where the journey naturally ends up and start over, looking, seeking, unable to see who and what we really are.

Life force is a strange thing. It requires a degree of intuition to start moving in the right direction, but whose intuition is it anyway.

Life force energy, whatever that may be, certainly doesn’t want you infecting the process of life with your thoughts and feelings about the way things should be.

It is as if all these processes are a function of life.

The other members of the study group have yet to break through and peak millions too.

So with fifty or so pages left before we reach the end of our study, what will life bring us?

I think with burning desire, we will all win through.

I have a fire in me, a light which says there is something in it for you.

Yes for you dear reader, I have a gift for you.

I am one small step away from providing you with the most incredible book you have ever read.

But will you help the birthing process by being who you were meant to be?

What does karma say about life right now?

Finally, here is a link to possibly the least corrupt source of Think And Grow Rich on the Internet.

This PDF has no marketing and no strings attached.

Napoloen Hill never intended for people to pyramid market his work, I mean for fucks sake it would be a really limiting world we lived in if everyone on the planet had a burning desire to up sell out of copyright work which should be free.

So here it is, untainted by the marketers!

http://ia600209.us.archive.org/6/items/Think_and_Grow_Rich/think-and-grow-rich-napoleon-hill_text.pdf

And let’s cut back to the chase again, is it working? I think it is. What else shall I give away for FREE

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

I have found a professional editor, who is going to work on it with me.

We are fleshing out the details right now.

What’s missing however is funding and I am looking for your sponsorship or support.

We are taking an outside the box approach to publishing and you can be a part of this new model too.

The Kindle eBook is online and available on Amazon – you can buy it here:

http://www.amazon.com/Hyperspace-Introduction-Exogenic-Consciousness-ebook/dp/B00958RMEK

Buying it or sharing the link will help bring in revenue to pay the editor to complete the next step, but to make sure he does a really great job, I have created a crowd sourcing campaign to fund the next step.

Watch the YouTube campaign video here:

Or go directly to the campaign here:

http://indiegogo.com/whoareyou

To remind you, this is what the book will be about.

Synopsis: You are not who you think you are. The common fallacy, illusion or paradox is that you are a separate individual who can work on your life and get to a place where you can experience freedom, happiness and satisfaction. This “I” is a dramatisation of your strategy to have a consistent identity, except can you be sure that such a thing really exists? The degree to which freedom can be experienced in life, correlates directly with seeing through this illusion of self.

We are constantly bombarded with invitations to discover the real me, our true self, the essence of who we are. From time to time we can all notice there is a stillness within experience that never changes in appearance, a state which has no quality, seems hidden, has no name.

Notable human beings from Confucius to Einstein, through Jesus to the Zen masters have identified and taught about this space for awareness or experience for thousands of years. It is a universal human quality expressed in Abrahamic, East Asian, Indian and Indigenous religions alike.

Because you believe so strongly in this sense of self, something has been misidentified. It is this emotion, feeling, sensation or thought you have spent your whole life seeking.

At the risk of sounding like yet another path that can be followed to an attainment of something, read FINDING YOUR INNER YOU and discover who you are really not. In this space, there can be an opening to the possibility of getting in touch with a constant state of being which never changes.

Enlightenment!

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

I am also formatting the talk as a Kindle book and I will provide you with a link shortly.

There will be three books on this subject.

Snails In Hyperspace: An Introduction to Exogenic Consciousness

Snails In Hyperspace: An Overview of Exogenic Consciousness

And

Snails In Hyperspace: A Complete Guide to Exogenic Consciousness

Synopsis: You are not who you think you are. The common fallacy, illusion or paradox is that you are a separate individual who can work on your life and get to a place where you can experience freedom, happiness and satisfaction. This “I” is a dramatisation of your strategy to have a consistent identity, except can you be sure that such a thing really exists? The degree to which freedom can be experienced in life, correlates directly with seeing through this illusion of self.

We are constantly bombarded with invitations to discover the real me, our true self, the essence of who we are. From time to time we can all notice there is a stillness within experience that never changes in appearance, a state which has no quality, seems hidden, has no name.

Notable human beings from Confucius to Einstein, through Jesus to the Zen masters have identified and taught about this space for awareness or experience for thousands of years. It is a universal human quality expressed in Abrahamic, East Asian, Indian and Indigenous religions alike.

Because you believe so strongly in this sense of self, something has been misidentified. It is this emotion, feeling, sensation or thought you have spent your whole life seeking.

At the risk of sounding like yet another path that can be followed to an attainment of something, read FINDING YOUR INNER YOU and discover who you are really not. In this space, there can be an opening to the possibility of getting in touch with a constant state of being which never changes.

Enlightenment!

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

We have now moved on the Chapter four, “Auto-Suggestion” and we are all creating desire statements.

I wanted to share one of the participants’ affirmation of their burning desire with you so you get a sense of what is happening in the group. (Some of the personal details have been removed).

DECLARATION OF PURPOSE

I know I have the ability to achieve this goal and I promise to take persistent and continuous action towards its completion.
I realise if I stimulate my mind, it will act on stimulus both negative and positive and that will become my self-expression.
I am choosing a confident and positive mental attitude towards myself and others.
I will not give up until I have put in place whatever needs to be done.
I pledge only to engage in activities which are for mutual benefit.

By 31st November 2013 I will have £22,000. I will have received 50% from the sales of 12 paintings at 44,000 before commission. By November 31st 2012 I have a complete new body of work.

In return for this money, I have created a body of Art work which is inspiring and beautiful. An expression of who I am in the world – committed playful connection. The work will be on show in X X X and X X Gallery in X in both spaces I have fantastic relationships with the Gallery owners and staff and in both solo shows sell 6 large paintings. The clients who buy and own my work have a lifetime of beauty and a financial investment for the future. I take continuous action, drawing, looking, playing, painting and making. Sharing myself passionately and generously with the world and acknowledging and appreciating the beauty everyday. I create opportunities for others to express their creativity, passion and playfulness. Everyday I notice the beauty and share that passion in the world.

I believe painting is an opportunity. I believe by completing these paintings, I provide a service to those who show and sell Artwork. I believe in this so strongly I can see my success. I am willing to adapt my plan to meet the opportunities that universal life force (whatever that might be) furnishes me with to complete on this.

My plan is to create a beautiful, inspiring body of work which expresses how I see the world- playful connection.

In a nutshell I aim to share my creative voice with the world, inspiration, beauty and playful connection.

Initially I will present this in the form of sketches and photographs from my recent visit to X X. In X X a commitment to manage my time to allow creative expression in and out of the studio.
A weekly drawing group in my studio will provide the space for myself and others to experience creative playful connection.
Being part of Open studio, inviting others to come to my space and sharing passionately what I do.
Creating a global structure with the artists friends I have around the world to share what I am working on through facebook and blogging.

By November 2012 I am in communication with X X Gallery and visit X X Gallery. I will also be in communication with X X and X (art consultant)

I follow these instructions in the spirit of faith and the principals of auto-suggestion.

What makes this kind of statement powerful, is the person who has written it is reading the statement several times a day and using it for reprogramming their life path.

If you are reading Think and Grow Rich, see if you can create something similar.

Take the above statement as a template and apply it to your situation.

Let me know how you get on by typing something in the comment section below.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

Thanks for continuing to support the blog and podcast.

As you know I am in the process of fixing the mailing list, mainly because PHPlist broke and WordPress’ latest offering of JetPack does pretty much everything required of a subscription service.

If you are one of several hundred readers who enjoyed the old news letter, please bear with me as I enter your email address’ manually, or you can go ahead and subscribe using the sign up box in the sidebar.

As I typed in all the addresses, I suddenly thought it might be fun to revisit the law of attraction.

I have been writing a book about Advaita, or non-duality for about three years.

However, because of my expertise as the author of Logic Of Attraction, I was recently asked to join a study group to discuss the Napoleon Hill book, Think And Grow Rich.

When you consider there is no self, yet there is attraction, it seems at first glance as if there is an obvious paradox.

It has been the biggest problem when it came to writing the new book and the single hardest area to research.

The outline is finally complete.

How everything fits together, simply became apparent in discussion and I wanted to explore it further with you as a thank you and as a teaser to the new publication, while I decide which format to run with and look for a team to help finalise the project.

I was worried it has taken me so long to get to this point, yet it is interesting to note Napoleon Hill took twenty years to complete his book and in the process he interviewed over five hundred extremely successful men in order to create his simple workable formula on the secrets of success.

I think the key point is very simple. The mind however is so attached to what it has been taught that even the simplest passages can seem incomprehensable and beg further explanation. Just like Advaita!

The book sold more than thirty million copies Word-Wide and has created countless millionaires. You can also find “Think and Grow Rich” in the Public Domain and read it yourself.

Okay…

So, I am going to start simply by discussing the Introduction and nothing else and I invite you to comment below.

Think And Grow Rich is about known principles. The key to the introduction is the “capacity to know what you want”, “determination” and “initiative” – simply put, you need to nurture “the will to win”.

You can “never stop at no” and the “greatest success often comes just one step beyond the point at which defeat has overtaken you”.

Night after night I sit at this computer and type. The amount of times I have given up is extraordinary, yet the success of my last book was entirely down to “stickability”, that is to say, driving myself beyond the point where I had enough. To making sure that it was the best possible book I could write and I have had nothing but positive reviews and praise.

In this blog over the next few weeks I would like to work with you to describe all 13 principles outlined in the book.

Let’s work together and look at the best and most practical ways of creating useful ideas.

You can join me in nurturing a state of mind that attracts riches.

I invite you to START by telling me the top ten things that you really want out of life.

You can also start to look beyond your own beliefs.

One of the real principles of success is giving up this habitual me.

While actions and choices create results, going beyond the simple notion that you are a person doing them can create a freedom to explore new ways of being and nurture new paradigms.

Above all I invite you to read the book, get into the discussion and see what happens!

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

David Rowan

I am an adult living with Autism …

Autism can be thought of as a spectrum, ranging from a mild subtly at one end to full the other; from mild dyslexia to full autism.

Different parts of the spectrum hold unique qualities and yet those further along the scale also hold some of the qualities of those from the earlier milder areas of the spectrum as well; these qualities may also vary in depth or strength; all of these conditions, from very mild dyslexia to full autism are a part of what is known as The Autistic Spectrum.

Autism remains a mystery to the medical profession, though recent technological advances in neuroscience are beginning to shed some light on the brain functioning of the autistic spectrum conditions. For further information, I would recommend, ‘The Neuroscience of Human Relations’ by Cozolino, ‘An Anthropologist from Mars’, by Sacks, ‘Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self’, and, ‘Affect Dysregulation and the Disorders of the Self’ by Schore.

Although I have lived within the autistic spectrum for the whole of my life, it was not recognised until I was 40 (meaning, I spent the first 40 years of my life being thought of as awkward and being misunderstood). Getting my diagnosis was a fantastic moment for me. No longer was I an awkward pedant who didn’t fit anywhere but I could suddenly say a word, ‘Aspergers’, and be understood – or at least, point people towards a large body of information so they can go on to understand me. For me, this was great ! – and, there was more to follow: In 2009, while at the University of the West of England, it came to light that I have three autistic conditions:

Dyslexia:

Most commonly known and understood, possibly because large numbers of the population have very mild hints of this mild end of the spectrum. Ordinarily, experienced as a difficulty with either letters or numbers, it is often accompanied with a high intellect and sensitive and restless central nervous system.

Aspergers Syndrome:

An A-social condition which commonly induces a high intellectual capacity along with an emotional bewilderment and untypical social and relational perception. It may help to think of archetypal figures such as ‘Spok’ from star trek, or a mad professor who knows a great deal about his topic but cannot find the glasses on his head and has odd socks on. It is now thought that Einstein, Newton and Andy Warhol were Aspergers.

There is a sensitive central nervous system which is easily overwhelmed by sensory phenomena; sounds, smells, touch, textures of clothing, the strength of light … can all be relentlessly uncomfortable.

Imagine that all the while a main ceiling light is switched on in your living room, someone is standing behind you, tapping your neck with a pencil – all the time … or, imagine that the sound of aggression, whether directed at you or not, is not just heard, but is felt like a sharp physical punch … or, imagine that the weight of clothing constantly taps at your attention.

When I walk into an unfamiliar large shop, like a supermarket or shopping arcade, I am often swamped with the movements, lights, colours, sounds and smells which seem to rush at me like a sensory wave. It can seem a bit disconcerting at times and I often react by becoming a little withdrawn. After a while, my system seems to acclimatise and a sense of balance is restored (unless the environment is very busy, noise, or bright, in which case it can become overwhelming to the point of needing to remove myself from the environment).

In spectral terms, Aspergers Syndrome may be thought of as a very very strong dyslexia: Dyslexia + + …

and …

Dyspraxia:

A motor-coordination problem. My brain is wired in such a way that my hand, and feet, sometimes move involuntarily, or land wide of an intended mark. For example:

I often peel my thumb instead of the potato I am holding …

My guitar playing may be creative and interesting, but it is also rather clunky. I play blues and rock guitar because they require a little less precision than classical guitar and if I am recording a song I am often in a great deal of pain before the song ends – it can take an incredible amount of time to do a simple take. Likewise, it takes me a very long time to chop the veg for dinner or to write a reply to an email …

The feet and general spatial awareness are a problem bordering on inconvenient. I sometimes trip over nothing and crash to the floor with an inelegant surprise – I got a stick to walk with in 2008, and this has helped tremendously. I often bump into door frames, rather than go smoothly though the gap (my feet tend to follow my  eye and if I am looking at the door frame in order to judge its distance, instead of passing by it I find I walk into it – even though I do not want to). I have almost caused a dozen heart attacks in glassware and gift shops and now only visit such places feeling a very strong sense of being self-conscious. I am also slightly echo-praxic, meaning that I involuntarily copy other’s movements. If I am at a gig and someone looks up to the lighting rig, I take my eye off the band and look upwards as well – which is very irritating because I lose the moment I was enraptured in (which is why I like to be at the front, so I can become lost inside the performance and not be jolted out if it). Embarrassingly, I also find myself following  ‘the car in front’, turning wherever they turn, even if I want to go in a different direction …

and …

I wouldn’t change being Aspergers for the world.

It certainly isn’t a disease; a disease may be defined as a condition with consistent symptoms caused by an infection.

Aspergers is a syndrome; a varied collection of traits from which different individuals have salient combinations. The (British) Autistic Society calls viewing the world from a mainly right-brain perspective; an Autistic Spectrum Disorder. I strongly disagree: I think it would be more accurate to call it an Autistic Spectrum Perception.

One can only describe a character trait as one of many potential expressions from a rainbow of human possibilities. If there were such a thing as a standard off-the-shelf  ’normal’  human then yes, anyone outside of that norm could be considered disordered. However, because human beings are not machines, the concepts of  ‘normalising’  is misplaced and, therefore, while an individual may be disadvantaged in certain areas of life, to say one is disordered is, in my opinion, unacceptable.

Labels are important – they help people to understand things and relate with the world appropriately. For example,

‘Safe car’ – is a label … ‘Death trap’ – is a label.

We must know the difference. …

‘Pedant’ – is a label … ‘Aspergers’ – is a label.

If you are able to discern the difference between these two distinctly different orientations in consciousness and correctly identify which one applies to me, then you will be able to respond to me with appropriate sensitivity – or, if not, and you respond to me as if I am an awkward pedant, I will feel bullied, alienated and misunderstood.

The label ‘Aspergers’ allows non-Aspergers people to step out of the lens of their judgments and view me from a different perspective. Unfortunately, our present society does not seem to have kindness and gentleness at its core – and that is possibly due to the neuro-typicals who run everything from the government to the media and entertainment industry …

For me, being an adult with an autism  hat-trick, is like a wonderful gift. I may miss what others see, but I see what others miss; and while my right brain opens into wonderful creativity, it also has a heightened sensitivity for another’s experience and people comment that my astrology readings have an insight into their inner world and psyche which is profound and deeply moving.

Memory:

Regarding my memory, I often forget things – and often important things too. For a neuro-typical, if something is over looked it signifies that the over looked thing was somehow unimportant, as if the amnesia signified a diminished sense of value. This is not the case with the autistic spectrum: I forget trivial stuff and important stuff just the same; this is one of the reasons I find finances so hard to manage – I constantly forget to remember to say things and miss deadlines and then all the dominos fall over. I can have an intention to tell someone something important and if I then get distracted by something, days can go by before I say what I was going to say. There is no malice in this, nor any intention to deceive; it is more a question or managing a chaotic mind: Asperger’s Syndrome, Mercury in Pisces, however you wish to describe it, the phenomenon is the same … it is also a very creative and inspirational place to find oneself – though not good for practicality.

Communicating: listening and speaking through the lens of literalism:

People with Asperger’s are inclined towards literalism, which colours both how I express myself and how I receive what is said to me. It would seem that non-Asperger’s people, sometimes referred to as, ‘neuro-typicicals’, communicate with inferences, hints and implications. To me, these nuances of communication are invisible. Conversely, people often respond to things I say as if I said different words and I find this very confusing. Another source of confusion for me is ambiguity and whenever I am confused I tend to adopt the approach of seeking clarity. I do this by asking questions. Sometimes, my questions are ignored because the person I am seeking clarity from is not clear themselves. Sometimes, my questions are met with hostility because the person I am seeking clarity from does not understand that I did not understand, and so presumes I am asking questions because I have some kind of nefarious or hurtful agenda … or perhaps I am just plain awkward and pedant. I am none of these things; I am an autistic spectrum communicator. Being an autistic spectrum thinker is great for being creative but I do tend to get lost in conversation in which the references are unclear – it is as if my ability to intuit the context does not work; I find it particularly difficult to follow someone if they refer back to something which was said previously, long or short term, without describing it specifically.

For example, when I posted something on facebook about BBC Radio 4 interviewing me at Stonehenge, someone made a comment about my accent; ‘how do you sound with that accent ?’, she asked …

I had no idea how to answer this question. ‘How do you sound with that accent ?’ – what does this question mean ?

is it a sarcastic remark ? … is it a compliment ?

I had no idea how to interpret the question, let alone answer it. I have been listening to the sound of my voice, via my ears and jaw-bone for almost 49 years. I have been listening to my voice on recordings; songs, then relaxation tapes, then CDs, then mp3s since 1980. I have heard my voice on the radio half a dozen times since 1994. I have heard it on MAP training videos since 1995, and via the TV twice since 2001 – and on u-tube astrology videos since 2010 …

To an Asperger’s mind; a sentence made with reference to a comment you have made in the past, and can obviously remember, sounds like a random statement to me, because, I do not know what memory of what you have said previously that you are referring to …

This is not awkwardness, nor pedantry, it is autism – my brain errs towards literalism and cannot follow cryptic messages or ambiguities; I do not have the intuition afforded to those of a ‘neuro-typical’ nature.

All can do is either become bemused and perplexed at not knowing what you are driving at, and not knowing if you are complimenting or ridiculing my voice

or …

ask !

Rather than guess what you mean and risk making an erroneous presumption, I prefer to ask, and I hope I ask in a clear and polite way. I have no desire to cause any discomfort – I just want to understand … x

There are things my aspie brain can do very easily, that neuro-typical brains find more difficult. I teach people these things and am told I am gifted; though really, I am just living through a different perceptual experience. Likewise, there are things that neuro-typicals find natural and easy that aspies find really hard, or even nigh-on impossible.

For example: to illustrate both perspectives imagine a physically disabled person picking up a coin from the floor. For an able bodied person, this action may be so un-challenging that they hardly notice the effort in doing it. For the disabled person though, it may require a herculean effort …

Now, make the disability invisible; imagine a voice so clear and articulate that the aspie person sounds wise and very capable. Imagine, a reference to something has been dropped during a conversation which has meandered back and forth between three topics. The neuro-typical person makes a comment about one of these three topics and, rather than specifically making a reference to it (naming the topic) they refer to the topic as ‘it’, using an unspecified reference. Intuiting which topic the  ‘it’  is referring to is easy for the neuro-typical, they can mentally pick up the coin. For the Asperger’s person listening, the use of the unspecified  ‘it’  is the precursor to a whirl of  confusion, self-doubt, frustration, humiliation and embarrassment. If the Asperger’s person is at that moment feeling particularly vulnerable or shy, the confusion may be held internally and their self confidence bruised. If the Asperger’s person is feeling safe with the communicator, they may ask the communicator to clarify what they said; which may confuse the communicator because the communicator may well believe they have been absolutely clear; the communicator could follow their train of thought and knew what they meant when they said the word  ‘it’, so surely, anyone they are speaking with can also do the same …

Things we find easy others may not. Things we find difficultt, others may find easy. Following an ambiguous, or unstated context, for me, is nigh-on impossible; though I do understand, that other people find it easy and communicate that way frequently.

When my brain becomes befuddled, it goes through a sort of 360 degree random context search and, because I do not know the context (and, for my autistic brain, regardless …of every previous conversation, it is contextually neutral and blank) I begin to think of every possible meaning I can attribute to the sentence; and, being somewhat bright, that means I am overwhelmed with dozens of varieties of means – instantly …

This is not personal – my brain responds this way to every ambiguous statement I hear, regardless of who the communicator is; a news presenter on TV, a close friend, a client … my brain is always seeking clarity and finds befuddlement painful. As far as I can tell, a lot of Asperger’s people have a similar experience.

Figures of speech are another source of chaotic bedlam for the Aspie mind. People tend to use figures of speech that they are familiar with, and often, it seems, presume that the recipient of their communication is either already familiar with  the figure, or, is easily able to intuit its meaning and this  would be the case for a neuro-typical.

However, for an aspie brain, it is very different.

To use the example set out previous, that of my voice on the radio: if the inquiry had been phrased in the following way, without any figures of speech or assumed understanding, ‘How does your voice sound to you on the radio ?’, I would have understood immediately and been very happy to give the most accurate and detailed answer possible. I am not a pedant; to me, a pedant is a person who is somehow deciding to be pedantic, as if they have a choice in the matter, or are able to modify their pedantry or even stop it altogether, for diplomatic reasons, for example. I cannot pick up pedantry and put it down again; pedantry is not something I do, it is bi-product of a neural orientation.

When an aspie understands a question, they are likely to embark on a great and deep inquiry, so beware ! – your easy, light, casual question can actually end up as a PhD research study which takes more than five years to complete …

I am still answering a question I was asked about astrology in 1983

I’d also like to mention …

in my aspie experience, I often find that people forget that I am Asperger’s and expect me to respond in a neuro-typical way. Even very close friends, sometimes seem to forget, and I think this is largely down to a couple of things;

I use all I know about NLP and modern applied psychology, and astrology, to learn how to function in accord with society. A policewoman once told me I am not an aspie because I was engaging in eye-contact with her, ‘the books say …blah blah eye-contact’, she exclaimed – ‘So you cannot be Asperger’s’.  She did not know I taught myself to hold eye contact after reading a book on how to be friendly when I was 16. I also used to do  ‘smiling exercises’  in a mirror, often for more than an hour a day …

(did you hear the way I said, ‘Hello …’, on the radio 4 thingy at Stonehenge  ? it is my  ‘learned’  hello, and you’ll see at the top of notes and hear it at the beginning of my Relaxation and hypnotherapy CDs …  and if you watch the Big Breakfast footage on my web site or on facebook, you will notice that when Chris, the staff member, walks along the line saying, ‘big lorry, yellow lorry’, with his arms outstretched, for a few steps, I follow and walk along with him. I couldn’t help it – I often, quite unconsciously follow people’s actions and direction – at a lecture last summer I first heard the term, ‘Echo-praxia’.)

Interview of Radio  4 – click here – http://audioboo.fm/boos/694657-dave-on-bbc-radio-4-stonehenge-seasons-17th-january-2011

Footage of  me on Channel 4’s  Big Breakfast – click here – http://www.davidrowan.co.uk/solar/hypnotipsy.html

So, to a large extent, I work at fitting in and this means my perceptual orientation/condition/autism becomes invisible to those around me. It is still there though, it is the lends through which I view life and express myself, and when I respond in an appropriately aspie way I am often met with surprise, irritation, bewilderment, even anger …

Imagine that ? – a person in a wheelchair being met with anger because it took them a while to pick up 50p from the floor – outrageous !!!

It won’t happen though, unless you are with a very unpleasant person, because a wheelchair is visible and thus, is always a part of the context of how we relate with that person. Have a go, if you can, of thinking of those in the autistic spectrum as living inside invisible neuro-chairs; it is how they filter what comes in to them .. and how they express themselves to the world around them. Questions and apparent pedantry are s not personal, just like needing to wear glasses is not a personal attack on those who do not like glasses. It is just a way of experience reality and is often invisible to the observer, and even forgotten sometimes by those who love them.

I apologise if anyone who lives with someone in the autistic spectrum finds any offence in my suggestion that they may sometimes forget their loved one has dyslexia, or Asperger’s etc … It is not a comment about you – it is a description of my experience of reality, and may only be a description of the life of Dave.  If you’d like to know if anyone else has these kind of experiences, it would be interesting to ask …

something you may find helpful if you live with the autistic spectrum – Asperger’s Syndrome or Dyslexia …

I was asked if I use the term, ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’, as ‘an excuse’  … ?

a question I found to be a little puzzling …

On the one hand, yes, the term Asperger’s Syndrome is a description; which is not to be confused with being an excuse;   just as describing a person with a mobility problem as, ‘in a wheelchair’, is a description – and the description, the act of describing, does not cause their mobility problem. Saying I am an Asperger’s person does not cause the condition, it merely informs you of the situation so that you can take it into account …

and, why do you have to take me into account – why can’t I take you into account ?

well, if I were a non-Asperger’s person;  a neuro-typical, displaying awkwardness and pedantry in my behaviour, those qualities would be behaviours; they would be things I elect to do, or not, and I could continue doing them, or not.

However, if those qualities are the bi-product of certain neurological wiring, then I can no more easily change them than a short sighted person can easily change their eye sight prescription by altering the neurology of their optic nerve  ’at will’.

The Asperger’s perspective is the lens through which I comprehend everything and also through which I communicate. I cannot change this any more easily than a short sighted person can adjust their eyes, so unfortunately, if a person cannot adapt to me, then it is very difficult, because, if the person who cannot adapt to me is a neuro-typical, then they actually can easily adapt – whereas I cannot not, or at least, not easily, and certainly not quickly.Self Correctiing:

I have learned a few things to modify my natural aspie tendency to be a-social; like, for example,  maintaining eye contact in conversation, and a lot of people are surprised to discover that I am an aspie when they meet me, but I do find ambiguity confusing and, for me, confusion is very painful.

When had my first university Asperger’s/Dyslexia assessment in Southampton in 2002, they discovered I had a  particular dynamic in my thought processing which they called ‘Self Correcting’. This was considered to be so disadvantageous to my forthcoming work as a student, that I was awarded a support worker who would check all my work for grammatical errors and typos, like a university appointed proof reader. My tendency for self correcting prompted a great deal of concern …

What is it ?

On the surface, ‘Self Correcting’ sounds like it describes a person proof reading themselves; typing some words, checking for errors, identifying errors, and then correcting the errors …

However, it is not …it is much more

The first step to understanding Self Correcting is to identify the location of the correcting. What I mean is this;

In the above example of correcting errors, proof reading oneself, the correcting process is external. The brain coordinates the eyes and hands to produce text. The eye scans the text and the brain identifies parts of the text which are incongruous to remembered text-rules. The brain the navigates the hands to physically touch the keys of the physical external keyboard, so that the outer reality is adjusted to meet the remembered text-rules; spelling and grammar. The person has self-corrected the text.

The term, ‘Self Correcting’, describes a completely different process.

In Self Correcting, the correcting is located in the brain; within the neural processing itself.

Here, the brain coordinates the eyes and hands to produce text. The eye scans the text, and light from the page stimulates the optic nerve, as it does in the self-proof-reading example, however, the attention of the individual, what some might term, ‘the mind’s eye’, is not focused upon the details of the external text. It is, instead, focussed upon the memory of what the individual has just written. the inner eye is not looking at the actuality of what has been written; it is looking at the memory of what the individual wanted to write.

The text just written may have errors, it may have no errors, but the individual cannot ‘see’ the text – they can only  ‘see’ the memory of their intention. Think about that for a moment, they can only see their memory of their intention …

All while the individual can remember their intended text, what they wanted to write, they cannot see it objectively; all they can  ‘see’ is their subjective text.

What I find is that if I look at something I have just written, I cannot see the errors – they are invisible to me. However, if I leave the text for some time, or distract myself by thinking about something completely different, the resultant amnesia means that when I next look at whatI have written, I see the text through fresh, objective eyes – and I can the see the actual words my hands produced and the errors are plainly visible..

You may notice on here that I sometimes write a status post, and then delete it, replace it, delete it and replace it again – this happens when I have written something, got distracted and then blushed when I see the errors my dyspraxic hands have produced.

I can see the errors in other people’s writing because i am not privy to the memory of their intention; in other words, because I am not aware of what they wanted to write, my inner eye is not beguiled by the memory – so my attention rests upon the physical page and sees what is actually there. This is then compared to the grammatical rules stored within my unconscious, and I am able to spot text which is incongruous to the rules of which I have knowledge.

I thought it would be interesting to post the following question on facebook:

‘a question for those with Dyslexia: do you find you are able to spot typos and errors in the writings of other people ?’

Every reply confirmed the same; those with dyslexia who cannot see their own errors, can see them in the writings of other people. This suggests that those who replied are Self Correcting.

For me, this Self Correcting mechanism, or neural dynamic, has boarder implications.

If we stop thinking of the Self Correcting process as something related with writing, and instead view it as a neural process, then it becomes clear that the disparity between viewing the external world objectively for what it is, and attending to the mind’s inner concept of ‘what is’, may have more general implications.

For example, if I expect the stairs to be a clearway of ascending steps which lead to the upper landing, all I ‘see’ is a ‘clearway of ascending steps which lead to the upper landing’. If there is something placed  at the foot of the stairs, I literally do not  ‘see’ it; really – even if I have to make an effort of climbing over it, or navigating around it, my inner vision is fixated on the memory of my intention – to arrive at the upper landing, and that is all I ‘remember’ afterwards; my ascending journey along clearway of  steps to the landing …

If the TV screen is covered in dust, I do not see the dust; I see,  ’that which I am looking for’, which is the electrical picture emanating from the screen.

This Self Correcting processing can be useful in certain contexts; when I look at someone’s face I rarely see their spots and blemishes … (until they point them out). Navigating your way through a world of expectations, can be bewildering, entertaining, socially disadvantageous and even downright dangerous. Not seeing the car as you step into an expected clear road, not seeing the open manhole …

Not seeing a friend’s face as they pass you in a busy street is inconvenient – not seeing the temporary mess of a local roadwork’s is convenient. Not being able to do your shopping because the supermarket has moved the shelves around and changed the colours of their packaging is very inconvenient – being able to clearly remember the circumstances of a difficulty and its associated feelings and thoughts, described by a client in a therapy session is very convenient. Forgetting someone’s name but remembering their Moon sign is …

I cannot read music, but I can play guitar because I learn the shapes of chords and the patterns of scales – though, I rarely have a clue what the names of the chords or notes are.

if you’d like a little technicality of the neuroscience of the ‘inner vision’, or, ‘mind’s eye’ …

In neuroscience, units of perceptions, such as the stimulation of the optic nerve when light touches the retina, are known as ‘percepts’ A percept is a component of a perception.

Percepts, such as the stimulated optic nerve, go to the rear of the brain and then loop around and around. If they have sufficient intensity an awareness of them emerges and they become ‘concepts’. Concepts are units of consciousness.

When we look at a tomato, we  ‘know’ the tomato is on the outside of ourselves; a real physical tomato in the real physical external world.

When we remember a tomato, we somehow ‘know’ we are not looking at one, on the ‘outside’

How ?

The name given to the knowing of what we know, neurologically is ‘Qualia’. Qualia is the way neuroscientists discuss how a brain distinguishes the difference between, for example,  various shades of blue. Qualia is a mystery, as is much of the brain, and although the  technologies of the last decade have produced a great deal of new understandings of the brain, we are still at the stage of formative investigation.

I’d like to paste an extract from one of my papers here …

(This may get a little technical, but it’s absolutely fascinating …)

‘ The Narrative Self:

Stephen Pinker attests that humans have an instinct for language; ‘Language is so tightly woven into human experience it is scarcely possible to imagine life without it’ (Pinker, 1994, p.17). Words are not merely symbolic conveyers of ideas or meaning; the phenomena of language is a construct of what may be considered to be that which defines being human; a complex and sophisticated consciousness of self (Dennet, 1991, p.191).  Consciousness does not appear to arise from any single region or neural network of the brain, but appears to be an emergent function which arises from the integration and synchrony of cycles of neural processing (Cozolino, 2002, p153). In The Feeling of What Happens, Domasio describes the emergence of narrative as a process which begins with a proto-conscious core self:

‘…neural patterns which become images, images being the same fundamental currency in which the description of the consciousness-causing object is also car­ried out. Most importantly, the images that constitute this narrative are incorporated in the stream of thoughts. The images in the con­sciousness narrative flow like shadows along with the images of the object for which they are providing an unwitting, unsolicited com­ment. To come back to the metaphor of movie-in-the-brain, they are within the movie. There is no external spectator (Domasio, 1999, p171).’

Domasio asserts the autobiographical self is constituted by implicit memories of multiple instances of past experiences which grow continuously and may be partly remodelled to reflect new experiences. Sets of memories which describe identity and person can be reactivated as a neural pattern and made explicit as images (Domasio, 1999, p.174). Edelman and Tononi confer, describing the formation of the autobiographical self as, ‘the remembered present’, a higher-order of consciousness which can place itself in a scheme of the past, present and anticipated future, which, in its most developed form has a semantic and linguistic capability (Edelman and Tononi, 2000, p. 103).’

The architecture of the brain is not completely static and fixed. The term, ‘Neuro Plasticity’, is used to describe how the brain’s shape is changed when different cells are used, a bit like making a new path in a field of soft tall grass. The more the path is used, the more ingrained the pathway becomes. If it falls out of use it can disappear. Yes; a whole chain of thought, an idea, can literally vanish from your head. American neuroscientists have coined the phrase, ‘use it … or lose it’.

So, the shape of our brain determines how easily we may, or may not, express facets of our character, including problem solving abilities and the options of thoughts we may have. Obviously, when faced with a challenge in life, the more choices we have through the soft ling grass, the easier it may be to find a way to overcome the challenge and thrive.

Less thought options = less choices = higher chance of failure or becoming stuck.

More choice options = more choices = higher chance of success … finding new horizons … and survival.

What creates the thought options ?

Brain activity

What stimulates brain activity ?

Our actions, the environment, and narrative; words.

What stimulates the brain with words while also providing us with new words, which are new thought choices, new pathways ?

Books !!

Books expand  our vocabulary, which expands our inner narrative potentials, which are an expansion of our neural choices – our life choices are enriched by reading.

And, in this spirit, here are the books  referred  to above (and a few more you may enjoy …)

Bibliography:

Bowlby, J., 1979, The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds, Tavistock Publications

Capra, F., 1996, The Web of Life, HarperCollins.

Cozolino, L., 2002, The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, W.W. Norton and Company inc.

Domasio, A., 1999, The Feeling of What Happens, William Heinemann.

Edelman, G M, Tononi, G., 2000, Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination, Allen Lane The Penguin Press.

Grinder, J., Bandler, R., 1981, Trance-formations, Real People Press.

Guastello S, Koopmans M, Pincus D, 2009, Chaos and Complexity in Psychology, Cambridge University Press.

Jackendorff R, 2007, Language, Consciousness, Culture; Essays on Mental Structure, The MIT Press.

Kirkpatrick L A, 2005, Attachment, Evolution, And The Psychology of Religion, The Guildford  Press.

Pinker S, 1994, the Language Instinct, penguin Books.

Sacks O, 1995, An Anthropologist on Mars, Picador.

Schore A N, 2003, Affect Regulation And The Origin Of the Self, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Watson P, Ideas: 2005, A History from Fire To Freud, Weidenfield & Nicolson.

and I recently found …

Autism and the Edges of the Known World: Sensitivities, Language and Constructed Reality – Bogdashina

Memory in Autism: Theory and Evidence – Boucher and Bowler

Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain – Domasio

The Healing Power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience, Development & Clinical Practice – Fosha, Siegal and Solomon

The Healthy Aging Brain – Cozolino

The Mindful Therapist – Siegal

Nurturing the older brain and mind – Greenwood and Parasuraman

The Extended Mind – Menary (Clarke)

Language in the brain – Schnelle

For a tad more on my experience of Asperger’s, see here:

http://www.davidrowan.co.uk/solar/aspergers.html

in kindness

David

Post script:

‘Living with a Beautiful  Mind’ – The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Pedantry:  a possibly somewhat rude example of the difference between Aspergers logic and Neuro-typical pedantry

One year in 2004, a household name company decided to champion a different cause – they chose the National Autistic Society. They put out the call through the company for anyone who’d like to participate who likes in the autistic spectrum, or lives with someone who lives within the autistic spectrum to be interviewed to create a booklet to encourage awareness …

I was mentioned and asked if I’d like to participate and I said, ‘of course’. They wanted to do a feature on me called, ‘living with a beautiful  mind’, which I thought was really nice. To do this, they had hired what  I can only describe as an in-house journalist, or at least, someone was delegated the task. She asked Reena if I’d be free to talk on the phone for half an hour one particular afternoon and was told,

‘yes, though  you’d better clear your diary for the afternoon’.

‘Oh, great. Though it will only be a short …’.

‘Yes, I know – so you’d better clear your diary’ … the journalist’s puzzlement was itself short-lived …

The appointed moment came and the phone duly rang. We said, ‘hello’, and got chatting and she asked, ‘So, what’s it like living with an autistic spectrum disorder ?’

I heard the word ‘disorder’ and began to feel a need to either educate or encourage deeper thought.

I replied, ‘Well, I wouldn’t call it a disorder – I would say I have an Autistic Spectrum Perception’,

J – ‘oh, right, sorry. Well, I called it that because that’s what it says on the web National Autistic Society web site. Do you have a problem with the words people use ?  …  you probably take words literally don’t you … ?

Hmmm … I heard, and not for the first time, ‘…  you probably take words literally don’t you … ?’ and inwardly sighed …

Because:

She asked the last part of her question with a tone that implied I am to be pitied because I take words literally and that literalism is some kind of problem. I decided deeper thought was required …

D – ahh .. ok, here’s a quote for you. Can you write this down verbatim ?

J – of course ..

D – ready …

J – full of anticipation, ‘yes’ …

D – ‘anyone who doesn’t take words literally … is a  Wanker !

J – ‘oh my goodness, what .., I , I can’t writer that into the piece, I’m sorry but …

D – ‘that’s the quote, write it down, “anyone who doesn’t take words literally is a wanker” … ’

D – ‘really, they are … because wanker means, “highly attractive and intelligent individual” … doesn’t it … ? … ‘

J – ‘what ?…’

D – ‘wanker – means highly attractive and intelligent individual .. in the world of a person who doesn’t take words literally … doesn’t it ? … ’

J – ‘I’m not sure I follow …’

D – ‘ok; there aren’t two Oxford English Dictionaries really, are there ? It’s not as if there is the section that holds the words with relevant fixed meanings that we all refer to in a sense of shared reality, and there is the other section that holds the words with irrelevant meanings to which we randomly attribute whatever meaning we happen to feel like at the time. No, there is one English dictionary that states the agreed shared meaning of every word in the English dictionary. Either the word, ‘Wanker’ is offensive because we all agree that that is, because of it’s defined meaning in the body of literature we call a dictionary, or, the word ‘wanker’  means anything you want it to, because the only people who fix meanings to words are people who takes things literally, and they have a disorder.

Either, you take words literally, or you don’t; and if you don’t, you really are a wanker … ’

J – ‘ahhh … I see. Ha ha, though I still can’t print it’

D – ‘that’s a shame, because I am told I have a disorder by people who are doing exactly the same thing as me. Really, if anyone talks about someone as if being literal is a problem, just call them a wanker and they’ll soon realise their offended feelings are revealing that they are doing exactly the same thing – responding to words as if they have a shared and defined meaning’.

‘Honestly, if you wanted me to  communicate in a way that wasn’t literal I could draw a picture or dance or play some music but really, since words are both the  tools and product of a literal medium and I can only use them in a literal way …’

J – ‘you think deeply  don’t you ?’

D – ‘now, that is a trait of being Aspergers … ’

J – ‘and you seem to have a sense of humour, which the web site say’s you shouldn’t have’

D – ‘oh goodness, that one as well. Ok, journalist person, to me, it seems to be like this: if a comedian was playing at the comedy store in London and went out, did his act, and then shuffled off the stage to absolute silence, not even a slow clap or a boo, it would be totally unrealistic for the bad comedian to then announce, ‘what a terrible audience out there tonight. I was really very funny and not one of them laughed – not one of them has a sense of humour …’

Of course, this would be daft. It is not the audience who lacks a sense of humour, it the comedian who lacks the ability to inspire laughter within them. That’s right, isn’t it ?’

J – ‘well, yes …’

D- ‘So, I can only assume that one day some psychologist sat in front of someone with aspergers syndrome and told bad jokes so badly that he didn’t even raise a smile and like some deluded bad comedian announced, ‘the patient does not laugh – conclusion: Anyone with Aspergers Syndrome does not have a sense of humour’. This announcement is taken literally by other non-aspergers people as being a statement of truth and is even written on Aspergers websites as a guide to symptoms …’

She was on the phone for two and a half hours and I have a copy of the booklet, ‘Living with a Beautiful Mind’.

‘A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security’.

Albert  Einstein

If something is valuable it goes along these lines.

If one person wants to buy item X and there are a hundred of them, then demand represents one percent.

For arguments sake, we can value it at a cent.

And we can see, it is not very valuable.

Keeping it simple, if a hundred people want to buy item Y and there are a hundred of them, then demand represents a ratio of 1:1, call it a dollar or a Euro depending on where you live.

Now let’s look at what happens when demand outstrips availability.

If a thousand people want to buy item Z and there is one of them, then demand represents a ratio of 1000:1.

That’s a grand to you and me, or maybe just one of us.

You see, the figures are never this cut and dried and sought after items rocket in value in direct proportion to the insanity of those who seek them.

But you get the overall picture.

So what happens when people make more of something to fulfil a demand?

You can expect the physical value to go down right?

And what if suddenly there is a possibility of an infinite number of copies?

Think of China and the predominance of electrical goods that flood the market every year.

Think of the internet and digital goods.

I check the book chart in my local supermarket, because I like to know what sells. Not that I am ever influenced by it of course. I noticed the top three books this week are by the same author (Shades of Grey) and they had sold out of all but one book.

The interesting thing about this book is there are an infinite number of Kindle editions.

The traditional value system stops short when it comes to digital goods, so perhaps the model needs to change?

Society needs to switch to a value system which accounts for pleasure and usability. We also need to learn to derive more value from things which people provide for free, perhaps in turn providing something useful to someone else?

Then I really started thinking.

Imagine a value system which is driven by a bio chip inserted in your brain stem.

Imagine you gain credit by providing value to others.

Imagine you get charged credit for what you derive pleasure from.

Let’s say you can walk into a store and the value of each item has been derived by the amount of pleasure it has given to others, averaged across the entire population.

You get a retina scan and you have enough credit for a smart phone, a dishwasher and a car.

And those ultra rare items, well think about it.

The value of the item will be in direct proportion to its pleasure and usability.

I can’t see Chris Evans having a problem with his collection of Ferraris, but someone with a Van Goch in a room in a house they rarely visit?

And as these elite items bounce from pillar to post, will we unravel the haberdashery from the hyperbole?

And this blog, you are one of a few hundred readers. You hit it once, read it once and it has to be worth a dollar. Come back more than once and you must be deriving value. You can read over five hundred articles on this website, at least half of which will leave you squirming in your seat in pleasure.

So in the mean time, if you enjoyed reading this article, hit the free will button in the side bar and drop me some bucks for a latte.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Credits: podcast features At The Cash Register.wav by digifishmusic & Construction work 02.aif by Stomp freesound.org

A. No…

Nothing is predetermined, in the sense that there is no already defined model future ahead of us to live into. Only nothing exists yet. And nobody is ahead of us laying down the tracks for where our journey will go. Yet we have no choice in the matter of life. To an extent, the past predetermines the future, free will suffers the mercy of cause and effect.

There are usually a small number of predictable probabilities within an infinite realm of possibility. There is no absolute as to what will happen next, with as many choices to make about the interpretation of this chaos, as there are actual outcomes. What happens next, will be what happens next and is not always predictable despite preconditioned responses or ideals.

Perhaps the biggest thing people miss when they apply the Law Of Attraction is; “It doesn’t happen to you, you happen to it”.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

Credits: Podcast features rbh train freight by.wav by RHumphries freesound.org

If you have stereoscopic vision, this can be tested against reality by doing the following. Take an object an arms length away from you or hold a hand out directly in front of you. Close one eye and leave one eye open. Now switch eyes, in other words close the open eye and open the closed one. Observe movement in the object in front of you. If you don’t see it, rapidly switch between the two eyes, or choose an object like a pen and line it up with something in the background.

Did you have an influence over the object in the outside world, or the background and did it really move, or was it simply a shift in point of view?

The brain is very powerful and creates an illusion of reality. The illusion of reality created by the brain is not reality, it is a point of view.

Here is another exercise, thinking about the same thing. Use a video camera, or even the camera on your mobile phone and ask a friend to help you. Take a fast journey by train and look out of the window at the hedgerows. Notice that visual awareness is a seamless experience. Wherever you look, there will be a sense of being in smooth motion. The visual field will be flowing from one place to the next. The train is taking you somewhere and the scenery will pass by very naturally.

Ask the friend to watch your eyes, but not to mention what happens. Get the friend to make a movie of your eyes as you watch the scenery go by. Before watching the movie, pay attention to your environment and make a mental note of some of the objects occurring within your space. Close your eyes. Move your eyes such that you are looking in a new place. Open them again. Fully take in the object you are looking at. Close your eyes and move them to a new place. Open your eyes and observe the next object. Do this several times.

Notice the disjointed nature of moving your eyes from one place to the next and notice that the experience isn’t seamless.

Now watch the video your friend took of your eyes. Notice how the eyes dart around gathering information. Notice that darting around gathering information is what the brain needs to create a seamless reality.

Finally, notice that YOU have no control over how this happens.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

So I am sitting in the garden, with a MacBook on my knees and I am working through a technique with a woman called Ilona. Ilona Ciunaite is one of the founders of a website called Liberation Unleashed. What makes LU different and fairly groundbreaking is that it provides online access to resources which reveal answers to the ancient question of enlightenment.

This particular process is to look inside and relax the mind. By relax the mind, we mean take stress and tension out of thinking, not stop it entirely. When I get into a hot bath to relax my body, my body doesn’t disappear. Think about relaxation and think about relaxing different areas of your body and then apply it to the thoughts.

What came up for me during the process, is that I am afraid of losing control. If the sense of Mark doesn’t keep tight control and it relaxes and lets go, then something else might be running the show and if it isn’t Mark – who is it? There is a lot of conditioning in the faith I was brought up in about the dangers of spiritual possession. I was warned not to take drugs, drink alcohol or meditate because I could become possessed.

The difference between this process and therapy, is that all these things are noticed as tensions in the mind. It doesn’t matter if they are true or they are not true. In therapy we hold on to these kind of revelations as justifications for the way that we are. And maybe this isn’t the way that we are. Apparently I am a man called Mark with a set of preferences about colours and textures and this week I wouldn’t be seen dead in brown. Next week? Who knows? Mark is a transient quality like fat or thin, so let’s not get hung up on trying to fix it.

In simply asking the questions “what is the mind up tight about” then allowing thoughts to arise, then letting them go, thinking can become wonderfully relaxed. It is noticed that the mind does not need to resolve anything in order to relax. It is seen that the act of thinking to resolve becomes activity which doesn’t free the mind up to relax.

I look at the cat. The cat is rolling in dirt. He is in immediacy. He isn’t thinking “if I roll in this dirt, I am going to have to lick all this grit off my fir later” he is simply enjoying rolling in the dirt. When he comes to cleaning himself, he will apply himself to the task at hand. He will simply remove the grit, how it got there won’t really occur to him.

You see, the past doesn’t care. Things are only not resolved when they are seen as not resolved. In reality there is no such thing as unresolved. What happened, happened and it is already resolved because the consequences of former actions are now the new state of play.

So what the mind is up tight about is not unresolved. What the mind is up tight about is what the mind is up tight about. It doesn’t need to resolve anything out there in the world because out there in the world is already resolved. It is as it is. The current state or play. The mind only needs to resolve things for itself and in this moment.

As human beings we experience choices. They probably aren’t real choices in the sense that since birth, each and every action will have some kind of impact on the next action. However, we experience choices as if they are real choices.

When we get stuck in life, there is a simple choice.

Look at life and the current state of play. This is an outcome to thinking. Who we think we are is who we end up being. So what is in thinking that had this become the state of play? If continuing in this state of play serves life’s experience, then simply enjoy. If this state of play does not serve life’s experience then apparently choose.

Are you a victim and does past thinking justify current actions (state of play)?

Do you recognise that it is already resolved and let it go?

You see, thoughts are often symbolic and memories get adjusted to suit what we need to blame about being stuck. Maybe the question to ask is what if this was actually the result I was trying to get right now? If you are sad, lonely, have no money, no amount of therapy to fix the complaints will not change the experience because the result already is.

It almost never matters why in therapy. What matters is seeing through the cost of the justification and letting it go. It is in choosing new outcomes that it gets seen. The trap in modern psychology is the juicy WHY! It won’t help forward anything. Relax thinking, see the misunderstanding, release it from the system and let it go.

See you on the other side of the looking glass

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton
[contact-form-7]

See you on the other side of the looking glass

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton
[contact-form-7]

Emily Alexander

No Cellar Out 0.9ß

Are you looking for new music?

Why not check out my new album, now in the iTunes music store?

http://itunes.apple.com/album/no-cellar-out-0-.-9/id529571455

Looking for old music?

Take a look at my artist pages!

http://itunes.apple.com/artist/mark-tinley/id20996583

http://itunes.apple.com/artist/tinley/id281181431

Like to try before you buy?

Take a listen on Spotify…

I hope you enjoy listening to is as much as I have enjoyed making it for you.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton
[contact-form-7]

We are rapidly moving away from being a social tribal based community to becoming a more insular and isolated one.

We favour highly intelligent, self sufficient, inventive people with leadership qualities over people who are along for the ride.

And your choice for your offspring could define their entire future!

A world where people will interface with robots and need to cope with fast paced analytical reasoning.

A world where a kiss could be contagious and sentiments will be spoken via email.

So, if you are thinking about having a baby, I could have the perfect solution.

I can help your child to evolve genetically, by being its birth father.

Guaranteed IQ in the 150 range without genetic screening.

I have been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome and a distinct advantage is that I am highly intelligent.

I am also suited to cope with where this world is heading, because I am able to enjoy long periods of time alone with little or no human contact.

Your child?

The leading edge of evolution…

But what about the side effects of these brain advances?

Perhaps one of the disadvantages of Aspergers is a predilection towards anxiety or depression.

But does such a minor problem outweigh the advantages of genius?

Who do you know these days who does not have a problem with anxiety or depression?

It is as common place as the cold.

More than 26% of US adult citizens suffer from anxiety disorders.

For a huge fee, plus unreasonable expenses, I can fly to California and meet you to donate my sperm.

I do not drink alcohol, caffeine, or smoke.

I do not take drugs and I am not on medication.

For further details please contact me.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

“No, I don’t think I have” I replied, “why have you”?

“What, have you never run then”?

The adult mind looks at the above enquiry and takes it somewhere. The child mind takes it somewhere else. And it is this child inside this book seeks to illicit. The behaviour of child, the innocence of child, that lies within. A seed of pure consciousness within each and every one of us. A part of us which is not overrun with concepts about the way things are, should be. Perceptions of a real world made unreal by the very perceiving of it. Believing in what it senses based on untruths and misconceptions.

So it is the adult mind that misconceives the chasing of shadows.

And it is the child mind who understands the poetic reference to shadows chasing trees in the breeze.

You see the adult mind does something to the shadow that the child does not and in so doing negates any possibility that the shadow could be chasing.

The adult mind presupposes the shadow has an identity, or in the case of shadows does not.

How can a shadow chase me if I don’t grant it being? Unless it has an identity, how could it possibly give chase?

The shadow is a reflection of dark in the light. Absence of light, blocked from projection of source to the ground I stand upon. Body masks photons and there it is. The shadow. In a sense it isn’t real. So if it isn’t real how could it give chase?

To the child mind, the shadow is always chasing you. The younger the child the less of a sense of their own identity they have, so less need to personify objects and shadows.

The shadow chases the body, because that is what happens. It doesn’t need an identity to give chase. The child mind simply observes without recourse to concept. So it doesn’t need to negate reality.

Okay, let’s take this somewhere else.

My sense of self is as inseparable from being as my shadow is inseparable from the light.

I exist.

Existence is and there I am.

You can’t sneak up and jump on it. Self is a tricky thing to trick.

Standing in the light of being, I know the light of being creates the illusion of self.

And I have seen the light.

On the other side of each fear lies a realm of consciousness without a shadow, the child mind set free.

On the other side of self lies the real me.

Being, just being.

Existence is and there I am.

Ten Pence

After reading this article in The Metro

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/896735-5p-and-10p-coins-pose-health-risk-due-to-increase-in-nickel-content

About a new type of coin set to be introduced to replace the current cupro-nickel versions as a money-saving measure, which the Mint believes could save up to £10million each year as the cost of copper increases.

It got me seriously thinking about money and what it really is.

Money is entirely conceptual, the physical manifestation of which is a representational system, which is valueless.

Money is not a thing, it is an idea.

Reading the article makes this very clear.

The paradox is the 10 million pounds saved by the Royal Mint.

Given the Mint actually makes the money and puts it into circulation, if the Mint saves 10 million on the manufacturing process, where does that money go?

Do they mint 10 million more in currency because of this?

If not, why not?

Given that all currency goes against the dollar on the trading floor and the value of the dollar represents something physical, the gold reserves in Fort Knox, then something is drastically amiss.

Money is a concept, it isn’t real.

If you want to find out more, check out Mr Twenty Twenty’s excellent crash course, NLP Of Money.

And please purchase my album about money or the song I made with Mr Twenty Twenty, Powerful Happiness Is Your Function.

Play with some of these ideas and ask yourself.

What is money?

What is my attitude towards money?

Is it true?

If it isn’t true, what else in life may not be true?

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty Wharton

It is as if the age gap provides the space for new ideas to show up.

I am sitting discussing MG/Rover with Roger, who is 87. He is telling me how his car ended up as scrap in France when it broke down.

“Was it the cambelt”? I ask.

And as the story progresses, it turns out the garage who fitted the cambelt disappeared by the time he returned from his holiday, while MG/Rover simply refused to take responsibility.

We discuss Peugeot next and Marshalls of St Neots.

We agree that Peugeot make great cars, but Marshalls?

“I won’t use them any more” I venture “too many broken promises”.

“Me neither” says Roger.

We get on to electric vehicles and Roger quite rightly points out that we are still going to need fossil fuels for planes.

“If you made electric planes, there would be no room for anything else once you filled it with batteries”.

Then he said something even more gripping.

“It makes me laugh you know, all this technology, when they say we are no longer in the age of steam”.

I am puzzled.

“Turbines” he says “what do you think turns turbines”?

“Oh sure, what, like power stations”? I reply “I suppose coal fired power stations must use steam”.

“And nuclear power stations” he explains.

“Nuclear Fision creates the heat, which makes steam and turns a turbine”

Steam!

So we live in the age of steam…

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty Wharton

visit Findhorn for Christ Consciousness Week 2012 - click - download A4

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

Here’s mine

Birth chart interpretation for Mark

Born 18 Mar 1963 at 23:25 local time in Southampton, Britain – England
Long: 001W22 Lat: 50N54 Zone: 00:00 DST: No UT: 23:25

Generated by Mark Ty-Wharton

Sun 27° 39′ Pisces
Moon 03° 03′ Capricorn
Mercury 16° 35′ Pisces
Venus 16° 56′ Aquarius
Mars 05° 22′ Leo
Jupiter 26° 09′ Pisces
Saturn 18° 46′ Aquarius
Uranus 02° 13′ Virgo
Neptune 15° 24′ Scorpio
Pluto 10° 27′ Virgo
Ascendant 23° 31′ Scorpio
Midheaven 14° 27′ Virgo

General personality

Born under the sign of Pisces, you have a deep-feeling nature with compassion for those less fortunate than you. You tend to have obscure and undefined goals, and cause confusion for yourself and others because you act on your emotions. But when you succeed in defining your objectives, you have an abundance of creative imagination and insight to realize them. You are kind and charitable, but sometimes your tendency to make sacrifices for other people can get out of hand. You can easily resort to telling white lies to get out of tricky situations, and all too soon you find yourself in trouble – either at work or with your parents or lover. Your imagination could be put to good use in the arts or music.Scorpio rising produces a personality that is deeply reserved, secretive and determined. The power of the personality emerging from a Scorpio Ascendant is so intense, magnetic, and charismatic, that it is often somewhat overwhelming. Symbolized by the scorpion, you have an external “coat of armor” that protects and lets you survive in hostile situations. You are not the sort of person who ever knuckles under, even when pressures and circumstances would defeat lesser souls. When cornered, the famous “deadly scorpion sting” may be brought into play. With Scorpio on the rise your personality is very powerful. People find you hard to understand, to know what you are thinking at any particular time. There is a hidden depth to your persona that is nearly impossible for others to comprehend. Much of the time you may feel as though you are misunderstood. You are very willful and self-reliant, appearing calm and in control on the surface. Yet there are strong emotions at work inwardly. Scorpio is a water sign, and it is a fixed sign. This means that you are an emotional person. These emotions are very controlled (fixed), giving you the determination and the strength to overcome just about any opponent. Resentment and jealousy can be intense with you. You always pursue your goals with intensity. You can stand under heavy strain, and be relied upon to stay cool, even in the most serious emergency. You’re inclined to be very suspicious or skeptical, and occasionally you can be “stingingly ” sarcastic. Every sign has a positive and negative expression, but with the Scorpio the range of possibilities is extreme. Everything is black or white. There are no shades of gray with Scorpio on the rise. Your penetrating stare can look right through a person or a situation. You can make an instant diagnosis and it is usually the right one. The Scorpio personality is often maligned as over-sexed, a bit on the evil side, and often bent on revenge. This is not completely true, but Scorpio does get what it wants, when it wants it, most of the time. It is not a personality to be trifled with.

Emotionally you are reserved and cautious. This might lead to loneliness at times, since you have some difficulty in projecting warmth and tenderness. You are serious and more concerned with achieving goals and objectives than many others, and you want to be recognized as a capable and independent individual. This is not a bad trait, but try not to look down your nose at other people’s suggestions. You are instinctively apprehensive of new ideas, and have a tendency to grumble about minor things that goes unexpectedly wrong. One of your major problems might be lack of self-confidence. Try to look at life with optimism.

You have an abundance of energy, and are able to work very hard when interested in something. You have the knack for inspiring others to do things as well, and would be an excellent team leader. Young people can relate well to you because there is an element of youthfulness in your temperament, but you are inclined to take risks, which could be costly.

A conjunction of the Sun and Jupiter shows that you rarely do anything in moderation. You have an undying faith in yourself and believe that you can do anything to which you set your mind. Your enthusiasm and confidence level runs high, and sometimes you promise more than you can deliver. Even when major setbacks occur, you hang in there. You’re never one to let anything get you down or keep you from charging off on another venture. You have confidence that affairs will eventually work out. Character is all important to you. An extremely high sense of justice and concern for others is apparent in your makeup, even if this doesn’t show up in other parts of your chart.

A positive aspect formed between the Moon and Uranus suggests that your early environment and experiences gave you an inquiring mind. You’re mentally alert and able to absorb knowledge easily. You relate well to people because you listen well and appreciate the opinions of others. You hold your own in an argument because you are always well armed with the facts. You’re not exactly a rebel to authority, but you never hesitate to challenge anyone who assumes power irresponsibly. Your thinking integrates experiences of the past with a clear vision of the possibilities in the future. You’ve learned from your past, yet you’re anything but old-fashioned. Your colorful expression is original and spontaneously imaginative.

Mentality & communication

You have a powerful imagination, and a pleasant, gentle way of thinking and communicating, but you are forgetful, and not terribly practical when it comes to planning the day-to-day organization of your life. You probably rely more on using your intuition than on logical thinking, but then your hunches and feelings are usually more accurate than most other people’s. You are mentally disorganized and have difficulty keeping your attention on one thing at a time. Although you have many interests, your concentration needs conscious development if you are to avoid just wandering here and there, accomplishing little.You are also alert, curious, and knowledgeable on many unusual subjects, and have the capacity for independent and progressive thought, and to communicate this in an original way. Your mind is constantly active, consciously or subconsciously. Solutions to intellectual problems can come to you in unexpected flashes. Your mind is focused toward the future, and you have no problem understanding or accepting modern thought.

Love, marriage & social relations

You have dynamic powers of attraction and an individual way of expressing affection, but it is not very easy for you to relate to people on a very intimate level. You tend to be more of a friend than a lover, and you need good intellectual rapport with your partner more than most other people. Unusual things stimulate your interest, and you seek the company of people who are different from the average person. It is also essential for you to be permitted complete freedom of mobility, as you can easily blame others for restricting your development. On the other hand you respect people’s right to be themselves as well.A conjunction of Venus and Saturn shows the necessity to make concessions to others to get what you want. You have to adjust to make relationships work. Many of your relationships are unsatisfactory or restricting in some ways. You feel you are being used or perhaps they are just not fulfilling. It may be that you have to give more than the other person does. Pessimism may mark your attitude toward personal relationships. This aspect also relates to financial matters. Your judgment in material affairs is sound, and you are very self-disciplined in handling money.

Venus forms a negative aspect with Neptune in your horoscope. This aspect may show subconscious difficulties in close interpersonal relationships. It’s hard for you to maintain close relationships because of defense mechanisms that go up when you sense that you are being challenged. Rose-colored glasses or blinders may affect your judgment in matters of the heart, and perhaps also to your financial affairs, as well. You are likely to be shy and retiring with the opposite sex, at least more so than shown by other indicators in your chart. Often this aspect shows a lack of direct or a degree of dishonesty or subterfuge associated in marital affairs.

Career & ambition

The Virgo influence in tenth house suggests that attainment is gained through service. Often this service is associated with improving people’s minds. You work with diligence and devotion to fulfill professional commitments. Despite your broad views, you can efficiently cope with many details in your work. Your career may deal with writing and critical analysis, allowing you to express your practical, concrete observations and your thoughts and theories. You will be bored unless your career requires the exchange of ideas and a complexity of detail. You probably play it safe in selecting a career. You may prefer to find employment in a large, well-established organization such as civil service, a church, or an educational institution.

Other traits

You tend to be quite philosophical, and there may well be a dedication to beliefs; this may emerge in an adherence to a religious faith, but equally could relate to some compelling interest, or perhaps an art-form. Charitable and kind, you are able to do a great deal to improve the lot of less fortunate people. You have a good capacity to enjoy life, and a tendency to put on weight. You can be somewhat deceptive, and probably are an excellent mimic.You have a rational, logical and positive manner, and don’t like having to depend on others for anything. You are usually able to take a detached view of your own psychological problems, and while there may not be a great deal of flexibility in your attitude of mind, you have the ability to counter what is wrong by using stronger and more positive characteristics and traits. You tend to be quite individual, and don’t accept overconventional or well-established ideas or outmoded concepts.

I am in a kids play park with my fearless son.

I can’t take a photo while another kid is in shot, or I will probably get arrested.

People ignore other people’s children.

Weird!

There is a little girl playing near my son and she has lost her shoe.

She is shouting on her mum who is yards away for help.

There is an adult standing right next to her and it is as if she isn’t there.

The child has a half expectant look, something about her body language suggests that the closer adult could help.

Stands to reason right, pass me my shoe, help me put it on.

But no, we don’t talk to other people’s children.

It is a social faux pas.

I once saved a child from drowning and the mother looked so shocked that I had dared touch her child.

Then she realised I was her hero, her knight in shining armour and then she thanked me.

She had been busy talking and hadn’t seen the child go under.

I had simply grabbed it by the arm and said “are you alright”.

But helping a child put on a shoe?

Isn’t that beyond our community responsibility?

No wonder we grow up isolated and separate.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Life happens out here in the world with our senses.

So the wise spend all their time looking within and believing in their selfs.

Living in the heart, trying to find the soul.

Presence is all around us yet we ignore it.

Sight and sound are here and immediate yet we journey to the centre of the earth to find an answer.

And all of this, is in the imagination.

Life needs to stop looking in there, in the imagination and to start looking out here in the world.

It is not that there is no centre of the Earth, it is liquid, physical, it is just that if we to have a self it is certainly not at the core of being human.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati,

Mark Ty-Wharton.

Well, that is my story and I am sticking to it.

What happened on the second day was extraordinary.

I stormed out of the building and left the course.

I have to admit that it isn’t the first time I have done this.

In the past I would have just been angry and blamed everyone else. I would have got lost in the process of the anger and not looked at some fundamental issues which shape my life.

It seems to me that in the lack of a presence of any other way of being, I am anger.

Put another way, if I am not angry, I get to see there is a huge void inside of me.

Culturally we have been led to believe that something is missing and we turn to God, or seek pleasure to try and bridge this gap. The gap between who we believe ourselves to be and who we are not.

I have news for you. You are not anything. The atom farm, or colony or family of electrons and neutrons that creates the physical co-operative that is your body, doesn’t need you.

You are a function of it and it doesn’t care much about what you think.

As I stormed around Hyde Park, I began to realise that I wasn’t being angry, angry was being me.

Provided I am angry, I get to be a me.

If there is no anger, I lose my sense of identity.

And it is this very sense of identity that is illusory.

Sure, there is a physical form typing on these keys, but is it an individual?

The only point of view where it possibly can be an individual is as a manager of various processes.

I get to breathe, drink, eat, read, sleep, write.

Without getting too deeply into it in a light hearted blog post (ask me for coaching if you want to blow your mind), there are no processes an individual is in charge of. None.

So, back to anger and storming around Hyde Park.

I have maintained for thirty years that I am having panic attacks and they make me very angry.

What I noticed is that anger is having panic attacks.

The two seem somewhat collapsed, yet there is a fear of what might happen if everything was unleashed.

There is a fear of dark deeds and murder most foul.

I am angry at people, because I have an undeclared commitment to be angry.

To be a somebody, I have to find fault in the world and blow up about it.

And then I am this wonderful new age guy, who is gentle and kind and caring.

It’s so fucking two faced.

I get to manifest anger because of a sense that something is missing and I need to fill the void.

I get to manifest panic attacks because it wouldn’t be nice to be angry.

And there is a lot of anger that never gets honoured.

And by not honouring it, it never gets dealt with.

For example, if I try and be level headed around my ex-wife to give my children the impression that everything is okay between us, I never get to acknowledge the things she did that made me angry.

They get bottled up.

And bottles burst and anger shows up in all sorts of strange ways.

Like panic attacks, road rage, or lumps under the skin.

So what am I saying?

It is a simple process.

Acknowledge anger and let it be.

Acknowledging anger does not mean I have to act on it.

What my ex-wife did was not okay and I am still angry about it ten years later, simply because I kept a lid on it, to be positive for my kids.

Humanity’s lack of compassion and fairness is not okay.

When people rip me off, it is not okay.

Doing self development does not mean it is okay.

A double negative does not make a positive.

Don’t be angry?

Worse still, don’t try to not be angry?

All this negating leads to a lack of acceptance for what is there.

Anger.

Honoured, the anger can be seen for what it is, an energy, the fake identity of Mark.

When it is a ghost in the machine, trapped with a lid, it is invisible.

When I honour that “life is not fair and I hate you” it can be seen for the drama that it is.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

Live for the moment, of the moment

We hear this phrase a lot and yet, never really think about what it means.

The etymology of words fascinates me, because it is in language that the ancient secrets of the Universe are revealed.

It is in the lost meanings of things that freedom lies.

Often times just a thought away and usually spread right across language without us noticing.

The dictionary defines the moment as a short indefinite period of time.

Indefinite?

Not limited.

Unlike infinite, a concept which has no ending, indefinite feels sure that things will one day come to an end, it just doesn’t know when.

At some point perhaps time will stop?

Moment is derived from the Latin word momentum, meaning movement.

Momentum is a certain kind of movement, driven by force, conjuring images of motion that cannot be stopped.

The ball is in play and it has a strength or velocity about it, a tendency to keep moving.

Let’s look at our current model of creation, the Big Bang. The God of the religion Science!

This imaginary force that pulled the Universe into being and suspended it magically in space has a tendency to keep things in motion and it does it by flux and flow, wax and wane.

Its inconsistency perpetuates it, as it makes maximum use of direction, magnitude and velocity.

And let’s look at current itself.

Here is another word that appears to mean one thing, something intransient, yet means something else as well.

Just as moment belongs to time, current implies a static concept, as well as one of flow.

We cannot freeze the motion of the Universe. It has a tendency to keep moving.

So for living in the moment, of the moment?

It just means “do things”.

Shit happens…

It doesn’t mean meditate and be at one with the universe, you are already that.

It does not mean “Be In The Now” because time is an arbitary concept based on planet earth’s relationship with the sun.

Living in the moment means, getting wet in the river of life and going wherever it may flow.

Living for the moment means “what happens, happens”.

Do some things today, just for today.

Go with the flow, when it’s rapid, it’s rapid, when it’s not, it’s not.

The Taoists recommend taking action that is spontaneous and effortless.

I invite you to apply these principles to your life today and see what shows up.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Anurajyati (be in love),

Mark Ty-Wharton

(Getty Images)

I just read the following article http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/tv/2012/01/24/simon-cowell-warns-x-factor-judges-aren-t-safe-for-2012-115875-23714604/ and I got really excited…

The reason I am excited is because I would make a perfect judge

The first verse is clearly a pointer to no self, no-one replies. Awareness just is, it doesn’t need to be decided, reasoning is too much.

While the second examines the nature of reality.

The universe is expressing itself.

So which former Sex Pistol attained enlightenment?

After reviewing the lyric, you are invited to comment below.

There’s no point in asking
You’ll get no reply
Oh just remember a don’t decide
I got no reason it’s all too much
You’ll always find us
Out to lunch

Oh we’re so pretty
Oh so pretty
We’re vacant
Oh we’re so pretty
Oh so pretty
Vacant

Don’t ask us to attend
‘Cos we’re not all there
Oh don’t pretend ‘cos I don’t care
I don’t believe illusions ‘cos too much is real
So stop your cheap comment
‘Cos we know what we feel

Oh we’re so pretty
Oh so pretty
We’re vacant
Oh we’re so pretty
Oh so pretty
Vacant

Oh we’re so pretty
Oh so pretty
Ah but now
And we don’t care

We’re pretty a-pretty vacant
We don’t care

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Mark Ty-Wharton

You could say “It’s all music” of which there are many different manifestations, yet at the end of the day it’s all sound.

Adyashanti, Alan Watts, Eckhart Tolle, Gangaji, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Paul Hedderman, Osho, Tony Parsons and many more?

All these teachers have experienced, yet approached melody by different means.View post

What makes it even harder for the seeker is the lack of consistent terminology across genres.

A bass guitar is a bass guitar is a bass guitar in music, but Satori is not Satori is not Satori.

Buddhism, Hinduism and Zen label positive states by different dreams.

So avoid listening to negation. This is not it, that is not it, the other is not it, because there is only this.

Even Charles Manson is enlightened if you listen to him in a certain way.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Mark Ty-Wharton

It was once Simon Le Bon’s house, perhaps he had fitted the shutters?

Donna was sitting on the wall outside with a pen and a camera and asked Nick to sign something for a friend while he stopped to pose for a photo with one of the Italians.

Just how many women were there in Italy. Always Italians… And Donna, always Donna. I am sure Duran Duran had other fans but I don’t remember them.

The gate clanged behind us and we were plunged into darkness. With only the mirrors on the banister glinting a reflection of the black light on the stairs, we stumbled along a dark corridor and into the living room.

Privacy, like private, like private shop I mused. Something pornographic? This is more seedy night club than retreat.

I say living room as it was a typical Victorian house with a bay window and a divider between the front and back rooms, though this had long since gone.

This double room was about thirty foot long with a massive DDA mixing desk at one end, a couch which had been there so long it was reputed to have an Indian burial ground underneath it, and racks or stacks or musical equipment arranged in stations. Guitar central, synth corner and Pro Tools.

And it was at Pro Tools that I sat, in front of a Mac Quadra till it inexplicably exploded and then an identically shaped Power PC. This whole system was synchronised to a pair of digital tape machines which whirred like fan heaters under the mixing desk and the trick was to bounce things back and forth in the most efficient way.

Music technology was in its infancy and we were at the bleeding edge. When a computer crashes in creative flow it can be as disastrous as using a balsa wood boat down rapids. Pop stars can explode with the same ferocity, and sometimes do. Never Nick though, always the gentleman with impeccable manners, he would simply settle down to arriving late or writing another list.

It was on one such day that he announced that I was part of the movie he was directing and then handed me a piece of jigsaw telling me it was what I had been looking for.

It wasn’t.

What was fascinating about this surreal conversation was, it would start to shape some of the ideas I formulated about life when I did actually start to look for what was missing. We all have something missing right? And some of us know what it is and some of us don’t. I didn’t, still don’t, don’t care now, but had to look for it all the same.

So here I am recounting the tale and have yet to mention Warren. Privacy was Warren’s house and he had given up his entire living space to a recording studio. Excellent! I would have loved to have done the same, except for having a wife. What an inconvenience, although she was something I thought would fill the void.

At this point Warren walked into the living room waving a large tuna steak on a plate and mumbling something incomprehensible like “What up Mister Tin”, then  plonked himself down on the sofa next to Nick.

And thus the day began, busy busy busy, no time to think about what was missing again.

I put the jigsaw in my pocket for later.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Mark Ty-Wharton

What was interesting about it is, it looked like the kind of cloud you would get in the sky.

Something about this planet and its design gives rise to such phenomena.

So is it by design? or purely accidental.

Inherent in nature is, the exact criteria needed to provide life in its current form.

Why do crystals form in patterns? in the patterns that they do?

Perhaps a vibration or wobble is caused by the earth being off centre, tilted, or caught between two huge gravitational fields?

And this very vibration shakes things into the familiar patterns we see before us.

A flower, a tree. Why is life life-ing that way?

Whatever it is that does it, it is responsible for the patterns that make up you and I.

We owe it our lives.

Life is us.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Mark Ty-Wharton

The sound of one hand clapping

Enlightenment, liberation, spirituality…

Gurus make something simple into something horribly complicated.

Clap hands hard.

Smarting…

A direct experience.

Now have a direct experience of awareness.

It cannot be done.

Awareness and experience correlate but cannot be separate.

You are not awareness.

You are not experience.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Mark Ty-Wharton

Lucid Dream

Welcome to chat.parallels.com, Vijay Kumar R. will be right with you.

Mark Ty-Wharton

We have just created trouble ticket for you. Ticket number: #1275156.

Vijay Kumar R.

Thank you for contacting Parallels Customer Support.

Vijay Kumar R.

How may I assist you today?

Mark Ty-Wharton

Hi I just spoke with your colleague

I want to upgrade to Parallels 7 from Parallels 3.0

I have been offered the full product version of Fusion by VMWare for $34.99 and I wonder if you can match the price for my upgrade and keep me as a customer?

Vijay Kumar R.

I am sorry to inform you that you will have to buy Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac full version for $79.99 as the upgrade from Parallels 3.0 to V.7.0 is not possible.

Mark Ty-Wharton

Okay, can you give me a promo code to buy the full version of the program for the same price as VMWare are offering Fusion for? $34.99

Vijay Kumar R.

I am sorry to say that it is not possible.

Mark Ty-Wharton

In other words what steps can you take to stop me from buying and using your competitor’s program?

Mark Ty-Wharton

Why is it not possible?

Vijay Kumar R.

However, provide me with 2 minutes while I have a check with ourSupervisors.

Mark Ty-Wharton

Okay, thanks

Vijay Kumar R.

We appreciate your patience.

Mark Ty-Wharton

Okay, thanks

Vijay Kumar R.

May I know where have located?

Mark Ty-Wharton

I am in the UK

Mark Ty-Wharton

London

Vijay Kumar R.

Thank you for the information provided.

Mark Ty-Wharton

I can download the product. I have helped Beta test in the past.

Vijay Kumar R.

I had a word with our supervisors and I am sorry to inform you that you need to purchase if for $79.99.

Mark Ty-Wharton

Wow, that’s unbelievable

Mark Ty-Wharton

You can tell them I am going to buy VMWare then, I won’t be helping you with any more beta tests!

Vijay Kumar R.

They are kept informed about that as well sir.

Mark Ty-Wharton

I already bought your product once and VMWare offer the same or better functionality for half the price – is this how you reward customer loyalty?

Mark Ty-Wharton

In the words of Seth Godin, a company folds one customer at a time!

Vijay Kumar R.

You will have to pay $79.99 for our product just because our product is worth buying and its twice

faster and better than the other products.

Mark Ty-Wharton

Your product is worth buying twice? Is that company policy? To sell things twice!

Vijay Kumar R.

Sorry, I did not mean

in that way. I just gave you an answer to why you should buy our Product for $79.99.

Mark Ty-Wharton

I think you sould read Seth Godin’s blog before we conclude this conversation

Mark Ty-Wharton

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/11/preparing-for-the-breakthroughcalamity.html

Mark Ty-Wharton

Products and services succeed one person at a time, as the word slowly spreads. Customers defect one person at a time, as hearts are broken and people are disappointed. Doors open, sure, but not all at once. One at a time.

Vijay Kumar R.

I do understand your concern sir, but we have to go with the company’norms.

Mark Ty-Wharton

No you don’t

Mark Ty-Wharton

Company norms become stagnant business that loses sight of its customer base

Mark Ty-Wharton

Have you any idea how hard it is to talk to an advisor?

Vijay Kumar R.

Yes sir, I understand.

Mark Ty-Wharton

As a parting note, I write a blog and I will be sure to let my readers know the outcome of this conversation.

Mark Ty-Wharton

Thank you for your time and have a great day.

Vijay Kumar R.

Is there anything else I can assist you with?

Mark Ty-Wharton

No, I am filling the credit card details I was going to give to you into a form on the VMWare website

Mark Ty-Wharton

I get 18 months free support too!

Vijay Kumar R.

I am happy about that sir.

Mark Ty-Wharton

And a FREE copy of McAfee

Mark Ty-Wharton

My blog is http://likebeing.com

Vijay Kumar R.

We do provide Kaspersky anit-virus, Kaspersky internet security alongwith Parallels 7.

Mark Ty-Wharton

I think you are missing the point

Mark Ty-Wharton

I am already a Parallels customer

Mark Ty-Wharton

and I helped beta test Parallels

Mark Ty-Wharton

and you can’t match a competitors price

Mark Ty-Wharton

I only want to upgrade

Vijay Kumar R.

Thank you for using our product sir.

Mark Ty-Wharton

I am not going to use your product any more!

Vijay Kumar R.

We respect you all the time as you were using Parallels product.

Mark Ty-Wharton

And now you don’t?

Mark Ty-Wharton

You want me to enjoy the 90 new features in VMWare?

Vijay Kumar R.

I am really sorry that I could not help you with purchasing our product for an discounted price.

Mark Ty-Wharton

Okay, no worries I am sure VMWare won’t treat me like this

Vijay Kumar R.

We do respect our customers all the time sir.

Mark Ty-Wharton

Thanks for your time

Vijay Kumar R.

Thank you for contacting Parallels Customer Support.

Mark Ty-Wharton

Anurajyati

What am I talking about?

My Sat Nav, that’s what.

This expensive little device is fit for the bin and not a lot else, you see the mapping is two years out of date.

And because it has a Lithium Ion battery which can be charged around a thousand times before wearing out and it charges each and every time I switch on my car, making several journeys a day has left the battery life somewhat lacking.

All the same, this is a satellite receiver, it finds satellites and it tracks them and it does it perfectly well.

Right now I am standing at fifty two degrees, three minutes and forty three seconds north and zero degrees, forty three minutes and twenty seconds west.

It knows that.

So why if it works perfectly and it is designed to work with my car’s twelve volt system so the failing internal battery is not really a problem, can I not simply update the mapping and carry on using it.

Well, that’s the problem, I can!

I plugged it into my computer.

You need an update it said.

“I know that” I shouted back at the screen.

I updated the software.

Most of the time I update software because Microsoft send me a message saying if you do not update your software, hackers will sneak into your email and fill your computer with links to absurdly unrealistic pornography and then your partner will check her email and see…

Oh, never mind.

I don’t think I need to worry about a firewall with my GPS, though I did see a car on fire in the high street yesterday so I did wonder.

Legal Warning – do not operate this device while driving – agree.

Destination.

Nanny’s house.

Bang.

Eek, my car is on fire.

Or something like that.

Anyway, back home, the Internet and my software update.

“Would you like a new map?”

And…

“Click here to add to basket”

Great!

Checkout.

Eighty nine dollars and ninety nine cents.

What?

Are they mental?

Exchange rate dot com.

Fifty Seven Pounds and seventy nine pence, though I doubt my credit card company will give me anything like such a good rate.

Currently I can pick up a brand new RAC branded Sat Nav from Halfords for thirty nine pounds and ninety nine pence

Ah but it isn’t a Garmin I hear you say and you can’t upgrade it when the mapping is out of date.

Okay

So I looked on eBay.

I can buy the latest equivalent of this model, the Garmin Nuvi 1200, NEW, for sixty three pounds and ninety five pence which includes postage from Newton Abbot in Devon.

Assuming for a moment the new maps really represent fifty seven pounds and seventy nine pence of the value and accounting for the three pounds and ninety five pence postage, the unit cost of the GPS, in car charger, USB lead and lithium ion battery that fails after two years and needs a bomb disposal unit to take care of if you put it in the bin and all the packaging, printed manuals, stickers and paraphernalia is two pounds and twenty one pence.

It’s hard to see how they could ever produce this unit for such a price, the research and development, the testing, the marketing and so on.

Garmin are just another corporate monster devouring planetary resources and pushing the increasingly bewildered consumer to buy more stuff.

And the real resource being profiteered from, the hidden cost, is to the environment and the lives of the people in the third world countries we exploit to make this stuff.

The real horror story is that we are going to run out of resources and we are all going to die horribly suffocated by our own greed.

So do I bin it and buy another one, or do I reuse.

It’s a very hard choice.

I wrote to Garmin and asked them for a FREE map…

Dear Mark Ty-Wharton,

Thank you for contacting Garmin Europe.

I am happy to help you. Unfortunately our devices only come with free map updates within 90 days of the new device acquiring the first satellite fix. After the 90 days if you have not taken advantage of the guarantee you will no longer be entitled to it and you will need to purchase an update.

Blah Blah Blah

Emma Switzer

I replied…

I think you are clearly missing the point Emma.

I have been a Garmin customer for at least ten years, have bought several products and have always been happy with them.

But, why on earth would I spend more money upgrading a map on a device when I can buy a brand new complete Sat Nav system for less money?

Am I to assume the unit is worthless, always was worthless and I am simply paying for the up to date information.

If the map was reasonably priced I might buy it to save another piece
of plastic from going in landfill…

Dear Mark Ty-Wharton,

Thank you for contacting Garmin Europe.

I am happy to help you; the cost of our mapping is based on how much we are charged by the mapping company. Garmin® does not compile the map data; we pay royalties on this data and therefore only license it, we do not own it. The routable data is provided by the company NAVTEQ, a respected map data vendor, often regarded as the best in the business.

Blah Blah Blah

Emma Switzer

I asked for Navteq’s details so that I could ask them for a free map.

Garmin sent them.

I responded thanking them and suggested they watch a film called “The Story Of Stuff” on YouTube.

Dear Mark Ty-Wharton,

Thank you for contacting Garmin Europe.

I am happy to help you; the cost of our mapping is based on how much we are charged by the mapping company.

Garmin® does not compile the map data; we pay royalties on this data and therefore only license it, we do not own it. The routable data is provided by the company NAVTEQ, a respected map data vendor, often regarded as the best in the business.

You have to understand that the maps are constantly changing, and the mapping is continuously being updated.

The cheaper option in the long run is to purchase the Lifetime maps.

You would have to pay the one-off cost of £74.99, but this would provide you with every update that we release for the Life of your device.

Blah Blah Blah

Kerrie Carrott

The life of my device?

The life of my device, what does that mean, I am not sure I could open this to replace the battery it seems to be sealed, so is it dead now?

Or will they leave it behind in a software update.

Oh sorry, the new version of the operating system no longer supports that processor.

Dear Kerrie Carrott

Do you actually understand my point, because it seems to me you have just cut and pasted Emma’s original email, or you have this complaint a lot and already have a cleverly worded template for it?

I initially paid seventy nine pounds and ninety nine pence for my Sat Nav and I am led to understand I can buy the map without lifetime mapping for sixty four pounds and ninety nine pence.

And that lifetime mapping costs seventy four pounds and ninety nine pence.

I would therefore like to upgrade my existing map from non-lifetime mapping to life-time mapping for ten pounds.

I am forty eight and if I look after this unit carefully it should last at least as long as I do.

Can you please arrange this and invoice me accordingly.

Kind regards…

Cat Spot Off

Last week I invited you to test your hearing and perception.

I have now posted the final sound clip on Sound Cloud.

The question was… Is this sound effect Stereo or Mono?

The answer is, it was mono.

So why were your ears telling you it was stereo?

I added a stereo element to the mono sound, filtered pink noise.

In The Pink by Mark Ty-Wharton

You can hear the stereo quite easily, move your head around if you can’t. If you have a MONO button press it and the sound will collapse.

When placed behind a mono sound, this sound has the effect of tricking your mind into thinking the sound coming from each speaker is different and hence thinking the sound is stereo.

It is actually an old trick with a new twist.

It is quite well known that if I take a mono sound and use a graphic EQ to create a comb filter (turn up / down frequency bands in alternate speakers) that I can simulate stereo.

Even my mum knows about that. She used to tell me “the bass is in the left speaker and the saxophone is in the right”.

But if I do that the resulting sound gets hollow and weird, especially if I am nearer one speaker than the other.

I needed another solution for some extremely realistic 3D audio that I was making.

I found that by adding noise and faking it’s stereo, I can fool the brain’s spatial decoding system into thinking something is happening that isn’t.

And if you are concerned that there is no noise in your audio to mask this process, I would go as far as to suggest that if you isolate any sound recorded in the real world, there will be noise in the background of it.

There will be a level where you can use this and nobody will notice. And in my experience adding a little noise can actually work really well on quiet sounds and often makes them sound a lot more natural.

Here is a screen shot from the DAW session.

The left speaker’s faders are gray, the right speaker’s faders are orange. It is really easy to see the separation.

You can download this AU plug-in free from http://www.voxengo.com/product/marvelgeq

What surprised me the most was, the sound itself can be mono, so it seems it is that ever important background of noise that gives us human beings our spatial awareness.

So there you are, I discovered something really interesting about sound and how we perceive space and I wanted to share it with you.

Feel free to download the audio from SoundCloud to put in your DAW and play with.

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

I have posted a couple of sound clips on Sound Cloud.

Here is the first.

The question is… Is this sound effect Stereo or Mono?

Please don’t download the sound until after you have made your decision.

Please use your ears and your perception to decide, don’t load it into a DAW and investigate.

Stereo Or Mono by Mark Ty-Wharton

Having trouble deciding?

It is subtle isn’t it.

When you have made a decision and not before, here is a mono version of the same sound.

Mono by Mark Ty-Wharton

You can hear the difference right?

So what do you think is going on?

Again, is the first one stereo?

I discovered something really interesting about sound earlier and how we perceive space and I wanted to share it with you.

Please don’t cheat, just use your ears and post in the comments box below.

When I have enough confused sound engineers, I will post the solution.

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

I just started to read The Guiding Principle by Davide De Angelis and I notice how much I filter what is being said.

I interchange terminology to suit my current belief system and I agree with Davide, though I wonder if he agrees with me.

Davide mentions God.

I interchange God with “what is happening” or “all that is”.

Davide calls the life force that animates the universe ‘Guiding Principle’ which I interchange with “I don’t know”.

One thing Davide and I seem to have in common is, we were really worried about being fucked up and now we are not.

My life was horrific, I experienced anxiety at every twist and turn, in short it was a fucking nightmare.

I am not saying I am not fucked up, I am diagnosed with a form of autism and I experience things no human ever really should, what I am saying is, I am no longer that worried by it.

If I could somehow explain that I experience anger, anxiety and bliss simultaneously and hold my deeper depressions as a source of constant amusement, then I might be able to convey something of the shift.

It starts with identity and once the true nature of identity is revealed it is hard to go back. It is no misfortune for mine to have been revealed many times throughout this life.

So what on earth am I talking about?

The Ancient Egyptians believed that a human being was made of five parts.

The name (given at birth), the personality (everything that makes an individual unique), the vital essence or animus (that which distinguishes a dead person from a live one), the shadow (and possibly the reflection, how the person sees others and Jung’s dark side could be included conceptually) and the metaphysical heart (the idea that the child was formed from a drop of the mother’s blood).

To Ancient Egyptians the heart was the seat of intention.

For the sake of simplicity, mind, body and spirit aside, let’s just call this identity. If I have a soul, I don’t know what it is and that is what I am looking for, except perhaps where I look is the last place I will find it.

Self development

During my life, as a child of the sixties, I have been encouraged to “turn on, tune in and drop out” to expand my consciousness, to achieve some kind of revelation, the goal? Bliss.

And there is certainly an experience of bliss available at the end of the drug rainbow, if one is willing to risk rat poison or chemicals brewed in a dirty bathtub to get there.

Okay let’s do it…

Here is life, banging on about life… “How do I get there then”? you are probably asking.

The short answer is, you don’t. You have been tricked, there is a secret so profound that even if I tell you, like Davide De Angelis’ book, you will filter it out from your reality and not see it.

Here goes…

There is no subjective you, there is only what is happening. Even your observations are a part of what is happening and you, are a part of the object, All that is.

The practice is to allow the metaphysical heart to have a voice. This is the voice of gratitude and love. It would seem the natural physical state is one of pure bliss and identity is the stable door firmly bolted.

How can I transcend identity?

One way would be to take loads of drugs, pure and simple, get so out of it you have no idea who you are and you might get close to enlightenment. Why do you think so many people do it? A wee joint before going to work? Just drop a pill before going to a party. KILL SELF CONSCIOUSNESS DEAD… Get yourself out the way! But be careful you don’t take the body with you. No body, no enlightenment.

And let me warn you too, taking ecstasy is like a drag race. Short sharp shock enlightenment for the desperate and lazy. Wake up the next day and guess who is still there! Okay, you will always be there but there is nothing like drug withdrawal to muster an identity crisis. Identities love stories and worry and “oh Christ, I think I am an addict” always fuels the me, me, me pyre nicely.

Imagine the rush, three hundred miles per hour and somewhere in the middle of it, you get a sense of it.

Except sometimes even the most conscientious drug takers have accidents.

How else can I transcend identity?

So you get that I am not recommending drugs as a route to enlightenment unless of course the merest hint of a split second glimpse of your true nature is all you came by for?

Good.

So what about self-development? What is that?

I did the Landmark Forum in 1999 and fell directly into a pitfall. One I made for myself I hasten to add, it is an excellent course and often misrepresented by the people whose identities filter its content.

But what exactly do I mean by that?

On the third day of the Landmark Forum, life was just life, the way it was and the way it wasn’t. The pitfall? I tried to own it. I spent years trying to own it. It became a goal, course after course after course, I wanted that ‘state’ back. What I failed to see is that the state was me.

In a few hours, Landmark had peeled off layer after layer of identity and then there was just being. I started to ask myself “what do I have to do to have just being”? when perhaps I should really have been asking “what do I have to allow to experience what is happening”?

And despite being told by a number of well meaning people that Landmark Education was self development, that is not what it is at all. It is a redefinition of self which allows an experience of pure consciousness, beingness, to occur.

If three long days and an evening session doesn’t appeal to you, you could try something like Advaita or Zen? All like paths ultimately lead away from the selfish idea of the me. Even this one, like being, because you and I are of the same stuff, that is what I see.

Can you answer questions and help me to attain enlightenment?

I am always happy to answer questions, more to the point help you find the right questions to ask to find the answer. You are not really looking for anything, because you ‘are’ already IT. The true nature of self is that there isn’t one and… it’s counter intuitive to everything you have ever known so it might take some subtle enquiry to have a validating experience. Language is paradoxical in that so many words have more than one meaning.

Ultimately the Ancient Egyptians knew “I” to be five separate states of being. Traditionally we hold three of them Body, Mind, Spirit in high regard and to be totally honest the terminology “I” in the sense it is being used in this blog has nothing to do with any of that.

There is ‘what is happening’ and “I” is simply a part of it, a reference point. It has no more inherent importance than ‘cup’ which holds the tea I am about to sip. It is simply one of many containers for ‘all that is’.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

Mark Ty Wharton

I should of course litter the blogroll with affiliate links to local drug dealers, or perhaps only give brief synopsis’ of articles and it is not because I have money that the complete article is available to you for free.

I want you to read this. I want you to live this. I want you to experience what it means to be human.

If you found the information contained herein entertaining or of value, then I invite you to make a donation. You can of course choose any amount will be appreciated and you can ensure continued recordings, writings and freely accesable materials for others less fortunate than yourself.

You can click to the left where it says support this website to donate.

Anurajyati

In a sense, it is designed to simulate a mild stroke and my experience of it is, that after listening, my mind is calmer and my visual field appears much brighter.

It has a fun hippy era feel to it and I like to imagine myself in a bright flowery shirt driving a VW camper and smoking Californian grass, not that any of those things ever agreed with me!

This recording however, takes me to all the places I imagined I would have gone if it had.

The result is very hypnotic so I recommend that you do not actually listen while driving your camper van. You are also responsible for getting yourself out of trance, there is nothing in the script to bring you back from enlightenment, so you may find yourself queuing at the bank and really enjoying it.

Finally, if you are in any way epileptic or susceptible to hypnosis, please don’t listen at all because it might make you mental. Ultimately, this audio is designed for entertainment purposes only.

Please use it responsibly and don’t forget to smile when you have finished.

Of course, I might be imagining any effect this has on my brain and you know what, I invite you to do that too…

Please pay what you think it is worth. The flow of energy between us will enable me to pass on your good will to others. And if you decide to download it for free, I will collect your email address and mail you incessantly till you buy something else.

Anyway, have some fun with it

Anurajyati

Since human beings have had language, they have taught one another using fables and parables, stories and tales.

And someone else’s life experience conveyed as a point carries more meaning than the point alone.

So what is the point of this?

I am working on a new book.

I already revealed what I hope are the most interesting moments in my own life in The Logic Of Attraction and I even fictionalised a few for GURU. Frankly, it is getting a bit boring, all this selfing!

My new book is already about you. It reveals Who you are, What you are, Where you are, Why you are, When you are and even tells you How you can be more effective in life. And because if this I want it to reflect your stories about life.

Without revealing too much about the book, I am looking for stories about the following (list updates regularly, if in doubt ask).

• A time when you were really happy
• Artificial Intelligence and computing
• Auras
• Beliefs
• Clairvoyance
• God
• Illusions, including hallucinations and optical illusions
• Out Of Body Experiences
• Meaning Of Life
• Perception
• Religion
• Satisfaction
• Spiritual experiences
• Time and any event in your life which appeared to occur outside of time
• Well being
• What drives you
• Witchcraft

Please tell the story in terms of what happened (the facts), what was revealed (what you learned from the experience) and what you recollect (the details).

Once I have your story, I will need your permission to dramatise your story in a way that illustrates the purpose of a chapter. I also need to be able to identify you personally, so if you want to remain anonymous, please don’t share your story with me.

By submitting your story you acknowledge that it will not be treated as confidential, nor that your work is proprietary. You will be credited in the story and I can provide readers with a way to contact you should you so wish.

Please note: I do not guarantee I will get back to you, or that I will use your story if it does not suit my purpose. I do aim to respond to anything that does not look like SPAM. I may consider your story for another book. Please don’t submit anything you consider confidential.

Please indicate somewhere if you are on the autistic spectrum and what meaning that holds for you. I am always interested in your comments and I appreciate your interactions.

Thank you.

Anurajyati (be, in love)
[contact-form]
[contact-form-7]

As a child I remember being on a boat. My parents had gone into a French town for a meal. My father had commented he was going to eat frog’s legs and snails. It sounded disgusting and I was finding it really hard to go to sleep, so I decided to count…

1… 2… 3…

I counted from one to ten, then from ten to a hundred. As I counted on into the night, I had a realisation that the numbers might never be able to end unless I went to sleep. Staring up at the stars and night sky, I had a sense of discovery. I had discovered infinity.

It doesn’t matter how far we look out into space, or think about a position out there in our vacuum, there will always seem to be a more distant point in space and time.

So on to the game…

Would you agree that in any given string of numbers you can add numbers to it ad infinitum?

And in fact you could even add infinity to it?

Would you also agree if I were to take infinity away from infinity that you would be left with nothing?

Like this:

∞ - ∞ = 0

Agreed?

Good…

Would you agree that nothing plus nothing equals nothing?

Like this:

0 + 0 = 0

In fact the same could be applied to an infinite succession of zeros.

So:

0 = 0 + 0 + 0 etc

Then given the above would you agree:

0 = (∞ - ∞)+(∞ - ∞)+(∞ - ∞) etc

So by applying the associative law of addition to the above:

0 = ∞ + (-∞ + ∞) + (-∞ + ∞) + (-∞ + ∞) etc

Of course:

(-∞ +∞) = 0

So:

0 = ∞ + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 etc

Discarding the addition of an infinite string of zeros leaves:

0 = ∞

And while you contemplate that I am going to have a cup of tea…

I recently went to speakers corner and started speaking about consciousness.

By consciousness, I mean one consciousness.

I hold it on good faith that we are “one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively”.

I say I hold it on good faith, because for it to be seen, there would have to be no individual me.

So we are not talking about collective or group consciousness here, because those would be the collective thoughts and feelings of a group of individuals.

What I am suggesting is; there is no separation. That any separation is only apparent and simply serves as a useful reference point for gardening or shopping.

Take science. The scientific world view is that there was a great big bang a few million years back and over time we evolved out of that creation.

Many things from one?

Yet scientists also tell you everything in the known universe is constructed from the same building blocks.

Would it be mad to suggest; everything which is not matter is consciousness?

And all matter constitutes the physical form of that conscious being.

The big bang happening now.

My heckler at speakers corner argued that I was misusing the word consciousness and reminded me “surely consciousness is the state of being conscious; awareness of one’s own existence, sensations, thoughts and surroundings”.

The prevailing truth it seems, is that we are individuals having an individual experience.

For him it seems, there is something in him looking out at everything else.

But let’s play with the dictionary definition.

Consciousness, the state of being conscious.

Conscious, aware of one’s own existence.

Aware?

So where does awareness happen?

I say “I hold it on good faith” as an individual for a very good reason.

It can be said that when I look at a tree in the park, the awareness of the tree happens with my mind.

Yet the awareness of the tree happens at the point of the tree, without the tree there can be no experience of the tree.

So the location of my mind can be seen to be with the tree itself.

And in a sense, I am only my awareness so I must also be the tree.

Which means I am one consciousness experiencing itself in separation.

But will the tree still be here when I die?

Sure, it will.

I am not saying it exists only because of me, the tree and the apparent I are just in a dance with nature.

So is the tree in my experience separate to the tree in your experience?

Wink alternate eyes in fast succession.

Two points of view?

Does it mean you are two people?

Two separate experiences seen as one.

Self simply happens as a result of everything perceived.

For you and I there is no absolute tree.

Actually there might not really be a you at all, it could be an illusion?

But you and I held it on good faith for years that we are individuals.

You and I created an us and them world view.

So how is that working for us?

A satisfactory theory of the universe has to be one that’s worth betting on. It seems to me absolutely elementary common sense. If you make a theory of the universe which isn’t worth betting on, why bother, just commit suicide. But if you want to go on playing the game you’ve got to have an optimal theory for playing the game. Otherwise there is no point in it – Alan Watts

You and I are not who we think we are.

There is one pervading energy and it can be said to be conscious, because I am it, you are it and there is awareness.

The paradox is; I cannot prove this as an individual because proving the hypothesis would depend on there not being a me to prove it.

So I am holding it on faith.

Call it what you will and I invite you to discuss it with me.

When I say “one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively” what does that mean to you?

Are you vehemently opposed?

You see, what’s being suggested is that ultimately dropping the us and them analogy and supporting a philosophy of “one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively” creates a context where there can be a powerful shift for humanity.

Holding the one consciousness model of the universe on faith is a more empowering position than believing this world is a a singular experience dominated by the idea that the world revolves around a me.

When I see you and I as part of ‘what is happening’ unfolding, I treat you with love and respect.

See you on the other side of the looking glass

Anurajyati

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In fact the entire topic has now sparked discussion on both the Aspie Tribe Google Group and Facebook.

Lisa Jo Rudy writes:

If you’re sick of hearing about all the “deficits” challenging people on the autism spectrum, join the club. But for every down side to autism, there seems to be a positive — an unusual trait that rarely appears among the “typical” community, but shines out among autistic folk. These plusses are well worth celebrating.

So today, I want to look at trait number six.

6. People with Autism Have Terrific Memories

How often do typical people forget directions, or fail to take note of colors, names, and other details? People on the autism spectrum are often much more tuned in to details. They may have a much better memory than their typical peers for all kind of critical details.

I love this conversation. When I think about memory, my mind boggles over a neuro-typical person’s ability to forget almost every detail of any event which happened more than a handful of years ago.

Then I find myself reminding them of details and then ultimately having the realisation that they are probably blissfully unaware of what it was they did when they were sober let alone the fool they were when drunk.

I guess though with all memories, the question is, was it significant?

I seem to lock onto harrowing memories more readily than happy ones, though I clearly recall all three of my children being born and a considerable amount of detail surrounding the event.

Did I fail to note the colour of the sheets? I fear not! The nurse’s names elude me.

The number of loose screws attaching the seat to the wall in the shower? I can picture it clearly in my head. I can’t accurately tell you the colour of the seat though.

My take on this:

Autistic people think in pictures.

Visualisation (including dreams) is relatively two dimensional and focused on what one places ones awareness on.

I can easily recall a picture of my current car, or motorcycle.

I cannot recall an image of many people’s faces unless I have seen a photograph of them.

Photographs make it easier to remember.

Emotionally charged events make for easy memories.

I am always over anxious so I am likely to remember.

As a final thought, I am a graduate of Da Silva Mind Control. Part of the training includes a method of remembering hundreds of items. If I choose to store phone numbers in my brain (though why would I when I have an iPhone) I can recall them with ridiculous accuracy.

For example I remember the lighting designer from the 1995 Duran Duran World tour’s fax number. I doubt he does! As an aside, I have no idea what his name was…

Anurajyati,

Mark Ty-Wharton

But where is this self?

This who as “I” for most of us is self centred and thus in essence we are something like lost.

Perhaps when you have a more honest sense of self, you can start to have some idea who you are?

To use a very simple analogy.

If I were navigating a ship, standing on the ship and using the ship as a reference point in the middle of an ocean wouldn’t tell me much about my location.

Finding a fixed reference point on the distant horizon however may give me some indication.

With two reference points and accurate charts, given the right tools I could represent my location with a whole lot more accuracy.

Although of course even this would not be a true representation, only a relative one, relative to the points used for reference.

Take Earth for example?

I know where I am physically in relation to the surface of the Earth. It tells me nothing about my relationship to space. Does it have a centre? A start point? An end? Is it möbiotic?

And can I rely on perception alone to give me a true location of self?

What reference point to use?

God?

Is there one?

Can you prove it?

Time?

Awareness?

Experience?

What if self is simply a reflection of what arises in your experience?

What if the reference points you think are solid are merely perceived and are not even true?

I am not saying the ship will disappear without reference points.

Perhaps I am saying the ship would simply know that it didn’t know where it was.

Then perhaps with an indefinite course life becomes an adventure to explore and find out about?

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

I met David in the virtual world by way of the lovely Violet Patton-Ryder who I was on a leadership course with last year.

When I found out Violet had covered “I Want To Hold Your Hand” I just had to contact David and find out if I could join in the fun!

Here is our offering, “Get Back“.

I would dearly appreciate your support in bigging it up on Facebook and Twitter.

Post it on your wall and tweet your friends.

It’s fun and best of all it’s free.

If you like The Beatles or simply enjoy listening to creative music then download the whole project.

But don’t forget to tell your friends.

You can hear it here!

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton aka Tinley

“I am” energy, yet energy is not “me” I am a function of the interaction between awareness and the experience driven.

Imagine conscious realisation, the “me” in the equation, to be an anomaly that can become apparent in the mechanism of existing.

The Chinese call this energy Chi.

An analogue to this perhaps would be DC voltage.

It is always present and moving in a direction.

Think of the battery in a car.

The negative leg of the battery is connected to the car by a thick metal strap.

The car shell itself is ground.

With the ignition switched off (no circuit) if I use a meter to take a measurement between the positive terminal of the battery and the ground, I will see voltage. The meter will register flow of energy.

If I take a measurement between the negative terminal of the battery and the ground I won’t see anything. The meter will register nothing.

Nothing cannot be measured yet we know it is there because the battery needs to feed back into it to complete any circuit we may choose to make.

Think of desire as the means of driving experience and we have something representative of the positive element, while awareness remains the place experience feeds back to yet is immeasurable.

Obvious perhaps?

There’s more.

If I put a load on the battery by say switching the car’s headlights on, the voltage feeds the headlights and returns to the negative terminal to complete the circuit.

Desire, feeds experience and there is an awareness of it perhaps?

Simple.

Not quite as simple.

While there is a load on the battery, if I then take the meter and connect it between the negative terminal of the battery and ground (using it as a bridging meter) it will register a flow of energy.

While nothing itself cannot be measured by itself, under the load of experience an energy flow can be measured between nothing and nothing.

So desire feeds experience and there is awareness of it perhaps and this feeds a separate and measurable energy which appears between nothing and nothing.

I choose to make this “me”.

In this analogous hypothesis I can prove my existence.

There is no “real” me, yet one shows up in the face of experience.

Anurajyati,

Mark Ty-Wharton

In fact the entire topic has now sparked discussion on both the Aspie Tribe Google Group and Facebook.

Lisa Jo Rudy writes:

If you’re sick of hearing about all the “deficits” challenging people on the autism spectrum, join the club. But for every down side to autism, there seems to be a positive — an unusual trait that rarely appears among the “typical” community, but shines out among autistic folk. These plusses are well worth celebrating.

So today, I want to look at trait number four.

5. People with Autism Are Not Tied to Social Expectations

If you’ve ever bought a car, played a game or joined a club to fit in, you know how hard it is to be true to yourself. But for people with autism, social expectations can be honestly irrelevant. What matters is true liking, interest and passion — not keeping up with the Joneses.

What’s great about this particular conversation is, my friend Kerry (also autistic) got all fired up about it and wrote the following:

“social expectations can be honestly irrelevant”

This can be a constant problem for individuals on the autistic spectrum – if I expand on this positive side of autism I note that this is both a blessing and a curse.
In the workplace for example, autistic people can often oversimplify their likes and dislikes, how they feel and their needs, this can be very frustrating for neurotypical people who tend to mask their feelings and are actually more socially complex than autistic people when social conversation happens in an open way, what can arise in some social situations, often happy to be included within a group of people they are open to being befriended, sometimes mislead or at worst an amusing pulp, this may not make the autistic person feel any different emotionally although they may experience bouts of anxiety which can be awkward for them to explain, grasp and interpret into their own language internally, this includes anger which also is a difficult expression to tolerate. This can be seen in the family where young autistic people may be expected to emulate or ‘make the grade’ by their nearest and dearest. Neurotypical people are often kind toward autistic people going out of their way to connect, sometimes this is reciprocated by the autistic person often not as they seldom are alert to the invitation of conversation and are processing life on an alternative speed.

I am proud of this piece of writing,

Cheers

Kerry

Amusing pulp – I like that! Fabulous description of my entire life perhaps? Amusing awkward pulp, the group’s clown or idiot – or after a few glasses of wine, positively embarrassing to be with to the point of being arrested. Yeah yeah, I gave it up!

After forty eight years of training I still have no clue what social expectations are and worry about them constantly. Just give me clear instructions and I’ll make all the right facial expressions for fifteen minutes then I think chained to pointless disciplines would be more fitting.

I just panic that I did something wrong.

And because I don’t get the subtleties of social interaction, I worry that it was something really bad, like thinking out loud about your fat ass, boils or the fact you stink.

Anurajyati,

Mark Ty-Wharton

Lisa Jo Rudy writes:

If you’re sick of hearing about all the “deficits” challenging people on the autism spectrum, join the club. But for every down side to autism, there seems to be a positive — an unusual trait that rarely appears among the “typical” community, but shines out among autistic folk. These plusses are well worth celebrating.

So today, I want to look at trait number four.

4. Autistic People are Passionate

Of course, not all autistic people are alike. But many are truly passionate about the things, ideas and people in their lives. How many “typical” people can say the same?

Wow!

Passion, there is a concept for an emotionless Spock like creature with no friends!

Am I passionate?

An all consuming intense love for…

Hmmmm

Better get out the dictionary.

Ah

The dictionary tells me that passion is caused by strong feelings, a barely controllable emotion, an intense enthusiasm for something.

Clearly my special interests follow this psychological model and I am way more animated when I talk about them, but passion?

It never looks like passion to the “typical” observer, so I am not so sure.

Today’s intense focus, a laser sharp obsession, an “I must do this thing” can be defined as barely controllable.

Strong minded?

Clearly!

I, however have to exaggerate to appear passionate and it seems like I am faking it.

By definition, perhaps it is passion?

Compared to the common understanding of the word, I think I am the “not all autistic people are alike”

Anurajyati,

Mark Ty-Wharton

Pete was considered missing as of Sunday (30th) when nobody had heard from him for several days.

On Tuesday (1st), Police entered Pete’s home and found him dead.

Nobody is sure what happened, hopefully he passed in peace.

While Pete suffered a number of minor ailments, including a bad back, he was in no way considered unwell.

He enjoyed real ale but wasn’t an excessive drinker, didn’t smoke or do drugs, yet, very sadly, has died, aged just 52.

Pete had an honours degree in fine art and was the managing director of Backstage and Stage Hosting, a voluntary group that runs festival stages at events all over the UK.

Pete also played the guitar and regularly attended the Stone Circle in Milton Keynes where he shared his songs and friendship.

In fact Pete was a man whose playing and singing provided the backdrop to many of the greatest potential hangovers at festivals this side of the eighties.

A Gentle Giant, Big Pete will be sadly missed.

I think what people will miss the most is the hugs.

Pete had the biggest heart of anyone I know and would do anything for anyone.

And it was with this heart that he touched the hearts of so many others.

What will be remembered is the happy times with him, festivals, him playing and singing and lots of laughing.

He was a truly great man, who genuinely connected with people and had a wonderful energy. A true brother to all.

A bard with a big heart and a carefree love of the land.

He had a wicked sense of humour and knew just what to say to put someone at their ease.

While many people will never forget the fantastic hugs he gave and jovial whispers of love and advice, the spirit of a person lives on in the memories of those who knew him and the lives he shaped and leaves behind.

Pete was passionate about classic and custom motorcycles, owned 6 bikes and was practicing pagan.

To paint a picture of Pete’s often colourful life, on December 18th he posted the following on Facebook.

“Just went out in my underwear to make angels in the snow… frozen out there, but warm as anything now I’m back in and dry Just had to be done!!!”

I would like to think Big Pete is out there now, riding free into the light with angels, his music resonating on the wind.

Somewhere, he is still lifting people’s spirits, playing the guitar and making people laugh.

Rest well big fella,

Love & Light.

In honour of Big Pete, I would like to post one of his songs.

Bound in love, soul and heat,

Merry meet and merry part,

Harm ye none do as ye will and

Merry meet again,

To the East and greet the wind,

From gentle breeze to hurricane,

To the South and feel the fire,

Where spirits blaze and rise again

Bound in love, soul and heart,

Merry meet and merry part,

Harm ye none do as ye will and

Merry meet again

To the west’s soul primal birth,

Whose tears and love shall cleanse the Earth,

To the North’s ancestors known,

To seek the wisdom of the Crone

Bound in love, soul and heart,

Merry meet and merry part,

harm ye none do as ye will and

Merry meet again

To Sun and Moon and stars above

Justice willed, aimed peace and love,

To Earth and Sky, Fire and Sea,

What ye will comes back to thee

Bound in love soul and heart,

Merry meet and merry part,

Harm ye none do as ye will and

Merry meet again

Pete Wilkins, known to those whose hearts he touched as Big Pete.

Blessed be!

Lisa Jo Rudy writes:

If you’re sick of hearing about all the “deficits” challenging people on the autism spectrum, join the club. But for every down side to autism, there seems to be a positive — an unusual trait that rarely appears among the “typical” community, but shines out among autistic folk. These plusses are well worth celebrating.

So today, I want to look at trait number three.

3. People with Autism Rarely Judge Others

Who’s fatter? Richer? Smarter? For people on the autism spectrum, these distinctions hold much less importance than for typical folks. In fact, people on the spectrum often see through such surface appearances to discover the real person.

I need to think quite carefully before addressing this issue and addressing it clearly will be a challenge.

What is true for me is that I reserve judgement on all people until I have known them for a considerable length of time.

This caution can be mistaken for an open outlook. I often sit on the fence until a person has shown their true colours, giving certain individuals the benefit of doubt long after others have walked away licking their wounds.

However, it is easy for me to observe that the surface stuff changes radically on a moment by moment basis.

Perhaps one of the most frustrating things about neuro-typical people is their malleability in character.

Neuro-typical people often play a different ‘part’ for each person they meet and while they are not in anyway being inauthentic, as a person on the autistic spectrum, I feel completely fake when I try to emulate this.

Best I can do is hide certain traits if I need to fit in.

Who is fatter?

I cannot stand thin women. Perhaps it is what they stand for that really annoys me? Certain colleagues wives look like they would snap in two if you had proper sex with them. On the other hand a woman needs to be light enough to throw around a bit. But hey, I am a strong guy, bring it on. It matters!

Richer?

Just don’t get me started on money. What an issue that is for me right now. I tend to be significant about money when I haven’t got any, but money really isn’t the problem though. The distinction money is irrelevant then. The person behind the money? I know some very generous millionaires and some very tight ones! Okay, I’ll admit it. The amount of money a person has, or what they do with it, rarely sways my opinion of them. Fairness would be where I would judge.

The real person?

Now, you are absolutely talking the truth. I see you. I really do. I see you. All of you and more.

Anurajyati,

Mark Ty-Wharton

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Lisa Jo Rudy writes:

If you’re sick of hearing about all the “deficits” challenging people on the autism spectrum, join the club. But for every down side to autism, there seems to be a positive — an unusual trait that rarely appears among the “typical” community, but shines out among autistic folk. These plusses are well worth celebrating.

So today, I want to look at trait number two.

2. People on the Autism Spectrum Live in the Moment

How often do typical people fail to notice what’s in front of their eyes because they’re distracted by social cues or random chit chat? People on the autism spectrum truely attend to the sensory input that surrounds them. Many have achieved the ideal of mindfulness.

So what the article is essentially saying:

People on the autistic spectrum are truly ‘living in the now’. We are living in a more honest paradigm, the paradigm people like Eckhart Tolle believe to be essential to the evolution of the human race. We are in the moment, aligned with the spiritual consciousness these teachers are telling others they should strive for.

On face value, another interesting observation and while it sounds like a load of mumbo jumbo, I am actually going to agree with this one to a greater extent than the previous trait. Why? Because I have direct experience of a level of consciousness which for a lifetime I have been told is weird.

I don’t think we are buddhas, because the way I see it, autistic people still experience a conceptual and perception biased world. Let’s face it, this is my field of expertise and without projecting outcomes into future moments IQ driven ideas would be meaningless. However the perception bias in autism is very different and coloured by much narrower fields of interest.

To someone involved in a sociological game, objects have a meaning relevant to the survival of a self interested in looking good in and around society.

The conceptual meaning of something can totally override that things practicality.

A person on the autistic spectrum is more apt to look at things literally and logically. Perhaps investigate the truth about say ‘global warming’ rather than listen to hearsay.

To balance the argument, I personally spent the best part of my life overwhelmed by distractive social cues. Not the cues themselves, the mind trying to grasp them and use the right ones for the setting meant I missed a lot of sensory input I would otherwise have been aware of had I been less programmed socially.

The real skill being missed by the article, a skill which should have been number one in my opinion?

FOCUS

Given leave of social distractions, I have the ability to FOCUS on what is in front of my eyes with complete clarity. When I have a special interest in a subject, nothing will stop me from attaining mindfulness.

Achieving this same level of mindfulness in other areas takes contemplation.

For you, like me, the power of now lies between this thought and the next. It has taken a lifetime of thinking to learn there is nothing to get.

Anurajyati,

Mark Ty-Wharton

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Lisa Jo Rudy writes:

If you’re sick of hearing about all the “deficits” challenging people on the autism spectrum, join the club. But for every down side to autism, there seems to be a positive — an unusual trait that rarely appears among the “typical” community, but shines out among autistic folk. These plusses are well worth celebrating.

So today, I want to look at trait number one.

1. Autistic People Rarely Lie
We all claim to value the truth, but almost all of us tell little white lies. All, that is, except people on the autism spectrum. To them, truth is truth — and a good word from a person on the spectrum is the real deal.

Okay, on face value, an interesting observation, except it’s not true.

Why?

While I agree that to an autistic person the truth is the truth, I don’t agree that I cannot lie. While I personally find it almost impossible to tell an out and out lie, it is more of a personal choice than something inherent in my way of being.

Lying is incredibly easy. And the way autistic people lie is by telling the truth. The truth is always contextual and in the case of the truth, context and view point rely implicitly on one another to form a relationship which conveys a state of affairs to any person you are communicating with.

We need to examine the etymology of the word lie for a second here to get to the bottom of this.

The easiest place to go is Dictionary.com

What’s more, the first definition on the page will suffice for me to make my point. I could argue about this all day, but I won’t. It is a simple statement that holds weight on its own merit and I don’t need a barrage of examples to convince you.

Lie – noun
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.

I have at least one other friend who is diagnosed with Aspergers whose apparent lies drive me to distraction. The key to knowing what the truth is with that person is to ask the right questions. Specific questions.

Sometimes the truth can be misleading, it is in the intent that it becomes a lie.

Where a specific fact about a situation can cause a general lie to be assumed by the person being communicated with.

A simple example from my working life would be upon being asked “what do you think of the song” I will on occasion tactfully reply “I love the bassline” knowing full well my truth is concealing the fact I hate it.

Don’t get me wrong, the bands I work with write some awesome tunes, it’s just at times, even a person with autism occasionally knows when not to ruin the vibe!

Anurajyati,

Mark Ty-Wharton

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What is that?

Well, maybe you’ve heard, maybe you haven’t…

There is a size zero epidemic sweeping the world.

The way to achieve the look?

A diet pill!

When will we learn?

Remember cocaine?

Remember Cocaine?

Good honest cocaine. The designer drug that became the marketers choice at the beginning of the last century. Look what that got us.

Crack!

Try Crack Instead!

If you are looking to lose weight, and fast – there is no doubt zero diet pills work, but so does crack cociane and I’ve heard cancer is pretty fucking effective too…

There’s always a dark side to any drug of choice and prolonged use of any of these kinds of pills can even lead to sudden and uncontrollable weight gain because they upset the user’s natural metabolism.

Natural metabolism, natural weight.

What the marketers don’t want you to know…

Women are meant to be all different shapes and sizes!

Like men…

Unless you want to experience anxiety, irritability, panic attacks and paranoia, or muscle twitches, physical tremors, restlessness and vertigo…

Stay perfect and stay healthy!

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

Ever look at a butterfly and wonder at it’s life in a day existence?

Strange that a life could be so short.

Consider that which we consider to be our Gods, to be observing our kind in the blink of an eye.

We perceive our lives to be long and arduous, fraught with tests.

We cannot perceive it any other way. Our magnetoception is linked to days, punctuated by light and dark.

And yet, we are like fireflies, a brief burst of energy and we are gone!

Jesus?

Had a short physical life, but is it our physical life which defines us.

In essence, Jesus has lived over two thousand years as a concept, in my Christian upbringing and yours.

Whatever your religion, Jesus has touched your life in some way.

Do you think God has noticed yet?

Happy Christmas,

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/zen-of-blues-radio-edit-single/id408646380

Why would you do this?

I started recording this song at 09:41 this morning…

I did a final mix and edit at 13:06

Then I designed the cover…

Then I uploaded it to online stores Worldwide…

And now before midnight, same day, you can buy it in the iTunes Music Store.

Surely that has to be worth 79p of your hard earned???

Anurajyati

Mark Ty-Wharton

I hope you enjoy it.

Anurajyati,

Mark Ty-Wharton

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