Whoever cannot seek
the unforeseen sees nothing,
for the known way
is an impasse
— Heraclitus, in Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus, #7, p. 7, Brooks Haxton (tr.).
Of all the words yet spoken,
none comes quite as far as wisdom,
which is the action of the mind
beyond all things that may be said.
— Heraclitus, in Ibid., #18, p. 13.
The way up is the way back.
— Heraclitus, in Ibid., #69, p. 45.
Applicants for wisdom
do what I have done:
inquire within.
— Heraclitus, in Ibid., #80, p. 51.
Just as the river where I step
is not the same river, and is,
so I am as I am not.
— Heraclitus, in Ibid., #81, p. 51.
Oh well, all this might be very disquieting were it not that “sacred” has lately been discovered to apply to a point of arrest where stabilization has gone on past the time. There is nothing sacred about literature, it is damned from one end to the other. There is nothing in literature but change and change is mockery. I’ll write whatever I damn please, whenever I damn please and as I damn please and it’ll be good if the authentic spirit of change is on it.
— William Carlos Williams, from Kora in Hell: Improvisations, in Imaginations: William Carlos Williams, Webster Schott (ed.), p. 13.
So I come again to my present day gyrations.
So it is with the other classics: their meaning and worth can only be studied and understood in the imagination —that which begot them only can give them life again, rekindle their perfection —
Unless to study by rote or scientific research — Useful for certain understanding to corroborate the imagination —
Yes, Anatole was a fool when he said: It [art] is a lie. — That is it. If the actor simulates life it is a lie. But — but why continue without an audience?
The reason people marvel at works of art and say: How in Christ’s name did he do it? — is that they know nothing of the physiology of the nervous system and have never in their experience witnessed the larger processes of the imagination.
It is a step over from the profitless engagements of the arithmetical.
— William Carlos Williams, from Spring and All, in Ibid., Webster Schott (ed.), p. 123.
So all things enter into the singleness of the moment and the moment partakes of the diversity of all things….
— William Carlos Williams, from A Novelette and Other Prose, in Ibid., Webster Schott (ed.), p. 282.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Notable Notes
Love, like money, is offered most freely to those in least need of it.
— Mignon McLaughlin, The Complete Neurotic’s Notebook, p. 9.
We lavish on animals the love we are afraid to show to people. They might not return it; or worse, they might.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 15.
We’re irritated by rascals, intolerant of fools, and prepared to love the rest. But where are they?
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 17.
No matter how young he may be at the time, nor how old he may live to become; on the day an unhappy child leaves home, his life is half over.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 24.
No good neurotic finds it difficult to be both opinionated and indecisive.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 29.
Others follow patterns; we alone are unpredictable.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 31.
The proud man can learn humility, but he will be proud of it.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 33.
“Pull yourself together” is seldom said to anyone who can.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 41.
Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 49.
An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners’ names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 57.
What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 62.
Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 72.
An artist usually has no friends except other artists, and usually they do not like his work.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 72.
Don’t be yourself — be someone a little nicer.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 131.
Tough and funny and a little bit kind: that is as near to perfection as a human being can be.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 138.
Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 143.
A rich suicide consoles us a little, and frightens us a lot.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 172.
Those without money often say they would do anything for it, when all they mean is that they would do anything pleasant and convenient. That’s why only the rich are rich.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 177.
Artists refuse to accept the idea that they should starve; they want all the money, as well as all the fun.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 177.
— Mignon McLaughlin, The Complete Neurotic’s Notebook, p. 9.
We lavish on animals the love we are afraid to show to people. They might not return it; or worse, they might.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 15.
We’re irritated by rascals, intolerant of fools, and prepared to love the rest. But where are they?
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 17.
No matter how young he may be at the time, nor how old he may live to become; on the day an unhappy child leaves home, his life is half over.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 24.
No good neurotic finds it difficult to be both opinionated and indecisive.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 29.
Others follow patterns; we alone are unpredictable.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 31.
The proud man can learn humility, but he will be proud of it.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 33.
“Pull yourself together” is seldom said to anyone who can.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 41.
Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 49.
An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners’ names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 57.
What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 62.
Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 72.
An artist usually has no friends except other artists, and usually they do not like his work.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 72.
Don’t be yourself — be someone a little nicer.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 131.
Tough and funny and a little bit kind: that is as near to perfection as a human being can be.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 138.
Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 143.
A rich suicide consoles us a little, and frightens us a lot.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 172.
Those without money often say they would do anything for it, when all they mean is that they would do anything pleasant and convenient. That’s why only the rich are rich.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 177.
Artists refuse to accept the idea that they should starve; they want all the money, as well as all the fun.
— Mignon McLaughlin, Ibid., p. 177.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Escape Your Tribe
IMPORTANT!
READ THIS CAREFULLY!
What I have been saying — the important lesson of this book — can be put into two simple imperatives:
1. Never believe totally in anybody else’s BS.
2. Never believe totally in your own BS.
These formulations are my own, but the basic idea here, of course, derives from Gotama Buddha.
If you do not retain some zeteticism* about all ideas, however appealing they may be, you have entered hypnosis, as I entered hypnosis when placed in the Catholic school to be “educated” by the nuns — a bunch of ignorant women who had been so deeply hypnotized themselves that they remained mentally crippled for life.
In the famous story, the Buddha was asked, “Are you God?”
“No,” he replied.
“Are you a saint?”
“No.”
"Then what are you?”
“I am awake.”
He meant that he was able to see who he was, where he was, and what was going on around him, because he was no longer blinded by Belief Systems.
*A term from ancient Greek philosophy revived by Dr. Marcello Truzzi, because the similar term “skepticism” has been pre-empted by certain entrenched dogmatists. The modern so-called skeptic accepts the dogmas of the reigning Establishment and is cynical only about ideas that are new, original or Heretical. The zetetic is skeptical of all dogmas.
— Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II, p. 72.
ROC: In all your research, have you ever come close to believing in the One Big Conspiracy that controls everything?
WILSON: Never. There are three basic attitudes toward the universe: atheism, polytheism and monotheism. Metaphorically, you can apply these views to history also. Atheist history says it all happened by accident, polytheism says it happened as the clash of rival forces, and monotheism says it happened because of one dominant intelligence. I don’t believe everything happens by accident, so atheism is out for me. On the other hand, I agree with H. L. Mencken, who said he wasn’t a monotheist because the world looked to him like it was designed by a committee. The world would make some kind of sense if there was one group of “insiders” who really run everything. Since the world obviously doesn’t make sense, there is no such group. There are just rival coalitions trying to become the group that runs the world, which is probably just as hopeless as trying to become God and “run” the universe. These Apes of God all get defeated in the end by what I call the Snafu Principle.
ROC: What’s that?
WILSON: In the power game, the more successful you become, the more motive people have for lying to you. They lie to flatter you, to avoid contradicting your prejudices, to keep their jobs, to tell you what you want to hear, etc. Have you ever told the truth, the whole truth, to anybody from the government? It’s the same in any authoritarian organization, be it the army, a corporation or a patriarchal family. People say what those in power above them want to hear. In the big power struggles, the most successful conspiracy of the decade becomes the stupidest conspiracy of the next decade, because it never hears what might offend its self-image. Communication is only possible between equals. The power game creates total communication jam and everybody near the top drifts slowly but inexorably into a kind of schizoid fantasy. Then they get replaced by younger, hungrier predators who are not successful enough yet to frighten everybody into lying to them, and hence have at least a partial knowledge of what the hell is really going on.
— Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II, pp. 146-147.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Know Your Tribe
This triggered a total mutation in human society. As Riane Eisler has pointed out, previous human groups (“tribes”) had been based on partnership models (or as mathematical game theory would say, non-zero-sum games). Post bronze society was based on Authority and Submission (zero-sum games). Concretely, Bronze Age civilization — called The First Wave by Alvin Toffler — created an Elite of warriors with bronze spears and their Leader, a high testosterone “alpha” male of the type that usually leads mammalian herds. These alpha males almost always called themselves sons of the Sun-God, and their huge agricultural civilizations are often termed sun-kingdoms.
These agricultural sun-king civilizations spread “westward and mildly northward” (as Bucky says [R. Buckminster Fuller]). Almost always they had the primal Sun King structure: the “divine” alpha male at the top, the nobles below, and women and slaves at the bottom. The whole world had changed. You could not mistake a citizen of one of these Sun Kingdoms for a tribal human than you’d mistake a canary for a Gila Monster.
It took thousands of years, but eventually the largest part of humanity had been conquered, domesticated, de-tribalized and incorporated into one Sun-Kingdom or another. As late as the 18th Century, Louis XIV was called “the Sun King.”
— Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II, p. 49.
Aside from these psychological benefits, the major “spiritual” effect of LSD may be considered either another benefit or a dire curse, depending on your viewpoint. I began to develop a strong suspicion that there was, somewhere in space-time, another Adept of Brain Change, or perhaps a School of Adepts, helping and guiding me. This is not at all unusual. In most human societies, historically, the shamans have used similar brain-change drugs and soon become convinced they have “allies” helping them. Even a man with such a long and orthodox scientific career as Dr. John Lilly confesses that he thought he had superhuman “Guides” on some of his LSD voyages.
My teachers seemed to have a damned peculiar sense of humor at times.
At one point I was almost totally convinced that my teachers were a school of extraterrestrial adepts resident in the double-star system of Sirius. Strange coincidences — or Jungian synchronicities — then accumulated around me, supporting this theory.
Later, a “psychic reader” told me I was “channeling” the spirit of an ancient Chinese sage. Coincidences or “omens” supporting this model then obligingly appeared.
Then, another “psychic” told me I was channeling a medieval Irish bard. More synchronicities followed.
This sort of thing always happens to people who mess around with Cabala (even if they don’t use Acid.) The late Dr. Israel Regardie, a psychotherapist and Cabalist, often distinguished two ways of looking at this phenomenon, when it happens to you. The objective theory, as he called it, assumes an external reality to these “entities.” The subjective theory, on the other hand, assumes the “entities” exist only in our brains, as anti-selves or Jungian archetypes or something of that sort. Dr. Regardie believed you will get the best results when you are not committed to either theory but just open yourself to whatever happens.
Somewhere along the way I got concerned with the direction all this was taking and decided to safeguard my sanity by choosing the subjective theory (It’s all in my head) and ruthlessly repressing any tendency to speculate further about possible objective theories (There are super-human forces at work here…). In terms of the neurological model then current, I explained everything as my over-developed left brain learning to receive signals from the usually “silent” right brain.
(We now know that this left brain/right brain model does not quite explain everything, and Karl Pribram’s hologram model of consciousness seems more inclusive. But I refer here to my state of ignorance in the mid 1970s, before I advanced to the more complex state of ignorance I now possess.)
Then one night I was looking at Harvey, the comedy about the pookah, on TV. One character in the story is a medical orderly named Wilson; since I was once a medical orderly and named Wilson, he attracted more of my interest than the major characters.
Wilson-in-the-TV was more “skeptical” about the giant rabbit than anybody else, and began to seem to me like a parody of my attempts to reduce everything to the right brain/left brain model.
The pookah refrains from playing any nasty tricks on the Unbeliever. Instead, he arranges that just by accident Wilson meets a young woman who falls in love with him — which is obviously just what he needs. Then, when Wilson learns that the giant white rabbit is called a pookah, he looks the word up in a dictionary and reads the definition aloud. It reads:
“A Celtic elf or vegetation spirit, wise but mischievous, fond of rumpots, crackpots and how are you tonight, Mr. Wilson?”
Wilson-on-the-TV (me) also had a startle reaction. Thinking it over, I decided Harvey offered the best approach to Cabala and its entities. From then on when High Weirdness occurred, I would just file-and-index it as a six foot tall white rabbit from County Kerry, playing games with me.
I still prefer this model to all others, because there is no chance that I or any sane person will ever take it literally.
— Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II, pp. 56-57.
In short, without language we’d have less suffering and no progress.
Remember also that the imagined contains a great deal of both the desirable and the terrifying — what we want and what we fear. Thus, unlike our relatives the chimpanzees and baboons, however clever one of them may be, humans alone can long for things that never existed outside their language-games (i.e. their “thinking”) and can get very irritated at the world for being less pleasing than these fantasies. They can also scare the hell out of themselves, and one another, with other verbal constructs that have never appeared in sensory experience.
Thus, the state of “living in fantasy” or “being on a head trip” is by no means uncommon and is not typical only of well-fed intellectuals in academic Chairs. Everybody does it to a quite alarming extent. Humans never deal with raw experience as other animals do; they deal with experience filtered through what Dr. Timothy Leary calls a reality-tunnel and sociologists call a gloss — a belief system. Every belief system (or BS) colors experience in a different way, rosy-red or gloomy black or some unique personal flavor.
We can all see how other people’s BS makes them blind and “stupid” at times, but we find it very hard to notice how our own BS is doing the same to us. This is what anthropologists call acculturalization.
Following Gurdjieff, I prefer to call it hypnosis. Every culture on the planet — from the Stone Age bushmen of Africa to the still-medieval peasants of County Kerry, from the Parisian art crowd to the Oxford agnostic crowd, from Ohio Republicans to the Iranian Moslem Fundamentalists, from science-fiction buffs to the neo-pagans and “witches,” from the Tibetan Buddhists to the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal — represents another case of group hypnosis by BS (belief systems).
That is, when I was sent to a “school” to be “educated,” that meant I was to be hypnotized into the tunnel-reality of my tribe….
— Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II, p. 70.
These agricultural sun-king civilizations spread “westward and mildly northward” (as Bucky says [R. Buckminster Fuller]). Almost always they had the primal Sun King structure: the “divine” alpha male at the top, the nobles below, and women and slaves at the bottom. The whole world had changed. You could not mistake a citizen of one of these Sun Kingdoms for a tribal human than you’d mistake a canary for a Gila Monster.
It took thousands of years, but eventually the largest part of humanity had been conquered, domesticated, de-tribalized and incorporated into one Sun-Kingdom or another. As late as the 18th Century, Louis XIV was called “the Sun King.”
— Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II, p. 49.
Aside from these psychological benefits, the major “spiritual” effect of LSD may be considered either another benefit or a dire curse, depending on your viewpoint. I began to develop a strong suspicion that there was, somewhere in space-time, another Adept of Brain Change, or perhaps a School of Adepts, helping and guiding me. This is not at all unusual. In most human societies, historically, the shamans have used similar brain-change drugs and soon become convinced they have “allies” helping them. Even a man with such a long and orthodox scientific career as Dr. John Lilly confesses that he thought he had superhuman “Guides” on some of his LSD voyages.
My teachers seemed to have a damned peculiar sense of humor at times.
At one point I was almost totally convinced that my teachers were a school of extraterrestrial adepts resident in the double-star system of Sirius. Strange coincidences — or Jungian synchronicities — then accumulated around me, supporting this theory.
Later, a “psychic reader” told me I was “channeling” the spirit of an ancient Chinese sage. Coincidences or “omens” supporting this model then obligingly appeared.
Then, another “psychic” told me I was channeling a medieval Irish bard. More synchronicities followed.
This sort of thing always happens to people who mess around with Cabala (even if they don’t use Acid.) The late Dr. Israel Regardie, a psychotherapist and Cabalist, often distinguished two ways of looking at this phenomenon, when it happens to you. The objective theory, as he called it, assumes an external reality to these “entities.” The subjective theory, on the other hand, assumes the “entities” exist only in our brains, as anti-selves or Jungian archetypes or something of that sort. Dr. Regardie believed you will get the best results when you are not committed to either theory but just open yourself to whatever happens.
Somewhere along the way I got concerned with the direction all this was taking and decided to safeguard my sanity by choosing the subjective theory (It’s all in my head) and ruthlessly repressing any tendency to speculate further about possible objective theories (There are super-human forces at work here…). In terms of the neurological model then current, I explained everything as my over-developed left brain learning to receive signals from the usually “silent” right brain.
(We now know that this left brain/right brain model does not quite explain everything, and Karl Pribram’s hologram model of consciousness seems more inclusive. But I refer here to my state of ignorance in the mid 1970s, before I advanced to the more complex state of ignorance I now possess.)
Then one night I was looking at Harvey, the comedy about the pookah, on TV. One character in the story is a medical orderly named Wilson; since I was once a medical orderly and named Wilson, he attracted more of my interest than the major characters.
Wilson-in-the-TV was more “skeptical” about the giant rabbit than anybody else, and began to seem to me like a parody of my attempts to reduce everything to the right brain/left brain model.
The pookah refrains from playing any nasty tricks on the Unbeliever. Instead, he arranges that just by accident Wilson meets a young woman who falls in love with him — which is obviously just what he needs. Then, when Wilson learns that the giant white rabbit is called a pookah, he looks the word up in a dictionary and reads the definition aloud. It reads:
“A Celtic elf or vegetation spirit, wise but mischievous, fond of rumpots, crackpots and how are you tonight, Mr. Wilson?”
Wilson-on-the-TV (me) also had a startle reaction. Thinking it over, I decided Harvey offered the best approach to Cabala and its entities. From then on when High Weirdness occurred, I would just file-and-index it as a six foot tall white rabbit from County Kerry, playing games with me.
I still prefer this model to all others, because there is no chance that I or any sane person will ever take it literally.
— Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II, pp. 56-57.
In short, without language we’d have less suffering and no progress.
Remember also that the imagined contains a great deal of both the desirable and the terrifying — what we want and what we fear. Thus, unlike our relatives the chimpanzees and baboons, however clever one of them may be, humans alone can long for things that never existed outside their language-games (i.e. their “thinking”) and can get very irritated at the world for being less pleasing than these fantasies. They can also scare the hell out of themselves, and one another, with other verbal constructs that have never appeared in sensory experience.
Thus, the state of “living in fantasy” or “being on a head trip” is by no means uncommon and is not typical only of well-fed intellectuals in academic Chairs. Everybody does it to a quite alarming extent. Humans never deal with raw experience as other animals do; they deal with experience filtered through what Dr. Timothy Leary calls a reality-tunnel and sociologists call a gloss — a belief system. Every belief system (or BS) colors experience in a different way, rosy-red or gloomy black or some unique personal flavor.
We can all see how other people’s BS makes them blind and “stupid” at times, but we find it very hard to notice how our own BS is doing the same to us. This is what anthropologists call acculturalization.
Following Gurdjieff, I prefer to call it hypnosis. Every culture on the planet — from the Stone Age bushmen of Africa to the still-medieval peasants of County Kerry, from the Parisian art crowd to the Oxford agnostic crowd, from Ohio Republicans to the Iranian Moslem Fundamentalists, from science-fiction buffs to the neo-pagans and “witches,” from the Tibetan Buddhists to the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal — represents another case of group hypnosis by BS (belief systems).
That is, when I was sent to a “school” to be “educated,” that meant I was to be hypnotized into the tunnel-reality of my tribe….
— Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II, p. 70.
Monday, October 25, 2010
More Wisdom, Less Thought
Remember the rule laid down by Pythagoras. It has been quoted again and again, but losses none of its beauty and profundity by repetition. It runs as follows:
“Let not the setting sun reach the western horizon, nor close thine eyes in sleep, before thou hast gone over all the events of the day just past, and hast asked thyself this question: What have I done today that has been done amiss? What have I done today that has been done aright? Have I injured anyone? Have I failed in my duty? Let not the setting sun reach the western rim of space, nor let thine eyelids close in sleep ere thou hast asked thyself these questions.”
If only men and women would conscientiously follow that simple rule, ninety-nine per cent of the world’s trouble, heartache, sin, and anxiety, would be non-existent, would never happen. And the reason is simple. The world’s troubles arise from our weaknesses, not from our strength; and if we would increase our strength, and do away with our weaknesses, every human being thereafter, in proportion to his inner evolution, would become a power for good in the world. And you see what that would mean. It cuts at the tap-root of most of the thoughts and feelings and acts that bring misery amongst us.
— G. de Purucker, Wind of the Spirit, p. 10.
You decline to write poetry, won’t listen to sutras,
Too lazy to visit the other peaks of Ch’an—
When at last your head is white and they question you,
What stories will you have to tell your students?
— Buddhist Poet Monks of China, The Clouds Should Know Me By Now, Red Pine/Mike O’Connor (eds.), p. 71.
Moonlight and the sound of pines are things we all know
Zen mind and delusion distinguish sage and fool
Go back to the place where not one thought appears
How shall I put this in words for you
— Ibid., p. 131.
Mountains and rivers: flowers of the Tao
But I, sadly, am a writer
No divine voice, talentless
Yet, lend me a brush; I’m off and running
Better an addiction to sunset clouds
To dispense with this sickness of words
Let wooded springs purify this old heart
Azure clouds burnish the sun red
— Ibid., p. 159.
Synthetic thinking, generalized, led Fuller to the concept of ephemeralization — “doing more with less.” The tendency of technology, he showed us with graphs of various historical stages of machinery, always moved steadily toward greater and greater ephemeralization. Every step forward in information allowed us to do more and more with less and less energy. Economists, he said, were still thinking in terms of scarcity while science was inexorably moving the world toward abundance and super-abundance.
Bucky [R. Buckminster Fuller] then spoke about the 92 natural elements, and I got a tingly feeling of strange intuition or “predestination” when he mentioned that the last of them was discovered the year I was born. These elements occurred at random around our planet, he said. Universe — a term he used the way theologians use “God” — would eventually force us to make a choice, as technology advanced, between two ways of getting maximum benefit out of these elements. We could follow traditional mammalian politics, in which one nation would try to dominate the others in order to access all 92 elements, which we now call a zero-sum game. Or we could choose a new synthetic path, a non-zero-sum game, in which all Terans cooperate to “advantage all without disadvantaging any.”
Since war will continue to become more and more “omnilethal,” Bucky said, humanity would have to choose the latter cooperative path eventually, because “we always do the intelligent thing after we have tried every stupid alternative and none of them works.”
Everybody at the seminar seemed as overwhelmed by Bucky as I was.
“He puts you in a trance,” somebody said.
“No,” somebody else said. “He wakes you out of your trance.”
— Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II, p. 47.
“Let not the setting sun reach the western horizon, nor close thine eyes in sleep, before thou hast gone over all the events of the day just past, and hast asked thyself this question: What have I done today that has been done amiss? What have I done today that has been done aright? Have I injured anyone? Have I failed in my duty? Let not the setting sun reach the western rim of space, nor let thine eyelids close in sleep ere thou hast asked thyself these questions.”
If only men and women would conscientiously follow that simple rule, ninety-nine per cent of the world’s trouble, heartache, sin, and anxiety, would be non-existent, would never happen. And the reason is simple. The world’s troubles arise from our weaknesses, not from our strength; and if we would increase our strength, and do away with our weaknesses, every human being thereafter, in proportion to his inner evolution, would become a power for good in the world. And you see what that would mean. It cuts at the tap-root of most of the thoughts and feelings and acts that bring misery amongst us.
— G. de Purucker, Wind of the Spirit, p. 10.
You decline to write poetry, won’t listen to sutras,
Too lazy to visit the other peaks of Ch’an—
When at last your head is white and they question you,
What stories will you have to tell your students?
— Buddhist Poet Monks of China, The Clouds Should Know Me By Now, Red Pine/Mike O’Connor (eds.), p. 71.
Moonlight and the sound of pines are things we all know
Zen mind and delusion distinguish sage and fool
Go back to the place where not one thought appears
How shall I put this in words for you
— Ibid., p. 131.
Mountains and rivers: flowers of the Tao
But I, sadly, am a writer
No divine voice, talentless
Yet, lend me a brush; I’m off and running
Better an addiction to sunset clouds
To dispense with this sickness of words
Let wooded springs purify this old heart
Azure clouds burnish the sun red
— Ibid., p. 159.
Synthetic thinking, generalized, led Fuller to the concept of ephemeralization — “doing more with less.” The tendency of technology, he showed us with graphs of various historical stages of machinery, always moved steadily toward greater and greater ephemeralization. Every step forward in information allowed us to do more and more with less and less energy. Economists, he said, were still thinking in terms of scarcity while science was inexorably moving the world toward abundance and super-abundance.
Bucky [R. Buckminster Fuller] then spoke about the 92 natural elements, and I got a tingly feeling of strange intuition or “predestination” when he mentioned that the last of them was discovered the year I was born. These elements occurred at random around our planet, he said. Universe — a term he used the way theologians use “God” — would eventually force us to make a choice, as technology advanced, between two ways of getting maximum benefit out of these elements. We could follow traditional mammalian politics, in which one nation would try to dominate the others in order to access all 92 elements, which we now call a zero-sum game. Or we could choose a new synthetic path, a non-zero-sum game, in which all Terans cooperate to “advantage all without disadvantaging any.”
Since war will continue to become more and more “omnilethal,” Bucky said, humanity would have to choose the latter cooperative path eventually, because “we always do the intelligent thing after we have tried every stupid alternative and none of them works.”
Everybody at the seminar seemed as overwhelmed by Bucky as I was.
“He puts you in a trance,” somebody said.
“No,” somebody else said. “He wakes you out of your trance.”
— Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger II, p. 47.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Take Advice Further
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.
— Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), U.S. Scientist, quoted in The Mind of God & Other Musings: The Wisdom of Science, Shirley Jones (ed.), p. 74.
I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.
— Jonas Salk (b. 1914), U.S. Microbiologist, quoted in Ibid., p. 74.
Whatever a man does he must do first in his mind.
— Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893-1986), Hungarian-American Biochemist, quoted in Ibid., p.77.
Our intellectual endeavors, our whole science will be of no avail if they do not lead man to a better comprehension of himself, of the meaning of his life, and of the resources buried in his inner self.
— Lecomte du Nouy (1849-1919), French Scientist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 78.
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
— Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912), French Scientist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 79.
Man is inside his most important biological specimen, himself, and . . . from this strategic position he is able to learn many things that no amount of observation of other specimens ever could reveal.
— Edmund W. Sinnott (1888-1968), U.S. Biologist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 80.
In a free world, if it is to remain free, we must maintain, with our lives if need be, but surely by our lives, the opportunity for a man to learn anything.
— J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), U.S. Physicist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 80.
The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box…. Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
— Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895), British Biologist,
quoted in Ibid., pp. 81-82.
Imagine the fifteen-billion-year lifetime of the universe compressed into the span of a single year…. Dinosaurs emerge on Christmas Eve; flowers arise on December 28th; and men and women originate at 10:30 P.M. on New Year’s Eve. All of recorded history occupies the last ten seconds of December 31….
— Carl Sagan (b. 1934), U.S. Astronomer,
quoted in Ibid., p. 93.
The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly.
— Thomas Alva Edison (18347-1931), U.S. Scientist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 95.
Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this something, at whatever cost, must be attained.
— Marie Curie (1867-1934), Polish Chemist, quoted in Ibid., p. 114.
Life is short, art long, opportunity fugitive, experimenting dangerous, reasoning difficult…. To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy.
— Hippocrates (460-400 B.C.), Greek “Father of Medicine,” quoted in Ibid., p. 126.
— Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), U.S. Scientist, quoted in The Mind of God & Other Musings: The Wisdom of Science, Shirley Jones (ed.), p. 74.
I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.
— Jonas Salk (b. 1914), U.S. Microbiologist, quoted in Ibid., p. 74.
Whatever a man does he must do first in his mind.
— Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893-1986), Hungarian-American Biochemist, quoted in Ibid., p.77.
Our intellectual endeavors, our whole science will be of no avail if they do not lead man to a better comprehension of himself, of the meaning of his life, and of the resources buried in his inner self.
— Lecomte du Nouy (1849-1919), French Scientist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 78.
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
— Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912), French Scientist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 79.
Man is inside his most important biological specimen, himself, and . . . from this strategic position he is able to learn many things that no amount of observation of other specimens ever could reveal.
— Edmund W. Sinnott (1888-1968), U.S. Biologist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 80.
In a free world, if it is to remain free, we must maintain, with our lives if need be, but surely by our lives, the opportunity for a man to learn anything.
— J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), U.S. Physicist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 80.
The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box…. Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
— Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895), British Biologist,
quoted in Ibid., pp. 81-82.
Imagine the fifteen-billion-year lifetime of the universe compressed into the span of a single year…. Dinosaurs emerge on Christmas Eve; flowers arise on December 28th; and men and women originate at 10:30 P.M. on New Year’s Eve. All of recorded history occupies the last ten seconds of December 31….
— Carl Sagan (b. 1934), U.S. Astronomer,
quoted in Ibid., p. 93.
The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly.
— Thomas Alva Edison (18347-1931), U.S. Scientist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 95.
Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this something, at whatever cost, must be attained.
— Marie Curie (1867-1934), Polish Chemist, quoted in Ibid., p. 114.
Life is short, art long, opportunity fugitive, experimenting dangerous, reasoning difficult…. To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy.
— Hippocrates (460-400 B.C.), Greek “Father of Medicine,” quoted in Ibid., p. 126.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Sages Advice
In Lost Horizon, a group of westerners find themselves captured by Lamas in the mountains of Tibet. Here the drifter of the group, Conway, swaps thoughts with a Tibetan holy man.
“Slackers?” queried Chang. His knowledge of English was extremely good, but sometimes a colloquialism proved unfamiliar.
"Slacker,” explained Conway, “is a slang word meaning a lazy fellow, a good-for-nothing. I wasn’t, of course, using it seriously.”
Chang bowed his thanks for this information. He took a keen interest in languages, and liked to weigh a new word philosophically. “It is significant,” he said after a pause, “that the English regard slackness as a vice. We, on the other hand, should vastly prefer it to tension. Is there not too much tension in the world at present, and might it not be better if more people were slackers?”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Conway answered with solemn amusement.
— James Hilton, from Lost Horizon (1933), quoted in The Idler’s Companion edited by Hodgkinson and De Abaitva, pp. 74-75.
The fact that scientific method seems to reduce God to something like an ethical code may throw some light on the nature of scientific method; I doubt if it throws much light on the nature of God.
— Sir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944), British theoretical Astronomer, The Mind of God & Other Musings: The Wisdom of Science, in Shirley Jones (ed.), p. 48.
One equation involves Planck’s constant (h), the velocity of light (c), and the electronic charge (e). The combination hc/e happens to equal 137…. This number connects quantum theory (h), relativity (c), and electricity (e). Therefore, it holds a special significance for physicists. When I mentioned this number — 137 — to [Gershom] Scholem, his eyes popped out…. He told me that in Hebrew each letter of the alphabet has a numerical equivalent and that the Cabala assigned a deep symbolic significance to the sums of such numbers in a given word. The number corresponding to the word “cabala” happens to be 137. Could there be a connection between Jewish mysticism and theoretical physics?
— Victor Weiskopf (b. 1908), Austrian-American Physicist, quoted in Ibid., pp. 48-49.
Quarks are located in a physical “somewhere” between matter and spirit…. The “inconceivable concept” of the electron as a “wave of matter” alone touches upon a metaphysical dimension…. These “waves of matter” are more than shape; they are metashape, shapes to which we can no longer attribute a substantial content — only a spiritual one.
— Gerhard Staguhn (b. 1952), U.S. Physicist, quoted in Ibid., p. 49.
Science shows us that the visible world is neither matter nor spirit; the visible world is the invisible organization of energy.
— Heinz R. Pagels (b. 1939), U.S. Physicist, quoted in Ibid., p. 66.
The world of psychical phenomena appears to me to be as much a part of “Nature” as the world of physical phenomena; and I am unable to perceive any justification for cutting the Universe into two halves, one natural and one supernatural.
— Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), British Biologist, quoted in Ibid., p. 67.
To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.
— Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), British Biologist, quoted in Ibid., p. 67.
“Slackers?” queried Chang. His knowledge of English was extremely good, but sometimes a colloquialism proved unfamiliar.
"Slacker,” explained Conway, “is a slang word meaning a lazy fellow, a good-for-nothing. I wasn’t, of course, using it seriously.”
Chang bowed his thanks for this information. He took a keen interest in languages, and liked to weigh a new word philosophically. “It is significant,” he said after a pause, “that the English regard slackness as a vice. We, on the other hand, should vastly prefer it to tension. Is there not too much tension in the world at present, and might it not be better if more people were slackers?”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Conway answered with solemn amusement.
— James Hilton, from Lost Horizon (1933), quoted in The Idler’s Companion edited by Hodgkinson and De Abaitva, pp. 74-75.
The fact that scientific method seems to reduce God to something like an ethical code may throw some light on the nature of scientific method; I doubt if it throws much light on the nature of God.
— Sir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944), British theoretical Astronomer, The Mind of God & Other Musings: The Wisdom of Science, in Shirley Jones (ed.), p. 48.
One equation involves Planck’s constant (h), the velocity of light (c), and the electronic charge (e). The combination hc/e happens to equal 137…. This number connects quantum theory (h), relativity (c), and electricity (e). Therefore, it holds a special significance for physicists. When I mentioned this number — 137 — to [Gershom] Scholem, his eyes popped out…. He told me that in Hebrew each letter of the alphabet has a numerical equivalent and that the Cabala assigned a deep symbolic significance to the sums of such numbers in a given word. The number corresponding to the word “cabala” happens to be 137. Could there be a connection between Jewish mysticism and theoretical physics?
— Victor Weiskopf (b. 1908), Austrian-American Physicist, quoted in Ibid., pp. 48-49.
Quarks are located in a physical “somewhere” between matter and spirit…. The “inconceivable concept” of the electron as a “wave of matter” alone touches upon a metaphysical dimension…. These “waves of matter” are more than shape; they are metashape, shapes to which we can no longer attribute a substantial content — only a spiritual one.
— Gerhard Staguhn (b. 1952), U.S. Physicist, quoted in Ibid., p. 49.
Science shows us that the visible world is neither matter nor spirit; the visible world is the invisible organization of energy.
— Heinz R. Pagels (b. 1939), U.S. Physicist, quoted in Ibid., p. 66.
The world of psychical phenomena appears to me to be as much a part of “Nature” as the world of physical phenomena; and I am unable to perceive any justification for cutting the Universe into two halves, one natural and one supernatural.
— Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), British Biologist, quoted in Ibid., p. 67.
To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.
— Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), British Biologist, quoted in Ibid., p. 67.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Stay Open to Opportunity
Money doesn’t grow on trees, and if it did, someone else would own the orchard.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees, p. 19.
Most people do not realize that there’s just as much money to be made when a society is falling down as when it’s rising up.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 21.
The road to success is always under construction.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 28.
If you lined up all the economists in the world end-to-end, they still would not reach a conclusion.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 100.
The economy depends as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 120.
Opportunity knocks but once, while temptation leans on the doorbell.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 139.
Some people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
— Oscar Wilde, in Ibid., p. 139.
There is hardly anything in the world that someone can’t make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and people who consider price alone are this man’s lawful prey.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 144.
“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open….”
— George Carlin, fronticepiece, Braindroppings.
“No artist is pleased…. [There is no] satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
— Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille, from Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham, in Ibid.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees, p. 19.
Most people do not realize that there’s just as much money to be made when a society is falling down as when it’s rising up.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 21.
The road to success is always under construction.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 28.
If you lined up all the economists in the world end-to-end, they still would not reach a conclusion.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 100.
The economy depends as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 120.
Opportunity knocks but once, while temptation leans on the doorbell.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 139.
Some people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
— Oscar Wilde, in Ibid., p. 139.
There is hardly anything in the world that someone can’t make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and people who consider price alone are this man’s lawful prey.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 144.
“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open….”
— George Carlin, fronticepiece, Braindroppings.
“No artist is pleased…. [There is no] satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
— Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille, from Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham, in Ibid.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Consider the End at the Start
Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events not of words. Trust movement.
— Alfred Adler in Quantum Leap Thinking by James J. Mapes, p. 17.
Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have occurred. A whole system of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
— Wolfgang von Göethe in Ibid., p. 162.
We have always thought of the Bible as a book. We know that was only its first incarnation. It is also a computer program. Not merely a book that Rips typed into a computer, but something that its original author actually designed to be interactive and ever-changing.
The Bible code may be a timed series of revelations, each designed for the technology of its age.
It may be some form of information we cannot yet fully imagine, something that would be as strange to us now as a computer would have been to desert nomads 3000 years ago.
“It is almost certainly many levels deep, but we do not yet have a powerful enough mathematical model to reach it,” says Rips. “It is probably less like a crossword puzzle, and more like a hologram. We are only looking at two-dimensional arrays, and we probably should be looking in at least three dimensions, but we don’t know how to.”
And no one can explain how the code was created.
— Michael Drosnin, The Bible Code, pp. 45-46.
Suddenly a voice called out to him from nowhere: “Moses, come up to the top of the mountain.”
It was 1200 BC. According to the Bible, on top of Mount Sinai Moses heard the voice we call “God.” And that voice gave him the ten laws that defined Western civilization, the Ten Commandments, and it dictated to him the book that we call the Bible.
But when God says, “Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will work miracles,” the code says “computer.”
The word “computer” appears six times in the plain text of the Bible, hidden within the Hebrew word for “thought.” Four of the six anachronistic appearances of “computer” are in the verses of Exodus that describe the building of the Ark of the Covenant, the famous “lost Ark” that carried the Ten Commandments.
The code suggests that even the writing of the laws on the two stone tablets may have been computer-generated. “And the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets,” states Exodus 32:16. But encoded in that same verse is a hidden message: “it was made by computer.”
The code must be describing a device far beyond any we have developed. The New York Times recently reported that mankind may be ready to take the next leap, to harness the world inside the atoms and create “an information-processing method so powerful that it would be to ordinary computing what nuclear energy is to fire.” [quantum computing]
— Michael Drosnin, Ibid., p. 95.
The anxiety of early abuse creates a severe need in children to take control of life. They fashion dramas, sometimes severe and self-destructive ones, in order to give themselves a sense of meaning and hence reduce their anxiety. Breaking the pattern of these dramas can be extremely difficult, but therapists have found success by facilitating the perception of peak moments of success with athletics, group interactions, meditation, and other activities. These activities are designed to promote the experience of a higher self to replace the old identity and its attendant reaction pattern.
To some extent, each of us is hit one way or another with the same kind of anxiety abused children experience. In most cases, thankfully, this anxiety is of a lesser degree, and our reaction patterns are not as extreme, but the process, the growth step involved, is exactly the same. This realization, as I watched it play out in my work, clarified in my mind what the whole culture seemed to be going through. We knew that life-as-usual seemed to be missing something that could be attained through an inner transformative experience, a real change in how we perceive ourselves and life that produces a higher, more spiritual personal identity. The effort to describe this psychological journey became the basis of The Celestine Prophecy.
— James Redfield, The Celestine Vision, pp. 7-8.
This scenario can be played out, as well, by the white-collar criminal whose delusions finally catch up with him or anyone whose use of drugs, working, shopping, eating, watching sports, or pursuing sex gets out of control. Whatever the crutch or obsessive behavior, it never addresses the root cause and is doomed to break down; the angst creeps back in and we are driven onward in our never-ending flight from disconnection. This is the nature of hell on earth — and according to much of the information coming in from near-death and out-of-body researchers, it is the nature of hell in the Afterlife as well.
Robert Monroe reported that during his travels in the Afterlife dimension he regularly saw hellishly delusional constructions devised by groups of souls who obsessively pursued sex as a defensive illusion against their lostness. In Ruth Montgomery’s automatic writing of Arthur Ford’s descriptions of the Afterlife, she noted that certain souls could not wake up in heaven after death, caught up, no doubt, in the same illusions they devised in life.
Such accounts suggest there is also great effort on the part of other beings in the Afterlife dimension to intervene with these deluded souls. They probably do so using the same process of uplifting that we already know about: the process of focusing on the soul’s higher self and projecting energy until the soul wakes up, cuts through the obsessive activity, and begins to open up to the divine inside — which is the only real cure for any obsessive activity….
— James Redfield, Ibid., p. 195.
As both science and mysticism demonstrate, humans are in essence a field of energy. Yet the East maintains that our normal energy levels are weak and flat until we open up to the absolute energies available in the universe. When this opening occurs, our ch’i — or perhaps we should call it our level of quantum energy — is raised to a height that resolves our existential insecurity. But until then we move around seeking additional energy from other people.
— James Redfield, Ibid., p. 71.
— Alfred Adler in Quantum Leap Thinking by James J. Mapes, p. 17.
Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have occurred. A whole system of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
— Wolfgang von Göethe in Ibid., p. 162.
We have always thought of the Bible as a book. We know that was only its first incarnation. It is also a computer program. Not merely a book that Rips typed into a computer, but something that its original author actually designed to be interactive and ever-changing.
The Bible code may be a timed series of revelations, each designed for the technology of its age.
It may be some form of information we cannot yet fully imagine, something that would be as strange to us now as a computer would have been to desert nomads 3000 years ago.
“It is almost certainly many levels deep, but we do not yet have a powerful enough mathematical model to reach it,” says Rips. “It is probably less like a crossword puzzle, and more like a hologram. We are only looking at two-dimensional arrays, and we probably should be looking in at least three dimensions, but we don’t know how to.”
And no one can explain how the code was created.
— Michael Drosnin, The Bible Code, pp. 45-46.
Suddenly a voice called out to him from nowhere: “Moses, come up to the top of the mountain.”
It was 1200 BC. According to the Bible, on top of Mount Sinai Moses heard the voice we call “God.” And that voice gave him the ten laws that defined Western civilization, the Ten Commandments, and it dictated to him the book that we call the Bible.
But when God says, “Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will work miracles,” the code says “computer.”
The word “computer” appears six times in the plain text of the Bible, hidden within the Hebrew word for “thought.” Four of the six anachronistic appearances of “computer” are in the verses of Exodus that describe the building of the Ark of the Covenant, the famous “lost Ark” that carried the Ten Commandments.
The code suggests that even the writing of the laws on the two stone tablets may have been computer-generated. “And the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets,” states Exodus 32:16. But encoded in that same verse is a hidden message: “it was made by computer.”
The code must be describing a device far beyond any we have developed. The New York Times recently reported that mankind may be ready to take the next leap, to harness the world inside the atoms and create “an information-processing method so powerful that it would be to ordinary computing what nuclear energy is to fire.” [quantum computing]
— Michael Drosnin, Ibid., p. 95.
The anxiety of early abuse creates a severe need in children to take control of life. They fashion dramas, sometimes severe and self-destructive ones, in order to give themselves a sense of meaning and hence reduce their anxiety. Breaking the pattern of these dramas can be extremely difficult, but therapists have found success by facilitating the perception of peak moments of success with athletics, group interactions, meditation, and other activities. These activities are designed to promote the experience of a higher self to replace the old identity and its attendant reaction pattern.
To some extent, each of us is hit one way or another with the same kind of anxiety abused children experience. In most cases, thankfully, this anxiety is of a lesser degree, and our reaction patterns are not as extreme, but the process, the growth step involved, is exactly the same. This realization, as I watched it play out in my work, clarified in my mind what the whole culture seemed to be going through. We knew that life-as-usual seemed to be missing something that could be attained through an inner transformative experience, a real change in how we perceive ourselves and life that produces a higher, more spiritual personal identity. The effort to describe this psychological journey became the basis of The Celestine Prophecy.
— James Redfield, The Celestine Vision, pp. 7-8.
This scenario can be played out, as well, by the white-collar criminal whose delusions finally catch up with him or anyone whose use of drugs, working, shopping, eating, watching sports, or pursuing sex gets out of control. Whatever the crutch or obsessive behavior, it never addresses the root cause and is doomed to break down; the angst creeps back in and we are driven onward in our never-ending flight from disconnection. This is the nature of hell on earth — and according to much of the information coming in from near-death and out-of-body researchers, it is the nature of hell in the Afterlife as well.
Robert Monroe reported that during his travels in the Afterlife dimension he regularly saw hellishly delusional constructions devised by groups of souls who obsessively pursued sex as a defensive illusion against their lostness. In Ruth Montgomery’s automatic writing of Arthur Ford’s descriptions of the Afterlife, she noted that certain souls could not wake up in heaven after death, caught up, no doubt, in the same illusions they devised in life.
Such accounts suggest there is also great effort on the part of other beings in the Afterlife dimension to intervene with these deluded souls. They probably do so using the same process of uplifting that we already know about: the process of focusing on the soul’s higher self and projecting energy until the soul wakes up, cuts through the obsessive activity, and begins to open up to the divine inside — which is the only real cure for any obsessive activity….
— James Redfield, Ibid., p. 195.
As both science and mysticism demonstrate, humans are in essence a field of energy. Yet the East maintains that our normal energy levels are weak and flat until we open up to the absolute energies available in the universe. When this opening occurs, our ch’i — or perhaps we should call it our level of quantum energy — is raised to a height that resolves our existential insecurity. But until then we move around seeking additional energy from other people.
— James Redfield, Ibid., p. 71.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Get Ready to Get Ready
A human being who strives for something great considers everyone he meets on his way either as a means or as a delay and obstacle — or as a temporary resting place. His characteristic high-grade graciousness toward his fellow men becomes possible only once he has attained his height and rules. Impatience and his consciousness that until then he is always condemned to comedy — for even war is a comedy and conceals, just as every means conceals the end — spoil all of his relations to others: this type of man knows solitude and what is most poisonous in it.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, #273, p. 222.
The problem of those who are waiting. — It requires strokes of luck and much that is incalculable if a higher man in whom the solution of a problem lies dormant is to get around to action in time — to “eruption,” one might say. In the average case it does not happen, and in nooks all over the earth sit men who are waiting, scarcely knowing in what way they are waiting, much less that they are waiting in vain. Occasionally the call that awakens — that accident which gives “permission” to act — comes too late, when the best of youth and strength for action has already been used up by sitting still; and many have found to their horror when they “leaped up” that their limbs had gone to sleep and their spirit had become too heavy. “It is too late,” they say to themselves, having lost their faith in themselves and henceforth forever useless.
Could it be that in the realm of the spirit “Raphael without hands,” taking this phrase in the widest sense, is perhaps not the exception but the rule?
Genius is perhaps not so rare after all — but the five hundred hands it requires to tyrannize the kairos, “the right time,” seizing chance by its forelock.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ibid., #274, p. 222.
Anyone who does not want to see what is lofty in man looks that much more keenly for what is low in him and mere foreground — thus betrays himself.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ibid., #275, p. 223.
In all kinds of injury and loss the lower and coarser soul is better off than the nobler one: the dangers for the latter must be greater; the probability that it will come to grief and perish is actually, in view of the multiplicity of the conditions of its life, tremendous.
In a lizard a lost finger is replaced again; not so in man.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ibid., #276, p. 223.
Confucius said, “Study without thought is blind, thought without study is dangerous.”
Without thought, study is not absorbed; without study, thought is uninformed.
— Thomas Cleary, The Human Element, p. 33.
Lao-tzu said, “If you agree too easily, you will be little trusted.”
Try to please everyone and you wind up pleasing no one. Try to be all things to all people and you wind up able to be nothing to anyone. Treasures are hidden because of their value.
— Thomas Cleary, Ibid., p. 67.
Work on yourself first; take responsibility for your own progress.
At the outset of an undertaking, when there is potential but no momentum, it may be that all you can do at first is to marshal your own resources and try to develop the capacities and qualities you will need along the way. Without a developed framework of support at this stage, you will need to manage yourself and do your own work, under your own steam. If you rely on others before you have consolidated your own strength and awakened your own faculties, you may tend to become dependent and weak.
— Thomas Cleary, Ibid., p. 79.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, #273, p. 222.
The problem of those who are waiting. — It requires strokes of luck and much that is incalculable if a higher man in whom the solution of a problem lies dormant is to get around to action in time — to “eruption,” one might say. In the average case it does not happen, and in nooks all over the earth sit men who are waiting, scarcely knowing in what way they are waiting, much less that they are waiting in vain. Occasionally the call that awakens — that accident which gives “permission” to act — comes too late, when the best of youth and strength for action has already been used up by sitting still; and many have found to their horror when they “leaped up” that their limbs had gone to sleep and their spirit had become too heavy. “It is too late,” they say to themselves, having lost their faith in themselves and henceforth forever useless.
Could it be that in the realm of the spirit “Raphael without hands,” taking this phrase in the widest sense, is perhaps not the exception but the rule?
Genius is perhaps not so rare after all — but the five hundred hands it requires to tyrannize the kairos, “the right time,” seizing chance by its forelock.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ibid., #274, p. 222.
Anyone who does not want to see what is lofty in man looks that much more keenly for what is low in him and mere foreground — thus betrays himself.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ibid., #275, p. 223.
In all kinds of injury and loss the lower and coarser soul is better off than the nobler one: the dangers for the latter must be greater; the probability that it will come to grief and perish is actually, in view of the multiplicity of the conditions of its life, tremendous.
In a lizard a lost finger is replaced again; not so in man.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ibid., #276, p. 223.
Confucius said, “Study without thought is blind, thought without study is dangerous.”
Without thought, study is not absorbed; without study, thought is uninformed.
— Thomas Cleary, The Human Element, p. 33.
Lao-tzu said, “If you agree too easily, you will be little trusted.”
Try to please everyone and you wind up pleasing no one. Try to be all things to all people and you wind up able to be nothing to anyone. Treasures are hidden because of their value.
— Thomas Cleary, Ibid., p. 67.
Work on yourself first; take responsibility for your own progress.
At the outset of an undertaking, when there is potential but no momentum, it may be that all you can do at first is to marshal your own resources and try to develop the capacities and qualities you will need along the way. Without a developed framework of support at this stage, you will need to manage yourself and do your own work, under your own steam. If you rely on others before you have consolidated your own strength and awakened your own faculties, you may tend to become dependent and weak.
— Thomas Cleary, Ibid., p. 79.
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