Life From Lightning

It's easy, in any age, to think that we've got it all figured out; that, regardless of how much remains to be discovered, what is known rests on a fairly firm foundation. At the risk of singling out the present as somehow unique, however, these days it seems that mankind is particularly prone to this illusion. Our scientific knowledge is so vast that to imagine that any one part of the edifice rests on the infirmity of illusion is, for many, unthinkable.

Take DNA: the hereditary molecule, repository of a species' history, determinant of an organism's attributes, blueprint by which the cell and ultimately the body is constructed. Deterministic, Darwinian theory relegates DNA to the status of historical record and blueprint ... whilst demoting living beings to no more than the machines constructed by it. The process of evolution is thought to be nothing more than the happenstance 'improvement' (if such a word can be said to apply, which committed Darwinists insist it doesn't) of the organisms built by DNA: random changes in the genetic code, tested against a randomly shifting fitness landscape over geologic spaces of time, stretching from the now back to a chemical mud puddle somewhere on the Earth's surface 3.8 billion years ago, when a set of molecules just happened to accidentally fall into a self-replicating configuration.

Well, that's the story according to mainstream biology, and so the one the man on the street knows, more or less vaguely, as the truth. Within the confines of official culture Creationism is peddled too, as a sort of jester at the feet of dignified science, its bald-faced denial of reality and wide-eyed innocent credulousness in the face of the most ridiculous of Biblical stories held up now and again for public ridicule. There are those who believe the Creationist line, but in truth, its cultural function is primarily to prop up Darwinian biology by providing a false - and by necessity absurd - alternative, one that cannot possibly survive inside the halls of academia. It's the hoary old dynamic of cultural polarization all over again, analogous in both form and function to the left-right political function: by gesticulating at caricatures of the opposition, either side is able to keep its followers from straying too far from the official line.

Then there's Intelligent Design. Darwinian apologists often try to connect ID to Biblical creationism, but it's been a tough charge to make stick because ID isn't a coherent theory so much as a stance: a growing community of scholars who, having looked at the fantastic intricacy and sophistication of molecular biology, and having been told it all arose according to chance fed through a recursive algorithm, shake their heads and shout, laughing and incredulous, "No fucking way, man!"

You won't find many books by ID proponents that lay out how, precisely, life was created; rather, most of the literature consists of a catalogue of inconsistencies, improbabilities, and anomalies that, taken together, produce quite a bit of negative evidence against standard evolutionary theory, but very little positive evidence for any alternative (a charge Darwinists make frequently, often stating sarcastically that the implication is that God fits into the blank spots.) So, into this theoretical vacuum I'll throw out my own speculations.

It starts with an interesting experiment conducted in 2003 by Romanian biophysicist Mircea Sanduloviciu at Cuza University, in which an electrical discharge inside an argon plasma caused cells to form, dubbed 'plasma blobs'. The plasma blobs contained no complex structure - at least, none has yet been observed - but they did possess properties of growth (by absorbing gases), replication (by dividing in two), and communication (by emitting electromagnetic waves, causing the atoms in other plasma blobs to vibrate.) So right here we have a possible origin for cellular life, taking place not in a puddle of slime but in a plasma. The early atmosphere of the Earth was a highly charged environment, in which plasmas were very much dominant, so if such structures could form there - and form naturally - this would be a worthy line of inquiry.

Now, let's jump ahead and look for a moment at some of DNA's largely unsung properties. Everyone knows about DNA's hereditary attributes, but few outside of the New Age community have heard about DNA's amazingly sophisticated function as a transceiver for biophotons. Outside of a few scientists - who over the decades since their discovery in 1923, and largely under the public radar, have advanced the understanding of the phenomenon - mainstream science has largely ignored biophotons, leading them to dismiss the parts of the molecule that function as a transceiver as 'junk DNA'. What is known is this: DNA molecules continually emit and receive photons of coherent light in a highly sophisticated fashion that indicates the photons may well serve as a communications medium, linking perhaps not just the cells within an organism but potentially organisms throughout the biosphere. Many researchers speculate as to an identity between biophotons and ki energy, suggesting that techniques such as acupuncture work by manipulating this photonic communications web. At any rate, we see that DNA and the cellular plasma blobs communicate in much the same fashion: with light.

Finally, I'll draw your attention to an interesting morphological correspondence. Look at these two images:


The first you no doubt recognize: the familiar double helix of DNA. The second is a Birkeland current, that is, an electrical current that naturally arises inside charged plasmas under the influence of magnetic fields. Birkeland currents are interesting beasts: they scale through at least 14 orders of magnitude, ranging from the planetary to the intergalactic, representing one of the only phenomena in the universe exhibiting an essentially fractal dynamic over such a broad scope. So far as I know, at present it's unknown whether or not Birkeland currents can form at molecular scales, though I myself would not be at all surprised to find that they do.

In that case, we'd have a situation whereby not only cellular analogues arise in high energy plasmas, but DNA analogues as well.

So, here's my theory: that's exactly what happened, and it happens everywhere throughout the universe, more or less continuously and entirely naturally, though absent certain very specific conditions the structures remain more or less ephemeral. However, the early earth, with its preponderance of solid and liquid state matter in close contact with high-energy plasma, provided exactly those conditions. By a mechanism as yet unknown, the plasma blobs cooled and precipitated as cellular membranes; whilst the Birkeland currents wound amino acids into ropes of DNA, drawing them into place through electromagnetic influence, then leaving the structures frozen in place as energy levels decreased and the currents ceased.

From this point, the initial 'programming' could well have been random; evolution might have picked up from there, and moved things along in an entirely conventional Darwinian way. However, there's reason to suspect that this, too, is not the whole story, for DNA's primary function appears to be as a transceiver rather than a simple historical record. Evidence suggests that 98% of the structure - the so-called 'junk' DNA - fulfills just this function. I'm getting quite a bit more speculative here, but as I noted in Electric Astrology an energy conduit can also transmit information, meaning that early earthly life may well have received programming instructions from cosmic sources. If this is the case, the first cells might have been created as nothing more than simple cellular membranes together with molecular antennae. A cosmic intelligence, reaching down to the earth's surface with fingers of lightning, would be able to program these early cells with the data necessary to make use of the self-organizing properties of the ambient building blocks - ranging from simple molecules such as methane and ammonia up to the more complex but still abundant amino acids - in order to bootstrap the construction of appropriate proteins.

Is this what happened? Hey, I don't know. As always with anything you read on the internet, caveat emptor. This much I do know: if God exists, and permeates the universe, then there must have been some physical mechanism by which She created life. The above, at the moment, is my best guess at what that mechanism is.

A Prayer

Cosmic Father who art the Heavens,
Hallowed be Thy Infinite Names,
Teach me today my daily lesson.
Grant me the wisdom to seek Truth,
The discernment to see it,
And the courage to act upon it,
That Your Will may become mine,
And Your Hand act more perfectly through me.

Divine Mother who art the Source of all Life,
Whose Boundless Love encompasses All,
Guide me along the true Way,
That I may this day grow closer to You.
Grant me to drink deep of the water that flows from Your bottomless spring,
Filling my cup with Your inspiration,
And make of me Your instrument,
That with me You might shape the world yet more fully
With Your immeasurable Beauty.

For Thou art the Beginning and the End and All in between,
The Matter and the Light,
The Power, the Will and the Way.

Conversation With a Baptist

Our electrician came over yesterday to hook up a 400W metal halide lamp in our workshop (so bright it leaves a green afterimage on your eyes, even when you don't look directly at it.) At one point he needed our stapler.

"Ask, and ye shall be given," I intoned, handing it to him.

"Hey, pretty good, do you know any other Bible verses?"

"Just a second ... 'From he who hath not, even what he have shall be taken, while to him who has shall be given'." (I paraphrase.)

Thus launched the first conversation I've had in I don't know how long - years, likely - with a real-life, died-in-the-wool believing fundamentalist Christian, a man who takes his Bible so seriously he homeschools his kids (not that I've anything against homeschooling. Based on a reasoned critique of the public education indoctrination system, it's an admirable act. Which doesn't apply in this case.)

It was an amusing conversation. He was thrown for a loop, it seemed, by my statements, questions, and responses; obviously not a practicing Christian of any sort, he expected me to be your usual godless heathen atheist, I think. For instance, I could tell he was expecting an eyeroll when he put forth that the world was of the devil; when I agreed with him unconditionally, he wasn't sure what to say next. When I suggested further that the devil, too, was ultimately of God, and should be seen as a part of God's plan ... well, he wasn't sure what to say to that.

We discussed the gnostic texts, and I explained to him my views on the origins of the Bible, both the pentateuch and the gospels. He of course took them as the literal view of god, and was perplexed - though not angered - when I suggested that Christ's original teachings were likely suppressed, and that furthermore much of the Bible, though ultimately based in historical fact, consisted of mythologized oral history recrystallized into written 'history' along lines intended to materially benefit a small priestly class, not to elevate the consciousness of the masses and thus bring them closer to God.

When he said, Jesus was the literal Son of God, born of a virgin, descended from heaven to save mankind, and that only by taking Jesus into our heart could we be saved ... again, I agreed, and pointed out that the Christ figure is unique in any era but not in history (being the Son of God he manifests wherever and whenever he is needed most), that the virgin birth could well be an allusion to a personal rebirth inside the Kingdom of Heaven (an internal state of consciousness in which one is in direct contact with the Absolute), and that accepting Jesus in our heart amounted to achieving inside ourselves what Jesus achieved inside himself (namely the Kingdom of Heaven.)

At one point, clearly perplexed, he remarked that I seemed to believe a bit of this and a bit of that (i'd been throwing some vedic ideas into the discussion), and how did I decide what was true? Obviously, for him, he took the Bible as being true and everything external to it as part of the Lie, which greatly simplifies things. So, I admitted to more or less following my own gut instinct, to which he replied, but how can you trust yourself? Of course, I don't, not entirely, and so I alluded to the Cassiopaeans, telling him that I participated in an online group whose main focus was holding up mirrors to one anothers' beliefs in order to detect falsehoods arising from wishful thinking or psychological shortcomings, a task no man can accomplish alone.

I'm sure he still thinks I'm a lost and damned soul, and the jury's still out on that one so I won't say he's wrong. I could as easily tell him to open his mind and question things, for when you're exploring the most important matter in life (which we both agreed this was), you want to proceed with care. Yet at the same time, God is a merciful type; to those who ask - sometimes even without knowing they're asking - he shows the way. Especially in this age, as the veil lifts, the way becomes increasingly clear. And though knowledge might hasten the journey, God doesn't care in the end what words or ideas one of his appendages uses to grow closer to him; in the end, it is only the growth that matters.

Life Becomes Art

Remember the movie The Abyss, where deep-sea oil drillers fall so deep they encounter an alien civilization of bioluminescent invertebrates with a water-based technology?

I couldn't help but be reminded of that by this video at National Geographic (shot by an oil-rig ROV, no less! Just like in the movie!) Of course the Magnapinna squid featured there isn't thought to be an intelligent creature, so much as either a living bottom-dredger or a passive ambush predator (or both), neither of which is an ecological niche likely to earn a species intelligence.

So the search for the deep ocean squid cities continues....

Another Letter From the Devic Realm

At last! I've been waiting for this one for months, now. Be still my beating heart.

Another chapter of Les Visible's invaluable primer, Spiritual Survival in a Temporal World, has just gone online.

If you haven't read the first 12 chapters, they're still available at JustGetThere.

Electric Astology

The electric universe theory postulates the existence of vast interstellar networks of electricity carried by helical plasma structures known as Birkeland currents. Spanning so-called empty space, these currents power the very stars, the planets, and ultimately connect every piece of matter in the universe.

Now, where energy can be carried, so too can information (just see your USB port!) Indeed, the one virtually presupposes the other; in physical theory, 'energy' and 'information' are mathematically synonymous, as various theories of quantum information demonstrate. The universe can be described as a vast hologram projected inside a quantum computer that is continually computing its own existence, a description that is completely compatible with the electric universe model, discussing as they do complementary rather than contradictory aspects of reality.

Conventional astronomy, predicated on a Newtonian world-machine of gravitational force, posits that every body in space is ultimately nothing but isolated matter, cut off from any surrounding system. Stars are vast nuclear reactors, slowly consuming their own small store of fuel until one day they die; their movements inside the vast clockwork machine governed by nothing but impersonal laws that render any evolution ultimately purposeless. Save clumsy destruction such as a nearby star going supernova and inundating the earth with radiation, or a random comet slamming into the ocean and initiating an ice age, events far removed from one another in time and space can have no mutual influence whatsoever.

The ancients studied the skies, too, and their traditions are kept as the various forms of astrology. Whatever their many and varied particulars, one axiom every system held in common was that all astronomical events had real effects on the lives of humans and every other being in the universe, for the cosmos was seen ultimately a single whole. To the modern, scientific mind the idea that Mars being in the house of Scorpio might cause a man born at one time of year to meet his future wife and another woman born a different time of year to lose all she owns seems a laughable superstition, for no plausible causal connection could possibly exist....

Unless, that is, one brings to mind the electric universe's fractal web of electric charge, connecting all things in the universe with currents ranging in size from vast intergalactic trunks that power quasars to the filamentary sparks that forms the conversation of the atoms. Stars, planets, moons and asteroids and the smallest grain of interstellar dust: all are hooked into the same web. The shape those connections take - the double helix of the Birkeland current - is even suggestive of a certain famous molecule, one whose hereditary and even computational properties are well known, but whose function as a sophisticated electromagnetic transceiver is generally not.

By this vast web, information as well as energy can travel. One wonders if the various astrologies - either as the disjecta membra of a lost civilization, the misunderstood teachings of visiting aliens, or the philosophical inductions of inspired minds - had this in mind when they took it as obvious that all was connected. I am not saying that any of these traditions are necessarily correct in the particulars, for no art that studies so complex a system can ever hope to divine all its secrets; that many, if not all of the traditions are fragmentary and corrupted, reduces their reliability still further. Nevertheless, there may well be something to them, not on their own individual merits as fully developed theories, but in terms of the way that they look at the world.

The exclusive focus on solid bodies moving through space that has preoccupied astronomy since the days of Newton is akin to considering exclusively the skeleton of a body; and when the skeleton only is studied, the study can be of nothing but death. This is reflected in the grim picture painted by modern astronomy: the stars live solitary existences, burning up their own small supplies of fuel until one day, either in a spectacular explosion or with a gentle sigh, they die. On some of their planets life may. perhaps, by some accident, arise, but that life too is doomed by its star's inevitable fate; its history shall amount to no more than the clever re-arrangement of some small fraction of the matter around the star, with no wider significance for the universe at large. In the end, as the universe's expansion continues, all matter will eventually disperse into a thin atomic cloud, dim and dark for all of eternity.

If gravitational astronomy amounts to a study of the bones and nothing more, the electric universe theory offers up for our consideration the connective tissues, the circulatory system, and perhaps the nervous system of the universe. In short, it provides the parts of the universe's body necessary to bring it to life, on a cosmic scale. No matter the seeming gulfs that separate the parts, nothing is ever even for a moment separate from the whole.

Might it not be that the universe is at once a vast living being, and the living dream in the mind of god? Where actions taken at any one point, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can have repercussions of cosmic dimensions, whilst movements of the remotest of heavenly bodies reach down to influence the lives of the smallest of its inhabitants?

Secret Histories: A Tale of Two Books

It's been a while since my last post. Not coincidentally, it's been a little over a week since my copy of Laura Knight-Jadzyck's imposing tome The Secret History of the World (and how to get out alive) arrived in the mail. I spent my last forty bucks ordering it, so you'll understand my excitement, and perhaps forgive me that my internetting (particularly the blogging) declined precipitously while I read my way through it. And a fascinating read it was, too.

Now, here's a strange thing: I'd already read The Secret History of the World, several months ago. The volume remains on my bookshelf. So why would I be so excited to reading it again? Well, to start with, they weren't the same book. Before I'd even heard of Laura Knight-Jadzyck, Mark Booth's (much slimmer, much less scholarly) volume - The Secret History of the World As Laid Down by the Secret Societies - caught my eye at a bookstore in Japan, and for some reason I just had to read it. At the time I found it extremely interesting, although not entirely credible ... for reasons I couldn't quite put my finger on. I knew (and know) very little about secret societies and other esoteric matters (a statement I make, not in comparison to the great mass of Other People, but to the Great Sea of knowledge); and yet, something about Booth's book struck me as, well ... not quite right. He makes an incredible list of claims, including: Adam and Eve were vegetables; the Sphinx was built in 10,000 BC; Jesus came to Earth in order to spread a new kind of consciousness, and had a twin brother who lived in Mesoamerica.

And yet, for all that, in a stunning lack of discernment on my part ... I actually kind of liked the book. Many of its ideas spoke to me.

Then I found out about the real (and original) Secret History, and, well ... there's just no comparison. Knight-Jadzyck's book is based on a lifetime of research into, well, everything; the things she uncovers are incredible, every bit as incredible as Booth's, with the crucial difference that she provides footnotes whenever she can. Her method is that of a proper historian: to drill down to primary sources, and then consider whether or not those sources can be trusted. She takes the rigorous methods of academic historians, and applies them to topics that are far outside the purview of respectable academics: Atlantis, hyperdimensional beings, cyclical catastrophes, ancient technologies ... all within the context of trying to understand how, and why, we have gotten where we are (and where we are likely to go next.)

The picture she paints is far from a reassuring one. Our distant ancestors made an unholy pact with hyperdimensional reptoid beings that feed on our negative emotions, and manipulate our reality in order to maximize their food source. Since then, at least one major global civilization (Atlantis) and possibly others, have come and gone, reaching as high or higher than our own civilization only to be dashed to pieces by the arrival of periodic cometary swarms. Most of our mythology is the fragmentary memory of lost technologies, warped beyond recognition after endless millenia of history's longest game of Telephone. And the same fate is in store for us ... unless we Ascend spiritually, and get out of the Matrix in which we live. It's paranoia of a spiritual depth, and written here - in such brevity - it looks like a psychotic's dream castle.

Well, except ... she isn't just pulling all this out of her ass. It's based on decades of careful research, pulling together threads from comparative mythology, archaeological anomalies, and virtually every science you can name. Her 'wild claims' are arrived at after looking at a great deal of evidence, and are stated with much qualification for - as she would be the first to say - if our history has been intentionally falsified, getting to the Truth is, as a physicist would say, a nontrivial problem.

Now, it's curious, don't you think, that a few years after one Secret History is published, another appears. The first is dense, scholarly, well-researched ... and presents in the end a way of looking at the world that would rock the powers that be to their very core, should its message be widely received. The second is superficially interesting, but on closer examination falls apart into a big pile of intellectual junk food. They both have the same name, and similar-looking covers; but while you'll never see the former at Indigo or Barnes & Nobles, the latter was widely released (and critically panned.) It's almost as though someone wanted the second book to be associated with the first; the Control System going into damage control mode, patching up the little hole in the carefully constructed Matrix that had been opened by Red Pill Press.

I consider myself fortunate to have come across the real thing.

The Free Currency Project

Let's talk about solutions, for a change.

I'm in the process of putting one of mine up at the Free Currency wiki. Here's an excerpt, to whet your appetite:

For the past few hundred years, ever since the establishment of the first central bank, the creation of money has come with a price attached: an interest fee, which must be paid to the issuer. In the end, such money is nothing but debt, and it's ending now in the only way it could: everything, all the real wealth in the world, is being sucked to the top of a pyramid billions of people broad and hundreds of years old. This end was inherent in the way our money works, but it is not inherent in money per se. Our modern monetary system is, when you get right down to it, nothing but a game that we play. On this page, you'll find the rules of a new game. One that just might be more fun to play than the one we're all sitting at the table for now.

This isn't just some bullshit idea I came up with on my own (although certain details of the implementation are, so far as I know, unique.) The basic concept was brought to my attention in a series of articles (Money: A New Beginning Part 1, Part 2, Money and the Crisis of Civilization) by Charles Eisenstein, a thinker whose thoughts are deep in that way that many philosophers aspire to but few are able to pull off with such grace (his book, Ascent of Humanity, is online, free to all, and highly recommended.) The key idea is that of demurrage, which is very simply the opposite of interest: whereas the money we use now gains value over time simply by virtue of being money, free currency loses value until eventually it just dries up and vanishes. This is odd, until you consider that in the real world, actual physical goods and, yes, services, also decay and must eventually be replaced. Use money that the same principle applies to, and the potential changes are enourmous.

Now, I'm not going to explain all the ins and outs here. That's what the wiki is for, so if you're interested, go there and check it out. What I'm really interested in, is help (that's why it's a wiki.) Reformatting our currency is one of those things that, by definition, cannot by done alone. It's a big project, and it requires more than just me (good for big ideas, and not much else.) The project needs web designers, programmers, graphic artists ... and that's just the initial stage. Later on, when it's time to go live, it'll need people on the streets marketing the currency, talking to businesses, getting the word out to the man on the street. I've got ideas on how to do all of this; no doubt others out there have their own. The project needs them all.

If you want to help, drop your name in the comment string and I'll give you edit permission on the wiki (it's closed to the public until I've got everything up.) And even if you don't, don't be afraid to mention this at whatever forums you hang out on.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to take our economy back.

Comets and Strange Clouds

Last night I had a dream. What it meant, if anything, I don't know, but this is what I saw.

Initially, I was inside a room, at a party which many of my friends were attending. It was night, of course. Most likely in the city, as I couldn't see any stars in the sky. Then, looking through the window, I saw a light, high in the heavens, and so went outside, where I could get a better view of things.

It started as a single meteor, streaking through the sky. Before long it was joined by others. All came from different directions. They came down, and hit on the over the horizon. A flash of light, followed long after by a boom that rolled over the landscape. By this time my friends were joining me outside, and they were starting to panic, a bit. Me, I was just watching.

Clouds followed the boom. Dark, roiling monsters that blotted out the heavens.

Shortly after, what I can only describe as rainbow clouds appeared. Not your standard rainbow, arcing from one point to another. These were more like shifting bars of light, high in the air and perpendicular to the landscape, their colors moving through pure reds, blues, and greens.

That's all.

V for Ve know vere you sleep

No doubt you all remember how AIG had it's bottom pulled out of the fire by the American people last week. And maybe you've heard how the executives had an all-expenses paid corporate resort weekend at a spa in California. Bless their hearts, I'm sure their nerves were just wrecked by the trauma they'd undergone in the near collapse of their livelihoods. A weekend of pampering was just the thing that was called for!

This is just a thought, but since we know that they're planning another getaway, and we know where it's going to be ... well, wouldn't it be kind of cool if someone were to pay them a visit? Or many someones? A great gathering, perhaps?

Now, I won't be anywhere near the place in question. But I figure there must be a lot who are. Would it be asking too much, for a flash mob to gather on top of them while they're being massaged and bathed and dining on their organic produce, and, well ... put the fear of G-d into them?

That would send a fun message, don't you think? Just a thought.

People of the Circle

Read the following short article, and ponder everything you think you know about history.

"We do not know why, but all of the 4,000 Cucuteni-Trypillians settlements were intentionally burned," said Sergiy Krolevets, director of the National History and Culture Museum of the Republic of Moldova.

Gee, I wonder why anyone would've wanted to do that?

Ahimsa

Free will and evil.

Small words with big implications. They're two of the biggest problems in philosophy and theology. Resolving them isn't easy. For millenia, priests have asked how we can have both an omnipotent, omniscient, and omi-everything-else-ient deity, whilst still maintaining Free Will for either It ot It's creations. And if one of It's other omni's is omnibenevolance - something every authentic tradition agrees on (though sometimes you have to hold 'em upside down and give them a bit of a shake to see it, as they they don't all use the same word for it) - well then, how do you account for a creation that contains within it so much pain and horror that it can as easily be a festering hell as a verdant heavan? The usual answer is that Evil occurs because all entities within creation excercise Free Will, and I think while that's not really far from the truth, though it doesn't really get us out of the woods because all of the Creators other attributes really seem to work against the whole 'Free Will' thing being anything but an illusion, an artifact of our impossibly narrow perspectives.

Traditonally, science has seen it a little differently. Evil isn't so much of a problem; in an inherently random universe, with a meaningless history that amounts to little more happenstance and an endless series of (un)fortunate accidents, it isn't really hard to see how what we call 'Evil' has come into the world. The tricky part is, again, Free Will, because the picture science generally paints with its metaphors is that of a world that reduces to the deterministic, mechanical operations of atoms and various subatomic particles. It's all a great and fantastically complex Machine, and Free Will is, again, an illusion, this time an epiphenomenon of minds that, for some reason, would go insane if they didn't believe in their own Free Will.

Well, okay. That's a bit of a strawman, I admit; the image of old science, hollowed out with age and the creeping toll of it's own contradictions. There is also New Science, a strange mixture of quantum mechanics and ecology, it's math a heady brew of cellular algorithms, fractal geometry, and nonlinear dynamics. It's still in it's infancy, and if we continue to call it science at the moment it is only because we do not have a better name for it. We will, though, because when it matures it will be as different from science today as science is from the Aristotelean academies of the Middle Ages.

But that's not our topic today. Today, we're talking about free will, and evil, and seeing if they have any relation to each other. Or, indeed, if they exist at all.

The astute amongst you may be scratching your heads around now, wondering why on earth the title of this post is 'Ahimsa', the Hindu concept of non-violence. There's a connection there, I promise, if only you're a little patient.

Free will exists, because it has to. At any moment, you have a choice. Right now, you could continue reading, go to another page, get up and go to the bathroom, go outside for a smoke, get back to thinking about how to go to Mars, or just about anything else. No, really, the choice is yours. In the next moment, you could be doing any of an uncountable number of things, and before that moment comes, there's no way of knowing just what that thing will be. Not for you or for anyone else.

As for much else in the macroscopic human realm, there's a quantum mechanical analogue here. The wavefunction of any subatomic particle will continue to evolve for however long it's wavefunction isn't being collapsed by observation (or measurement, or whatever else you want to call it); as it evolves, it ceases to be a definite point in space and probabilistically smears, occupying an infinite number of different positions simultaneously: some highly probably, some vanishingly improbable, but all, to one degree or another, possible. Once it's observed, it snaps into one or another of those myriad states, and it does so randomly. Neither an observer nor, one suspects, the particle knows what state it will occupy immediately after a measurement. Of course, physicists generally speak of the particle's wavefunction randomly 'collapsing' to a certain state, but we might as well impute a tiny fraction of consciousness to the particle, and state instead that the particle, itself, chooses.

Electrons with Free Will. Now isn't that a concept that turns everything on its head.

Free Will, you see, is inherent in the very structure of the laws of physics. It's there, right from the beginning, and it's there all the way up to the very top. As such, it's a very important, dare I say even Sacred, thing. There may be no principle more fundamental to the workings of the All.

Now. Evil. Well, that's simple: Evil is whatever attempts to abridge Free Will. Whenever one entity tries to limit the free choice of another, it is engaging in an evil act. This can be overt - a mugging, a murder, a mob or a mass bombing - or it can be covert, as in advertising and propaganda, or any other form of lying. All lies are attempts to deny others of their free will by altering their perception of reality. This is manipulative evil. There's also coercive evil, which tries to make people do things through brute force, and preventative evil, which attempts to keep people from doing things. Regardless of what shape evil takes on, it is identifiable, always and everywhere, by one over-riding principle: it is that which attempts to weight choices, to make one entity choose A over B.

Hold on there! Am I really making such a sweeping statement? Surely there are times when it isn't evil to deny Free Will. For instance, what about when one is trying to prevent evil?

Here's the kicker, folks. Free Will is so fundamental a principle that even those who are doing and pursuing an Evil path are excercising their own Free Will, and Must be allowed their own Choice.

And that, my friends, is Ahimsa. Nonviolence. Not just being a Vegan anymore! (and since when has that ever been a viable ethical stance? What, just because they're plants it's okay to eat them? You think having a nervous system privileges animals when it comes to pain? Even cells sense. Hell, even electrons sense, and respond to that sense: they too can be repelled, and there you have the essence of fear and pain together. No, you don't get off that easy. You can't just change your menu to keep your conscience clean.)

Surely, though, it's right to intervene, to do what you can to stop evil-doers from harming others? That's what some of you are thinking, I'm sure. Others, who know it's right, jump right to pointing out the consequences of just letting evil people do as they please: looting, rioting, murder in the streets and anarchy in the countryside. In our society we have Rules, damnit! There are Laws here, and all must Obey, for if not it would be a Hobbesian nightmare, the war of all against all.

That way of thinking, right there, that's one of the greatest tricks Evil ever pulled on this planet. It's got the best of intentions, but what it fails to take into account is that when you fight evil, you feed it. Fighting fire with fire just feeds the fire. The aim of Evil is to abridge free will; when you fight it, you're first of all violating your own free will (because you're reacting instead of acting), while at the same time violating the free will of whoever is engaged in whatever particular evil du jour is being fought today. By definition you're engaging in evil. By fighting the monster, you become it.

Ahimsa is a very different path. It's one that says, sure, evil exists. And what of it? It is Evil's choice to be evil. And it is my choice to be ... however I am. One on the path of non-violence will of course not attack another, but that is just the beginning. Neither will they counterattack one who assaults them (which doesn't mean they will stick around to be hit!) True ahimsa, of course, is impossible in this world: merely by living, we unavoidably prey upon other creatures, for survival is impossible without it. It can only be followed to the degree that one refuses to violate another's free will.

This doesn't just mean not hitting people, and not hitting back. It means not attempting to pursuade people through lying or cajoling or any other way of manipulating; nor trying to restrain one person from doing something bad to himself, or to another.

It is not an easy path. When you see someone being beaten in an alleyway, it's natural to want to help. When the country's laws are lax on air pollution, it's only normal to want to campaign to change those laws. When your nation is invaded, or your family threatened, there is nothing more human than to throw one's life on the line to defend it.

Walk away from any of those struggles, and you risk being branded a coward, even if only inside your own heart.

But all of them violate ahimsa.

It's a difficult path, there's no question.

It's also a path of unexpected power. Witness the British leaving India: Ghandi wouldn't give them the time of day, a hundred million Indians saw him doing that and thought, hey, that's a good idea, and before you know it, the Raj is gone. Without a shot fired. For no other reason than that a large number of people decided not to believe in it anymore.

Ponder that. And look out at the world we live in, the Planetary Control Grid and everything else that has been wrought by our desire to fight evil. By fighting evil, we've become evil. The harder we fight, the stronger it becomes. And the stronger it gets, the harder we want to fight.

It's an ugly cycle. Until you grok it (and very few have, by this point, but have patience, they will) you're a rat on a wheel you don't even know exists. But once you do, that hard path of ahimsa starts to look a lot easier in comparison.

Waking Up

Years ago, I used to think I was awake. Most other people walked blithely through a nonlinear world, holding fast to their unstated, unconscious beliefs, but me? I could see the writing on the wall. The Singularity was on its way.

A year ago, in the clamor of cognitive dissonance following my first 9/11 truth video, I thought instead that I'd woken up. The masses lived in a delusion, brainwashed by shadowy Powers that used them for their own cynical and heinous ends, but I? I was on to their Game. I had woken up, roused from my pleasant dreams as though by an alarm clock ... and a glance at the time told me that I had only a little time to get to class. A rude awakening, perhaps, but better than being jerked awake in the small hours of the morning by the sound of armed intruders storming every egress.

There weren't many people in the classroom. It seemed most of the student body was sleeping off a hangover, and was declining to attend their lessons. And if I was in class then, it was halfway through the semester, and I've had to scramble to get up to speed. That said, I counted myself lucky, to be attending these classes. One of the few awake. An elite.

Well, then, am I awake? Am I really? I'm not so sure of that, any more. The rabbit hole goes deep indeed, and if its seemingly endless depth teaches no other lesson, in and of itself, it teaches us at least this: reality is not real. It is all a dream, an illusion. No one is ever truly awake, though some few achieve the One and only then and thus do they awaken. Certainly I dare not count myself as one of them, for that would be a Lie of the worst sort.

But at least I am, I think, waking up.

I am not alone in this. There are millions of us out there, who have felt the call, for whom the curtains of reality have started to peel back, if ever so slightly. The images we perceive are indistinct, blurry, as though we're still wiping the sleep from our eyes. But already, we can make things out. We can see others sitting up, rubbing their eyes and yawning, still others running about, trying to shake a few last people awake, though there isn't much time. You see, the other thing we can see is that the house is on fire, and outside, laughing maniacs on horseback are brandishing torches and trying to shoot anyone who escapes.

I speak in metaphor, but you take my meaning, I am sure.

Anyone who's woken up even halfway knows that the only thing that can save this planet now is a spiritual revolution. Nothing less will suffice, for that is just how dire the situation is. Unsolvable crises and unresolvable conflicts are converging from every direction. The odds of destruction are growing so great that the chances of survival are becoming positively quantum. Opening that narrow dooreway into a world worth having will be a miracle, one that reduces those of myth to mere special effects. A miracle so powerful, a million Ghandis, Boddhisatvas, and Christs would be required to pull it off.

And their appearance would in and of itself be a miracle of the highest degree.

But then, in what age other than the sort we're living through now would they appear? Where else, but where they are in need of most? And when else, but at the very last moment?

I'm not talking about saviors descending from the sky on beams of light (though I'm not ruling it out.) There is no need for such ostentation. No, I'm talking about spiritual enlightenment, striking real people around the globe as though God Itself is methodically flicking the lightswitches inside their brains ... though of course, it's not so simple as all that. We have to find the lightswitches ourselves; but then, we've all been placed, exactly where we need to be, exactly when we need to be, decades in advance. So in the end, when the switches all come on at the same time, the effect will be the same.

We're waking up. Millions of us. And when we're awake, what a different world we shall see.

HELLO WORLD

Well, it's been a long hiatus since my last foray into the blogosphere, marking the fourth time my blogging has ceased. As always, I return to you, now, with a new project, under a new name, with new beliefs, new memes, and a new outlook on life.

Who is this strange voice in the unread outer wilderness, lost til now in the icy howl of obscurity? Why, I've been blogging a long time, dear reader, since I launched myself into the blogosphere all the way back in 2004 with strangerAttractor. Ah, but I've changed quite a bit from the callow youth who typed the screeds in that deservedly unread blog (unread save for one dedicated reader, a loyal troll). Those interested in charting my journey can follow along in the subsequent projects: 1+White = One Hundred, which chronicles my introduction to Japan during my three years there; the aptly named Cracks in the Sanitarium, in which you can watch me descend ever further into the depths of neocon madness; and finally Dancing in the Minefield, where you can see the cognitive dissonance finally start to open cracks in the walls of the mental prison that I am only now starting to tear down.

Ah, but who has the time to go through all that? Certainly not I, I assure you. I've provided those links not because I expect or even desire you should read anything therein, but only in the interests of full disclosure. There is much in my past to be ashamed of, but pretending I did not write those things I believed is no sort of solution. You see, my friends, one of the major themes of this blog - one among many others - is Truth. Truth about the world, and Truth about mySelf.

Truth is a hard thing to come by, in this age, in our world. Lies permeate our language and our mental environment like a thick post-industrial smog. We are lied to unceasingly by our leaders, both political and religious, with every speech and sermon; by our corporations, with every ad campaign and press release; by our scientists, with every contradictory study and jerry-rigged computer model. We lie to our friends, to our neighbors, to our familes and our lovers, with little white lies and lies of omission, mimicking in miniature the greater sins that dominate our lives. Inevitably, we end up lieing to ourselves with every other thought we think, rationalizing away our instinctive actions and reactions and refusing to acknowledge the seething mess of contradictions that underlies the great egoic I that we've all been raised to identify with. Lies are so ubiquitous that it seems our very world is made of them; like fish in water, we notice them only by their absence, the uncomfortable silence that follows the voicing of any inconvenient truth.

Will I succeed in keeping to the truth, like an incorruptible witness on the stand of an ideal court? No doubt, not always. Only you can judge if I am, and I'm relying on your to keep me honest. In a world so full of illusions, a world that very well may be nothing but illusion, it is inevitable that things will be written here that are not, strictly speaking, True. All I can promise is that I will never consciously pollute these words with Lies.

So, first things first, yes? The name of the blog. This one's called Psychegram: the intersection between mind and mathematics, consciousness and matter. The more observant of you will have seen that the URL does not match the title. There, it is psi, the greek letter so famously associated with psychic events, and ki, the Japanese for the better-known Chinese concept of chi. No, I'm not psychic - no more than most of you (which is more than any of us likely expect) - but I believe it to be among the possibilities in this very poorly understood universe in which we find ourselves.

By now you're wondering, why should I read this? Hell, why is this guy bothering to write it? The quick answer to both questions, of course, is that it's fun, and really what more reason do you need to do anything? Ah, but what am I doing here? Besides writing sentences ending in question-marks?

Well, questions are importent, ne?

I'm experimenting on myself, and in this blog, I will be - amongst other things - documenting the results of those experiments. Living in natural time, summong memetic entities from my subconscious, meditation, mindfulness, and in general exploration of the outer reaches of human experience ... or at least, the outer reaches of what it's possible for this human to experience. By doing that, I hope only to become more Human, and I think that's a worthy goal, for this world has seen very few fully Human beings.

But that's something that is going to change.

Partly, this blog is here to keep me honest. It's here because I think I'm on a Path, and maybe this will encourage others to follow theirs (and if enough do, well then, we might save the world! The Revolution is Within.) It's here because with all the things the internet has given me, it's time to start giving back. And, it's here because writing is fun.

That's enough for today. We'll see what I feel like writing about tomorrow.