We're Doomed.....

Part One

A little over a year ago, I wrote a piece that touched upon the theme of 'hope' ('Five Hours in Barcelona', July 23rd 2017). Hope - yes, Hope - is one of those big words, which take up a lot of space, and can be looked at from many different angles and perspectives. As the months have passed, so have I become conscious of how I simply skimmed the surface of one single aspect of that big word during that article.

Several friends and acquaintances have recently put forth the idea that 'They have no hope.' Or 'There is little hope for the world.' These are not necessarily pessimistic people. They have simply surveyed the landscape of current humanity - its politics, culture, ethics, general affairs - as they see it, and come to this conclusion. Those who have reached a certain age are able to look back over decades of events and sense that, in terms of creating a decent world for the mass of humanity, no progress has been made. None at all. Instead, they look at May, Johnson, Corbin, Trump, the EU, Merkel, Syria, climate change, fake news, environmental catastrophe, the current inability to trust or believe anybody of influence - and just give up all hope.

I notice how those people of today who harbour little hope express their belief with the minimum of panic, horror, or despair. 'I can't see much hope for the future': it's a phrase that's stated almost cheerfully. Matter-of-fact, a self-evident truth.

This is very different to the moments when hope for the future was in the balance in earlier periods of my life. There was the time of the Cuban missile crisis, when our family went to bed in genuine fear of the possibility of planetary annihilation before sunrise on the morrow. The height of the Cold War similarly induced a sense that the future of humanity was in dire peril. At these times, though, the overall sense was that the destruction of humanity would be a real tragedy, a disaster of unprecedented proportions. Human life, human civilisation, was extremely precious; something worth holding on to, worth surviving and fighting for. Today, however, the absence of hope for the human venture is greeted with a shrug of the shoulders. People are beyond deeply caring. We're doomed, and we'll get what we deserve for our sins.

Part Two

Let's consider this passage about C.G.Jung. It is written by a friend of his, having met Jung in the final few years of his life.

"Jung had observed in the eyes of animals giving birth to their young an enormous suffering which seemed to represent a fear of the dark unknown. And he believed that these animals need us, that they are waiting for us to reveal to them the nature of the world and the mystery of their painful existence. We are needed because we alone can project them into the light. Thus in a word, we will become the mirror of all creation, of animal, tree, river, stone and, perhaps, of God himself, for in the end, we are the consciousness of the world...… Nature has created us  ……. so that we may in turn contemplate it in all its evanescence and reveal it in its totality....."

It is possible to consider Jung's notion of the place of humanity in the overall scheme of things as ridiculous and laughable. That's not the point. The issue at stake is how we view things, and what we focus on. On Pale Green Vortex, a similar story to that of our no-hopers has at times been rolled out: how a glance at the past two thousand years of  the history of 'western civilisation' reveals that, details aside, nothing much has changed. Technology has developed, we may live longer, but the structural pattern through which people live their lives has remained pretty much the same. Political, social, and economic affairs take place beneath the umbrella of 'Empire', as Neil Kramer has been known to describe it. The name of the game is containment rather than true betterment. The prime aim of law is not to promote big concepts such as truth, justice, fairness, moral excellence; it exists above all to manage and support a system.

To the extent that we permit Empire to shape our view of what human life is, to that extent will we most likely experience hopelessness. Hope is not part of the agenda of Empire. It never has been, and never will be. Instead, it fosters a sense of futility, an disposition of passive dependence, an attitude of servile disempowerment, where authenticity and real individuality are frowned upon. And it behoves us to remember that it takes two to tango. The game of containment continues with such effect because it is allowed to, through the silent consent of the mass of folk. It is not enough to simply blame Trump or the EU or the local council for our lack of hope. It is an attitude to develop individually, by moving beyond the limits which these petty views of human potential encourage.

Rather than conclude with a wave of the 'no hope' banner, Pale Green Vortex has a different take on the soul-destroying nature of life under Empire. There is no solution within its strangulating parameters. That is the nature of the beast, arguably consciously developed as such. Solutions - hope - come from somewhere else altogether. As a start, there presents itself the task of elegantly removing ourselves from the entire set-up, as best we can. Take our identity out of its poisoned embrace, in whatever ways we feel suitable and find possible.

Hope comes with a change of perspective on the purpose and destiny of humanity, such as the change outlined by Jung. And that's it.

                   

Everywhere Awake

Part One

When I was a kid, waking up was what you did in the morning. It was a part of the day anticipated more enthusiastically at weekends than on schooldays. My first inkling that there was more to waking up than this was during my early days of practicing Buddhism. I soon discovered that Buddha was sometimes referred to as the Awakened One. The implication being, I suppose, that the rest of us were, to varying degrees, asleep.

Nowadays, all sorts of people are waking up in all kind of way. I know this, because the internet tells me so.

One common type of waking up concerns folk who are beginning to realise some truths about politics, parapolitics, the news, the media, education, the financial system, and so on. They are beginning to arouse from a slumber induced by being blindfolded, having the wool pulled over their eyes, or some such. This kind of waking up can be truly shocking, making a person question everything they have ever considered to be real, to be true. The entire world begins to crumble before their newly-opened eyes. It can be profoundly disturbing, depressing, or worse.

The other type of awakening is of a more directly spiritual nature. There is plenty of it about, especially online and in magazines concerned with 'mind and spirit'. Most frequently, those people involved talk about non-duality, oneness, cosmic consciousness, divine presence, or some such. While less dark than the first type of waking up, it can nevertheless deeply shake up the individual's sense of who they are and what the world is. By learning discernment, the reader can begin to sort out the chaff from the wheat. There are plenty of folk who are a bit fake, or have had a single blast of more enlightened experience, but who remain, one suspects, a bit lop-sided or incomplete in their awakening. And then there are the few who appear to be the real deal. They tend to be rather quiet, modest individuals, while the tub-thumping, chest- beating, 'follow me and my method, and you will be saved' type immediately arouse suspicion.

Some people are awake to the machinations of the control system, but asleep to other dimensions to life. While others have done a bit of non-dual stuff, but remain oblivious to the deviousness of dualism dished out every day all around them. Both of these are, in my view, insufficient. Direly so, I might say on a harsh day. There are folk 'out there' trying to do a decent job of incorporating the two into a complete vision. I haven't delved into his work much in recent times, but I know that Neil Kramer is one such person. Search them out and cherish them, even with all their imperfections.

Part Two

It's a few months ago when I bought a copy of 'The Spiritual Awakening Guide: Kundalini, Psychic Abilities, and the Conditioned Layers of Reality'. I did so in the hope of landing a fish that might provide some useful advice in my navigating the sometimes tricky and unpredictable waters of the kundalini crossing. I opened the package immediately on its arrival and skimmed a few pages of the book. After about three minutes I plonked it down forcefully on the table. This was one occasion on which I'd really wasted my money. I'd bought a book that really was unnecessary: a guide to kundalini was a contradiction in terms. The process was unique, highly individual - personal, even. The only guide could be my inner muse, and my wish for an external guide was simply a reflection of my inability to muster the courage to deal with my own life.

That was several months ago. Since then, I've found Mary Shutan's  book invaluable on all sorts of occasions. It has been a trusty companion in my moving through the unfathomable.

Like almost everything else conceivable, kundalini has plenty of entries on the internet. YouTube, in particular, overflows with techniques guaranteed to awaken your kundalini. And like everything else on the internet, and on YouTube in particular in this case, most of it is half-sense or nonsense. Anybody with an active kundalini will soon get to discern. There is plenty of stuff simply copied from what the Hindu texts and gurus over the ages have said; or very same gurus spouting the same platitudes themselves. There is plenty of New-Agey type stuff which might conceivably have some effect upon ones energy, but nothing like a full kundalini awakening. And, buried amongst the dross, is a small number of sources which are direct and authentic. From people who have actually been through a process (one which never really ends, it seems), and have something of value to impart. Amongst this merry little band we find Mary Shutan.

I first came across Mary via her website. She is the genuine article. No-nonsense: simultaneously out beyond the heaven chakra while completely practical and down-to-earth. She writes about how, for example, some mornings she gets up and wishes she didn't have kundalini to deal with as well as the other business of the day. Such realism marks her out as authentic. She casts an unimpressed eye over the plethora of 'wake your kundalini' stuff out there, remarking that, if these people really knew what kundalini awakening involved, they would run a mile.

The book is clearly written, and easy to follow. Mary sometimes adopts the style of 'when we reach this point, we will feel this.....' I don't like people telling me what I'm going to experience, but the material dealt with in the book is maybe most easily presented in this manner. It's a small gripe of mine.

Her book is not, for me, something to read methodically from cover to cover. It is a resource to dip into when the need arises, or when you simply fancy reading a few words of her wisdom. Bits and pieces have helped me no end, even if primarily as reassurance. Sometimes I just open a page at random, and see what's there. Nearly always it's of interest and/or use.

Thanks, Mary, for the book. I see she is bringing out another, solely on kundalini, next year. As she remarks, there is plenty of material, and enthusiasm, about waking kundalini, or what kundalini is. But, tellingly, relatively little on how to negotiate kundalini, should it actually wake up in the first place. For this we need people like Mary Shutan.

A typical short quote to end with:

'It is important to understand that many who are teaching or claiming to be "awake" or "enlightened" are doing so on a somewhat awake or between awake and asleep level. This false, or ego awakening is an illusion that can cause a great deal of harm. Careful differentiation of gurus, teachers, and ourselves is needed so that we do not fall into this category, which is increasingly and unfortunately common.' (Part One: Ego Awakening')

Images: Creative Commons
              Mary Shutan's book

         

A Big Taboo

There are times when we remain quiet for reasons of discretion, politeness, tact, out of consideration for others. Or simply from boredom or indifference. And there are times when we stay silent out of fear. Out of fear for our career, our reputation, our friendships, our safety or that of others we love. When the topic of which we may be tempted to communicate is deemed dangerous, unsuitable, unacceptable, mainly for reasons of social, cultural, or religious conditioning. When the topic we may wish to discuss is not in the interests of those who like to make the rules to be discussed. This is what we call a taboo.

I was proud in my youth to play my own small part in the collective consciousness of the time, which strove to break down many taboos. Unfortunately, new taboos have since arisen to take the place of the old ones. Some of these new taboos are, ironically, supported most vigorously by those who were, in the 1960s and 1970s, my 'comrades'.

Here on Pale Green Vortex, we are happy to avoid topics due to matters of discretion, respect etc. Taboos, however, are a somewhat different thing. If we are indeed striving for some kind of 'spiritual illumination', then freedom of mind is a prerequisite. And for true freedom of mind, taboos have to go.

Of all the taboos of our present time, there is one, in the social and political world at least, above all others about which anyone in their right mind will not speak. To do so is likely to attract a torrent of abuse and false accusation, the end of friendship, reputation and career. It is the taboo on 'the Jewish question'.

The Jewish problem is one which has occupied philosophers, politicians, people of power and people of religion for centuries. Western 'liberal democracies' thought they had finally found the answer to the problem once and for all: make it a completely unacceptable topic for discussion; make it an imprisonable offence in some places. Fortunately, it has not been so simple: the courageous human spirit refuses to go away.

The Jewish question deserves a decent airing - for the good of reasonable Jews as well as everybody else. Maybe 'the Jewish problem' could turn out to be no problem at all: a storm in a teacup, or a figment of imagination. However, while it remains the taboo subject to end all taboos, we will never know.

Below is a link to an article, which I find to be clear, well-written, reasonable and reasoned. It mainly concerns Russia and Russian history, but a read by anybody unfamiliar with the Jewish question will help to see its import.      


The article is from 'Russia Insider'. By linking to this piece, Pale Green Vortex is not necessarily condoning everything else on this site. Having said that, there is some thought-provoking material there. And we agree with 'Russian Insider' that the western mainstream media is totally, madly, and irrationally hysterical in its anti-Putin propaganda. It needs a collective brain transplant.....

https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/its-time-drop-jew-taboo/ri22186

The Egalitarian

It was the thing with Johnson, really: he was a great egalitarian. To Johnson, all people were the same, more or less, give or take the odd detail or two. His goodly nature, his overall bonhomie, would not allow for the possibility that some of his fellow humans might actually be a bit distinct from the others. That some might be fairly nice, while others might be quite nasty.

His egalitarianism led him to speak in sweeping generalities. 'People do this'; 'We humans are like this': his conversations were frequently peppered with such sentiments.

Sometimes Johnson's egalitarianism rendered him prone to depression and despair. 'We humans are a terrible bunch. We do some terrible things,' he could be heard to fret of an evening. Such observations, saturated with feeling, would fall from his mouth, as he surveyed the history of the human race, which he saw as characterised by viciousness, cruelty, betrayal, and general needless suffering.

On other occasions, however, Johnson's sense that we are all made of the same stuff would give rise to a certain optimism and faith in the human spirit. Put to him the proposition that some politicians really are a nasty bit of business, and he will reassure you that theirs is indeed a difficult job. They are not really bad, but are trying to do their best, just like everybody else. Changing things for the better is not an easy task.

Johnson had a good friend. His name was Larwood. They would spend afternoons walking together by the river or through the forests, half the time in silent communication with nature, half the time in animated discussion.

Johnson and Larwood had much in common. There was one thing, however, about which they could not agree. You see, Larwood was not an egalitarian. He desperately wanted to be one, to be like his dear friend. But, based upon the evidence all around, his heart and his instincts refused to allow it. Larwood could not help but see difference and distinction all around him. Not just difference, but real difference: difference that made a difference. He sensed some people to be seriously different to others. He felt uneasy with the feeling, and struggled hard to throw it off, but all to no avail.

Larwood was still young when he first felt the difference. On returning home from his primary school, he would peer out the front living room window at the world going by. He would watch with unbounded fascination the 9-to-5ers making their way home. Men with briefcases, a few ladies in high heels, after a day earning their keep, paying off the mortgage, now going home to family, food, and television. One day as Larwood was observing the parade, a strange realisation flashed into his young little mind. He wasn't going to be doing this stuff. This all bore no relation whatsoever to his own course through the jungle of life. Where this flash came from he had no idea. But it came with a certainty that was rare. Its impact was almost enough to make him fall onto the floor in shock.

As Larwood grew older, he was relieved to find others who were similar to him; people he met in person or through their writing. People who were not 9-to-5ers; who could not be 9-to-5ers. People whose destiny was distinct, already decided. Normally such people sensed a deep lack, a profound emptiness, in a life devoted to the everyday, to 'normality'.

He had read the stories. About Thule, the Hyperboreans, Atlantis. About how, once upon a time, there prevailed a Golden Age, inhabited by giants, whose wisdom was as great as their height. And about how some sort of catastrophe occurred, decimating these glorious populations, but how a few escaped, their traces and their wisdom still dimly felt here and there, a small minority of distinct humans wandering the face of the globe.

He knew Nietzche and the Superman. He knew, also, about the Gnostics, with their threefold classification of human beings according to their spiritual status. There were the pneumatics, whose nature was essentially spirit; the psychics, who could exercise freewill to go up or down; and the hylics, those on a downward trajectory, and who, some said, possessed no soul whatsoever. There were even those nice guys from Buddhism, the tulkus and Bodhisattvas. In truth, these were Ubermenschen if ever there was one. They were not 'normal people' with a nice kind and friendly bit stuck onto them. They were substantially recalibrated beings, of a different order to the majority of humanity.

Larwood felt no compulsion to believe any of these theories and notions. At the same time, he recognised something in them all, an attempt to understand, explain, or at least describe, the differences which seemed to present themselves.

Larwood hated to feel this way. It filled him with discomfort, distaste. The implications of all this, whatever they might turn out to be, were surely abhorrent.

He resisted and resisted, until ……. One afternoon he was on the bus going home. Two ladies across the aisle from him were engaged in animated discussion about the price of pork sausages in a variety of different leading supermarkets. It was their world, more or less, he realised, the price of pork sausages. He could go and talk to them about his world - the Tree of Life, multidimensional existence, the luminous Void, all felt, experienced realities to him - but it would be to no avail. They, like probably everybody else on the bus, would be incredulous. Not out of personal preference, but because they could not, were not able to, enter into his world. It was beyond them. They somehow lacked the capacity. Larwood's belief system, held together for long years by musty sticky tape, began to crumble. Slowly at first, before disintegrating comprehensively just as he got off the bus at his usual stop.

He felt no arrogance, no ill-will, no sense of superiority, at the now crystal-clear feeling of differences. He felt nothing at all, really. Except for an occasional tender-heartedness towards all and sundry, each and every one of us stumbling along, blindfolded to how things more truly are.

Time passed. It was the evening before the end of the world. Johnson and Larwood sat on a bench overlooking the river. Behind them, the pub was noisy with shouting and laughter as the big match was relayed on the big screen. Johnson put down his thick volume on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, commenting on how awful it all was, and how people act just as viciously today, all of which says a lot about human nature. Larwood gazed into nowhere in particular, quietly bracing himself for the Exit. The Void beckoned irresistibly. He wondered whether he and Johnson would meet again; and, if so, if they would recognise one another.


     

The Fool Darkens

The Fool, some say, is the most important card in the Tarot deck. The major arcana, some say further, from the Magician through to the World, can be seen as mapping out the entire journey of the spiritual pilgrim. That pilgrim is the Fool, who follows the winding pathway from start to end, while simultaneously being outside time altogether. Unlike the other cards of Tarot, the Fool boasts no number - the Fool is 0, zero, infinite; living in eternity.

Traditional depictions of the Fool show him - it is invariably male - as indeed a fool. There are early depictions which look like a beggar, a wild man, or someone who has lost his marbles a bit. The most familiar portrayals of the Fool, such as that of the Waite-Smith Tarot, show a figure resembling a jongleur, a jester. Decked out in colourful splendour, he sets out happily on a journey under the blessings of the morning sun. Sometimes he is juggling balls in the air, his head in the clouds. At other times he carries his worldly possessions in a bundle on a stick over his shoulder; travelling light, psychologically and materially. Sometimes he is shown about to stride over the top of a precipice. Sometimes he is accompanied by an animal, normally a cat or a dog.

Optimism, a carefree sense of freedom; life as a journey jam-packed with possibilities: this is the kind of attitude communicated by our traditional Fool. He cocks a snook at  the limited, oppressive nature of a life too determined by, and identified with, rationality.

His 'down side' is naivety - hence the imminent topple over the cliff -, recklessness, irresponsibility. The animal at his side may be issuing a warning, attempting to bring our Fool down to earth. It may be the animal nature which the Fool deigns to forget or disown.

The Fool follows the pilgrim on the journey. At least it's best if he does. He brings constant freshness to matters; he is the Zen beginner's mind, if you like. Recall the Fool if in danger of feeling stuck, stale, or depressed. In an ideal world, he is the constant companion.

With age, and with experience, the Fool is challenged. In Blake's 'Innocence and Experience', this Fool sings the songs of innocence, and this song only. Maybe he needs to fall down that scary precipice in order to learn a thing or two. And so the vision of existence darkens. And the focus shifts into Dark Tarot......

There are a number of fascinating Fools scattered around in the darker corners of the Tarot world. My favourite is that of the Royo Dark Tarot.

It is not a figure designed specifically for the Tarot: she first appears in Luis Royo's book 'Dark Labyrinth'. She is, nevertheless, perfect for the occasion.

It is not essential to be a Tarot specialist to realise that the Fool has undergone a considerable transformation. 'He' has become 'she'. Along with this change comes the disappearance of the bright light of the morning sun. The Fool now emerges out of and into darkness; she is a being of the night. Sun gives way to moon, the bright light of day and understanding succeeded by the night and the infinite mystery. Bye bye Apollo; hello Dionysos and the Queen of the Night.

The Fool with his head in the clouds is dead and gone. In his place we have a being fully cognisant of the deeper realities of existence. In Shakespearian mode, she contemplates a human skull, and is constantly aware of her own mortality. She keeps herself behind a mask, not giving too much about herself away to all and sundry, another sign of her movement from innocence to experience. Her loss of innocence imparts only greater beauty to her being, however. It is the particular loveliness which arises only when one possesses the courage to embrace darkness, the unknown, the great mystery. She is the real Fool, the darkened Fool, the Wise Fool.

Images. Some favourite Fools:
Cachet Tarot (top)
Way of the Fool Tarot (middle)
Royo Dark Tarot (bottom)      

Passion and the Big Heart in the Annals of Rock......

Part One: Lament to Passion

'Mister Postman, look and see, if there's a letter in your bag for me. I've been waiting such a long time, since I heard from that girl of mine.'

There are different versions of this song. But the one that I grew up with was played by the Beatles. It featured on the 1963 album 'With the Beatles', which I think was the first L.P. that I ever possessed. Its purchase was an occasion of tremendous excitement, and the record was soon ground into crackly oblivion by the cheap sapphire stylus on my cheap dansette record player. Until it was no longer playable, however, I loved every moment.

Appearances notwithstanding - the Beatles of that period performed all their songs wearing the same cheery asinine smiles beneath their cheeky mop-tops - it is a song of great passion. Older readers will probably have been there; I certainly have. What a mixture of emotions churn in the heart and the stomach as the daily wait for the postman is endured. Love, longing, despair; hope, fear, anxiety. It is with an uncomfortable mix of anticipation and dread that the footsteps of the bringer of tidings are met. And at the time when John Lennon intoned the words, the torture could continue for days on end.

It is an experience which is, I suspect, foreign to younger generations. Today, everything is instant. Even email is far too slow and cumbersome for many folk in the year 2018. A  text is all that's needed. 'Do you love me?' 'No. Go jump in the lake.' End of story. And in the life of instant, a whole lot is being missed out on.

Not always, but frequently, feeling requires time in order to gain depth. Thus the modern culture of 'easy and instant' is fated to promote solely trivia, the superficial. A life of photos of 'me having lunch' on Facebook and WhatsApp will inevitably lack emotional depth: the conditions are not there for the kind-of training which depth normally requires.

A life of information overload, of instant-ness, suits 'those who would control us' just fine. It creates the group, the herd, the sheeple, as the phenomenon is sometimes unkindly called, where there is no time to think for yourself, to reflect, to allow the possibility of being properly individual. It creates a universe of superficiality, in which the deeper aspects of life have no chance to muscle in.

Precious little is found in the mainstream on the mind-compromising effects of the culture-of-instant. That's hardly unexpected, since it is a system whose survival depends on a level of collective blindness. The so-called alternative media, though, also says little or nothing. I find this 'notable', since the culture of instant and incessant information is part and parcel of what creates modern culture and its malaise. Every bit as much as what the alternative loves to rail non-stop against: deep politics and the rest.

The passion of Mister Postman is a threat to the system, to the status quo. It is real feeling, real people feeling real stuff. It provides the opportunity for authenticity, for proper individuality. It is a danger, and has to be quietly dealt with, to be removed, in order to create a compliant populace.

Part Two: The 1960s March On

Watching some of those old music clips from the early and mid 1960s can be a bizarre experience, one that bleeds incongruence. To the modern eye, the body language is minimal, understated, or non-existent. But real feelings, real passions, are communicated through many-a song of the period, in a way that more recent music is normally incapable of doing. Take a peek at the Zombies performing 'She's Not There' in 1965. Compared with the gyrating which is the norm nowadays, the band is statuesque. But the lack of physical movements is compensated by the emotional gyrations emanating from the magnificent voice of Colin Blunstone. It's a great song, methinks, with longing, unfulfilled passions, overflowing. Typical modern mainstream 'emoting' is formulaic, manufactured, nothing in comparison.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2hXBf1DakE

As the 1960s neared their end, emotion in music became darker, more complex. A remarkable transformation in musical expression and consciousness took place over a few short years: it was a period when change seemed to speed up, as it appears to do from time to time in human cultural history. Here is Julie Driscoll, a mere four years after the Zombies. Julie manifested as a unique phenomenon in the history of human consciousness. She was embodiment of divine Shakti for the time, sent to challenge the customary cool of Lord Shiva. He failed totally, crumpling into a heap at her feet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLxMlqpxcRQ

There is a stereotypical reading of alternative youth culture of the 1960s, rolled out ad nauseam in any number of popular mainstream documentaries and the like. It goes a bit like this:

It all started off a bit naughty, but essentially quite nice: Carnaby Street, trendy, those cheery Liverpudlian mop-tops. Then came hippies, San Francisco, Haight Ashbury, dope, acid, more acid. Free love, flower power, love and peace, man. Within a year, though, it all turned nasty. Haight full of junkies, Altamont, Vietnam, student riots in Paris, rock stars dropping dead all over the place, Charles Manson. It all went wrong, it all dropped dead like the rock stars. By New Year's Day 1970 it was history.

I do not buy this interpretation of events. It certainly bears little resemblance to what I lived through as an impressionable teenager of the time. The story is a good one for television, simple and easy to understand. Many people like seeing something 'good' going down. To me, though, the reality was both more prosaic and more psychologically archetypal.

The transition from flower power to blood on the tracks was not a case of failure, of something naïve being replaced by something more 'realistic'. It possessed a continuum; it was the same process in a state of transition. Specifically, it was a darkening, a nigredo as the alchemists would have it, or incorporation of shadow elements to use Jungian language. This process is tricky and painful, but necessary if anything is going to survive. The counterculture in Britain as I knew it in the early 1970s was far smaller than the hippie stuff of five years previous. Yet it embodied a depth, substance, a solemn knowing, all of which were pretty absent from the alternative collective of 1967.

Part Three: Feed Your Head

Come the early 1970s, a certain thread in the world of rock was undergoing remarkable transformations. Jazz-rock, experimental rock, prog rock, post-psychedelic rock: we like to give things names, it makes us feel more secure. Whatever. Music of great complexity, sophistication, and psychic/emotional expression was emerging, pushing the boundaries further every week. Can, Yes, the Mahavishnu Orchestra were my main inspirations, but there were others doing similar stuff. I know enough about music to see that what was going on was remarkable from a musical point of view. I don't think people could create such pieces nowadays if they tried: it is outside modern mentalities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmM2qXDS9wc

While not exactly mainstream, some of the bands boasted an enormous following. The Mahavishnus and Yes played sell-out concerts in massive venues in the USA in particular. A considerable proportion of western youth was engaged and identified with the music and what it manifested. Then, one day, it stopped. Just like that. John McLaughlin disbanded the Mahavishnus and disappeared to India. Yes and their ilk became objects of ridicule. From 1975 -76 the map of pop, rock and roll was dramatically redrawn.

One common complaint about Yes, in particular, was that their music was self-indulgent and pretentious. Though less familiar with their later work, I know their music pre-1976 fairly well. It is a criticism which applies to a small minority of their output, in my view. The vast majority is far from pretentious. This is a criticism provided by people who don't get it, or choose not to get it. Whose emotional and spiritual range of sensibilities comes from flatland. Much of the band's repertoire invokes a variety of rich emotion, in my heart and soul at least. There is real passion there, but of a different order to what most 'pop' dishes up.

In place of Yes and the Mahavishnus, the youth of the day were suddenly served up punk and disco. Punk is far more readily accessible to the mainstream media; it works in the world that they are comfortable with, that they understand. Social unrest, anger, outwardly expressed frustration, class war: this is the fractious world which keeps the whole rotten system going. It is notable how the BBC and their like come up with sympathetic, understanding 'documentaries' on punks and skin heads, but the same is not forthcoming for prog rock, hard psychedelic rock, etc. The effects of these are potentially far more subversive. A youth culture based upon the Hindu-flecked jazz-rock of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, dealing as it does more with the one thing that scares the 'Control System' shitless, inner transformations, would be far more threatening than those which have appeared instead. It had to go. Simple as that.

That's punk. As for disco, well,...……. it's disco, innit...….

I have always smelt the whiff of social engineering about the transformation in 'music for youth' which I have outlined in skeleton above. To my knowledge, nothing has been written about it, and large chunks of modern alternative culture are not specially sympathetic to the consciousness-focussed phenomena that came and went so spectacularly. While I don't think that everything in social and cultural trends is engineered - there is room for the spontaneous, the unexpected, which will burst through regardless of any attempt at suppression - nevertheless things don't just happen by chance. Culture seems to be an ongoing game of cat-and-mouse between forces of spontaneous creativity and those of directed control. It is my thesis that, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the former were unusually prominent; a good deal of popular cultural change ever since has intended to bury that threat to its supremacy good and proper. It has been a comprehensive programme of dumbing down.                      

   

Highlands to Cologne.... and back

"Ladies and gentleman, welcome on board KLM flight 0925 to Amsterdam." I sit back and fasten my safety belt, the way you're supposed to.

"Life jackets are stowed under your seats. In the unlikely event of evacuation......" Beginning to relax, I close my eyes. She is there. No, not now, please. I find travelling difficult enough these days. I feel stressed as it is.

Soon we are airborne. Her thighs feel like they are mine. The dragon tattoo. She digs her sharp heels deep into the flesh just behind my buttocks. A steady pulsing starts up, and energy begins moving up my back. These days it's hard and straight, like a sword extending up the spine. Even at 20,000 feet.

"Would you like a snack, sir?" A friendly young KLM man offers me a sandwich. It's tasty wholesome wholemeal, enclosing tasty smooth cheese. It's at this point that I know I'm not travelling with a British airline.

Strangely, my wife has been allotted a seat a half-plane length from mine. Instead, I am seated next to the grumpiest man in Europe. He made bizarre gesticulations with his arms and hands when I asked him to move so that I could get to my seat. And he makes similar dismissive movements at the friendly young KLM man when he offers him a drink. Now he has noticed a woman resting with her seat in reclining position, and he is trying to adjust his seat into the same position. Not knowing how, he is flapping about and isn't having any luck. I decide not to help him.

Amsterdam. The first time I've visited the city. Bicycles, canals, sex shops, cannabis smoking places ('coffee shops'). I am generally allergic to larger-then-Aberdeen cities nowadays, but strolling around Amsterdam makes for a highly enjoyable evening. Sex shops, bicycles, and dope make for a far more human, far less threatening, environment than the normal alcohol-and-smartphone-saturated recipe for human non-civilisation. It's so obvious, not even up for discussion.

The wedding. We're here for the wedding. In Cologne. I have never set foot on German soil, and am interested in doing so. Getting to Cologne necessitates a three-hour trip by train. Long enough to get angry...

Holland is a small, densely-populated country. The impression I get, at least of the bit of Holland around Amsterdam and to the south, is of a nation managed by fairly intelligent, balanced human beings. Despite the pressure on the land, things are generally neat, organised, and with a reasonable aesthetic sensibility. I sense a little love and care.

Scotland is a small, frequently-sparsely populated country. Its landscapes and wild areas are not managed by intelligent balanced human beings. The people whose decisions impact upon Scotland are either completely inadequate individuals, or have interests well outside those of the well-being of the land of the nation. They have overseen decade upon decade of trashing, a process which has proceeded at an unprecedented pace over recent times, with the invasion of the windfarms, and now the omnipresence of ugly, largely useless, run-of-river (ruin-of-river) hydro schemes in all sort of wild place. It is a global disgrace; my brief experience in Holland confirmed to me that my feelings are not just subjective funk, but have a firm basis in reality. The management of Scotland is an ecological perversion and scandal.

And so to Cologne. Not quite the vibe of Amsterdam, but a city with a laid-back feeling all the same. A warm evening, and street life. It could almost be the Mediterranean.

The few Germans I have known in my life have all been friendly, courteous people, and this is the overall feeling I have of the goodly folk of Cologne. Germans have experienced a raw deal from the medium-term effects of official history. Any sign of them getting out of order, and you say 'Hitler' or 'Holocaust' to them. Immediately they return to being meek, timid, guilty, and compliant to the whims of those who would control them. It's a great formula, never fails.

The thing is, the Second World War is actually quite a long time ago now. Also, if you shout 'Pearl Harbour' or 'Hiroshima' or 'Vietnam' at the American establishment, it fails to have the same effect. Funny, that...

And back to Amsterdam. On the train. A big bunch of tall, drinking German males get on in Cologne, continuing to be tall, drinking Germans as we begin our way towards the Dutch border. Their behaviour would most likely get them kicked off the train in Britain, but on we go.

Alcohol culture. It's a weird thing, isn't it? As globalisation has proceeded apace, it has become the planet's drug. Noise, hysteria, aggression: not for everybody, but in general these are the three qualities that I would associate with drinking, especially social drinking. It is the approved drug, and these are by consequence the approved ways of behaving. I have enjoyed a glass or two of red wine with a meal myself for many years - at least until kundalini kicked in, and removed any attraction that an alcohol-affected brain might have had. But it is both bizarre and speaks volumes that alcohol is so tolerated, so culturally-ingrained, while almost any other drug is viewed with suspicion, fear, if not demonised, in the mainstream. Official Britain is near the bottom of the global scale of common sense when it comes to mind-alterers. I hate to have to write it, but Britain is nowadays near the bottom of the scale on quite a few things.

So back to Amsterdam and the pervasive sweet smell of dope. Then home......

Images: Cologne