Living In Strangeness

              An alchemist: student of strangeness

Part One: Update on Weirdness 

'Does a God who has conceived and borne intimate witness to all life and manifestation throughout the vast multi-dimensional realms of ineffable splendor - over countless aeons and through infinite iterations of mind-boggling dynamic evolution - really care what individual human beings choose to eat, drink, wear, say, or believe? Let alone choose to do with their genitals? I would suggest that the answer is no. God doesn't mind at all. Not even a tiny little bit.........  Perhaps the only thing that would be of tremendous interest to a supreme creator entity is just how well we are progressing on our own individual spiritual journey......'     (Neil Kramer, 'One Dream, Many Awakenings')

Neil could well have added that this 'supreme creator entity' does not care overmuch about personal trauma, either. Unpleasant, disorienting, and, er, certainly traumatic: but in the cosmic scheme of things, personal trauma barely registers. This is a perspective that I can at least begin to entertain as the traumatic element in recent life events slowly fades into the distance.

It is almost a year now since my life was thrown into unexpected turmoil by the trashing of our house by flood, all within the wider context of an astonishing and nightmarish synchronicity (see 'Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine', July 10th 2012, and 'Life Inside a Random Universe', August 21st 2012). Suggested interpretations of the flooding have poured in from a variety of sources: of a neglected house protesting; of a dwelling place that we originally moved to in immaculate condition now demanding to be our own creation; of the collapse of an ego personality and a corresponding rebirth and renewal; to mention just a few. People have read their Jung, taken note of the reality of correspondences, and these have been the results. To all who have offered suggestions, I say 'thank you'.

On the subject of the massive synchronicity involved, however, words of wisdom have been less forthcoming. This is more seriously weird, cutting across our normal perceptions of time and space, and I have been largely left to my own devices to deal with this one.  There are times when I have tried to dismiss the whole idea of this being synchronous as erroneous, just a chance coincidence; but the odds of this being the case are infinitesimal. The 'meaning', if indeed that is an appropriate notion, remains elusive. Maybe dark archontic forces started to take notice of me, and havoc was the result. Certainly, soon after the event, it was chaos and destruction - in the form of Shiva -that readily came to mind. Or maybe the Universal Consciousness decided the time had come to test my resolve; or that I was off-course and, failing to do anything about it, needed a helping hand in straightening myself out. Or maybe the Universe was simply putting on a fantastic magic show as a means of opening up my experience of the non-ordinary elements to existence.    

As the months have passed, I have become less concerned about 'understanding' the synchronistic aspect to the event, than simply absorbing on deeper levels that it took place at all.  In retrospect, I can begin to envision these various synchronistic events as all parts of a kind of initiation. An invitation into non-linear modes of experiencing....

Without doubt, the period prior to the house flood found me accessing unfamiliar states of consciousness - both during and outside formal meditation/mystical practice - with an ease and regularity that was new to me. An unmistakable change - maybe I was being primed for something bigger. But still nibbling around the edges. Then a higher intelligence entered centre stage: 'OK, dude. So you're interested in weird stuff? Well, here's something to really get you going. You won't like it. But I think you can take it.'

So it was an exit route from purely causal, linear, time-and-space perception into direct experience of something quite different. The old mechanistic way of thinking just wouldn't be able to get a handle on this at all. The water pouring from the attic onto the sodden floors below was not just an agent of destruction: the leaking water tank was also a vase of initiation, bestowing grace upon one terrified student of consciousness.

Today, the weird continues to manifest more regularly in my everyday life. While the domino-style world continues, another functions in parallel, the two entwining from time to time to create a richer tapestry. Rather like a number of computer programmes running simultaneously, one visible and obvious, the others chugging along in the background, but ready to manifest the moment it is appropriate. As it has started to become more commonplace and familiar, the weird is gradually becoming, well, less weird. More like a facet of life that I am constantly challenged to accept with equanimity.

Part Two: Buddhism's Missing Link

As should be clear from some of my recent posts, the questions of 'Why did I become a Buddhist?', 'Why did I stop being a Buddhist?', and 'How did Buddhism work and not work for me?' continue as threads in my life. They are not so much obstructions to personal energy as part of the wider task of understanding myself - plus, understanding what many of my former colleagues (some still good friends) are still up to.

Just recently a theory has presented itself to me. It remains speculative and not fully digested, yet worth outlining here nevertheless. It concerns missing bits in Buddhism as commonly practiced by westerners today.

As one such westerner attempting to follow a Buddhist path at the end of the twentieth/ early twenty-first century, I sensed that something major was missing. The practices just didn't work for me anymore. That was not, I concluded, because I was just lazy or obstinate or avoiding issues. The thing that was missing, I now see more clearly, was the weird stuff. The mystic shit. And the connection goes like this......

The sacred path is enumerated in various ways in Buddhism; but as an umbrella term, you can't do better than the Threefold Way. This consists of Sila (translated most frequently as 'morality' or 'ethics' - it's how you conduct your everyday life), Samadhi (meditation, one-pointed concentration), and Prajna (Wisdom). As I have seen Buddhism commonly practiced by westerners, the importance of Sila is readily understood and its practice taken seriously. The effects of our habits of body, speech, and mind in moulding consciousness are properly recognised. Folk are also generally prepared to take on Prajna, be it reflecting on impermanence, meditating on the dissolution of the elements, attending a course in Vipassana, Mahamudra, or any other of the wealth of approaches the Buddhist tradition offers to 'the way things really are'. But what about Samadhi? Sure, most folk spend a bit of time on a meditation cushion, but it's more than that. On presenting the Threefold Way, the Buddha put forth Samadhi as a whole one-third of the path. It was Sila, Samadhi, Prajna; not Sila, Samadhi, Prajna. My (past) experience leads me to suspect this is often not grasped. One reason? Samadhi is tough, disturbing, and seriously weird. It's where you find the mystical stuff; and where you can go nuts.

As conventionally presented, Samadhi has two main threads. One is that of developing one-pointed concentration. The other is the element of entering dhyanas, 'supernormal states of consciousness' as they are sometimes described, and each associated with a corresponding objective world (different density/dimensional realms as they are described in some western mystical traditions). I have met few Buddhists who appear to have taken this dhyana stuff all that seriously. More typical is an incident I recall from being on Buddhist retreat thirty years ago. One Buddhist colleague of mine, who clearly suffered from an overly discursive mind, emerged from the shrine room after another unsuccessful attempt at one-pointedness with a broad grin on his face. 'It's OK' he beamed reassuringly. 'You only need a bit of the first dhyana (the 'lowest' of these 'supernormal states') to become Enlightened.' A comfort, no doubt, to those reluctant to leave behind the unfamiliar; but a complete misreading, nonetheless.

Despite apparently being an integral part of the Buddha's path, these dhyanas are known to get a bad press, or at the least to be presented in a spirit of ambivalence. Typical, maybe, is the relevant section in 'A Survey of Buddhism', the magnum opus from his earlier years of my former Buddhist teacher. Having described the various states of superconsciousness, as he calls them, he goes on to discuss the supernormal powers associated with them: things like walking on water, passing through walls, telepathy. These powers, he emphasises, are not to be developed for their own sake: should they appear, they are devoid of spiritual significance, and are to be looked on 'with indifference, even with disgust.' The Buddha, apparently, regarded these powers 'with contempt and loathing.'

While there may be some truth in all this, it is hardly psychologically astute. For a modern western practitioner, bred on a diet of the Three D's (Descartes, Darwin, and Dawkins), any suggestion that we don't need to emerge from the safety of normal, consensus reality will come as a great relief. This distortion - that the supernormal powers are loathsome, therefore this dhyana stuff isn't worth the paper it is described on - amounts to a huge cop-out. You can only view these supernormal powers with loathing and contempt because you have actually been there and seen their limitations first-hand. The type of caution declared in 'A Survey...' may have been relevant at the time of the Buddha, when life seems to have overflowed with meetings with devas, yaksas, and all sort of other-dimensional entities. Or in tenth-century Tibet, when unleashing conjurations of thunderstorms on your neighbour's crops was a favourite pastime. Our 'weird stuff', intimately connected with the dhyanas and non-ordinary states in general, was more familiar to these people. To modern western folk, things are very different: entering the world that is embraced by the term 'samadhi' becomes in itself an enormous challenge and achievement. It means taking on the supernormal states and the weird stuff that is their hallmark. Leaving behind the narrowly rational, everything you ever learnt at school, scientific materialism and the rest. Synchronicity, telepathy, crop circles, past life regression, encounters with fourth-density entities, etc etc : anything that challenges the linear time-space programme, introducing in its stead felt paradox, strangeness, creating elasticity with regard to causal relations. This is all part of 'becoming whole'.

In the popular versions of the Buddha's life, as his final act before Enlightenment, he 'travels up' through all the superconscious states, then comes back down again. This is not, we can presume, done purely as a piece of good entertainment for the masses, but as an integral part of the process of the  Buddha's awakening, a profound teaching. In the light of what I have written above, its meaning becomes transparent. Full, red-blooded spiritual awakening has to contain everything, including the weird stuff. A being coursing purely in ordinary, linear consciousness is a mere ghost of a being. For modern western folk, it might be more appropriate to think of the samadhi stage as the stage of high strangeness. It's where the universe, and the individual who comprises part of that universe, ceases to work in the manner we are used to. This is what we are concerned with, rather than a literal journey up an escalator of 'superconscious states'.To chart a course through this unfamiliar territory will require all the strength, the energy, the subtlety, and the courage that we can muster. Do this and the student of consciousness will truly earn the title of spiritual warrior.



                                      

Arab Spring? Highland Spring....

Photos taken in early April; north-west Scottish Highlands.

From Buddha to Dakini: Naked Partings and Meetings

       Sherab Chamma.  Pre-Buddhist Bon figure

Part One: Animal Farm or wot?

Buddhism. Buddhist tradition. Buddhist traditions. Buddhist people. I spent over twenty-five years formally ordained into Buddhism, making a final extrication getting on for six years ago.  At least, that's what I thought.

Just recently, various happenings have coalesced to cause a more deeply critical revaluation of certain things Buddhic, at least as I have come to experience them.  I present a summary below.

First up, the Buddha.  Or, should we say, the historical Buddha figure, the one who prowls through the pages of the Pali Canon.  Was he really everything he cracked himself up to be?  Wise and accomplished, little doubt, and with a rare enthusiasm for communication. But the claims of uniqueness and exclusiveness, at least in this era, that he insists on so strongly? The new bright light burst into an otherwise uniformly dark and brutish Kali Yuga? The One and Only? The Really Special One? All seems a bit dodgy to me these days.

Next, Tibetan Buddhist Tantra. From the days of my early acquaintance with Buddhism, this is the stuff that really turned me on, communicated to the 1970s neophyte with zeal by Govinda, David-Neel and the rest.  Blueberry-coloured beings with huge bellies, half-human half-animal, three eyes, lots of flailing arms, out to scare you shitless. Great stuff. But in more recent times, it has come as a surprise to learn that some of this carnival of the bizarre is not Buddhist (or Hindu, whatever that catch-all phrase means) in origin at all.  Some, at least, of the figures have come up through pre-Buddhist Bon, which in turn most likely inherited them from more ancient shamanic peoples.

The Bonpo themselves get a bit of a bad press from the orthodoxy.  Weird magical anarchists with a penchant for hurling rocks and thunderbolts at their neighbours.  Then along came the Buddhists with their proper, organised spirituality, bringing light and peace in place of the dodgy rituals of those unpredictable practitioners of the Dark Arts.

So the story goes.  But maybe the truth is rather different.  Maybe we are looking at a tale of invasion and repression of indigenous shamanic peoples and practices, a tale rendered respectable by modern pro-Buddhist spin.  Could it be that the newly-arrived Buddhists in Tibet cleverly hijacked and absorbed the Bon and pre-Bon elements for their own ends, just as the Control System twists and assimilates to its heart's content nowadays?

History is written by the victorious.

It has been disquieting to consider that Buddhism, which I once embraced so enthusiastically as a radical alternative to the ignorance and blindness of the Judeo-Christian religions, may share, in degree and at times, in the same patriarchal idiocy and hierarchical power sickness.

Simultaneously, realising that the figures of Enlightenment are not the exclusive preserve of any one particular tradition has been personally liberating.  They roam the world wild, pure, unfettered, larger than any system that humans can hope to come up with.

Then there's the teacher.  The bottom line is that I left the Buddhist Order he founded because the practices and techniques weren't working for me any more.  In  retrospect, there's the temptation to  feel hoodwinked.  I signed up for the Great Enlightenment, and I got generalised exoterica - which worked for a while.  Then he showed me nothing else.  The disquieting niggle is that he had nothing else to show. I may be wrong.

Actually, what I have written above is not quite correct.  As well as the exoterica, my former teacher passed on a sadhana of a particular Buddha/Bodhisattva.  This sustained me for years, and for that introduction I am truly grateful. But when it comes to navigating consciousness as it begins to extend beyond the world of everyday third density perception, there was no guidance, no advice; not even any proper recognition of its existence. Maybe that is the mainstream Buddhist way. Look elsewhere, however, and helping hands abound. There are the shamanic traditions scattered across the globe; there are western mystical traditions, if you can get your head around them. There is Jung, fragmentarily; in fictional guise there is Castaneda, even. And there are quite a number of modern folk whose words can be accessed through books and the internet: Neil Kramer and John Lash have proved most helpful to me personally.    

And let's not forget the disciples.  Some remain among my best friends.  But when I formally embraced Buddhism I assumed I was joining a bunch of folk who, to a person, were uniformly busting their gut for realisation of the Unborn, the Uncreate, the Immaculate.  With respect, I would now say that this was a miscalculation on my part.

Part Two: Skinny-Dipping

23rd July 2007: a letter arrives.  It is acceptance of my resignation from the Buddhist Order by my former teacher. He is not surprised, he says, at my leaving.  The letter is courteous, though failing to express any appreciation of the years of blood, sweat, and tears I put into teaching meditation, organising classes, and running centres devoted to spreading his own brand of Buddha Dharma. I suppose this is OK.

Once I had decided to resign, writing the letter and the rest had come easily.  At least I thought it had.  One day, however, just recently, an alarm bell went off very loudly.  There was something I still hadn't dealt with. The kesa....  

A kesa is an item worn around the neck by those formally devoted to following the Buddhist path, in some schools at least.  It's soft-core uniform (I use this word, not as a put-down; I came across it as description on a Zen Buddhist website).  Getting rid of the kesa encountered more resistance than writing the letter. I mean, what do you do with a kesa? I put it off. And put it off.  Then forgot. Or, should I say, 'forgot'.

With time, deeper layers of purpose began to reveal themselves to the act of leaving behind formalised Buddhism. 'The drugs don't work any more' morphed into a spiritual imperative: to go freestyle.  The very act of identification - as a Buddhist in this case - manifested as an obstacle.  So I turned spiritual vagrant. With nothing to tie me down, I became like a beach-comber, wandering through the flotsam and driftwood of the seashore looking for bits and pieces of value.  It was not long before I realised that the great ocean, in its abundant generosity, would throw up all manner of treasure once I learnt to open my eyes.  I became a student of the intuitive art of beach-combing.

Things have changed in the Order to which I once belonged.  Its members can roam wide, free to gain succour from many areas of spiritual nourishment.  I look upon this as a good thing.  Nevertheless, at the end of the day, they will return from their wanderings to a comfy bed with the recurring motif hung above the pillow: Home, Sweet Buddhist Home. A sound night's sleep beckons.

To walk unfettered, free of any fixed identity, revealed itself as necessary for me to develop further.  Much can be learnt from a spiritual tradition, but the time arrives when, with gratitude and respect, the aspirant needs to jettison it, leave it all behind.  The leap into the void, into pure empty space, is just that.  No ties, beliefs, identities. No umbilical cord, however fine and gossamer thin. Not exactly comfortable, I know.  But to dance in the company of the wild, naked dakinis is a two-way affair: you need to go naked yourself.

Part Three: Grey Sky, Blue Sky 

Monday 18th March, 2013.  I open the back door to an east wind that cuts my breath. The perpetual winter sun of late February has long since given way to the unrelenting viciousness of March.  The thermometer reads three degrees, but in the wind it feels far colder.

The sky is painted a uniform grey as I head down the hill, alongside the river, then across mud-tangled grass. Monday: the world seems in quiet mourning.  A thick murk hangs over the landscape; as I climb, I can see thick smudges of snow on the lower hills to the east, then barely perceptible sheets of dirty white covering the higher ground beyond. Mercifully, the murk renders the wind turbines which rake the far skyline invisible. Darkness has its uses.

I am finally beginning to warm up, and stop to remove hat, gloves, and scarf.  At last I leave behind human habitation, and begin to ascend the wide and muddy track up the hillside.  I am nearing my destination. I had reckoned on two hours to get this far, but a glance at my watch shows me that, with the cold, I have accomplished the walk in only ninety minutes.

As I turn up the final narrow path leading to the little stone circle on top of the hill, a few grains of snow fall from the canopy of grey above.  The white Buddha, the Buddha of purity, of the mantra, is conferring his blessing.

The remains of the circle sit at two hundred metres above sea level, perched on the brow of the hill.  To the west lies forest, but eastwards the view is panoramic - on a clear day, that is.  Today, the gorse and thick grass hang damp in the silence.  I open my rucksack and take out a small wooden box, delicately carved for me by an old friend many years ago.  Opening the lid, I take out its contents.  There is a ring of flames and a number of tiny vajras, all made out of card, relics from a ritual in the Spanish mountains over twenty years ago.  Out comes a pouch holding a kesa; then a second older and grubbier specimen of the same.

The ritual is simple and effective, involving a few brief invocations and the burning of the wall of flames, vajras, kesas, and finally the pouch.  At first, it is difficult to get a fire in the wind and damp, but eventually the objects are returned readily to their constituent elements.  All this takes place to the quiet background hum of the mantra of the pure white Buddha.  I have not recited it for years, but it comes effortlessly to mind.  Ironic, indeed, that these Buddhist regalia, and with them any remnants of Buddhist identity, should disappear to the sound of the pure white Buddha.  A Buddha stretching back, beyond Buddhism into a distant authentic shamanic past, before Buddhism as history.  And, more profoundly, back to Universal Mind, beyond time altogether.

Midway through the ritual burning, a flock of wild geese fly directly over the circle. They are disconcertingly low, and in perfect V-formation. The group geometry, the distinctive honk-cry, the great migration to a distant who-knows-where, is something I have found, in these Scottish parts, singularly moving.  Now I begin to understand why.

The little fire begins to exhaust itself; with nearly all reduced to ashes, I pour some water over the remains just in case, before taking silent leave of the scene.  My hands are numb with cold, and I move quickly, eventually catching a bus for the final stretch of my journey. I search out warmth in a corner cafe and, over coffee, begin to write. It wonder if a tear will come: it doesn't.


References: for more on the relationship between Buddhism, Bon, and shamanism, go for the magnificent 'Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas' by Claudia Muller-Ebeling, Christian Ratsch, and Surendra Bahadur Shahi.  The equally magnificent John Lash writes in various places on metahistory.org: try 'Open Source Earth Wisdom for Kali Yuga' for starters.




                       

The Day of the Anarchist

                   
        Prince Peter Kropotkin

Part One: Sticks and Stones          

One of the vulgar tactics deployed by the wanton and the ignorant is the calling of names.  Find the right name and the unwary will immediately be deflated, a somnolent public deceived.

One such name is 'hippie'.  Nobody has a good word to say for the hippie, from the mainstream conservative to an alternative researcher such as Jan Irvin, who informs us that the 'hippie movement' of the 1960s was largely masterminded by the CIA and related agencies.  Never mind that no serious and self-respecting counterculturalist of the time actually referred to themselves as a hippie, or that the word was a creation of the mainstream media.  No. 'Filthy', 'bloody', and several others I do not wish to include here, are the adjectives invariably linked with that most vile of specimens, the hippie.

'Conspiracy theorist' is another catchphrase used to dismiss somebody you may happen to disagree with.  The term first came into common parlance. I believe, following the assassination of JFK, and was employed to shoot down anybody who suggested that the truth might be anything other than what the official channels told us it was.  It has become a phrase used in the mainstream pejoratively, connoting wackiness, cookiness, and paranoia.  I heard the term 'conspiracy theorist' employed most recently in this manner by Brian Cox. Excuse me, Professor Brian Cox, if you please.  The Great Professor is the current darling of BBC scientific rationalism, most likely a replacement for Richard Dawkins, who is getting on in years and not sexy enough.  Now, I confess to having only watched about twenty minutes of Prof. Cox in total: his cutting-edge scientific presentations seem to have a disturbing effect on my intestinal tract.  Anyhow, I caught him at the end of a programme about the Moon. 'We'll be online to answer your questions about the Moon after the programme' he hissed through the permanent smirk on his face. 'But no conspiracy theorists, who think we didn't land on the Moon' he continued smugly.

Bloody wacko conspiracy theorists.  Not worth bothering with.  Now, personally, I consider it unlikely that the Moon landings were faked.  There are, however, serious rational questions to be answered about some of the evidence presented.  Has Professor Cox, supreme exemplar of scientific objectivity that he is, actually cared to take a look at a few of the inconsistencies surrounding the official story? I doubt it.

The other time I caught the Great Professor on television (this is an unashamed digression, I know), he was in the middle of explaining science and equations and stuff to a hand-picked audience of 'celebrities' and the like (what a message that piece of theatre is sending out.....). 'The new physics is not mystical or woo-woo New Agey' he assured us smugly. 'It's very precise.' Now, look here, mate. These mystics through the ages you're so fond of poo-pooing have had far more knowledge and direct experience of the workings of the universe than will ever get processed through your own equation-and-diagram-addled brain. 'Mystic' turns out to be another knee-jerk term of derision, in the hands of Father Superior Cox at least.

Finally, we arrive at my other insult, the total dismissal: 'anarchist'.  What is an anarchist?  Well, it's a person who doesn't believe in rules, and has a penchant for chaos. Anarchists go round disrupting nice demonstrations organised by nice left-wing type people for nice worthy left-wing type causes.  Don't be surprised, should you have the misfortune to ever encounter an anarchist, if they are wielding a baseball bat or other hard and dangerous weapon.  A sort of western terrorist, really.  In common with the hippie, an anarchist probably hasn't washed for weeks, and frequently earns intelligent descriptive adjectives like 'bloody' and worse.  And it cannot be a coincidence that 'anarchist' sounds a bit like 'antichrist'.  Can it?

Part Two: Liberty Calls

The reality, surprise, surprise, is far from the mudslinging and spin.  One of the main figures in the history of anarchism is Peter Kropotkin. Or, to be precise, Prince Peter Kropotkin.  He is listed in Wikipedia as, among other things, zoologist, philosopher, evolutionary theorist, geographer, economist, and anarcho-communist. In other words, a Renaissance Man of staggering proportions. 'Mutual Aid', published in 1902, is among his more important contributions to human thought.  Following the hijacking and twisting of Darwin's ideas by the social Darwinists, who pushed interpersonal competition and 'nature red in tooth and claw' as justification for the existence of political and social power elites, Kropotkin decided to check things out for himself.  Taking off into the wide open spaces of Russia (there are plenty of them), he observed closely the behaviour of the animals he came across there.  His conclusion: co-operation was every much a requisite for survival and evolution of a species as was competition.  Needless to say, and for reasons that should be obvious, it was the ideas of the social Darwinists that prevailed as the currency of the mainstream.

Kropotkin himself did not deny our competitive urges, but insisted that they were not the inevitable driving force of history as claimed by the social Darwinists. This reflection was a vital ingredient in forming his ideas of political anarchism. Personally, I rather doubt the value of studying animal behaviour to give us clues about human nature.  In the natural world anything and everything happens.  The good, the bad, the ugly. If there is a message, it is this: human behaviour is varied and elastic. Don't try to pin it down too much; many things are possible.

However, in the spirit of political anarchism, we call at the very least work for a huge diminution of central government control, along with radical decentralisation.  There are many who will view such a prospect with trepidation; but is this fear really justified? Is it simply a conditioned reaction?  Just think.  Consider for a moment the people to whom we readily confer control on a daily basis.  The Camerons, Merkels, Milibands; the Salmonds, Obamas and the rest.  Are these beings who demonstrate an unusual and exceptional capacity for love, compassion, and sympathy for other human beings? No. Are they people more honest, honourable, trustworthy and innately responsible than your next-door neighbour? No. Do they embody remarkable qualities of problem-solving and creative thinking? Not at all.   They are where they are purely by dint of working a system, a system of power that they feel at home in.  That is pretty much it.  There is nothing to lose, but much to gain, through their demise.

Part Three: Quitting the Interface 

The notion of modern western democracy has become a grotesque parody of itself.  In Britain, we increasingly hear of LibLabCon, where the three 'major' political parties have been reduced to a children's 'spot the difference' game.  Debate takes place within carefully circumscribed areas, while issues that could make a real difference to people's lives are conveniently left outside the box, not for discussion at all.  In Scotland, whence I write, Big Chief Alex Salmond has an increasingly transparent habit of 'misleading' the Scottish Parliament.  It would be uncharitable of me to suggest that 'misleading' is a euphemism for lying through the teeth, thereby demonstrating an utter absence of respect for ones fellow parliamentarians.

The carnival of dishonour knows no bounds. On the occasions that I dare to dip into the 'news', it invariably shouts out loud in my face.  A couple of weeks ago, local newspaper headlines told of how Fergus Ewing, Scottish Minister for Energy (another euphemism - read 'Minister for destroying beautiful landscapes and plunging people into unnecessary fuel poverty') was accused of 'misleading Scottish Parliament' on how much extra the gas and electricity consumer had to pay as a result of government renewable energy policies. He protested that he was unaware of any problems with his figures: he had got them from the renewables industry, after all. Comrades, this is the same as going to tobacco companies in the 1950s for information on the links between smoking and lung cancer. Exactly the same. Underhand and criminal.  And, what's more, it appears that Ministers in Scotland are under no obligation to apologise for spreading falsehoods anyway. It's up to them to decide.

One simple step we all could take would be not to vote.  This is not just passive abstention, but a positive act.  As Emma Goldman, another prominent figure in the history of anarchism vividly put it, voting provides an illusion of participation while masking the true structures of decision-making.  If nobody voted, the criminals and psychopaths could no longer continue with their dirty tricks.  A system cannot keep going if nobody supports it - its only hope would be to usher in a reign of terror that would make even Josef Stalin wince.

'But we should vote' I hear the bleating protests. 'We live in a democracy. We should be thankful, and exercise our democratic rights.' Well, sorry. We bloody well don't live in a democracy. It's a rigged game, to borrow a term from John Lash.  Every several years we are presented with a number of identikit cut-outs, none of whom has anything to say that represents proper human aspiration. Besides, the catalogue of dark comics we see paraded as our 'democratically-elected representatives' has little say in what really goes on anyway.  This is increasingly determined by groups, organisations, committees way out of reach of democratic accountability.  Climate change summits, United Nations committees; agenda 21, common purpose; shady groupings of European bureaucrats.  This is where the action is. Behind the scenes, out of the public eye. And the action seems to be almost entirely aimed at creating a uniform, homogeneous, docile, planetary population blithely led by a creeping totalitarianism. This is blindingly obvious; anybody who doubts it frankly hasn't done their ten minutes of homework. And there is a two-minute test you can do to check it out. Firstly, ask yourself whether, as a species, we have become much more evil over the past ten years, say, or not. Then, consider the things that governments have done to increase freedoms during that time; and consider the things that have increased control and interference in people's lives over that time.

So don't worry if you don't vote.  Nobody has ever taken notice of your cross in the ballot box anyway.

This is where well-intentioned people who call for greater state control/scrutiny - of the press, for example - have got it so horribly and dangerously wrong.  Faith in the state as an agent for improvement would be touching, were it not so terrifying.  The notion that the state will be any more transparent, any more considerate of the freedom of individuals, has no foundation.  I challenge anyone to show me otherwise; I am open to communication.  In the meantime, our first obligation is to disentangle as far as possible from the state and its machinations.  Reclaim our sovereignty.  Otherwise, there can be no complaints.

To conclude with the eminently quotable Emma Goldman: 'The most violent element in society is ignorance.' And 'Every society has the criminals it deserves.'  Thanks, Emma.

Highland February

A few photos from the February sunshine of the north-west Scottish Highlands.

How Lou Reed Saved My Life

                     Ahem.  First released in 1974.

It is one of the more unusual details of my autobiography that Lou Reed once saved my life.  It was just over twenty years ago, and I was in New Zealand at the time.  I had previously harboured little desire to spend any time in the antipodes.  However, friends of mine in New Zealand contacted me, offering the chance to help out for a year at the Buddhist Centre they ran in Wellington.  In return for being resident Buddhist from the northern hemisphere, I would be fed, accommodated, and given pocket money.  My heart didn't exactly leap at the prospect.  However, I was free and available, and there was the feeling that, should I turn down the offer, I might spend the rest of my life wondering whether I had missed out on the chance of a lifetime.

From the moment I set foot on New Zealand soil, I felt like a stranger in a strange world.  I was never able to completely pin it down, but this just wasn't the place for me.  Gazing out over the ocean, I could easily imagine jumping in a little boat and dropping off the edge of the world..  My friends in New Zealand were wonderful with me, unfailingly kind and generous, but nothing could turn things around.  I felt truly displaced.

One Saturday afternoon, in an effort to improve my lot, I climbed the hill at the back of our house.  On reaching the top I sat down, put on the headphones, and listened to Mozart's Clarinet Quintet.  In response to one of the most sublime pieces of music ever written, I felt precisely...... nothing.

It was only a matter of days later when I received a phone call from my girlfriend in London.  We had been together for about eight years in a relationship that was close and sometimes intense.  We were, in my mind, a unit; end of story.  This time, though, she was weird, her voice strained.  She had been seeing a mutual acquaintance, she said.  Walks in the park, visits to the cinema.  She didn't know where it was heading.  A few disturbed hours later, the phone rang again.  She hadn't been able to tell me first time round, but they had been doing more than watching James Bond movies together.  Quite a bit more.  And that was that.

It was the pinprick that finally burst the balloon.  I fell into a dark and seemingly bottomless pit, from which there seemed no escape.  Every remaining antipodean minute was spent wandering around the vast, black space I had descended into.  I had not imagined a human being could feel like this.  I experienced many new things: non-specific hatred and rage; total self-disgust and worthlessness. I felt what it would be to kill another person, and to kill myself.  I temporarily turned into an unsuccessful sexual predator, too sensitive and timid to properly act out the role of sexual hunter.

Where to turn in a moment of such unanticipated darkness, when ones own existence and sanity hang in the balance?  My friends did all they could, offering support and advice.  They were not, however, able to meet me fully in this new uncharted territory.  More critically, Buddhism, as I had known and practiced it at any rate, had nothing to say.  The intensive meditation retreats, the highly-charged study groups, the much-vaunted friendships: nothing prepared me for this moment.  In my time of greatest need, the tradition I had followed faithfully and with heart for the previous fifteen years let me down.  Badly.  Generalised chunterings about impermanence and unsatisfactoriness didn't cut the mustard; neither did more tantric stuff about cremation grounds.  What I needed was someone or something very precise and concrete, which could shed light into this very specific darkness that I was living with.

The only voice that spoke to me in my moment of greatest need was that of Lou Reed.  Swapping Mozart for 'Berlin', 'Street Hassle' and 'Rock and Roll Animal', I walked the rain-and-windswept streets of Wellington with my headphones at full volume, absorbed in songs of degradation, despair, rage, torment and utter confusion.  Songs of the edge, sung from the edge.  Here was a voice that knew where I was at that moment in time.  A voice that had been there - and, by the way, survived to tell the tale.

'Genius' is a word to be used sparingly.  But I would claim that, scattered amongst the diverse offerings of the 1970s and 1980s Lou Reed, there are distinct nuggets of dark genius.  I am not thinking of the poppy, singalong tunes of 'Transformer', probably Reed's best-known album.  No, I mean the combination of sexual ecstasy and death from an overdose of the lyrical 'Street Hassle'; vulnerability and the possibility of redemption in 'Coney Island Baby'; the crazy yet highly crafted energy of the live 'Rock'n Roll Animal'; melody and beauty emerging from electronic chaos in suicide on 'The Bells' ('It was really not so cute/to jump without a parachute').  But for degradation, torment, and self-abnegation, nothing comes close to the series of songs put down on 'Berlin'.  'Harrowing' is a word that crops up in reviews, and it is apt.  Think of tramping the rain-beaten streets of Wellington, and I think of 'Berlin'.

On returning to the UK, I set about my own dark regeneration with the help of an electric guitar and an impressive array of effects pedals.  Still, the Buddhist tradition failed to offer any assistance, and the gulf between what it had to give and who I was started to widen.  Several years on, I came across another person aside from Lou Reed who had been into the darkness that had become my domain.  This was Carl Jung.  His description of the 'night sea journey' held me in its thrall.  My own life seemed to recapitulate his writings about personal shadow and unconscious and collective shadow/unconsciousness.  I undertook shamanic lowerworld journeying, and drew deep nourishment from archetypal psychologist James Hillman, someone else familiar with the Underworld.

My stay in New Zealand coincided with another high point in Lou Reed's creative life, a remarkable trilogy.  First up was 'Songs for Drella', a collaboration with John Cale in memory of their mentor Andy Warhol; 'New York', a unique portrait of the city at the time; and 'Magic and Loss', written on the death of two of Lou's friends from cancer.  All three albums charted new territory in the landscape of rock, and all are touched by that daimonic genius.  A few years ago, thirty years after its original release (to critical condemnation, by the way), 'Berlin' finally went on the road.  I caught the show with a friend of mine when it hit Edinburgh: a night to remember.  For the rest, I have not followed Lou closely over the past two decades.  By all accounts, he's not somebody I'd hurry to invite for dinner.  But for his giving musical and poetic voice to the underbelly of the human condition, and for helping me out in my own dark night of the soul, I shall always be grateful.

     

 

A Different Key, But Same Old Song....

Two men looking pleased with themselves.

I have thought hard before deciding to post this.  It probably won't win me many new friends......

Part One

Coldplay are an unusual band, being one of the few relatively contemporary groups whose music is immediately recognisable to me.  I almost like them - or so I thought.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a programme based on their 2012 World Tour.  I casually turned on, thinking it might be worth a peek.  I had only been watching for a few minutes, however, when an acute sense of irritation began to descend on me.  It was partly the needless jumping and prancing about on stage, plus the obsession with daubing luminous paint over everything.  But the main feeling of unease came from elsewhere.  It slowly dawned on me.  This all reminded me of a Hitler Youth rally.

Surely I was wrong.  After all, this is a right on, save-the-rainforest band, with some good melodies and lots of nice fans.  But the dynamic was unmistakeable.  Thirty thousand arms waving in mindless unison at the beck and call of the great leaders on the stage.  'Feeling happy?' 'Yes' the reply from thirty thousand voices. 'I can't hear you.' 'YE-E-E-S!'  The usual stuff.  The crowds and the heroes did their bit in Paris.  Then we went to Glastonbury, where it was just the same.  I switched off and went to bed.

In the end, it's not personal views and opinions, personal takes on life, that matter so much.  It's the type, the quality (I hesitate to use the word 'level') of consciousness that is primary.  And the quality of consciousness here on show was immediately recognisable - the same as that accessed and exploited by Adolf Hitler.

It reminded me of an episode related in Jay Stevens's superlative book 'Storming Heaven', involving Ken 'One-Flew-Over-the-Cuckoo's-Nest' Kesey.  More than Tim Leary ever did, Kesey promoted the LSD-for-everyone-with-lashings-of-rock-music motif.  Late in 1965, he attended a Beatles concert in San Francisco.  The Beatles were the thing: less than two years later, in one of those stupid moments that fatally overcame him from time to time, Leary pronounced them 'the four evangelists'.  Anticipating an overwhelmingly inspirational experience, Kesey was instead shocked to find thousands of teenyboppers screaming their heads off in a completely mindless kind of way.  Kesey's own adventures focussed on releasing the group mind, homo gestalt, a linked-up consciousness, but not of this type.  For him, the event brought to mind cancer; this was the negative side of homo gestalt, for sure.  Soon afterwards, Ken was invited to speak at an enormous anti-Vietnam war protest.  The group, the crowd, reminded him of his Beatles epiphany.  Expecting a stirring, indignant invective, the organisers of the rally were undoubtedly shocked when, instead, Kesey pulled out a harmonica and sang 'Home on the Range'.  'I'm Me!.... that's the cry of the ego, and that's the cry of this rally...... Yep, you're playing their game.'

Part Two 

It is slightly over a year since Labour MP for Glasgow South Tom Harris was forced to resign as the party's media adviser for his spoof video comparing Adolf Hitler with Alex Salmond.  As is the case in many such instances, he had a point.....

Firstly, we must rid ourselves of the assumption that we don't have nasty politicians in our modern western democratic societies.  Nasty people, we are led to believe, come from faraway places - Venezuela, Iran, North Korea - and from times gone by - Attila the Hun, Josef Stalin, Idi Amin.  Our own Blairs, Camerons and Salmonds, Obamas and Merkels might be mischievous, even a little naughty perhaps, but downright nasty? No, no, no.

This is actually a very clever propaganda manipulation.  True, their strategies may be less overt, more subtle: it is generally recognised nowadays that sticking people in concentration camps and down salt mines is not a successful ploy. People begin to complain and start wars against you.  In the modern era a more softly-softly approach normally works better.

So there is no suggestion that Mr Salmond wishes to round up all the English people in Glasgow and do unspeakable things to them.  Nevertheless, the type, the quality, of consciousness is once more immediately recognisable.

Foremost is the matter of ideology.  Whether it is the superiority of the Aryan race or the plight of the subjugated Scots, everything issues from the dark place of ideology.  Be it fascism, communism, free market capitalism, nationalism, scientific rationalism or whatever, ideology is very convenient.  Everything is now interpreted through a particular filter.  You no longer have to think.  Ideology is inevitably one of the most dangerous things around because you no longer need to look at what is really going on.  It blinds you to reality.

In relation to Alex Salmond and his 'independence of the oppressed' hype (which, despite protestations to the contrary, is the gist), I confronted some unsavoury aspects in the post 'Faces of Glenfinnan', May 18th 2011.  I looked briefly at how the abused easily becomes the abuser, how victim and perpetrator are locked into a mutually dependent and reinforcing dynamic (this theme is explored more thoroughly in John Lash's 'Not in His Image').  Circumstantial evidence suggests that Salmond's notions of 'Scotland' and 'the Scots' are abstractions. He doesn't appear to care about individual human beings north of the Border any more than does a typical politician in Westminster.  He doesn't want Scotland for its individual inhabitants: he simply wants a bigger bite of the poison pie of the dark cabal, that's all.

In some respects, Salmond's programme is a curious throwback in time. Independence: a strange distraction from the real issues in urgent times, a relic of the late 1950s and 1960s, when a whole bunch of African nations clamoured for freedom from oppressive imperial powers.  The result has probably been a disaster for the majority of Africans, for whom 'independence' has simply meant new (and sometimes even more ruthless) oppressors with a different skin colour.  In similar vein, Mr and Mrs MacPherson of Dundee are naive in the extreme if they think independence Salmond-style would mean their having a greater say in their own affairs.  Not at all.  The only thing to change would be the accents of those bossing them around.

In truth, the Salmond programme may be closer to Stalin than it is to Hitler.  A stark example concerns the invasion into rural areas of the windfarms.  Greater pressure, it is reported, will be brought to bear by national government upon local councils in 2013 to approve windfarm proposals.  This is because the Scottish government has to meet its self-imposed-upon-a-whim-and-a-soundbite targets for renewable energy.  So what is being said is that the concerns and wishes of Scottish people locally need to be brushed aside for the 'greater good' of the national programme (which, in this case, largely involves multinational companies based in mainland Europe).  This is what I mean by Scotland being an abstract concept.  The wishes of the individual folk of places like eastern Sutherland and Caithness, who are being saturation-bombed by these environmentally-unfriendly monstrosities, are irrelevant. 'We know what is best for you.  We have our targets. However, in order for us to provide you with what is best for you, some of you will have to do without some things you may like.'

This is the other curious throwback.  More than once I have heard Salmond use the worrying phrase 'industrialisation of the Highlands'.  Once more, his notion of industrialisation for the greater good is reminiscent of Josef Stalin's rapid industrialisation of Soviet Russia in the 1930s and 1940s, when innumerable villages and huge swathes of countryside were replaced by factories, life in huge apartment blocks, and the rest.  This in itself makes a fascinating study. Salmond's idea of industrialisation is an antiquated relic involving, it would seem, heavy industry and little else.  Windfarms, for sure, are just that - a remarkably crude 'solution' for a 21st century problem.  Stick huge structures of metal and plastic on top of a hill and hope that the wind blows.  It seems to me that Salmond and his cronies are fully paid-up members to an outdated vision of reality.  In more esoteric terms, I have rarely come across a group of people as fully committed to third density existence in its grosser and more vulgar aspects.  Dangerous people indeed.