Manna From A Hot Heaven

The theory of human-generated global warming has been a godsend to politicians and corporate big business alike. It seems only yesterday that talk of climate change was considered the domain of fringe environmentalists and anti-capitalists who dared to critique the unlimited benefits of oil- and coal- based modern societies. Then someone turned a switch, and realised there was money to be made here. Another switch was turned, and somebody else saw how climate change had great potential for fear-mongering and mind control. And so we arrive at the current situation.

If modern dominator culture is expert in anything, it is hijacking ideas and movements that arise counter to their own aims, and corrupting them to suit their own purposes. The mainstream of 1960s 'psychedelic culture' is one such example; interestingly, the British counterculture of the 1970s proved less susceptible to being sequestered, and was really beyond the pale, a fact which resulted in the enormous Operation Julie acid bust of 1977. Once we realise that renewable (which is not necessarily 'green') energy developments are not, in the main, about saving Polynesians and polar bears, let alone providing a better world for our grandchildren, but about making money and maintaining power, then everything falls into place. We understand why the number one consequence of global warming fear has been, in the U.K., the proliferation of large-scale wind farms constructed by multinational corporations, rather than local and domestic initiatives for energy production. In dominator cultures, power and money are concentrated into the hands of the few in the typical hierarchical pyramid. And the last thing these people want is for the mass of the population to be empowered in any way and take responsibility. Their role in the grand scheme of things is to watch television and shut up.

It also becomes clear why the emphasis is on greater generation of energy, rather than energy efficiency and decreasing consumption. I cannot imagine the Bilderburg group of highly influential people, meeting earlier this month in Spain, looking favourably on anything that involves decreases in consumption. Continued economic growth is the name of the game - the media screams at us every day that without it we are all doomed - so energy efficiency, with its concomitant fall in consumption and profits, is a very bad thing.

Armed with the fear that the theory of human-generated global warming provokes, the Control System is able to justify all manner of preposterous claims. The esoteric and convoluted scheme of Renewable Obligation Certificates, through which energy companies are effectively subsidised by taxpayers so that they can reap handsome profits from expensive wind energy, is one obvious and obscene example. Carbon, a word that has taken on the mantle of Jungian-style environmental Shadow, can be used as an excuse for higher energy prices and special taxes. The apocalypse that will be upon us if we don't invest heavily in large-scale renewables projects is used to justify ripping apart the countryside of Britain and covering it with monstrous metal-and-plastic turbines. The fear-and-guilt trip is a favourite ploy of the dominators.

Other sinister events surround the topic. There is seeding of the public unconscious with the need for wind farms: notice how frequently, when the phrases 'climate change' and 'global warming' are used on television, a photo of a wind turbine is flashed up at the same time. Former Energy Minister Ed Miliband's infamous comment that opposing a local wind farm is socially unacceptable. Practices that are undemocratic and of dubious legaity used by councils to rubberstamp wind farm proposals. More locally, the display in Inverness Museum that claims wind farms are 'vital to reduce carbon emissions': opinion presented as fact. I objected to the display, receiving a grammatically correct but ultimately anodyne reply. I decided to let the matter go, but am having second thoughts.

All of this is softly softly totalitarianism. I use this long word deliberately, and mean it literally. Politicians and economic bigwigs would have us believe that the debate is over, on wind farms in particular and human-generated global warming in general. More sinister happenings come to mind. When the Chief of the U.K. Meteorological Office appeared on mainstream television a few months back, in the middle of the climate email fiasco, to reassure us that the entire scientific community agrees that this type of climate change is taking place, and that it is without the slightest doubt a great threat, my antennae went into overdrive. Either he is extremely ill-informed, or he is lying through his teeth. Who is holding the gun to his back, I wondered. Watch Peter Taylor's brilliant scientific presentation to cut through the hype, the counterfeit consensus, and vested interests. Go to the 'Our Planet' section on holisticchannel.org.uk He does not doubt that human activity is affecting climate, but believes that its influence is fairly small compared to other factors.

Meanwhile, groups such as the John Muir Trust and Mountaineering Council of Scotland, who have fought tirelessly to protect wild places in Britain from the juggernaut of wind farm industrialisation are, I suspect, facing a dilemma. Invaluable though it has been, their work has borne modest fruit, as evidenced by the continued building of these Shrines to Mammon among hills, moorland and mountains. Unlike the 'developers', these groups have kept painstakingly to correct procedure, and spoken eloquently with the voice of reason. Unfortunately, this approach has little impact on a process that is fuelled by far darker forces. Will they become more militant? In a sense, the situation requires meeting head-on, confronting on its own terms somehow. A recent letter in one of the main hillwalking magazines called for direct action; last weekend, a demonstration was held against a wind farm in the Lammermuir Hills, south-east Scotland. More people are waking up to the con that is upon them. What effect this awakening will have remains to be seen. Maybe it's time to invoke the aid of the nature spirits, for their own good and for ours........

Confrontation

Modern texts often refer to it by the estate names of Fisherfield and Letterewe. I prefer the traditional and far more evocative appelation of 'the Great Wilderness'. On his pioneering 16th-century map, Timothy Pont simply scrawled 'Extreme Wilderness' over the area, and for long afterwards its contours and outlines remained mysteries to human civilisation. I once met a man at a bus stop on the Wilderness's perimeter. He had just traversed the region. Sunburnt and in mud-caked boots, he was a bag of nerves, as if he had encountered ghosts and aliens on the hills, a culture shock more severe than a week in southern India. It's that kind of place ......

I get off a bus on the rising arc of a lonely country road. Three cars are parked in a lay-by, and I cast a wistful eye in their direction as I take my short, sharp leave of the comforts and knowns of the human world. I have visited the Great Wilderness before, but never through this, its eastern portal. Dark evening clouds hang stubbornly over the hilltops; the loch is still and sombre as I tread the silent path along its shores. Soon the eeriness of this long, dark Scottish summer's eve begins to press in on me. A sound in the heather makes me jump; it's only a crow. Black outlines of crags and precipices in the heart of the Wilderness ahead catch my eye, and I momentarily wonder why I am here at all. I could, instead, be eating dinner at home, with convivial company and a glass of wine, before retiring to the sofa and the latest alternative culture podcast.

As well as tranquility and peace, the joyful release of tensions, the bliss of the separate self dissolving into infinity, the path of self-knowledge seems to involve confrontation, fear, being up against it. To go beyond the confines of normal egohood and consensus reality is scary stuff. What lies on the other side of the door? And what ego willingly relinquishes its control and power to a wider reality? Tantric Buddhists seek out this confrontation with the limits in cremation grounds at midnight, and by invoking wrathful deities. It's there is shamanism: 'A person who wishes to understand something about shamanism must first of all experience their own death. This is an arduous task! ...... The person who has not already died once as a human being cannot understand anything about shamanism.' (Christian Ratsch et al, Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas). In the arts: 'You scared yourself with music, I scared myself with paint, I drew 550 different shoes today, it almost made me faint' (Lou Reed and John Cale on Andy Warhol). And in serious entheogenics: 'DMT sometimes inspires fear - this marks the experience as existentially authentic ..... A touch of terror gives the stamp of validity to the experience because it means "This is real." (Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival).

At 9 p.m., with the sombre twilight full upon me, I take a sharp turn right around the prow of a hill and enter a broad but deep strath (a Scottish river valley). People have been here before - there is a reasonable hillpath - but I feel that I have stumbled into a secret, hidden fairytale land. Small groups of deer peer down at me from the hillside. Some run away, while others just gaze, still, silent, and curious. Suddenly, a blue spectre appears out of the gloom of the valley below me. I eventually make out a man. He is considerably older than me, extremely suntanned, wearing a striking blue rain jacket, and is walking rather slowly. It will be midnight before he reaches the roadside, but he is unconcerned: the skies of northern Scotland won't get completely dark at all on this June night.

More deer retreat from the water's edge as I head towards a level spot near a stream flowing into the loch. Beginning to erect my simple tent for the night, I notice a larger herd, thirty or more, grazing on the hillside a mere two hundred yards away. By the time I have pitched my shelter and look up, they have melted into the hillside and the night.

Here, for this short time, the rules of the game are changed; I am no longer king of the castle. Me and the rest of creation are on level terms, and it is a strange, unsettling feeling. I have my mobile phone, but here there is no signal. I have a tent against the rain, and a sleeping bag to ward off the cold. The deer have a coat to keep out both damp and cold, however, and it doesn't rustle noisily in the wind like my tent, keeping me awake. My ego wants to recoil, to retreat into the rigid shell of its own superiority, but a basic sense of justice and honesty inside me fights the tendency. I breathe out, relax, and allow the natural democracy of the valley to take me over.

I try to sleep, but the unfamiliar rhythms of this secret place make it difficult. The never-ending twilight penetrates the thin film that is my tent. And in truth the valley is full of noises at one hour before midnight. High-pitched sounds of a waterfall in one direction, constant gurgles from the stream in another; a cuckoo singing insistently into the deep twilight; all manner of other creaks, sighs, and rustlings. I go outside to see. Nothing, in this dimension at least.

A battalion of midges greets me when I emerge the following morning, and the dark clouds of yesterday continue to hang ominously over the tops and ridges of the mountains. I ascend a strange stairway of smooth, angled rocks towards the weird world of the summits. At one point I see a solitary deer below, standing quietly on the rocky pavement. What moves her to be there, alone and watching?

I continue upwards, and the silence of the mountain fog envelops me. Strange presences announce themselves in the gloom, elusive shapeshifters. I climb over two mountain summits with these ghostly gods for company. Then, en route to the third and final peak, the clouds dissolve into nothingness, and the world around me is transformed, radiant and bejewelled. Light plays on the surface of lochans sunk deep into the earth's crust, and every contour of distant crags and hillsides stands in sharp outline. Confrontation passes, consciousness expands to far horizons, a thin skin separates this wide place from infinity.......