Peaches and Pears

'If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.'  George Orwell, 1945

It is, I have to say, a fascinating case. It involves the geneticist James Watson, co-discoverer with Francis Crick of DNA (discoverers in the mainstream western narrative, that is: it seems likely that shamans of the Amazon have known about DNA for ages). He recently decided to auction off his 1962 Nobel Prize (and received big bucks for it). He needed the cash it seems, having become, in his own words, an 'unperson' in 2007. The reason for his fall into unpersonhood was comments he made about Africa. He was, he confessed one fateful day in 2007, not optimistic about the future of Africa because of what he perceived to be the generally lower intelligence of Africans. Not exactly PC, eh. As a result of his remarks, he was banned from speaking at the Science Museum in London at short notice, fired from the boards of several companies, and not invited to give any more public lectures anywhere. As he says, he became an unperson.

I am not, in this short piece, considering the rights or wrongs, the wisdom or folly, of James Watson's remarks. I am concerned with the way that certain opinions cannot be held or discussed. You just can't say that. And if you can't say it, you can't think it either. And that is the end of freedom of speech.

This is how things pan out in the western world of today. Governments, authorities, have realised that taking out the opposition by torture or killing isn't very clever - at least on home ground, People start to get upset and angry. It's not a good long-term strategy. No. What you do is take out the undesirables through denying them airspace, and through public censure. This has the added advantage of getting lots of decent, well-intentioned but inadequately researched people on your side. I mean, nobody likes racism, do they? Or sexists. We all want a fair and equal society, don't we? So we simply shift the goalposts a bit, so that our catchwords of evil, such as 'racist', encompass pretty much anything and everything we want. Note that, whatever its value as a point of view, Watson's on intelligence contained no hatred or ill-will. He was simply reporting what he felt to be true.

Meanwhile, from Scandinavia, I read this: 'A new law will come into effect in Sweden in Christmas 2014 that will allow people to be prosecuted for criticizing immigration or politicians' unwillingness to tackle the issue...... This new law is meant to stop Swedish people from complaining about their country being turned into a third world nation.' (speisa.com)

I read a little bit about Sweden since Red Ice Creations is based there. During 2014, interviews and articles have appeared in abundance on the themes of uncontrolled immigration in Europe and the development of the destruction of European cultures in what is sometimes termed 'white genocide', the systematic destruction of the traditional cultures of the nations and peoples of Europe. Red Ice has pushed this topic so much that I almost stopped looking at their stuff a while ago!

I was personally very sceptical of this notion of methodical eradication of our cultures. My view softened, however, following a visit to Paris in spring this year. What I saw in an admittedly brief and partial stay I found dismaying. A social and cultural mish-mash that seemed to benefit nobody. Not the folk of black African descent on the Metro in varied states of depression and/or aggression. Nor the Rumanians hanging around on the street corners or fleecing tourists on their way to the Eiffel Tower. Nor again the people whose families had inhabited the city for generations, and who were trying to hang onto their sense of identity. And all this has been presided over by the French authorities, who have either sat back and allowed it all to happen, or actively encouraged it through European policy and legislation.

To return to Sweden. Rec Ice comments thus: 'In the last three decades Sweden has been transformed into an unrecognizable heap of chaos....... The criticism that now is beginning to take place against these undemocratic policies has caused the government to turn on its own  native population. Swedes themselves are not protected under the new 'hate speech laws', for example. The country is on the verge of utter totalitarianism, only comparable with the USSR.'

Clever, huh? And you thought Sweden was the perfect model for the future. Totalitarianism in the name of the good, the fair, justice, FREEDOM!! Ha Ha! The least we can do is continue to speak freely, honestly, whatever appears to us to be true. We actually have no rights. But we do have our own power, inner spirit, integrity, and sovereignty, which nobody can take away. 'If liberty means anything at all....'





         

  

A Democracy of Fruit

One day Captain West, Leader of the People of the Nation of Many Fruit, judged that the time had come to address the multitudes on a matter of great importance. 'Friends' he said to the assembled masses. 'Here in the Nation of Many Fruit we are a proud and privileged people. We are not like the aggressive, troublemaking people of Russland. Neither are we like the sly and cunning hard-as-nails Ironians. Again, we hold nothing in common with the slave-driven and pathological people of Northern Careers. And we are not at all like the repressive Rubik Cubans. No, friends, we have Freedom. We have Choice. And, above all else, we have Democracy!'

At this, the gathered throng squealed in delight. 'Here in the Nation of Many Fruit, we have democracy and choice' reiterated the Great Captain. 'Yes indeed, we give you a choice of fruit. It's for you to decide. We give you Coxes, Russets, or Golden Delicious!'

Once more, the people exploded into rapturous applause. 'Freedom, freedom, freedom' they chanted as of one voice. 'Coxes, Russets, Golden Delicious.'  One man at the back of the crowd, a surly-looking fellow with lank orange-brown hair and a wispy beard, slowly raised his head and spoke: 'I want a banana' he muttered. The crowd fell silent for a moment before breaking into a disparaging and slightly nervous chuckle. Then a young woman with long blond hair, porcelain pale skin, and painted red lips piped up: 'I'd rather like some strawberries.' At this, the people gathered in the square took to murmuring, then started to boo and hiss loudly.

The Captain stood still and stared for a moment. Then he spoke. 'Such nonsense' he declared. 'We have freedom. We have choice. We have democracy.'  'Bananas? Strawberries?' whinnied his left-hand man. 'Poisonous. toxic. Never heard of them. Probably don't even exist.'  'These people are terrorists' chimed in his right-hand man authoritatively. 'Conspiracy theorists. Out to destroy our Great Nation. Don't worry: we have their details.'

'We have Freedom' restated the Captain to the gathered throng. 'We have Choice. Above all, we have Democracy. I wish you all a good night.'

At this, the crowd applauded as one, before dispersing homewards, to discuss late into the night the Big Question: Coxes, Russets, or Golden Delicious.

Image: Cezanne, innit.



      

More Fruit, Please....... Part One

                  Ah, wild figs. These are the babies.....

I've always been fascinated by the past. Not yesterday - World Wars, the Victorians, the Tudors and Stuarts - but the really past past. I am not alone in this. The abiding, almost universal, love affair of children with dinosaurs resonates with a largely unconscious intuition of our dim and distant origins. Young people can identify with the prehistoric for good reason.

One of the foremost aims of the growing-up process is to remove fanciful notions such as this, instead introducing the child to the 'real world', and preparing it for life the way it should be led: go to school, get a job, get a mortgage, raise a family, grow old, and die. Fortunately for me - and to the acute discomfort of my father - this claustrophobic version of the Freudian reality principle failed to take proper root in my own psyche. I continued to fruitfully dream, and track back, back, back......

Fascinated as I was by our ancient past, I became further preoccupied with the nature of the human condition. Inherent to my status as a young human being was a compelling musing on the big and vital questions: what? who? why? how come? Distant past and perplexing present appeared to collide when I came across Robert Ardrey and his two books, 'African Genesis' and 'The Territorial Imperative'. Ardrey took a hard look at what he thought we know about our distant ancestors on the African plains, and concluded that hard-wired into our nature is the aggression, competitiveness, and power-based hierarchies that have been the cause of so much pain and suffering throughout human history. His bleak, nasty-by-nature vision was one that, even then, I suspected to be flawed; and how much we can deduce about human nature by looking at the past in this way remained a vexing question. Yet Ardrey's writings vividly conjured up a version of primordial humanity, and had a profound impact on me. I saw dominance structures and latent viciousness everywhere.

Two or three years down the line, age around twenty, I had pretty much discarded the 'killer ape' theory of humanity. I also began to write an occasional journal called 'Journey to the Centre of the Brain'. As the title suggests, it was intended as a head-on collision with the deepest existential questions of life. This sporadic, three-year venture contains no narrative, just a jumble of pieces falling fairly randomly onto the page on the subjects of Zen, freak philosophy, consciousness, LSD, and renunciation. Most of it is unpublishable. The relevant feature here is the opening chapter. titled 'My life during the Cretaceous'. The first paragraph goes like this:

'I suppose it could really be any time, the Carboniferous, the Triassic, the Pleistocene, but I feel that the Cretaceous has some sort of significance, because the present-day life forms and life styles seem to have started to come together at this time. Like the dopey dinosaurs were going down, disappearing for now and possibly forever, and mammals and 20th century vegetation types were really coming into prominence. It's like I can feel the Cretaceous within me, because somewhere along the line I was back there in the Cretaceous, and that's an inheritance that's within my bones; my mind and body.'

If there is any structure to 'Journey' it is just this. The investigation - the experience, even - must begin here, with the beginnings. And they need to be traced back as far as possible - to moments when we are, maybe, unrecognisable even to ourselves. We are not who we think we are. Not at all....

Fast forward to the year 2014 and the publication of 'Return to the Brain of Eden', essentially an update of 'Left in the Dark' from 2007. From time to time a book appears that is intriguing, and possibly very important: 'Return to the Brain of Eden' is one such book. Authors Tony Wright ('inspiration and research') and Graham Gynn ('translation and scribe') take a serious look at the human condition in the light of both modern brain neuroscience and what we now know about deep human and pre-human prehistory. In particular, they muster the courage to stare straight into the abyss of mystery and inconvenience, where lurk a bundle of unexplained and/or ignored anomalies and peculiarities about the human species. One-handedness, hairlessness, bipedalism, and female orgasm, to mention a few. Of greatest significance, however, and most remarkable of all, is our brain. Not so much its current size, but the astonishing trajectory of its growth through time. '....the assumption of a straight progression from a pea-brained ancestor to the ultrabrainy modern homo sapiens is decidedly shaky. Hominid brains appear to have remained fairly constant in size for a long period from some 1.8 million years ago until about 600,00 years ago. But then, from 600,000 to 150,00 years before the present, fossils show that the cranial capacity of our ancestors skyrocketed. Brain mass peaked at about 1,440 grams (3.17 pounds). Since then brain mass has declined to the 1,300 grams (2.87 pounds) that is typical today.' (Chapter Two, 'From the Forest').

So, get this: our ancestors of 100,000 years ago had bigger brains than we do. What the hell were they doing with all that brain capacity? This, you would have imagined, would be hot news indeed, with every scientist and academic worth her/his salt rushing to develop an explanation for this extraordinary element in our prehistory. A vital link in the quest to discover 'who we are'. Not so. It's a reality that does not fit comfortably into the neo-Darwinian worldview that shapes so much of modern mainstream society. It is generally quietly ignored.

In 'Return', Tony Wright proposes an answer. Our ancestors, in a prehistory stretching back over several million years, lived for the greater part of this duration in tropical forests, where their diet consisted overwhelmingly of fruit. The effects on our biochemistry of such a diet are complex and many, and are outlined in some detail in the book. Tony Wright posits that this diet would have initiated a positive feedback system, promoting physical health, psychological well-being and, as a by-product, a rapidly expanding brain size. Conversely, when they eventually left the forests and by necessity abandoned the fruit diet, the hominids brought into being a reverse process of all-round degeneration. Which is where we are today.

While any theories about the distant past will necessarily remain speculative in these times when effective time travel is a rarity, the notions put forward in 'Return' appear more convincing than any of the highly dubious ideas put forth by others. Though working within the overall framework of evolution theory, Tony Wright and Graham Gynn introduce a few vital twists of their own, ones which make all the difference.

Some of Tony's ideas and research can be explored further on his website, but the book is best. In the meantime, I'm off to eat a mango.....

To be continued.

Image: Africa Bike

        

        

A Note For Samhain

Over recent years, and with erratic degrees of diligence and enthusiasm, I have marked the main festivals in the 'pagan' calendar: the solstices and equinoxes, along with the four great intermediary days. Should you live with at least one foot out in the natural world, you soon realise that these festivals all denote a significant turning point in the annual cycle, along with the accompanying human psychological attitude. And of these various festival days, it is Samhain that has the deepest impact on me.

Despite having lived for almost a decade in this northerly place, I am still caught off-balance by the speed with which the days shorten at this time of year (and conversely, by the fast-growing hours of daylight in March and early April). Ignore the shift at your peril. Should I not permit my body and mental habits to catch up, I will be in a state of exhaustion by the end of November, feeling painfully alienated and 'out of touch'. About a fortnight ago I started to feel the discomfort typical of this change in the year. Making the adjustment is not, for me, straightforward: it involves shedding a skin, renouncing the persona of busy outer activities in favour of a more inner attitude. Actually, this is a change in ego identity, from one who 'does' to one who 'sits' and 'is'.

So we enter the time of year when darkness has the upper hand. We live surrounded by blackness, and must make whatever provision is necessary. It is the time for magic, mysticism, penetrating the depths. For the feminine to come forth. For gazing long at a moon-and-star embroidered sky. For setting out on the kitchen table the Tarot cards of the High Priestess, the Moon, and Death. It is the time for watching what we considered to be strong and stable fall apart, or dissolve. For material to slip back into the void, into the darkness and nothingness, whence it came. A time for brews, unguents, and magic potions.

Though horribly commercialised, Hallowe'en remains as a faint reminder of this unique time of year. Witches, ghosts, ghouls, weird things. It is indeed the time when the veil between the worlds is thin, almost inviting us to tear it asunder. This is something that I find quite tangible as I walk through the woods, or even gaze across the trees and gardens out of my back window. The enforced busy-ness of the weeks to come, as the western world of humans winds itself up for the fake merriment of Christmas, bears witness to the alienation of modern mainstream culture from our authentic, natural rhythms.

We enter the darkness. And there we shall remain, until, come the arrival of February and the festival of Imbolc, we may stand atop a hill and welcome back the sun, the light, the brightness that increases by the day. Happy, magical Samhain, everyone.

Image: fragment from Witches Sabbath by Michael Heer, 1626



        

On The Hillpaths

Ah yes, the hillpaths. Not any old hillpaths - these specific ones. I have walked them eight or ten times, and never met another person on them (save my own companion, on the few times I have not gone out alone). They don't climb up the hills as such (though they do reach a height of 1500 feet above sea level) but more lead right into the hills. To the heart of things; into the belly of the beast, even. As such, they enter land more lonely, wild and mysterious than many-a path that leads to a giddy summit.

The track sets off from behind the tiny village as one, before bifurcating a few minutes' walk up the hillside. The paths were originally deerstalkers' ways into the wild places, built during the Victorians' craze for such pursuits. Nowadays, from what I have seen, stalkers travel mainly in swanky modern dark-green all-terrain vehicles across marshland and moor; on a good day, they probably don't need to get off their bum in order to bag a stag. In truth, these old deerstalkers' paths have seen better days, and some are in danger of falling into total disrepair. The hillpath I chose last week alternated between stretches of clear stony terrain and deep puddles, before occasionally getting lost altogether in bog and temporary baby lochs. The west coast of Scotland had clearly experienced a little precipitation over recent days.....

I hadn't walk this particular hillpath for several years. While some of it was familiar enough, other sections seemed new to me; and the hills can be unrecognisable from season to season. At one point, the pencil-thin track through the heather took a sharp turn to the right, and began to climb steeply above a deep, narrow gorge accommodating a rapidly-flowing mountain stream. This didn't seem right at all, but I continued anyway, just to see where it actually led. Ten minutes later, it became clear that this was indeed the path, as I emerged onto flatter ground that my memory banks recognised from five years past.

As I climbed further, landscapes opened up around me. Behind me, the unmistakeable jagged outline of the Cuillin of Skye appeared. While sunshine was in short supply all around me, the Cuillin were bathed in the low ethereal glow of mid-autumn sun. It does happen from time to time.

A pregnant, almost disturbing, silence had accompanied me all the way. The hills hereabouts have the ability to unnerve and unsettle the individual, particularly in certain weather conditions. Around now, though, the silence began to be punctuated by a distant piercing bellow, followed by another spine-chilling roar. Stags were out on the hills, and not too far away. I scanned the hillsides, then scanned again, but nothing. Maybe they were really close, but their coats would merge seamlessly into the colours of the autumn around. Then I heard the sound of scree moving down a slope to my right: two deer were crossing the hillside, but females. I continued to walk quietly and attentively. The roars continued to ring through the air. Then, halfway up the hillside to my right, I saw one. He stood still, as is the way of deer on the hill, and looked. I too stood still and looked. He was a magnificent specimen, and I pondered how, should there be a fight between stag and human, there would be only one victor. Then, as if fatigued by this mutual gazing, he turned his back and moved away. Swiftly yet silently, with grace and dignity, and without the slightest sign of anxiety or panic.

I reached the top of the pass. The afternoon sun was already beginning to set over the Cuillin skyline. I looked into the glens and mountains below and beyond me: some of the most isolated peaks in Scotland, normally requiring an overnight camp to be visited properly. I climbed to a small nearby peak before retracing my steps out of the wildness. Several deer peered down at me from a ridge above, a bit like cowboys out for an ambush in a 1960s spaghetti western. Twilight was descending as I rounded a corner and saw the familiar and somewhat comforting outlines of the few dwelling places of the village. I gave thanks, crossed the little river by the haphazard collection of rocks loosely arranged as stepping stones, shed a final glance hillwards, then was gone.



        



     

The Empire Strikes back

  Image found on Neil Kramer's Facebook page

Here we go round the mulberry bush. Again. And again. And again. Apparently, in the original, it was a bramble, not mulberry, bush; and this barbed image may well be more appropriate.

We have recently witnessed that annual gathering of the Wise, the True, and the Holy, otherwise known as the Conservative Party Conference. Prominent among the speakers was Not-at-Home Secretary, Theresa May. Our own local Green Tara, Mother of Mercy, Tory Bodhisattva of Infinite Love and All-Seeing Compassion announced that, should the Conservatives win the next General Election, they would be introducing 'Extremist Disruption Orders'. Folk who represent a threat to 'the functioning of democracy' could be banned from speaking at public events, from broadcasting or protesting.

Shortly beforehand, David Cameron had spoken at the U.N. In his speech, he stated that non-violent conspiracy theorists are just as dangerous as ISIS. That, I take it, includes Pale Green Vortex. Read while you can, folks: we won't be around forever.

It is plainly obvious what the whole thing is about. It is a full assault on 'dissenting views', a vague term that could be extended to include anything outside the Lib-Lab-Con, Republicans-and-Democrats paradigm. This is the barely-hidden subtext, and one that Cameron has been particularly keen on. Remember catching paedophiles as a pretext for increasing internet surveillance? Rarely have I come across a politician who is so transparently a hollow puppet for other people's agendas as David Cameron. Whenever I see him, I am reminded of this bendy rubber rabbit toy I had when I was a child. It could be twisted and manipulated into whatever shape you wanted. It eventually got old and was thrown away....

The war on terrorists is a dream come true for politicians. Since terrorists can pop up anywhere and everywhere, it's a war that can never be properly won, hence delivering a state of perpetual fear and attitude of constant warfare. Thus we will always need politicians to defend and protect us, and to introduce more and more measures to help us control the bad guys. So a lot of it is just that: a pretext for increased control, silencing voices that disagree or, more to the point, see through the whole bloody charade.

Meanwhile, yesterday evening, BBC aired a programme seriously challenging the official version of events surrounding genocide in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. If the BBC were to present more programmes questioning the official version of reality - on things like the Arab Spring and the windfarm fraud, for example - I would readily review my opinion of the corporation. As it is, while western governments gaily announce war in the Middle East on a regular basis, they idly stood aside while literally millions died in Rwanda and DRC (where, in the eastern regions, things remain far from stable even today). This is the kind of reality that gives the game away. It's not about Mother of Mercy. Not at all. It's about far sinister stuff, much of which the pathetic puppets of Obama, Cameron, and the rest are probably only faintly aware, if at all. It's a long, slow process whereby the tentacles of control are intended to reach out further and further, to squash independent thinking, freedom of speech, free spirited living. This is the long game: it behoves us to be awake to its many low tricks.



              

The Wisdom of Doctor Who

          Doctor and sidekick - welcome into the Vortex!

I don't watch television very much. I watch Doctor Who even less. The Doctor's rapid breathy mutterings, the quickfire witty one-liners, not to mention the quality of sound issuing from our ancient television set, mean that things pass me by before I've had the chance to realise that I've missed them.

I caught some of last weekend's episode, however. The Doctor and sidekick Clara touched down in Sherwood Forest at the time of Robin Hood. Strange things were afoot, as they tend to be in this programme. Eventually, the Doctor sorted it out. A bunch of robots from far away had landed and transformed their spaceship into a castle (disguise your nefarious intentions with a cloak of respectability). They had recruited the Sheriff of Nottingham as their human emissary/puppet leader. He was the public face, so that the ordinary folk didn't realise who was really behind everything, or what their true motives were. The robots were eventually revealed to be what they really were - robots, shadowy enemy figures, not human, in fact inhuman.

Thus far the programme presented a reasonable description of how lots of things really happen in the world of human affairs. Things got even more interesting, though, when the Doctor continued to insist that Robin Hood was a robot, too. Robin, champion of the masses and the Great Good - surely not. Naturally enough, he denied the accusation. The Doctor explained his reasons. Bad guys like the robots need to establish some good guy as apparent opposition, to give the ordinary folk 'the illusion of hope, and for them to keep on working.' It was Lenin who famously stated that the best way to control the opposition is to be it, and the notion of 'controlled opposition' is well-known in alternative research circles. Actually, not just the notion, the reality: check it out in Ukraine, the Middle East, almost anywhere that strife flares up which the Western governments take notice of. Things begin to make a bit more sense. Controlling the opposition, becoming the opposition, is a major ploy, it would seem, in moulding world affairs to your own pattern.

In the end, Robin Hood turned out to be a proper human being, not a robot after all. Yippee! But I found it curious to see the notion of controlled opposition being rolled out on the BBC, on a Saturday evening. Is this a mocking of public stupidity? Shove it in people's face and they still don't realise what's going on. The Doctors gets it. Why doesn' t everybody else?  

 

Wider Perspective

At the end of August I spent a couple of days in the far north-west of Scotland. Beyond the little port of Ullapool, the countryside of Highland Scotland changes dramatically. Trees generally give up the ghost in an unequal struggle for survival. It is a bare landscape, almost constantly battered by the wind, a terrain of moorland out of which weirdly-shaped mountains appear, as if scattered randomly on the scene. Begin to climb, and you soon appreciate that this apparent carpet of heather and rock is illusory. The place is as much water as dry land: a multitude of lochans dapple the landscape opening up at ones feet, on a sunny day glistening brilliantly.

It was on one such day, with not so much as a cloud in the sky, that I climbed one of the region's strange extra-terrestrial peaks. With every step onwards and upwards, the landscapes opened up all around me, daring my consciousness to reach out, absorb, and embrace this expanse, this almost infinite space. Nearing the summit and clambering over boulders and bare rock, I found myself thrown about by the wind characteristic of this unique corner of the planet. And on the way down, I sat for a while and looked out northwards across this magnificent scene of mountain, rock, and water. The colours I beheld gradually became more pristine, as if emanating from a place that we rarely contact. At one point, it seemed that the green-and-golden land reclining between two long lochans was breathing, the inhaling and exhaling of Gaia herself. The rhythm of my own body appeared to synchronise with that of the land, forcing me into concentration, into feeling my unique presence in this precise and present moment. Simultaneously, as may occur in such times of minor epiphany, the normal affairs of humanity fell naturally and effortlessly into their rightful place in the bigger scheme of things. They were revealed asgenerally  trivial, while being lauded as critically important down in the town, the city, the marketplace.

At 600 metres above sea level, gazing out across some of the oldest rocks on the planet in mid-afternoon at the tail end of August, I fancied that I perceived the distinctive rhythm of the natural world as it goes about its particular business. And foremost amongst the trivialities of human affairs as experienced from this perspective was the subject of the day, the matter of independence for Scotland. Suddenly everyone must have an opinion on this topic of topics. Funny, since until only recently we were all happy to go about our business without giving the question a moment's thought. Then some smart dude began banging on about how important it was, and what a difference it would make. And now everyone has to have something to say. This, I submit, is a classic example of mass mind manipulation; I reserve the personal freedom not to have an opinion should I decide not to do so.

The bottom line is that, whatever the result of the referendum, the Empire will get in, with its own set of assumptions, prejudices, and lists of what is really important. The notion of 'independence' may appear superficially attractive, but its major proponents have shown themselves to be a bunch of dark clowns, who rarely have a clue what they are doing or are going to do. Instead, they revert to every low trick in the handbook of amateur mind manipulation. The sad thing is that there are folk out there who actually fall for it.

The streets of my home town are plastered with placards and posters of the 'Yes' campaign, the final last-gasp bit of brainwashing of those without a brain. It is noticeable how a certain portion of the 'Yes' supporters resemble religious zealots in their style and emotionality. Independence has become for them a religious matter; they have turned into political fundamentalists, embodying all the dangers that fundamentalism incorporates. It is an evangelism that I find disconcerting, and leads me to the observation that some people readily embrace a cause. In fact, they are desperate for a cause. There is a notion - quite correct - that something is not quite right in our planetary project. But this particular response to this uncomfortable feeling is totally inappropriate. Find a belief, embrace a cause. In this state of despair, such people do not examine closely the object that will bring salvation. To do so will probably be self-defeating anyway. The important thing is to have a cause, a campaign, a belief that will take away the pain, will make things better. A cause - any cause to save the world from its own horrible self. Religion will still do for some people, but for many this has worn a bit thin, so we're out in the world instead. Politics, green issues, health issues. Save the planet. Save the seagull. Save the lowly worm from the seagull. Almost anything will do. And it's all to no avail - pretty much, anyway. Things don't really work like that.

I continued to look out over the rocks, the lochs, the mountains. A homecoming and totally alien at the same time. It is an irony that, on this, the theatre of independence has been completely silent on both sides. What is Scotland if not its ancient landscapes? Intrinsic parts of its history, prehistory, and cultural heritage. Its peoples viscerally moulded by sea, wind, hill, and its strange beauty. On preserving this elemental aspect of Scotland nothing is said. And, believe me, it needs preserving - urgently. No. Not a word. You see, the agenda is programmed, pre-arranged, and the ordinary folk flock to speak and bleat, like lambs to the slaughter. The 'independence debate'?: a surreal play enacted in a theatre of darkness by a bunch of ne'er do wells spouting bullshit.



      

  



              

Casey Hardison Lives!

An extremely well-written and heartfelt piece from Casey Hardison following his release from prison and deportation to the U.S.A. It speaks for itself, so I shall say no more.

https://www.erowid.org/columns/metanoia/

Photo: erowid

On Silver Peak

Mountain Amnesia

It's a few weeks back now. A Monday, four o'clock in the afternoon. I sat on a large rock and looked up at the steep hillside rising in front of me. 'One of the finest peaks, not only in this area, but in the whole of the west' declares the book. Massive slopes of thick, tussocky grass, bracken, and varied other vegetation, hiding sharp, angular rocks and invisible holes, led up to the ridge proper, snaking towards the summit beyond. And all pathless. 'I can't do it' I moaned to myself. Not, mind you, 'I could do it if I felt like it, but I'm not in the mood so I won't.' No. I couldn't do it. Literally.

Not so surprising really. Over three hours of travel from home on a number of buses - I'm not a good traveller. Sinuses playing up. A uniform leaden sky above adding a vague suffocating gloominess to proceedings. The sheds of the new fish farm beside the loch didn't help matters either. And I'd walked for ninety minutes with the load of a night's camp on my back already.

I took another swig of water from my flask and looked up at the mountain. What was I to do? I could bugger off back to Fort William. I could slink back home. Just as the demon of despair was quietly making an entrance, I recalled what I had written about before. I was not here on a predetermined path of make or break. I was here in freedom. I was here to stravaig. I stood up and immediately threw my rucksack onto my back. I was free to walk, to come and go, exactly as I wished. I would do whatever I pleased. I was in a moment of great privilege, and to fail to honour this state would be error indeed.

I knew not where I would go, though I knew where I was going. I returned along the lochside path, a new-found spring in my step. I headed up the valley beyond the water's head, passing under the famed viaduct and into the hills bordering arguably the roughest land in all upland Scotland. As evening descended, the clouds broke in tune with my mood, and soft light suffused the world. My sinuses, I noted, had cleared. A weary-looking couple passed me, coming off the hills. 'Far rougher than the map indicates' was their verdict on their cross-country overnight camp. I watched them trudge down the track in the direction of the viaduct and a welcome pint beyond.

I set up camp at the base of a mountain I knew a little from a few years back. A little path, built courtesy of stalkers in days long gone, threaded its way up the hillside to the distant summit. Maybe this would be my fate on the morrow.

I rose at 5.30. While I never sleep properly in the wild (not even in my swanky new Zephyros 2 Lite tent), it is a wonder and a privilege to be out and about in such places as the day begins. I packed up the dew-soaked tent, splashed my face in the waters of the little waterfall tumbling nearby, and began to walk. The path climbs at an easy angle, miraculously weaving its way up and through the rocks and tangles of vegetation. Then, at a certain point, it is as if you pass through a door, and you are walking through a truly wild landscape, rocks thrown around at crazy, chaotic angles. I spy a deer raked on the hillside; we stop and stare at one another. Then I am on, climbing steeply to the top of the first peak, then over terrain more fitting the Moon than planet Earth. Then I am on the true summit on the mountain.

It is only nine o'clock, but the sun is already warm. A few clouds bubble up over the highest surrounding peaks, but the air is soft, clear and stable. I leave the rucksack beside the summit cairn and wander around, taking it all in. This is one of the most magnificent mountain views I have had the fortune to witness - participate in, even. I peer down one side of the mountain, which falls in one great swoop to the head of Loch Morar, uninhabited, unfrequented, and sparkling deep blue in the morning sun. To the north, the craggy peaks of the Rough Bounds. Westwards, the sea and the outlines of the distant western isles.

I stay absorbed in this wilderness of rock, sky, and water for a good ninety minutes. As I begin to return to the glen far below, I meet another human on his way up. He is dressed in shorts, and has big cleg bites on his legs. He has almost completed his 'Munro round' - only five or six to go - but, he tells me, has climbed this particular mountain four or five times. 'I think it's the best view of all' he states. I don't use the word synchronicity, but tell him that I was thinking precisely the same about this peak, which goes generally unheralded in the books. We exchange tales for a few minutes, then bid one another farewell, fondly recognising one another as kindred spirits.

The snaking path, a welcome drink at the waterfall; the viaduct, a few tourists, and the world of humans with its peculiar endeavours. A tiny bird, a finch, joins me at my table, familiar with this human lark, as I enjoy coffee and a cake in the little cafe beside the tourist route. It quickly gobbles up the crumbs I leave, before flying off into the bushes nearby. I dawdle off to wait for a bus. Then I am home.





                      

Out and About In the Scottish Andes

The llamas of Loch Duich

Wot's this then? A bunch of llamas in Scotland? Surely not. And not just Scotland, but the north-west Highlands at that. What can they be doing here in this incongruous spot? There can surely be only one reason for such an anomaly, such an aberration. It must be climate change.

One of the cheap shots aimed at people who don't like windfarms is the calling of names - NIMBYs. Personally, I take the whole of planet Earth as my back garden, so I suppose that makes me a NIMBY par excellence. This being the case, I was both saddened and angered to read a few days ago that the Rampion Offshore Windfarm has been given the final go-ahead. This will consist of a fleet of 100-175 turbines stuck in the sea 8-15 miles off the coast of southern England - Brighton and Hove to be precise. Beachgoers in Brighton, not to mention folk out for a stroll over the South Downs, will be treated to the vista of an industrial wasteland out at sea while sucking their ice-cream. I had wondered whether the middle classes of southern England might have been spared this particular plague. But then I suppose that with Greenie Green Caroline Lucas as MP, the folk of Brighton had it coming to them (those who voted for her, anyway.....).

The green light for this great project was given, of course, by that apology for a human being Ed Davey. This is just the sort of project we need, he bleated: jobs, economic growth, energy security, carbon emission targets, blah blah. His statement was fascinating, because nobody believes this bullshit any more. That's not actually true, there are still a few believers - nine at the last count. But more and more 'normal' people are coming to realise that it's all political manoeuvering, carbon tax and green energy scams, controlling the means of production, lining the pockets of those whose pockets are already lined etc etc.

An extraordinary disconnect has developed between what politicians and others 'in control' tell us and what people know and believe. Ed Davey is just a particularly mind-numbing example. A made a quick scan of the comments sections of the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian websites following two recent 'events': Cameron's latest project to increase snooping powers on personal communications; and the terrorists-putting-explosives-inside-mobile-phones-means-more-airport-scrutiny story. In both instances, I was amazed at how many 'We don't believe this crap anymore, it's all about keeping us in fear and giving more power to the authorities' comments there were. This isn't Red Ice Radio, it's serious mainstream media. People have always been wary of authorities, but a sea change has taken place over recent years. Folk are waking up to the name of the game in big numbers. The Emperor has no clothes on, and his nakedness is there for all to see. Bankers, Bilderbergers and their ilk are living on increasingly shaky ground. The solution is not to defect to Russell Brand or Nigel Farage, but where things go from here (if anywhere: many people have a sadly strong habit of reverting to default position) is a matter of significance for the future shape of human affairs.

Returning home from my mountain-and-llamas day, I passed in the early evening sunshine one of our principal local shrines to hubris, deceit, and deception, the hill-top Millenium Windfarm. On this calm summer's day, every single blade of the turbines remained completely motionless.

'Mummy, mummy, the windmills aren't moving today. Does that mean cold soup for supper again?'
'I'm afraid so. But we've got some dry crackers to go with it.'
'Mummy, is it true that they're trying to plunge us back into the Dark Ages?'
'Oh, darling, where do you get these silly ideas of yours?'
'Mummy, why don't they take a look at those free energy thingies being invented by those very clever people? Why don't they, why don't they? Not even a teensie-weensie look?'
'You ask too many questions, dearest. Now here's your soup - minestrone, your favourite. Cold.'

A few miles further, I approached the modest settlement of Invermoriston. Many of the houses and gardens are festooned with banners. It's not a local festival - they all bear the words 'No Moriston Windfarm'. Picturesque Invermoriston, by the shores of Loch Ness, is already pretty much encircled by approved wind factories, but the slimy bastards want to put up yet another one very close by. People don't want this stuff, it is destroying their life. Stick a 24/7 disco in the middle of Westminster Abbey and you get the picture.

At the time of death it seems that human beings are confronted with a life review. I hope Ed Davey and the scummy rest are thinking about it now: they might have a lot of explaining to do.....



        

Down the Psychedelic Rabbit Hole

Jan Irvin. Joe Atwill. Manufacturing the Deadhead. David McGowan. The dark origins of hippiedom. Your thoughts are not your own. Neil Sanders. Plus the fulsome coverage afforded these people and their theses by Red Ice Radio. To all of these I give hearty thanks. As a result of your work, with its half-truths, dodgy conclusions, and occasional total misconstruings, I have been forced to wake up - to the fact that 'alternative research' needs to be viewed with the same critical eye required when dealing with the mainstream......

About five years ago I discovered - or, rather, rediscovered - the alternative community. I say 'rediscovered' because I was an active member of the alternative scene during the early and mid 1970s, before deciding that my future lay with Buddhism, and taking that as my life's context. It was with joy and a palpable sense of relief that, back in 2009, I made contact with the modern digital age equivalent of the counter culture. I began listening to podcasts such as Shamanic Freedom Radio. I attended ARC conventions, and within a year Pale Green Vortex was up and running - well, toddling.

Consciousness has always been my main bag, but I soon found out that, along with matters of the mind, the contemporary alternative scene embraced a good deal of research on subjects such as geo- and para-politics, history and prehistory, the powers behind the scenes, and so on. My own studies relating to climate change and energy sources - especially wind farms - were already leading me to the realisation that what the truth is and what we are told by the BBC and other mainstream media outlets are not necessarily the same thing. This personal suspicion was confirmed and fleshed out by the many reports appearing on a regular basis within the alternative world. I began to see that we are presented with, not so much 'the truth', as a certain version of reality, a kind of theatrical narrative, with its own dark intentions. Often not so much a matter of open-ended information as a means of thought-and-attitude control. Such a realisation has something of a seismic impact - everything that I had learnt until now demanded fresh scrutiny, with the possibility that it was all a lie. Not everybody emerges from this stage of 'dark unveilings' psychologically unscathed. I am, it seems, one of the lucky ones. And I am extremely grateful for the work of those researchers who continue to reveal the nefarious side to what we are presented with as reality.

Enter Jan Irvin and his band of merry - or not-so merry - men (and they do all seem to be men). Jan is at the forefront of a bunch of researchers who have recently been promoting the theory that the 'psychedelic revolution' (whatever that is), the hippie dream (whatever that may turn out to be) were the creations of the CIA, military and other intelligences, as a big mind control operation on western youth culture. It seems at first hearing outrageous; but then reality often appears outrageous when first encountered.

I suppose that I take the notion a bit personally. I was not directly engaged in very much 1960s stuff, being a bit young for that. Neither would I have ever called myself a hippie (nobody with any counter-cultural self-respect ever called themselves a hippie). Yet the aspirations of my own commune years had their roots in the matrix of late 1960s 'youth culture'. So was I an unwitting victim of mind control games by invisible overlords? Actually, not at all.......    

Of the various researchers in on this theme, it is Jan Irvin whose work I am most familiar with. A quick google search will lead you to his piece, co-written with Joe Atwill, 'Manufacturing the Deadhead'. Take a look. A careful read, along with a listen to his interviews on Red Ice, throws up a whole number of, as I said in the first paragraph, half-truths, dodgy conclusions, plus the occasional total misconstruing (deliberate or not, I do not know). To give just one or two examples. He calls upon the fact that a number of leading lights of the so-called psychedelic revolution (we could devote an entire article to this notion in itself, and deconstruct it: what is this 'psychedelic revolution', does it exist outside the heads of Jan Irvin and the Daily Mail etc. But we won't) were from military families as evidence of the thesis. Mind control puppets. Ironically, two of the foremost examples - Frank Zappa and Jim Morrison - were themselves highly critical of the sheeplike tendencies within 1960s youth. They both encouraged people to think and live for themselves, and they couldn't stand hippies ('You walk across the floor with your flower in your hand/ Trying to tell me no-one understands' sneers Morrison in 'Five to One'). Irvin quotes selectively from people like Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna ('cherry-picking' is the modern term), as if they had a completely consistent philosophy on hand to deliver. You can find a quote to prove pretty much anything from Leary, a flawed genius with a fatal attraction to opportunism and cheap publicity.

Jan Irvin seems to lump together a bundle of disparate people and organisations from different times - Aldous Huxley, Leary, McKenna, Esalen Institute, Alan Watts, Jim Morrison, the modern New Age - as all part and parcel of a big conspiracy to pervert and control the minds of western youth. There is a complete misrepresentation of McKenna's notion of the 'Archaic Revival', which Irvin and Atwill appear to feel is important. It is portrayed as a clarion call for a return to the Dark Ages, to peasantry and serfdom. This is total bullshit, no other word for it. McKenna is simply pointing out, as many others have done, that modern civilisation has taken a wrong turn, and that we would be better off rekindling the connection with the natural and supernatural worlds that our ancestors had.

I could continue, but I won't: it's not my intention to write a full critique. You can find out more, for example on Jan's website gnostic media, though beware. Some of it is not very pleasant, the comments sections frequently descending into personal slagging off. Jan's main responses to criticism are either to refer to the trivium (his own method for logic and reason) or to dismiss any doubts as 'horseshit'. There is, in fact, a more constructive discussion on an overtly psychedelic forum, shroomery.

So was this 'psychedelic revolution' of the 1960s a completely spontaneous and innocent upwelling of love, peace, and spiritual interconnectedness? No. Was it a carefully managed mind control event, with all its major players nothing but unwitting puppets in someone else's nefarious project for human enslavement? No. In this case, at least, reality was a dance between trendy groupthink (or unthink) and genuine creative living. Jan Irvin and his buddies are guilty of what one intelligent observer, Matt Reis (find his video on youtube), called 'conspiracy overload'. There is control out there, plenty of it; and there are 'conspiracies'. But to see the entire world through this particular lens is to blind yourself to the multifaceted nature of reality. It is no different to espousing an ideology, as a convenient, ready-made explanation for everything that happens. As Matt says 'This world view does not free minds, it enslaves them further.'

If you'd been a kid in 1958, you'd know one part of the story. My parents' generation, silently thankful just to be alive after the war, happy enough to live at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, with a house and a job and enough food for the evening meal. I was five years old at the time, and I recall standing on the windowsill of the living room, watching cars go by outside, taking people home from a day of work. I knew at that moment that this was not for me. The world held other adventures. I think I was right.....

Image: danngo on 8tracks radio







                       

The Goodly Christian

Beware the False Words of the Dark Magicians

Words are indeed magic. A few well-chosen words can precipitate a love affair, create or destroy a reputation, or incite an entire population to hatred and warfare. The dark magicians of modern times are well acquainted with the magical power of words. Shady sorcerers such as the Clintons, Cleggs, and Obamas; Salmonds and Sturgeons; Merkels and Camerons - make your own list (though some are more adept at the dark art than others, it must be conceded).

It is our responsibility to be wise to the manipulative tricks of these dark magicians in order to inoculate ourselves against the power of their cunning spells. This requires a basic awareness, at the least, of certain aspects of logic, and developing the ability to spot an attempt to cast a poisonous spell. The curse will most likely manifest as a form of logical fallacy, intended to deceive the gullible and unthinking. Anybody unable to discern a fallacy will be easy meat for the magicians' crafty predations.

I invite you to do your own homework on this one; it is not too complex, and is necessary. I will draw attention to two areas that stand out for me, however.

Beware the 'argument' that does not address the point in question, but instead appeals to the emotions, especially the emotional prejudices, of the reader or listener. In recent times, anybody with the temerity to disagree with any of the Scottish National Party's ill-thought-out policies would probably be dismissed as being 'negative'. Whatever that means, I'm not sure; but nobody wants to be branded 'negative', do they? So, to divert unwanted attention from your rubbish ideas, you have a go at the accuser and their negativity. This is not the discourse of proper discussion or debate. Ad hominem arguments are rife, when a point of view is countered by an attack on the speaker/writer's character or personal traits. 'Well, that's just the sort of thing we'd expect an ignorant, ill-informed person like you to say.' Closely related is the calling of names. Trying to dismiss anyone who questions human-made global warming as a 'climate change denier' is an example. By associating them with people who deny the reality of the holocaust, tarring them with the same brush, and thereby suggesting that they are people who refuse to accept the truth that is staring them in the face, and are happy to see us all burn in hell, is a despicably low and nasty trick.

Secondly, beware the black magic of the false dichotomy. A situation is presented in black-and-white terms, as having only two options, while in reality an entire spectrum of (frequently more intelligent) possibilities exist. The false dichotomy is rife. It happens all the time and, if not spotted, is an excellent way of promoting fear and insecurity in a population. A classic example is Bush's post-9/11 statement that 'If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.' No, George, a minute's reflection will demonstrate that it's not like that at all; but in the midst of the panic and insecurity of the moment, clear thinking is rare, and it is good enough to do the trick.

I encounter false dichotomies all over the place. If you're against windfarms, you must be in favour of nuclear. No. If you're not in favour of windfarms, you must be in favour of fossil fuels. Nope again. If you're against windfarms, you can't care about the environment. Bullshit. If you criticise socialism, you must be right-wing. If you're not left-wing, you've gotta be right-wing, O.K.? If you're not with Obama, you must be a Tea Party person. This is all false black-and-white bullshit to prevent proper thinking. Don't let others define the parameters for your thought, what's permitted inside the box and what isn't. Use your own open-ended intelligence. But to do so requires constant diligence. Beware, beware. They're out to get your mind.

The image of the Dark Magician for this piece comes from the fascinating Infinite Visions Tarot. The website is well worth checking out. The online text accompanying some of the figures of the Tarot is more incisive than a lot you can come across. And what Infinite Visions says about this particular card is of relevance with regard to the Dark Magicians lurking amongst us today:

'The Dark Magician is the wounded one who has sunk into deep despair, sadness, hopelessness, and may express these emotions through anger and violence......  The enemy lurks closely, searching for your weakness, and for an opportunity to exploit it. Take mental note of situations or events that stand out as being strange..... You may never see or recognise this enemy because the work is done behind the scenes and in the shadows or under the guise of a friend.'            

Beware, beware. Exercise constant diligence. They're out for your mind.......

Image: Infinite Visions Tarot

Rebirth and the Architecture of Mind Control

I have recently engaged in some communication with several old Buddhist friends on the subject of rebirth. I have been surprised to discover that there are some Buddhists out there who cling to a materialist/nihilist view i.e. that consciousness dies along with the physical body. This philosophical standpoint, I would suggest, is incompatible with Buddhist thought and practice, but there we go. I have ended up pointing out that rebirth - or 'continued consciousness', as I would prefer to call it - is actually more 'scientific' than the materialist view. Though I suppose that it depends on what you consider 'science' to be.

My dictionary defines science as 'the study, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of the nature and behaviour of phenomena in the physical and natural world.' I have no argument with this definition. My point about 'rebirth' is that there is no empirical evidence, despite vast amounts of 'experimental investigation', for the termination of consciousness with physical death. The materialist/nihilist view will assume that consciousness is produced and created by the brain - it does not, I believe, have any other choice. Millions upon millions of pounds have, over recent decades, been lavished on brain research. Nowadays, neuroscience knows a lot about the functioning of the brain: which bits are involved in this disease and that condition; which bits are activated by music, by meditation; which parts connect and contact each other under various circumstances; and the rest. Yet, despite this torrent of research, orthodox science is no closer now than it was twenty years ago to the Holy Grail of its research: the location of consciousness itself. However and wherever they look, our scientists just can't find the location point of consciousness in the brain. The only logical conclusion to draw is that they can't find it because it's not there at all. They're looking in the wrong place.

Set against this the wealth of reliable material available on consciousness as a faculty that can function outside and independent of the brain. Verifiable memories of past lives, near-death and out-of-the-body experiences, and more besides. The materialist/nihilistic view doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny whatsoever.

So what's going on, then? The notion of 'science' has been hijacked by a certain philosophy or ideology in order to make its ridiculous tenets appear more credible. The belief systems of materialism have conjoined the concepts 'science' and 'materialism' for the benefit of the popular consciousness, creating the misnomer 'scientific materialism'. The aim being to deceive people into thinking that 'materialism' is scientific, and everything else is accordingly airy-fairy, namby-pamby superstition. This is a massive manipulation of perception, a largely successful piece of mass mind control. This is the way that things are done. Scientific materialism, which is really a dogma, blind to the whole spectrum of evidence and empiricism central to real scientific enquiry, is presented as the truth, the only truth. It's actually an enormous con trick.

The subject of the nature of consciousness as introduced by the nihilism/rebirth question is not a matter of purely academic curiosity. Its implications are far-reaching. If the consciousness disappears in a puff with the dissolution of the physical body, there's really not a lot of point in anything. We may decide to live ethically, in order to render this life a bit more bearable for ourselves and others, but that's about it. If, however, consciousness extends beyond, taking up temporary residence in this particular physical body as just one small step in a much bigger journey, then whatever happens here takes on far greater significance. What I do now - what I seed consciousness with - will have an influence into a future stretching out to I don't know where.

To make it personal: I have turned up in a fairly favourable rebirth this time round. I don't need to work sixteen hours a day to obtain the means of physical survival. I have access to information, and sufficient personal freedom to follow up most things that I want to. My health does not present an insurmountable obstacle to most activities I may wish to pursue. I have been granted the opportunity to really chip away effectively, to make serious inroads into some quite basic psychological/emotional habits, which do no favours to me or to others. Any real difference I can make now will benefit an indefinite number of  future lifetimes, both for 'my' consciousness and for whatever other energetic configurations may interface with 'mine'. Conversely, I can just fritter away this lifetime. If so, I can expect my obstructive habits to come back and hit me even harder next time round.

'Empire is an ethos that seeks to control humankind by restricting it to a lower state of being' (Neil Kramer, Invisible Empire, May 22nd 2014). Restricting us to a lower state of being: a major feature of mainstream western civilisation as it has rolled itself out over the centuries. In particular, it has been concerned to take out of the public domain any knowledge of dimensions/existence outside the immediate physical, material world. In other words, it has taken materialism, scientific or not, as its preferred ideology for the masses. Its propagation has been a long, protracted matter, and one which continues to this day.

I used to regard the centuries-long battle of Christianity against the indigenous, 'pagan' people whenever it encountered them during its conquest of Europe, the Americas, and elsewhere, as a matter of conflicting belief systems. A long, bloody, and bitter moral (or immoral) crusade for what the Christians believed was right. This is, I suppose, the 'official', exoteric, version of events: a great struggle about who's got the Truth. More recently, I've come to see that it's deeper and far more sinister than this. It's not a question of 'Truth', of 'right versus wrong'. It's a matter of manipulation, power, and control. Taking access to higher dimensions of reality out of the discourse and experience of ordinary folk has been a number one priority in wresting control. Self-empowerment is to be denied the general populace, since it poses the prime threat to effective control over their lives. Firstly, people are granted access (often fake) to anything beyond the material only through a carefully-managed hierarchy of priests. Then they are denied all knowledge and access whatsoever, through philosophies and belief-systems that assert materialism and nihilism (these belief systems trickling down into everyday behaviour and attitudes, influencing the most trivial and mundane affairs). In the end, scientific materialism is revealed as a tool of Empire, of those who would have control over the rest of us by restricting us to a lower state of being. Our philosophies are not a matter of purely - or mainly - academic interest, intellectual ping-pong, and cerebral entertainment. They are a matter of life and death. Or life after death.....

Photo: wakeup-world

                    

Snippets From the West

Part One

The weather proved inclement - a southern English way to say that it rained a lot - so we abandoned notions of mountain walking and did other things instead. One day we visited the Isle of Eigg. One of a cluster of little islands scattered off the coast of western Scotland, and seen particularly well from the mainland near the mighty township of Mallaig, Eigg is interesting for a variety of reasons.

Like the rest of the appropriately-named Small Isles, Eigg is frequently subject to rain, wind, and low cloud: even when the western seaboard of the mainland is clear, the outlines of the Small Isles can sometimes be seen with all but the lowest slopes shrouded in mist. In 1997, however, something unusual happened on the social front on Eigg. There was a community buy-out: the current residents (all 84 of them) pretty much own the island. Since, as noted previously on Pale Green Vortex, much of Highland Scotland still languishes under the control of large landowners and estates, this is something of note. Life on Eigg cannot be easy, and it is with a happy heart that I see a group of people being courageous enough to take their lives into their own hands as far as this.

Community self-sufficiency is at a premium. Eigg provides all its own energy, from a combination of hydro-electric, solar, and wind sources. Even if the official blurb suggests that the islanders have been duped into swallowing the human-produced global warming propaganda, this still strikes me as admirable. Followers of Pale Green Vortex may have concluded that it regards all wind energy as evil. This is not true -quite. There is a world of difference between a few small turbines providing electricity for a local community and an enormous array of huge turbines organised military-like across entire hillsides by giant multinationals. Having said that, Eigg could probably do without its turbines...

As we walked past the scattered settlements on the island with their vegetable gardens (the island is mild, especially in winter, so some edibles do grow well), my mind wandered back to the spring of 1976. Along with my three commune friends, I hitch-hiked from Oxford all the way to Ellon, in north-east Scotland. We had been offered a modest cottage with several acres of land for our dream rural commune project, just outside the township. Ellon is located in the hinterland of Aberdeen, and one day on that Easter weekend I stood on a small hill, with the cruel east wind blowing wet snow into my face. I knew at that moment that I was not ready for this, to devote the remainder of my life to growing turnips on an exposed rise in a remote and forgotten corner of northern Scotland. Neither, it seems, were my colleagues. Within weeks the project had disbanded, each of us going our own separate ways. In some respects at least, the inhabitants of Eigg were doing what I had set out but failed to do. They are a bit of an example for the future; good luck to them.

Part Two

Mountain folk are often goal-focussed: get to the top of Everest even if you don't come back; bag another Munro before sunset; complete another long-distance trail. There is a place for such a style, I suppose, - I know it well myself - but another approach presents itself as sometimes more fitting, more conducive to cognisance and awareness of ones surroundings; more elegant. There is a word from old Scottish for a person who walks differently, a personage one occasionally meets in the modern literature on mountains in Scotland. This is the stravaiger. The dictionary tells us that 'to stravaig' is 'to wander about, especially without a sensible purpose'. The stravaiger is not a hill-bagger, a goal-oriented ticker-of-lists. It is a person who trusts in their spontaneity, their instincts, the natural rhythms and flows in themselves and in the world around them. The true stravaiger might end up spending all afternoon staring into a pool of water, or doing nothing in particular. At heart, the stravaiger is a bit of a Zen person, not to mention a little subversive, presenting a living challenge to the highly-valued notions of achievement and progress that drive the mainstream world. The real trick, I suppose, is to incorporate the ways of the stravaiger into daily life, even that which purports to be linear and progressive.

I was recently introduced to a person of similar ilk to the stravaiger; Slomo. Google him, he's easy to find. A friend sent me a link to the little film on Slomo. He in turn had been sent the link by another friend, who had probably been sent......... Anyway,Slomo was once a big boy in the medical world, but he chucked it all in for a life spent skating along the Californian coast. When skating, he says, he feels close to the divine, and when people see him they recognise him as 'one who got away'. A long time before, an old man had advised him to 'do what you want to', but it took many years for the wisdom of these words to manifest in physical reality. And for him to skate.

Many folk feel uncomfortable with the idea of 'doing what you want to'. Guilty, maybe. Life is meant to be hard, after all, full of knee-jerk self-sacrifice, a catalogue of unfulfilled dreams, disappointments, and unaccomplished ambitions. Not so: this is just a story we tell ourselves. And when Slomo does what he wants to, he is not following passing whims, moods, blind urges; the fad and fancy of the day. He is following the voice of his soul, his inner daimon, name it as you will. To skate is his calling, and I find it inspiring when I come upon the life of anybody who has the courage to follow their deeper instincts and intuitions, to trace the shape of their authentic uniqueness on this wonderful planet. These are indeed the people who have got away. And who have got it right.



              

 

Groupthink

We are in no position to reject relevant reading, whatever the source. A good article:

www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/10853279/sinister-groupthink-powers-the-modern-world.html

Workings of Empire

Here is something for your most serious consideration. Neil Kramer has produced a first-class compilation of various aspects to the workings of Empire. His one page serves as an excellent map, providing the basis for a lifetime of study for the aspiring mystic and seeker of what's really going on in the world. Read, consider, discuss, ruminate and, above all, research......

neilkramer.com/invisible-empire.html




  

All One Big Happy Family, Innit?

Probably not human: Highland frog

During the twilight period of my 'official affiliation' with Buddhism, around twelve years ago, I wrote an article for the magazine of the Buddhist organisation concerned. It was written in the aftermath of 9/11, at a time when I saw no need to question the official version of events that fateful day; nor, indeed, realised that anything other than the story beamed out of televisions and newspapers of the mainstream was possible. The article was called 'I'd rather be a gorilla than a guerilla', the main theme being how little I felt in common, on a deep, visceral level, with certain members of the human race. And how, in certain respects, I felt greater kinship with some non-human beings, even on the level of consciousness. I singled out as an example the gorilla, as an animal closely related genetically to humans, and as an animal with which I felt a personal affinity as a result of the shamanic practice I was undertaking at the time.

The article was, I thought, bold and, within the world of modern Buddhism, potentially controversial and groundbreaking. Without fully recognising the implications of these trains of thought and feeling, I was questioning the discrete nature of different species' identities, suggesting instead a continuum of consciousness. The feedback I received on my radical article was precisely...... zero.

The Gnostics, those western spiritual ancestors contemporary with early Christianity, were forthcoming about this topic. In 'the Tripartite Tractate' the Gnostic mystic writers proclaim there to be, not one, but three different kinds of human. There are the Pneumatics, spiritual souls. Then there are the Psychics, matter-dwelling spirits. Then there are the Hylic, totally devoid of soul, lacking the 'light of epinoia'. All three appear the same, living inside bodies of flesh, sharing the same language, mode of procreation, all with the same DNA etc. But their origin and psychic make-up are seriously different. Three different types of human, dressed up to look the same, but with unique configurations of consciousness, and at their own distinct stage in the 'sacred journey' (call it what you will).

More than once on Pale Green Vortex the words 'psychopath' and 'politician' have appeared in the same sentence. Some readers have considered this uncharitable of me; I'd say that the truth staring us in the face, should we dare to look, is not always pleasant, or what we'd like to see. A more softly-softly but related diagnosis for some people in 'high places' is afforded by the phrase 'narcissistic personality disorder'. I have my reservations about some of these psychological diagnoses, but for now let's go with this one. Narcissistic personality disorder is especially prevalent, it would seem, where visible signs of success, power, and status are prominent, and where admiration is readily forthcoming. Politics, celebrity, academia, medicine, finance, law enforcement, high profile sports. You've got the picture. A person suffering from NPD is likely to exhibit the emotional maturity of a typical 3-5 year old.

You can draw up your own mental list of likely candidates: I've got mine. But hierarchical systems of status, power, and influence will inevitably attract, and be populated by, folk with psychopathic and NPD tendencies. This is the rub, and plain common sense. Bees to the honeypot, and it cannot be any other way. A number of friends of mine have implied at various times that I'm a bit hard on politicians and banksters: we're all the same, really, all trying to create a better world. These friends of mine are in the main intelligent people, articulate and with a decent portfolio of formal qualifications. When asked why, with their apparently impeccable credentials and a wish to improve the world we live in, they haven't made any attempt to climb the political ladder themselves, they are at a loss. The answer's easy. They are decent folk, with a good heart and, unlike the Hylic, with an active soul. They are simply not the kind of people who are going to get into high-profile politics, finance, law, or whatever.

One serious consequence of these ruminations is that our current systems are tailor-made for (and by?) the soulless, the psychopathic. And, what's more, some form of political anarchism is the only political set-up that can in the long term be good for humanity. Even small government doesn't really fit the bill: the bees-to-the-honeypot syndrome dictates that small government will become bigger and bigger as time goes by.

It is a materialist worldview, focussed on physical appearance rather than on consciousness, that has promoted the great fraud that we're all the same. We look the same, therefore we are all the same. It's almost as if we've been put onto by this one. So don't be suckered. And keep your eyes peeled next time you walk down the high street: you never know who or what might be passing you by.




      

            

Home Sweet Home

I recently engaged in some correspondence with an old friend of mine. He related to me how, for much of his life, he has felt out of place in this world; that he has been born in the wrong place or at the wrong time. This is an experience I am only too familiar with myself. The number of occasions I have been out and about, and felt like an alien, sharing little in common with the other people around me and the goings-on in 'the world at large'. I am a misfit who belongs in the stars, with the cosmos at large, not waiting at a bus stop while a parade of Highland drunks sways past, punctuated by groups of teenage girls laden with cheap clothes from Primark.

I replied to my friend, detailing my familiarity with this most uncomfortable feeling. I continued my letter, however, with two more sobering reflections. One is that this experience of being a misfit is actually based on 'perceptual selectivity'. When I look at the world around me as a whole - the plants, the birds, the sun, the hills, the stars - I feel very much at home and in the right place. It is only when I narrow my focus to the world of less-than-noble activities of average human beings, as Castaneda savagely refers to the mass of humanity, that I take on the guise of an alien visitor.

More to the point still is the reluctant realisation that, in terms of consciousness, I am in precisely the suitable place with precisely the most appropriate people. It cannot be any other way. Everything is, in a sense, completely perfect and as it should be. This is the inescapable and humbling conclusion to arise from seeing that consciousness is primary, the main determinant, and seeks out (or, less romantically, just turns up in) the circumstances with which it is familiar, and/or which it needs for the next stage of its sacred journey.

That consciousness is primary is, for me, a no-brainer. The contrary notion, that consciousness is a product of the material brain, seems to me stupid, as well as being coincidentally highly unscientific. While modern neuroscience is successfully mapping out a wealth of functions in different nooks and crannies of the brain, it has got nowhere in locating the place of origin of consciousness itself. That's because it's not there. Stack against this the plethora of reports suggesting that consciousness has a life of its own, independent of any current physical manifestation. Near Death experiences, verifiable reports of past lives, experiences in meditation and other technologies of non-ordinary states of consciousness, not to mention the testament from many traditions from around the world.

Consciousness is just that: consciousness. To consider that it is produced by the brain is akin to believing that television programmes are produced by a television set. The brain is more like a receiver or transducer of consciousness. This consciousness takes up temporary residence in a particular physical body, heading for the exit door when the time arrives. Only a science that is highly prejudiced and based upon fixed ideology - in this case of 'scientific' materialism - can fail to take this on board.

Consciousness cannot help but end up exactly where it should be - this is implicit in notions of karma and rebirth, for example, and is sound common sense. But this is, for me, a humbling realisation. All the silly stuff, all the apparently ignorant people, the entire parade of the surreal and bizarre at the bus stop, is precisely what I need for my own walk along the sacred path. It is not an accident or a cosmic mistake that I am who I am, where I am. I hereby confess my hubris, arrogance, and superiority. While  part of me does indeed fly through the sky and swim with the moon, there is another part that truly belongs in the muck, the confused, the vicious - and the plain humdrum.

This life of mine on planet Earth can serve a twofold purpose. One is to, for want of a better way of putting it, seed the akashic field, the universal consciousness, with constructive, positive stuff. You may hardly see another person in your everyday life, but if you are really doing your mystical stuff, your life needs no more justification than that. But this life also serves as a great learning opportunity. Everyday living is like boot camp training - as Neil Kramer says, if you can survive planet Earth, you can survive anything. And this perspective adds a new, rich gloss to everyday life. No moment need be wasted: every experience, no matter how apparently trivial, provides an opportunity for growth. Every day presents a myriad of choices. Act from truth or untruth. With a sense of rightness or wrongness. With a caring loving heart, or a cold, sod-you attitude. In the mundane lie marvellous opportunities. And if, as I have often done, you feel that the world is crap, and you don't know why you've ended up in this cesspit, there's only one thing to do: stop sulking, get over it, and get on with it......

Photo: bhmpics