Go with the flow, or swim against the tide? Lent 2023: Day 38

The Zen Buddhist concept of the Tao (or Dao) is extremely useful, but difficult to pin down. The way, the path, the flow, the unfolding; something entirely natural that just happens. I wrote in January about the key skill of knowing when to hang on and when to let go - Taoism is letting go in a conscious manner.

Can one let things take their own course, while willing an optimum outcome that is ultimately aligned with the Purpose? I believe one can.

There are times when hanging on makes sense (Ukrainian defence of Bakhmut), there are times when it doesn't (holding assets in a plunging stock-market rather than cutting losses). There are also times when over-planning, over-analysing, leads to paralysis and ultimately depression.

"Only the dead fish swim with the stream" is a metaphor that's neither correct in its literal sense (many live fish do swim with the stream to conserve energy by using the water's flow to aid efficiency) nor apt (whilst there are some cases in which it's right to challenge existing paradigms, there are many other where going along with the flow makes more sense. 

A life in balance calls for setting the slider between two extremes; this is a slightly different case.


It's a case of knowing which situations require action and involvement, and the ones in which you can step back and let fate take the wheel - but willing it in the right direction. Trusting that all will be well in the end, with the 'well' being something higher, greater, than that which you initially imagined to be what you want. 

Zen Buddhism suggests that everything in life is impermanent and constantly changing, so holding onto things or trying to control them is ultimately futile, leading to disappointment and frustration. This is slightly too fatalist a view for me. You can, I believe, guide outcomes, will them into being, but as long as they fit into the greater scheme of things. And when they come to pass, never forget to feel genuine gratitude.

I have stressed the importance of intuition, something metaphysical, beyond reductionist-materialist science. Something that we know to exist, yet cannot in any way prove.

Learning to go with the flow is not synonymous with passive fatalism, but actively wishing luck. That difference is crucial. Letting go, but not being indifferent to the outcome. And be aware that it resides at a higher level, not at the material level. Letting go means placing trust in a higher order than just the cause-and-effect of rationalism. The optimal outcome should be one that elevates the whole, that stands one tiny step closer to One on the infinitely long path from Zero to One. It might not look that way from where you are right now; but with the passage of time, all becomes clearer.

Lent 2022: Day 38
When I was a child, I understood as a child

Lent 2021: Day 38
Will we ever understand what's inside the atom?

Lent 2020: Day 38
Religion, Society and the Individual

The Inner Hug: Contact with the Eternal and Infinite - Lent 2023: Day 37

You cannot fake it. It has to be utterly sincere. Your dialogue with God - the Maker, the Purpose, the Unfolding, the Eternal and Infinite. The God of the entire Universe, limitless, timeless; your help.

You are as nothing to the vastness of the Cosmos - and yet it was all created for you. There's a moment in your life in which this paradox becomes clear, when everything clicks into place.

Begin with a quieting of the self. Be at rest, entirely comfortable. Eyes may be closed, or beholding a sight that inspires marvel. As mine are right now, focused on the tall trees in the forest beyond my garden, reaching up to the sky, swaying slightly. A feeling of connectedness, serenity, ideal calm. Breathing slowly. In this state of mind, deep, glorious intuitions may come. 

And how does God manifest God in our lives? In your life? How do you know for certain that the materialist-reductionist worldview is flat, lacking depth and meaning?

Tiny shafts of light that shine through the whirring cogs of our everyday activities - that inner hug, tears of love welling up in the eyes...? Miracles? Does God intervene in our lives? Can we "petition the Lord with prayer"? When this happens, when you feel the inner hug - that is a time to ask. To ask for something that's right and proper., that's aligned with the unfolding Universe. Peace, peace of mind, health, comfort, freedom from fear, freedom from stress. Acceptance. Certainly not pimping the Ego; asking for material luxuries is neither right nor proper.

How do we know we're getting it right? We receive feedback in the form of profound intuitions, unbidden explanations to hitherto intractable problems - suddenly something becomes clear - indisputably clear. A strong, positive voice fills you with confidence, dispelling doubt. And that 'inner hug' - that magic, warm feeling within, your eyes well up with tears of joy - a surge of oxytocin through the bloodstream, acting as a biofeedback response to your trust in the Universe.

Can we always bring it on? I don't think I'm spiritually evolved enough to do so at will. It's now the evening, I try and I try. Somehow now it's not out there for me. We all have ups and downs - as the Rabbi says, "when you're having a great day, remember it can all turn shit-shaped very quickly. The corollary is also true. When you're having a shitty day, remember that great days are just around the corner."

And I must say, I'm happier with each passing year. To a 40-year-old, this may seem odd - it certainly would have seemed odd to a 40-year-old version of me to have read such words. But it is true.

Lent 2022: Day 37
Take it easy - or get rigorous?

Lent 2021: Day 37
Dream insights into past lives

Lent 2020: Day 37
Further thoughts on Reincarnation

Money and Metaphysics - Lent 2023: Day 36

 "Money is the root of all evil" - well, not quite. Dig deeper and you'll find that actually the root of all evil is the Ego - which money and power feed. Money buys power, which is used to buy more power, which is used to extract more money... Once you're a billionaire, the only egos you are interesting in impressing are those belonging to your peers. To them, there's no bigger trophy with which to flaunt your ego than human minds. I refer here to Elon Musk who spent $44 billion buying Twitter to shape it to his will, as well as nonagenarian media owner Rupert Murdoch and their like. Once you have so much money that another private jet, another Caribbean island or another 300ft yacht brings you no more incremental pleasure, then warping the minds of millions becomes a goal. Egos that don't know where to stop - the root of so much evil. Putin - maybe the richest of them all - is destroying hundreds of thousands of human lives to create a legacy for himself among Russians.

To avoid a world distorted by out-of-control egos, I'd propose the motto, "Aim to live in comfort; aim not to live in luxury". 

Money is in essence a call on other people. You have money, you can get people to do what you want them to do. Work in your factory, write you some code, sell you some land, create some art for you.

Back in the days of the first dot-com boom, there emerged the notion among start-up founders of 'fuck-you money' - then said to be around $10m - the net amount of cash you needed on your account to be able to say 'fuck you' to anyone. You're made; you're financially independent for the rest of your life (and your children and grandchildren will never have to work a hand's turn).

Today's Egos will demand much more than that $10m. I, however, require much less. Being financially independent as early on in life as possible is a sound financial goal to aim for. Owing money to banks for the home in which you live (which in theory they can repossess should you lose income) is not comfortable. Living in your own place (ideally without monthly service charges) is comfortable. Worse still is owing banks and credit-card corporations money for consumer loans taken out to buy all manner of needless fripperies and assorted bollocks that all too soon break down and end up in landfill.

The road to financial independence will be much shorter if you don't piss money away on unnecessary things. Not owning a car, for example, is a massive, whole-life, financial boost. Not flying off on a holiday or two every year is another. Thousands of consumer baubles can easily be foregone over a lifetime, your wallet fuller and your home less cluttered as a result. I do, however, aim to eat well, healthily and tastily; I'd happily pay three or four times more per kilo of a decent artisan cheese than something mass-produced, bland and rubbery.

The pursuit of money which is ultimately frittered away on unnecessary things gets you onto a treadmill of over-work, anxiety and stress. You are still uncomfortable, even though you're surrounded by material goodies. New car, new furniture, new clothes, new household electronics and appliances - and mounting debt.

"I work in a job I don't like to buy things I don't need to impress people I don't know" is where this ends up. And mindless consumption is endangering the ecosystem that civilisation requires to survive. Look at the lifelong greenhouse-gas emissions generated by the manufacture, use and disposal of items that you bought that weren't really necessary but you just wanted on a whim. Now multiply that by eight billion, plus the number of all the people now dead who've lived since the Industrial Revolution, and there we have the cause of man-made climate change. Our mammalian impulse to rise up the status hierarchy might prove our undoing.

But this must be a life in balance. 

I don't believe that you can focus on the Eternal and Infinite if you are living in discomfort - in pain, in hunger, in poverty, in stress. Money is needed to lift one out of discomfort, into a life of ease - and then, having attained material comfort, the mind should focus on the numinous and on the metaphysical questions - seeking purpose, and in that find human fulfilment. You need time to focus on what's most important in life, time to meditate, walk, exercise and contemplate in the search for meaning.

Not on chasing the next million bucks, or flaunting one's Ego with ostentatious displays of wealth.

"But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them; Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." [Mark 10:25] Jesus was on to something there.

Lent 2022: Day 36
Losing sight of God

Lent 2021: Day 36
One life is not enough

Lent 2020: Day 36
Accounting for talent

Into the Afterlife III - Lent 2023: Day 35

I roundly reject the doctrine of salvation in the context of the afterlife. 

What are we to be saved from? By whom? In Christianity, salvation means saving people from sin and its consequences - eternal damnation - through the death and bodily resurrection of the Saviour, Jesus Christ. 

If there's one Christian doctrine which smacks to me of social control, it's that of salvation. "Do as the Church says, and you will be saved; if you don't - you will be damned."

What is sin? It's not a term I use, but I'd categorise the notion as "behaviour that would cause one to feel a need to apologise for it". Something you'd feel guilty about. But do you need a saviour to redeem you from your transgressions? Can you not redeem yourself, through self-reflection, atonement and resolution to improve? Do you need to whisper your sins to a priest in a confessional - an intermediary between you and your Purpose, you and your Maker - for them to be forgiven?

And then - what is original sin? If anything, original sin is anger - the primitive rage that wells up in our reptile brain, a throwback to pre-human, pre-mammalian neurobiology wired for fight-or-flight. Only we can save ourselves from that. More evolved brain regions are used for regulating and controlling the instinctive 'kicking-off' effect. 

We all have our own personal demons. As I wrote in the first week of this year's Lent, most of us can be placed upon one (or more!) psychiatric behaviour disorder spectrums. This knowledge makes it impossible to have a one-size-fits-all tariff for sin and redemption, as laid out in the Catechism. 

The crucial question in this post is the correlation between how one lives one's life and what happens after you die.

The foundation of my spiritual worldview is the subjective conscious experience. With consciousness comes conscience; how that balances along the spectrum of good and evil - and thus sin - is indeed a subjective matter. 

Mass-murderers such as Putin or egregious narcissistic liars such as Trump and Johnson might be acting entirely within the boundaries of their own conscience. Being biological entities driven purely by their Ego, any conscious experience is crowded out of their mind which is constantly shouting "I! I! I!"(or else it's missing altogether - the philosophical zombie). They feel no guilt, no remorse for their actions, nor for the consequences of their actions. Nor are they ever likely to atone. 

Do such people experience an afterlife?

I really don't know. I have had several dreams that square with my flashbacks to mid-century America that suggest that my consciousness previously incarnated in a man with violent tendencies. Does karma have a role in assigning future incarnations? A climate-change denier with a private jet born again into extreme poverty amidst a deadly drought in Sudan? 

This starts getting speculative. I don't know. There does need to be some memory of continuity of consciousness if the spiritual journey along a path of universal unfolding is to have sense, if it is to mean spiritual evolution - an ever greater understanding of the totality of life.

The long-term aim of these Lenten blog posts is (hopefully!) to create a record of my progress in understanding, based on intuitions, divine inspirations, discussions and reading. A slow journey.

Lent 2022: Day 35
Altered states - caffeine and alcohol

Lent 2021: Day 35
The science of coincidence

Lent 2020: Day 35
Soul and Body

Into the Afterlife II - Lent 2023: Day 34

An ever-growing number of scientists is prepared to speculate on immortality - either physical immortality (medical science works out how to keep us alive forever); digital immortality (a virtual brain to which our consciousness is uploaded); or by explaining how consciousness can transcend bodily death.

The notion of a 'longevity escape velocity' has been posited by biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey and espoused by AI pioneer Ray Kurzweil; whether this will happen within the next few decades remains to be seen. And the idea of a brain-computer interface is being developed by Elon Musk's firm Neuralink. Both ideas appeal to those with a materialist mindset, as they do not require belief in the notion of an eternal soul - or indeed eternal consciousness.

Consciousness itself remains a divisive topic among scientists and philosophers. The split is between those who hold that consciousness is merely an emergent epiphenomenon that evolved within the brains of higher-order animals, and those who are open to the idea that consciousness could be fundamental to the Universe. The latter group will either hold that consciousness is a property of matter, or a force-carrier permeating the entire Cosmos. Both would agree that it is massless and eternal.

Either way, panpsychism - consciousness everywhere - is a useful concept when it comes to explaining phenomena such as reincarnation, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences or remote viewing. 

OK - so I don't know how it works. But let me explain my first-hand experience of the phenomenon.

My memories of childhood are proof to me that the 65-year-old man writing these words was once a boy living in West London in the early 1960s. Qualia memories - not so much of events, but memories of feelings, experiences - a composite of the texture of lilac-tree bark, the smell of creosote, the sound of the latch on the front-garden gate, the taste of freshly picked strawberries, the sight of fluffy clouds in a summer sky. I can readily summon up such qualia memories and attribute them to something that's my childhood.

In a similar, but vaguer, way, the flashbacks I experience to past existences feel familiar and comforting, though I cannot place them to the same degree of accuracy. They are not scenes from films - for films do not convey the sense of the smell, taste or feeling. And here, I'd reject the confident assertions of materialist-reductionists that all I'm experiencing is a memory of some movie I once watched. 

Searching for a vector, a mechanism, whereby one can experience (albeit infrequently and weakly) glimpses into a past beyond one's childhood, I have considered electromagnetic waves, DNA, bacteria passing through our bodies, and quantum entanglement. Science would feel comfortable with such an explanation. I don't know - but I am sure that once the underlying nature of consciousness is better understood, it will fill many of our gaps in knowledge.

I hold the belief that we are evolving spiritually as well as biologically; becoming ever-more angelic with each subsequent incarnation, rising in understanding towards goodness, away from brutality and evil.

One thing is clear to me - it is not the Ego that reincarnates. Not the proud, boastful Ego, quick to anger, quick to take offence. It is the Consciousness, the Consciousness alone. The singular, the purest, unfiltered experience of being. Of feeling alive. By not being able to distinguish between the two, many people's expectations of an afterlife are unrealistic. A next-life continuation of the biological you is as unlikely as a scrapped 1993 Nissan Micra being melted down and the steel and other recycled parts ending up as another 1993 Nissan Micra. 

If you want your Ego to survive you after death - it's not something that I believe will happen. In Heaven, seated at the right hand of God, or indeed anywhere. The more powerful your Ego in your current life, the less of the youness of you will make its way to the next conscious incarnation. If you are essentially an Egotistical being, the flashbacks you'll get from this current life in your next life will be few and they will be weak. Too weak to even recognise. The more conscious you are, the more qualia you will experience, the more memories of them will carry over. This is, however, no more than my belief, based on a dataset where n = 1.

Why, you may ask, why should your consciousness reincarnate? For me the answer is simple - it is so that it may witness the further unfolding of the Universe. So that it may partake in this unfolding, growing ever in understanding and wisdom, seeking unity, evolving spiritually. So that it continues the conscious journey from Zero to One.

Further incarnations may well have greater powers that we'd currently call 'supernatural' - telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis. Over thousands of generations, our ability to manipulate matter with mind might just enable us to engage in interstellar travel... but that's for another post.

Lent 2022: Day 34
A search for purpose

Lent 2021: Day 34
The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson

Lent 2020; Day 34
What goes round, comes around

Into the Afterlife I - Lent 2023: Day 33

We die - and then what? 

There's probably no greater question facing us all, however our lives are playing out. Whatever your position in our mammalian status-hierarchy, this unanswerable question visits everyone.

All I can posit from my own personal subjective experience is glimmers - short flashes - the briefest moments of low intensity that have been with me all my life that suggest to me that my Consciousness (not my Ego!) has had previous experiences of existence.

I have experienced these moments all my life; I cannot ignore or reject them. They are an integral part of my identity, the phenomenon is consistent and has been consistent all my life.

I would best describe this as being a strong déjà vu, a flashback, unbidden but often prompted by landscape and environment. Imagine, let's say, a childhood day by the seaside or childhood visit to the shops just before Christmas. An event that, in my case, could have happened 60 years ago. I experience the flashback perfectly, a simulacrum of the experience of the qualia of being there, congruent like a fractal, pleasant, familiar, utterly realistic. Being there. For a fraction of a second. Then the experience dissolves, leaving a delicious aftertaste in my mind.

The molecules that make up the soft tissue of our bodies is constantly being recycled. The hippocampus, the brain region involved in memory, undergoes a high rate of cell turnover; neurons in this region are constantly replaced; old ones die, new ones are formed. The time spent by molecules in these neurons as a part of your brain would be in the order of a few years. So those memories of qualia moments cannot be stored long-term without some kind of hand-over from old cells to newly formed ones. Persistence of long-term memories is still not understood by neuroscience and remain the subject of ongoing research.

Now I'll get weird. While I have trained myself to nail down déjà vus from childhood and adolescence, I also get déjà vus that are similarly familiar but not from this life. They feel exactly the same, but they are not qualia memories of England from the 1960s and '70s; they feel like America from the 1940s and '50s.

I had these anomalous experiences for as long as I can remember, and have often written about them on this blog over the years. With passing years, I hope to be able to describe them with ever-greater precision and nuance, placing them in the context of advances in consciousness studies, philosophy of mind and neuroscience. However, these experiences are entirely personal to me, and while sceptics may claim that they are merely the result of misfiring neural connections within my brain, to me they feel as real as qualia memories from childhood.

Living in London, these anomalous qualia-memory events were relatively rare, they stepped up in frequency when I moved to Warsaw, and then stepped up again after I bought the działka in Jakubowizna. I attribute this landscape and climate. Rural Kentucky? Ohio? These flashbacks happen more frequently and more intensely on cloudless days, and when the seasons are changing. Looking across the flat fields around Chynów, with radio towers, power lines and water towers on the horizon, is a consistent trigger for me. Over the decades, I have also had enough secondary and tertiary experiences dating back to Edwardian England, France in the late 19th century, Pripet Marshes in the early 19th century, 18th century Germany, Tudor England and even neolithic times, to suggest some form of spiritual continuity.

What's going on? I consider this to be an intimation of how an afterlife could look.

As biological entities, we are bodies, but we are also consciousness. The former, driven by biological imperatives, is powered by the ego, but the core of who we really are is our subjective conscious experience. I postulate that at death, the body and the ego die, but the consciousness survives.

I, for one, have had a lifetime's experience of this. I know that the vast majority of people haven't, so I don't wish to impose my view as a one-size-fits-all model of an afterlife. Still, I hold that sometime after my physical death, it is possible that a child will be born with anomalous, inexplicable, experiences of life in England in the second half of the 20th century and Poland in the first half of the 21st century. 

More tomorrow.

Lent 2022: Day 33
The Search for Understanding

Lent 2021: Day 33
Connecting with the Metaphysical

Lent 2020: Day 33
"On my planet there is no disease"

The Practice of Gratitude - Lent 2023: Day 32

I wake up - I'm feeling fine. No ailments - no dolegliwości (splendid Polish word there, as in co Ci dolega?). Springing out of bed, I express conscious gratitude for my ailment-free state. No need for elaborate ritual. No need to prostrate myself before the Omnipotence of God the Father. Just a simple, sincere thought - not even a thought - an awareness of being in the state of gratitude. It has to be real, though - not going through the motions. The essence of prayer, without its form. A feeling of being plugged into the Purpose, the Grand Intention of the Universe.

The sceptic might well ask - "Michael, if were you to cease feeling gratitude for something that you enjoy (due to genetic predisposition, healthy diet and exercise) - would you fall ill as a result?

In a Pascal's wager kind of a way, I wouldn't want to risk it. But in any case; it is not something I do, it's something I feel. Can you stop feeling joy on a sunny spring morning? Feeling gratitude for one's health doesn't hurt, but I do believe it is an integral part of staying healthy.

Left: Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) argued that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas if God does exist, they stand to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (an eternity in Hell).

Those who believe in a deterministic universe might say that everything has already been decided in the minutest detail, and that whether or not you feel gratitude is entirely irrelevant to our life's journey and its ultimate outcome. I disagree with this proposition, considering that we have more will than the determinists give credit for - metaphysical will, that we can use to bend outcomes our way.

If there is a ritual, it's while brushing my teeth. A quick, though heartfelt, thank-you God for all I have, and a supplication for health for family and friends. Two or three times a day. If, at the end of brushing my teeth, I put down the brush and realise I have not practiced gratitude, I pick it up again and continue brushing - this time with feeling.

Gratitude should also be felt whenever one experiences a moment of elation, simple everyday moments. Turning the front-door key when it's cold and dark outside and warm and bright inside. Gazing up at a starry night. The first slurp of an excellent wine. The feeling of connectedness with other humans.

Taking good fortune for granted, becoming complacent of one's privileges in life, does, I feel, draw down the karma. The person who contemplates not  (człowiek, który się nie zastanawia) has a harder time in life, buffeted by events they cannot explain, events that seemingly have no cause.

Intuition, which I am increasingly inclined to see as hints, instructions, suggestions, popping into your stream of consciousness in a one-way manner (rather than the dialogue that is prayer), is also something to be grateful for. Being aware of those intuition moments means that you are working together with the Purpose, and you are moving towards the Purpose.

Lent 2022: Day 32
The Search for Perfection

Lent 2021: Day 32
Meditation

Lent 2020: Day 32
Divine Intervention

Coincidence corner - two blog-post titles of the three above happen to be lines from the Roxy Music song, Mother of Pearl. So here it is...

Science vs. the Paranormal - Lent 2023: Day 31

Developing yesterday's theme about those with a propensity to believe in God vs those who reject the notion of a Purpose to the Universe, I want to take a look at the scientific method, which has been crucial in shaping people's mindset in the direction of rational materialism for the past three and half centuries or so. 

In 1964, British physicist Peter Higgs first postulated a new massive spin-zero boson. Forty-eight years and €6 billion later, rational science proved him right, with the discovery in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider of what's now known as the Higgs Boson. Which exists for all of 3.2x10^-22 seconds.

Now, bosons are not something that figure highly in one's day-to-day life. We all know that atoms are made of nuclei consisting of protons and neutrons, surrounded by a shell of electrons. The Standard Model of particle physics, however, is somewhat more complicated... 

At the core of the atom are the proton and neutron, both of which consist of three quarks - two up and one down (whatever that means) in the proton and one up and two down in the neutron. (There are also top, bottom, strange and charm quarks; these are all totally beyond me). Then we have leptons, of which the electron is but one of six. Then there are things called bosons, force-carriers - with gluons acting between quarks in the nucleus (strong nuclear interaction), photons acting between electrons (electromagnetic interaction), W-bosons (mediating the weak nuclear interaction). For the sake of completeness, there's the Z-boson, with zero charge. And finally, there is the crowning glory of contemporary particle physics - the Higgs Boson, which (somehow!) gives mass to particles. 

So the Standard Model is a lot more complex than the familiar picture of the atom was in my childhood - but then there's scientific progress for you.

Science had long theorised that a particle such as a Higgs Boson could exist; the equations suggested it. However, billions of proton-proton collisions had to be observed before scientists could look over all the data and arrive at a statistically significant result that indisputably proved the existence of the Higgs Boson.

Now let's look at attempts to prove or disprove paranormal phenomena. Be it something as simple as willing outcomes of coin flips, or influencing a random number generator with the power of the mind, or guessing which of four friends would be ringing you on the phone.

Not a very strong effect. Indeed, a very weak effect. Out of 100 coin-tosses, 51 are heads (where you will heads to come up) and 49 are tails - but if you conduct 100 coin-tosses a thousand times, always willing heads, in the vast majority of the thousand runs of 100 tosses, you get 51 (or more) heads - then that is statistically significant. That's the proposition made by Prof Etzel Cardeña in his peer-reviewed study of psychic abilities, The experimental evidence for parapsychological phenomena: A review. published in 2018 by American Psychologist, a mainstream publication.

Similar studies have been published by Dean Radin and Rupert Sheldrake; there does exist a weak effect of mind over matter, but it is strong enough to be observed in a manner that's as statistically significant as discovering the Higgs boson amid the data coming from billions of observations of neutrons colliding in the Large Hadron Collider.

The problem science has with paranormal phenomena is that there's no theoretical framework to explain how it happens. There was masses of theory underpinning the speculation that a Higgs boson exists - there's exactly zero theory behind phenomena of mind affecting matter, or non-local consciousness effects such as precognition or remote viewing. Science hasn't a clue as to how it might work. But - weak though it be - it does work.

Yet if experimental results show statistically significant data - does it matter if the effect is weak? According to scientific debunkers yes - without some kind of a theory backing it up, the work is worthless. Surely, that's what science should do - accept that there is something going on, and try to posit an explanation for this phenomenon - whether it be normal or paranormal.

Lent 2022: Day 31
Consciousness - fundamental and universal?

Lent 2021: Day 31
I'm better than you - no really, I am!

Lent 2020: Day 31
Divine Inspiration

God/No God - Lent 2023: Day 30

It's very simple not to believe in God and not to believe in an immortal soul. "We are nothing but matter; once we have run our biological course, once entropy catches up with us, we die, our consciousness is extinguished, there is nothing. A random meat-covered skeleton that onced lived on on a random planet in a random Universe, that just happens to exist - that is all. In keeping with our Newtonian, classical-physical worldview, one based on rational thought rather than conscious experience." 

It's harder to believe in a God - a supernatural prime-mover, a Cosmic Purpose, a destination, a complete understanding - I could continue listing the attributes of God as I see them, and then have endless theological arguments with other folk who also believe in a God - but see God differently. The question of belief in an afterlife is similarly fraught - there are so many possibilities that believers can believe in, that debates about how this looks like in practice would be never ending. Literally.

So we have humanity divided into two broad groups; there are atheists who flatly deny the existence of God, and believers who feel there is a God. [I'd say that at the heart of things, agnostics who actively seek answers will sooner or later fall into one group or the other.]

My big question is - what is it that delineates the two groups? It is, after all, the deepest divide in all of philosophy.

Is it an environmental thing? Do people who grow up in either a religious society or a rational, secular society remain holding onto those views? Or does it run deeper - is it genetic? Is there some variant of some gene or other that gives an evolutionary advantage to those inclined to believe/disbelieve in the supernatural? Or is it on a higher plane altogether - is the difference indeed spiritual? 

Atheists will state that those who feel the need for some metaphysical aspects in their lives are by that very fact somehow weaker for it, unable to face life without the crutch of God or some other superstition.

Believers might state that those who dismiss outright the presence of some supreme consciousness and prime mover of our Universe lack a soul, and - lacking a soul, they cannot begin perceive that which the believer holds to be intuitively true. Other believers might argue about the importance of 'salvation'. ["From what?", I'd ask.]

Whether a God exists or not can be neither proven nor disproven. Both of the following propositions - "God exists," and "God doesn't exist" - are unfalsifiable by the scientific method. I will expound further about the scientific method in tomorrow's post, but for the purpose of this one, I hold that neither of these two propositions can be taken into a lab and tested.

Splitting the "God exists" proposition further, I'd touch on the dualism/non-dualism discourse. If we assume that there is something more than mere matter, is it the soul - something entirely not of this world - but of a heavenly realm ultimately beyond the material (Descartes' position)? Or is it, as Eastern spiritual tradition posits, essentially consciousness - all part of one Universe, unknowable, evolving and ultimately unifying? If we are to somehow reconcile science and spirituality, this would be the route - based on consciousness being a fundamental property of the Cosmos, along with mass, charge and spin.

My view is that something deeper than material reality does exists; I have felt this, experienced this since early childhood; something numinous, mystical, untouchable by our human faculties. It is intuitive and deeply personal. Yes, it can have an element of wishful thinking, it can result in believers reaching out to engage with religions that are dogmatic and ultimately damaging to the psyche. But in some of us at least, it is present. Why? How? I hope to find out!

I have been careful not to get drawn into any religious dogma; my lifelong quest is for understanding God, intuiting that a God in some form does exist, on the basis of personal subjective conscious experience. Defining God, and indeed, defining the afterlife, drive my quest - and the Lenten discipline of daily contemplation and writing help clarify my beliefs with each passing year.

Lent 2022: Day 30
Let the Spirit guide you!

Lent 2021: Day 30
On being perceptive

Lent 2020: Day 30
Time - religion and metaphysics

Building your own religion - how AI would do it. Lent 2023: Day 29

Three years ago, my series of Lenten blog posts were about how I'd go about designing my own religion. Today, inspired by a passing thought I had while falling asleep last night, I put decided to put that  same question to ChatGPT, and here are the answers...

Me: "Imagine you are the founder of a new religion. How would you go about creating a new religion from scratch?" 

ChatGPT: "As an AI language model, I don't have personal beliefs, so I don't advocate for any particular religion or encourage starting one. However, I can provide a general framework on how to build a new religion from scratch based on historical and cultural perspectives.

Here are some aspects to consider when building a new religion: 

• Purpose: What is the purpose of your religion? What problems does it aim to solve, and what values does it promote?
• Theology: Develop a system of beliefs and values that explain the purpose of the religion and provide guidelines for behavior. This could include a creation story, moral code, and belief in a higher power.
• Doctrine: Develop a set of teachings that explain how to live a virtuous life and achieve salvation or enlightenment. These teachings could be in the form of scriptures or oral traditions.
• Practice: Develop rituals and practices that help followers connect with the divine and live a virtuous life. These could include prayer, meditation, fasting, pilgrimage, or acts of service.
• Symbols: Choose symbols that represent the beliefs and values of the religion. These symbols could include icons, images, or objects that hold special meaning.
• Music: Develop music that supports the rituals and practices of the religion. Music can be an important way to evoke emotions and connect with the divine.
• Holy places: Designate specific places as holy, such as temples, shrines, or natural landscapes. These places can be used for worship, meditation, or pilgrimage.
• Holy architecture: Design buildings and spaces that reflect the beliefs and values of the religion. Architecture can be used to create a sacred atmosphere and support the rituals and practices of the religion.
• Community: Create a community of followers who share the beliefs and values of the religion. This community can provide support, fellowship, and accountability.

When building a new religion, it's important to be respectful of other religions and cultures. It's also important to be transparent about the purpose and beliefs of the religion and to allow followers to question and explore their faith."

Why, thank you, Chat GPT! Now, you'll have noticed the links above - these are to individual posts on my blog, written three years ago; I am amazed at how the AI has covered the same points as me. 

However, my conclusion is this: having built my own religion, I found that it is one that needs no followers, nor buildings, nor a hierarchy, nor funding. My religion requires rather intelligent interlocutors prepared to question, to offer suggestions based on intuitions that have sprung from our consciousness - rather than constructing dogma. A walk in the fields to talk about the essence of existence, the purpose of consciousness, the future of the Universe, the interface between faith and science.

I am building a religion for no one but myself. I don't seek anyone to follow, nor do I want anyone to follow me. Rather, I want a small handful of people to walk beside me, talking with me, questioning my assumptions, taking understanding to an ever-higher level, building an ever-more accurate worldview together. I'd be a charlatan if I claimed I knew all the answers. I am seeking. That's literally the only honest stance to take regarding the spiritual.

Lent 2022: Day 29
Meditations on travel

Lent 2021: Day 29
The ups and downs of life

Lent 2020: Day 29
Prophetic

Can the future affect the past? Lent 2023: Day 28

Retrocausality is a theoretical concept in physics positing that something can happen before it's been caused. The future, in other words, can influence the past. This idea, also known as backwards (or retroactive) causation, has been explored in some interpretations of quantum mechanics, such as the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment. 

[The double-slit experiment is well known. A photon passing through can be a wave or a particle until observed. Imagine, as John Archibald Wheeler did, this experiment conducted on a galactic scale, an observer on earth determining whether a photon from a distant star is a wave or a particle. The outcome of that observation would therefore, he said, influence something that happened millions of years ago.]

Retrocausality challenges the relationship between cause and effect that's fundamental to the way in which we understand the natural world. It divides scientists; there's no consensus on whether it's real - and whether it has any real-world applications that we can notice - or whether it's no more than a fanciful theory which stubbornly refuses to be proved or disproved in the lab. Its proponents say that in any case its physical effects would be extremely weak. 

Newtonian physics are based on the assumption that causality operates in one dimension - in a forward direction from cause to effect, just as time runs in one dimension and only forward from past to future. 

While retrocausality is a fascinating concept, its practical implications remain speculative.

So let me speculate for a while. There are many things we can no longer remember. What did you have for breakfast on [random day] in [random year]? Maybe that particular date squares with a memorable medical procedure you underwent, and you clearly remember eating no breakfast that morning. Otherwise, eating a bowl of porridge containing 1,831 flakes of oats as opposed to a bowl with 1,794 flakes has no significance. My breakfast from 10 March 2023 could have retrocausally been changed, and there'd be no effect on past or future. No one, not even I, would notice the change. There's no record, no effect.

Remember the definition of magic - bringing about change in the physical world through supernatural means. Willing outcomes, in other words. Not just seeing into the future, but affecting it. But how about changing the past in a meaningful way? Changing outcomes from ones that happened in the past to ones that didn't happen? Erasing memory of an alternative reality? Or creating (as posited by the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics) a branching-off of a parallel universe at the moment your last spoon dipped into the packet of oats?

If we can (and I believe that in a very limited way) affect the future by willing a positive outcome or forestalling, precluding or mitigating a negative event, could it be possible that we can be currently living in a better reality than one that could have befallen us because of an event in an alternative past?

I write these posts with the future in mind - I return to them to see how my thinking has evolved, and indeed how scientific and philosophical thought has evolved. There are more panpsychists around today than was the case ten years ago - and a lot more scientists open to possibility of the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence on this planet.

Lent 2022: Day 28
Understanding the Infinite and the Eternal

Lent 2021: Day 28
Higher life forms, imagined

Lent 2020: Day 28
The Secret and the Hidden

Being positive is much more than just being optimistic - Lent 2023: Day 27

I wake for a pee at three-thirty three; Intuition comes to me: 

"The power of Positivity is much more than merely 'thinking positive'; it comes from you being positive right through to your very core. Positive down to the subatomic level."

In the morning, I look upon these words in my notebook to develop this intuition further - positivity must come balanced by possibility; you can only be truly positive in mindset if you're aware of all the things around you that can go wrong - illness, accident, crime, war, global cataclysm. Positivity that isn't placed within the context of all the chaos that can disrupt or end your life is nothing more than naive, innocent optimism.

Quidquid agis, prudenter agas, et respice finem - the wisest words my mother transferred to me. It is literally an injunction to stay alert whatever you're doing - and think it through to the end. "Whatever you do, do it prudently, and keep the outcome in mind." 

While on the subject of my mother, she was optimistic, but the optimism wasn't grounded in observation, something that became clear after her death when we looked at her reading matter, with the title Think Yourself Slimmer being an exemplar of her approach to life. More exercise and less cake and she might have lived a lot longer than her 88 years. Both of her elder sisters outlived her, surviving well into their 90s.

So often we do things automatically, especially routine actions, without really thinking about what we do, and how we do it, and what the outcome should be. Willing a positive outcome from anything we undertake - wanting it consciously at the outset - even it it's only grinding coffee beans and transferring them to the funnel of my Bialetti without spilling excess grounds all over the worktop - helps bring about success. 

"Yeah, it's gonna be fine. No need to worry." Climate change, nuclear war, biological terrorism, supervolcano eruption, asteroid strike, artificial intelligence dominating mankind - it would be wrong to ignore these. Człowiek, który się nie zastanawia - 'the person who considers not'. Optimism is only slightly less dangerous than pessimism; being positive is also about acknowledging the dangers, so as to consciously forestall or preclude or mitigate them. 

A plane-full of people that crashes probably didn't contain any one person that consciously considered the possibility of that crash. Sure, there'll be pessimists thinking "we're all going to die" without really mulling it over. And many more optimists thinking that every previous flight they'd been on landed safely, so the possibility of a tragic end to this one isn't something that would have entered their mind. A highly controversial, but unfalsifiable proposition.

Think it through, intuit the answer, and then seek to draw out a positive outcome for us all!

Positivity involves plugging one's Consciousness into the Purpose, into the flow. In a weak way, it works. Yet over tens of thousands of incarnations of spiritual evolution, your Consciousness's powers of positivity will seem utterly miraculous to you today.

If science can grapple with the concept of retrocausality - the future being able to influence the past - maybe there's a theoretical path open there for reconciling science with spirituality. More on this tomorrow.

Lent 2022: Day 27
God and Nationalism

Lent 2021: Day 27
Consciousness in other creatures

Lent 2020: Day 27
The Physical and the Metaphysical

The Ghost in the Machine - Lent 2023: Day 26

Intermittent faults. You come across them here and there, you can't trace them to any one thing in particular; they could be systemic, they could be one-off, a software issue, a hardware problem - you don't know. 

Entropy reigns. 

Any machine will, over time, break down as its parts wear out. Any biological organism will die, sooner or later. From out of chaotic disorder (random atoms and molecules), creativity brings order (parts brought together to construct a chair or a laptop, or biological life brought into being). And then back into disorder again (things break down, people age and die). 

This is how we observe the arrow of time - through the effects of the second law of thermodynamics. Left on its own in a cold room, a cup of tea will cool down, not heat up. An omelette can never return to the state of being an egg. A butterfly cannot become a caterpillar.

We cannot reverse the arrow of time. 

But we can slow it down.

A machine that's properly maintained will function longer than one which is neglected, left to rust in a corner, used irregularly. Similarly, all other things being equal, human beings who looks after their body - exercise and healthy diet - are likely to outlive those that do no exercise and eat junk food.

But there is also - I believe - a metaphysical 'brake' that we can apply.

Conscious care, applied to one's body, one's possessions - including living ones, such as pets and plants - extends to more than just regular maintenance. It means not being complacent for one's health and things, being grateful for one's health and things, and willing them on. The laptop on which I write was bought used in June 2018, when already 18 months old; it's still doing fine. I am willing it on!

The biological equivalent of intermittent, untraceable faults, are ailments of unknown aetiology. A good example is cramp - I was woken up twice last night by painful leg cramps. Because these are not dangerous or likely to turn into anything worse, medical science hasn't devoted much time investigating what factors bring about this disorder. I suspect a hereditary element, as my father had this too, increasing in frequency with age. Another is pompholyx, a skin disorder. I had this, primarily on my fingers, from the age of 15 to the age of 40, peaking around 20. Again, no big deal, so medical science is still unable to pin down a cause. My own experience suggests direct sunlight (it was always worst in high summer), but medical science posits food allergens, over-frequent hand-washing and other causes that certainly did not apply to me.

This type of 

Be at one with yourself; be at one with your stuff. Hold it close and look after it. If you can't - you have too much stuff. Old stuff takes on new life when you take a renewed interest in it. Fixes, hacks and workarounds keep things going on. Observation, monitoring and feedback are crucial to this virtuous metaphysical cycle.

A watched pot never boils. That's a pot that's physically watched - and metaphysically observed.

An observed life rushes past less quickly.

Lent 2022: Day 26
The End of Times

Lent 2021: Day 26
Physical Immortality

Lent 2020: Day 26
Intimations of Immortality

Intuition and Dreaming - Lent 2023: Day 25

And Lo! Did I dream... I was in a garden centre somewhere in the Thames Valley (Pangbourne? Goring?); a Victorian-style conservatory, cast-iron painted white, glass walls and roof. I was just about to buy a sapling pine; the small tree was about 25cm high, in a clear plastic pot. A slender grey stem, some needles sprouting at the top. I was about to take it to the checkout and pay for it, when suddenly I felt my intuition telling me calmly: "This tree will not take root in your garden - put it back." 

And as that intuition came to me, I realised immediately that I was dreaming, and that in fact this dream of an intuition was the very first time in my life that I had dreamed of intuition! A lovely moment of lucid dreaming! The dream, as usually happens, then drifted off into other, less memorable, themes, but the moment stayed with me until I woke. I wrote it down in my notebook [See, coincidentally, my injunction on the 25th day of Lent last year to... write everything down.]

As I write these words, I can see in my mind's eye - I can feel the klimat, the atmosphere - of the garden centre, quite posh, beyond it the escarpment of the river valley, a low, rocky, cliff-lined wall with trees. It is early summer.

And so it seems that my recent series of Lenten blog posts about intuition has worked its way into my subconsciousness. A new way of looking at the world. 

Does it have practical meaning though? Something I should act upon? That I, Dembinski, should avoid garden centres? 

I have indeed been considering buying some blackcurrant bushes to plant in my garden. And I have noticed a few days ago a couple of pine saplings emerging from the soil near my apple trees. My own trials of grow pine saplings from cones failed, while the acorns I planted the same way have successfully taken root. Maybe the soil was wrong? 

Well, I can certainly detect day-to-day trains of thought being recycled and recombined in the dream. The Thames Valley setting? A typical disjunctive cognition. [Coincidence corner - on my desk I have a blank sheet of paper; just now, I turn it over to see what's on the other side - it's a to-do list from Monday 27 February, written in black biro. Just two words written in red biro: 'DISJUNCTIVE COGNITION']

But back to the question in hand - should I buy the blackcurrant bushes? Do dreams serve as warnings?

Yes, I should buy the blackcurrant bushes. But the dream, if anything, stands as a warning against complacency. The bushes, if bought, will only grow and flourish if a) I will them to grow, unhindered by unseasonal frosts or hail or other random events, and b) if I look after them.

Intuitions like this, whether dreaming or awake, signal the observer to draw from out of the future, by act of will, an optimal outcome. These intuitions do not serve not prophecies - they do not mean that "something that I will invest in is likely to die" - rather they are warning signals to heed, meaning "watch out for something, and to will it to go the right way."

Lent 2022: Day 25
Writing It All Down

Lent 2021: Day 25
Faith and Knowledge

Lent 2020: Day 25
Chances, complacency and gratitude

We are all Sentinelese - Lent 2023: Day 24

North Sentinel Island is part of the Andaman archipelago, belonging to India, in the Bay of Bengal. The island is home to the Sentinelese, an indigenous people strictly isolated from the rest of humanity. They are protected by Indian law, and any approach to the island closer than five nautical miles (9km) is prohibited. This is to protect the tribal community (estimated to be up to 400 strong) from contact with infectious diseases. The area is patrolled by the Indian Navy, which maintains the strict no-contact policy with threat of force.

The Sentinelese have attacked vessels that stray too close to the shore with arrows, as well as firing them at low-flying helicopters. In 2018 an American Christian missionary, John Allen Chau, was killed by the islanders after bribing local fishermen to take him there. Responding to Chau's death, the Indian government implemented even stricter regulations to protect the isolation of the Sentinelese and prevent any further attempts at contact. The Indian government has made it clear that the Sentinelese people should be left alone and that any attempts to make contact with them are illegal.

I mention the Sentinelese in the context of alien life in our galaxy and Fermi's Paradox. This is the 'zoo hypothesis', which states that alien life intentionally avoids contact with humans to allow for our natural evolution and sociocultural development, and avoiding interplanetary contamination. This is the most widely posited theory explaining the apparent absence of extraterrestrial life on Earth, despite its mathematical likelihood (see the Drake Equation).

The North Sentinel Island metaphor is useful; casting ourselves - a technologically advanced civilisation thousands of years ahead of this indigenous tribe - in the role of interstellar (or perhaps interdimensional or time-travelling) non-human intelligence. Flip this on its head and you see it from the aliens' point of view.

Despite our technological superiority - are we qualitatively better than the Sentinelese? We can only assume that their lives are shorter, less comfortable and more brutish than ours - but are material luxuries the only things that count in our human lives? It would be fascinating to learn about Sentinelese spiritual beliefs and practices; how they see the world around them - those white lines drawn high above them by winged craft in the blue sky, the distant, giant ships at sea, the stars in the heavens at night. 

But we won't - and it's for their good. 

Contact with more-advanced and less-advanced peoples does not end well the latter.

The most benign form of contact with the Sentinelese that I can imagine would entail not so much technology transfer, but transfer of best practices suited to their current technological level; improved hygiene using nothing more than what they have to hand, improved agricultural and animal-husbandry practices, improved social interaction based on the notion of win-win and improving trust (assuming they don't have this already). But not flooding them with consumer goods and providing them with electricity and household goods. Such contact would require specific protocols to be deployed, standard procedures for ensuring no unintended long-term harm. Certainly spreading the word of Jesus Christ, or any other theological or ideological construct would not be allowed.

Now, returning to any advanced space-faring civilisation that might view us as we view the Sentinelese, I consider it highly likely that some form of 'no-contact' policy is in place with regards our species.

The only form of contact that I could posit would be in the form of consciousness-to-consciousness communication, non-physical - indeed metaphysical - which would grow in frequency, regularity and intensity over centuries or indeed millennia. All the while, Homo sapiens would develop technologically and spiritually, evolving away from a bipedal mammal prone to anger and territorial warfare towards a more angelic being.

Lent 2022: Day 24
Memory, identity and reincarnation

Lent 2021: Day 24
Reconciling science and spirituality

Lent 2020: Day 24
Refutation (II)

The Spirituality of Cosmic Life - Lent 2023: Day 23

Given the vastness of the Universe - not just our own galaxy, the Milky Way, but across all galaxies to the furthest fringes of what we can observe - there simply must be life.

Yet all we know for certain is that the Big Bang, the origin of all we see in the night sky, happened 13.8 billion years ago, and that life has emerged here on our planet. 

In our feeble attempts to define 'God', a supernatural or metaphysical reason and purpose for Everything, we must acknowledge that were the Universe more than just a random thing that exists, God must indeed be universal. Like the laws of physics - present in the same way across the Cosmos.

Our understanding of the fringes of the observable universe are filtered by the fact that we're seeing how it looked billions of years ago, before our solar system was even born. So the development of sentient life, and then civilisations, outside our own galaxy is not something we can observe  in anything like real time. And remember, the Milky Way is but one of around 200 billion galaxies that we can observe.

The panpsychists' notion of consciousness connecting all matter requires it to act superluminally (faster than the speed of light) - indeed supercausally. This requires a leap of faith, abandoning the accepted limit that nothing with rest mass can be accelerated to the speed of light, with massless photons being the only particles capable of travel at that speed. Accelerating matter to speeds approaching those of light requires increasing amounts of energy that would approach infinity. 

But the panpsychist's consciousness is by its nature massless, like a proton or (unconfirmed) graviton. That would match my intuition. A universal substrate upon which, through which, matter moves, interacting with it. As I say, this is nothing more than a hunch, but an idea I'd like to see taken further.

Assuming that consciousness is universal, massless and superluminal and indeed supercausal, it must affect all sentient life on whatever planet of whatever star system of whatever galaxy it finds itself. And indeed, on interstellar (or interdimensional or intertemporal) craft.

Can interstellar craft travel faster than light? Well, there is the Alcubierre drive, a theoretical idea in which space is warped (compressed ahead of the craft, expanded behind it). Objects can't accelerate to lightspeed within normal spacetime so the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that it arrives at its destination more quickly than light would in normal space, without breaking any physical laws. This would of course break the laws of causality; the craft would arrive at its destination before it had even departed. Literature about UFOs frequently mentions propulsion systems based on electrogravitics or anti-gravity, or other ideas from science fiction. 

But even if superluminal speeds were the ultimate barrier, any civilisation that was, say, a billion years advanced compared to us, has still had time to explore the galaxy using robotic self-replicating probes (as posited by John von Neumann as early as 1948) travelling at a small fraction of lightspeed. These ought to be everywhere by now - except they're not - or we've not seen them. There are many explanations to the Fermi Paradox (given how much life there should be out there - where is everybody?); two possibilities are the Zoo Hypothesis ('don't interfere with creatures less evolved than you') and the Shadow Biosphere Hypothesis (they are here, but we humans don't see them).

So - whether aliens are here or not, there is a vastly more likelihood that intelligent life exists across the Cosmos; the next question is - how does that life refer to the question of spirituality?

If could ask an alien one question, it would be regarding its worldview - ultimately reductionist-materialist, or spiritual? Does all sentient life in the Universe share one God - one reason, one purpose?

[Today marks the halfway point of Lent.]

Lent 2022: Day 23
Matter and materialism

Lent 2021: Day 23
Near-death experiences and the Afterlife

Lent 2020: Day 23
Refutation I

God, Aliens and the Unfolding Universe - Lent 2023: Day 22

These are just my half-baked thoughts on the subject. The vastness of our observable Universe - the sheer number of stars and exoplanets - and the relative youth of our industrial civilisation, lead me to believe that there are many advanced civilisation in our corner of the galaxy, and that some at least have visited us. Or that there are other dimensions of time and/or of space, from which aliens visit.

Science mocks such assertions (less so today than in the past); the consensus will state that we are alone on our planet.For many with an interest in the subject, it is clear that it's not something that can be brushed off or laughed at. The sheer volume of eyewitness accounts over the past 80 years, from all over the world, suggests that there's something going on, but we don't know what it is.

Individual cases, individual witnesses, can be debunked, ignored or derided. But when so many testimonies exist, it's hard to dismiss it all. [If you are interested, watching films on the Eyes on Cinema YouTube channel is required viewing. These span many years and many countries, and what grabs me is the consistency of the reports, the seriousness and credibility of the witness, who include police officers and pilots.]

Over the decades, saucer-shaped and cigar-shaped craft have given way to black triangles and glowing orbs; in the small percentage of cases where aliens are observed, they are either small grey beings with large heads or tall humanoids. 

Documents purportedly from the US government that have surfaced as a result of the Freedom of Information Act suggest retrieved alien craft and unsuccessful attempt to reengineer the technology, which seems to be guided by consciousness, with propulsion systems that our physics cannot fathom. And most worrying are the testimonies of those who claim to have been abducted by aliens and subject to invasive medical procedures.

I've never seen one, so I don't wish to speculate, but looking at well-documented cases going back decades - the ones that still bear up to scrutiny and haven't been rejected out of hand as hoaxes or misidentifications - it's clear that this phenomenon should be taken seriously.

Personally, I don't think that we as a society, as a species, are ready for the existential shock of learning that we are being visited, so I can understand why governments are not keen to let the cat out of the bag. Rather, I believe that we are being slowly - over generations - being acclimatised to the notion; in the words of Dark Skies creator and UFO podcast host Bryce Zabel, disclosure in the form of a slow dissolve rather than a jump-cut. No rush.

The ontological repercussions of knowing (not just speculating) that advanced beings from another world are here with us would be shocking to science, technology, business, society and religions.

If such beings exist - would they have a God? How much more Godlike would they be than us - not just in their ability to do things beyond our understanding of physics - but in how they see the Cosmos, its past and its future.

Earthly religions would cope in different ways - fundamentally, the split would go within faiths rather than between them. Anyone who believed in the literal word of their religion's holy book would have huge problems in dealing with this new reality. Those who saw their scriptures as a metaphor, something that needs interpreting and adapting to our modern reality might find it easier. Those who see religions in a metaphysical sense, seeing their highest common factors, will cope best.

I intend to delve further into this topic during this, the fourth week of Lent, in an attempt to define a Supreme Purpose in the Universe - one that would apply to all forms of sentience across the Cosmos.

More ufological spirituality tomorrow!

Lent 2022: Day 22
The Good Lord and the Environment

Lent 2021: Day 22
Muscle Memory, Mindfulness and Metaphysics

Lent 2020: Day 22
Repeatable Metaphysical Experiences

Intuition, Inspiration and Creativity - Lent 2023: Day 21

Where do great ideas really come from? The rational materialist would state that they can only emerge from the human brain, the result of complex thought-processes, conscious and subconscious. The reductionist view is that consciousness and thought are both local, confined to the skull, and any idea of extraneous sources of inspiration (other than those perceived through the senses) is bunk.

I'd take a different view; it's possible to pluck creative thoughts from the ether (or neutrino stream or whatever one can call a universal medium that conveys conscious thought). It's not a particularly strong force (for me at least), but it's there, and I believe that as well as helping guide one through life, it can also serve to inspire one's creativity. But you have to be open to it, believe in it, and be sensitive to it.

I have had a few goes at automatic writing; this example probably the best - where I really did feel I was in the mind of someone else - a middle-aged Englishwoman in post-war Ealing, suffering from loss and social isolation. Unlike dreaming, another source of creativity for me, automatic writing is bidden - I consciously tried to 'catch a wave', and did so. Interestingly, her house was situated just 350 metres from where I sat writing this, but 65 years or so earlier. Going with the flow, it felt like tapping into a stream of consciousness. It then took some conscious editing to give a final version, but I was happy with it.

Consciously trying to tap into something is quite different to getting a sudden flash, or a sudden burst, of inspiration. The similarities lie in having to judge how true the results are. Many's the time I sat down with the intention of writing a short story automatically, only to reject it halfway through on the grounds that it wasn't truly authentic. I'd find that my intellect was interfering with the setting or the character or the plot, and that for whatever reason, I wasn't truly letting go and giving in to the external flow. 

Using dreams as a basis for short stories is another creativity tool I use; these come when they come as they come, there is zero control over them. Sometimes I recognise the inputs (this morning I dreamed of Gringott's Bank from Harry Potter, then remembered I'd read a Polish-language Wikipedia article about Goblins that mentioned this). Rarely, dreams have a distinct past-life flavour, instantly recognisable to me, consistent in the unities of time, place and action. Other dreams, suitably tweaked, serve as a starting point for a story to which external conceits and plot twists can be added.

But coming back to those waking-life moments of intuition. Learning to put an intuition to use is primarily about being sensitive enough to recognise it when it happens, and when it does happen, to assess its honesty and value. Does it raise your understanding? Does it clarify a matter? Does it bring entirely new ideas to the table? Or can it bring a spark of inspiration to kick-start or nudge flagging creativity?

I don't feel it strongly enough, nor do I feel it often enough, but feel it I do. Again, practice and exercise should help intensify the effects and the creative outcome. Discipline is needed! Get it down on paper or digitally!

Lent 2022: Day 21
The perennial question - how much spirituality do we need?

Lent 2021: Day 21
Where is your soul from?

Lent 2020: Day 21
Finding a symbol for your religion

The Practical Uses of Intuition - Lent 2023: Day 20

There is, I believe, this sixth sense within us - except it manifests itself in different degrees. Just as some people by natural physique and training become great athletes, while most of us don't. Or some people by predisposition and practice become chess grandmasters, while most of us don't. Some of us become aware of the power of their intuition at an early age, some as they grow older. Some of us will go on to train that power, others will either ignore or neglect it.

Even if you feel it weakly, it can be of practical value in life.

What for? Certainly intuition will not to make you exceptionally wealthy and worshipped by the masses. But it can, I believe, guide you towards a more comfortable existence, richer in meaning and fuller in purpose - so yes, it can help.

Believing in, and being able to identify, intuitions is the vital first step. Noticing that quiet moment of insight appearing suddenly into the stream of your consciousness, cutting through the buzz of your thoughts - and accepting that it is a sincere and extraneous wish to help you. Sifting away your wishful thinking, if you can say with total honesty to yourself - yes - that's absolutely right. 

I am uncertain whether you can draw down intuitions at will. Some people claim they are able to, for the purposes of divination. I feel the intuitions that I notice are the unbidden ones; answers to problems that have been bothering me for some time - I focus my thought onto something else - and then PAFF! - here's that intuitive answer I'd been seeking. On noticing it, my first task is to parse that intuition - is it genuine? Is it just my inner voice, just the workings of my brain - of does it feel extraneous, arriving from beyond?

Some people seem to have greater powers than most. Some can actively divine a future outcome, turn it into a future dichotomy or fork in the road, and resolve it to their favour. There is one caveat. That resolution should not be related to the Ego.

My life experience leans towards one thing - 'don't force it.' (nic na siłę). Hammering a square peg into a round hole is not as good as eventually finding a square hole, a perfect fit. Going with the flow may seem like giving in to fate, a weak, passive, approach - but given guidance from above (as it were), willing it, listening out for it, feeling its sincerity, is a certain basis for decision making, better (in my book) than over-intellectualising a decision and then justifying the outcome.

Consider this Informed Taoism. Being guided by intuition, letting things take their course but steering them with a conscious desire for a just outcome is better than banging your head against a brick wall in a display of obstinate determination. As I wrote, knowing when to hold on and when to let go is an important skill, but that knowledge when informed by an intuition that you consciously know to be right is all the more powerful.

Lent 2022: Day 20
Free will, consciousness and determinism

Lent 2021: Day 20
No, but who are you really?

Lent 2020: Day 20
Applying Occam's Razor to your religion

Rail travel update - Radom line

I interrupt my series of Lenten posts to cover the big railway news story of today - major changes on the Radom line, affecting Jeziorki and Jakubowizna and all points south.

There is good news and there is bad news.

First the good news. The SKM now runs to Piaseczno, which means doubling the number of trains serving the line from Piaseczno, Nowa Iwiczna, W-wa Jeziorki, W-wa Dawidy and W-wa Okęcie. At peak times, these stations now have six trains an hour running into town. From W-wa Służewiec, the trains from the airport join the line, so stations between there are W-wa Aleje Jerozolimskie now have eight trains an hour to town at peak times. The two new SKM services (operated by the City of Warsaw, analogous to the London Overground lines) are the S4 that goes all the way north to Wieliszew past Legionowo, and the S40 that terminates in town.

Now the bad news. None of these trains go to W-wa Śródmieście, the station serving central Warsaw. Or indeed to any of the other stations along the Linia średnicowa - the transversal line linking Warsaw West with Warsaw East. Not only the new SKM trains, but this also affects all the trains from Radom. And that means Chynów too.

Half of the trains coming in to Warsaw along the Radom line now terminate at the newly refurbished and reopened W-wa Główna station, which lies 2km west of W-wa Śródmieście, a 25-minute walk. Of course, there are buses and trams connecting the two as well.

The other half of trains from the Radom line end up at W-wa Gdańska, 3.5km north of  W-wa Śródmieście. There is, however, "convenient change to Metro M1"; from W-wa Gdańska it's three stops on the Metro to Centrum, next door to W-wa Śródmieście. An alternative for me to get to my office is to change at W-wa Młynów, walk to Metro Młynów on the M2 line and take that to Świętokrzyska (four stops).

W-wa Gdańska lies on the northern Warsaw loop line, and like W-wa Główna, it has been recently refurbished. Now, the western end of this loop line manages to miss Warsaw West station, passing at the bizarrely twice-renamed W-wa Zachodnia Peron 9 - a name which implies that it's an integral part of Warsaw West, but it isn't. It is merely a rebranding of the old W-wa Wola station - first as W-wa Zachodnia Peron 8, and now Peron 9, reflecting the fact that Warsaw West has sprouted an eighth platform during its ongoing modernisation. 

The problem with Peron 9 is that with the current pedestrian diversions in force, it's nearly 1.5km on foot from Warsaw West Platform 1. Down one tunnel, along a long road, round the corner, across (no zebra crossing) a busy road, along this to the entrance to the ramp up to Platforms 8, 7, 6 and 5, over the pedestrian viaduct, down some steps to Platform 3, down into another tunnel and up some steps. Not to be attempted with heavy baggage or on a wheelchair. An absolute nightmare, but to give PKP PLK its due, this nightmare has been well communicated to passengers - avoid changing trains here!

You can still get to W-wa Śródmieście if you're coming up from the Radom line; if your train is terminating at W-wa Główna, change at (the main!) Warsaw West for a service that will take you to the city centre; if you're on a train to W-wa Gdańska, change at W-wa Aleje Jerozolimskie for either a train to Warsaw West and change there for W-wa Śródmieście, or take one of the airport trains and alight at Warsaw Central and walk.

As you can see, it's bloody complicated, a nuisance, and tricky to work out especially when trying to get home late of an evening after a whole bottle of wine.

This state of affairs is likely to drag on for four years, until the major modernisation of the transversal line is completed; it will entail closing the existing W-wa Powiśle (shame!) and re-siting the station further west, underground in the tunnel, nearer Rondo de Gaulle'a. All good by 2028, but until then, fun and games.

This time last year:
Angels, daemons and aliens

This time two years ago:
Reconciling science and spirituality

This time three years ago:
The metaphysical journey as I see it

This time six years ago:
Spirit of Age, spirit of Place

This time seven years ago:
The crux of the matter

This time nine years ago:
10,000 steps is a lot for one day

This time ten years ago:
Bary mleczne - Warsaw's cheap eateries

This time 12 years ago:
Old Town, another prospect

This time 13 years ago:
W-wa Śródmieście - commuters' staging post

This time 14 years ago:
Filthy ul. Poloneza

This time 15 years ago:
A sight that heralds the coming of spring

Intuition and Superstition - Lent 2023: Day 19

After the death of my parents, there was much cleaning up to do; a lifetime's accumulation of stuff. First my mother, then my father. Books and clothes were easy to deal with. Much harder was dealing with the small things that they kept, the small things that were meaningful them.

My parents' approach to these varied diametrically. 

I'd ask my father: "Why do you keep this?" His answer was practical: "It may come in handy someday.*" 

I'd ask my mother: "Why do you keep this?" Her answer was metaphysical: "It's lucky."

And so a significant amount of the clutter in the house we inherited was, in the words of her grandchildren, "Babcia's lucky shit." Tons of it. Much of it was intended to attract wealth; a lucky gold-painted wooden horse, under which she'd place her lottery ticket each week (to no avail). A lucky this, a lucky that. "No," she'd tell us when alive, "don't throw that away - it's lucky." 

Many objects were Far Eastern, several fat Buddhas; a Daikoku (Japanese god of wealth, the Buddhist version of the Hindu deity Shiva), sitting on a bag of rice; a dancing Shiva; a Kwan Yin; dogs of Fo (left: one of a pair, one of three pairs my mother had, here with an inkpot). But there also entirely random objects - many dice, a small coin from Rhodesia, a single Barbie doll shoe, pine cones, a porcelain monkey holding a turnip. And many elephants, which were meant to be particularly lucky, especially when it came to attracting money. Some were on windowsills or ledges or on top of bookcases, many more were stored in shoe boxes.

Superstitious beliefs drown out the calm, quiet voice of intuition. Being wedded to an extended catalogue of omens that you believe are connected with good or bad fortune closes the mind to what's really going on. You see a single magpie, or walk under a ladder, or a black cat crosses your path, and you are convinced that an unfortunate event will befall you - and should one happen, that would serve to reinforce your cognitive bias in favour of that particular superstitious belief.

One illusory correlation which can be summed up as "something worked out for me two or three times, so therefore it will also work out the fourth, fifth and nth time" at least has some grounding in probabilistic calculation. Superstition, not based on any prior observation, doesn't.

I see omens not as a indicators of what will happen, but rather of what might happen. If, for example, I consciously notice two persons with an eye patch, in quick succession, it's an alarm call to watch out for potential accidents affecting the eye. If I ignore the omen, noticing the two persons only subconsciously, and then have some problem with my eye, I will later recall seeing them and regret not having switched on my 'quantum luck' mechanism at the time. By that I mean drawing down that request to consciously preclude or forestall such a misfortune.

Superstitious and suspicious though she was, my mother was at heart an optimist. Her lucky things were there to bring good luck, rather than to ward off bad luck - or to project bad luck on others. And maybe - after her wartime traumas - her wishes did come true. Maybe no millions on the lottery, but from the time of her arrival to England in 1947 at the age of 20 to her death at the age of 88, she enjoyed a peaceful and relatively prosperous life. She died before Brexit, Covid, Trump and Putin's genocidal war could trouble her.

*Like my father, I have border hoarder disorder. Cotton-wool ear buds - after use, I cut off the ends, and keep the plastic tubes. Wire tags from food bags, elastic bands, jars, bottles, scrag-ends of cable-ties that can be reused etc. Practical stuff. Other things that I hoard (which don't fit into the practical category) are objets trouvés, goblincore in nature, picked up on my walks. To these, however, I ascribe no supernatural powers.

Lent 2022: Day 19
Between Randomness and Cause

Lent 2021: Day 19
Pleasure and Self-Denial

Lent 2020: Day 19
Balancing the Spiritual with the Material

Intuition, Consciousness and the Physical Universe - Lent 2023: Day 18

Here's an intuition I jotted down in my notebook five days ago, captured on paper as soon as I had it: "Intuitions pass through you like neutrinos; most pass straight through you, some you catch and let go and forget, some you catch and hold." Those words, noted on the morning of Monday 6 March.

Intriguing! Like neutrinos, eh? 

I check.

"Neutrinos are abundant subatomic particles famous for passing through anything and everything, only very rarely interacting with matter. About 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second."

The vast majority of neutrinos are a byproduct of nuclear fusion in a star's core. There are also (rarer) neutrinos born in supernovae. But to me, the most interesting form is the relic neutrino, found in the Cosmic Neutrino Background. 

From Wikipedia: "The cosmic neutrino background (CNB) is the universe's background particle radiation composed of relic neutrinos. The CNB is a relic of the Big Bang; the CNB separated from matter when the universe was just one second old [my emphasis]. As neutrinos rarely interact with matter, these relic neutrinos still exist today." It is estimated that relic neutrinos make up about 1% of all neutrinos in the universe

So - every second. 10¹⁴ neutrinos pass through your body. Proportionately, even if only 2 x 10¹² pass through your brain (occupying 2% of the body's volume), and only 1% of all neutrinos are relic neutrinos, that still leaves us with 2 x 10¹⁰ relic neutrinos passing through the brain every second.

But it's the 'very rarely interact' part that's interesting. 

How rarely is 'very rarely'? I ask ChatGPT: "The probability that a neutrino will interact with matter is incredibly small, typically less than 1 in 10 billion." Expressed in orders of magnitude that's less than 10^-10.

OK - now we're getting somewhere! We are now in an order of magnitude where in theory, a relic neutrino could be interacting with the matter within your brain twice a second.

What is the nature of that interaction? Chat GPT again: "The interaction of a neutrino with matter is described in terms of the weak nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. The weak force is responsible for the decay of subatomic particles, and it is the force that governs the interaction of neutrinos with matter. When a neutrino interacts with matter, it typically exchanges a W or Z boson - the particles that mediate the weak force." All very dry. Can you feel that relic neutrino triggering a Z boson exchange? It happens twice a second or so...

Now I step in with a controversial proposition. What if relic neutrinos have some part to play in Consciousness? What if they are the basic building block of consciousness, or carrier of consciousness, or are in some other way linked to the phenomenon that we experience as consciousness? What, if in their incredibly rare interactions with biology, they spark... intuition?

This is all flaky stuff, built on nothing but the most basic knowledge of physics and cosmology, and above all - on intuition. But it is something - a modest attempt at least to engage with the Hard Problem of Consciousness in a non-Dualist way.

Lent 2022: Day 18
Zen in the Art of Meditation

Lent 2021: Day 18
Possibilianism

Lent 2020: Day 18
Teetering on the Edge of Chaos