Lent 2026: day 44 – the importance of nuance

Our brains are wired to seek certainty. Evolution takes no prisoners – that's either a sabre-tooth tiger waiting to pounce on you from that outcrop, or it isn't. Life has become vastly more complex ever since. As we struggle to understand reality, we need to ask: how do we do so? Assuming of course we have enough curiosity; some folk simply ask why bother?

An intellectual framework. Do we need one? Or just take asking those questions one at a time, as they come? Here's a start. Ontology – the 'what we know', and epistemology – the 'how we know it'.  Epistemology? Heuristics is many people's epistemology. Making macro-level deductions from observed patterns. "He's a bad 'un, and that one's also troublemaker. They're both immigrants, therefore by deduction, all immigrants are bad and immigration should therefore be stopped." Bayesian inference – your epistemic confidence rises with frequency of observation. "Trump has lied yet again – I can now confidently assert that he's a liar."

And then there's the question of lumpers or splitters. Are we trying to divide and subdivide aspects of reality into ever-smaller discreet units (splitters)? Or are we trying to manage complexity by grouping commonalities into larger categories for easier assimilation (lumpers)? Or both? Or neither?

But when it comes to spiritual questions, we find ourselves wrestling with inchoate intellectual structures, rather than material quantities. Our intellectual framework has no empirical evidence to go on. A divine presence ordering the Universe? Where's the scientific proof? Life after death? I know many people who have died, none have returned from the dead. 

Our certainty-seeking brains look for tidy answers. Solutions rather problems that further investigation. Close the door to that question, declare it solved and move on to the next one, rather than living in a world of ongoing uncertainty. Nuance is uncomfortable.  It often requires finding balance between the objective and subjective; holding two seemingly contradictory views at the same time. So it is important to be able to feel comfortable with uncertainty while engaged in the quest for answers. Leaving things to fate, submitting to the flow; like a gibbon flying through the air before grasping the next branch, trusting that the next insight, the next incontrovertible fact, will be solid enough to support you on your further quest. 

Your personal ontology is the result of the interface between intellect and intuition; a blend of what you have worked out vs. what has come to you; what you have read vs. what you have experienced.

On the face of it, there seems to be no room for nuance in binary questions such as "Is there a God?" or "is there life after death?" The first one suggests a yes-no answer, rather than a challenge to define 'God'. Similarly 'life after death'. Is this even the right question? 'Does consciousness survive the death of its erstwhile biological container?' is a more nuanced framing.

Ultimately, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and the like are futile questions; approaching theology and metaphysics through logic, using deduction and inference is a dead end. Answers that satisfy you, subjectively, that do not need external validation, come from personal experience. From insights, but above all from intuition.

Feel comfortable in uncertainty.

Lent 2026: day 44
Kicks, thrills, fun, pleasure – and joy

Lent 2024: day 44
Spirituality and the Dream World

Lent 2023, day 44
The Purpose

Lent 2022: day 44
Habit, discipline or obsession

Lent 2021: Day 44
Life after life after life after life

Lent 2020: Day 44
A myriad paths to God

Lent 2026: day 43 – the interface between material wellbeing and soul

The goal of technology should be to give us time to pursue what really matters. Enough surplus resources – food, clothing, shelter, energy and information – to ensure that life's not a struggle, enough so everyone has enough to live life without suffering discomfort. And to have enough free time to enjoy life. 

But we humans are flawed, flawed in so many ways. Some people want more and more and more. More money, money to spend in ways that screws our planet with their wanton consumerism. Others want money without having to put in the work. Crime or welfare. Not contributing to society, subtracting rather than adding value to society. The feeling of being entitled to something – to anything – because it is owed to me. Why? By whom? For some historic slight or injustice? Because of accident of birth? Societies with the right mindset, which I define as 'getting on with it', show year-on-year, decade-on-decade progress. But again, societies should not believe they are simply entitled to progress. It can stall (Japan in the 1990s, the UK since Brexit) or go backwards (large chunks of the Middle East).

Optimising society means focusing on better health outcomes and better education that leads to less egregious behaviour, leading to fewer resources being spent on security. Optimising the way we use natural resources, from food to energy, to recycling. Science and technology helps us do that, but it is like squeezing a ball of plasticine in your hand; as it compresses, some of it squishes through between your fingers. Unintended consequences creating new problems to resolve. The motor-car? Pollution, congestion, road deaths. Nuclear physics? Nuclear proliferation. The internet? Doom-scrolling. 

The notion of teleology should be more widely applied to our human lives, not only in the context of metaphysics. The notion of end-cause, purpose, that which we are aiming for, is not really discussed in the media. What is the purpose of eight billion human lives? Nothing more than survival and procreation? And having fun along the way? Nothing more than biology? 

Surely our purpose is creativity. We are born with the urge to create, beautiful things and ideas – and art and music. Once we have eliminated discomfort on our lives, we can focus on aesthetics. Guided not by external validation, but by what truly resonates with our own personal sense of taste. [In my case, this is informed by a preference for mid-century modern Americana; familiar and comforting.] We are also born curious; we seek to understand the world around us down to the very quintessence of matter, and up to the heavens, infinite and eternal. This, I believe, is why we live; to discover, to create, to invent. Ironing out discomfort from our lives while we are at it. Improving, generation by generation, the quality of human life.

Once upon a time (until 2016), I believed that humanity's arc was generally upward; that today is better than yesterday, and that tomorrow will be even better than today. The future will be rosier still. Generally upward, but with two steps forward and one step back. History was meant to have ended in 1991, with the collapse of communism and a stable world order based on democracy and free markets reigning forever more. But this optimism overlooked the existence of psychopathic ideologies and psychopathic individuals, as well as the reality that societies include sizeable numbers of liars, simpletons and egregiously avaricious persons whose actions screw it up for everyone.

We are flawed as individuals. We have our good sides and our bad sides; our immediate purpose as a society should to be continue squeezing out the bad, from our politics and from our streets. But defining 'bad' comes with its own set of problems. Religions evolved to maintain social control, but if those controlling religions are themselves flawed, this fails. Religion in the service of the state, telling Plato's 'noble lie' to keep people aligned with their state's best interests, is not the answer. Rather, it is an acceptance, an understanding, in the minds of the bulk of the population, that it's in everyone's best interest to behave in win-win mode, rather than being adversarial or transactional in your everyday dealings with fellow citizens, businesses and the state. Cooperation within a competitive market has brought bountiful benefits to mankind that individual endeavour never could have managed. 

Whilst I am not decrying the personal ethics of atheists (especially humanists), I do see that having a spiritual outlook on life does lead to self-improvement and higher state of consciousness.By living life in comfort rather than aiming to live in luxury, by dialling down material desires (new car, exotic holiday, shopping trips etc) we end up less worried about our financial state and more able to savour the simple joys that life has to offer.

Lent 2024: day 43
More questions than answers (Pt IV)

Lent 2023, day 43

Wayside shrines

Lent 2022: day 43

Spirit of Place and Metaphysics

Lent 2021: day 43

Doubt and Curiosity

Lent 2020: day 43

Quartodecimalism, or the fixing of the date of Easter

Lent 2026: day 42 – dreams, coincidences and destiny

In the annex part of the building, the big table awaits delegates for the sit-down dinner that formally ends the two-day linguistics conference. Outside, it's already dark. In the main ballroom, people are mixing in small groups, chatting, champagne flutes in hand, waiting for the signal to take their seats. Everyone's in business attire. I walk across from the ballroom, into the annex, which is still mostly empty. But I see one person already seated, his back to the table, head in hands. He's not wearing a suit, but a dark-grey woollen jumper. I recognise him. It's Rysiek. But Rysiek's dead. He died in December 2023. I walk over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. Telepathically, I express my sadness at his passing. He raises his head, looks at me and stands up. We hug. I wake up from my dream with a start. He has just imparted to me the name of the next boy from our West London Polish scout troop and Polish Saturday school who is soon to die...

Do I believe in prophetic dreams? Not really. I can be persuaded by empirical evidence – but I've not really had any that I can correlate to a future event about which I dreamt. But are prophetic dreams not more similar in nature and mechanism to contemplated synchronicities – those meaningful coincidences that lead you to think about some possible misfortune which is then prevented? 

Yes – this is more like it. Collapsing the wave function. With consciousness. The person whose name came to me in my dream this morning will not die anytime soon, because I have considered that possibility happening. By narrowing down a range of possibilities, I have precluded an event from occurring by the simple act of awareness that it may happen.

Preventing the inevitable by thought: is this at all possible? How about a more nuanced approach – not so much preventing but postponing the inevitable, mitigating its effects, reducing the impact of the inevitable? This, I believe, applies to completely unexpected, out-of-the-blue occurrences. We were all expecting the Iran war to kick off – the roots were too deep for it not to have happened. It was just a question of when. The same goes for Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But how about the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 that killed 227,000 people? Could it have been forestalled, postponed or its effects mitigated by consciousness? By merely considering its possibility?

But what about (divine) purpose? The continued presence of latent chaos on earth, inherent in nature, between nations, and the small-scale chaos that can randomly befall any of us in our day-to-day lives?

Ultimately, we are here to learn, to develop, to elevate our consciousness through facing challenges such as illness, bereavement or war. I prefer the word 'challenged' to the word 'suffering', 'trial' to 'ordeal'. That we may overcome, elevated. And, having learned, moved on, out of one biological container to another, our consciousness having evolved a notch or two.

Six weeks of Lent have elapsed. Tomorrow I shall begin summarising this year's Lenten journey.

Lent 2025: day 42
Accident of birth

Lent 2024: day 42
More questions than answers (Pt III)

Lent 2023, day 42
Where did religions come from?

Lent 2022: day 42
A Future Like This

Lent 2021: day 42
Actively seeking Understanding

Lent 2020: day 42
From Zero to One

Lent 2026: day 41 – in touch with the intangible

Early morning walks on an empty stomach (but after a strong black coffee, no sugar), are for me among those moments of repeatable joy, especially when the sun is shining through. There's a buzz in my head, a slight giddiness, not at all unpleasant, a mildly altered state. Walking through the forest, catching sight of a hare or deer, absence of traffic or indeed anybody, awareness of the seasons, a connection with nature. Gratitude; connectedness; a grounding in base reality, touching the sense of life.

Who or what is God? Certainly, God is not a person. God is by nature indefinable to our human minds. We are not to fully know God until the moment of ultimate unity.

As I walk this morning, I find myself considering a test for the ego: would you wish another incarnation as a human, or would you rather rush through to that ultimate union with Brahman, with The One, with God? 

To be honest, I feel I'd like another crack at life as a human (though next time with more wisdom, resulting from spiritual evolution). I'd like to carry on with and within the cycle of samsara (birth, death, and rebirth). For the sake of curiosity. Knowing that within one lifetime, there can never be closure.

No rush, just a slow, patient, continuous improvement based on series of learnings, reaching higher and higher levels of metaphysical insight. Life after life after life. In tangible, physical, biological form. Consciously guided wetware.

Does this suggest that my ego, far from being switched off or even dimmed, is still interested in manifesting itself in future bodies? Reluctantly, I have to answer 'yes'.

Do I need another adventure, or do I just want one? What do I wish for my next incarnation? This is where the narrative arc of the ego needs to align with the Purpose of the Cosmos for optimal results. The best answer is: "I wish to continue learning, to continue in spiritual growth, and to receive with simplicity whatever biology I am born into."

And here I return to a fundamental thought I've often harboured since youth: had my parents not met, my consciousness would still be here, on earth, in biological form – just not the biological form that I currently inhabit. Everything that I'd have in common with that hypothetical person, essentially awareness, metaphysical will, and those qualia memories – familiar flashes of exomnesia harking back to a previous existence – is rooted in consciousness. Everything that's different – DNA, upbringing, environment – is rooted in biology. 

The intangible, the ineffable, feels so far off, but I do believe that spiritual evolution brings us closer to at least having some vague idea of life is for, why something exists rather than nothing, the true nature of reality – and the true nature of God,

Lent 2024: day 41
More Questions than Answers (Pt II)

Lent 2023, day 41
The End of Times

Lent 2022: day 41
A Better Future

Lent 2021: day 41
The Holiest of Holies

Lent 2026: day 40 – is God is knowable or unknowable?

 For Marek

What can we say of God with certainty? That God is good, that God is love? Or, that because of God's ineffable nature, and because of the limitations of human reasoning and language, God is entirely unknowable? We humans seem destined never to understand God through our human reason, through logic, through scientific method. The metaphysical lies forever beyond our grasp.

What, though, of our physical world? Will we even get to understand that? This is has been the pursuit of science since the late 17th century. Since then, mankind has built up an ever-more complete grasp of the immutable laws that govern everything from the inner workings of an atom to an expanding Cosmos full of galaxies, and on the basis of that knowledge, had developed technologies that have vastly improved the quality of our lives.

While our scientific knowledge has grown exponentially, we are still a long way off from knowing it all.

In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking posits three possibilities for a grand unified theory of everything that will satisfy our ultimate curiosity about the Universe:

1. There is a theory of everything “which we will someday discover”.

2. There is no theory of everything, “just an infinite sequence of theories” that describe reality with ever-greater degrees of accuracy, but never ultimately ties up all the loose ends, much like Zeno's paradox of only ever getting halfway to your destination.

3. There is no theory of everything – “events cannot be predicted beyond a certain extent”. Hawking stops himself from going further and stating the possibility that the Universe might be fundamentally unknowable.

So I would add a fourth possibility: it is not for us, Homo sapiens, to ever come up with a workable theory of everything. Our brains are just too puny to get to grips with the complexity of an unfolding Universe. Not only is the metaphysical beyond our grasp, but the physical is too. Maybe Homo superior will get there, maybe not.

All that is certain to us is conscious experience and our intuitions relating from that experience. Gnosis. Knowledge through experience rather than knowledge through learning. The one thing I do know for sure is that I am conscious. Indeed, I am conscious of being conscious. This is the fundamental base substrate of my subjective reality. Aware of being aware, I am! 

"Are you a Trinitarian or a Unitarian?" "Do you believe in Transubstantiation or  Consubstantiation?" Thousands perished for replying with the 'wrong' answer. But ultimately, do nuances of dogma matter at all?  Does God even care what we understand God to be?

This is why I find religious fundamentalism of all sorts intolerable; fundamentalists proclaim certainty of that which by definition is unknowable. Divine inspiration can only take us so far. We can merely be aware that those who seek God are on a quest for knowledge that is ultimately doomed never to succeed. In this lifetime.

"Jesus said : "Let him who seeks cease not seeking until he finds"." – From the [Gnostic] Gospel of Thomas, 1:2.

Lent 2025: day 40
The nature of the past

Lent 2024: day 40
More questions than answers (Pt I)

Lent 2024, Day 40
How we lead our lives

Lent 2022: Day 40
Fasting and Temptation

Lent 2021: Day 40
Medicine, Mindfulness and Miracles

Lent 2020: Day 40
Coercion, Persuasion, Conversion and Faith

Lent 2026: day 39 – on Original Sin

What is Original Sin? To many, it's become some old dogma cooked up by early Christian theologians to justify the whole schtick about why mankind needs salvation. 

In my personal theology, I consider original sin not in terms of vague inherited guilt, nor as an primordial act of disobedience, but as something far more immediate and recognisable. 

I take original sin to be anger.

Classical theology, rooted in the Augustinian tradition, frames original sin as 'disordered will' – the conscious turning away from the good towards the self. My lived experience suggests something else, something more visceral. The disorder does not present itself as 'will'. It is a reaction to external stimulus, instantaneous override of good judgment and the ability to calculate long-term consequences.

By 'anger' I mean that hair-trigger orientation that reacts before it understands. Losing one's temper, when instinct overpowers intellect, and 'flight or fight' kicks in. The collapse of the wave function into 'I' vs 'Adversary'. [If you need a frame of reference here, think road-rage. Google Gemini image]

Anger inhabits a space that is biological, moral and existential. It is innate. It is triggered by perceived threat. It carries with it an implicit judgment – this should not be happening! I am right! The moron driver of the black SUV is clearly in the wrong! And anger compels immediate action, from incoherent shouting to drawing a .38 revolver. In an instant, anger simplifies the world into opponent and self, wrong and right, offence and response.

Anger is not just one sin among many. It is baked into the operating system. Once anger is engaged, perception narrows, ambiguity collapses, and the other becomes the foe. Time shortens – there's no 'cooling-off period', no 'counting to ten', no space for reflection, only reaction. Lashing out. The self consolidates, defined by nothing else than what it is resisting. Anger is already a form of violence, even before any violent action – or even in the absence of violent action.

The Old Testament is full of references to a wrathful Lord. [This supports my contention – and that of the Gnostics – that the Old Testament God was an imposter, the Demiurge, the creator of the material world, and nothing to do with the almighty God of Love as preached by Jesus.] However, the New Testament rarely mentions anger. A rare reference: the Epistle of James 1:19-20: "Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God". All four Gospels tell of Jesus's Cleansing of the Temple, but in none of the four accounts does Jesus display any outright anger at the moneychangers, other than possibly overturning their tables (mentioned in Matthew 21:12 and Mark 11:15).

Anger always requires a trigger; it does not arise out of nothing. Anger is where the system 'kicks off' into an altered state. From the neurocognitive perspective, anger is immediate, subcortical and energetically mobilising. While the idea of the 'reptile brain' (a reptilian complex at the heart of the brain, surrounded by paleomammalian and neomammalian layers) has long been disproved, there is a grain of truth here. Bypassing deliberation, anger is evolutionarily useful in a threat-filled environment, but maladaptive in a world of complex social relations. In theological language, one might say that our base nature is not evil, but misaligned – optimised for an environment that we are no longer living in.

The implications of this maladaptation is important. Original Sin here is not primarily rule-breaking or rejecting God. It is misperception under the influence of anger, a form of behaviour caused by loss of self-control. Ethics becomes less about compliance and more about the discipline of not allowing reptilian first reaction to define our reality. Also of huge importance is the speed with which we can right ourselves after being hit by a wave of anger, how quickly our consciousness, our intuition and our intellect can return once more to dominate our behaviour.

'Salvation' in the context of anger is that recovery of self (literally, "I was beside myself with anger"). Loss of control is temporary; the mind returns to the space between stimulus and response.

'Sin' in the context of anger is no longer a static condition, but a feedback loop. Anger generates anger. Reaction provokes reaction. Strike calls for counter-strike! Yet response to egregious behaviour directed against one should always be appropriate and proportionate to the infraction, and that calls for analysis, not mindless lashing out. Ultimately, anger can be mollified, its causes mitigated (like, drive less, avoid cities and motorways), but the trigger mechanism is always there, in your head.

AFTERTHOUGHT: After writing the above, I went for a walk. In the other part of Jakubowizna, a large aggressive dog suddenly started barking at me from behind a wooden fence, at a distance of about  a metre and half. My instant response was to shout a stream of obscene Polish words at the hound. Fortunately, there was no one in the front garden to witness this and to think me mad. A few paces further along the pavement, I had returned to my usual disposition, albeit shaken up a bit.

Lent 2024: day 39 
The Magic Power of Gratitude

Lent 2023, day 39
Peace of Mind

Lent 2022: day 39
Animal spirits, animal consciousness

Lent 2021: day 39
Praise the Sun God

Lent 2020: day 39
Don't let misfortune catch you unaware!

Lent 2026: day 38 – do animals have souls?

Czester and Scrapper went to the vets today for the snip – a far less invasive operation than what poor Wenusia had to endure. It's eight pm, they've just had their first (small) meal of the day, and they both seem in fine form. Still, I felt guilty that the two boys were being deprived of their sexual potential. Fatherhood is no longer a reason for them to live. Why do cats live? What do they live for? Who do they live for? We keep cats as pets, and it is for our convenience that we get them sterilised. We humans manage their reproduction. Companion animals are cared for, fed and sheltered, but wildlife – hunting and culling excepted – self-regulates, existing as it does at the fringes of human civilisations. Deer, hare, boar, we see them from time to time; their lives are perilous but fully agential. Living in instinct and intuition. And aware of their existence.

Whenever I look into the eyes of any of my cats for any length of time, we end up staring at each other, exchanging slow blinks. We may not know what each of us is thinking, but I am aware that I am looking into the eyes of a conscious creature, just as self-aware as I am. A being that is as central to the universe as I feel that I am.

I absolutely refuse to speculate on the possibility of cross-species reincarnation, for I have never had any experiences that could possibly inform me of such. But I do feel that my cats have that small 'c' consciousness which I possess, and that their feline bodies are indeed containers for consciousness. Or souls.

Our relationship with our pets, is more simple than the complexities of inter-human relationships. The feelings we have for our pets, fondness, love even, expect no reciprocity. The ego doesn't get in the way, no trying to show who's boss. Just acceptance of who we are.

Dogs, having lived in the presence of humans for much longer than cats, have evolved facial muscles that can form expressions to which humans can ascribe emotions. Cats can't do this (yet!), rendering their faces more enigmatic to their human owners. Yet cats' inner experience cannot be denied. That feline mind is forever occupied by something. It is paying attention; it is there in the present.

But does the cat have metacognition – is it aware of being aware? Probably not. I'd posit that metacognition requires a substrate of higher intelligence in parallel with the substrate required for consciousness. But this lack of consciousness of being conscious does not negate the presence of consciousness in animals.

In 2012, the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (2012) concluded that many non-human animals, including cats and dogs, possess the neurological substrates necessary for consciousness. This landmark scientific statement challenged the long-held view that consciousness is unique to humans, and has since influenced global animal welfare policies.

Take a strictly Darwinian view of animals and their purpose is solely to survive and reproduce. But spend time getting to know cats and you will see that there's more to them than that. There's a soul in there, and that soul is also on the eternal journey from Zero to One.

Lent 2025: day 38
A Lenten interruption (heart attack)

Lent 2024: day 38
Neither a follower nor a leader be

Lent 2023, day 38
Go with the flow, or swim against the tide

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

Lent 2026: day 37 – diverse minds, diverse souls?

I base my theological worldview on the ground truth that consciousness is primary. I can declare with absolute certainty that no one other than myself can experience what it is to be me. My life is my own. It is built upon memory, my memories of myriad qualia going back to early childhood. Not memories of events, which are prone to fail, degrade or twist, but memories of feelings, conscious experience, awareness. Memories that resurface, either bidden, triggered (typically by smell or sound), or that pop into my stream of consciousness spontaneously. Congruent familiarities. And that, dear reader, is the essence of me.

And yet no man is an island. Cooperation has made Homo sapiens an unparalleled evolutionary success. Yes, as members of the species, we are all different, neurologically different, each with our own blend of strengths and talents. In the material world, we all have to cooperate to get by, working as a plethora of professions and service providers woven together into societies.

Today I want to ask what role does neurodiversity play in the way we respond to the metaphysical? Does our neurodiversity lead to diverse ways to define and find God? How do neurological differences affect our spirituality? After all, they affect our social, cognitive and emotional functions. But our faith in a supreme being – or belief in the lack thereof? And those of faith – how does it manifest itself in our lives? How do we conduct our search for meaning and purpose in life? How does it affect the relationship between our consciousness and our ego?

Some minds have an innate tendency to systemise how they see reality, with a preference for internally consistent frameworks. They crave order and neatness. Other minds, however, are stronger on loose associative thinking, and are able to detect novel patterns or connections across domains.

Just looking at the above pair of mind-types in the context of metaphysics, the first suggests a preference for ritual and doctrinal clarity; the second for imaginative immersion and symbolic/transcendent interpretations. In other words, I am postulating that some mind-types might innately seek exoteric faiths that set out their truths based on the received word.  For other mind-types, however, esoteric traditions are more attractive – engagement in a search for truth based on subjective experience. Here, I'd place exoteric faith as an equal and opposite to reductionist-materialist atheism: you base the faith on the Word of God or your atheism on the certainty of Science. No place in either for fluffy, woolly notions of first-person subjective experience of the Numinous.

Metaphysics – aspects of reality above or beyond the physical, the material –  is by its very nature underdetermined. Neurodiversity affects how people tolerate that lack of definition. Some minds have a high need for certainty, and are uncomfortable with ill-defined concepts unless formalised. They will strive to collapse metaphysics into clear doctrine. The Nicene Creed which I mentioned two days ago is a good example – the certainty-seeking mind aligns with religion as social control. Other mind-types have a much higher ambiguity tolerance, and are comfortable with paradox (something can be both true and not true at the same time), and are able to sustain open-ended philosophical tension.

We all have but the mind we were born with. But we can ask for more – we can learn, observe, extend our curiosity. Frequency and intensity of experiences vary from mind to mind. This imprints upon the consciousness in different ways. Ultimately, we must strive to understand ourselves, our biologies, our minds – and then to engage in open dialogue if we genuinely seek metaphysical enlightenment, to progress on the journey from Zero to One.

Lent 2024: day 37
Observer or participant?

Lent 2023, day 37
The Inner Hug: Contact with the Eternal

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

Lent 2026: day 36 – time and the soul

The Ancient Greeks distinguished between elapsed time, perceived time and eternity.

Let's begin with chronos (χρόνος) – measurable, sequential time. This is the closest to elapsed time in the modern scientific sense. Chronos is quantitative, continuous, divisible time, progressing in a linear fashion from past through present into the future, measurable in years, seasons, months, weeks, days and hours. Chronos was used for tracking celestial cycles in astronomy, for marking events in history, and for everyday scheduling. Chronos is not an independent entity, but a measure of change, without change, there is no time to count. This aligns with modern physics – time is a parameter that indexes change in a system, in particular, entropy – the time it takes for example for an ice cube to melt, for milk to dissolve into coffee or a strawberry to decay into mush. The inexorable progression from order into disorder.

Then we have kairos (καιρός) – qualitative, experienced time. It cannot be measured with a clock; it is felt, not counted. This corresponds to the notions of perceived or opportune time. Kairos is not something to be quantified; it is entirely context-dependent. It can feel fast or slow. Floyd Dixon puts it like this: "We was having so much fun/Didn't know it was half past one/Turned round to have one more/Looked at the clock and it was half past four." On the other hand, after holding the plank posture for four minutes, the fifth minute takes what feels like an hour to pass. Kairos is also the moment when something ought to happen. In Greek rhetoric it was the right moment to present the clinching argument. In warfare, the decisive instant to strike. As such, kairos is linked in meaning to opportunity or decision – and the intuition to act. I would put this as the moment of aligned flows; when your flow and the Cosmic flow are congruent. It is the 'now-or-never' moment; the 'sliding-door' moment. Kairos maps directly onto modern psychological notions of subjective time dilation/ compression, flow states and the emotional weighting of moments.

And finally, the Greeks had the notion of Aion (αἰών) – eternal or cyclical time. This is unbounded time, associated with the lifespan of the cosmos. Aion is not sequential in the everyday sense, but is often cyclical or timeless, associated with permanence or totality. Plato defines chronos as “a moving image of aion”. Sir Roger Penrose uses the term Aeon to describe one cycle of endless Big Bangs, cosmic expansions and heat-deaths, from one Big Bang to the next. When the last atom ceases to vibrate, there is no vibration, nothing with which to measure time. Time ceases. Without time, there is no space. And at that instant, the next Big Bang pops up. An eternity of aeons. 

And so – where in time is the soul? Seeing 'soul' and 'consciousness' as the same concept but from different historical ages, I would consider the soul as belonging to the aion, the biological body as  belonging to chronos, and consciously experiencing kairos. Passing through the aeon, chronologically. One lifetime at a time.

********

This Sunday, the clocks go forward. The realm of chronos, the quantifiable. Yet what we experience is not an arbitrary hour on the clock, but is predicated by our biological reaction to the sun's rising and setting, and all points in between – our circadian rhythm. On Sunday morning, the sun will rise at 06:17, an hour and two minutes later than on Saturday. We will be robbed of an hour's sleep – and this has health implications (hospital admissions for heart attacks spike by 24% in the week after the time change – it was this time last year that my heart attack occurred). 

So to prepare for the spring time change, I have been going to bed early (as early as 9pm) for the past four evenings, and waking up shortly after 5am, in other words before sunrise, which today was at 05:27. 

The early start is wonderful. I witness the sun rising through the forest next door, and set off for an early pre-breakfast stroll. Early spring, so the young day is full of the year's coiled potential, still waiting to burst open. On an empty stomach (just the one black coffee!) I feel light-headed, alert and alive. An altered state. Quite something! It's sunny, though with a chill wind from the south, a wonderful feeling to be alive and soaking up the qualia. 

Kairos suggests that it's later than it is; my early-to-bed, early-to-rise pre-time-change regime has gifted me an additional hour and half of daylight that I could have wasted by waking at seven am. On Saturday night, I go to bed at 9pm and wake up at 6am, having had a normal eight hours' sleep.

In the balance between chronos and kairos lies the balance between quantity and quality.

Lent 2024: day 36
After death, what's next? (Pt III)

Lent 2023: day 36
Money and metaphysics

Lent 2022: day 36
Losing sight of God

Lent 2021: Day 36
One life is not enough

Lent 2020: Day 36
Accounting for talent

Lent 2026: day 35 – religion and social control

I am not sold on the idea of organised religions for two reasons. The first is that I firmly believe, I intuit, that everyone who seeks God shall find God in their own way. There are therefore as many paths to God as people who seek God. This is one of my primary principles regarding human spirituality. I believe that in essence faith is experiential rather than book-taught – esoteric rather than exoteric.

The second reason is that I see religions as all too often straying in their remit from the spiritual into the temporal realm. The temptation for spiritual leaders to appropriate humans' innate longing for the numinous, – the sense of awe – for the purpose of social control is too great. "Believe in what you are told to believe, live according to our precepts, and you will be rewarded in the afterlife" is a simple yet persuasive narrative.

In The Republic, written around 375 BC, Plato (through his narrator, Socrates), engages in his famous mind-experiment of devising the perfect state. Having set up a hypothetical community of mutually interdependent craftsmen (farmers, builders and weavers), which is expanded to include merchants, artists, tutors and warriors, it becomes clear to Socrates and his interlocutors that some form of social control would be required to ensure that the unjust do not end up dominating the just. Socrates postulates the sort of religion that a just state would require to keep  the morale of its citizens high. He is critical of Homer and other authors who portray the gods as morally dubious, and so, introduces censorship to his republic. Strict control of cultural narratives is therefore essential: stories about the gods must be controlled, because they shape the character of the populace. “We must first supervise the storytellers. If they tell a fine story, we approve it; if not, we reject it.” Children absorb stories before they can reason; myths must be filtered at source. The state decides what is acceptable. Plato is saying that rulers need to have systematic control of cultural input.

Seven centuries later, in 325 AD, the Roman Emperor Constantine – who had converted to Christianity eight years earlier – convened the Council of Nicaea, summoning 200 bishops from around Christendom to Nicaea (in modern-day Turkey) to hammer out what it was exactly that Christians believed in. After all, he reasoned, if this is to become the official religion of the Roman Empire, it's important to know what it stands for. And thus was hammered out the Nicene Creed, an imperially approved statement of what the Church believes (and by omission what it doesn't). Of course, this wasn't the end of the matter; debate would rage on for centuries – about the nature of the Holy Trinity in particular – but it was a crucial step in establishing Christianity as a global religion, rather than a loose collection of squabbling cults.

Theological debate in the service of empire-building, the Council of Nicaea highlights how the needs of church and state can overlap. And so they did for the best part of a millennium and a half. The Enlightenment led to a clear separation of secular governments from church authorities; the 'divine right' to rule was over. Theocracies are on the retreat (with a few stubborn exceptions).

Is church-going in general decline in the West because people can see through the social control aspects of religions? Has atheism – based on the notion that there's no God because everything is composed of matter – led to societies losing control? In balance, no. Secular laws by and large work effectively, keep trouble-makers in society from causing too much harm to the rest of us.

I have written about the rising numbers of people identifying themselves as 'Spiritual But Not Religious' (SBNR) in the US, as church-going and religious affiliation is falling. In Europe, this is reflected in the term 'believing but not belonging', with many people retaining spiritual beliefs, but disengaging from church participation and doctrine. And there are also the 'Religious But Not Spiritual', who go to church out of a sense of tradition, duty and order, without feeling any spiritual calling. 

I would posit that a fixed proportion of society has some kind of a spiritual calling; for some, there is the need to belong to a faith community and engage in regular spiritual practice (church-going); for others – this number is increasing as the former decreases – a self-authored worldview with an emphasis on spiritual experiences rather than pre-packaged teachings is preferred.

How will this look in the future? I suspect that the SBNRs will continue to grow in number, and this will be seen in a proliferation of YouTube channels and social-media accounts; a whole new stream of people searching for God in their own way.

Lent 2024: day 35
After death what's next? (Pt II)

Lent 2023: day 35
Into the Afterlife (Pt III)

Lent 2022: day 35
Altered states - caffeine and alcohol

Lent 2021: day 35
The science of coincidence

Lent 2020: day 35
Soul and Body

Lent 2026: day 34 – qualia, sensitivity and attention

Sunrise is getting earlier and earlier in the run up to next Sunday's time change. I woke up this morning at quarter past five*, fed the cats, then caught the sun rising through the trees of the forest next door. Some thin clouds in the sky, but the red orb shines through branches touched by a light overnight frost. Scrapper and Czester, sitting on the window sill, framed this picture. 

A sense of bliss becomes me. All is well. I give thanks. I give thanks for noticing the sunrise, and for being able to revel in it for a moment. After all, this dawn could have been overcast and dull. Qualia like this are to live for.

Our daily lives are a progress through a constant cloud of potential qualia, some of which come to our attention; most, however, pass by without notice. Unremarkable. What collapses the wave function to trigger a memorable qualia experience? Vivid sensory inputs? Or is it more emotional? Is paying attention the answer? 

If so, I have only really started paying mindful attention to what's around me in recent years – yet my mind is crammed with memories from childhood, youth and earlier adult years. 

What selects for the experiences we note, and those we subconsciously overlook? The warmth of the sun on my face on a bright spring day like today, a subtly changing cloudscape, the buzzing of an early bee around my front door, the crunch of dry twigs underfoot. These experiences are the qualia that form the raw texture of reality.

However, at any given moment, there are far more of them available to experience than we are capable of being aware of. The world does not present itself to us in neatly lined-up row of sensations to sample one after the other. We live in a sensation-rich environment, abundant and random, that at times can feel almost overwhelming. 

What we define as 'our experience' is but a thin selection of all possible experiences that could potentially be experienced. So how do we allocate the finite resource of our awareness? Is it something that requires our active effort (attention)? Or is it something passive (sensitivity)?  Something we are born with to a lesser or greater degree? Is it something, that applying discipline to it, we can intensify? Should we sift through this firehose of sensory inputs looking for anything in particular?

One thing I learnt from my father is the importance of observation; to be observant, to notice, to be aware of detail. Attention can be trained, disciplined, refined. But as with talents, it is based on something that's already present. And that is sensitivity. Great artists have it, it opens their doors to perception.

Left to itself, attention drifts. It is captured by novelty, by movement, by threat, by desire, by commerce. It loops through familiar concerns. It returns, again and again, to whatever has most successfully hooked it in the past. In this sense, much of what we attend to is not chosen consciously at all, but inherited – from biology, from culture, from advertising, from habit.

What we notice, what strikes our inward eye to imprint itself on our long-term memory, accumulates over time to shape our inner life, and indeed to shape who we are. And with death, as consciousness passes on, I feel that the strongest of those qualia memories will resurface at some future time in another biological container.

A short walk before sunset; the air is getting chilly. Birdsong. A rising razor-crescent moon. The cats chasing each other down the drive. Qualia. And during the walk, a pleasant and familiar past-life flashback. Short, not particularly intense, but enough to provide me with continuity and assurance.

* While I mitigate seasonal affective disorder in autumn by ignoring the time change and going to bed at the same time relative to the sun, in spring, a different strategy is called for. In preparation for the spring time change, I start to go to bed one hour earlier relative to sunset, so when the clocks go forward at the end of March, I can wake up at the new hour and be up around sunrise.

Lent 2024: day 34
After death – what's next? (Pt I)

Lent 2023: day 34
Into the Afterlife (Pt II)

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

Lent 2026: day 33 –talent and intuition

Imagine a blank canvas in front of you, a range of paint brushes, and access to paints in any shade you want to reach for. GO! Don't think, just feel yourself slipping into a trance-like state. Don't think: "Oh, it could do with a contrasting colour here, a splodge of white, maybe," rather let your intuition take control of all decisions. You have no previous experience, no 10,000 hours of practice, no theoretical knowledge about paint drying times and combinations of hue. Just go for it. Let it out; don't intellectualise, don't think: "this is starting to look like a city at night in the rain, so I'll steer it that way,"

What do you will come out? More than likely, brown sludge, slop; nothing, a distant approximation of what could be taken for abstract impressionism but lacking any redeeming qualities. Get 300 people in front of easels, however, and give them the same task, and a jury will have something to go on. Some curious quirk that catches the eye, there unintentionally. But importantly, some folk are better able to tap into the flow.

The early abstract impressionists knew exactly what they were aiming at; but daubing blank canvases seemingly at random – can it result in anything of interest?

You don't know until you've tried it!

Same with automatic writing. Put yourself in front of a keyboard, get into the flow and see what comes out. Imagine a higher entity, a separate entity, a strand of non-local consciousness, taking over your fingers, and letting words come out as they may. What are you getting?

This is certainly not going to work with musical instruments. The untutored, the unpracticed, will never manage a euphonious run of notes. Forget intuition alone serving as a guide to musical creativity! The 10,000 hours rule here is the rule that cannot be broken (though Sid Vicious had a good try). Having said that, the phenomenon I've noticed (and recorded) for some time now – waking up with an original tune going around my head – is very real (I have a phone's-worth of recordings), but these are typically short, two or three bars of music, certainly no Moonlight Sonata.

Mindfulness, meditation, altered states designed to enhance creativity – but not the creativity that comes from a thought process, rather a case of letting your consciousness reach for new quality.

Lent 2024: day 33
Time and spirituality, Pt III

Lent 2023, day 33
Into the Afterlife (Pt I) 

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"

Lent 2026: day 32 – what it is to be talented

The Parable of the Talents has puzzled me since I was a teenager. If the master or lord in the parable refers to God – where is God's mercy? Where is God's love? It was this parable that first caused me to question the authenticity of the Gospels. Were the Evangelists (who wrote the four canonical Gospels between 30 and 75 years after Christ's crucifixion) accurately recording the actual words of Christ, I wondered.

Let us begin with asking what is a 'talent'. In Biblical times, it was a monetary unit, expressed as the value of 30 kg of silver, equivalent to 6,000 denari, one denarius being a day's pay for a labourer, so therefore one talent represented the equivalent of about 20 years' worth of work. In modern terms, this would be somewhere around 1.1 million złotys or £200,000 at the national minimum wage. That's one talent. Now, the master gave his servants each five, three and one talent respectively. Those sums would have been understood by those who listened to the parables of Jesus as inconceivably vast amounts of wealth.

In the Middle Ages, the meaning of the word 'talent' came to be used figuratively in Latin as "a gift from God", "a marked natural skill or ability" and thus into our modern lexicons.

So let's read from the Gospel of St Matthew (chapter 25, verses 14-30)

14 For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. 15 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey. 16 Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents. 17 And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. 18 But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money. 19 After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. 20 And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. 21 His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. 22 He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them. 23 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. 24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: 25 And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine. 26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: 27 Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. 28 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. 29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. 30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I find these words harsh, and in all honesty, unGodlike. I have reflected upon the parable of the talent over the decades, but if we look at it through a Gnostic perspective, we can imagine the lord not as the loving Jesus, but as the Demiurge, the Archon that created the material world, more interested in what his servants can do for him materially than in what makes each one different, and maybe take account of the innate risk-averse nature of the third servant. The lord is extractive, profit-driven and punitive. I see not a trace of Jesus about him. More the 'rank-and-yank' corporate CEO with an eye on Q4 earnings and a big year-end bonus for himself. So why the inclusion of this parable (in two versions) in the New Testament? Certainly, there's not a trace of the Sermon on the Mount here ("Blessed are the unprofitable servants, for they too shall have abundance").

But age and experience has told me that the evangelist Matthew (who wrote his Gospel some 50 years after Christ's crucifixion) was merely being perceptive of the human condition. Verily, those that have shall get more, while those who have little shall have even that snatched away from them. Matthew posits this notion earlier in his Gospel (Chapter 13, verse 12): "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." From this comes the rather harsh 'Matthew effect' in economics – advantage begets further advantage. Wealth inequality has a natural tendency to increase over time.

OK, that's life, it doesn't sound particularly Christian, but Matthew puts these words into Christ's mouth. Matthew is backed up by his fellow synoptic evangelist Luke, writing on the same theme. "For unto you I say, that to every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that little he hath shall be taken away."

There is but one charitable interpretation that I can hold with – that the talents are neither money, nor indeed innate gifts or talents in the modern sense, but God's love. The servants that accept God's love and spread it in the world are rewarded, and the one who ignores it, burying it instead, is punished.

[If you are keen for a comparison with the Gospel of St Luke, here it is (chapter 19, verses 15-26):

15 And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading. 16 Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound* hath gained ten pounds. 17 And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities. 18 And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds. 19 And he said likewise to him, Be thou also over five cities. 20 And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin: 21 For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow. 22 And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow: 23 Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury? 24 And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds. 25 (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.) 26 For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.

* The 'pound' used in the King James Version of Luke's Gospel is also known as a mina, a Greek coin that is one-sixtieth of a talent, and rather than the servants being entrusted with five, three and one talent respectively, each gets just the one mina, a significantly smaller sum all round.

More on talents as gifts tomorrow.

Lent 2025: day 32 
[No post, the day of my heart attack]

Lent 2024: day 32
Time and spirituality Pt II

Lent 2023, day 32
The Practice of Gratitude

Lent 2022: day 32
The Search for Perfection

Lent 2021: day 32
Meditation

Lent 2020: day 32
Divine Intervention

Lent 2026: day 31 – what do you want from life?

A tough question to have to face up to. Doesn't it all depend where you are in life's cycle? "Get into a good university." "Get a good job." "Get married and buy a home." "Pay off the mortgage, get the children off to university."  "Inherit the family fortune." And then we'll see. Usually this means buying something you've always wanted, ticking off bucket-list destinations, boosting one's position in the status hierarchy, chasing honours and fame.

What do you want from life? Something material? Or something intangible? Is there an ulterior purpose?

It is useful to consider the Aristotelian notion of teleology (from the Greek telos, aim, purpose, end goal, design, final cause), the study of where we're heading to and why. This is about the fulfilment of your human potential. Making the most of your talents, temporal and spiritual. But reductionist materialists would argue that we are nothing more than stochastic products of emergence (evolution) existing in an indifferent and meaningless universe, and our only purpose is survival and reproduction, and there's nothing more. The race to own more stuff and to show off achievements is a vestigial remnant of sex drive; peacock feathers.

Personally, my own quest is for a higher level of consciousness; for greater understanding; transcendence; participating in something more than the ego; coherence. I am aware that I am destined never to get anywhere near grasping intuitively the wholeness of Cosmos, of which we are such a tiny part; nevertheless, each insight, each step nearer, is significant. Hence – one lifetime at a time.

Joy I seek, rather than pleasure. Comfort; not reaching out for luxury. Conscious experiences, rather than ego trips. So, I am (eventually, over time) to observe the Universe unfolding, as it experiences itself (Big 'C' Consciousness). And integrate my own small 'c' conscious experiences, my qualia, with those of the Universe. Over time. This is not (and this notion is central to my beliefs) something that can be achieved in a single lifetime! In feeling the sun and wind on my face on a sunny day, in reflecting upon triggered or unbidden memories, in experiencing simple joys, I am doing this. Physical reality is but a substrate for conscious experience; the biological layer (consciousness requires a container, a platform, from which to observe the unfolding Universe). Health is important, bodily aches distract consciousness from being aware of anything other than the source of the pain.

I asked Google Gemini for its distillation of  the purpose of life, and the answer astounded me: "Be at the interface where chaos becomes meaning". Wow! Very good. And ChatGPT? Slightly more prosaic, but instantly relatable. "To become more conscious, and to use that consciousness well." Yes, I'd agree with that too. It's a search, a journey – in the form of daily rural walks, a starry night, the changing seasons, cats, good food, good music, interesting conversations that share new ideas and refine old ones. The framework is complete.

Lent 2025: day 31
Hope and hopelessness

Lent 2024: day 31
Time and Spirituality

Lent 2023, day 31
Science vs. the 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

Lent 2026: day 30 – how do souls migrate?

If we accept consciousness being immaterial and persisting beyond bodily death, rather than a phenomenon tethered to neurons and synapses of the brain – how does that signal bind, unbind and rebind to new biologies?

Over the years in this blog, I have considered possible vectors (or metaphors for mechanisms), from brain waves, quantum effects and gut flora to music. Today, I'll dive in deeper.         

Let's start with the metaphor of consciousness as a broadcast field. Our brains act as receivers, picking up signals from the field. At death, the receiver fails – but the field, the signal, persists; a new brain with compatible structure locks onto the same frequency or pattern. The question here is that of compatibility; is this purely a biological factor? Is it random? What of karmic affinity? The 'broadcast field' metaphor also explains atheists who do not feel the numinous, who have no spiritual attunement; for they are like computers, able to think, logically, quickly – but are not connected via wi-fi to the Cosmic Consciousness, to the Eternal Whole. Then there is the idea of the brain not so much as a receiver but as a transmitter, generating electromagnetic fields that might imprint on the environment and later be reabsorbed, but no there are no hypotheses as to storage or retrieval mechanisms.

Acoustic / vibrational models begin with the notion that reality is fundamentally vibrational, and that consciousness is a frequency pattern. At death, the pattern dissipates but does not vanish; it can be congruently reconstructed under the right conditions via resonance. As I wrote, this echoes Pythagoras's 'music of the spheres', as well as the Vedic concept of Nāda Brahma ('universe as sound'). Whether your physics is field-based or wave-based, this is intuitively powerful; and while lacking a concrete encoding mechanism for memory/identity, it could be that music somehow acts as trigger.

Physics (bless it) has not yet detected neither such fields nor such vibrations. (Note the word 'yet' there– as I wrote yesterday, should it? Will it ever detect them? Or is science destined never to nail down the numinous and ineffable as a mathematical formula?)

The next mechanism is quantum information transfer. This posits that consciousness as a quantum state (or information pattern). Consciousness is encoded in quantum information, potentially in microtubules (the Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory of Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff) or some deeper quantum substrate. At death, quantum coherence collapses the information of consciousness, which disperses into the quantum vacuum or entangled states; it then recoheres in another system. This theory provides a technical framework for non-local persistence. However, there is no evidence that personal identity can survive decoherence.After 30 years, Orch-OR has neither been proven nor falsified. Sir Roger has often stated that he does not believe consciousness to be computational.

However, if we think of our consciousness as operating system software, and our thoughts as the apps run on that operating system, the brain being the biological hardware, then we can think of a computational continuity model of reincarnation, with old software being copied over into a new computer. A wave pattern of information reforms in a different medium, recreating the consciousness of the deceased person. This model is favoured by those who believe in a simulation hypothesis. But the question remains: what's the transfer mechanism? Pen-drive or wi-fi?

Biological carriers are also worth considering. Genetic memory links consciousness to DNA patterns. This can explain 'atavistic resurgence', whereby a memory from an ancestor re-emerges via blood lineage; however this can't explain non-familial cases of reincarnation. This could explain the strong feeling of familiarity I got in May 2010 while cresting a low hill outside Mogielnica, unaware of the fact that my grandmother was brought up nearby. Then there is the microbiome (gut flora). The gut-brain axis has been proved to influenced cognition; it could be  hypothesised that microbial ecosystems carry 'memory markers' from one human to another. This, however, is thought to be highly implausible as a carrier of identity and complex personality; at best microbes can influence mood.

The panpsychist and idealist models, towards which I lean, are based on the core idea that consciousness is primary, rather than derived. There is no migration of consciousness, only localisation (life), delocalisation (death), and relocalisation (rebirth); a whirlpool forming in a river dissolving and reforming elsewhere Advocates include three of my favourite philosophers, David Chalmers, Bernardo Kastrup and Phillip Goff. Idealism, which gets away from the primacy of matter, sidesteps the transport problem entirely, but is hard to reconcile with personal identity continuity that we see in those cases where one dead person's identity seems to inform the consciousness of another (which I experience).

If we want to abandon any pretence of scientific rigour, we can seek non-mechanistic answers in karmic or causal continuity, as propounded by Buddhism. There is no migrating entity here, only a causal chain, with one life conditioning the next, as a flame passed from candle to candle or a wave propagating on a calm surface of water. In Buddhism (unlike Hinduism) there is no permanent self, but continuity of tendencies. While philosophically rigorous, it doesn’t satisfy intuition of a persisting 'self'

So... what persists? Memories? Certainly. Personality traits/behaviours? Possibly. Physical traits (birthmarks etc). Personally, I can't see why. Causal chain (karma – learning lessons, undoing past-life wrongs), yes, I get that and appreciate this argument.

Any viable mechanism must explain memory continuity (rare but claimed cases), identity persistence, selectivity (why one body, not another), and ways whereby energy and information are conserved. The answer lies in a blend of the above. Perhaps.

Old Souls and New Souls: some people report the feeling of having experienced many previous human lifetimes. Others few, or just one. But most folk – none at all. My thinking here: humanity is expected to peak at ten billion sometime in the mid-2070s before settling back to a more sustainable and stable number in the middle of the 22nd century. More and more human beings will become inhabited by old souls, who will have experienced many lives and therefore become wiser, gentler, understanding the notion of win-win rather than looking at life adversarially. A stable population will mean lesser pressure on natural resources. Less greed. So – is the number of souls finite? Still so many questions remain.

Lent 2025: day 30
Getting On With It (Pt II)

Lent 2025: day 30
The Divine in your life

Lent 2023, day 30
God/No God

Lent 2022: day 30
Let the Spirit guide you!

Lent 2021: day 30
On being perceptive

Lent 2020: day 30
Time – religion and metaphysics

Lent 2026: day 29 – can reincarnation be proven?

The two great religions of the East, Hinduism and Buddhism, accept the concept of reincarnation. The great religions of the West, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, don't, while still accepting life after death in one form or another. [Certain esoteric traditions within or adjacent to the three Abrahamic faiths are more open to reincarnation, but they are far from the doctrinal mainstream.] Secular materialism, or physicalism, likewise rejects reincarnation. 

So to the Western mind the concept is entirely alien, on the one hand, it's not passed down in religious education, on the other it's poo-pooed by rigorous rationalism. Awareness of the transmigration of souls in the West only really kicked off with New Age in the 1960s, a movement focused on the unification of body, mind and spirit.

Today, reincarnation is considered increasingly seriously as a hypothesis in the context of life after death. The blending of Eastern traditions of reincarnation with science, and the philosophy of idealism, which posits that consciousness is the fundamental property of the universe, from which space, time, matter and energy are derived (and not the other way around, as science believes).

If any one Western researcher has done more serious work into this subject, it is Ian Stevenson (1918-2007), from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Over his 40 years of work in this field, he authored 14 books and 300 academic papers, based on over 2,500 cases of children who claimed to remember past lives. What made his work notable was his systematic methodology. His research focused on children (typically aged 2–6) who spontaneously spoke about 'previous lives'. 

Prof Stevenson studied cases mainly in countries where reincarnation was a culturally accepted belief;  India, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Turkey, Burma and Thailand. He was looking for statements made by the child relating to a deceased individual that could be verified. In particular, he was looking out for behavioural and physical traits that corresponded with those of the deceased. Prof Stevenson's methodology focused heavily on early documentation, interviews with multiple witnesses, and taking care to minimise the possibility of information leakage between families.

I don't intend to highlight any of the cases that he brought to light (if you are interested, ask your favourite AI for a summary of Ian Stevenson's most persuasive cases). What I do want to share with you is what he claimed, and what he didn't claim. He never claimed to have proven reincarnation. His position was more restrained; the cases he published "may point to a currently unknown mechanism of memory transfer." ChatGPT sums up his work as "anomalous but not definitive, sitting at the boundary between psychiatry, anthropology, and parapsychology".

Stevenson emphasised that the information he collected was suggestive of reincarnation but "was not flawless and it certainly does not compel such a belief." Yet he believed that he had produced a body of evidence for reincarnation that should at least be taken seriously. Reincarnation, he posited, might represent a third factor, along with genetics and the environment ('nature and nurture'), contributing to the development of certain phobias, philias, unusual abilities and illnesses.

Now, while believing in reincarnation on the basis of first-hand experience, I feel that Prof Stevenson's approach is flawed. The problem I have with seeking empirical evidence to prove any metaphysical subject lies in the problem of using the scientific method as a tool to validate it in front of an innately sceptical scientific community. If they don't wish to accept it – fine. I just happen to do so, and if I need to validate my spiritual experiences to anyone, it is primarily to myself.

I don't reject Prof Stevenson's work, but consider it incomplete and pursuing the wrong goal. If he proves some unknown mechanism linking a living person with a dead one through memory, then why does it manifest itself so rarely? Are most people – even in cultures that accept reincarnation as reality – unable to reincarnate? Unworthy of reincarnation? Or do the hallmarks or a reincarnated soul manifest themselves in vaguer, more subtle ways than direct, literal, links to a real predeceased person?

I personally do not believe that the spiritual realm wishes itself to be proven empirically by science, with experiments, in a formula. We are not simply meant to know – yet. We should accept the mystery of these anomalies as part of our reality, but unless a case is too strong to overlook, we should not dig through archives in an attempt to prove its literal reality. 

Attempts by scientists (who have to endure taunts of 'pseudoscientist!' from their fellows) to prove the existence of a range of psi phenomena using the scientific method (repeatable experiments, peer-reviewed papers etc) are ultimately doomed to failure, not because the numbers lie, but because no one has the slightest idea of a mechanism, a framework, by which they can happen.

So let's say I find medical records of a 'Mr. Martin' who died in the early hours of the morning in a modern hospital building in America in the mid-late 1950s – then what? Does that prove anything? Does it explain my dream? Validate a lifetime of anomalous qualia memories? Would it silence the sceptics? Of course not. Do I need validation? Personally, no. I know what I experience – however, how it happens is a mystery. And I expect it to remain so. For many lifetimes to come.

More tomorrow.

Lent 2025: day 29
Getting On With It (Pt I)

Lent 2024: day 29
Altruism and consciousness

Lent 2023: day 29
Artificial Intelligence creates a religion

Lent 2022: day 29
Meditations on travel

Lent 2021: day 29
The ups and downs of life

Lent 2020: day 29
Prophetic

Lent 2026: day 28 – a case study in reincarnation

How does reincarnation 'work'? I put the word 'work' in quote marks because it suggests a mechanism, a process. To me, It doesn't feel that way. It's more ethereal. Whilst I have experienced a lifetime of what I call 'past-life flashbacks' and 'past-life dreams', I've long stopped looking for names, dates or precise locations. Such a search is futile, and indeed spurious. "Please, accept the mystery." I'm happy with a vague feeling, a familiar sense of the returning qualia. Dreams, I find, offer greater historical and geographical precision. Even so, pinning down a former biological container for my consciousness somehow does not feel to be the right thing to do. So much room for wishful thinking and other cognitive biases. 

Are we destined never to know names, dates, precise locations? That's what I think. But there are well-documented cases suggesting that it is possible. One of the most compelling cases I've come across of a 'past-life memory' corroborated by historical facts is that of James Leininger, born in 1998.

Starting around the age of two, the boy began having recurring nightmares of a plane crash. From his accounts of the dreams, his parents, Bruce and Andrea, pieced together a story far too detailed for a child of his age to invent. James provided specific information that his parents later verified in military archives; he identified the plane as an F4U Corsair and a ship called the Natoma. Research confirmed an escort carrier named the USS Natoma Bay. James mentioned a friend named 'Jack Larsen'. Bruce Leininger eventually tracked down the real Jack Larsen, who had indeed flown with the Natoma Bay squadron during WWII. James described his plane being hit in the engine by the Japanese, catching fire, and crashing into the sea near Iwo Jima. 

Bruce Leininger identified a pilot as James Huston Jr. from squadron VCS-81 on the USS Natoma Bay. The details align; Huston was the only pilot from that squadron killed during the battle of Iwo Jima. His plane was hit in the engine, caught fire, and crashed into the sea, just as the child had described in his nightmares. As James grew older, he met with James Huston’s surviving sister, Anne. After speaking with the boy and hearing his specific memories of their childhood home and family, she became convinced that James was the reincarnation of her brother.

Sceptics suggest suggestibility (where a child absorbs information from a documentary or book and later forgets the source), but the Leiningers maintained that James had had no exposure to WWII history or flight simulators before the nightmares began. By the age of eight, James’s memories began to fade, (common in these types of cases), and by on reaching his teenage years, he reported that the vivid memories had almost entirely faded, leaving him with only an interest in aviation.

I used ChatGPT to examine the veracity of the details. 

Squadron name was not strictly correct (VCS-81 flew floatplane scouts like the Vought Kingfisher from cruisers). There was, however, a squadron VC-81, which did indeed fly from the carrier USS Natoma Bay. But the big disparity between what James Leininger reported as a two-year-old and historical fact is that VC-81 did not fly F4U Corsairs; instead, the squadron flew FM2 Wildcat fighters.

Below: F4U Corsair (left) compared to FM2 Wildcat (right). Google Gemini Nano Banana 2 images. Note the significant difference in the wings and overall size.

Any naval-aviation historian will immediately tell you that escort carriers like the Natoma Bay were too small for F4U Corsairs to fly from. The Natoma Bay was, however, present at Iwo Jima and its squadron heavily involved in ground-attack missions supporting the US Marines' invasion. 

Asking ChatGPT about losses incurred by VC-81 at Iwo Jima, I got this:

"Confirmed loss: Lt. (jg) James M. Huston, Jr. Aircraft: FM-2 Wildcat. Mission type: Strike on shipping at Chichi Jima. Outcome: Aircraft hit in engine (likely AA fire), crashed into the sea. No wreckage recovered. Huston was the only pilot from Natoma Bay (VC-81) killed during the Iwo Jima operation."

I present this case in detail because it is unusual and represents, in my view, an atypical scenario. Striving to identify a real individual is something I don't personally feel comfortable with; while I have put together a 'past-life narrative' of my own, it was not in childhood, but over decades. The 'past-life' feelings have stayed consistent in terms of flashbacks and what I call my canonical dreams; they have not faded.

Another major difference between what I feel and the Leininger case is the time between lives. I sense an immediate overlap; the flavour America of the mid-1950s being so clear to me, so compelling. Death and rebirth within months, or even an overlap. Yet more than half a century passed between the death of James Huston Jr. and the birth of James Leininger. 

Finally – if James Leininger could experience this – why can't more of us? Why don't we hear of more such cases? It suggest that reincarnation is an extremely rare phenomenon.

So many questions...

More tomorrow!

Lent 2025: day 28
Death, dreams and memories

Lent 2024: day 28
Ego, Consciousness and the Environment

Lent 2023, day 28
Can the future affect our past?

Lent 2023, 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