Normal blogging service resumes with a photo round-up

A short round-up of my favourite photos from the past 46 days...

Below: trackside sunset, W-wa Jeziorki looking towards Dawidy Bankowe, 18 February

Below: sunset over Drwalew, 21 February

 

Below: melting snow and ice under a clear sky, Jakubowizna, 21 February

Below: from Chynów station, looking north along the track towards the DK50. 21 February.
 

Below: Warsaw skyline; Varso tower's mast is in place, making it taller than Stalin's Palace of Culture (right). 27 February. Jeziorki in the foreground, Grabów and Służew in the middle distance.

Below: ulica Baletowa, level crossing, W-wa Dawidy, southbound train passing. 2 March

Below: crushed toy gun, in the fields between W-wa Dawidy and W-wa Jeziorki stations. 3 March.

Below: Jakubowizna, 22 March

Below: new estate, Nowa Zgorzała, drowning in mud, 20 March

Below: train, plane and passing rain - between W-wa Dawidy and W-wa Jeziorki, 8 March.

Below: approaching snowstorm, Warsaw on the horizon. This is the site of the future Węzeł Zamienie - the first junction of the S7 south of the airport. 3 April

Below: standing stones, Picos D'Avidy, 28 March.

Below: standing stones, Picos D'Avidy, 4 April.

Below: bridge over the S7 at Nowa Wola, 5 April.

Just noticed my late father's birthday; he'd have been 98 today had he lived. This morning I dreamt I gave him a present - a large-scale super-detailed sports-car model; he unboxed it and started playing with it - he was in awe of the working steering and suspension, the opening windows, the engine under the bonnet. I dreamt I gave him a present - yet forgot entirely until I looked for blog posts from this day that it is his birthday! The mysteries of the subconscious - or coincidence?

This time last year:

Coercion, persuasion, conversion and faith

This time two years ago:
My father at 96

This time three years ago
My father at 95

This time four years ago:
Happy 94th to my father...

This time five years ago:
Happy 91st to my father!

This time eight years ago: 
My father at 90

This time nine years ago:
An independent Scotland - what if?

This time ten years ago:
Królikarnia

This time 13 years ago:
Happy 85th to my father!

Lent 2021, Day 46: the summing up

Another Lent has come and gone; my thirtieth in a row. Should I ever reach a remarkable old age in good enough physical shape for people to ask how I did it, the first word I shall deploy will be "Lent". Of course, I'll have to expand on that; good habits, dietary and exercise, initiated during Lent that went on into the whole year. The fact that salt snacks, confectionery, biscuits and cake no longer play any part in my diet helps, as does being able to go for many weeks without taking a sip of alcohol.

But there's also the metaphysical element. An annual stocktaking of what's most important in life, the bigger picture, asking the 'why?' of our existence. Some do this once a week - Friday prayers, Shabbos, Sunday Mass. Me, I've got into the habit of an annual exploration of my worldview, which over time becomes more nuanced, but at the heart is still as it has been for decades. Namely, a continued journey to reconcile the empiricism of science, driven by a desire for proof, and the mysticism of the spiritual world, driven by a longing for God.

Existential questions surrounding the afterlife are always there; I have an answer that probably satisfies neither those who want to cling on to the 'me-ness' of being themselves after physical death, nor those who consider death to be a final extinction of consciousness.

My approach to religion is personal; I could never join an organised religion - I'd be forever questioning matters of doctrine, dismissing swathes of it as mere social control. And yet I stand with religious folk against the reductionist-materialists who claim that there is nothing supernatural or metaphysical - everything can be explained with science. It can't. And yet I stand with scientific folk poo-pooing much that's claimed to be The Word Of God as being entirely human in provenance - if sometimes holy scripts can indeed be inspired by the numinous, the spiritual.

This year I haven't touched upon the important questions of feeling good/peace of mind nor of being kind/helping others. Religions that offer peace of mind as a main feature are missing the point, philosophically a balm rather than a remedy or substitute for a quest that might not end in what you're looking for. Helping others? Being kind? Obvious, but somehow I'm not good at reaching out to strangers with random acts of kindness. I tend to get embarrassed by charity. Maybe it's a demand-avoidance thing - I don't expect kindness from others, in fact I'm suspicious when others offer me help - are there strings attached? Maybe that's the effect of a year of lockdown; it's turning me into a hermit.

Lent is the bridge between winter and spring, it leads to Easter, the Resurrection - be it literal, metaphorical or mystical - the world is reborn (*applies to Northern Hemisphere only) once again, the circle is completed but one year up, one cycle closer to our Eternal fate.

This time last year:
Religion, Society and the Individual

This time five years ago:
Qualia - the experience of being conscious

This time six years ago:
Analysing the success of Lidl

This time seven years ago:
Should schools be teaching language - or Languages?

This time eight years ago:
More moaning about Karczunkowska's pavement deficit

This time nine years ago:
Architectural detail from Edinburgh

This time ten years ago:
Spring explodes in Jeziorki

This time 11 years ago:
Along the way for Warsaw's southern bypass

This time 12 years ago:
Quintessential Warsaw vista

This time 13 years ago:
Jeziorki on Google Earth

This time 14 years ago:
Okęcie airport, our near neighbour

Mindfulness vs. materialism: Lent 2021, Day 45

Rapidly approaching the end of Lent - it seems to go by faster with each passing year. Lent is one-eighth of a year long - 46 days, that's six and half weeks, with 13 weeks to the quarter, 52 weeks and one day to the year (52 weeks and two days to the leap year). 

How much spirituality do you need in your life?  One day in every seven, or an eighth of a year every year? This 46-day marathon concentrates my mind on that need, a need that is also there outside of Lent, but this time of year is time to study it in some depth. The discipline of daily writing helps.

I am moving towards an every deeper appreciation of 'mindfulness' in its broadest sense as an antidote to the everyday materialism that encroaches us. This is both the materialism of classical physics that negates the metaphysical or supernatural as well as the materialism that manifests itself in our desire for possessions that deplete our planet's natural resources.

Retail therapy - the high you get stepping out of a clothing retailer with a new jacket - needs to be placed in the context of the materials and energy used to make it. Has it genuinely made you happier?

The quest in life should be for fulfilling your human potential - the balance between your talents, your  drive and your limitations. This is vastly more important that any quest for possessions. Now, I'm not saying "imagine no possessions" (while being the owner of a Mercedes 600 SEL, Rolls-Royce Phantom V and other prestigious cars); I am saying - remove discomfort from your life.  Discomfort distracts from the real task ahead. Yes, live your life in comfort - but not in luxury.

Our human desire to get one up on others in our mammalian hierarchy is evidenced by consumerist notion of built-in obsolescence; products that still have utility and value are overtaken by ones with more 'modern' design; we cast aside that which is useful because it no longer signals our position on the social scale. Fortunately, planned obsolescence is something that consumers and regulators have begun to take seriously as being wasteful.

Focus mindfully on sources of real joy in life and on the primacy of the subjective conscious experience - this is where it's truly at. These are the bridges between the material you - your brain and body - and your soul, your spirit, the conscious you - the eternal thread. When scientists ask for proof of your consciousness, the best answer lies in those deep memories that flash back, bidden or unbidden - they are proof that your consciousness is not just a here-and-now illusion, but is something that lasts.

Yet we are so far from understanding where we are going, and why we're going there; Lent has given me again the chance to concentrate intellect and emotion on the great questions. 

Little by little we inch forward in near darkness, sometimes stumbling, sometimes taking a wrong path, but guided by goodwill and hope, the journey progresses. It's like walking up a mountain; after a while you can see how high you've gone, but the upper slopes are shrouded in mist; you've no idea how much of the path still lies ahead.

As I write, I look at the clock and see that Lent will end in 25 and half hours. I shall then celebrate with a bottle of Grand Imperial Porter and a Laphroaig chaser. But before then, the summing up.

This time last year:
Further thoughts on Reincarnation?

This time two years ago:
Peace of mind stolen by Brexit

This time three years ago:
On Learning and Living

This time five years ago:
Goats and hares

This time six years ago:
On Gratitude, and loving life

This time nine years ago:
Edinburgh views

This time ten years ago:
Halfway through Lent

This time 12 years ago:
Swans on ul. Trombity

This time 13 years ago:
Papal anniversary, Warsaw

This time 14 years ago:
Sowing oats, Jeziorki

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

We all have these moments where, engrossed in some activity or other, you get a flashback to a split-second in time, and all of a sudden you are there - PAFF! on the beach in summer, the sun sparkling off the waves, cool seawater lapping on your feet, warmth of the sun on your skin. Or PAFF! walking into a frosty evening, out of a warm shop all decorated for Christmas, snow gently falling as you hurry home with bags of presents.

Many such moments you can quickly identify - ah yes - driving to my future parents-in-law, autumn 1987, trees and hedges speeding by in the drizzle... cycling briskly through the woods at dusk, Warsaw, 2007...

These are memories of experiences are called qualia - the first-person subjective experience of being there, the here-and-now as uniquely experienced by you. Sometimes you recall them, sometimes they are prompted (by smell, by sound). sometimes they come to you unbidden; they are as authentic as that time you first experienced them.

I have experienced such qualia memories, bidden or unbidden, all my life. And I have trained myself to pin down with precision the time and place when and where they occurred. Why do I do this? 

Because I have also had, since childhood, strange ones that I cannot place within my life. Another time, another place. I call this strange phenomenon exomnesia - literally, memory from outside, from beyond. These are much rarer that current-life flashbacks; only several a month, but consistent enough to have become an integral part of what it is to be me. Having had these all my life, I have been seeking answers as to what these could be and what they could mean. It has been a long and sincere search. 

Why do more of us not have exomnesia experiences? I'd say there are two main reasons.

First, you need to be observant, curious and sensitive to these experiences (if you get many current-life flashbacks - some use the term 'deja-vu' - you are sufficiently sensitive). Secondly, our  contemporary Western culture tends to make us subconsciously reject such experiences as being intrinsically meaningless. This is for two reasons - because we have been brought up (since Newton) to be materialist-reductionists who believe that 'it's all in the brain', or we've been brought up to believe in a dualist material-spiritual worldview in which the afterlife is sitting at the right hand of God for Eternity after several decades of obeying religious laws.

A property of flashback events is that they are instantly familiar, they are comforting in that familiarity; they are not unpleasant. They are of how you felt, they are a record of your emotions of experience. They are not about you as an actor, they are not about events - rather they are what you witnessed and received.

I have mentioned William Wordsworth in this context - his poem Ode - Intimations of Immortality captures the sense I had in childhood of life being familiar, though not this one.

You need to strip away the ego. The memory of things you've done - in childhood, in adolescence - that still bring you shame and embarrassment today when you think about them. This is a function of the ego, and I believe that it gets stripped away with biological death. (The 'life review' that many people who report near-death experiences would be this; a final reckoning of the negative acts that a human has performed in life before ego and consciousness part company. Ego dies; consciousness abides.)

I have experienced memories such events from 'past lives' (to be confirmed!), but only in dreams, never in flashbacks experienced in my waking life. Dreams that do away with regular convention of 'disjunctive cognition', where people, places and things are familiarly jumbled up. My 'past-life' dreams fulfil the classic Three Unities, of Time, Place and Action. There are no anachronisms (cars and TVs in Victorian England for example). They are rare - I have several a year - but they are very real. A good example this Lent has been the dream of 1831 (see here).

My current thinking is that with every passing life, memories of the previous ones become more vivid, more real; there is a thread connecting the Eternity-long road from Zero to One. We are here, unfolding along with the Universe, evolving spiritually from the barbaric to the angelic. 

We will get there; certainly not in one lifetime. It is way too short. The road is long, but finally, it will be All in God, God in All. We are all part of a continuous whole.

I hope that gives hope!

This time last year:
Accounting for talent(s)

This time four years ago:
Ten years of blogging
[14 years today]

This time five years ago:
Białystok the Dull

This time eight years ago:
UK's first town where Poles are a majority

This time nine years ago:
Lost legend of rock'n'roll: Johnny Kołyma

This time ten years ago:
Stalin's plans to escalate nuclear Armageddon

This time 11 years ago:
Warsaw's favourite weekend destination

This time 12 years ago:
We are two

This time 13 years ago:
Crushed velvet dusk in my City of Dreams

This time 14 years ago:
My second Jeziorki blog post, also from this day

The Devil is doubt - or does doubt drive curiosity? Lent 2021, Day 43

Let's imagine, many decades from now, you are lying on your deathbed. You know that it cannot be far off now. What are you thinking? Are you reconciled to your biological life reaching its natural end and oblivion approaching, a final, ultimate switching off of your conscious experience? Or will you be secure in your belief that on dying, God will take you to His side, and your soul will continue to experience awareness for eternity, as an immaterial continuation of your conscious being - and there in Heaven, you will still be you? 

Or something else - that your consciousness will slip free of one biological body and "slip inside this house as you pass by" (to quote the 13th Floor Elevators)?

Certainty is crucial at this juncture. One's final moments (may they be conscious!) are not a time for doubt. Existential anguish in face of death suggests you've left it too late (unless death comes too early - so powerfully portrayed by Zbigniew Cybulski at the end of Andrzej Wajda's film version of Ashes and Diamonds). The desire to hang onto your ego in face of death is universal, an unwillingness to let go - either to lose it into nothingness, or else to have it stripped from your consciousness so all that's left are occasional memories of subjective experiences - qualia - that will in future haunt another being. Neither are appealing to the mainstream Western mind.

Yet my lifelong experiences of incongruous memories of another place at a prior time to my own give me a certain confidence. A confidence that by seeking further, that by expanding my knowledge of the frontiers of science, neuroscience, particle physics, astrophysics and philosophy, that confidence will be deepened rather than weakened. My personal doubts - when faced with powerful arguments from reductionist-materialists - are weaker today than in years gone by. The reductionist-materialists' arguments are weakening as science learns ever more about that which it knows it doesn't know. 

New ideas, new theories cast doubt on what was once scientific consensus, that there's nothing beyond matter, nothing above the laws of physics. These new ideas - such as science-based panpsychism or quantum-based consciousness theories - are to me Good News. They feel right to me. The click with my intuitive observations about qualia memories. My curiosity eggs me on. 

We should all question orthodoxy - be it religious dogma or our outdated materialist cause-and-effect physics, rather than passively accepting either as a given. We should listen to the inner voice that seeks answers to our intuitive notions about purpose and reason for existing, for being aware, for our subjective experience.

I often think back to my father's final years; our walks on Sunday to the Polish chapel on Courtfield Gardens. He never talked about his faith; we'd walk to Mass talking about his observations - what he saw on the street, the changing seasons, his physical condition - and we'd walk home talking about the same. He guarded his beliefs well, to his death; in church, he'd take Holy Communion each week, and speak all the responses with the congregation, taking an active part in Mass - but his subjective experience of it remained his own.

Was he beset by doubts? I really don't know. Is he today with Jesus - or will a child one day be wondering why they are experiencing anomalous memories of the Warsaw Uprising and postwar London?

Am I beset by doubts? -  Certainly less than I used to be. The notion that I'm deluding myself and creating a false narrative recedes as I learn to parse my metaphysical experiences with ever-increasing sincerity and accuracy. When the *PAFF* moments happen, I will continue to analyse them based on my ever-improving understanding of science and the philosophy of consciousness.

This time last year:
Body and soul

This time three years ago:
Religion and Happiness - a Lenten summary

This time four years ago:
Health and fitness in a Quarter of Abstinence

This time eight years ago:
Easter Sunday in the snow

This time ten years ago:
Cycling to work - the new season begins

This time 11 years ago:  
Five weeks into Lent

Actively seeking Understanding: Lent 2021, Day 42

Am I seeking God - or am I seeking Understanding? The latter, to be honest - names, labels don't help much. I am guided primarily by instinct, by what I intuit about the metaphysical. It is an in innate, lifelong drive to understand my deepest, most sincerely held feelings about the Infinite and Eternal. And it is something that neither reductionist classical science nor organised religion can answer.

I know I am searching in generally the right direction. I also know I'm a long way away in terms of absolute azimuth heading and distance. And I believe that this distance is far, far greater than can be measured in numbers of successive lifetimes. Progress is slow; sometimes it comes by way of unbidden insights - channelling of Universal truths, in those moments when I am tuned in and receiving. Sometimes progress can come from reading a book or just a short article about a new discovery or spiritual insight. A new line of inquiry comes along, a new door swings slightly open, revealing light from beyond.

Who are my gurus, my mentors? I have none - if I read something by a philosopher or scientist that furthers my understanding, I'd be looking to nuance that rather than try to deepen it. Guides I do have - people along the way in my life who occasionally make a suggestion that opens a new door to new vistas. My brother is chief among this group of guides in terms of volume of suggestions and ideas. The frontiers of science - at the subatomic and galactic levels - and philosophy - in particular the philosophy of mind - these are the places to look for those keys that can unlock further doors. Or just find doors you hadn't yet known existed. 

The study of religious texts is a worthwhile pursuit, as long as you are open to looking at those texts not just literally or as metaphor, but as myths arising from our collective consciousness over the millennia. Seeking answers at the meta-level. And philosophy, the 'why' of why we exist, can be the ultimate meta-level.

My broad advance along many fronts will not be rapid, but it will be joined up. I am a generalist rather than a specialist. I am holding out for a long life because I'm a slow and plodding learning, and a breadth of learning requires decades more growth in understanding. Hence, I am grateful for my health and try not to allow complacency to creep up on me - "because last year was good, next year will be good too." There is, I strongly feel, a supernatural connection between will and outcome - maybe quantum physics will be able to explain that one day.

In the meantime, Lent is rapidly approaching the end; four days left, and a summing up will soon be in order.

This time last year:
Anacyclosis - what goes round, comes round

This time three years ago:
Winter returned for a morning

This time four years ago:
Globalisation and the politics of identity

This time seven years ago:
More photos from Edinburgh

This time eight years ago:
Edinburgh continues to fascinate

This time nine years ago:
Ealing in bloom - early spring

This time 13 years ago:
Swans arrive in Jeziorki

The Holiest of Holies: Lent 2021, Day 41

Reverence towards the spiritual has been on the wane ever since mankind got its head around Newtonian mechanics - and the idea that every cause must have a natural, physical effect. Supernatural causes = superstition. Since the Enlightenment took hold in Europe, people have been drifting away from organised religion in ever-increasing numbers as science paved the way for the machines that mass-produce the goods that our materialist societies revel in.

Profanities were once chiefly religious in origin; which we still see in euphemisms like 'jeepers' or 'gee' for 'Jesus'. The name of God, guarded in Judaism and used with care (hence the usage 'G_d', or substitution of Yahweh with HaShem - literally 'the name') is seen as possessing a supernatural power in itself. Taking the Lord's name in vain - using it disrespectfully - is in breach the Second Commandment according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

We've become far more materialistic as a species; the last three centuries of our development have been spent pushing back on the supernatural, replacing it all the while with empirically-proven scientific fact, but a respect for faith still lingers. Intrinsic human kindness, politeness, an understanding of the need to get on with people with different worldviews, prevents us from igniting conflicts against those of a different faith - or indeed of no faith. How different, then, from the times of the Thirty Years' War in which millions of Catholics and Protestants died fighting over matters of religious doctrine. These mattered far more than national sovereignty or borders.

This is a clear sign of human progress, growing tolerance on issues of theology ('Islamic State' excepted), though inter-communal strife still tends to play up religious differences.

Even if we are deeply religious, we are less likely to take offence these days at casual derogatory remarks aimed at faiths unless they are intended to cause offence. The notions of blasphemy (bluźnierstwo) and sacrilege (świętokradztwo) are linked; interestingly the most recent high-profile blasphemy cases in the UK were over 40 years ago were to do with gay rights; the common-law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were abolished in England and Wales in 2008. In Poland, a case was brought to court against three LGBT activists accused of offending religious sentiment by depicting the Black Madonna of Częstochowa with a rainbow halo. All three were acquitted by a Polish court earlier this month.

Sacrilege is somewhat different in Catholic countries where its main meaning is the misuse of the Holy Sacraments - taking Communion without having received Penance is considered sacrilegious under canonical law. In England and Wales, it is more to do with offences against church property, such as burglary, or urinating on consecrated ground. Sacrilege was removed as a separate category of crime from the statute books in 1861.

So what would spark me off in a spiritual controversy? I'd certainly not get irate about such matters! Brexit, Trump. Putin, Xi Jinping all get me going, but politics apart, on issues of human spirituality, religion - religions - I'd be more than happy to engage with a debate with atheist or fundamentalist, although there's little sense in debating an entrenched position. Anyone who can't move on from "the word of God as expressed in the Bible/Koran/Torah is absolute and immutable" or "there's no God, no afterlife, get over it" is a difficult interlocutor.

Let us be thankful that customs have moved on since Biblical days!

This time last year:
"On my planet, there is no disease"

This time three years ago:
A Brief History of Time review (Part II)

This time six years ago:
"We don't need no [tertiary] education"

This time seven years ago:
Arthur's Seat - Edinburgh's urban mountain

This time eight years ago:
Heaven

This time nine years ago:
A wee taste of Edinburgh

This time 12 years ago:
Forward go the clocks

Medicine, mindfulness and miracles: Lent 2021, Day 40

In clinical trials 38% of those given the AstraZeneca vaccine reported at least one side-effect such as pain at the injection site, a headache or brief fever. But then so did 28% of those who got a placebo injection. Of the subjects given the placebo during the Pfizer vaccine clinical trials, 33% reported mild or moderate fatigue, and 33% mild or moderate headaches, compared to 34% and 33% respectively of the same age-group who received Pfizer's Covid jab*.

WOW! The clinical-trial subjects literally received an injection of water - and around a third of them claimed to have suffered side-effects!

This is the nocebo effect at work - the placebo effect's evil twin; once again it confirms the power of the mind over the body.

We are easily led. We can convince ourselves that things are subjectively good or bad, and this feeds into our samopoczucie positively or negatively. In medicine, there is a saying: "There's no such thing as a healthy person. Only undiagnosed diseases." This is Schrodinger's Disease - until a doctor of medicine takes a peek, you're well and ill at the same time. And while many diseases can only be cured with timely medical interventions, those deemed to be 'of unknown aetiology' are more likely to respond to the power of a positive mind-set.

Steve Jobs and Bob Marley both succumbed to cancer thinking that they can overcome it with fruit juice and marijuana respectively, rather than conventional oncological treatment - they were both wrong. But the story of Wilko Johnson (recounted on this blog a few days ago), suggests that miracles can happen. Was a misdiagnosis a miracle? Can miracles happen retrospectively? Is there a role for the supernatural in healing? Can gratitude and appreciation of life help? We need balance; we cannot dismiss science out of hand - nor can dismiss the power of mind over matter simply because it cannot be quantified by science.

Linking health and happiness with the celestial order, the flow, the Unfolding, we should express our gratitude for what we have, and in a grateful state of mind ask for health and happiness for ourselves and for our loved ones.

Non-dualism (the non-materialistic version of monism) means considering the entire Universe, all things visible and invisible, the material and the spiritual as one - and this requires a holistic view of mind and spirit. The effect of spiritual will on our well-being is important. A life in balance means that bodily health and spiritual well-being shouldn't be ignored, nor should they be obsessively pursued. Conscious awareness of both plays an important role.

An example to me of this effect is my ongoing success in keeping my blood pressure optimal without having to take pills. The average of last week's daily readings at 110/76, a year ago it was 113/79. Walking, weight-training, exercising, healthy diet, and - during Lent - no alcohol. But there is no room for complacency; no letting up - the long-term aim being a healthy body in which a mindful consciousness can reach for new understanding and insights on the infinitely long road from Zero to One.

Belief in the power of belief. If you don’t believe that a positive outlook can improve your health or slow down disease – then the chances are it won’t. If you do believe in the power of belief, then there is a greater chance that it will help. Up to one-third greater, looking at those Covid vaccine trial results!

* Date from this presentation, slide 17

This time last year:
Divine intervention

This time two years ago:
Oblique views of Warsaw from the air

This time seven years ago
On Calton Hill, Edinburgh

This time eight years ago:
Doomsday - the Last Judgment

This time nine years ago:
Sunny Scotland at 23.9C 

This time 11 years ago:

My road bike, ready for action