No God for those who don't believe, God for those that do

Lent 2019: Day 34

Consider this possibility: for those who deny the existence of God, who live life without the intuitive feeling that there's something more to life that what's physical, material, there is indeed no God. They exist in a Godless parallel universe, living side by side with those for whom the presence of God is a given, who exist in a universe filled with Godly wonder. Together on one planet.

For those who believe in God, who accept the presence of a God - the next issue is to define that God. And to define the Afterlife. (A Venn diagram of believers in God and believers in an Afterlife would be to closely overlapping circles - the two beliefs are connected.) Beliefs in God are manifold; religious orthodoxies strive to corral people with the constraints of doctrine, but the individual human mind will usually strive to personalise faith to fit individual convictions.

Then there are agnostics - those living without the conviction of atheists or believers. Some agnostics actively spend their lives seeking answers, but most merely drift along; neither thinking nor not thinking about these questions - just getting on with the day-to-day. Regardless of whether or not they attend religious services. Those agnostics that do not seek also exist in a universe devoid of God.

Life-changing mystic experiences don't happen to everyone; some of us seek them, some of us befall them. Some of us have lived in the presence of a numinous feeling since our earliest childhood, that there is some great unfathomable mystery that overarches everything.

View from my window, early this morning

I know what I'd like from my God. To participate in, to commune with, that eternal process of increasing consciousness, ever-rising awareness, the journey from Zero to One, from life after life after life... But there's a catch. It's that pronoun 'I'.

The human ego is the biggest obstacle to spiritual growth; narcissism eats the soul, draws down the eyelids to the light of God. "Do good, and you will be rewarded with eternal bliss" sounds more like top-down social control than divine inspiration. Desperately wanting to cling on to the youness of you after death makes people adhere to commandments. But the youness of you will disappear, to return in the briefest of flashes, anomalous memories of lives past. At least this is my experience.

Possibilitarianism accepts a multitude of quantum outcomes; the question is - can you influence them through your will? I think there's something in this. I feel comfortable and connected in my worldview, though I believe it needs honing over the coming decades. That is what life is for.

Trying to catch the blossom at its finest, 10 April 2019.

This time last year:
Work proceeding around Jeziorki

This time two years ago:
Karczunkowska reopens to traffic

This time seven years ago:
Goodness gracious!

This time eight years ago:

Muddy feet, Warsaw 'pavements'

This time nine years ago:
Cycling and recycling

This time ten years ago:
Winter clings on to the forest

This time 11 years ago:
Toyota launches the iQ

This time 12 years ago:
Old school Łódź

Thanks for the memory - morning flashback

Across Puławska, beyond the giant Selgros cash and carry, I espied a quartet of trucks. Awaiting unloading? Don't know. They there stood gleaming in the morning sunshine, and released within me a flashback to childhood - it came there instantly - a diecast Matchbox toy truck that I had in the mid-1960s, an American tractor-and-double-trailer combo. Long gone, the last part left was the four-wheel bogie linking the two trailers (I believe the children still played with that in the mid-1990s).

Right now there are two of these on eBay, mint and boxed; one for $127 (in Australia) and one for $250 (in the US), plus postage. I have no desire to actually spend such money on old toys, mainly because I know that owning one will not bring back the precise qualia of experience back in the same way as merely thinking about it, savouring the memory.

This time three years ago:
In which I learn to speak

This time four years ago:
Sunshine and snow, Łazienki Park

This time five years ago:
Shopping habits in the wake of Lidl's opening 

This time six years ago:
In vino veritas

This time seven years ago:
Are we getting more intelligent?

This time eight years ago:
Lenten recipe No. 6

This time nine years ago:
Coal trains, Konstancin-Jeziorna

This time ten years ago:
Jeziorki from the air

Działka update

Work on the exterior started on Monday and is likely to finish next weekend. As of this week, the entire elevation, on all four sides, has been clad in 20cm (8") insulating styrofoam; it will be plastered and painted white. Below: front view. Alarm system has been dismantled for the duration, will be reinstalled after the plastering has been painted.

Below: from the back. A toolroom has been built under the patio stairs.

Below: the old garage doors (which came from an old industrial lift!) have gone, along with the side door, these will be replaced with an up-and-over style garage door with remote opening. The new door, from Wiśniowski, Europe's second-largest garage door manufacturer, arrives on Thursday. Wiśniowski exports to 45 countries and employs 1,800 people.

Below: the builders are now sleeping over, saving time on commutes. The kitchen sink has been fitted, and the kitchen is in use at last!

Below: bottled gas feeds the cooker. All that's needed now is handles for the kitchen cabinets. These will be added next week.

Below: the first fruit tree is in flower - it's a plum tree. Within two weeks, the entire area will be heaving with fruit blossom.

Below: Jakubowizna from the train as it pulls into Chynów station. My działka is just down the road, down the road a piece, out of sight among the trees on the horizon. To the left in the middle distance, newly pruned apple trees, blossom soon!

I walked to Sułkowice station through Grobice, along a farm track running between orchards. There's a sense of the nature around me being like runners in their starting blocks, ready for the pistol shot that signals a sudden bursting into activity. Any day now.

Approaching Sułkowice, I see the new track bed being prepared. In the distance, a southbound Koleje Mazowieckie train nears the station, while in the far distance (click to enlarge) a northbound one waits at a red signal outside Czachówek Południowy station. A fair amount of disruption on the line right now; my train home was delayed by 23 minutes.

Below: walkers with pram in the spring sunshine; Sułkowice.

This time last year:
Łódź is a film set

This time two years ago
Contemplative imagery, Ealing and Warsaw

This time seven years ago:
Baffled: my first visit to Jeziorki's Lidl 

This time eight years ago:
In vino veritas?

This time nine two years ago:
Are we getting more intelligent?

This time ten three years ago:
Lenten recipe: tuna, chickpea and pesto salad

This time 11 years ago:
Coal train sidings, Konstancin-Jeziorna

This time 12 years ago:
Jeziorki from the air

My father at 96

My father has turned 96; officially his birthday was a month ago – his date of birth as far as the British (and indeed Polish) state is concerned, 5 March 1923 the date he enters on the NHS reception system when visiting the clinic or hospital. My grandmother remembered exactly when her son Bohdan was born; so within the family the 5 April date has always been the day to celebrate.

This dual birthday is the result, it is claimed, of the wrong date being entered on my father's birth certificate at his christening by 'tipsy guests'. (A post-war copy of this, made out at the church of All Saints on Plac Grzybowski, round the corner from my office, still exists.) It occurs to me that the use of Latin for liturgical purposes may have resulted in the month April being noted as 'iiii' instead of 'iv', and subsequently mistaken for 'iii' - just a theory!

Being 34 and half years older than me, my father's advanced age gives me great strength and optimism about my own ageing process. I can hardly consider myself 'old' when I have a living parent more than a third of a century older than me!

Though unable now to walk very far, my father is in good spirits. The darkness and cold of winter have passed, spring is here; when the house is warmed by strong sunlight streaming in from the south, my father is particularly happy. He is looking forward greatly to the summer; he has been invited by the city of Warsaw to the commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, with complimentary travel and accommodation. I hope he'll be well enough to go!

Below: my father and my brother, Isle of Wight, August 1964. Nearly 55 years ago.

I should like to express my gratitude to Violetta and Basia who look after my father, ensuring his well-being and comfort. Below: Violetta's photo of my father's dining room, with spread of birthday cards!

This time last year:
My father at 95

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

This time three years ago:
HOT! 24C in Warsaw 

This time four years ago:
COLD! Snowy Easter Sunday in Warsaw

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

This time six years ago: 
My father at 90

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

Can't find that peace of mind...

Lent 2019: Day 28

Brexit is obsessing me - there's so much riding on this, I have so much to lose, particularly in the event of the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal, that I find it really hard to focus on spiritual matters. I have been wanting to write about human consciousness, memory, the quantum forces at work in our brains, the interface between physics and biology and the supernatural - and whenever I sit down to write, or even think about these matters, I am sidetracked by the endless shitshow that is Brexit. Scouring the internet I'm looking at how those petitions are going, how the pound is faring, the latest news from Parliament from the BBC; following the debates on Twitter - it is morbidly distracting.

What will the outcome be? It remains uncertain after two years, nine months and 12 days. The stakes are high, my pulse quickens and blood pressure rises whenever my mind strays (as it often does) to whether or not - and if so - in what way, the UK will leave the world's most prosperous trading bloc.

At this time of year, I wish my thoughts to rise up to a higher plane, to consider the Eternal and Infinite; they are, however, constantly dragged down to more mundane thoughts about the value of my pension and my savings, care for my father, ease of travel between Poland and the UK and the ultimate fate of the land where I was born - for I don't see the United Kingdom remaining united in the event of a hard Brexit.

If you've been expecting more elevated thoughts from this blog in the run-up to Easter, my apologies.

The physical aspects of Lent are going well - exercises, walking, eschewing meat, alcohol etc. And the weather at this time of year - blue skies, nature about to explode into life - favours contemplation of the numinous. But I can't get my mind on message here. The awfulness of what could happen is overwhelming me.

This time last year:
On Learning and Living

This time three years ago:
Goats and hares

This time four years ago:
Białystok the Dull

This time 11 years ago:
Crushed velvet dusk in my City of Dreams

This time 12 years ago:
My second Jeziorki blog post, also from this day

Dissecting memories as the basis of personality

Lent 2019 - Day 25

The halfway stage of Lent has been passed; resolve - strong, will - iron. No meat, no alcohol, no salt snacks, fast food - confectionary, biscuits, cakes I avoid anyway. More vegan elements to my diet, lentils, tofu, chickpeas interspersed with the fish and cheese. And lots of exercise, twice a day, full set of press-ups (60 a doddle, 70 at a stretch), pull-ups (10-11 in one go). 11,000+ paces a day, every day.

A healthy body is home to a healthy mind, and peace of mind comes from a healthy soul. The deeper aspects of Lent are as important. Today, I want to look at the role that memories play in the shaping of our personality, and how our conscious - and indeed - subconscious observations - make up an important part of who we are.

In particular, I want to write about involuntary memory, sometimes known as Proustian memory, after novelist  Marcel Proust. He posited in his novel In Search of Lost Time that involuntary memory contained the 'essence of the past', stating that voluntary memory lacked accuracy and authenticity. In the novel, he describes eating a tea-soaked madeleine biscuit, an action which powerfully brought back to him a childhood memory. From that memory, he rebuilt in his mind his childhood home. This becomes a recurring theme throughout In Search of Lost Time, with sensations reminding Proust of previous experiences. He dubbed these  sensations 'involuntary memories'.

I have frequently written about flashbacks, ('PAFF!' moments) unbidden or triggered by sensory stimuli. Smell, as Proust points out, is a great evocator of deeply buried memories.

A child of what author Geoff Dyer calls the Airfix generation, I was a virtual one-boy production line assembling an endless succession of plastic kits; warplanes, warships, armoured vehicles and cars. Since the age of five, I must have made hundreds of them. Assembling these models, glued together with polystyrene cement and decorated with enamel paints was an aromatic experience, not appreciated at the time. To this day, I have flashbacks linked to the smells of individual paints, and the kit I was using it on - Airfix Matt Brick Red (Bristol Beaufighter), for example, or Humbrol Matt Sea Grey (A-7 Corsair II) or Gloss Brunswick Green (HMS Victorious). And the exact shades of the colours too - from Olive Drab to Dark Earth, from Duck Egg Blue to Insignia Yellow. How my eyes reacted to them, I can recreate those memories without any external stimulus. It's there in my memory, and still strong.

But smells are fiendishly complex - the smell of a house, for example, or a cupboard or garage... very unique. The smell of mothball on a winter coat taken out of the wardrobe for the first time that season - and PAFF! There it is. I am transported from a Warsaw bus in October to an ex-military barracks in Gloucestershire in the summer of 1967.

These triggered memory flashbacks are wholly spontaneous; trying to recreate them with deliberation is difficult. I am trying, for example, to summon up the smell of my late parents-in-laws' house - now sold, refurbished by new owners - that atmosphere - those qualia - lost. I cannot just bring it back. No doubt at some time in the future, it will return, be it unbidden or triggered...

I am who I am because of an accretion of memories built up over my lifetime; sounds (a front-garden gate latch clicking shut, a Morris Minor changing gear from third to second, pop hits of the 1960s and 1970s), sights (a Belisha beacon by the kerb, a Routemaster bus, an old copy of Look and Learn) - the itchy feel of a British battledress top, as I wore in Polish scouts, the acrylic plate attached to my dental braces pressed against my palate, the sweaty feel of a bicycle helmet on my head in summer, the taste of Lyons Maid Strawberry Mivvi,  Olde English Spangles, grilled sardines with cuentros on a Portuguese beach - and then all those smells... Communist Poland in summer, klatki schodowe, the back of a kiosk Ruchu - cheap newsprint, cheap tobacco, cheap plastic toys, the smell of two-stroke exhaust...

Another smell memory that has stayed with me (for 56 years!) was the smell of my First Day in School - September 1962, Oaklands Road Primary, Infants. The smell of Magic Marker ink on handwritten signs naming things in the school building: 'Door', 'Nature table', 'Class 3', mingled with the smell of fresh wooden-floor varnish. I say first day in school, but each start of term at the infants' department of my primary school had those exact same smells. [They were subtly different in the junior school building from September 1964 on.] And from that era, the autumn of 1962 - around my fifth birthday - a piece of pop music ingrained in my deepest memory. The sound of the (then) future.



But my strange, unexplained, anomalous qualia memories of other, earlier lives, are not memories of sensory sensations - they relate to spirit of place in another time, clear yet ephemeral; fleeting - I try to parse them, to dissect them - trying to relive them by returning is impossible. Time has moved on; the spirit of place evolves over time; the billboards, the street furniture, the clothes, the cars. But it's real; I savour and cherish these briefest flashes, insights into an atavistic past.

I shall return to memory with a review of Adventures in Memory, by Hilde and Ylva Østby, two Norwegian sisters - one a novelist, the other a neuropsychologist. And yes, Proust's madeleine biscuits get a mention.

This time last year:
Winter returned for a morning

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

This time five years ago:
More photos from Edinburgh

This time six years ago:
Edinburgh continues to fascinate

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

This time 11 years ago:
Swans arrive in Jeziorki

Warsaw - oblique views from the air

This is little short of amazing - Warsaw from the air like you've never seen it before. Photos taken on six clear days between 8 and 15 April 2018, with astonishing resolution, covering the entire city within its limits. Below: here's an example (for my father) of the building in which he lived before and during the war, on ul. Filtrowa 68...

There are five sets of photos (thumbnailed to the left). The main one above was taken looking north, the others were taken from directly above (which is what you get in Google Earth satellite view, only in higher resolution), looking east, south and west. Lots of interactive fun - the only constraint is the city's boundary.

Below: my office window (middle block, four floors down from the top).

Here's the link - click, explore and enjoy! (lots to find for train and plane spotters!)

This time five years ago
On Calton Hill, Edinburgh

This time six years ago:
Doomsday - the Last Judgment

This time seven years ago:
Sunny Scotland at +23.9C 

This time eight years ago:
The iconic taste of Marmite

This time nine years ago:

My road bike, ready for action

This time ten years ago:

Christ's Passion at the Dominican Abbey

SO...?

Lent 2019 Day 22

You have nine trillion (9 x 10¹²⁾ ancestors, if you trace your lineage back all the way to the Universal Common Ancestor, the first life form to appear on our planet 4.1 billion years ago. Each of those nine trillion ancestors had to reproduce successfully for you to be alive today. Just one broken link in that chain - just one ancestor that failed to reproduce - and there'd be no you.

SO?

................................................................................................

Every atom (and there are around 7 x 10²⁷ of them within you), has been around for billions of years. The seven kilos or so of hydrogen atoms within you have all been around since 378,000 years after Big Bang, pretty much of all of the 13.8 billion years of the lifetime of the universe. The heavier elements in you were ejected from stars. You are stardust, indeed. Over that time, within each of the 4 x 10²⁷ of hydrogen atoms inside you, the electron has been whizzing around the proton. Tirelessly. Eternally.

SO?

................................................................................................

After you die, each one of those 7 x 10²⁷ atoms within you will remain in existence in our universe, until - who knows? The universe, currently expanding at an ever-accelerating pace, would slow down, stop, and then, eventually all matter would collapse into black holes, which would then coalesce, producing a unified black hole or Big Crunch singularity. But until then, the atoms would continue. For a brief moment in time, they came together to form you.

SO?

................................................................................................

Can you see the magic in all this? Did all that successful reproduction that brought all those atoms together to form you happen by accident or design? Is your consciousness a phenomenon that exists within your skull specifically because of a vast series of happy coincidences - or is it somehow linked to a grander universal purpose?

This time last year:
A Brief History of Time reviewed

This time two years ago:
Eyes without a face

This time three years ago:
London blooms in yellow

This time four years ago:
London's Docklands: a case-study in urban regeneration

This time five years ago:
Scotland and its language 

This time six years ago:
Death, our sister

This time seven years ago:
First bike ride to work of the year 

This time nine years ago:
Poland's trains ran faster before the war

This time ten years ago:
Winter in spring: surely this must be the last snow?

This time 11 years ago:
Surely THIS must be the last snow?