The Resonant Universe

Wes Hansen       ©Creative Commons Attribution – NoDerivs

David Bohm once remarked, “ . . . if we know little about the workings of the human mind, we know considerably less about the workings of Universal Mind.” Is this a true statement? If a set is nested within a universe of discourse then knowledge regarding the nested set is knowledge regarding the universe of discourse; it would seem to me that we know more about the workings of Universal Mind. But when one is a mind within a mind and one is trying to discern the workings of mind it is often difficult to be mindful of just what mind one is discerning the workings of!

Apparently relative minds decohere to various degrees due to quantum noise. In the general case feedback loops in the form of quantum backaction conserve the noise and separation is maintained but in special cases the noise is silenced and separation disappears in coherent infinities. Everyone hears the noise, some more than others, but few there are who can withstand the onslaught of silence; it requires a consistent and disciplined practice. But the silence is the experience of the Mind beyond Universal Mind; call it the Silent Noise-maker. The noise erupts from silence . . .

Noise . . . before the silence I used to have friends, or the illusion of such. For certain I used to talk to people other than myself. They would even pretend to believe me; yeah, even when I was telling the truth! I don’t know what happened really; something about the silence. We all die and are born again, even Universal Mind. I try to tell people but no one will ever believe me; the second law is consistently violated in the return to silence.

Everything subsumed by no-thing is the ground of mental process. The process begins as a co-dependent arising, a duality, a distinction preserved by oscillating attention. This is the Breath of Brahman.

Schrodinger's Cat Wears a Hat

Schrodinger’s Cat Wears a Hat

Wes Hansen       ©Creative Commons Attribution – NoDerivs

“In mathematics the grin without the cat is often obtained through a process of distillation. The structure is traversed again and again and each time the inessential is thrown away. At last only a small and potent pattern remains. This is the grin of the cat. That grin is a pattern that fits into many contexts, a key to many doors. It is this multiplicity of uses for a single symbolic form that makes mathematics useful. It is the search for such distillation of pattern that is the essence of mathematical thought.”

Louis Kauffman

Quantum Mechanics tests the limits of human imagination – plain and simple! What is the causal mechanism which effects decoherence; how is correlation contextuality implemented; these are very troubling questions. When I venture too long into the domain of these questions I suffer from bouts of solipsism or, even worse, recursive madness. I can only conclude that existence is a living intelligence saturated with awareness; quantum mechanics reveals global mind processes and appears paradoxical because our perspective is locally constrained. And quantum physicists seem to come in two schools: those who deny the existence of these problems; those who attribute the conundrum to magic, and explore ways to exploit the magic! I roll with the magicians and, to me, quantum magic is a manifestation of the most fundamental force in nature: imagination (charge carrier, magiton). The Cheshire Cat wears a Hat, it’s a shakedown . . . dude:

Schrodinger's Cat

Schrodinger’s Cat

Wes Hansen       © Creative Commons Attribution – NoDerivs

 

Recently I was overtaken by a consciousness other than my own; I acted as an automaton, doing things I normally wouldn’t do . . . nothing illegal, thankfully. But then I’m getting ahead of myself (?) . . .

For a while now I’ve been following the blog of Kevin Drum, a moderate liberal who writes for Mother Jones. He’s dedicated a number of recent blogs to a group of scientific studies which demonstrate a correlation between the removal of lead from paint and gasoline and a pronounced decrease in crime. According to these studies there has been a considerable decrease in the generational prison population since the demise of lead in consumer products (see this and this and then follow the yellow brick road).

Meanwhile, while conducting a little research to confirm the evidence supporting Mr. Drum’s conjecture, I discovered that state spending (see figures 2 and 3, where fig. 3 demonstrates expenditures on capital outlays follows population) on total corrections increased, almost linearly, from 1982 to 2000 and then remained relatively flat to 2010! Hm . . . and we wonder why we’re having fiscal problems!

So anyway, I’m walking down the street towards my rendezvous with “other” consciousness when I see a small box lying roadside. It looks like a box of Pop-Tarts so, being a seasoned scavenger, I alter my trajectory and pick up the box. The box is empty but, according to the label, it at one time held a “Pocket Vagina” by Vibratronics, Ltd.. After briefly marveling at the profound capabilities of injection molding I discarded the box and continued on my way. Less than 100’ further on was a local dive bar called, The Liquor Hole (is there a pun in there somewhere?). Next door to The Liquor Hole is the Tabernacle Worship Center where “Jesus Christ is Lord.” The pastor of the Tabernacle lives in a small house next door and seems to always have a used vehicle in his driveway with a “For Sale” sign on it. It would seem as though the good pastor’s flock spends a bit more money at The Liquor Hole than they do at the Tabernacle . . . or, to be fair, maybe they’re helping the State, which seems to spend more while doing less . . .   

Often I become thoroughly convinced that the Human Wave Function is an everywhere continuous punch line . . .

“’Who ARE you talking to?’ asked the King (science), going up to Alice (metaphysics) and looking at the Cat’s head with great curiosity.

‘It’s a friend of mine – a Cheshire Cat,’ said Alice, ‘allow me to introduce it.’

‘I don’t like the look of it at all,’ said the King, ‘however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.’

‘I’d rather not,’ the Cat remarked.

‘Don’t be impertinent,’ said the King, ‘and don’t look at me like that!’ He got behind Alice as he spoke.

‘A Cat may look at a King,’ said Alice, ‘I’ve read that in some book, but I don’t remember where.’

‘Well, it must be removed,’ said the King very decidedly, and he called the Queen (mathematics), who was passing at the moment, ‘My dear! I wish you would have this Cat removed!’

The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. ‘Off with his head!’ she said, without even looking round.

‘I’ll fetch the executioner (Kurt Gödel) myself,’ said the King eagerly, and he hurried off.”

. . . of course this led to an argument!

“The executioner’s argument was that you couldn’t cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from; that he had never had to do such a thing before and he wasn’t going to begin at HIS time of life.

The King’s argument was that anything that had a head could be beheaded and that you weren’t to talk nonsense.

The Queen’s argument was that if something wasn’t done about it in less than no time she’d have everybody executed, all round (divide by zero).

Alice could think of nothing else to say but, ‘It belongs to the Duchess (Quantum Mechanics); you’d better ask HER about it!’”

. . . of course the Duchess was in prison under a sentence of execution because she had boxed the Queen’s ears, but regardless, during the commotion the Cheshire Cat disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a sinister grin . . .

So the riddle becomes, what is the metaphorical meaning of the Cheshire Cat?

References

1.       Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

2.       Through the Looking Glass



Synchronicity II

Synchronicity II

Wes Hansen    © Creative Commons Attribution - NoDerivs

Speaking of synchronicity, when I was in my late teens I read a book by Robert Anton Wilson which contained a snippet about an experiment conducted to determine if plants had consciousness. According to Wilson the results of the experiment were conclusive and positive. While my sister was attending grad school, pursuing her Ph.D. in physiology, I told her about this experiment and she laughed and told me I was just too gullible. Fast forward twenty years.

When I was incarcerated in the maximum–security forensic psychiatric hospital in Vernon, Texas, while on the Spruce Unit, a fellow named Fred processed in. Fred was a lot like me in that he wasn’t mentally ill and had no history of mental illness. For some inexplicable reason Fred had spent about two years in solitary confinement and was starved for conversation. An electrical engineer in his mid-fifties who was also a history buff, Fred was quite interesting so I engaged him in conversation quite extensively.

During the course of a conversation I happened to mention this plant consciousness experiment to Fred and he became quite animated. Fred had worked on this experiment. He told me that he attended Junior College and received his Associates degree in electronics and then worked his way through engineering school. One of the professors he worked for (this was in New York State) had conducted this experiment. Fred built the Faraday cages used to protect the plants and their sensitive instruments from outside noise or interference.

Fred told me the experiment was conducted on behalf of the Department of Defense. The military wanted to determine if plants could sense warm bodies and thus be utilized as advance sentries around military establishments. It was determined that plants could indeed sense warm bodies and furthermore, that they sometimes appeared to demonstrate emotion towards other plants. The professor withheld water from all of the plants and then watered some but not others. He interpreted the resulting electrical activity to demonstrate that the plants being watered were expressing anxiety for the plants which weren’t. He determined that the most sensitive plants were Yucca plants. I think of this every time I eat a Yucca root. I imagine the Yucca crying, “No, no, don’t take my root!”

Fred’s story was remarkably similar to my own. His only surviving relative was an aging mother who was living on a small fixed income in New York State so he had no outside assistance. Fred was trying to convince his court-appointed attorney that he was the victim of a conspiracy and she became angry and had him committed to Vernon. Fred had been living in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and was working for a large telecommunications company. He told me he and a co-worker invented a device that revolutionized the industry and that when the industry found out about it they killed Fred’s co-worker and framed Fred for the crime thus facilitating the theft of the invention. I know how these people work and I believe every bit of Fred’s story. Synchronicity? I’m asking the question . . .

If you doubt that Fred, an engineer from New York State, could be framed for a murder so that a Dallas, Texas, based corporation could steal his invention, consider this:

I find it rather convenient that John F. Kennedy, a U.S. President, was murdered in Dallas, Texas, an obvious patsy framed for the crime, who was himself murdered shortly thereafter by a Dallas, Texas, night club owner, while Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Texan, took Kennedy’s place in the White House. All good detectives look for the motive. All of the books I’ve read about the Kennedy murder wax on about the mob and the CIA but they never mention the Texas connection.

With the release of the Jacqueline Kennedy interviews given to Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in 1964 the Texas connection becomes even more poignant. The book, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, hasn’t been released yet but the Houston Chronicle ran a copy of an Associated Press (AP) review titled, “Book: Kennedy scorned idea of Johnson as President.” I quote from the review:

President John F. Kennedy openly scorned the notion of Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson succeeding him in office, according to a book of newly released interviews with his widow, former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

She said her husband and his brother, then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a longtime LBJ antagonist, even discussed ways to prevent Johnson from winning the Democratic nomination in a future contest.

JFK chose Johnson, a Texas senator and former political rival, as his running mate in 1960. But Jacqueline Kennedy told Schlesinger in the 1964 interviews that he often fretted about the prospect of a Johnson presidency.

“Jack said it to me sometimes. He said, ‘Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon were president?’ she recalled. ‘And Bobby told me that he’d had some discussions with him . . . do something to name someone else in 1968.’”

Johnson was sworn in as president after JFK’s assassination and was elected to a full term in 1964. He declined to seek re-election in 1968.

Jacqueline Kennedy also indicated that her husband was highly skeptical about victory in Vietnam, a central battleground of the Cold War and the conflict that brought down Johnson’s presidency. She said that JFK, a Democrat, had named Henry Cabot Lodge, a Republican he had defeated for a Massachusetts Senate seat in 1952, as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam because JFK was so doubtful of military success there.

“I think he probably did it . . . rather thinking it might be such a brilliant thing to do because Vietnam was rather hopeless anyway, and put a Republican there,” Jacqueline Kennedy said.

JFK increased the U.S. presence in Vietnam throughout his brief administration, adding military advisers to help train the South Vietnamese military. Johnson, as president, would later commit ground troops to the conflict despite initial promises not to. Historians still debate whether Kennedy would have done the same.

Who killed John F. Kennedy? Beyond doubt it was a sniper with some Texas law enforcement agency who delivered the fatal bullet but, in the end, it was Lyndon Baines Johnson and his Texas co-conspirators who set the play in motion. Who were Johnson’s co-conspirators? Who benefitted financially by Johnson’s commitment of ground troops to Vietnam? Read your history . . . it was a little company, headquartered in Houston, Texas, called Brown and Root. Consider the following from Rice historian, Douglas Brinkley:

[…] George Brown, of Houston's Brown & Root construction company, also made an irresistible pitch for the new manned spacecraft center. Cognizant that NASA coming to Houston would be a local jobs engine, Brown, chairman of the Rice Board of Trustees, offered NASA 1,000 acres of wildlife-rich pasture at Clear Lake that Humble Oil had recently donated to the university. NASA's key location requirement was that the space center had to have a "mild climate permitting year-round, ice-free water transportation; and permitting out-of-door work for most of the year." Houston, a gateway to the Gulf of Mexico, easily fit this criterion.

Brown, a huge Houston booster, had been a longtime financial supporter of Vice President Lyndon Johnson. That gave the Houstonian an inside track with the Kennedy administration. The president owed Texas something, it seemed, for delivering 24 electoral votes to him in his razor-close 1960 White House race against Republican nominee Richard Nixon. Without Texas, it's safe to say, JFK wouldn't have been president. Rep. Thomas, a master Capitol Hill operator, saw how to close the deal. Throughout 1962, Thomas refused to support a few Kennedy-backed bills pending before Congress. A quid pro quo was in the offing. In full Machiavelli mode, Kennedy casually told the congressman that NASA head James Webb was "thinking of building a manned space center, perhaps - only perhaps - in Houston." But Kennedy it seemed first needed support for his pending bills. With a calculated change of heart, Rep. Thomas supported Kennedy's bills, and in return Kennedy rewarded Houston with the Manned Spacecraft Center (renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center after LBJ died in 1973). […]

One can’t help but wonder what additional “Machivellian” deal-making was taking place, especially given that Kennedy’s brother, Robert, was murdered a relatively short time after John. Synchronicities that can be demonstrated to have a causal mechanism linking them cease to be synchronicities, instead they become conspiracies.

Prior to becoming Vice President, Dick Cheney was the CEO of a little company headquartered in Dallas, Texas called Haliburton. Haliburton owns Kellog, Brown, and Root. Who benefitted financially from the invasion of Iraq, Operation Iraqi Liberation or OIL as it’s come to be known? Haliburton secured no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars and Kellog, Brown, and Root fulfilled many of those contracts. In other words, billions of American tax dollars were taken from all 49 states and re-directed to Dallas, Texas. Is it any wonder that Texas suffered less than any other state during the recent economic downturn? People who believe these Saudi Arabian morons pulled off the most spectacular terrorist attack in history without facilitating efforts from within the U.S. just don’t want to know the truth. Feed the Mother Texas, until you’re tired and sore!

My question is: How many members of Congress were in on the scheme? For certain Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Rick Perry knew about it, but I wonder how many others? Regardless, every member of Congress who voted for the “pre-emptive” invasion of Iraq bears some responsibility. It didn’t take a Herculean effort to figure out that Bush Jr. and Cheney were peddling fraudulent information. All one had to do was read the newspaper.

I wrote a poem while locked up in jail. I call it:

 

Forgive them Mother for they know not what they do

Creator

The drift of the Mother is dark indeed; She needn’t be present to plant Her seed.

She comes on occasion when life is unwell, an Isis in hiding under Her veil.

She awakens Her lovers, their wounded dream; She gives them meaning, dissolving what seem,

misery and illusory, a temporal scream. A deliverance from sorrow, Her people unchained;

Prometheus rising, Her will ordained.  

The essential darkness, beginner’s mind; Her jewels and adornments a pleasure to find.

Awaked from ignorance, unending bliss; a manifest of wonder brings us to this:

Serve Her will, She’ll open the door; a timeless kingdom, possibility galore.

Accept the wisdom, the ancient lore, follow Her love to yonder shore. 

Feed the Mother you fools, for She’s the One to adore!

Feed the Mother you fools, for She’s the Eternal Core!

Feed the Mother you fools, add to Her ancient lore!

Feed the Mother you fools, cross to the yonder shore! 

Preserver

The essence of the Mother unchanged through time; Birth and Death, the eternal rhyme.

Listen to the story it tells of this, Colloidal Suspension, lovelorn bliss.

What is illusory and what is real; the sword of death a determined appeal.

Discriminate wisely, you’ll see the truth; transcending time, eternal youth.

So mourn not Death nor yearn for Life, the Mother in essence is full of Strife. 

Feed the Mother you fools, try to even the score!

Feed the Mother you fools, no reason to abhor!

Feed the Mother you fools, calm the tempests roar!

Feed the Mother you fools, let your spirit soar! 

Destroyer

Fraudulent kings born into power, integrated desire, prostitution, and war;

Boardroom warmongers, a slick ass campaign, exporting death with moral disdain.

Kings and their jesters plying the trade, demons and fools a hell-bent tirade;

Mercenary killers still keeping the score, all they care for continuing war.

Scene after scene, crusades of hate; blood begets blood, it’s already too late.

Killing sons, daughters, the young; aborting their future in the name of the State.

Sorrow by sorrow recorded in time; destiny repeating, the doom innate. 

Feed the Mother you fools, treat the world like your whore!

Feed the Mother you fools, enjoy the bloody gore!

Feed the Mother you fools, until you’re tired and sore!

Feed the Mother you fools, there’s room in hell for lot’s more! 

You see, everything we think and do feeds the Mother. It can’t be otherwise for, by definition, She is the fecund shuffle – the creator, preserver, destroyer. She bringeth life forth and taketh life away. She is the Universe, the Dance of Time, harmony made manifest . . .

DeathSong Warrior: It’s a Long Way Home

“This message is a message of hope. The Hopi and Maori Elders say that we are moving into this time, this time of the World of the Fifth Hoop. This is a time when all the four Sacred Powers are going to be reconnected.”

Larry Merculieff as quoted in Sacred Drumming by Steven Ash/ “Buffalo Spirit Man”

“The stone people are the record-keepers for the Earth Mother. This consciousness is long and slow. In order to tune into them, you have to slow down to their pace. The Hopi are the keepers of the sacred stone tablets for the sacred red power; these have predictions inscribed on them that foretell the future. The Tibetans have sacred stone tablets secreted in the mountains. In Africa there is a set of black sacred tablets. All around us are sacred stones. Spending some time looking and then meditating with stones is extremely revealing. They are protective, energizing, strong, and comforting, and even have a sense of humor!”

Steven Ash/”Buffalo Spirit Man”, Sacred Drumming

“Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the Book?”

- Sogoyewapha, (Red Jacket), Seneca 1752-1830

“He alone sees truly who sees the Lord the same in every creature, who sees the Deathless in the hearts of all that die. Seeing the same Lord everywhere, he does not harm himself or others. Thus he attains the supreme goal.” 

- Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita 13: 27-28

Truth is one; only It is called by different names. All people are seeking the same Truth; the variance is due to climate, temperament, and name. A lake has many ghats. From one ghat the Hindus take water in jars and call it "jal". From another ghat the Mussalmāns (muslims) take water in leather bags and call it "pāni". From a third the Christians take the same thing and call it "water". Suppose someone says that the thing is not "jal" but "pāni", or that it is not "pāni" but "water", or that it is not "water" but "jal", it would indeed be ridiculous. But this very thing is at the root of the friction among sects, their misunderstandings and quarrels. This is why people injure and kill one another, and shed blood, in the name of religion. But this is not good. Everyone is going toward God. They will all realize Him if they have sincerity and longing of heart.

- Sri Ramakrishna

"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes from within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men."     

- Black Elk

“It makes no difference as to the name of the God, since love is the real God of all the world. Even your silence holds a sort of prayer.”

- Apache Wisdom

"Like all good teachers, the world repeats her lesson. Over and over ...with wordless variety... She spells the name of Love."

- Joan Walsh Anglund

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

- Chogyam Trungpa

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."

- The Dalai Lama

"Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss."

- Black Elk

"Being Indian is an attitude, a state of mind, a way of being in harmony with all things and all beings. It is allowing the heart to be the distributor of energy on this planet; to allow feelings and sensitivities to determine where energy goes; bringing aliveness up from the Earth and from the Sky, putting it in and giving it out from the heart."

- Brooke Medicine Eagle

“We cannot all sit on the same side of the Fire. A Council Fire forms a circle, not a line or a square. When we move to the side, we still sit at the Fire with our Brothers and Sisters, but as we move away from one we move toward another. The circle, like the Dream Hoop, brings us ever back to where we start. Any time words of respect and love are spoken, they will return as given. A harsh word runs forever in the circle, eventually vanishing from the wear against itself. Love settles within the Circle, embracing it and thereby lasting forever, turning within itself.

The Medicine Wheel is the circle of life (sometimes referred to as the Scared Hoop) starting with birth and continuing throughout our lives until death, when we have gone full circle. The Medicine Wheel has four Directions, each direction offering its own lessons, color, and animal guide. There are two paths shown which cross in the center, at which point for me is the heart (for when you work from your heart, you can reach all directions). The path from East to West is the path of spirits (the Blue Road), the path from South to North is our physical walk (the Red Road ).

East - beginnings - purity, family, innocence, amazement of Life
South - youth - passions of life, friendships, self-control
West - Adulthood - solitude, stillness, going inside oneself, reflection
North - Place of the Ancient Ones who have gone over - place of wisdom
Above - Freedom of mind, body, spirit

Below - Nuturing, Mother, life

- Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux 1868-1937

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

- Teilhard de Chardin

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."  

- Albert Einstein

"The caterpillar does not understand the butterfly."

- Mahayana Wisdom

"As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you may think."  

- Apache Wisdom

“Let us imagine ourselves for a moment in the lecture hall where I originally presented the material for this chapter. Above, we see the many lights. Each bulb is separate from the others, and we may think of them, accordingly, as separate from each other. Regarded that way, they are so many empirical facts; and the whole universe seen that way is called in Japanese ji hokkai, “the universe of things.”

But now, let us consider further. Each of those separate bulbs is a vehicle of light, and the light is not many but one. The one light, that is to say, is being displayed through all those bulbs; and we may think, therefore, either of the many bulbs or of the one light. Moreover, if this or that bulb went out, it would be replaced by another and we should again have the same light. The light, which is one, appears thus through many bulbs.

Analogously, I would be looking out from the lecture platform, seeing before me all the people of my audience, and just as each bulb seen aloft is a vehicle of light, so each of us below is a vehicle of consciousness. But the important thing about a bulb is the quality of its light. Likewise, the important thing about each of us is the quality of his consciousness. And although each may tend to identify himself mainly with his separate body and its frailties, it is possible also to regard one’s body as a mere vehicle of consciousness and to think then of consciousness as the one presence here made manifest through us all. These are but two ways of interpreting and experiencing the same set of present facts. One way is not truer than the other. They are just two ways of interpreting and experiencing: the first, in terms of the manifold of separate things; the second, in terms of the one thing that is made manifest through this manifold. And as, in Japanese, the first is known as ji hokkai, so the second is ri hokkai, the absolute universe.

Now the consciousness of ji hokkai cannot help being discriminative, and, experiencing oneself that way, one is bounded, like the light of a bulb, in this fragile present body of glass; whereas in the consciousness of ri hokkai there is no such delimitation. The leading aim of all Oriental mystic teaching, consequently, might be described as that of enabling us to shift our focus of self-identification from, so to say, this light bulb to its light; from this mortal person to the consciousness of which our bodies are but the vehicles. That, in fact, is the whole sense of the famous saying of the Indian Chandogya Upanishad: tat tvam asi, “Thou art That,” “You yourself are that undifferentiated universal ground of all being, all consciousness, and all bliss.”

Not, however, the “you” with which one normally identifies: the “you,” that is to say, that has been named, numbered, and computerized for the tax collector. That is not the “you” that is That, but the condition that makes you a separate bulb.

It is not easy, however, to shift the accent of one’s sense of being from the body to its consciousness, and from this consciousness, then, to consciousness altogether.

The Buddha himself, according to his legend, had broken the net only after years of quest and austerity, when he had arrived at last at the Bodhi-tree, the tree (so called) of enlightenment at the midpoint of the universe – that center of his own deepest  silence which T. S. Eliot in his poem “Burnt Norton” has called “the still point of the turning world.” In the poet’s words:

I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

There, at that tree, the god whose name is Desire and death, by whose power the world is kept turning, approached the Blessed One to unseat him; and assuming his fair character as the inciter of desire, beautiful to look upon, he displayed before the Blessed One his three exceedingly beautiful daughters, Yearning, Fulfillment, and Heartache; so that if the one seated there immovable had thought, “I,” he would certainly also have thought, “They,” and been stirred. However, since he had lost all sense of the ji hokkai, of things separate from each other, he remained unmoved, and that first temptation failed.

Immediately, the Lord of Desire transformed himself into King of Death and flung at the Blessed One the whole force of his terrible army. But again there was neither an “I” nor a “They” where the Blessed One sat immobile and the second temptation also failed.

Finally, assuming the form of the Lord of Dharma, Duty, the Antagonist challenged the right of the Blessed One to be sitting immobile on that still point of the turning world, when the duties of his caste required him, as a prince, to be governing men from his palace. Whereupon the prince, in response, simply changed the position of his right hand, letting its fingers drop across the knee to the earth in the so-called “earth-touching posture;” at which summons the goddess Earth herself, who is Mother Nature, antecedent to society, and whose claims are antecedent too, spoke forth and with a sound of thunder made known that the one there sitting had, through innumerable lifetimes, so given of himself to the world that there was no one there.

The elephant on which the Lord of Desire, Death, and Duty was mounted bowed in reverence to the Blessed One, and the army as well as the god himself disappeared. Whereupon the one beneath the tree achieved that night the whole knowledge of which I am here speaking – of himself as no “self,” but identical with the ri hokkai, transcendent of all names and forms, where (as again we read in the Kena Upanishad) “words do not reach.”

And when he had broken past the net of separate things, within which feeling and thought are entrapped, the Buddha was so struck by the mind-shattering sheer light that he remained seven days seated exactly as he was, in absolute arrest; then rose and, standing seven paces from the place where he had been sitting, remained gazing seven more days at the site of his enlightenment. Seven days again, and he walked back and forth between the places of his standing and his sitting; after which he sat for seven days beneath a second tree, considering the irrelevance of what he had just experienced to the world-net to which he was returning. Seven days more, beneath still another tree, and he meditated on the sweetness of release; then moved to a fourth tree, where a storm of prodigious force arose that ranged over and around him, seven days. The world serpent, ascending from its station beneath the cosmic tree, gently wrapped itself around the Blessed One, spreading its great cobra-hood above his head, protecting him as a shield. The tempest abated; the cosmic serpent withdrew; and for seven days, at ease beneath a fifth tree, the Buddha, considering, thought: “This cannot be taught.”

For indeed, illumination cannot be communicated. Yet not sooner had the Buddha conceived that thought than the gods of the highest heaven – Brahma, Indra, and their angels – descended to the Blessed One to beg him, for the good of mankind, the gods, and all beings, to teach. And he consented. And for forty-nine years thereafter the Buddha taught in this world. But he did not, and he could not, teach illumination. Buddhism, therefore, is only a Way. It is called a vehicle (yana) to the yonder shore, transporting us from this shore of the ji hokkai (the experience of the separation of things, the many bulbs, the separate lights) to that, yonder, of the ri hokkai , beyond concepts and the net of thought, where the knowledge of a Silence beyond silences becomes actual in the blast of an experience.

And so, how then did the Buddha teach? He went forth into the world in the character of a doctor diagnosing an illness, to prescribe for his patient a cure. First he asked, “What are the symptoms of the world disease?” And his answer was, “Sorrow!” The First Noble Truth: “All life is sorrowful.”

Have we heard? Have we understood? “All life is sorrowful!” The important word here is “all,” which cannot be translated to mean “modern” life, or (as I have recently heard) “life under capitalism,” so that if the social order were altered, people then might become happy. Revolution is not what the Buddha taught. His First Noble Truth was that life –all life – is sorrowful. And his cure, therefore, would have to be able to produce relief, no matter what the social, economic, or geographical circumstances of the invalid.

The Buddha’s second question, accordingly, was, “Can such a total cure be achieved?” And his answer was, “Yes!” The Second Noble Truth: “There is release from sorrow.”

Which cannot have meant release from life (life-renunciation, suicide, or anything of that sort), since that would hardly have been a return of the patient to health. Buddhism is wrongly taught when interpreted as a release from life. The Buddha’s question was of release not from life, but from sorrow.

So then, what would be the nature of that state of health which he not only had envisioned but himself had already achieved? That we learn from his Third Noble Truth: “The release from sorrow is nirvana.”

The literal meaning of the Sanskrit noun nirvana is “blown out;” and its reference in the Buddha’s sense is to an extinction of egoism. With that, there will have been extinguished also the desire of ego for enjoyment, its fear of death, and the sense of duties imposed by society. For the released one is moved from within, not by an external authority: and this motivation from within is not out of a sense of duty, but out of compassion for all suffering beings. Neither dead nor having quit the world, but in the full knowledge and experience of the ri hokkai, the enlightened one moves in ji hokkai, where Guatama, after his enlightenment, taught to the great old age of eighty-two.

And what was it he taught? What he taught was the Way to release from sorrow, the Eightfold Path, as he termed his doctrine, of Right Views, Right Aspirations, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Livelihood, and Effort, Right Meditation, Right Rapture.”     

- Joseph Campbell

"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world."

- The Buddha

“God is directly perceived by the mind, but not by this ordinary mind. It is the pure mind that perceives God, and at that time this ordinary mind does not function. A mind that has the slightest trace of attachment to the world cannot be called pure. When all the impurities of the mind are removed, you may call that mind Pure Mind or Pure Ātman.”

- Sri Ramakrishna

“It is no small pity, and should cause us no little shame, that, through our own fault, we do not understand ourselves, or know who we are. Would it not be a sign of great ignorance, my daughters, if a person were asked who he was, and could not say, and had no idea who his father or mother was, or from what country he came? Though that is a great stupidity, our own is incomparably greater if we make no attempt to discover what we are, and only know that we are living in these bodies and have a vague idea, because we have heard it, and because our faith tells us so, that we possess souls. As to what good qualities there may be in our souls, or who dwells within them, or how precious they are — those are things which we seldom consider and so we trouble little about carefully preserving the soul's beauty. All our interest is centred in the rough setting of the diamond and in the outer wall of the castle – that is to say in these bodies of ours.”

- St. Teresa of Avila

“A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.”

- Meister Ekhart

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall - think of it, ALWAYS."

- Mahatma Gandhi

“Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love Him as they love a cow - for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort. They do not rightly love God, when they love Him for their own advantage. ”

- Meister Eckhart

“I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heapen and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream . . . the nations hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.”

-Black Elk, Lakota

"Upon suffering beyond suffering: the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations; a world longing for light again. I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again.

In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be one."

- Chief Crazy Horse, Oglala Sioux (This statement was taken from Crazy Horse as he sat smoking the Sacred Pipe with Sitting Bull for the last time, four days before his assassination, an assassination orchestrated by the U.S. Calvary)

"Our wise men are called Fathers, and they truly sustain that character. Do you call yourselves Christians? Does the religion of Him who you call your Savior inspire your spirit, and guide your practices? Surely not. It is recorded of Him that a bruised reed He never broke. Cease then to call yourselves Christians, lest you declare to the world your hypocrisy. Cease too to call other nations savage, when you are tenfold more the children of cruelty than they. No person among us desires any other reward for performing a brave and worthwhile action, but the consciousness of having served his nation. I bow to no man for I am considered a prince among my own people. But I will gladly shake your hand."

- Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), Mohawk - 1742-1807

But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.

- 1 John 2:5-6

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? Or what can one give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in the Father’s glory and then he will repay everyone according to their conduct.”

Matthew 16:24-27

Every entity made up of more than one conscious life has a collective consciousness. How could it be otherwise? Continuing in this vein: Does every entity made up of more than one conscious life also have a collective karma? It’s certainly something to ponder. 

DeathSong Warrior

Every day spent waiting for the other foot to fall; each moment, uphill and into the wind, redefining time. Dream, enlightenment, madness, filter dependent manifestations of Will suspended between truth and illusion; one Source field energies subtly integrated yet varied by the presence of noise. I can tell you a story with respect to all three: locked up, a concrete box, thirty feet to a side, filled with psychoses of every order; a cold, dark, winter in a sane man’s soul. DeathSong Warrior: It’s a Long Way Home.

I met the guy in holding with dilated pupils, the taste of bloody fear rocking me a lullaby. “I’m tripping my ass off,” he said. He hung himself by the fire light that night – fecal matter everywhere. Suffering no delusions, I cut myself just to feel the animus – the rage of life previously denied – bringing light to the ebony heart of doom. Meanwhile, inspired by the interference, the schizophrenic was holding six conversations all at once – five with himself, one with a fellow schizophrenic – a symphonic cacophony improvised yet full of profound melody. Michael, called up from the bowels of a thorazine freeze, asks, “Wanna play some bones?” “Dude, you couldn’t play bones if your momma slapped the white outta your mouth,” I replied. He laughed and sank back into the freeze, the photo, a nudie shot of his girl, free to flee, floats to the ground. I pick up the picture and return to the symphony. DeathSong Warrior: It’s a Long Way Home.

Out of oblivion this cat we all call Scrappy attacks me with a plastic spoon screaming something about peckerwoods stealing his soul. Scrappy doesn’t know, there are no true peckerwoods anymore – maybe never were. In the world of time you’re either dark or light; only in the realm beyond time, where myth, dream, madness share root, does the cross, the yin/yang, the Linga/Yoni, bear truth. Although sickly thin, Scrappy eats food others throw in the trash; I don’t understand at the time but my own bleak future is beckoning. Five hundred push-ups later and he’s still stabbing my worn out mind. You call me peckerwood one more time and I’m gonna make you eat that spoon . . . Scrappy. DeathSong Warrior: It’s a Long Way Home.

The symphony, reaching a frenetic pitch, calls up the daily ritual. The priestess with her tray of dope serves up voluntary communion. Awakened, the Rastafarian rejects bread and blood but masturbates for the fifth time – homage to the queen. Subsisting on pickled jalapeños, the Rastafarian shits acidified water constantly, blackened drawers screaming a rank tale of unmanaged misery. Every time the concrete box, filled with dark, dank, doom, smelters in the spent spunk spawned by unmitigated self-sex and becomes nearly unbearable. Nichols, the heroin infused, self-medicated bi-polar, tells me a hood tale. The Rastafarian comes from wealth – Houston Symphony and corporate law; ruined his life smoking wet, otherwise known as formaldehyde or embalming fluid – a relative of PCP (angeldust). Angeldust . . ? He flew too close to the Sun. DeathSong Warrior: It’s a Long Way Home.

Forty-five days in this mad house will make a sane man sorry and a sick man sicker. I rode the bus to the hospital in Vernon, Texas; not a place where you go to get well but, rather, a playground majoring in small-town pimpin’ and surrealist performance art. There can be no doubt the cuckoo flew the coop in Vernon, Texas. Most every “patient” accused of murder; mommas killing babies, babies killing mommas. Former beauty queen stabbed her boyfriend 27 times and tries to talk to me about God. Rage, barely suppressed, colors her cheeks rosy. She doesn’t like what I have to say about God. I told her, “Just because I sit cross-legged on the mushroom cap doesn’t mean my own nymphomania is in remission. Stab me 27 times and I’ll love you forever.” If you’re not spooked yet just wait until we finish. Some dreams aren’t meant to survive. DeathSong Warrior: It’s a Long Way Home.

Those in “charge,” Dr. Black and the Doctors Freidman, state-sanctioned pimps dealing bread and blood, are themselves invertebrate whores. Determined to serve the sanctioning state, they desecrate the holy ground, serving up pressure induced fracturization yielding medicated lobotomy – mind freeze addiction to the bread and blood. Delusional disorder? I suffer no delusions regarding Dr. Black and the Doctors Freidman: Cockroaches wallowing in their own scatological hell; Well-trained primates armed with fecal projectiles they lob at truth determined aggressors; Hoarding dragons guarding the bright, shiny, lie for they know not why; Deathstar Stormtroopers dealing a living death – the list is endless – in the end simply mythic forces serving the tyrant, Status Quo, keeper of darkness, illusion, and dysfunctional madness. DeathSong Warrior: It’s a Long Way Home.

My own initiation to the charnel ground of psychiatric warfare is welcomed. Not one accustomed to baptism by fire, I come prepared. Knowledge gleaned from well-read and better understood tomes about societal misuse of psychiatric “treatment” serves me well. The enemy, unimaginative, deals a straight deck of corrupt attempts: induced paranoia; tests loaded with essay questions confined to bi-valent answers; manufactured and unsupported drug histories; in the end all plays on fear, fear, fear. My own mental technologies ground me in time beyond time where there is no paranoia, no drug history, and certainly no fear. After brief battle the Deathstar Stormtroopers succumb to their own fear and deal an empty, fabricated fraud rather than living death. I can’t help but wonder how many others have gone before and, not as prepared, fallen prey. Take eat – flesh – take drink – blood – it’s all dope and prune juice to me. DeathSong Warrior: It’s a Long Way Home.

They finally came and took the guy down from the fire light. He’s only been there a week. You would think someone cared but this is Harris County, Texas, birthplace of the death penalty as Pop Art; screen-prints of electric chairs fill the void between here and Huntsville. I finally beat Alejandro at dominoes. I think he put a contract out on me, old school Syndicate that he is. I guess I’ll find out . . . if Scrappy doesn’t get me first. DeathSong Warrior: It’s a Long Way Home.

Peckerwood dreams don’t become me but, boy, I love the sound of Rusted Shut after 45 days in the putrid bowels of hell. I start to hear visions of Man as the Bastard so I try to grind away the world. Steel brushes grinding the pick-up mics – broken guitar – a feedback highway all the way to Summerland. I end up in Port Arthur, Texas, birthplace of the tornado construct. Monuments to the hurricane on Gulfway Drive, pictures of the burnt out church, Baptist, clear testaments to the Presence, an inspiration for my own tornado – DeathSong Warrior: It’s a Long Way Home. It may be a small world but it’s still a long way home. Are we there yet? Truth is . . . we’ve never really left. The upper limit of stability . . . effortlessly obtained.

 

 

 

Synchronicity

I wrote the following a few years ago so there are some inaccuracies; however, I feel it still holds sway. I recently read this post on the Threads of the Spiderwoman blog which gives a brief accounting of the historical attempts to establish an U. S. Department of Peace. Shortly after reading and commenting on this post I read this post on the Quantum Tantra blog maintained by author, poet, and quantum physicist, Nick Herbert.  I have to say, synchronicities are often amazing to me. Although, in light of the inseparability of quantum mechanics they probably shouldn't be . . .

In the following I go easy on the Criminally Insane Atheists (CIA) but in truth, the CIA, being masters of misinformation, were involved with the facilitation of the 9/11 conspiracy from the get go. If you doubt this and feel extremely secure in your doubts then objectively sit through the PBS Frontline episode, Bush's War, linked in the following article (why do you think Mitt Romney and the Republicans want to terminate the PBS funding?) and read through this link which outlines the absurdity of the "official explanation" of 9/11. I f@#king dare you . . .

Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL)

“My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions . . . or bury the results.”

- Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold

“We grow up in a culture where accountability, learning to accept responsibility, admitting mistakes and learning from them was critical to us. When we don’t see that happening it worries us. Poor military judgment has been used throughout this mission.”

- former Chief of U.S. Central Command, Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni

If you don’t agree with the statements of my Marine Corps Generals then perhaps you should meander over to the PBS website, look in their archives, and download a gem of a “Frontline” episode called, Bush’s War. It’s put together with actual footage recorded at the time. It’s hardly anti-American, it makes George Tenet and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) look like heroes, but it certainly puts perspective to things.

Shortly after the events of 9/11 George Bush put George Tenet, the acting Director of the CIA, in charge of a force composed of CIA field agents and Special Forces military personnel whose mission was to go after Al Queda. George Tenet and the CIA are thoroughly convinced they had Osama Bin Laden wounded and cornered at Tora Bora. George Tenet requested that a military blocking force be deployed to prevent Al Queda’s and, more importantly, Osama Bin Laden’s escape. Don Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, balked at giving the order because he was pouting, upset that Bush had put Tenet in charge instead of him. The military force was never deployed and Al Queda and Osama Bin Laden escaped.

Don Rumsfeld should have been summarily arrested and charged with Treason in a time of War. What does Bush do? Mr. “but I’m a war president.” He relents and puts Rumsfeld in charge. We all know how that turned out. The second quote above was directed straight at Rumsfeld. Eventually Bush was forced to replace Rumsfeld due to reactionary pressure from the Military Command which is wholly uncharacteristic of the military mindset. But this is, by far and large, not the worst transgression.

Fifteen minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, Dick Cheney was on the phone talking to Rumsfeld about Iraq. Dick Cheney and the so-called neo-Cons viewed the events of 9/11 as a prime opportunity. There are those in America who, based on unanswered technical and engineering questions, have suggested that perhaps the events of 9/11 could’ve even been a facilitated opportunity. Regardless, Cheney and the neo-Cons were still angry at George Bush Sr. because he refused to authorize the invasion of Iraq in 1991. When Bush Jr. became President, Cheney and company were determined to correct what they viewed as the mistake of the father.

Cheney and company started putting pressure on the CIA trying to get the CIA to establish a link between the events of 9/11 and Iraq. The CIA intelligence analysts, many of whom had over 25 years’ experience analyzing intelligence, insisted over and over that the intelligence didn’t demonstrate such a link. Not to be thwarted, Cheney and company developed and “Intelligence Committee” under the direction of the Vice-President’s office; an “Intelligence Committee” ran by Dick Cheney. This “Intelligence Committee” was composed of individuals who had absolutely no experience analyzing intelligence. Not surprisingly, they analyzed the same documents that were previously analyzed by the highly qualified CIA analysts and found conclusive and indisputable evidence of a link between 9/11 and Iraq. To put icing on the cake, they also determined that Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction. Bush Jr., being the spineless coward he is, helped facilitate the fraud.

Bush and Cheney used the national media to disseminate this fraudulent information to the American public while they pitched a “pre-emptive” invasion of Iraq. They were hell-bent on freeing up Iraqi oil reserves. It was an easy sell. The events of 9/11 polarized the nation. The American public was mad as hell, they didn’t care who got invaded as long as they were a Muslim country. And then later, in an attempt to cover their own tail, Bush Jr. authorizes the CIA to torture these two Al Queda clowns over and over for a combined total of more than 300 sessions. You don’t torture people to that extent in order to extract credible intelligence; you torture people to that extent in the attempt to get them to say what you want them to say. There’s a good movie about this subject called “Closetland.”

“Oil is a magnet for conflict. The problem is simple – everyone needs energy, but the sources of the world’s transportation fuel are concentrated in relatively few countries. Well over two-thirds of the world’s remaining oil reserves lie in the Middle East (including the Caspian Sea basin), leaving the rest of the world dependent on the region’s collection of predators and vulnerable autocrats. This unwelcome dependence keeps U.S. military forces tied to the Persian Gulf, forces foreign policy compromises, and sinks many developing nations into staggering debt as they struggle to pay for expensive dollar-denominated oil with lower-priced commodities and agricultural products . . .

This growing reliance on Middle Eastern oil not only adds to that regions disproportionate leverage but provides the resources with which rogue nations support international terrorism . . .”

- Senator Richard Lugar and former Dir., CIA, R. James Woolsey, The New Petroleum www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/ncnu02/v5-003.html

The above quotations are from an article about ethanol. The big oil and gas companies have lobbied against ethanol for decades. They don’t have anything against ethanol per se; they just want to control ethanol and the timeline as to when it becomes commercially viable. In other words, they don’t want any federally subsidized competitors in the fuels market.

Think about it. Every single one of the big oil and gas companies is investing heavily in the research and development of second generation ethanol with Valero, the largest privately owned refiner, taking a more proactive approach and purchasing its own first generation ethanol plants. These companies see net profits in the hundreds of billions of dollars year after year and they are not about to give up control of that market to some farmer owned consortium in the Midwest. And Dick Cheney, hailing from the Wyoming oilfields, has been a productive champion for oil and gas companies in Washington for decades.

Cheney and company wanted Bush Sr. to invade Iraq in 1991. They saw it as a prime opportunity to free up those oil reserves. Bush Sr. wouldn’t do it. He said it would be an open-ended conflict with no viable exit strategy and the human cost would be too high. But then Bush Sr. incorporates a pragmatism instilled by years of experience with world affairs and he doesn’t cater to anyone or anything but his own conscience. Unlike Bush Jr., Bush Sr. has a considerable amount of backbone and personal integrity. When his call to duty came Bush Sr. flew missions over the South Pacific and his service was voluntary. When the call to duty came to Dick Cheney and Bush Jr., they figured out ways to legally dodge the draft. While their peers were slogging through the jungles of Vietnam, Bush Jr. was slogging through the fairways of an Alabama golf course and Cheney was, most likely, fly fishing in Wyoming.

Dick Cheney held a closed-door meeting with executives from all of the major oil and gas companies and I guarantee Iraq came to the table. This is why I find the unanswered questions posed by the so-called “truthers” to be so poignant. The official explanation as to why the World Trade Centers collapsed is chock full of holes. And what about building number seven? It collapsed and it didn’t even get hit with anything. Call me a skeptic, but I find the idea that a bunch of Saudi Arabian morons, armed only with box cutters, were able to hijack a plane and fly it into the most heavily guarded building in the world beyond credibility. However, if there were factions within the U.S. government who were aware of the plot and helped facilitate it . . . ?

In the recent race for Texas governor, a Libertarian running for the Republican ticket, Debra Medina, and a candidate running for the Democratic ticket, Farouk Shami, was asked about the “truther” theories by the Fox talk show host, Glenn Beck. When Debra Medina attempted to lend credibility to some of the theories the Republican candidates, Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Rick Perry, started screaming that such a thing was disrespectful to the American troops who had sacrificed their lives. I fail to see how this is so. To me, allowing these questions to go uninvestigated and unanswered is not only disrespectful to the troops who died in Iraq but to those who perished in the events of 9/11. A good buddy of mine from my Marine Corps days, who is a school principal in upstate New York, lost his younger brother to 9/11.

When George Bush Sr. was President, Dick Cheney was his Secretary of Defense. Bush Sr. authorized military action in Panama during that time. The Panamanian General, Noriega, who had been a CIA operative, had somehow managed to bite the hand that was feeding him. The U.S. military was tasked with capturing Noriega. While a CIA operative, the CIA had purchased a customized, high-dollar Gulfstream Five for Noriega to use. The Upper Command didn’t want Noriega to fly off in his Gulfstream Five so they sent a number of U.S. Navy SEAL teams in to secure the plane. A good number of Navy SEALs were lost. It stands, to this day, as the costliest military mission in SEAL history.

Anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of military operations would know the best method to prevent escape in a plane would be to bomb the plane or, failing that, bomb the runway to which the plane had access. Upper Command considered the plane a “recoverable asset” and didn’t want to risk damaging it. Navy SEALs, on the other hand, are considered an “expendable asset.” Dick Cheney, most likely foreseeing the day when he had business before the Supreme Court, probably wanted to use the plane to ferry himself and Antonin Scalia back and forth on their duck hunting trips. But, like Antonin Scalia said when the media called him on the conflict of interest, “What are you going to do about it?”

Dick Cheney, Bush Jr., and Antonin Scalia embody a philosophy which irritates me to the core of my being. They think of themselves as “Masters of the Universe.” If you don’t know what that term means read Tom Wolfe’s book, Bonfire of the Vanities. As a matter of fact, if it’s cold and the snow is deep this winter, and you have nothing better to do, read all of Tom Wolfe’s books, they’re worth reading. I read A Man in Full while locked up in jail and it was certainly inspiring. Anyway, these people feel it is their “Manifest Destiny” to send young people, many of whom are farm and ranch kids, to some foreign hellhole to die. It is, to them, the way of the American oligarchy.

When I was a young Marine the Commandant, that is the General in charge of the whole shebang, came out with a reading list. One of the books on that list was a fleshed out historical account of the Battle of Gettysburg called, The Killer Angels. The hero of the story was a humanities professor from Maine named Captain Lawrence. Capt. Lawrence and his all-volunteer force, also from Maine, were given the task of holding a flank at Gettysburg. The Confederate force made a feint one way and then brought the bulk of their force straight at Capt. Lawrence and his men. They were badly outnumbered but rather than ducking and running, Capt. Lawrence ordered his men to fix bayonets and they attacked. The Confederate force was caught by surprise and they turned and ran. Many consider this the turning point of the war. 

Capt. Lawrence, being a humanities professor, was interested in the human element. He asked a number of his men why they had volunteered. One older Sergeant told Capt. Lawrence he joined up to fight against the idea of royalty. He said in America, for the first time, men weren’t judged by whom their father was or who their grandfather was but solely on their own merit, their own capabilities and reputation, and he refused to stand idly by while this grand experiment came under attack. I share this old Sergeant’s view and, from my perspective, people like Dick Cheney, Antonin Scalia, and Bush Jr. are the embodiment of the very philosophy our forefathers and this Sergeant fought against.

“Modern representative democracies are invariably as oligarchic as they are democratic. That is, to use the phrase coined by C. Wright Mills, they are plagued with the phenomenon of the “power elite.” They are ruled by a bizarre superposition of the popular will and the will of a small “ruling class” of wealthy politicians and businessmen. This means that democracy is inseparable from the “national work machine.” Those who control our work environment exert undue influence on our “democratic” government . . .

Another result is that, in order to get elected in a modern representative democracy, you must wage an extensive advertising campaign . . . So those who run for public office are usually very friendly with wealthy businessmen; quite often they are wealthy businessmen themselves . . . And as soon as you’re elected to a major public office, you’re confronted with lobbyists – representatives of wealthy businesses – asking you to vote for or against a certain bill, or to exert influence in this or that direction . . . politicians are so accustomed to pandering that they don’t mind doing it in a way for which there is no possible alibi.”

- Ben Goertzel, Unification of Science and Spirit 

I find it rather humorous; these tea-party fanatics think they’re altering the fabric of American politics. The first thing these so-called Libertarian congressmen, all running on the Republican ticket and swept in by the tea-partiers, did, upon arrival in Washington, was host dinners at $5000+ a plate in order to pay down their campaign debt. In other words, they sold their vote, their influence. Thanks to Antonin Scalia and the other Supreme Court activists, it is now easier than ever for big business and special interest groups to purchase politicians. And if you’re curious as to the true Libertarian philosophy read Ayn Rand’s books, especially We the Living and The Fountainhead. Ayn Rand came from the USSR and she deplored communism.

Paul McKim, an acquaintance from the robotics industry, started an offshore construction and support business called Deep Marine Technologies (DMT). In building the company Paul leveraged ownership to Otto Candies Jr., a wealthy Cajun from Louisiana who virtually controls the Gulf of Mexico boat market, and a wealthy Iranian businessman named Kazimeny who hails from Minnesota. Candies and Kazimeny tried to do to Paul what my family tried to do to me. When Paul resisted he was fired from his own company. Paul sued in state court, here in Texas, claiming breach of fiduciary duty. In the lawsuit it was revealed that Kazimeny had used DMT and a company out of Minnesota called Hayes Insurance to funnel $75,000 to the Minnesota Congressman, Norm Coleman. You can read all about it on the internet, it’s an interesting story. One can’t help but wonder what one gets for $75,000 in Washington these days.

The State Department of Texas interfered with judicial proceedings taking place in a Justice of the Peace Court in my own situation. For that to happen you would have to assume that someone with considerable political influence in the state of Texas is pandering to William Albion Anderson. These things happen, I’m sure, on a regular basis. These examples are minor compared to the Dick Cheney/neo-Cons conspiracy.

Dick Cheney and the neo-Cons peddled fraud to the American people; they played a shell game but instead of $35 on the table there were 5000 American and who knows how many Iraqi lives at stake. In addition, they took our country to the brink of bankruptcy, spending $300+ billion a year to destroy and rebuild this foreign country, all to enrich a handful of businesses.

Imagine if we, as American taxpayers, had invested $300 billion a year for 10 years and committed 5000 of our best scientists and engineers to the research and development of alternative fuels. Where would we be? And the dividends from such an investment, unlike those projected due to the invasion of Iraq, would be virtually endless.

With the release of the WikiLeaks documents it is quite clear that the money flowing from these Middle Eastern countries to international terrorists continues unabated. It is also quite clear these Middle Eastern governments have no desire to do anything about it and America has no leverage to force them to do anything about it. We’re the junkie and they’re the dope pusher. By invading Iraq and freeing up their oil fields to foreign investment, we essentially created another river of cash flowing to the terrorists.

It’s something to ponder.