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Out out brief candle

~ a candle, by its nature, is not sustainable ~

~ a candle is, by its nature, not sustainable ~
the candle was first lit in 1712;
a steam powered pump to extract floodwater from English coal mines
possibly the first time in history that humanity had a machine more powerful than an elephant to reliably do its work
the candle burned brightly
as new uses/new innovations
turned steam power into Gaia conquest power
"Iron Horses" laced continents
steamships huffed out to the open sea to slaughter whales by the thousands
for more light/more heat
streets illuminated, darkness vanquished
the candle was volcanic now, Promethean;
the whales were spared extinction
not by kindness nor compassion
but by the drilling of oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania
1859 ~ a crucial moment in the candle’s short life
it now grew so high it dimmed the stars
(they remain dim to this day)

horse drawn carriages melted downward like wax droplets
relegated to the candle’s side
replaced by automobiles
the flame was a furnace now
Carnegie, Edison, Ford stoked it to a seething inferno
industrial altar boys commencing a ceremony to set the Earth ablaze;

baptism by fire

soon skyscrapers pierced the sky 
Woolworth, Chrysler, Empire State


 giant candlesticks thrusting upward to catch the match of the sun
unstoppable now, or seemingly so
raising the temperature of the atmosphere itself!
down, down, the candle burns
all but spent;

its heat so intense now that we can't touch it
its light so blinding that we can’t see
how close to its nub it has burned

when the dying flame mutes/dims/extinguishes
I will huddle with you
I will need your warmth more than ever then

Transpersonal NOT Transhumanist (part 2)

Do these men (and they are all men) feel confident that humanity will come out of these radical changes evolved and upgraded, or merely bypassed and unnecessary? Generally, they seem cautiously hopeful. They picture the human species evolving alongside AI, using its godlike power to make we mere humans godlike as well, while simultaneously warning us that if that doesn't happen, it's essentially game over for the human race. We won't be able to keep up with exponentially advancing AI as a competitive species. Either we ride the wave or are pulverized by it.
Beyond the glitter, transhumanism doesn't look that wonderful, does it? It is pushy, it is reckless, it is male, it is left brained, it lacks any spiritual or feminine energy. It is a future essentially of the geeks, by the geeks, and for......everybody? The parallels one finds in history are the patriarchal priest classes of old and the colonialist empire building monarchies of Europe and the Middle East. The legions of tech bros who support transhumanism are either in denial of or tacitly endorse its inherent biases.
The most disturbing - at least to me - aspect of transhumanism is the low regard, if not outright disdain, it has for the natural world, of which homo species is a member and wholly dependent upon. It sees biological realities as annoyances to be overcome, and imagines the human brain successfully separating itself from the body, digitalizing itself (or availing itself of some improvement over digitalization) and living free from the slings and arrows of.....life. It is using vast resources to achieve its goals, using up the environment at a crisis point in history when Sustainability is of growing urgency, because it hubristically imagines that soon technology will become so ingenious that it will be able to make resource depletion and energy overconsumption a thing of the past. It is folly to think in such a way, to gleefully burn the rubber down to the metal on the promise that takeoff into the skies will save us just in time.Bluntly, I reject transhumanism and so, frankly, should you.
Which brings us to transpersonalism. Might/does it offer a better path forward? And if so, why hasn't it achieved this any time over, say, the last ten thousand years?
Transpersonal inquiry/discovery is very ancient; it is older than agriculture. And yet, as noted previously, it has always occupied a fringe position in human society. It has been the purview of yogis in their caves and sermoners on their mounts. A mere sliver of humanity has heeded the call, walked the path. Religions represent perhaps the biggest failure, preferring to wrap followers in preposterous myths and arid rituals rather than guide them to learn about their true nature.
Yet even popular culture has, at times, functioned as a microphone for transpersonal pursuits. Consider these lyrics from three immensely popular songs, embraced and enjoyed by millions of young people in the '60s and '70s:
The Beatles: I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together
The Who: If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high, you'd laugh and say nothing's that simple
Kansas: Once I rose above the noise and confusion, just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion
These old songs are still listened to, even by members of much younger generations, many of whom hear them without paying attention to what they mean, convinced as they are that the universe is meaningless and all such supernatural stuff is tosh.
This is perplexing and tragic, as a society formed of members who embrace and delve into transpersonal inquiry/discovery would be kinder by far. It would also be more fun! What many people don't understand is just how fascinating and thrilling the transpersonal path is. It is an overused trope to say something is 'better than sex', but in this case it quite literally is so. The ecstasy that surges through the body, lighting it up like a Christmas tree, when one is experiencing a transpersonal moment of deep clarity goes well beyond sexual orgasm. I wouldn't write that if I couldn't attest to it. Nevertheless, it remains the path less taken.
I imagine that many reading these words will simply note them as interesting, maybe a bit odd, without their interest in what they have read being stoked to the point of wanting to learn more. This is a weird world, when more people are eager to explore the sci fi fantasies of transhumanism than sign up for the always here, always now, always available benefits of the transpersonal path. Why has the transpersonal path remained at the edges of society throughout these millennia? Has it let US down or have we let IT down? In fact, neither. Human beings are transpersonal regardless of whether they know it or not. Just as humans five thousand - or fifty thousand - years ago were composed of millions of self-reproducing cells before cells had been theorized or discovered, everybody today is much more than the expression of their personality. Your connection to all of Being is there for you to discover and cultivate, no matter what you believe at the level of the intellect, and no matter what you have done (and whom you have hurt) through the actions of your body.
Like the character in the Kansas song I quoted from above, I have risen above the noise and confusion to get a glimpse beyond this illusion. Although I would phrase it differently. It makes more sense to me to say that I have dropped below the noise and confusion, moved further inward along the bicycle spoke of my being to the hub from which all emanates. And doing so, I looked across and saw everyone else there as well. I saw each and every one of us capable of and willing to join me in creating a New Earth experience of love, harmony and justice. A world absent all cruelty, sadism and depravity.
Thus, at times I have strongly felt that we will create such a world; that it is our collective destiny to do so. At others, I have felt that perhaps we will not and cannot attain such a collective alignment on this plane of personalities, and must experience it elsewhere, where our vision is clearer.
Unlike transhumanist proponents, I make no promises about how much better things are going to eventually be, and how much more we will be than we are now. My hope, of course, is that many more people will harken to the voice of wisdom within them, standing always at the ready to reveal its truths to them as it has done for me. Perhaps the series of crises we seem bent on racing toward societally - environmental, technological, political and so forth - will act as catalysts to bump large portions of humanity into a sense of urgency that NOW is the time to get it, claim it and use it for oneself and others. If not, then the human experience is likely to fail. Transhumanism is fantasy, a technological pseudo philosophy with Victor Frankenstein as its symbolic leader that has no power to save us.
It is important to remember that the Elon Musks and Bill Gates' of this world have no greater power than you in truth. The 'power' they have to influence society with money and technology is shallow. It seems much greater than it is. If you, like me, wish to experience a different world than the one they are offering, then you have just as much power, and just as much right, as they do to put your stamp upon the future. If you go deep into meditation and see a vision of humanity coming together at the transpersonal level to collectively create a kinder world, hold that vision. Hold it with the same intensity as you imagine billionaire tech bros are holding THEIR visions. The power is in the vision, not the moolah and the gadgets.
Finally, if society does fail, that will be tragic at the level of the human personality. If we end up following transhumanists over a cliff, I will lament. Transpersonally, however, we will all be okay. Remember that in troubling times.

Transpersonal NOT Transhumanist

Transpersonal, NOT Transhumanist!

Our bodies age and die, like the bodies of every other biological organism. Within each body, countless iterations of the aging/dying process unfold at a cellular level, moment by moment. Heck, even our species will eventually become extinct as have so many species before us. There is nothing special here; it is the way of living things.
There have always been humans who have wished to defy this. Pharaohs and tyrants, practitioners of black magic. Probably going far further back into history than agriculture, awareness of our mortality has stood as more challenge than inevitability to some, who have felt that their mere irritation with the way things are must somehow mean that things don't have to be that way. Because they are 'special'.
In terms of the hubris, the indignation and the feeling that 'I'm different', today's transhumanists have much in common with Ramses II. What they have that he didn't is.... a way. Actually any number of ways by which they may transcend the built-in limitations of cellular life. They all involve extraordinary advances in technology that promise to render death, as we know it, obsolete.
Things such as precision nanobots running through the human bloodstream, zapping pathogens, perhaps even rejuvenating cells. Or simply abandoning the organism altogether, and placing one's consciousness in a 'superior' apparatus capable of living thousands of years or longer, and then being replaced with a fresh unit. Or one's consciousness living without any particular form at all, in an upgrade of 'the cloud', experiencing whatever it wants to experience at any given moment. This is what it means to be 'transhuman' to the geeks, AI true believers, 'Singularitans' and others who embrace this soon to materialize future.
They can have it.
Except they actually can’t. There is virtually no possibility of these fanciful scenarios actually coming to bear, because they are so aggressively positioned against the nature of reality. They are like ivory towers floating somewhere near the Van Allen Belt.

2500 years or so ago, as Athenian scholars were laying the intellectual groundwork for the transhumanist vision of technology liberating humanity (or certain sections thereof) from the limitations of the flesh, in far off India scholars of another kind were pursuing a different path.
These scholars were concerned with the inner worlds that become accessible through meditation, and were sharing their discoveries and techniques with followers who were willing to undergo the rigorous training involved.
Their discoveries are not known and honored like those of the descendants of Aristotlean logic in our modern - technology addicted society - but that is a tragedy. Because at a time when the folly of 'transhumanism' is gaining steam, what would truly benefit humanity and possibly secure our future and our progeny's as well is the transpersonal path. It is by becoming transpersonal - NOT transhumanist - and recognizing our shared Oneness, that we will discard the greed, cruelty and depravity that hold us back and cause unfathomable suffering.
Becoming transpersonal, rather than transhumanist, offers benefits for individuals as well as society, now and into the future.
Let's briefly define both terms, and see what - if any - overlap there is between them.
'Transhumanism' is a belief that humans have the ability - if we choose to use it (and 'we' refers to the scientists/engineers/inventors who will do the heavy lifting for us) - to transcend our biological limitations and upgrade ourselves through technology to become a sort of 'homo technicus', possibly not even needing oxygen to survive.
'Transpersonal' means looking beyond one's individual expression to recognize a shared oneness, not only with other human beings, but with all living things and even with the source of all that exists.
In both cases, there are variations on the central theme. A transhumanist may believe it is mankind's destiny to fill all dead matter in the universe with human created superconsciousness. Or they may merely believe that humans will soon be able to connect directly with AI in ways that confer greatly expanded intelligence and a greatly extended lifespan on them.
Transpersonal adherents may believe that humanity's ultimate destiny is to merge with Source, thereby forever ending all discord and disharmony within the human expression, living as fully realized children of God thereafter. Or they may simply believe that we owe it to one another and ourselves to view all life as connected and sacred, and try to live with that in mind in our daily activities and encounters.
Is there overlap? At the more extreme ends of both, there is. A transpersonal thinker believes that we ultimately will come to experience ourselves as one with all things, including the source of all things. Just as spokes on a bicycle tire diverge from each other but trace back to the same central point, in this view humans remain connected to our central point and ultimately will make our way back to it, where we are connected with everything and everyone that has ever diverged from it.
Transhumanist thinkers have a variation on the 'all are One' viewpoint in thinking that a technological point of convergence may emerge, where my consciousness will be able to connect to and blend with all other consciousness (a superintelligent variation of 'the cloud') in a way that makes every experience (every delight, every adventure, every dream scenario) available to all. Heaven, by this way of thinking, doesn't exist yet but theoretically can exist when we figure out how to invent it.
You could say that these more extreme versions of transhumanism have their roots in transpersonal philosophy. Transhumanists yearn for the higher experiences that sages throughout time have talked about, but feel that the universe comes up short in actually delivering on such promises, leaving it up to human ingenuity and inventiveness to achieve what humanity has desired from long, long ago.
Transpersonal, in this view, has been all talk. It is up to transhumanism to start putting some meat on the bone.
Let's get this part out of the way: the transhumanist vision is at best partly, and at worst entirely delusional. Why the distinction? Well, first it is helpful to recall that transhumanism precedes AI. There have been dreamers and visionaries who have predicted and called for a technological utopia to lift humankind beyond all physical and mental restrictions since the early days of the Industrial Revolution if not before. Though I consider this folly, to a certain degree I consider it a laudable goal to have in mind. Not my personal cup of tea; however it doesn't bother me that some would see technology as mankind's salvation any more than than if someone sees Art, or Music, or Philosophy as holding the promise of raising us up to stand alongside gods. So, maybe this isn't a delusion and maybe it is. I wish all dreamers and idealists well.
The delusion comes about in thinking that AI is the technology that punches our ticket to the promised land. First of all, why should it be? Is there anything in its emergence that suggests such a lofty role for it? There is certainly not.
AI depends on two things in order to exist at all and in order to grow; the internet and Big Data. And what are the auspicious Origin Stories of these two ingredients?
The internet began as ARPANET, a linking of a few US university computer systems which was set up to help America win the Cold War. It might also have been set up to create more billionaires and help them eventually become trillionaires, but that was hardly a selling point so one can only speculate. The point is that this network was devised to facilitate strategic superiority for one Cold War adversary over another. If both have H bombs, let's try something else, in other words.
As for Big Data, its origins are, if anything, even less illustrious. The history of digital data collection begins as an extension of market research. McDonald's, Burger King, Proctor & Gamble, Unilever and others wanted to learn as much as possible about you, the consumer, so they could figure out how to win in the marketplace. That's pretty much it. If data helped them sell more toothpaste tubes, then data was Da Bomb!
There you have it, the Zeus and Hera of AI are Cold War strategizing and Mad Men shlepping. Does THIS sound like the technology that will create Peace on Earth and turn us all into Einsteins?
There may of course be other ways to achieve artificial intelligence, and these may spring from higher ambitions than the current model did. But that's not where we are right now. Right now it is this version of AI that the transhumanists are putting their hopes and dreams into.
It is also important to point out when comparing transpersonalism with transhumanism that there has never been a transhuman. Nobody can argue that they are transhuman (although assuredly Ray Kurzweill wishes he could claim such), but merely that they are transhumanist. In other words, they are looking toward an expected future event, which is dependent on technology catching up with the fanciful predictions made about it. Meaning that transhumanism is something that IS thinking and talking about something that is NOT.
Such is not the case concerning transpersonalism. This is ironic, because undoubtedly there are those in the transhumanist camp who assert that all transpersonal accounts are merely made up shit, utterly subjective and mostly or completely delusional.
But...they are wrong about that, and anyone who has actually HAD transpersonal experiences - and there are many of us and there have long been many of us - knows this to be true.

The Transpersonal Experience and the Role of Meditation


For the majority of those of us in the transpersonal camp, meditation is the path that has taken us out of the exclusively personal and onward and outward (and inward, of course) toward the transpersonal.
Meditation has long been taught in numerous esoteric traditions, and though different traditions teach different things, and various meditators have various experiences related to meditation, the one thing that all traditions have in common is the teaching that meditation is a pathway to the transpersonal, in other words to the realization that 'All are One and All is Source'.
This is THE prime esoteric realization, and it is available to all who are willing to follow the path to it. It isn't waiting for a small coterie of techno whizzes to make it happen, and doesn't hover in the near or distant future. It is here, now, and has always been here and now. There is, in fact, no other place for it to be. Transpersonal is Reality, plain and simple. Yours as much as mine, skeptics' as much as adherents’.

What exactly do I mean by 'transpersonal experience'?
Succinctly, it is both realization and attainment. Since that is unlikely to mean much to people who have not experienced it, let me attempt to explain.
Let's recall the analogy I offered previously, of spokes on a bicycle tire. Each spoke is at its greatest distance from every other spoke at the outer end, where the spoke hits the rubber one might say. We could think of your personality, my personality and everyone else's operating here, at this outer circumference.
At the opposite end is the hub, the point from which all spokes radiate outward. We can liken this to what a yogi might refer to as 'Source', or 'The One' or 'Brahman'.
Everything that is radiates out from this central hub, and NOTHING exists that does NOT radiate out from it.
Now, at any point if you were to trace inwards from the far end of the spoke toward the center, you would not only be moving toward the center on that spoke alone. You would also be shortening the distance between that spoke and all other spokes. In other words, if it was three centimeters distant from the nearest spoke at the outer end, at some point as you trace inward that spoke would be two centimeters distant, then one, then half a centimeter and so on.
This is what the transpersonal experience is like. It is not only one's realization of one's own transpersonal nature, but of the transpersonal nature of all others as well. The closer you get to the center, the closer you realize all others are to the center as well.
On the plane of personalities, no other 'spoke' needs to recognize its transpersonal nature for you to recognize it about them. Thus 'trans'personal. One cannot merely transcend the personal regarding oneself, but must inevitably do so for others as well. From your own vantage point - closer to the Source - you see all others there as well. You, instinctively, remember for them what they are not presently recognizing about themselves.
The ultimate example of this is the story of the cross, from Christian lore, where it is told that Jesus said, 'forgive them, for they know not what they do'. In such a situation, it would be only natural for Jesus to have seen his torturers and executioners from his own vantage point, closer to Source and beyond the cruelty and sadism they were exhibiting at the level of personality.
Now we can understand the meaning of the words 'realization' and 'attainment'. Not only does Jesus in this story realize his transpersonal nature, he is able to see it in people who are doing the worst possible things to him. He has attained a higher expression of what it means to be a human being.
Now, my using this example is not to say that it is anything more than a story. But AS a story, it gives an excellent example of what transpersonal realization is like. It is an extreme example of how the transpersonal can play out in one's life. There are numerous examples of people forgiving people who have killed their loved ones, visiting them in prison, etc. These are yet more examples of transpersonal realization/attainment. Whether they realize it or not, or use the same terms as I do, such acts are, inherently, transpersonal.
Why is meditation so important? What doors does it unlock?
It comes right down to terminology, with 'trans' meaning beyond, and 'personal' meaning your ongoing picture of yourself, as a personality having day to day experiences. Meditation is the best tool humans have ever designed (a technology of the mind) to move out of that and go someplace else.
The personality is inherently self involved and self interested. It lives its life churning out a stream of sentences, most of which begin with 'I'.
I am done working for today.
I am ready for a beer.
I wish people saw my value at work.
I might start looking for a new job.
I think I nailed that explanation.
And so on, and so on, and so on, and so on, till the last syllable of recorded you.
How can one hope to become transpersonal - in other words, move beyond the personality - in such a state of self obsession?
Meditation, by quieting the mind, by disengaging it from the continual flow of 'I' sentences, releases us from that trap.
It is a practice; it takes time. It takes effort. It takes attention most of all. And many people simply aren't willing to give it the time/effort/attention it needs. Furthermore, as every meditator knows all too well, the 'I' sentences don't exactly like giving up their position on the throne of the mind.
As petty and mundane and often vain (as well as self abnegating) as those 'I' sentences are, the personality is quite content to churn them out from morning till bedtime. It seems to think there is nothing better to do with human consciousness. What about art, invention, creativity, etc.? Certainly the personality acknowledges that they are of higher value than the 'I' sentences. But every creation of art and every invention begins with 'I'.
I have an idea.
I think this is an interesting idea.
I might become famous because this idea is so fresh and unusual.
yada yada yada.
Not bad, of course. Just nothing transpersonal to be found there, at least most of the time.
Beethoven may have created elevating music, but the work involved in doing so was personal, not transpersonal.
Meditation, when done properly, is the most surefire way to move out of those 'I' sentences. To see what else is going on in one's consciousness. And what one finds is quite astonishing.
It is true that meditation is a great technique to quiet the mind, and for that reason alone is worth doing as it brings both mental and physical health benefits. But if you are only meditating to quiet the mind, that's like purchasing a newly discovered Rose Period Picasso to have something pretty to hang in your living room.
The greatest value of meditation is the access it provides to the transpersonal. Quieting the mind is the gateway. Without all the 'I' sentences cramming our minds like a rush hour train car, other aspects of our consciousness can emerge. And as they do, we can cultivate the practice of engaging with them. Significantly, we can develop the practice of well considered inquiry. We can turn to these deeper aspects of ourselves with questions we have long held, perhaps never even fully expressed before.
This engagement is key, as it shows us that we are smarter/wiser than we imagined ourselves to be, as the answers to these questions begin to materialize. A dialog of sorts begins to emerge; a dialog with a trusted elder and close confidante. It seems like someone else, but it is US! And that is because we are much more than our personality, and we are not trapped at the level of personality, with its insecurities and its vanities.We even grow to love these insecurities and vanities. They are so much easier to love when we understand that they are nothing more than one aspect of who we actually are.
Now meditation has gone beyond merely quieting the mind. It has introduced us to the transpersonal realm, a realm we share with all others. I am not merely my personality, and neither are you. I see you, and the world, differently.
And what seemed bleak and hopeless now seems merely unripe. We know we can do better because we have acquainted ourselves with the parts of ourselves and others that are capable of doing better.
Whereas transhumanism fixates upon the idea of dropping the flawed biological organism in order to achieve utopia/immortality (not through collective effort but dependent on the most technologically gifted among us) by replacing it with something better, transpersonal understanding looks upon our flawed humanity with great love and appreciation. Tenderly, as one looks upon a child. Not contemptuously, as a child looks upon a toy that no longer interests it.
So, which course will humanity choose: transpersonal, transhumanist, or neither? Objectively, the wise betting would be on the latter, as both transhumanism and transpersonalism are currently fringe pursuits of a small minority, hardly mainstream. It seems like the mass of humanity will probably just keep plodding along as it always has.
However, in terms of trashumanism, the worrisome aspect is just how much power, money and influence those on the fringe have. There are elements of transhumanism to be found in the statements of Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Bill Gates and Peter Thiel, among others. These are men who essentially worship technology and are willing to devote vast resources to pushing it forward so that it comes to dominate human society in ways that it previously hasn't. Their guru of sorts is Ray Kurzweill, the self promoting tech savant who has been preaching about The Singularity for years now, still boldly proclaiming a true 'deus ex machina' arriving like the Messiah by 2045 if not earlier.

Superintelligence is Stupid!

As with so many things, the devil lies in the details. In principle, the idea of 'superintelligence' seems pretty straightforward and even reasonable. Computing has advanced rapidly, particularly since the era of PCs which began in the 1980s. Computers are able to plot trajectories at far greater speeds than humans. Thus, plotting every possible chess move, and countermove, and subsequent countermove, and so on all the way to multiple ways to achieve checkmate is in their superiority wheelhouse and that will never change. Never mind that it was humans who created the game of chess, it is still pretty impressive in that one respect, analyzing data, plotting trajectories, and so on.
Computers are able to assemble data and configure it, again, much more rapidly than any human can, which is why AI can whip up an 'artwork' or a musical composition in the time it takes a human being to dip a brush into paint. The AI has no passion for wanting to create beautiful art; it just assembles components of art, whether visual or musical, extremely rapidly, within set parameters so that a dog looks like a dog and not a turtle.
All of this is indeed impressive. It has nothing whatsoever to do with 'superintelligence', which is the anticipated moment when computers will be able to do EVERYTHING that humans do better than we can. This would presumably include them being able to create robots which can go beyond us physically in every possible way in addition to mentally/cognitively. Run a hundred times faster than Bolt, smell better than a dog, see better than an eagle, and so on and so on.
In the age of 'superintelligence', we are told, humans will have made themselves utterly redundant. Our invention will have so thoroughly surpassed us in every imaginable way ~ INCLUDING in the ability to evolve rapidly such that this year's AI will be a thousand times superior to last year's AI ~ that we can only hope they will look kindly upon us as their inventor and be nice to us.
Look at it in detail, however, and you can see that it's all bullshit! Let's do that.
Here's a nifty little 'proof' that 'superintelligence' is a myth. It may sound ridiculous, but then so is the premise that it challenges.
The fact that YOU - right where you are, sitting somewhere in the middle of your life - have problems, is proof that 'superintelligence' is a myth.
Why? Because the premise of superintelligence is that it will evolve to the point of being able to solve any problem that humans might face. No more environmental catastrophe, no more wars, no more food crises, and so on.
Now, one might argue, that's all in the future, so how could that have anything to do with my current problems?
Good question, but let's remember the premise of superintelligence: it will surpass human intelligence and capabilities in all manners and all respects, and will continue to improve itself beyond that such that eventually nothing possible in the universe will be beyond its capabilities.
So, if a.) superintelligence is achieved at some point in the near future and b.) time travel is possible, then why hasn't this future superintelligence jumped back to 2025 to announce itself? Why hasn't it solved all of OUR problems like it is presumably solving the problems of everybody in the future?
Surely a little thing like time travel is not beyond its godlike capabilities, right?
And yet, that clearly seems to be the case. If it doesn't exist NOW, then either time travel is impossible (that may well be so) or 'superintelligence' is a myth, because a superintelligent entity, at SOME point in its expanding capabilities, should be able to master time travel. Meaning it should be able to travel back to this very moment, and hopefully use its intelligence to solve our many problems, even if only for the self interested purpose of making sure the human race survives long enough to invent it.

The Kirk Delusion

If time traveling AI isn't ridiculous enough, let's now turn to the Mother of All 'superintelligent' myths: that AI will eventually advance outward to seed the entire universe with consciousness!
Indeed, some futurist/transhumanists see this as the ultimate destiny of AI.
The premise is simple, and based upon their very materialistic conception of the universe; i.e. that it is mostly dead matter, unaware it even exists, whether a planet, a star, or all the matter in between galaxies, stars and planets. Just lifeless 'stuff'.
Do I think that? No, but materialists do. So, to them, what better use for all that incalculable amount of matter than to act as raw material that AI can use to fuel itself as it recreates and 'upgrades' the universe according to its godlike whims?
This is what I call 'The Kirk Delusion'. In the old Star Trek series there were several episodes where Captain Kirk stepped in and did things that nobody else in the galaxy had ever attempted, even sometimes saving the galaxy as a result.
He stopped a war run by computers that had gone on for centuries. He defeated Nomad and The Doomsday Machine, thereby sparing untold numbers of lives throughout the galaxy.
And on and on. If not for this one Earthling, beings across the vast expanse of the galaxy would have perished.
Obviously, it is absurd to imagine that this tiny planet on the outer edge of the galaxy has so much importance. It is arrogant to assume that OUR invention, AI, can have so much impact beyond this minuscule rock.
And yet, that's what some of these dudes believe; that it is somehow mankind's destiny to give meaning, through our invention, to an otherwise meaningless universe.
What are these guys smoking, seriously? The delusions that go along with AI are off the charts.

More Than the Dog

There is an old joke that goes 'what do you need to know to teach a dog tricks?'
And the answer is 'more than the dog'.
Perhaps that is the best we can come up with, that 'superintelligence' simply means being smarter in every way than human beings, whether or not human beings can be considered all that intelligent in the first place.
If human intellect, and ONLY human intellect, is the rather low bar of 'superintelligence', then we can leave out all the nonsense about time travel and taking over the universe and all that blah blah.
Putting aside for the moment that there really isn't anything 'super' about such intelligence, we can at least consider the possibility of it being achievable. Will AI eventually outperform human intelligence in every imaginable way, including such things as creativity, imaginativeness, insight, philosophy, etc., in addition to computation, analysis, and data processing?
I'm going with a hard no, though obviously others disagree.
We might begin by examining how AI came about in the first place. Recall that I wrote that AI began to take off after PCs became widespread.
And why is that? Because the Internet is the main engine driving AI development. Yeah yeah; machine learning, neural networks, large language models blah blah blah.
The fact is that it is OUR data, which we exchange billions of times a day over numerous platforms, that is feeding AI in its growth. Just as a baby's brain only grows with proper stimuli. The brain on its own can only do so much, and the brain replica that is AI is exactly the same. It needs data to grow, and data is provided by human beings.
If PCs had never existed and IBM just kept cranking out more and more powerful supercomputers, you wouldn't get AI, at least not as it is currently configured. What is necessary is all those billions of computers and smartphones talking to each other to generate the stimuli necessary to create 'artificial' intelligence.
You have to make a huge leap in assumption to imagine that AI will eventually transcend that limitation and start growing on its own.

The Superintelligence Under Your Nose

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the 'superintelligence' mythology is that it takes as its premise that human intelligence, or specifically human cognitive intelligence, is the high water mark against which AI's intelligence is to be measured. Presumably, since we have not yet been visited by extraterrestrial inhabitants of a superior race, the brains of our Einsteins and Curies are the highest level of intelligence the universe has yet come up with. And that is the intelligence that people like Kurzweill and Bostrom use as a barometer when positing AI overtaking it.
But that is clearly NOT the case, and this is easily demonstrated.
Ask yourself, how willing would you be to surrender your digestive system; stomach, intenstines, etc., and hand a Ceasar's salad to a computer program to process into fuel for you?
Obviously, not at all. At what point in the future do you imagine AI being able to do the job better than your digestive system, such that your internal organs doing the job now are made redundant?
Probably never. So long as your life, moment to moment, depends on the various systems operating in your body; digestive/circulatory/nervous/immune, etc., you are not going to be willing to hand over ANY of that to AI, even though you ARE willing to hand over numerous cognitive tasks which are clearly less essential to your survival.
Thus, the intelligence that runs your body is FAR more intelligent than your noggin cooking up ideas. I am writing this, and I imagine I am being pretty clever while doing so. But I am humbled to the point of shame when I run that up against all the things happening in my organism - keeping me alive - that my mind doesn't have a clue about. Cellular reproduction, cellular growth, homeostasis, digestion, and so on.
Just because we don't label that 'intelligence' (we certainly should) doesn't make in unintelligent. And AI isn't even in the same borough as that, or even state.
So, transhumanists are imagining a 'superintelligent' computing system taking over the entire universe while not even training it to behave like the MOST intelligent thing we are aware of - intimately, I should add. And the main reason for that is because they don't have a clue where to begin such training models. The second reason is that their worldview is skewed. They are obsessed with human cognitive intelligence because they are so impressed with their own. This is Victor Frankenstein level hubris, and reminds us why Mary Shelley's book is STILL the most important metaphor for our age.

Farewell to the Goodest of All

When someone like Jane Goodall passes away, it is an opportunity for the rest of us. A voice, a library of thoughts and innumerable decisions stemming from those thoughts have departed this plane. But that voice, those thoughts and those decisions live on, and we can give them a home. Let her words, thoughts and deeds become your inheritance.
At a time when clowns, buffoons and thugs run things and technology swallows the biological world with unspeakable gluttony, spend your inheritance from Jane wisely.

The Future Of Communication

A couple of events transpired recently that have me questioning if communication as we know it (or at least as we old timers have come to know it) is in crisis.
The first took place at Kinkos, where I needed to get some material printed. In general, I have never found Kinkos to be the most helpful or customer friendly place. The staff seem to always be busy with other things, often treating paying customers as if they were an annoyance. But this was different. The young lady who took my order certainly wasn't rude. She just....wasn't there. She is a 'digital native' who probably does 90% of her communicating or more via a device. She had an intuitive sense of what I required, but almost zero ability to convey that to me. She would give very brief instructions. She told me to place the number 8 in a box that I could have written an obituary in. So, I wanted to make sure; perhaps there was a smaller little box to place the number in that I wasn't seeing... 'You mean here?' I asked. A tiny 'uh' was all I got. No explanation for what the 8 was necessary for.
Then she wandered off. I had no idea why. I stood there confused. She returned, did a couple things, and told me to have a seat. I assumed she was going to make an order form. She was gone a LONG time. Had she forgotten? Was she taking a break? I went to the desk and nobody seemed to know where she was, or even very interested in finding out. So I sat down again. Finally, she returned, NOT with an order form, but with the materials I had requested! She didn't say she was going to make them, just told me to have a seat. She brought them to me, I was surprised, and she was gone. I took my purchase to the front desk to pay, and never saw her again.
It was as if an efficient robot had served me, not a human. However, to her, young and digitally acclimatized, there was probably nothing unusual. She didn't even acknowledge my expressions of confusion and later surprise. Nothing. She had a series of tasks which she understood, and she did them. Keeping me in the loop didn't even occur to her.
From my perspective, this was not good customer service, but from another perspective, perhaps a more modern one, it was as good as it needed to be, no niceties and no extra words. Welcome to a brave new world.
The second episode happened the following day. In the midst of a disagreement, in an attempt to make a point, somebody informed me that if they judged me from FB only, they would consider me to be a 'consistent and insufferable asshole', while magnanimously informing me that in real life I'm a good person.
I was stunned and hurt by this remark, and also confused as to why this person felt the need to go for the jugular in that way.
This person and I hold political views that are in most cases divergent. We are also both confident and brash in how we communicate our opinions. We haven't held back from each other, and in my assessment there had also been a give and take of ribbing, trusting that the other could take it.
Clearly, I was wrong about this. A comment like that indicates that the person had this opinion of me for a while and resented our previous jousts, and what they had not communicated up till that post was brewing in them, unspoken.
This brings up several things for me. The first was that this person has a very limited view of my FB persona. On my wall, I post artwork, I write copiously about my philosophy and spirituality, I make jokes, and am active in other ways as well. I also post strongly opinionated (but to my mind informed) comments about matters concerning which he and I are in disagreement. Does that, in sum total, make me a consistent asshole?
This person rarely comments upon anything else I post. 95% of the time, he has popped up on my thread solely to take issue with something I wrote about a social or political issue. Basically to point out where I am 'wrong'. Does he not see anything else I post, not care about it, think it is less representative of my online/FB persona than the comments that make me an ‘asshole’?
Clearly, things between us have been poorly communicated, miscommunicated, or un-communicated up until now. And that has been a kind of wake up call, similarly to my interaction with the Kinkos staff.
The thing that struck me about this episode was that people have different ideas about what online personae are, how valuable they are to us, how much they truly represent us, etc. Some people don't even consider whether the persona they present through social media is different from the 'real' them, while others make clear distinctions and thus think it is less rude to attack the persona (i.e. refer to it as an 'asshole') than the person.
What this person didn't know about me is that I am both very aware that my online voice is a persona that I have cultivated and also that I really LIKE it. So to me, it would be like someone went to an art exhibition I was holding and said, 'Andy, this work is all just junk, but I do think of you as a good person'. Essentially, that is how I received the remark.
My online persona arose out of comments made and received back in the days when the Huffington Post was actually an interesting and even important forum for people outside traditional media to exchange views on topics of great interest, ranging from politics to science to entertainment. It was a free for all, but it was also a place where people tended to understand the unspoken rules. If things got a little rough and tumble, people were expected to accept this within limits. Comments that had a certain amount of bite to them tended to get more attention and responses, and these were ways that people gained clout on the site. 
Most of my life, the 'real me' was non-confrontational, mostly keeping my opinions to myself (if I even took the time to form them) and often finding myself just nodding along with what a more loquacious person was saying to me, whether I agreed or not. Thus, I was quite surprised with myself when this new 'me' came into being on social media. Suddenly, I was being bold, being witty, risking offense. I was willing to defend my own views and challenge those of others. I loved the responses I got and the quasi-friendships with kindred spirits I formed through this persona, which I named 'whatsthatsound' after the Buffalo Springfield song, to show that I was left leaning and a bit of a rebel.
My online persona, although it is not to everyone's tastes, is as dear to ME as are my art pieces, the songs that I write and all other manner in which I express myself through some specific medium or endeavor. Insulting it, referring to it as an ‘insufferable asshole’ crossed a bridge and burned it to the ground as far as I am concerned.

These two seemingly unrelated incidents converge upon the point of illustrating just how much communication has changed in the three decades in which the internet and chat technology have emerged. We are playing with a lot of new tools now, and making up the rules as we go along.
We are also, clearly, devaluing earlier ground rules that have existed for centuries. Perhaps the reason the clerk at Kinkos was so unmoved by my nonverbal cues of confusion and surprise was that she was less able to pick up and accurately interpret such cues than someone born half a century ago.
As for the person who insulted me, it seems he just assumed that I view online personae the same way he does, as lesser aspects of one’s being that can be trashed, so long as one takes pains to explain that the 'real' person makes the cut.
My discomfort in the first episode and hurt in the second largely come down to my having different expectations than those I was communicating with, which were not adequately fulfilled. We weren't playing the same game, in other words, though to all appearances we were.
Such miscues are extremely prevalent now, and will surely increase as technological developments keep adding (and by extension subtracting) ways to connect Person A with Person B (or thousands, or millions, of Person Bs).
This may all work out for the best, and then again it may not. Human beings are very adaptable and resilient, yes. But there are limits. Communication is the core of civilization, its sin qua non. Without communication, nothing humans value would have ever been achieved. No pyramids, no Sistine Chapel, no White Album. Technology is rapidly churning out new types of communication modes one after another, but the whole edifice could come crashing down like The Tower of Babel if we don't ensure that the ground floor remains firm.

The Omega Option

Imagine that, all along, there has been a clause in your 'contract' with the universe ~ something that you, and every other human, can exercise if you so choose; an 'Omega Option', if you will.
This clause enables you to opt out of your human journey being a purely personal ‘education course’ for your soul’s evolution, and use it for something much greater.
Perhaps you believe, as so many do, that the purpose of the journey that your life has been thus far has been to nurture and evolve your own identity, to help you grow spiritually, grow in wisdom, strength and integrity. You may feel that this is true throughout the human collective: each one on his or her own journey to greater awareness and understanding.
But, somewhere along the way, perhaps you got the distinct sense that this might actually be a 'lesser' option, when all is said and done. It doesn't seem to be working out, somehow. The younglings in Gaza being starved and amputated without anesthesia are certainly hard to see as spiritual beings guiding their own evolutionary path. What 'lessons' can such a one learn through abject misery, caused by others? In the rare case of surviving all that, how could that human 'nurture' anything other than hatred and desire for revenge? It is a recipe for endless cycles of bloodletting, NOT gradual awakening.
Back to the 'Omega Option'. What if you, and anyone else who chooses, could take all that you have learned thus far on your personal journey and use it for a higher purpose? Wouldn't that purpose be to elevate collective humanity to a higher plane of awareness and existence such that what is happening in Gaza could never happen again, and the people choosing to commit the unspeakable crimes there could become incapable of even thinking of behaving in such a way ever again? Wouldn't that naturally be your choice? How could you choose to remain 'little old me' with maybe a dream or two of writing a novel or making a documentary while the tsunami of misery grows and grows and threatens to turn this very planet into Hell itself (which is where we are heading now, clearly)?
IF you had that option, to subsume all that wisdom and experience and strength that you have gained from being you into a grander - transpersonal - purpose, and sacrifice personal goals so that your journey's fruits (up until now) can be redirected toward saving humanity from its worst aspects, WOULDN'T you?
If the Omega Option exists, for you and every moment, is there a better time than now to exercise it? And is there a reason NOT to?

When I write "to subsume all that wisdom and experience and strength that you have gained from being you into a grander - transpersonal - purpose", I am not talking about abandoning any personal missions or relinquishing individualized identification. There may be some spiritual traditions that call for this, but this is not and could never be my approach.
I am saying, rather, that we can actually FULFILL our identity as an individual by bringing it, warts and all, along with us to our higher mission of awakening humanity and ending suffering. Everything that we have learned up to this point from both losses and triumphs can be put to good use.
The crucial point is that we go beyond 'personal' and enter into transpersonal. This is not 'transhumanism', as that is a distorted and delusional concept of using technology to move humanity forward. Transpersonal refers to recognizing oneself as more than just an individual, and rather an aspect of Collective Humankind. As from toe to foot to leg to body, we can extend body further to shared body, One human being made up of billions of individuals.
And that One human being is clearly struggling. There is no evidence that if all of us merely continue on our own journeys, spiritual or otherwise, that any evolutionary progress will be made. We cannot imagine that what is happening to the victims of Gaza, or going on in the minds of the victimizers, is all part of some grand divine plan that ultimately leads each one to enlightenment. How long must these cycles of violence continue? Thousands of years? Tens of thousands of years? How about never? As in, such cycles of violence and retribution can NEVER right themselves into a divine path. There must be an intevention.
Unless we come together as a collective force, we will not achieve a New Earth; there aren't enough billions of years in the universe otherwise, and anyway who has time for that when so much misery is unfolding every moment humanity fails to evolve?
So the greater mission, then, beyond any personal evolution, is awakening humanity to its divinity. NOW. We have gone around in circles, fooling ourselves that eventually we will pop out of that groove after a few more spins. Becoming 'enlightened' on a planet where for every enlightened person there are several hundred being tortured, thousands going hungry, and so on is about as useful as going to see a movie with a bag over your head.
IF a person here, a person there, becoming enlightened had any ameliorating impact, that would be one thing, but what evidence do we have for that? The New Age movement, Marianne Williamson, the 'Conversations With God' books and all that stuff has touched millions of lives, but what have they accomplished on a planetary scale? You don't have to think too hard about this. A genocide is unfolding before our very eyes, funded and propagandized for by the 'leaders of the free world'. Individual enlightenment-seeking, if it could do ANYTHING positive for the world, should have been able to do something about THIS, of all things.
But it hasn't, clearly. Because, ultimately, one person becoming enlightened is an oxymoron. The whole POINT of enlightenment is to connect oneself TRANSPERSONALLY to everyone and everything else. It is to see beyond the very illusion of exclusive identification as an individual. Once this happens, the appearance of individuality becomes an expression, no more and no less. In my own case, I no longer identify as Andy Boerger, but I use this personality I have honed and refined as my way of expressing. Since I have been an artist and writer for many years, this has actually not been difficult for me. 'Andy Boerger' is to me only somewhat different from a painting I create or an essay I write. My paintings and essays aren't 'me', but they EXPRESS me, just as my personality/body/mind does.
I no longer have any personal goals toward becoming enlightened. 'Andy Boerger' is as enlightened as he is ever going to get. Rather, I choose to abandon that project completely and subsume all of that into a greater cause, the Awakening of the Human Collective.
So, the Omega Option means choosing to subsume personal expression into the greater project of awakening the human collective and ending the current era of recklessness and rage.
Sounds easy, right?
First, let's consider what I am saying, which is that by exercising the Omega Option we align ourselves with the event of human awakening to the point of merging with it. This is the ultimate transpersonal action. And it may sound impossible from the start, because people can't become 'events', can they? We tend to think of events as having no agency, no real awareness, and having very little in common with human beings.
Let's consider a possible (though hardly hoped for) event, and let's make it a biggie: a massive eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera.
Now THAT'S an event! We tend to think of it in terms of what it would mean for biological beings that would be impacted by it. What would happen to the trees, the squirrels, the coyotes, the eagles, the humans, and so on. We don't imagine the event experiencing itself, we imagine it being experienced by millions, or billions, of life forms, each of them experiencing things more or less similarly to how we ourselves would. Panic, fear, pain, etc. The event happens without experiencing itself, and at some point it is over; history moves on.
That seems so different from the human experience, which we tend to picture as a narrative that unfolds over time. A personality is gradually acquired, it matures, it has numerous experiences including triumphs and defeats, it has a rich and intense inner life, etc. Thus, juxtaposing this with an event like a volcanic eruption, they seem to have nothing in common. And if we are convinced that our human experience IS us, then we probably neither desire to become an event or imagine it to be possible.
But that limits our effectiveness - our usefulness to humanity - because people tend to think only in terms of how they, as an individual, can contribute to a desired event. If that event is the election of a preferred candidate, they think in terms of the calls they can make, the donations they can make, the canvassing they can do, and finally that one vote among millions they can add. If the desired event is the awakening of the human collective, it is the same. People wonder how they, as one individual, can contribute to bringing it about. Typically, they will come up with answers such as 'be kind', 'meditate', 'read and share books with important messages', 'forgive those who have wronged me', 'follow my guru's guidance', and so on. Basically saying, 'I may just be one drop in a bucket, but I will try to be the best drop I can possibly be and hope that by doing so I can contribute somehow'.
Sadly, that holds out very little hope, and a glance at history reveals that it doesn't have much of a track record. We need to think bigger. And here's the thing: by thinking bigger we also learn a lot more about who and what we REALLY are.
The idea of 'becoming a (desired) event' is unusual, to be sure, so let's break it down. First, let's inject the perspective that the alternative is to imagine that we, as individuals, can merely CONTRIBUTE to a desired event or outcome through our deeds and words. Although certainly true, that places us in the position of being a mere drop in a bucket, which doesn't seem all that helpful when the fire is raging all around. And let's be clear: the fire IS raging all around. What is happening in Gaza, as well as this freakishly hot summer (and last year's, and almost certainly next year's) are clear indicators that we don't have a lot of time. Individual efforts are, sadly, not up to the task of bringing about massive change. The forces ~ basically Greed ~ that are resistant to our individual efforts are too entrenched, too equipped with the instrumentation and methodologies required to keep things from shifting in the face of grass roots movements and 'bold new candidates' etc.
We don't have enough time to bring about the required changes, and more importantly, there IS not enough time in the universe for that. Thus, we must BECOME the event, rather than merely contribute to it. You, me, everyone who feels the pull must extend beyond the illusion of individuality and embrace the idea of BEING the Great Awakening of the Human Collective.

Yet, we might think that a.) that's not possible, and b.) nor is it desirable, because events are just 'things'; they don't even know they are taking place. If those two concerns were adequately addressed, we might be convinced to exercise the Omega Option.
If someone presented you with the opportunity to trade places with The Big Bang, why wouldn't you? What could possibly be more attractive about being one tiny individual on one tiny planet for one tiny sliver of time than being the grand event that brought everything you are, PLUS everything else that is, into being? The answer is nothing, other than the idea that The Big Bang doesn't even know it happened, and you are aware of your life from moment to moment.
Put that aside, and it's a no brainer. You can trade little old you and your mere decades of life for the biggest thing that ever happened, which resulted in all things that exist existing, and is this very moment causing things to happen trillions of light years away that are beyond our ability to comprehend. Hell's Yes! Sign me up!
However, IF The Big Bang was completely unconscious, was merely a thing that happened without awareness, then we'd probably have to say, 'nah, I'll pass; I'm good as is'. We will take consciousness, even our own limited one, any day of the week.
But, how do we KNOW that events are unconscious? We don't; we simply imagine them to be because they seem so different from the only consciousness that we can comprehend ~ that belonging to biological life forms (and perhaps eventually the inventions of biological life forms such as AI).
If we can think outside that box, suddenly everything changes.
The question comes down to: who, and what, are you, really?
If you believe yourself to be a biological organism that experiences things purely through interactions of your brain and sensory apparatuses with the world around you, then the idea of changing over from 'me' to Event of Human Awakening is pretty much D.O.A., is it not?
With my writing, I continually emphasize the fact that you are so much more than that. You are an expression. Your biology is an expression. Your brain is an expression. Your five senses are expressions. Your thoughts and experiences are expressions, and so on.
Meanwhile, everything identifiable in your world, from news events to forest settings, from spouses and children to stellar nebulae, are also expressions. All of these are expressions of the One Elemental Consciousness that is doing the expressing. Everything and all of it, seeming to be unrelated but actually intimately connected by virtue of the fact that EVERYTHING derives from the same Source. And that Source is your TRUE 'identity', NOT the expression of individualized consciousness you appear to be.
With that knowledge, it becomes easier to bridge the seeming gap between human being and Event. Events are also expressions of Universal Consciousness. The Big Bang, The US Civil Rights Movement, the discovery of oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, the first manned aircraft flight, etc. ALSO expressions.
And, as you are not the expression itself, but the One doing the expressing, and events such as those mentioned above are similarly not the expressions themselves but rather the One doing the expressing, your ability - as well as your right - to modify your expression seems apparent, does it not? If, at your core, you ARE Source, then what sort of limitations are placed upon your channels of expression? And by whom? Furthermore, at this point in history, what better way of expressing could there be for a human being than to become the event of human awakening? An event that can largely end suffering, end greed, end recklessness, end conflict, etc.?
This is the moment to choose that, by subsuming all that you are expressing as now into a larger purpose. You are familiar with the expression 'Be the change you want to see in the world'. From an outside-the-box perspective, what does that mean? Perhaps it goes beyond advising you to make your own meaningful individual contributions to change. Taken verbatim, it means 'become an event', exactly what I am saying. The 'change' we want to see in the world IS the Event of Human Awakening, is it not?
That is the Omega Option. Choose to become the event. The only step left to learn is……how? First, by embracing the ideas I have offered here. You might not, and that’s fine. They are unconventional, to say the least. However, if what I have written seems true to you and more importantly beneficial to others, then that is where to start. After that, it is a matter of focus and intent. I focus on this all the time! Every day, and often throughout each day, I take time to concentrate on outgrowing my personal identity and subsuming it into the collective, for the purpose of awakening the collective to its true nature. I have not stopped living my life. I haven’t stopped creating art, writing, teaching or anything else. There is no need to retreat to a cave. There IS a need to continually apply focus and intent, and not allow this idea to fade into just another passing fancy or idle daydream. I will not allow that, because of the importance of this to me. And I welcome you finding it to be important as well. Let’s awaken humanity by BEING that awakening. This nightmare has gone on long enough.

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The View From the Left Hemisphere of the Universe

After the Big Bang came the Great Darkness. In indescribable darkness, matter raced away from itself in all directions, pushing space into being as it did so. Darkly, it spun and coalesced, exploded and merged, exploded again, grew heavier, impossibly; formed stars that lived billions of years, died, and in that dying gave rise to new stars, stars that spun off particles that, trapped in orbit, coalesced into planets. Galaxies, containing billions of stars, expanding, moving away from each other, pushing at the frontiers where What Is Not yielded to What Is. Unfathomably, Improbably. And all in total darkness.

Because no one was there to see it. A spectacle of unimaginable beauty, resplendent with colors beyond our own limitations of red at one end and violet at the other, played out over billions of years, and yet this spectacle was for not. As bland as a painting of a snowflake floating in a glass of milk, or an inkblot on a lump of coal. For, for only a brief period of the many billion year history of the universe has anything been seen, anywhere, and only as the result of a chance occurrence. On our planet, and perhaps others, matter formed itself into something that could sense light, and by gradual modifications these light sensing mechanisms became more sophisticated, up to and including our own wonderful eyes. And these modifications; did they occur so that the beauty of the universe could be beheld and appreciated? No. Every modification, from the simplest eyes to the most complex, merely helped an organism secure food. Or not become food. Or perhaps a combination of the two.

Think about that for a moment. Do a gut check. Does it seem credible? That except for on our planet, and perhaps other planets similar to ours, and only in a relatively brief period of this and similar planets' histories, has the grand spectacle of the universe been even partially visible to itself? And only through the vulgar mechanism of keeping one step ahead of a mouth or a grabbing appendage? That up until the time that these modifications came about, on perhaps this planet exclusively, even though it is made up of light and its very mechanisms are circumscribed by the speed of light, the universe was completely and utterly blind?

Such a scenario lacks poetry, to say the least. That a cosmos could be at once so dazzling and yet completely invisible to itself for such a long time, only to finally become visible through the merest chance on an inconsequential rock - somehow seems decidedly unsatisfying to my poetic nature. There, where my mind is free to wander and extend beyond what is rational and explained, the above scenario seems to me to have it all backwards. Eyes, my poetic mind persuades me, do not make sight possible. On the contrary, it is sight that makes eyes possible! Eyes did not develop because, for some odd reason, in a universe that up until then had been completely blind, there was suddenly some reproductive advantage to sensing light (imagine what an extraordinary moment that must have been, and yet so under-appreciated by its experiencer. Hey, now this is interesting. Munch munch).

Rather, eyes are a (but one, I dare say) manifestation of vision. It was not mindless food-seeking that brought them into being.Vision gave them birth, no less so than a painter's vision gives birth to a masterpiece, and an inventor's vision gives birth to a flying machine. Speaking of "flying machines", in the same vein I posit that birds did not develop wings because there were things to eat up there. Birds rose to fill the sky because the sky, because flight, summoned them.

Viewed through the lens of reason, such notions are risible and wholly passe. Where is the evidence to support such outlandish claims? Where do these bizarre notions of vision and flight come from? Obviously, they don't come from a scientific theory or an experiment, or from an objective, wholly rational observation of naturally occurring phenomena. Rather, they come from an area of human consciousness which science knee-jerkedly meets with cool skepticism, if not outright disgust: intuition, subjective feelings, and our mysterious human quality of looking for meaning in the cosmos.

Yet, how firm is the ground upon which science so confidently, even arrogantly, dismisses such rival attributes of human nature? For someone who is convinced that science is man's greatest achievement, and moreover is our greatest hope for improving our condition in the future, the very question probably sounds preposterous, perhaps even insane. Nevertheless, I will dare to ask: as reason and intuition are both essential aspects of a fully human mind, can one arrogate to itself an exclusive "rightness" from which to dismiss the properties the other might bring toward understanding the universe which we inhabit, and our relationship to it?

Science, as we have come to define it, has a very brief history. For all practical purposes, it begins in ancient Greece, notably with Socrates, and his method of questioning hypotheses. From there we move to Aristotle, who applied the Socratic Method, with his own modifications, to a variety of fields such as ethics, poetry, politics, etc., and most famously, science. The derivation of the word is perhaps related to cutting, or more accurately, separating. The Greeks, with Aristotle first among them, learned about their world by dissecting and examining it, reducing it to its parts, separating what could be determined to that point, and then investigating more fully into those "parts" which remained mysterious. Aristotle applied this method to zoology, anatomy, botany, and pretty much all aspects of the physical world. What he accomplished, with his stellar intellect and unquenchable curiosity, is mind boggling.

Aristotle's discoveries and theories went on to fuel scientific inquiry for centuries. His vast achievements functioned as a template for the Renaissance. The great Arab scientist Alhazen refined the scientific method into its current form roughly a thousand years ago. It came into its fullest expression through the Italian super-genius Galileo in the early seventeenth century. Completing the process, the great inventions, such as the telescope and the microscope, along with the higher mathematics of Newton, arrived on the scene in the century after Galileo's achievements, giving birth to the era that we live in now, the Scientific Age. That's pretty much the extent of it. The entire history of science (as we think of it), subtracting its fallow period in the Dark Ages, is less than two thousand years roughly one percent of the history of our species. The duration that it has been the dominant way of seeing the world is much shorter, perhaps no more than three hundred years.

Given such a short history, we can only conclude that science, according to science, was not selected for in the human species. One must keep in mind that according to our present understanding of how natural selection works, traits only pass the test of selectivity if they help the extant, hosting organism to survive. Ask any biological scientist, and he or she will hasten to assure you that evolution doesn't know what it is doing. It has no grand plan, no concept of a future, no notion of how newly acquired traits may spread among the entire species; no such scheme. Rather, it plays out one groping, clawing, devouring organism at a time.

Our large, multifaceted brains were selected for, most certainly. The knowledge we needed to explore caves, to use weapons, to hunt, to organize against stronger predators, was provided by those brains. The human resourcefulness and inventiveness that our brains made possible was selected for along the strict and narrow rules of natural selection. But science wasn't. Remember, for only the last three hundred years or so has there been any demonstrable survival advantage to having scientific knowledge, most obviously in terms of decreasing infant mortality, and extending the average human life span by several decades. For the vast preponderance of the history of the species homo sapiens, approximately 200,000 years, the scientific method provided mankind with no survivability value whatsoever, proved by the obvious fact that we survived without it. In purest evolutionary terms, it is nothing more than a "lucky accident", an ancillary feature of our large brains (which developed, remember, solely to help us secure food and avoid becoming food), that didn't even begin to reveal its usefulness until twenty millennia after our brains' development had made it possible! How utterly insignificant the very feature of human consciousness that devised the theory of evolution is, from the perspective of that very theory!

And yet the champions of science hold it up as a paragon against which all other features of human consciousness cannot even hope to compare. Did intuition and and hunches help our species survive before science? Assuredly so. Did poetic and spiritual insights provide strength and succor to our lowly and set-upon species, huddled together in small tribes against a world vastly more threatening than the one we inhabit today? Bet on it. Without them, would we even be here? That I very much doubt. That science, coming along so late in the game, should nevertheless hoist itself to such a lofty and judgmental position seems rather presumptuous to me.

Imagine a basketball team that plays well enough in the regular season to earn a playoff berth. The team advances, all the way to the last few minutes of the championship game. A talented rookie comes off the bench, and makes a few clutch shots. A star is born! But no, because this rookie then kicks everyone else on his team off the court. He's decided they've outlived their usefulness, and that he alone is the only hope the team has of winning the game. Every error his teammates have made throughout the season that he didn't play in proves to him their unworthiness to even be on the same court as him. Their mere presence weakens his chance of bringing home the trophy. Well, I think we can all imagine how that would turn out! And yet that is basically the arrogant stance that science's staunchest champions take. Any talk of hunches, intuition, to say nothing of spirituality and supernatural phenomena, is met with the same level of disdain our imaginary rookie shows to the very teammates whose efforts have made his appearance on the court possible. Religion? They are convinced that it has been nothing other than an unmitigated disaster for mankind.



I greatly admire science, and am grateful for such benefits as it has provided me. With my poor eyesight, for example, I could never have survived in eras before scientific research yielded eyeglasses. It is scientific triumphalism that I take issue with. What we have today is perhaps less true science than a raging tyranny of the left hemisphere of the brain over the right, and the consequences scream out at us. On the one hand, scientific experiments have improved medicine and lengthened our life spans, and technological advancement has improved the quality of human life. On the other hand, science has damaged the environment to the point where our very survival is threatened. Factory farmed, steroid injected animals harm our health. Acid rain weakens our forests (the very "lungs" of our planet). Oil spills and nuclear disasters point out the price we pay for our brave new technological world. Beyond all that lurks the mother of all environmental threats, catastrophic climate change. That we could have placed ourselves in such a dangerous predicament a mere three centuries into the Scientific Age should clue us that we should be going about things differently.

To me, the Great Lesson of our time is not that the ascension of science over the last few centuries is a harbinger of a new age of enlightenment, if we can just hold on and solve our current existential threats. It is that our survival depends upon striking a balance between the wonderful possibilities that science brings about and the poetic, intuitive, meaning-seeking portion of our consciousness centered in the other hemisphere of our magnificent brains. If that balance cannot be reached, I for one have very little hope that mankind will escape destroying itself. We will,rather, hasten our return to the Great Darkness, clinging to our belief in an unconscious universe that is completely blind to our existence, and never even returned the favor of seeing us.

What is the Higher Self?

We live in a time of great disconnect. Indeed, we are connected to the outside world as never before, but most people have little to no connection to the far more compelling story that is being told to 'I' by 'I' right now and always.
In a sense we are all reactionaries, or are rendered so by the material world, because the story we continually tell ourselves is one of reaction and response. From the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep, 'I' am engaged with something else: another person, a problem I need to solve, a task I must perform, and in lieu of any of that, some form of entertainment to engage me.
It's like our energy is on full blast all the time. Extending out from us and into our world.
We call this normal, and take it for granted.
Many who are religious know that this is not the best way to live, but because they have identified 'god' as something outside of themselves, they still find themselves engaging WITH, once again directing their attention outward to learn from and gain happiness from a deity greater than themselves.
This is a time of intensity, even insanity. The world appears to be breaking apart in so many ways. Spending all our time and energy reacting to and responding to an intense and insane world is certainly going to affect us profoundly, and subsequently it is no surprise that stress and discontent are so prevalent.
If we had another option beyond just taking a vacation, we might benefit greatly from it. If a large number of us exercise this same option then the world itself would benefit. The crazy would subside, even a little. The intensity would abate.
It is time to meet the Higher Self.

I'll just come right out and say it: the Higher Self is possibly the most neglected vital thing in the world today. Because the mass of humanity fails to connect to the Higher Self, it becomes easier for us all to engage in lower activities that debase and exhaust us, conflict being the most harmful (and also the most obvious).
So, why do people neglect their Higher Self? Well, because it is something that very few people spend any time thinking about, it is perhaps unsurprising that Higher Self is widely misunderstood. Even those who do consider it important generally have an incomplete conception of it. Thus, its value is not fully appreciated.
Perhaps greater understanding OF it would yield greater interest IN it, so I will attempt to explain Higher Self to the best of my abilities.
Is it our conscience? The 'little voice within' that nudges us in the right direction and guides us to wiser choices?
Not really.
Christopher Hitchens, in one of his many public debates with Christians, indicated that he thinks that's what it is, and that's all it is. Always scholarly, he referenced Socrates' 'daemon' and Adam Smith's 'inner guidance'. Both men were referring to a higher wisdom within us we can seek which can sort between right and wrong actions.
Of course, as is well known, Hitchens was committed to a materialist worldview, which presumably means that he would account for this 'daemon' as having arisen through evolutionary processes which formed the human brain.
Certainly, this 'daemon' is a good thing to have. It's also an extremely good thing for OTHER people to have when they are engaged in some form of relationship with you!
But it is not the Higher Self. Is there a connection? Indeed. But is it the sum total of the Higher Self? Not even close.
So if the materialists are falling short of the mark, how are our religious brethren doing? Actually, not so good. From the Christian perspective, you had better attribute any inner voice of wisdom to Jesus or God, lest you be tricked by Satan! It seems absurd, but even if your Higher Self guides you to make wise and loving choices for decades, but you claim that it comes from within you and not via Christ talking to you, any Christian pastor would caution you. Satan is quite the trickster, they will tell you, and no matter how good his advice might seem to be, he is after only one thing: your eternal soul. Seek spiritual guidance to get back on track, they would advise.
It should be noted that Alcoholics Anonymous has adopted this concept for their own purposes. They refer to a 'Higher Power' that can guide us, once we admit our powerlessness and need of outside assistance to achieve sobriety and the life we dream of.
In both cases, we are cautioned against trusting 'wisdom' that arises from within and is integral to us.
As forHindus, they maintain that the concept of an 'inner guru' is dangerous and fraudulent unless and until one has achieved a high level of enlightenment under the tutelage of flesh and blood gurus who have completed the process themselves. It is not Satan, but 'the ego' that tricks those who do not receive the approved training and instead listen to teachings and insights that come from WITHIN, NOT through masters who have expunged their own egos to the point where they can properly guide you.
So we're not getting a lot of help either from materialists or 'that old time religion', are we?
We must remember that we are talking about 'Self' here, so that means NOT Jesus and NOT a guru, but an actual and accessible higher aspect of OURSELVES that can uplift and enlighten us.
Does it exist? YES, emphatically!
So let's figure out what it is and start working with it.
The Higher Self is exactly what the name implies, a higher version of yourself. Mentally, morally, imaginatively and creatively, yes. But also physically, and this is the part that is easiest to miss.
Hitchens referred to Socrates and his daemon, so I will fast forward a tad and say that Plato is possibly our best guide to understanding the Higher Self, with his concepts of 'real' and 'ideal'.
According to Plato, anything that exists in expressed, manifest form derives from a formless ideal, a template if you will.
The Higher Self is this template from which you derive, both in terms of mind and in terms of body.

Most people, when considering the Higher Self, think in terms of a Higher Mind, but not a Higher Body.
This was me for thirty years. For three decades I have experienced connection with my Higher Mind (on and off I should say; during this period there were moments when I could not feel the connection strongly, or even at all - my 'Father, father, why hast thou abandoned me? moments).
Only recently have I come to realize that Higher BODY exists on the same plane of ideals (to use Plato's terminology) as Higher Mind, and thus I make it a daily practice to focus on aligning my physical form with this Higher Body just as my mind has become aligned (not completely, of course) with my Higher Mind. Higher Mind is thus an aspect of Higher Self, not the totality of it.
We can see that it is like peeling back layers of an onion to come to a fuller understanding of what Higher Self is, and the more important understanding of how we can benefit by connecting to it. Since most people consider the Higher Self purely in terms of Higher Mind, let's start there.
By tendency, I rarely include personal episodes in my essays, however in this instance I feel I may be doing the topic a disservice were I to avoid relating it to my own experiences.
I first encountered my Higher Mind in 1991, during a very dangerous and dramatic situation. I had to escape from the Oakland Hills Fire of that year, which devastated a large swath of terrain just behind the UC Berkeley campus. The apartment I was renting at the time was one of the casualties of the flames, and I easily could have been another.
There was a point when I made my way in haste down the road toward the Bay when I nearly froze up. Imagine the situation. Behind me were hundred foot flames, and on both sides of the road were flames from the burning forest all around, licking at the asphalt. Suddenly, there was nothing in front of me but pitch black. It looked like nothing a sane person would ever choose to drive into, but with flames on every other side of me, what else was there to do? Still, I nearly froze and put on the brakes, which would have meant certain death, but the fear of driving straight into That Blackness nearly overwhelmed me. I was terrified that I was heading straight into the firestorm, which was where the black smoke was most likely coming from.
Then, I heard a voice. It was as clear a voice as one might hear from someone with whom they are conversing. No one else in the car heard it, of course, but it was more than just a thought in my head. At least to me, it was clearly audible, and it said, 'everything is going to be all right'.
'Confidence' is not the right word to use here, but this voice was of no doubt about what it was saying. It wasn't cheering me on, trying to boost my confidence, and such. It was basically reporting the future to me from a place of knowing. There was no trace of doubt in it, as one might hear from another person in a similar situation. It knew, and it wanted me to know.
I received this information differently from how one generally does. The moment I heard this voice telling me everything would be all right, all fear evaporated because I, too, knew that it would. The best way to describe it would be that I downloaded the information, and it became MY certainty as well as the voice's.
And, as it turned out, everything WAS all right. After a few seconds of driving through pitch black, the smoke began to dissipate. From black to gray, from opaque to vapory, and finally to a clear view of the city of Oakland below. I and my passengers were safe. Hardships would follow (we had lost our homes after all) but we would survive.
One other element of this episode has always stayed with me. Before leaving the apartment complex, I spotted out of the corner of my eye a woman who looked very panicky as she stood by the firefighters who had just arrived. I was part of a queue of cars making our way to the exit gate, but in a matter of seconds I made eye contact with her, stopped briefly to open the door, let her in, and chauffeured her to safety down the hill.
This was, I believe, an initiation ritual. If I hadn't stopped to let her in, I think I would not have 'met' my Higher Mind a few moments later. Perhaps my entire life would have unfolded very differently. I suppose it is possible that I would not even have survived that very day. But I 'proved' myself with that simple act, and Higher Mind responded.
That episode in the Oakland Hills marks my first awareness of Higher Self, though I would not call it such for quite some time afterwards. I had been agnostic with atheistic leanings for a good 15 years prior to that experience, so my transition came about slowly, but steadily.
Thus, I did not consider this voice of wisdom and assuredness (and it must be said, a terrific sense of humor as well) my Higher Self at first, and I as I wrote earlier, I no longer do either. In the beginning, I called it 'the conversation', as it was something I could tune into whenever I wanted, and doing so yielded great insights over time.
As for now, I recognize that Higher Self includes both Higher Mind and Higher Body, meaning Higher Mind (that which I have been aligning with for three decades) alone is not Higher Self. There is a 'template' for a more perfect version of our physical expression, just as there is one for our mind.
Ultimately, Higher Mind - and indeed Higher Self - is as temporary an expression as the physical mind and body are. All are mere temporary expressions of formless Consciousness, the Aware Existence from which all matter arises and throuh which dissolves.
The purpose of Higher Mind is to make itself obsolete. Once our 'everyday' consciousness has fully merged with Higher Mind and experiences no separation from it, recognizing higher/lower are merely different aspects of the same thing, its role as a teacher and guide will have been completed.
This will be a shining moment that we all will eventually experience. As more and more of us do, the discord and conflict and sorrow that characterizes life on Earth will attenuate gradually, as fewer and fewer will gather at that trough.


To summarize, the Higher Self is a higher version of you in every imaginable aspect. It exists to bring you into alignment with your Truth, which is that you are Aware Existence and Eternal Source.
If YOU didn't exist, neither would Higher Self. Higher Self has no purpose unto its own; it is your guide in all manners and all respects.
This is not to diminish it in any way. It is indescribably wonderful, beautiful and awesome. But as I wrote earlier, its purpose is to render itself obsolete.
The Brooklyn Bridge is an extraordinarily beautiful work of art, but if there were no span for it to bridge, no gap between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, it would not exist. Think of the Higher Self this way, then. An extraordinarily beautiful bridge between all that you think you are and all that you TRULY are.
It is impossible that you will not at some point come to align yourself with your Higher Self so that it can serve this function for you. The only question is how long do you want to wait?
It is high time humanity moves forward. We have spent precious time indulging ourselves in the illusion of materialism and 'the cosmos is all there is or will ever be', and look where it has gotten us.
One word to describe the materialistic age: recklessness. We have been reckless with human lives, reckless with the future, reckless with our relationships to our fellow creatures, reckless with our treatment of arable land, reckless in our use of resources, reckless in our pursuit of wealth, and reckless in our choice of leaders.
Reckless, as well, in our concept of ourselves. We are NOT thinking mud, we are beings of Consciousness! Why is it so appealing to so many to feel that they have grokked it all, read their scientific papers and concluded that we are thinking mud?
I will never understand this.
What I will say is that our future hinges on whether enough of us can let that vulgar illusion go for good and reclaim our true value as Immortal Consciousness expressing as and through matter, but in no way limited to that particular expression.
This is where the Higher Self comes in. If you are willing to consider the possibility that it exists, it will take that opening and make something of it, as it has done for me.
You have to be willing to question the premises of materialism, but how is that a bad thing? There is nothing better that can happen to a human being in this or any lifetime than meeting the Higher Self and beginning to align with it.
It is the 'seek thee first' that has been taught about, but misunderstood.
But now is a time for understanding.
You are glorious and wonderful. Love beyond compare and creativity such as you have never known is waiting to introduce itself to you.
May you meet your Higher Self in THIS life, not the next.