Before getting into Cal's comment on "Seth's" arrogance, a note on the coming legalization of pot.  It has been reported in the last two days that casual use of pot causes permanent "abnormalities" of the brain.  Now, I have been hearing this and worse about every drug since the War on Drugs began, and take all this stuff with a grain of salt.  Still, it does not surprise me.  There are chemicals and radiation and lack of substances (like oxygen) that really do destroy the brain, but I will suggest that the pot "abnormalities" are not brain destroying, but alterations of the brain to accommodate the odd realities pot introduces.  In other words, it might well be that the supra-brain consciousness is re-configuring the soft-ware (the brain) so that it might handle alternative experiences.  They, our scientific brethren, probably have not thought of that, due to their intellectual rigidity, but it is my guess that this is probably the case.  As stated in two other blogs, pot changes thinking.  It's legalization will lead to much wider regular use, and this WILL lead to a changing national character.  I cannot say exactly what this will be, and do not wish to postulate on this now, but here come those changes.  As always, interesting.

Now, Cal Roeker will have noticed my arrogance towards science above, which was intentional - more for fun than anything  else - but perhaps it was my interpretation of Seth yesterday that made him sound arrogant.  From my viewpoint, Seth is anything but arrogant.  He is a teacher, and teaches like a well-disciplined science teacher - no brag, just fact.  His note - he has made several of these notes - about the inability of science to detect some of the phenomena he describes, is simply a teaching moment.  We can assume right off the bat that few of us would naturally get what Seth is saying.  He is only adding that even our science, which is up to a higher standard, cannot get this stuff because it is beyond the boundaries of our reality as we collectively understand it.  I often note that the standard ego (mine included) purposefully excludes many influences.  This is because the ego usually is concerned more with survival in this reality - that is its purpose.  That it often becomes a tyrant in this regard is a natural offshoot.  But this is not to say that the ego is necessarily "bad", and certainly not that it is useless.  It, the ego, simply oversteps its need in determining our perception of reality.  And that is what science often does.  

But science IS better in this way than the ego, and can go further - we have discussed quantum physics here with all its amazing, unbelievable possibilities.  Still, there are some avenues that are not open to science.  God, for instance; realities based on things or senses of feelings, whatever they may be, that are simply outside testable limits.  This is not downplaying science, anymore than saying that men cannot become pregnant is downplaying men.  It is simply not its nature.  

As to why the author, Jane Roberts (although the author of this book is supposedly Seth, but legally, it is Roberts) is open to Seth and Cal and I and most of us readers are not - that is a potentially complicated matter.  People like Roberts may have been born with this inclination, as some are born with an inclination towards mathematics or sports.  They might also have had an experience - a near death experience, or simply an encounter with a mystic - that has opened them to this type of path, which they then pursued.  But what Seth and just about any person experienced will tell you is that YOU can do this stuff, too.  It is a matter of concentration and meditation, with certain known methods to follow.  Everyone has access to these.  There are books on Christian meditation and prayer, on Indian meditation, on vision quests, hypnosis, shamanic travel - a whole slew of things that Cal can pursue if he wishes.  But pursue it he must.  For most of us, it will not find us - with no effort, the easiest path for our superficial conscious to take is to take no different route.

A final note: as has been stated before, Seth tells us that these multiple selves and so on are happening to us as we speak, regardless of our waking awareness.  You, Cal, are as complex as that friend of yours, but you do not take note of it.  You, Cal, have universes acting within you beyond your wildest imaginings, and they are affecting you right now - only you are not aware.  But, as stated, you can become aware if you wish.  But I often go back to that Zen Buddhist who said, "Of the spiritual path: better not to start; if started, better to finish."  Maybe you don't want the responsibility of an expanded consciousness.  Many psychic or mystical types wish they were normal - that is, unperturbed by these other realities that make them social misfits.  So choose your path wisely.  FK                           

Still continuing with the Seth book by Jane Roberts - it is a long book- and am amazed by what is brought up.  This channeled entity - Seth, channeled by the author - is no ghost or disembodied spirit, although he (she, it) claims to have lived on earth before.  Seth is instead a teacher, but on a scale that is hard for us to imagine.  What he says is beyond fantasy or simple subconscious information.  Much of it is (to me) original, considering its publication date (1970), but often absolutely on mark with later theories that have been recently explained in different - and generally inferior - ways.  

Two things have struck me in particular so far; one, that Seth's explanation of multiple universes and synchronicity was almost exactly like my own in a novel I wrote several years ago (still unpublished) called "Remission."  In this, I have the main character come to the realization that reality, or our part in it, is something like a layer of an onion.  All the layers are dependent on one another, but usually separate - except that there are some "doors" in each.  The layers, unlike an onion, are ever moving, and now and then, the "doors" or holes in one reality layer match up with that of another.  Sometimes several of them match up, and the aware conscious is then able to move to these different reality systems and then directly affect the one he came from by using the "magic, or different rules, of the other system.  This, I said, is what true magic is.  Synchronicity is a sign that reality layers have lined up, with one reality briefly superimposed on another (they are parallel realities in a way, in that they are all related to another by a central core, and so the temporary bleed-over is generally not of a shocking nature).  

With minor changes, this is what Seth related - and I have never read the Seth materials or consciously anything exactly like this idea of reality systems and synchronicity.  This mind-picture, then, is related to the OTHER thing that has struck me - Seth's idea of time and atoms (or what we conceive of our physical reality.)  I have mentioned before the idea that Thomas Campbell gave us in "My Big Toe" - that we exist only at a certain oscillation point of the atoms or particles of our reality.  These atoms continue to exist at other frequency points even as they do not contribute to our own reality oscillation; meaning that there are large gaps in cosmic time within our own substance, or reality.  These "atoms" then, have vast experiences while we are in oscillation stasis - and they bring back information to our time pattern.  Thus, things are happening to us and all our reality in each moment that we are not aware of, and which may change us subtly or sometimes very obviously (as in a remission and so the title and part of the story line).  

Seth confirms exactly this, although he places no claims on quantum physics - and the author and her husband, who writes the dictation, are both artists and poets with absolutely no knowledge of physics.  These two things - the "onion and door" model and the lapsed time model - combine to show us that we are indeed multiple - beings, beings that experience many realities at many different levels at each moment, with each contributing to the other.  Seth even uses the terminology of Campbell the physicist when he explains that all matter is consciousness (that is, is created by thought), and all thought -every little thought we have - leads to another reality that plays out every probability.  The connection to quantum theory here is astounding - and in a way, best expressed by Seth and his medium who claim no knowledge of physics.

In a way, though, Seth does - by explaining that our science could never get at most of these other realities, because of the limited inquiry tools that it uses.  Fascinating stuff - and almost overwhelming to me - more so, in fact, than any other of the "weird" books that I have showcased so far (I do not include theological discussions as weird.)   Overall, it makes the mind boggle; we are in an intricate web of playing-out possibilities that all have feedback to one another - and are sometimes accessible from our reality sector.  Most important, however, is that we are being affected by alternate realities at each moment.  Synchronicity is the bleed - through, what we experience from this reality perspective of the others.  Again - prayer, thought, expectations, all these subjective experiences DO have an affect on reality.  In fact, reality IS subjective, although we have blinded ourselves to that to continue this version of reality.  

Yes, I know - kind of crazy, like a long conversation with philosophers and physicists on pot.  And yet - I believe much of it is true.  How that is will have to be thought about and perhaps reasoned through for another time.  FK            

A curious thing happened to me this week.  My brother is getting married and I had to buy tickets for us to go.  Going was easy, but the return was difficult.  One of us had to get back early, but we would not want to have to wake for the flight at 4 AM, and as it turned out, the cheap flights were either early or late.  There really was no choice - we would have to get up really early.  So I booked the flight, and then was informed - right at the point of putting down my credit card - that the early flight had suddenly jumped up in price, and all my previous information was lost.  A quick look again showed that there was another flight at almost the exact time and at the cheaper price, but it was late.  I would put buying the tickets off for another day.

A few days later and I was on the computer again, not thinking of booking a flight.  But then it occurred to me, got me worried over losing cheap seats, and I went to do it again.  The one flight that had its price bumped up was still there - and now my memory begins to fade - but I did not pick it, either because the price had gone up, or the seating wasn't up for choice.  I cannot recall why (this is not usual for me) but saw the other flight at nearly the same time and clicked on it.  It had plenty of cheap seats, and I went for it.  Looked everything over three or four times, then booked and paid for it.  

After, a car rental deal came up and I checked that out.  When clicking on it, I saw that the car would not have to be returned until that evening, not the morning.  Suddenly, what I had done began to click - the flight at nearly the same time was NOT at the same time, but rather had the same numerical time with a "PM" attached to it.  I had gotten us an evening flight, nonrefundable, exactly what I had wished to avoid.  I am now the official family moron.  

Looking back on it now, though, the oddness of it becomes clear.  Why had the prices suddenly gone up just as I was about to buy?  It had been OK'd all the way through, including choosing the seats.  And why had I not clicked on that flight the next time?  Why, that is, can I not remember clicking on it?  Why I got the second flight in the PM is clearer - the last time, I had concluded it was another morning flight, and so did not look at it closely - although I triple checked everything else.  As for the real morning flight, when I looked it up to see why the heck I had blundered, there it was, clearly stating "3 seats (what we needed) left at this price, " the price I wanted.  What had happened?  

I'm sure this kind of thing has happened many times to me before, but of all those other times, there is only one other that I can recall because it had such consequence.  I have written an essay about it - it is how I did not see a certain woman sitting next to me in a car, which made me not to talk to her until a certain time in which it would be certain that I would ask her out, and she would say yes.  The woman would become my wife, and it remains the oddest thing in memory to have happened.  This flight thing, at least at this point, does not - the only consequences I can see from it is that some of us will be getting very little sleep and have a lot of driving for one night in store.  But who knows?  The change will give me more time to see people at the other end of the flight, and it will change driving times and all sorts of other things.  Who knows what it will change - and if I'll ever know of its importance, or lack of it.

My mother has Alzheimer's or something like it, and she is constantly being surprised because she cannot remember.  Perhaps this was only that - a simple memory glitch, or glitch of some sort, with little or no meaning - or perhaps an initial sign of my own withering mind.  Regardless, we are told by everyone from button-down Freudian psychologists to far-out West Coast New Agers that we do not really forget anything (I think they would have to make exceptions for disease) but rather, hide certain things to continue the drama that we have chosen for life.  Perhaps there are times when the forgetting would not normally happen, but that in remembering we would ruin the plan, our plan, whether made in heaven or during childhood formative periods.  And so we have these odd occurrences that should never have happened, and then find that these lapses have led to important consequences later.  Or we don't find out, and can only think - did they and we don't know?  

This is not an example of paranoid thinking, given the varied proofs we have that forgetting is a nearly conscious procedure.  Such open forgetting as the examples given do lend credence to the idea that these were or will be important in my overall life story.  But, for all except the most materialistic psychotherapists, these cases show that we all have a drama to fulfill - that is, that we have a story, chosen in advance, to tell through our time in our bodies.  The key to that drama would tell us a lot, and guide us through the most difficult times, but do any of us know?  Do any of us, as the Greeks said, "Know thyself"?  I am certain that we contain within us this key to our story, and that we can find it.  It is, this key, not fully deterministic because, once known, it can be consciously altered, but it is, like a river bed, an indicator of the most likely direction of our efforts.  Another reason, again, to listen for that distant inner voice.  FK     

Today, a new essay, "Nightmares," under Essays on the web site.

A note: this one is particularly dark, as the title infers.  It is about the existence of evil and the terror of doubt.  It came to me in that off hour between night and day, and I put it just as it was: a horror and a dilemma of doubt.  This is not the way I normally think, however, nor how most of us think, but I hold that most of us do think this way sometimes, and as such it must be looked at and pondered.  It is a version of the "dark night of the soul," which is considered crucial for the final stages of mystical union.  Doubt and fear must eventually be met, and from there, if one is fortunate, one is able to see beyond it all to union.  "Nuff said.  FK   

It is no revelation to us oldsters that what the young wish for is often stupid - for this young man (me), that might have been cash, fame and lots of eager women.  But it is usual that one's concept of one's needs and wants always seem right at the time.  It is like one's opinion - in something like politics, your's is the right one, and the other guy, well, he's "uninformed," to put it nicely.  I am ready to say now that my desires as a youth were stupid and would have led to very bad things - social diseases, unplanned kids, addiction, cirrhosis - a whole slew of things that would have come from desires that seemed quite reasonable at the time.  But am I ready to say that I am just as stupid as when young, given the bigger picture?

No and yes: I know better than to get into messy personal entanglements for a moment of pleasure, or to casually use drugs and alcohol to keep a constant state of a chemical high.  But how about my desire for sales with my books?  Or a certain kind of success for my son?  Or a great boon in income for an easy retirement?  These all seem practical and good from my current perspective, but I have been very wrong before, and not just as a youth.  Until my 40's, I got drunk fairly often, and my only regret about it were the hang-overs.  Ah, to have a cure for hang-overs and my life would be good!  No, it wouldn't have.  The bad news of hang-overs was the great news for a better life - it forced me to be relatively moderate and might well have saved my life.  Oh, and how I prayed for success in my field, anthropology!  I did all the other stuff that was necessary as well, but nothing was coming and nothing ever came.  It changed my life in a very disagreeable way - I became a house-fixer, house-husband, child-care giver and (unpaid) writer.  This, given that I am a man, has not helped my social status to say the least.  Believe me, being called a "kept man" hurts.  And yet...

And yet, looking back, my time as an anthropologist was the least spiritual in my life.  I lived the materialistic theories, and lived to achieve prominence in the field.  I was, in many ways, a go-getter butt-head.  Failure re-opened the spiritual space, raising our child made me more aware of love than I had ever known, fixing houses gave me knowledge of self-reliance, and the space left after the kid got older gave time to write.  It is not perfect - the job search is going back into gear as I seek to relieve my wife of the financial burden, but something more has been gained.  What I had wished for was ego-gratification; what I got was growth - and guilt, to be sure, but very important growth.  If I had been allowed my wishes - my more mature and non- lethal wishes - I would never have known a world that was not made for my personal gratification, and which has given me greater satisfaction (although not perfection) than I would have had, in spite of myself.  

And so, we go  back to the idea that intent, or prayer, can change reality, or at least outcomes.  I do believe, after much thought and research, that it can.  But if you are lucky - or maybe are lucky in simply falling in to a good spiritual practice - you will NOT get what you want, but instead, what you need.  The trick is in finding that sweet spot, where you are led like a spoiled child to safety and a better (in the grand scheme) life.  Certainly humility and compassion and acceptance are key - but those were never my strong points.  Perhaps it is in the trying - of having the will to do - but in not trying to the bitter end, that one's efforts will be guided.  For me, I always am led to this particular conclusion: let the quiet voice lead.  This voice can be known because it does not tickle the gratification bone, but rather comes from a calm, deep perspective.  You may not like the advice or the results, but if you are like me, in hind sight you'll see that you've hit the jack pot, at least for that while.  When you can't see, you shouldn't lead the way, especially if you think you can see.  It has proven to be the case in my own life.  Still, I plead for success, and still, it does not come - but the world continues to turn.  May I continue to be so lucky, to not have my way, but rather, the better way.  

The quiet voice - not a supine resignation, but a slowing down, a listening, an opening.  And maybe a well-needed lesson in humility, for what we want is most often not what we need.  For me, I continue to pray, but have added, with difficulty but sincerity, this: give me what I want, but not if it against thy (or the deeper) will.  Thy (wisdom's) will be done.  In hindsight, it has seemed to work; rather, it has definitely worked.  It is, I think, the one true way.  FK           

Cal Roeker's comment on yesterday's blog brings up a very difficult topic - how much can belief effect reality?  Can belief and non-belief actually change what one is going to experience?  

It might not seem so challenging on one level: I might believe that the sledge hammer doesn't exist, and yet still have my hand broken by it.  Belief or not, reality strikes down.  It is also my understanding - one step up from belief - that there are layers of reality, which theologians often refer to as onion-like.  We may not believe in higher powers - say, in karmic turnaround - yet that disbelief does not matter: the laws, even if they are laws that we do not understand, still apply.  For instance, the Plains Indians believed that the Ghost Dance would make them impervious to the Blue Coat's bullets, but it did not - they dropped like flies.  In the past, people did not know of microbes and probably would not have believed in them if told - yet millions died from them - and so on.  And so we have beliefs, and we have laws - laws that may be operating on us without our knowing, but they are laws none-the-less, and our hands, so to speak, are crushed under certain circumstances whether we believe in them or not.  

But then we have the countering power of belief - of a religious person's belief that God or the gods will change things for them if prayed too, or a shaman's belief that his working with the spirits can alter reality, or the neo-quantum physicist's belief that consciousness IS the universe, and that intent in consciousness can also have its effects.  Of these cases, the physicist is referring to laws he has inferred from quantum mechanics - in this, his position falls in with one who is working with real, physical or physical-psychic laws that, as of now, are only poorly understood.  There is no magic here, but simply a lack of general understanding.  In this case, intent can change reality, but only according to these poorly understood laws.  There is real evidence that this is so, but it is countered by the inertia of the general system in which most of us are subject.  

The shaman seems to me to have an intermediate position, somewhat more to the faith side of the physicist, but still based on the perception of reality.  He does talk to spirits, and he does understand many of the effects the spirit world has on this one.  This is from his inside perception, and one may claim that he is basing his technique on belief.  But HE does not - he perceives the spirits and sees them at work, to either help or harm.  Is this a belief system?  If so, then the results he sometimes gets may be put under the category of "belief changing reality."  Or is it another dimension, so to speak, of reality, with its own laws that interact with our own laws?  Then he is more the technician of the spirit world, like the physicist - not operating on belief, but rather on a different level of natural laws.

And then the toughest part - the religious believer and prayer.  That prayer can change reality IS clearly a belief, and one that is encouraged to remain a belief by many religions.  Islam and Christianity, for instance, highlight FAITH as a moving factor.  Mohamed, then, can move mountains, and Christ - "where two or more are gathered in my name" - can also change the outcome of events.  Yet this, too, is different from the man who does not believe in this or does believe in that.  Faith is rather a singular belief that a higher power exists that can change reality, not the believer himself.  This, really, is a shift back to intent, as understood by the physicist, an intent that strikes at the heart of reality because that is what God is, in symbolic form - the heart of reality.  We may anthropomorphise him (or her - its all anthropomorphising), but the reality behind the symbol is the heart of existence.  It would seem that, with deeply held belief in this heart, one could transcend the limited mind-picture and actually get to that much greater plain of reality that we represent by God.  In that way, the faithful could have access to a reality-changing technology.  As one Anglican Catholic put it, Christ (an aspect of God) is in our hearts, the center of our being that is related (through love) directly to God.  Being in touch with that center could conceivably give one the power - not through magic, but through the apex of the lawful pyramid  - to accomplish anything, or nearly so.  

So - does simple belief or disbelief make it so or not so?  No: but attainment of the the deeper meaning of things does give one the power to make unexplained (to us) changes in this reality.  Belief may do so by uniting personal intent with this greater meaning (law of laws), and so have real effects on the world.  Of course, one cannot simply wish for anything and get it - it must be in accord with the greater law.  That may have a hampering affect, but if would seem that at some point, where intent and belief were pure, the limitations of one's wishes would be understood.  But yes, it does seem to me that belief, in its deepest sense, can lead to great changes, both in consciousness and in the physical realm.   FK                  

Am well into another book, although that reading has been temporarily halted by March Madness.  As a UConn alum, all must stop for the mighty Huskies!  In any case, the book is one of the Seth series, by Jane Roberts, "Seth Speaks," written, purportedly, through Jane.  Seth is a disembodied entity that has found a medium in Jane.  He has been on earth as a human many times, so the entity is more than familiar with our reality.  The comments - on reality in general and ours in particular - are surprisingly complex and thoughtful.  

Surprisingly, I say, because the Seth series began in 1970 and was probably one of the first New Age books following the flower child wave of the mid and late 60's.  Much of what was written then was pop-shallow wishful thinking and immature, but this is not.  I will point out the main thrust of the book as read so far in a moment, but first the reason that this book was not read by me earlier.  It has to do with mediums and the "ghosts" that they bring down (or in).  

I have published an essay before in this site on Marc, a friend who inexplicably joined the Allistor Crowley witch coven in New York City.  Crowley was known in the 19th century as an innovative researcher of the occult, but also as a demonic figure who used magical methods to achieve selfish - often very selfish - ends.  His name carries the stench of evil.  Those who have read the essay know - Marc died of a bizarre suicide after becoming paranoid - schizophrenic, driving a stolen limousine into a truck while in pursuit by the police.  Before all this, he had been a philosophy PhD candidate at UMichigan - not exactly in the mold of an evil madman.  
There are now umpteen books on magic of all sorts, most selling it as a way to responsible personal discovery.  They often involve dealing with ghosts.  In both cases, I find most of the authors are playing with fire.  For one thing, ghosts are known to be either the psychic fragments left by of those once living - and thereby of little use for knowledge - or lost souls who for some reason cannot evolve or move on to whatever awaits most of us after death.  By this logic, they would more than likely be the more disturbed among us.  Seth is supposedly not such a creature, but a highly evolved teacher come to help us out of our spiritual crises.  That may well be,  and the book is proving to be enlightening in certain respects.  
But how would I choose my entity, say, if I decided to become a medium?


Mediumship is like magic in general - most of us, myself included, have no reliable map to the alternate realities or spaces where such voices or power come from.  In my way of thinking, dabbling in magic is like driving a car without knowing how to steer or use the breaks.  One MIGHT get a nice ride from it, but chances are, one would end in a damaging car wreck.  This applies to more than what we consider magic.  All those who begin serious exploration of spiritual places, through meditation and study or prayer - are always warned by the authorities in those fields to have an experienced guide.  If the reader has never explored non-ordinary reality, either by choice or by chance, he might find this conversation strange.  But most, I think, would agree - it is so odd at times that we have no experiential background for it.  There might well be potential danger in even the simplest attempts to get beyond ordinary reality.


But most of us also know know prayer and simple meditation.   We seldom stray with those techniques too far afield for too long.  But a medium?  This is being taken over, at least in consciousness, by another force.  Even if it is only a deeper part of the personality, its dominance could have great disorienting affects, to say the least.  And so Seth has come to me to mean something spooky, and perhaps evil.  


But from what I have read so far,  it is nothing of the sort.  I will leave it to Ms.  Rogers to give herself to the entity, but Seth's words to date hold no evil or potential for evil, and in most ways are more philosophical than magical.  The greatest thing said so far - something that has been echoed for decades in all manner of alternative reality studies - is that consciousness is not a by-product of creation, but creation itself.  And, more to the point, that all that IS created is a symbol of something higher - that is, something reflecting and pointing to something of greater potential depth.  Such has been my own inner experience, and it is, I think, irrefutable.  While we may measure our objective reality with objective tools and envision it as dead or inert, this cannot be the case.  It was fathered (and mothered) into creation by something else, and as in all cases of parenting, our reality must carry the genetic imprint of the parent.  That imprint is in everything - if we know how to read it.   So far, the Seth book is aiding in that reading.  It seems safe and serious.  Still, I for one will not be calling the spirits down to take over my personal consciousness.  As the old maps used to say of unexplored areas, "Here Monsters Be."  FK                       

But enough about physics.  There is something fundamental that is lacking in these expositions, as clever and enlightening as they are, and it is poetry.  One may also call it "art" in general, but I am calling it poetry because of a conversation I had on the phone with my son last night.  Speaking of the novels he had read, he then turned to poetry: why the obfuscation?, he asked.  "If I read 5 pages of a book, I know what it's talking about.  If I read five paragraphs of a poem, I have to go back and analysis it 5 times and I still get it wrong.  Why do they write this stuff like a puzzle?"

Ah, excellent question, my boy!  And it is as true with any art as it is with poetry, that some wish to sound wise by creating something that no one else can comprehend.  But that silliness is found in the social sciences, too.  No: what sincere poetry tries to do is to draw the reader from the discursive - from what words ordinarily are - to that something or other that is the point of the poem.  If it were to convey a message, as might be in a novel, it would be best to say, "Bill went down to the river and brooded over his failures.  Then he came back to the house and kicked the dog."  We are led beyond a standard "right and wrong" or "black or white" into human emotional responses, but that is it and all there is intended to be.  A poem might read, "And he trudged through the dead grass under a heavy sky /to stand at the edge of frozen waters;/and there looked down at his whitened hand, trembling and wrinkled with age.  "Why?" is all he could say, and the sky echoed back only that, "why?"/  And so he turned, lost again in silence, to lights dulled by the gloom."   Poetry/prose would be more exact, and this is only off the cuff, but the meaning is not found in analysis - rather, it is in the picture painted and the setting set by meter and combined meaning to bring you to - what?  Something beyond your ordinary self.  To the vast impersonality of nature and the hovering of death over everything.  What good, it asks, is anything?  The question might be taken by the reader and he might have a reply.  But he is drawn none-the-less into something beyond the ordinary by the mere act of reading, whether he wants to or not.  He is brought to the edge of the imponderable, and maybe the beginning of his own wisdom.  Poetry, as all true art, tires to do just this: reach beyond.

The physics of reality does not, even as it does.  The demystifying nature of its reasoning, even as it might assure us of the infinite and exciting principles it is discussing, does not similarly light the same fire.  It takes the moon and turns it into space dust,or a projection of information "packets" connected by energy patterns oscillating at the speed of light.  It is fascinating, but not deep.  

A few blogs ago, I mentioned the Gospel of the blind man, of Jesus healing the blind, and how he told the Pharisees that the blind would see and the seeing would be blind.  Discursively, this does not make logical sense.  It, too, is poetry, the art of spiritual knowledge.  That there might be a physics to it is, I think, probably the case, as discussed before.  But the real plunge, the real hit, is in the finality and authority of the overall impressions: one, that  the world is not what you think it is, and the more you think you know it, the less, or more blinded, you are; and two, that it is time, THE TIME HAS COME, for a reversal of everything you thought you knew.  God will be man/will die of man; the weak shall conquer the  strong; the blind shall be the sighted ones.  The world is about to be turned on its head, in accordance with the will, or way (yes, we could read 'physics') of heaven, and it is big.  Apocalypse, struggle, and finally victory and the reign of everything that is right with Heaven and crushed by the world of Man.  In it, we hear the ringing of a wisdom far greater than our own, and we know it is BIG.  

And so it is with the great religions.  They are the poetry of God, guiding you not by discursive knowledge, because we cannot understand, but by divine poetry, painting the picture and giving the sense, the awe, the depth to it as best as we can grasp.  It, like poetry, is a bridge to something beyond (only further).  Further, I'm afraid to say for our scientific friends, than science could ever go alone.  FK             

I had not planned on writing the blog today, but instead to begin on an essay that would be finished tomorrow.  The essay idea has to do with the first time I noticed a darkness - something contrary - within me, at age 6.  I was to work into it with a brooding mood to capture this realization, but the brooding mood went.  It is cold and gloomy and we are expecting rain and sleet and everything is brown and apparently going nowhere, but I don't feel brooding.  I should - this is the perfect day for it - but I don't.  Because of that, I will mention - one more time with physics - something I found very interesting as I nearly finished Thomas Campbell''s Book I of "My Big TOE."

The ending is hard-hitting.  I'm sitting there in the late evening with a beer, beginning to feel sleepy, and the last chapters are physics, physics, physics.  In a chapter or two, Campbell suddenly explains relativity theory, the reason for "c", or the speed of light as a constant, and the meaning of quanta and  Plank's Rule.  And, funny thing, even though he even uses some mathematical formulas, I got it - and you would, too.  Somehow, he was able to do what no one else apparently has - explain what all this modern physics is about (modern meaning the past 100 years) in general but real terms.  But that is not all.  As he says, following Einstein, space is not really space as in 'matter,' but is rather time-space: that is, it exists in relation to time, which exists in relation, in the case of Einstein's theory, to the speed of light.  I won't get into it, and in fact couldn't  do the job that Campbell did -get his book if you want to find out.  But what is unique in Campbell's thoughts is as such: we come from a greater reality, or plenum (everything, full) source which creates realities by creating "ripples" or sources of differentiation within itself.  Within these reality ripples, or "cells" as Campbell calls them, is an oscillation, or wave length, between the disturbed and undisturbed state (the ripple at peak and at trough).  Time is the period of the wave completion, that is, the going from trough to peak to trough.  There is, in the intervals between peak and trough, no time - a dead space - where the energy or information creating the trough is neither being sent nor being received.  

I haven't explained it well because I am mixing metaphors - but the point is, it takes time - in our reality, the speed of light - for information, or energy, to move from one reality cell to another - the peaks  of the waves in the reality field - and in that intervening space, nothing happens.  We have, then, a good deal of "time" (compared to the plenum - see below) where we have no time and no existence as we understand it.  But the field source - what some have described as the creative aspect of God (but not the Godhead itself) has a much, much higher frequency level for information (energy) transfer within itself (because it is not the ultimate God but an aspect of God, it is not fully unlimited, and therefore is not eternally motionless and timeless). Thus, for it, we (our reality) move at an incredibly slow pace (all this compared to the creative aspect's notion of time).  The author promises in his other two volumes to explain how ESP and all that can occur because of this (and perhaps other things) but I am not near that now.  Rather, I am pondering the author's statement that in these looming time intervals that form our reality, the God aspect has lots and lots of time to roam around us - kind of like the man in the Twilight Zone who could stop time.  Many things can be done by this aspect, as well as by other entities in faster-moving realities.  In fact, we are sitting ducks for the beings in faster-moving realities.  

Now think - how might your life have been altered oddly in that time space?  Has anything odd or coincidental happened in your life that has had a significant impact on you?  I have had such things, many of them, some of which I have written about in my essays.  Meeting my wife was one, for instance - I simply could not recognize her existence for a space of time, the oddest thing that ever happened to me. And because of that, we went out, kept going out, and got married, had a kid, and everything else that followed.  There were many other times, when things just happened to come along at the right time (or wrong time, or so it seemed) to deeply impact me later.  When, for instance, I was about to go into the army - had already taken the tests and was ready to sign - a very good job suddenly dropped into my lap, one that I had not even applied for (I will not go on with that, as this now appears to be the germ for a new and happier essay - tomorrow, perhaps.  It changed my life).  This, it seems, explains synchronicity.  Although I'm sure the author will be more explicit in the forthcoming books, this would be where "meaningful coincidence" lies - in the dead or timeless space between our time that is filled by the activity of more active-time beings (or simply, the God aspect).  

Interesting.  And so, pray and think right thoughts - there is a near infinity for these prayers and thoughts to be analysed and worked on between each tiny fraction of a second.  Another, greater world is present all around and, in a very real sense, within you.  It can be influenced and can influence in a flow between your information and its being, or directive.  You CAN petition the Lord with prayer.  And as you understand yourself, so will IT, and much more.  May the force be with you.  FK 

There is a problem with solving the big meaning of existence with a physicist's attitude, I know: where is the passion?  For while it is the calm rational head that keeps the body going, it is passion - art - that maintains the reason for keeping alive.  The author who I have been discussing, Thomas Campbell, knows this but cannot help but be analytic.  I would probably be too passionate.  Such are our limitations.   

However, he does make one think.  From his perspective, all that makes up life is a subset of a larger reality (and so on) which we cannot understand from our limited reference state, but which does affect us.  As proof that this greater reality exists, Campbell uses the unavoidable fact that the very laws of objective science were broken when our reality came into existence - nothing, from our standpoint, can come from nothing.  And yet it did.  Higher laws of physics, ones that seem magical or "mystical" to us, do exist and do function in this world, even if we cannot figure out why.  Yet, according to Campbell, these higher laws have there own rational pattern - albeit, based on a rationality that we cannot comprehend.   And it was on this that I began to wonder about the physics of morality.

Last week's Gospel was on Jesus's healing of the sight of a man born blind.  It begins with his disciples asking him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?," reiterating the little known truth that many Jews of that era believed in reincarnation (how else could a man be born blind because of his sins?)  Beyond that, Jesus answers, "Neither...it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him."  Here is a law of cause and effect that comes from a higher power to directly affect this world, but there is much more.  Towards the end, Jesus speaks to the cynical pharisees who question his miracle: " I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind."  "Are we then blind?", mocked the Pharisees.  Jesus replies, "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, 'We see,' so your sin remains." 

Frankly, the only part about the above that I understand rationally is the use of the blind man for a lesson, for that is well within the scope of the power of the god I envision.  But what of the others?  I can kind of understanding the references to sight and blindness  by bending my mind around obscure symbolism - have faith and see, do not and [recognize] your blindness, but that does not fully cover it.  No, those who are blind will see and those who see will become blind; further, those who see are in sin, and those who do not, have no sin.  How to fully make sense of it?  

I cannot - but what if Jesus were talking about a supernatural (that is, above our understood nature) law of physics?  And that all in this nature reflected the laws of this greater physics?  Perhaps those who are born blind reflect the state of their souls - made, in this sense, more perfect for being less influenced by this limited reality.  A thin reed, perhaps, but I believe an idea of a greater physics is further substantiated by the former statement: that in future, those who cannot see might see and those who do might become blind. 
What Jesus may be talking about is a reversal of the consciousness of reality - that is, that the sight of the seeing becomes understood for what it is - a form of blindness, in that the greater reality is not seen (or, in another phrase, the forest is missed for the trees.); and that those who are blind - that is, those who do not believe they know (vs, the the Pharisees who believed they did) what life is all about, might be given that greater vision, as it is not blocked by their insistence on the reality of the smaller vision (which they do not "see," or know.)  Thus we have a physics of reversal, a law that operates on a different level but affects us all.  And with that, we might understand all the statements of Jesus that seem to contradict reality; for instance , just like the blind, the meek are not blinded by this reality and are open to the greater "vision," or meta-reality about them.   Jesus here would be speaking symbolically, but only barely; he would be indirectly, as best as he could do with people of this background, trying to teach people of this greater reality and how to get in touch with it.  At the base, as always, would be humility, the quieting of the ego that allows the greater information to come through.  

It would then be that morality, rather than a sociologically derived formula, is actually based (to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the culture) on guiding us to the path that leads to the comprehension of the physics of reality that subsumes our own.  Just a thought, but it might be noted that this greater reality, as always, might be obtained through the quiet voice.  FK