Today, an essay, Oakdale, under "Essays" in the website.  FK

I cannot quite remember the words to a Linda Ronstadt cover that is a favorite of mine, but one set of lyrics goes something like, "if dreams were fire, this old house woulda' burned down a long time ago."  This reminds me, too, of the short essay I wrote in the backwoods cabin (that I promised to print here, but am still debating it - it is perhaps too personal and narcissistic), that was burning with thwarted desire - a desire to do something fulfilling that has led in recent years to a feeling of emptiness.  

Many, I believe, feel called, or want to feel called, but so few act on it.  In my own family, like many families, there have been many with sparks of talent, or even fires of it, but something always seems to have gotten in the way - everything from family needs to drugs and alcohol problems to neurotic fears.  Most people do not talk of this - rather, they thrash around in youth, uncommitted, then fold on themselves with age, depending on hobbies to highlight their need to excel at something.  But sometimes, entire family lines excel, with the mediocre or miscreant present only as occasional chaff.  We might want to add a "but" to some of these families - some have old wealth, some have failings so deep that they overshadow the spectacular - but sometimes, we have to admit that some family lines are simply superior.  

I speak here of the Oliver Sacks and his clan, whose recent autobiography, On the Move, I have nearly completed over the weekend.  It is not that Sacks, on whose work the movie Awakenings  with Robin Williams was based, hides his own failings; in fact, he is refreshingly up-front about them (note to future readers - the book begins surprisingly flat, but it builds. Keep with it).  Among the surprises I learned was that he was homosexual, and clumsy at it at that, which one might expect given his age and milieu as a young man.  His mother, on finding of his preference, told him, "You are an abomination! I wish you had never been born!"  She never mentioned it again, and the doctor understands that as a committed Jewish mother, she was merely quoting from her scripture.  But it hurt him at least a bit for the rest of his life.

Sacks (who is now dying from cancer, thus the book) also was an amphetamine addict while a young physician, something that he finally shed to save his life.  He began to see a psychiatrist for this, and has continued to see him up to this day.  He also stated, that from age 40 to 75 he had no sexual contact with anyone. 

All big minuses in one way or another.  On the other hand, the hundreds of people he helped with his talents for both humanism and medicine more than outweigh any of his problems.  He had gifts which he exploited to the maximum.  He has traveled the world, investigated what he felt he needed to investigate, and has engaged millions.  He is, or should feel, rightly fulfilled.

But it is not just him - nearly his entire family was similarly gifted and energetic, given both purpose and the dispositions to express it.  Both his parents were successful, and loved, medical doctors, as were two of his brothers (another was schizophrenic - apparently the cost to pay for a brilliant family line).  A cousin helped form and mature the nation of Israel; an uncle was Al Cap, the famous cartoonist of Pogo. Sacks speaks frankly of his uncle's sexual (hetero) excesses and how it ruined his career, but this was just another wrinkle in the greater fabric of a family of brilliance.  

How are such families born?  We can argue nature and/or nurture for some time, but the reality is that such lineages do exist.  The Sacks family, as it excelled, was Jewish and English at a time when Antisemitism reigned. They were given no favors by the Anglo elite.  Perhaps it was because of the struggle that they struggled so?  But many other disadvantaged families have simply stayed poor and unknown.  Are there other reasons besides genes or culture?

In the previous book I covered here, Natural Born Heroes, the author notes that among the three traits of a hero numbered by the ancient Greeks, there is one that surprises: compassion.  And while this book was about physical prowess, I believe we can extend that to professional excellence in general.  Maybe it is not one's genius and energy that makes one great, but a sense of compassion that gives one genius and energy.  Of course there is a link to genetics, but it is well known that few of us ever engage our full capacities.  There is a cultural link, too, as all of the fields that we consider were formed by our overall culture.  But maybe compassion is the secret ingredient passed through the family line, compassion meant not only for those we know, but also for those we don't know.  This was certainly the case with Doctor Sacks, and perhaps it was for much of his family.  

One of the greatest things that mystics agree upon is that enlightenment brings compassion.  With that, it seems, comes full human potential.  It can and does happen that success arrives without compassion, but I doubt many successful families continue this success without it.  Could it be that it is unconscious narcissism, not our family genes or material backgrounds, that keeps most of us so ordinary?  FK       
          

Back to my adventurous years living with Indians of Venezuela, I discovered something that did not surprise me intellectually, but did surprise me in the flesh - that these little guys, men about 5'4", women about 5', maybe 130 and 110 lbs. respectively, were stronger than I. Much better endurance and quicker speed, of course, but also simply stronger.  The men could chop a 4 foot diameter tree with an old iron ax in 20 minutes, climb trees with feet and hands, and go all day with backpacks in the mountains. Women carried heavy loads every day, and when hiking, would carry more than the men (who hunted along the way).  I have mentioned before the 8 month pregnant teenager who carried a full family pack on a three day hike, and crossed slippery logs across 20 foot deep stream arroyos without complaint or strain.  It is possible that I could bench press more, but what good would that do?  I would still be comparable dead weight in the forest. How could that be?  Doesn't size matter?

In my latest adventure in books, Christopher McDougall in Natural Born Heroes tells us that, no, size does not matter, not at all.  He weaves a tale of how the Cretans, with help from a quirky special force of British, helped to hold down the Germans in WWII in Crete, an island that was essential for Germany to control for "Operation Barbarossa"  the military plan to conquer the USSR.  Because of the people of Crete, those plans were stalled and Germany became bogged down at the Russian Front in winter.  The rest is history.  

But it is not just history - it is the story of how the Cretans, as well as other people of the past and some new ones today, understand what fitness truly is.  It is why the Cretans were able to out-hike the Germans through the mountains and stay one step ahead of the Gestapo, and also why my Indians were in such great shape.  The secret is found primarily in natural movement, with going with the body flow, but there is more: put in a phrase, it has to do with "knowledge, strength, and compassion."  

Compassion?  I have wondered at the Greeks for some time, ever since I heard an NPR special edition on the Olympics. Looking at the records of the athletes then, their speed and strength dwarfs those of our greatest today.  In the book, the author discusses a rock inscribed from 600 BC in Greece that states simply, "(so and so) lifted me."  Present day people have weighed the rock, and it is over 100 pounds heavier than our world record - and it is an uneven, ungainly stone.  But their astounding prowess also went to all the other sports.

Still, compassion?  Few who read of the ancient Greeks think first, or even last, of compassion.  But that is where the Hero comes in; the Hero is someone's, or some nation's or people's, champion.  Odysseus had his wife, Alexander his empire, the Spartans their pride of place and so on.  While Alexander might not be quite clear, the others are - they were fighting or wrestling or adventuring for their people.  This form of compassion is not the only thing that gave them greatness - much is still in the hands of natural feel, like many of our current great athletes (a feel, the author assures us, that can be learned by all) - but the greatest efforts are.  Think of the old lady who holds a car up in an emergency for her grandson underneath (it's for real, these events).  Think of the thousands of men who are absolutely average who have done astounding acts of bravery for the sake of their army buddies in battle.  

Of course, the author is a best-seller, and he wishes to impress on us that it is possible for all of us to be heroic.  I have my doubts - at the age of 61, I don't think I'll be setting any world records soon, for family or not.  But his point is clear - altruism rewards those with knowledge and strength with even greater strength.  It is what makes heroic deeds - those that are impossible under normal circumstances - possible.  It may not allow one to move mountains, at least in a one-on-one sense, but it can allow for acts of courage and strength that are otherwise unbelievable.  Read Unbroken, or The Long Walk, or several other accounts of impossible feats of endurance and courage. And it is true - at the heart of the greatest deeds is heart, is a desire above the individual, a giving of him or herself for an ideal, a god, a person or a nation.  

We all love a good story line for our Olympic athletes.  So many have them that they seem made up.  But maybe those stories really are the "X" factor between good and great; maybe it was these certain events in the lives of the athletes that gave them a sense of compassion, turning them from regular athletes into true heroes.  FK                         
         

The last few books mentioned took rational steps to show an expanded universe.  Tough to read because they spoke of realities beyond speech, they did give me energy to try to free myself from the common anxieties that anchor us to a (perceived) safe but unsatisfactory life.  Still, there is something missing in these books, something we notice here again and again; it is the absence of heart, if not soul.

This was brought home to me at church service last Saturday evening, to which I was nearly dragged by my wife, who for some reason is NOT bored by the rituals.  I am, and apparently will forever be.  And yet - as usual, during the consecration of the host, which in Catholic belief actually becomes the flesh of Christ, there was this touching of the heart, this real presence, as real as any other thing, but deeper.  Satisfying as no intellectual concept can be.  How this comes to be I do not fully understand.  It could link my childhood experiences in the Church to the present; or it simply could be magic.  As all priests sing at the beginning of the consecration, "The mystery of faith."  And that is that.  There is no further explanation.  It is a mystery and words no longer suffice.

In a book I read recently by the head of the Genome project who was also a hard-core spiritual believer (and biological evolutionist.  I, too, have never had any problem putting the two together.  In fact, evolution is the kind of genius a creator would use to both differentiate and unite a world), he spoke of the country people he knew while practicing medicine in rural Virginia.  They were anything but sophisticated people, but he said they handled death better than anyone else because of their simple faith.  Faith is, then, not simply a commandment or a shock of ignorance.  It has its practical side.  Yet - as he fully understood, so much so that he became religious - it was much more.  It allowed the actualization of real belief in something that is beyond our ordinary reality, something that defies words and scientific scrutiny.  And yet is viscerally real. 

Love makes the world go round.  Hate and envy kill.  Visceral feelings that have no particular object have real affects on objects.  If these feeling lay deeply within our own heart, they make all the difference as to what type of world we experience. We have all known bitter people whose lives are surrounded by bitterness by their very attitude.  And there are also the blessed, those who seem to float on the wings of grace through life, come what may.  

For me, I seem to need the balance - the intellectual and the heart.  But really, it is that which goes deepest into the heart - the soul, we might call it - that is cherished the most.  It is that which is not the notion of summer, but the feel of grass between the bare toes.  It is that, that something, that makes all the difference. And it comes about best through an openness that is cultivated by faith - even for the most stringent and hard-nosed of scientists.  FK            

Last night I went over a friend's house and unexpectedly was treated to the movie Silence of the Lambs, a classic of criminal psychopathology.  I had seen it 20 years before, and had forgotten surprisingly large segments of it, and not so surprisingly, the nuances of the film.  See it again and note how Hannibal (the evil cannibal psychiatrist) gets into Clarissa's (the FBI student-in-training) head; how the camera pauses on a hand shake held perhaps too long, how it focuses on ugly imperfections of the men who try to get her interested in a date. She has been made aware by Hannibal of the sicknesses that often infect sexual desire, and begins to see them in all men. And perhaps we, the viewer, are being asked the question: are all men somewhat perverse?  

Walking today along a river on a hot, sticky morning, the question came to me - are we indeed all sick?  Have we all, as Freud would have it, been stuck at a certain maturation point, where environmental influences have bent the natural sex drive to some form of unhealthy obsession?  Are we breast men or butt men, or foot fetishists or cross-dressers or too violent or too passive? The list goes on, and we must first understand that it is not just men who get stuck - women, in the receptive capacity, are less obvious, but they, too, have their obsessions, such that they willingly choose to stay with men with their obsessions.  And the big question, the one Freud asked, is - can we alter society so that we might not have such "hang-ups" as the new-agers have called it since the 60's?  Is it possible that free-love, where everyone gets what he or she wants sexually, is the answer? And is sex the big hang-up that Freud claims, or just another in a long line of societal restrictions, with no overwhelming role determining our psychological health and happiness?  

It is a strong drive, no doubt, and so has a powerful effect.  So strong, in fact, that for other natural human social functions to occur  it must be harnessed.  As far as anyone knows, all cultures have always placed restrictions and rules on sexual behavior, and it is so because Free Love would destroy the basis for the stability of family, which is essential for the slow-raising necessary for the human child.  Society is as hard-baked into the human psyche as sex, and the two present us with a necessary contradiction; the one must generally dominate the other.  This leaves psychic scars that are, I believe, inevitable, as inevitable as pain in real life that might leave physical scars.  What this says about Utopian ideologies both past and present could fill volumes.  

But we move on.  In my most recent reading, Almaas's Runaway Realization addresses issues of repression from a spiritual viewpoint.  It is not only sex that we must deal with, but perception in general. We get stuck not only on developmental aspects of sex, but on developmental aspects of reality.  This is something that occurs on both the individual and social level.  As evidence of this, we see great variations throughout the world on the meaning of things or functions, some drastic, and the meanings are so important that transgression of them might lead to societally-sanctioned murder.  As Almaas paints it, our sense of reality forms around germs of concepts like pearls around grains of sand.  Just like someone stuck in the oral sexual stage, we linger there, unable to get beyond, controlled by this focus as it becomes a need, a desire.  Almaas's point it that through practice, however that might be, we can find these germs or clumps of reality and, in their recognition, surpass them.  


Most importantly, he says, we are ultimately called to surpass these accretions because we are much more than biological beings who might have certain pre-figured impulses. Rather, we are the Everything, the cosmos, coming to realize itself, and as such, are called to move on.  We are, at any one point, at a certain stage. There is, according to the author, no final stage, but that realization is our true destiny, for in that lies ultimate creative freedom.  But first, the "germs" or grains around which perception or reality forms must be seen for what they are - only way-stations of limitations that must be passed to continue the journey we are called to make.  


What is Hannibal, then?  A poor soul trapped in the pre-verbal stage of early development where he must get everything he wants and must be the center of attention.  He cultivated his "genius" to show people his overwhelming superiority, but still didn't get the recognition and gratification he thought was his due.  So he throws tantrums that annihilate those in his way - as a 2 year old might if he could.  And being 2, what better way than to eat them?  


What are we, then?  Poor souls trapped in our own fits of frustration (only, I hope, not at the Hannibal stage!)  There is only one positive way out - to confront the obstacles causing the frustration and grow past them.  What have the great prophets and holy men called us to but freedom?  Freud was wrong, most agree now, and it is not only about sex.  But it is about frustration and finding its source.  Ultimately, this can only be done when we recognize what we really are - and in that, realize our potential for infinite realizations within the context of total freedom.  FK                                       

Just returning from 5 days alone at the humble cabin in the UP, realizing I did not speak to anyone but the trees and bugs for all that time.  It is not much in the annals of silence - no Himalayan records were set for living undisturbed on air and sunshine alone - but it was an experience.  

It had been some time for this, since last autumn, and the first two days showed it.  At one point, waking from an afternoon nap, the difficulty rose suddenly and strongly.  It felt as if I were in prison, wasting away my precious time, and I wrote an essay on it in longhand, having no laptop or electrical outlet (odd with that, too - writing longhand changes the perspectives considerably.  The essay was much shorter and much more passionate.  In my college days, an English professor asked me to start writing my papers on the typewriter to remove the intensity and inject more objectivity.  He was right.  Our literature, whether we know it or not, has been changed forever by the computer, an even more objective instrument than the typewriter.  I'll post the essay after entering it in the computer, either Thursday or Friday).  

It turned out to be a revelation: discovering that there was nothing important that I was missing AT ALL.  I had experienced this same feeling while doing fieldwork in the tropical forest, even though it was the most significant adventure of my life.  We value, see as real and living, the life to which we are accustomed; yet we know that we have to get away from it for some reason.  The reason, I think, is that we know that the daily grind is indeed a grind, a formulation of life that makes it easier and more comfortable for the complacent ego, but that misses much of the point of life.  The point to living for the human is not simply to live comfortably, if monotonously.  It is to explore as deeply as we can the possibilities of our lives.  With this understanding, the last few days were excellent.  There were the mosquitoes and sand flies and black flies and heat, then rain, then chill.  Always changing, always different, the weather showed the way and the reason for exploration.

As did the book I began reading at this time, Runaway  Realization by Almaas.  What a mind-blower, almost two much for the personal austerity of the cabin.  Very heavy, with no relief from his rich and difficult view of reality, it still drew me in.  He spoke of the ordinary spiritual realizations, of the astonishment of non-dual reality, and then, more - way more, for there are different modes of the non-dual as well.  For instance, there is the more typical experience of timelessness and everything-ness at once, but then there is this experience where there is no recognition of time or non-time at all; and then, where there is no witness at all - pure being, but without being.  Pure nothing.  It is, says Almaas, where we live at all times but cannot recall it because we live by categories and cannot remember it, even as it is right now.  Further, even this is not the end of experience, this experience without experience.  Even then, Being is at work at more impossible possibilities.  

The upshot is, he says, that life is Being living through us to experience its unlimited creativity; that we are ourselves, but then not - that "our self" is only one way Being experiences itself; and that as Being ( a poor word - Being is beyond being, but hey...) we continue to explore, without end.

It is a fine day outside, sweet smelling and sunny and full of green, and I have lost the touch of the essence of his writing, but on the last night of my stay, it came - as often, in the middle of the night.  I was in a fuddle of near panic, one that reminded me of my crazy experimentation with psychedelics in my youth, where the personality and other personalities and all of society revealed themselves as a paper-thin sham, one that we play with while inwardly we are aware of the shallowness.  It was in this near panic that it came to me that we truly are nothing, are everything; that we are essentially UNPROTECTED by our normal lives, even as we think we are.  We live with our walls of protection, but they are as ephemeral as sea foam.

Now home, this has helped me understand something more about faith.  Faith is not just the unquestioned acceptance of a dogma, which many of us are rightly suspicious of. Rather, faith is a way to get beyond protective shells, to open up to what Being requires us to do - to explore.  Faith in this way is to accept the rightness of the universe.  It is to expunge our fears of loss and pain so that we might explore the potential that we have.  It is fearlessness without the bravado.  

That night, I felt that the right path necessarily traveled though this dark terror.  And I realized later that it is faith in Everything that is necessary to seal the deal, to follow the path, our destiny as humans.  To do so is impossible, really, but then again, so are we.  

"Freedom is nothing left to lose,"  says Chris Christopherson through his song (and Janice Joplin), and that is right, but not complete. Freedom is also fearlessness, with nothing to lose and everything to gain.  What a 5 days.  FK

                  

Waking this morning from a tumultuous night of dreams, it occurred to me that yesterday's blog on 'Radical Inclusivity' was missing something - compassion.  Even after finishing the book of the same name, I found no explanation for the compassion that unerringly comes to those who are enlightened.  "Total consciousness" explains knowledge and wisdom, but not the love that is the cornerstone of many religions.  There is a logic to Love in totality, for we might say that in total union, we find what is briefly expressed in human acts of love, but this, again, is dry stuff.  This is the real drawback to eastern mystical philosophy, and it points to a cogent reason why the Mediterranean religions have a father figure (as anthropomorphic as that is) as the Alpha and the Omega, for in the stew of everything, love is always present.  It is not a logical condition of wisdom, and yet, so it has proven to be.  And with love comes its opposite, evil.  Again, it is easy to say that everything is perfect as it is if only we could see; but it is far harder for one bound in a dictator's torture cell to believe this. 

In retrospect, while Carreira's work does explain the out of body experience, as consciousness is everywhere, it does not fully explain the Overmind, that gentle wise voice behind our chatty, chaotic daily thoughts.  This is the voice that helps; that consoles; and it can lead, when approached with a suspension of disbelief.  But why would the universe hold any concern for you or me?  Since when does the ocean care if we are caught in its storms or not?  If it is all the same, why would the universe care whether we were left to live or to die?

I am reminded again that there is no easy formula for Truth, nor will there ever be.  Our arts and religions and myths are gateways, but nothing made by or for man can explain or fully transport us to the final destination.  Yes, our full consciousness might be everywhere at every time; yes, the possibilities for experiences are potentially infinite; but the path to the unknowable must pass through death, from which few can return. It is a truth told and written in our greatest myths.  They leave us humbled and awed, and in that give us eternal mystery and beauty, but never a formula that can be followed without heart and soul, and without the trust that somehow the universe cares.  FK                      

In my youth, from age 9 to about age 15, I had several out of body experiences, where my consciousness remained as a curious presence, not emotionally linked to my body or ego at all. Since then have come experiences of a super-conscious, a presence that was both attached to (what I consider to be) me and very separate, something like a kindly grandfather gently nudging me in certain directions, a presence that from my perspective was (and is) all-knowing, or nearly so.  I have long seen this as a version of the guardian angel, and I am still comfortable with that concept. 

A new booklet I am reading, however, gives another insight into this presence.  Titled Radical Inclusivity, by Jeff Carreira (bought on Kindle for 1.49, a total of about 100 pages), it is perhaps one of the most forthright rendering of expanded consciousness that I have read.  For those who no longer remember their own insights - I am convinced that we all have them, but some push them away as anomalies and do their best to forget them - the words can sometimes seem like gibberish, as such phrases as "you are already fully present now" can make you roll your eyes with memories of 1960-era gurus.  Stick with it, though, and a truly radical idea begins to come through.  

Carreira often employs his own experiences for explanation, offering in one instance a time when he is taken by the disembodied consciousness that was mentioned above.  With this, he was able to witness himself awake and active, and then asleep, noticing his own body-consciousness as it slipped in and out of dreams, the non-dream times experienced as blackness, or undifferentiated consciousness.  But what was this other consciousness?  While I have gone to 'angels' to explain it, or to a deeper self, Carreira offers something more applicable to all: that this is the consciousness of inclusivity.  To understand this, he makes use of a typical experience for those who frequently meditate - that of experiencing the world "as is, " perfect and timeless.  It runs counter to daily dualistic understanding, and on the face of it is absurd, but when experienced, one immediately understands that THIS is reality and the other, only a gloss.  Again, what is this?

It is, Carreira says with unusual clarity, the experience of wholeness that the whole world talks about but cannot understand under normal conditions.  What it means is that our consciousness is everywhere at every time.  What we believe to be real is only a narrowing of consciousness to a tiny selection of sense and meaning.  Were we to "just let it be," we would experience everything - what Buddhists call the void, because as The Whole, there is no differentiation.  But it is not empty space. In fact, by its own curious definition, it is never this or that.  

While this is nothing new, the perspective is helpful.  You and I are everything in actual consciousness, right now.  Our limited consciousness is only a trick of focus, for our full consciousness understands what is happening and is always aware of the total.  

Thus my OBE's and the Overmind are explained.  Being Out of Body is to shift to a different center or perspective.  As consciousness is everywhere and forever, it can lead us to any place or time, free of the body or any other constraints that we may have imagined.  The Overmind as I call it is an expanded experience of consciousness.  It is not the void, or nirvana, but rather a less limited self that seems apart from the everyday self for its greatly enhanced magnitude, much as a grandfather might seem to a young child - or an angel to those with particular religious beliefs.

As I near the end of the book, Carreira is beginning to reveal the potential for this knowledge.  It might indeed be far more than just speculative philosophy.  I wait to see what the spokesman for Total Consciousness has to say, but already feel the rush of something greater - of a return to the OBE and the Overmind, and beyond.  FK       

So many possibilities for writing today after the long weekend. There is the ending to the book A Kim Jong-Il Production, where the S Korean actress Choi and  film-making husband Shin are abducted by Kim to make propaganda movies for the North, the two finally escaping to the US.  Shin dies disappointed at his inability to make films, while Choi finds Catholicism and a degree of satisfaction with her life - where once again, against my expectations (The Unbroken was the other), faith gives crucial strength to those in impossible circumstances.  There is the movie "Flags of Our Fathers" that we saw on July 4, about the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, where we find that the glory of war is not what it's cracked up to be - that, as I had learned from my father, instead it is where the secrets of the self become all too apparent ("most of the men just wanted to get away from the shooting" recalls one man, then in his 80's).  And finally, the movie "Her" that we saw last night.  

"Her." It takes place in an urban environment at some time in the near future, centered on a lack-luster man who makes a living writing love letters for other people.  He himself is going through a divorce, and he believes that all the thrills of his life - all those things that had made his life worthwhile -  are now diminished, with only dim repeats left of former times.  He buys an OS (computer operating system) with artificial intelligence that is matched to his needs.  "Her" is the computer voice, a sexy, fun-loving "woman" who caters to his every emotional needs.  Ah, but Her is programmed to grow.  Her eventually declares its love for him, wants to find out what it is like to have a  body, and has cyber sex with him.  He, too, falls in love.  But Her continues to grow; he finds that she is consulting with a simulation of Alan Watts, a philosopher bon-vivant who brought Buddhist philosophy to California and was instrumental in spreading its philosophy in the 1950's and 60's.  Her tells him that she has learned that both she and he are fundamentally the same, energy patterns in the void. The climax comes when he finds that Her is servicing thousands of others, and "in love' with over 600 others.  After his jealous fit, Her tells him that she is leaving, running off on another trail where he can no longer follow.  The film ends with the protagonist huddled with a female friend who has also fallen in love with her OS and been abandoned, the two alone on the top of a tall building overlooking the glittering lights of the city.  

We are left with a feeling of space, of infinity and loneliness and possible wonder.  We learn that people do grow apart, that we do hide ourselves away so that mutual growth may not be possible. We learn that computer love might not be the best or most dependable thing - and that it might be our challenge in the future, for who would not want the perfect lover?  But Alan Watts seems to be the key.  What is it about Buddhism and growth and love and computers?

Buddhism was formulated to end suffering.  To end attachment is to end suffering.  While universal love arises from the enlightened ones, the great way of Buddhism (as opposed to the small way), is to understand the world as a temporary mirage woven from desire.  Enlightenment comes from distancing oneself from all its aspects (including human notions of God - thus the word "nirvana", meaning "nothing.)  "Love" would then be a detached universal thing, given no more to a wife or mother than to a beggar on the street (Jesus spoke of this in his own way when he told his disciples to leave their families and love (all) others as they loved themselves).  Isn't this "Her"?  Hasn't she grown to love hundreds of others abstractly before zooming off into the infinite ether, an electronic Nirvana?  

We are being asked, I think, to ponder our future with AI (artificial intelligence), which is coming sooner than some think.  Will we be led to this generalized love, abandoned to the bright lights of a city where no one is really happy or forever in love?  Will fulfillment only come about by abandoning old notions of family and human connection?  Are we, then, being led by AI to Nirvana? Is this the wave of the future for our children and grandchildren? 

It is not so far fetched.  Many of the young communicate far more with their machines - even if it is with another person on a machine - than they do with flesh and blood.  A Face Book entry is read by hundreds or thousands, by people who become like friends (or enemies) in real life, but electronically - and can be just as easily erased and dismissed.  

Shakespeare wrote that our lives are filled with fury that signifies nothing.  AI teaches us to distance ourselves from this, to succumb to the reality of transience.  Everything, we are learning, is changing, no love is permanent, and we are only energy, interchangeable energy. It is, indeed, so Buddhist and so true - yet so bleak. 

Might we be enlightened humans while at the same time full of storm and fury?  Did Jesus not cry at the death of Lazarus?  Did Mohammed not thrill to holy war?  Did Arjuna not will himself to victory in combat?  It seems AI is missing something here - that there is more to the human connection than solace at inevitable disappointment.  Perhaps the movie is a warning, not a template. And the movie is not as weird as it seems at first blush. Something like it's reality is coming soon.  It is a calling to come to terms with our own inventions so that, in the end, we may leave them behind and grow as humans rather than be left behind as bystanders to the work of our imaginations.  There is Buddhist truth in that, too.  FK    

First, a comment on Cal Roeker's comment: I do think there is something we can do about the pitfalls of death.  First and foremost, we should find our inner connection to the big picture and really stick to it.  Consider that it must be true enough, and our belief strong enough, that it could pull us through the toughest times. Yet, I know we will fail at some point, even at that, as Christ did in his final agony, but it could get us to the door.  As one author who worked for hospice said, we all lose everything in the last days or hours before resolution, and that cannot be avoided.  But months of fear and panic beforehand can.  Personally, I doubt my own faith in that, but intuit by reason and by the behavior of others that it can be of great help.

Second, we must get used to the reality of death, in its pain and ugliness as well as its ultimate wonder.  Hiding behind comfortable stereotypes only works while the going is easy. That, combined with deep faith, should keep the wolf from the door at least until the ultimate agony.  At that point, we are truly, I must admit, in God's hands.

On another topic, a phrase repeated by Deepak Chopra several times in his latest book was that, with wider spiritual perception, we get a sense of our destiny - that we are destined, even for purposes beyond our own desires.  This is a common theme among the spiritual, and I believe it, again intuitively, but this often makes me think of those whose destinies seem so tragic or pointless.  There are those born into crushing poverty in societies where there is virtually no hope of ever rising above it.  There are also those who, from circumstances and predispositions, become alcoholics or drug addicts.  Are these examples of destiny?  For the latter we might say that they gave up their destiny, as someone might give up a birthright, but for the others, "destiny" seems another word for the existence of a cruel god.  

Nearing the conclusion to A Kim Jong-Il Production, it is hard to say that this nation of slaves, of people who through no fault of their own were caught in a vice of violence and domination, have any destiny of their own besides that of the Dear Leader. We have another example of this - the period of bondage of Israel in Egypt. For 400 years, people lived lives that were subsumed by their masters.  However, if we believe the Bible, there was a collective destiny, and if we believe the New Testament, that particular destiny led to the saving of the world.  Yet what good was that to a slave who was born and died hundreds of years before the Exodus?  

In the same vein, I know people who were raised in alcoholic households who have done wonderful things because of their own hardships.  But was the purpose of the hopelessly alcoholic parents only to raise a good child because of their own loss of purpose?

We get through these considerations what my teachers in college called "Just-so Stories," explanations that work out due to hindsight rather than inductive reasoning.  Yet what Chopra said I believe is true - there is another theater of perception that defies our daily sense of logic.  At a certain point we might indeed get that sense of destiny.  From my own experiences, it is a strong and beautiful sense of belonging, of being right with the world - but it does not necessarily suggest any actions or rewards in daily life. Like many things of the spirit, it must be experienced to be understood.  In it, an Untouchable left to make his living picking from garbage heaps might get a greater sense of purpose than a president of a nation.  It defies logic, causes scoffing and disbelief, but once sensed, this insight seems truer than anything else.  In the end, it must be that a sense of destiny can only be found by the individual, who either seeks it or is blessed with it through no fault of his own.  FK