November 2023 - Gaunts House

Gateways.

Gateways.

The not-such-good-news is that the pariahs, those who early in life consciously sold their souls to the devil – the money-speculators, bankers, brokers, agents, priests, politicians, ‘professionals’, conmen, thieves – who would have us believe they are the backbone of modern society, but really predate on their own kind; their way is a consuming cancer. They seek to draw us into their web, which appears against the sky like scaffolding, but it’s a trap. They seek to devour what they can of our beings before discarding the remains. Worse still, they seek to sell their wickedness as a right way for others to follow. Theirs is the path of damnation, degradation, destruction, devastation.

The Good News is that there is another way, the Real Way, but we have to shake off the detritus to find it in ourselves.

“ You have within you a ‘spark’, some call it a ‘divine spark’, some ‘soul’, which are all the same, really. All very well to suggest such a thing, but how can one know it to be true ? By finding out ! We will call this finding-out the ‘original search’, for that is what it is; one’s first real search for what one can absolutely know is true, which turns out to be ‘what is true for you’, as the real you is all you have to go on. The sense of the ‘real you’ is at once both the goal of your original search, your guide, and destiny.

“ Very many humans avoid this all-the-way-deep soul-searching for shallow excuses, like they’re too busy chasing their fantasy, ‘chasing their tails’, and so forth. Very many are too attached to what they subscribe to, to what they have been taught, to what they may want to believe in, to the conventions of a world so crazy it is destroying itself. They know nothing else, no better, nor does anyone else they know, other than some crazies chasing the scent of a dream.

“ The door, or ‘Gateway’, to one’s ‘original search’ can be an ‘end-of-tether’ situation of a personal nature. In other words, humans seem to need a reason – a powerful fed-up-ness, inner desperation, sorrow, ‘nose in the gutter’, end-of-the-line confusion – to bring them to the point of sitting down alone, to work out who in heaven or hell they really are, what life is, whether to live or die. Sometimes, this moment may come to a young person confused by years of poor parenting, inappropriate ‘education’, social pressures, trauma, and the prospect of an adult lifetime ahead with little object beyond some seemingly prescribed compromise of self. Sometimes, it can come a little later in life, when the compromises and confusions have become overwhelming and unbearable. Sometimes, it may come to the aged who have endured a difficult life and would like to live out their days in peace. Many endure, clinging to what have become the chains that bind them, and never come to it.

“ There are other ‘gateways’ to profound inner seeking and learning, too. Imagine a circle over here of the gifted, thems blessed with extraordinary talents, good intentions, well-meaning innocence, bright-eyed trust; and, in that direction over there, another ‘group’ of wind-in-their-hair folk in woods and gardens, on the land with the animals and growing crops, hunting and caring for wildlife and the environment, out sailing, surfing, mountaineering, adventuring, exploring, and the like; and then, over there, the thoughtful and creative, dreamers, poets, artists, sculptors, musicians, singers, writers, wood-carvers, story-tellers, designers, the transformers, creative artisans, and the rest; and again, somewhere else over there, the natural healers, those whose nature or experience leads them to helping and healing others in need, some near-saintly in their provision. And there are some with a cornucopia of all these elements of human-being, too.

“ And one must suppose the majority of nowhere people sitting in their nowhere land, not knowing where they’re going, the confused, the cold, homeless and hungry, the weak, the alcoholics and addicts, the down-trodden, and the ‘idiots’ – those addicted to modern materialism and claptraps – might find reason to begin to find their way, somewhat shakily, (perhaps from the rejection of their children); but very few will get far without help.

“ Any and all of these people can be moved to enquire deeper into the self, towards soul. Many will have had this or that sort of experience – some of them ‘spiritual’, without really paying much attention – too busy with ego, the false self; others paying too much attention, imagining they are special, much too busy with their wannabe selves. But then again, some, here and there, may begin to be touched profoundly, imagining they experience a non-event as guidance, as a nudge, a mystery, a puzzle, a challenge. Then again, one may suffer a series of wonderful, or dreadful, man-made experiences that may or may not have profound meaning. Are such experiences a test, a consequence, an inspiration, or what?

“ So, one might find oneself sitting down alone to embark on one’s ‘original search’. What then ? One comes to realise the only way to get anywhere, to get to the bottom of it, is by being honest with oneself; completely, utterly and ruthlessly honest. Only that way can one progress on the journey. Anything else misleads. So, one’s original searching begins in earnest.

“ To be ruthlessly honest with oneself demands letting go everything one has ever been taught in order to be able to discover what one really thinks and feels; because that alone is our guide; that alone we can know; and that alone is how we learn who we really are. Each one of us is potentially important, whatever that might mean. It’s a battle of right and wrong, of real and unreal, that must be won. One must let go the ego-nonsense, the wanting, and make-believe; perhaps what one’s parents or school have leaned on; what they may have inflicted on the child; prejudice and conditioning ? At every turn, there’s challenge, confusion, conflict to be shrugged-off in order to progress to the depths of one’s being, because that is where one is going; to find out who one really is.

“ If one is brave enough, sometimes desperate enough, possibly both, one may come to perceive one’s essence, which may appear as the yolk of an egg surrounded by albumen, or a sun surrounded by clouds. And the realisation may come that this concept of original essence represents one’s Life Spark, one’s ‘Soul’, within and without. The thing is, this concept of essence within – this soul – is the realised Real You, a silent recognition, but only the very beginning. We can call this essence your ‘spark’, the source of your spirit-energy; and the realisation of it for-real becomes the one and only ‘first-day of the rest of your Life’. ” [1]

This will be the way of survivors.

[1] from ‘Come Sunrise’, chapter two, 2019-20. Gaunts Publishing.

Dimensions of Consciousness. 18nov23.

I suppose I and my contemporaries have been fortunate that our lifetimes have spanned the most extraordinary human era. The years from c.1940 to c.2030 have witnessed more highs and more lows, more change and more colour, more light and more dark than any other era, so far. As of this early morning, I thank my lucky stars for having survived, and ponder, would I have had it any other way ? Of course, the answer is affirmative : so much of the change has been seriously detrimental to so many and so much; a nightmarish drift into crazy commercialism, loss and empty gain, political mayhem, and common destruction. In these ‘Reflections’, I have often projected into another time – after the ‘Correction’ – because I see the modern world paradigm can only destroy itself, which people of my age have witnessed as progressive defilement throughout our lifetimes, clearly-sighted or not. I was a born ‘watcher’, observer, witness, (think of it how you will), albeit influenced by dint of circumstance, naturally one of those countryside or maritime folk with what can appear to be second-sight, but more likely is a translation of intelligence and clear-sight; a double-faceted gift. On the up-side, one can sometimes see a bigger picture, and ‘make provision’; on the flip-side, one’s good nature can be vulnerable to charlatans and lost souls.

‘ Commerce is supported by keeping the individual at odds with himself and others,

by making us want more than we need,

and offering credit to buy what refined senses do not want.

The masses become shackled;

I see how their eyes weep and are desperate – of course they feel desperate –

for something, for some remedy that a poor soul feels needs to be bought.

I find nothing more offensive than a god who could condemn human instincts in us

that time in all its wonder have made perfect.

I find nothing more destructive to the well-being of life

than to support a god that makes you feel unworthy and in debt to it.

I imagine erecting churches to such a strange god

will assure endless wars

that commerce loves.

A god that could frighten is not a god –

but an insidious idol and weapon in the hands of the insane.

A god who talks of sin is worshipped by the infirm.

I was once spiritually ill – we all pass through that –

But one day the intelligence

In my soul

Cured

Me. ’ ^{^[1]}

It is, and has been, the apparently ambitious, but mistaken activities of ‘lost souls’ that undermined the wellbeing of the human species for all the reasons paraded previously; too often seduced by apparent easy comfort and convenience; too often using resources and fossil fuels mindlessly translated as ‘practical necessities’; too often the very opposite of essential awareness, of the vital, foundational breath that is connection to ‘Love, Life, and the Universe’; too often precluding any real choice. While the extreme over-population of humans on earth can appear to offer obvious commercial opportunities, cheap-fixes for consumers actually degrade and pollute our environment, not unlike rodents in the house. That mindless, posturing politicians too often dance the dance is everyone’s misfortune.

Any awareness – apparent cognition and recognition – however woolly or bizarre, may be described as some level of Consciousness. We feed into our consciousness what we will. On awakening of a morning, we might direct ourselves into the bathroom and kitchen to perform ritual tasks, sleepily. On going to bed of an evening, we might follow a familiar nighttime routine – reading, for example – to relax the mind before switching-off the light and snuggling down for sleep. Just for now, we might imagine our regular actions and motions involve an ‘Objective Consciousness’ – beaming our consciousness into and onto whatever we are doing.

While it can be argued that our various senses feed into our consciousness how they may, it is recognised that sometimes some will not, for example when they are ‘switched-off’ by the host, (when sleeping), or by some external agency, (accident, anaesthetic), or deliberately blinkered by a Wrong Culture’s conventions; the contemporary nightmare.

Much has been discussed about dreams and dreaming by others all over. During our deep-sleep, something may stir our unconsciousness just a little, such that we may become subconsciously aware of one or several dream ‘movies’, not unlike a procession of situations, which in our dream state seem real, and we seem to be a part of in some way. Whereas in the dream ‘movies’, we may seem to playing an active part, actually we are dream-observing active parts of our brains linking aspects of our life, sometimes seemingly rationalising, and ‘filing’ (as in office cabinets), particular passing thoughts, observations, uncertainties and fantasies from recent days, sometimes linked to past stuff. And then we pass back into the oblivion of deep sleep. For what it’s worth, we may imagine dream-awareness as ‘Subjective Sub-Consciousness’.

We may imagine Consciousness to have Subjective and Objective aspects. Both Objective and Subjective Consciousness are determined by Mind, our ‘Real Consciousness’, the Us that is in control, (or not), who hopefully tells Brain what to do. However, when Mind is absent, (asleep, distracted, wandering, unrealised), different parts of Brain can lure Us into foolish ways. ‘Mr. X’, a cerebral automaton, may take over, temporarily driving the car, doing mundane chores, even making love to one’s wife ^[2]. Thus, we can project that Mind and ‘Real-Consciousness’ are one and the same; and that an ‘Unreal Consciousness’ can be fabricated by Brain, when we’re not looking, not ‘watching’, when Mind wanders, is distracted, or perverted.

The Consciousness that scribes this piece is ‘Real-Consciousness’, a mix of Subjective Consciousness (receptive), and Objective Consciousness, (translating subjective reception into language, and transferring it into action – ‘watching’, speaking, typing, etc), both present and correct, always maintaining Open Reception ^[3] ; ‘listening’ and at once ‘translating’ and ‘acting’. And I suggest that this awareness is the natural and normal way for Humans to be and to act. And, by association, any human thoughts and deeds, beings and doings, are likely to be misguided without it; to easily go awry.

It follows that dimensions of Awareness and Consciousness need to be realised in stillness, and practised, which could be the foundation of all New Education. How to balance this ‘stillness’ with the natural exuberance of children is quite simple as children, from around 50 months, naturally welcome it, (after a bout of fun and exercise), when practised in communicating, circular sitting groups, regularly, thereafter.

Adults need to unlearn so much indoctrinated claptrap, to re-educate themselves along ethical lines founded in common-sense and conscience, and in Real Consciousness, in profound spirituality, in the Intelligence In Our Soul.

Many of us have become dimly aware of approaching Artificial Intelligence, of automatic mechanisms and robots that can replace human activities more efficiently and in half the time. For some, such will appear as commercial investment opportunities; for most, we will have little choice but to conform, to do what we are told in de-humanised environments. Music for some ‘men in grey suits’, but slow torture for most sentient beings.

And there can only be a deeper tragedy in all this. Robots, like computers, are only as good as what is fed into them. Real Consciousness, imagination, core creativity, the muse, originality, feeling, real care, love, real sexuality, real spirituality, profound stillness, cannot be fed into machines. It appears intimated that the human race will become bound by inanimate robots; possibly, we will become redundant, Ho ! The ‘men in grey suits’ may imagine the most devious among them will control the robots, and the rest of us; but, as always, they continue to delude themselves, and mislead the world all the way to terminal catastrophe.

Time for everyone to Get Real.

First, look within. Find the courage to be completely honest with yourself, and with everyone else.

What have you got to fear ?

^[1] ‘An Insidious Idol’, Meister Eckhart, c.1300AD. trans. Daniel Ladinsky.

^[2] See Colin Wilson’s ‘The Occult’, 1970.

^[3] To Love, Life, and the Vastness; to the breeze in the trees; to beauty, colour, light, and truth.

Let’s hear it for the Good News !

12nov23.

It’s time to ‘shift onto another foot’, to report Good News instead of the endless critical observations of a temporarily failed species; the doom and gloom that’s surrounds so many modern lives, the fantasy play-lives of some. The apocalyptic vortex has only steepened, the madness only accelerated during my lifetime, along with the exponential rise in the human population.

Historically, early European adventurers settled in Britain hundreds of thousands of years ago. Around 8,300 years ago, Britain – Plato’s Albion – became a recognised island ^[1] with regional nomadic peoples ^[2], evolving a natural island culture. Following the Roman departure around 430AD, increasing numbers of north-western Europeans came to settle and spread.

The millions of modern day Brits live amidst a confusing clash of cultures, great and small, with astonishing levels of ignorance about the turn of historical events. In an age of increasing technology and access to information, so many young and middle-aged appear mentally locked-in to a level of shallowness, and subliminal depression, masquerading as contemporary ‘hip’, which difficulties appear to develop as time goes by; possibly, harbingers of the all-round disintegration of this modern era of Life.

And I find, too, that I know so little about what happened politically in the years when the last world-war ended. Britain again faced bankruptcy to American war-aid, and the people elected the third Labour government in the face of Churchill’s wartime triumph. What may have started as objection to inequalities of wealth and power, began to be fermented by trouble-makers ‘on the make’ with the advance of industrialisation and its offshoots around a hundred years ago, some justified, some not. Whereas a mix of cultures has been generally a blessing and a boon, over-population has fermented a growing unrest inherent amongst our peoples.

In northern Europe, Anglo-Saxon and Norman descendants share a Viking heredity, a culture of greed, pillage, and violence. For a thousand years and more, this abusive culture, which spread around the globe, adapting to different religions and ‘trade’, led to the present day come-to-pass, to imminent catastrophes, to the unstoppable trajectories of Climate Change ^[3], such that many people and life-forms will not survive.

That a corrupt culture – expanding delusions of power, wealth and status taking wanton advantage of others – has marched in tandem with escalating technologies and horrific warfare, mass destruction of infants, siblings, parents, and property; so much horror and harm, so much hunger and hurt; and worldwide degradations of species and environments, multiplying migrations, and expanding financial and economic failures, ballooning addictions, sickness and mental-health stresses, relationship failures, and societal breakdowns, is consequential, not coincidental.

So, let’s put all that on one side for now, and move on. Surely, to find a better way for the future can only be seen as a Good Thing ? Tough to find good news within the existing paradigm. That some will survive the inevitable ‘Correction’ ^[4] has to be Good News, surely, looking at things from specie and environmental points-of-view. That the ‘Correction’ will reduce world human population to manageable proportions, (likely, to be between sub-one and two billion, between now and say a hundred years’ time), and that survivors will need to ‘think it all out again’, have surely got to be Good Things, if bitter pills. Other species surviving on planet Earth will surely rejoice.

Good News that the hitherto unchallenged Gods of Religion and Money will of necessity shortly be ‘put to bed’. People everywhere are ‘reviewing the situation’, looking deeper into their hearts and minds. And there’s little chance that any modern political paradigm, so-called political party, or party politician, can survive much longer. ‘All Change’ time. “Three, Four Cheers – Hurrah !”

Warfare will come to be seen as having been a conjoined breakdown in communication and relationship, promoted by fear and greed, ambition, lust, and human failure. About bloody time humans come to reject all that and anything like it. A safer and positive life awaits us all, if only we will contribute our better selves to it. Has to be Good !

Can we hope for awakened populations to ‘get down and dirty’, meaning to ‘Get Real’, honest and open ? Can we hope that populations worldwide will move from the ‘blink-in-time’ ^[5] hidebound nonsense toward a resurgence of Truth and Justice ? Sounds potentially like a Global Ethical Revolution – Gotta be Good !

Like me, you might rejoice if and when the media shed their sensationalist shenanigans, and their influence over prominent people and the public at large. So much nonsense tailored to this prejudiced opinion or that; so many wannabes pandering to journalists and cameras to further their dodgy aims to the extent where few intelligent people any longer pay attention to media, other than a passing glance at absurdly pedalled prejudices; a little like reviewing a bookie’s starting prices. The ‘power of the press’, and of media advertising and undesirable promotions will properly decease in the time ahead. Can only be Good.

The Healing of Humans will follow along lines of ‘tough love’ – not unlike the inevitable pain of an operation to put right an ailment – which can only be a Good Thing. Small, communicating-for-real communities will reintroduce safe and friendly support and stability for their families, children, and oldies. Land and nature-based education and play will nurture children and adults. Competition will largely disappear, outside passing friendly sporting rivalries. Agape – friendly love – may again come to predominate in all our everyday affairs. Honourable romance will again come to be enjoyed within and between communities. Relationships will find surer footings in understanding that it is natural, and all but inevitable, that in time individual parties may grow apart, which can be celebrated. The children and young people will find love and inspiration within their communities. Such dreams are the real stuff of us human beings, not idle fantasies. They are Surely Good.

If the people, priests, media, and ‘men in grey suits’, will lend themselves to it, there is still time to explore and put in place a fresh, pure, positive and compassionate Culture on Earth. Cultures have tended to be founded on, and adapted to prevailing and promoted spiritual grounds. It is there we could first look. It can only be Good to turn from perdition to salvation, from petty politics to profound spirituality, if only for what will turn out to be a few, mainly young survivors.

Spirituality, eh ? a minefield only if people plant landmines of opinion, pain and prejudice in the way. If we can find our way to the ‘paradox of pure’ in human terms – the highest and lowest common denominators, supreme and simple both – we could find a real foundation for a real future for our children and grandchildren. Gotta Be Good !

Shall we ?

And it can be said that the Anglo-Saxons and Normans of these islands and northern Europe have proved to be innovative peoples. One imagines this intelligence has had to do with the seasonally changing climates of the latitudes, and with the necessary address to coastal winds and currents, and essential relationships with wildlife; possibly a mix of the lot. Possibly some traditional instinct honed by aloneness, awareness, natural cunning, and survival.

Here’s a clue : each one of us has to do all our inner work ourselves; has to undertake that long and troubling inner journey that relies on complete honesty to discover who we really are, on our connection to the Vastness, the Great Spirit. The care and nurture of our children and communities, and right education can and in time will lead to an Ethical Revolution, and the only possible route to salvation. Gotta Be Good !

It becomes the remarkable people of Albion and these fine islands to pioneer such a major historical re-think, to nurture Life, Love, and the Universe.

So, what do you think ?

Shall we ?

^[1] Around 8,300 years ago, rising sea levels, from receding glaciation, finally cut Britain off from the Euro-Asian landmass; the final part, from between the Rivers Ouse and Thames, connected to modern Netherlands, we refer to as ‘Doggerland’.

^[2] Some shall we say 6,250 years ago, when there were very few people on the land, nomad adventurers travelled freely where they would. Nomadic hunter-gatherers, and herdsmen, tend to return to different home bases regularly.

^[3] ‘Even more relevant to present-day Global Warming than the current rate of emissions, is the far greater accumulation of CO2 at the Tropospheric Ceiling of our atmosphere, from previous decade’s emissions, that mainly causes the warming. The time it takes ‘Greenhouse Gases’ to reach the Tropospheric Ceiling can be anywhere between 35 to 65 years. Gases swirl, comingling with other gases around the planet’s surface for a while before beginning to rise, gradually. The higher they go the colder and denser the air becomes and the slower they rise, Earth’s gravity increasing its resistance. Once arrived at the Tropospheric Ceiling, they dissipate slowly over a period from a minimum 55 years to centuries. See also next page.

‘For simple calculation purposes, we may imagine CO2 takes roughly 35 years to reach the ceiling and remains there for say 65 years, a cumulative total of say 100 years. Thus, the Global Warming we experience today may be seen as largely the result of CO2 accumulations from around 1920, about 100 years ago, or more likely from between the mid-1800s and early 1900s.

‘The unavoidable conclusion is that future decades will experience ever more troubling Global Warming from exponentially increasing CO2 emissions since c.1920. For example, 2050 will experience warming from the accelerating CO2 emissions in the 1950s and earlier; 2100 from emissions in the 2000s and earlier, and so on : a deadly prognosis.’ from ‘Charting Climate Change’, Gaunts Publishing, 2021.

^[4] Nature always has, and always will find ways to correct or adapt to imbalances.

^[5] In the great scheme of things, a handful of thousand years here and there are no more than a ‘blink-in-time’.

The Conference [1] – The Gods review the Human Dilemma.

The Almighties considered that the central problem on Earth was Human Inadequacy. At root was the devil of human self-interest; envy, fear and greed promoting corruption and wrong relationships, and the misuse of money and material goods. The source of that confusion was wrong spiritual foundation, wrong culture, wrong education, and stunted parenting through generations. Religions were seen to have been a mixed blessing, all too often being linked to politics and ‘wealth’, too often to have been the cause of bitter conflict – human inadequacy.

Humans tend to put their heads in the sand imagining that nothing too awful is going to happen for the foreseeable future, and they tend to see themselves as individually powerless to do much to make a difference without prejudicing their lifestyles, ambitions, hopes and dreams. For many Earth creatures, living and surviving is more or less it. They follow a conscious procession of life from birth through death, ‘flowering’ – putting on their ‘glad rags’ – to attract and mate; sourcing food and water, rearing their offspring from season to season, preparing them to survive by nurturing their beings, adapting, and conforming to wrong cultures.

Humans have been brainwashed into believing that academia, as opposed to ‘real education’, can lead to power and riches. Appalling soulless education has devalued real intelligence, produced witless state-fodder, disempowering adult life and the greater spectrum of children, and tended to diminish the human spirit through depression, disease, stress, diabetes, and cancer, in supporting absurdly corrupt governments and societies.

Science and industry increasingly pollute the planet’s air and water. While humans may marvel or shudder at new achievements and may sometimes imagine it their purpose to push the boundaries of science and technology, these latter have too often proved detrimental to health and well-being. So many of the problems facing humankind and planet Earth are the result of neglect in reviewing so-called science, industry, and technology, historical layer upon layer, quite the opposite of what ‘the system’ would have people believe. Real human achievements are found in creativity : in art, design, language, music, speech, and writing, and in engineering too, but not in real communication as that has been compromised by wrong motivation. Until mutual co-operation defeats the ego-trip of ‘competition’, and until the worth in a human being is found to be the stability and joy she or he shares, humans and the planet will suffer. The essential object for change at this time, has to be the ‘Rejection of, coming to terms with the false Ego-Brain’ in the collective evolution of humankind.

The Conference concluded that it was unlikely that many on Earth had any real sense of where they were in the slide towards apocalypse, except possibly some older people who may have observed and noted the accelerating decline of so much during their lifetimes. The situation is confused by ignorant and self-interested politicians and businessmen, and by different scientific and university researchers arriving at different conclusions, some of which can be misleading, most amended later-on. Added to the mix, ambitious journalists fabricate sensational nonsense; and a determination by certain powers-that-be to withhold information for fear of unrest.

Christianity, the religion, had much to answer for, some of it obvious, and some subtle. For example, ‘forgiveness of sins’ on-a-sixpence has permitted people to behave abominably and get away with it. Western so-called civilization has depended on that. With removal of colour-tinted gels from their eyes, humans might see that the Abrahamic religions had encouraged them to ‘sell their souls to the devil’ ! So much of this sits upon shifting sands. Humans have yet to find a common ground they can subscribe to whole-heartedly. Consequently, they tend to adapt to whatever passing caravan seems to suit them best, often at an unholy cost to others.

Across the globe, humans have much in common, much goodness as well as much un-good. The greatest warmth and generosity are found amongst the indigenous poor; the least, amongst the super-wealthy, often addicted to drugs, alcohol and vacuous nonsense. Unless and until humans find a comprehensive and comfortable view of life and ideology that all can welcome and contribute to, divisions are bound to continue to plague all societies, countries, continents, and individual lives.

Over-population is a dilemma because one of the principal purposes of all life-forms is sexual reproduction to continue a species, to which was added joy, pleasure and ecstasy to make copulation of both the greatest moment and regular comfort. The greatest, most important, most meaningful event in any human’s life is the birth of a new-born. Humans must find a way to manage their populations, to link them to the availability of essential local resources, water and food. It is over-population that caused high levels of urbanisation, over-use of resources, pollution, and sequential catastrophes.

The madness of ‘business’, stealing someone’s treasure only to realise that same treasure is coveted by others, and in time will be taken from them in turn, is the way of materialism. This craziness embraces concepts of slavery and worklessness. Mass-production, to provide for increasing numbers of consumers, relies on the mining of rare resources to fabricate huge machines to churn-out thousands of identical cheap products for the masses in set time-frames, needing to be adjusted and checked at high speed by robotic slaves incarcerated in massively polluting ‘factories’; providing super-wealth for a few. Many of these products are ‘not good’ for humans; many parts are discarded, thrown away, adding to mountain ranges of waste. The failed system fuels madnesses described as consumerism, dysfunction, obesity, and a spectrum of illnesses.

The phantasm that is their fiat-money cannot be ignored, meaning the dreadful plastic notes and fairground coins they have in their pockets. ‘Fiat’ because it is fraudulent and valueless, based on nothing other than trend, whisper, speculative ‘confidence’, and convenience. The concept allows for ‘taxation’ and mega-corruption, which ordinary god-fearing folk are required to fund from meagre resources, and for which aspirant grey clerks, so-called ‘professionals’, dictate the rules, charging unholy fees to administer them.

The approaching apocalypse will occur from a conjunction of several cataclysms: over-population, over-use of natural resources, wanton fossil fuel use and consequent pollutions; accumulation of poisonous gases in the atmosphere; climate change & altered environmental cycles causing drought, water-shortages, famine, wildfires, and migrations. Pandemic, economic and financial collapse, bio-chemical and nuclear warfare are serious threats. All of these threaten cataclysm. Together, they will cause Apocalypse. If human inadequacy is the first and major problem, the next most urgent are over-population, and fossil-fuel emissions, and the CO2 in the atmosphere.

In the near future we can perceive a number of dangerous whirlpools on collision courses, not unlike spatial gaseous attraction. Imagine these different whirlpools dancing in space, and imagine a Big Negative Vortex drawing them toward it magnetically, only to consume them as its victims. This is the image of the Apocalypse threatening demented humans, and all life-forms on planet Earth. On a scale of things, humans are moving from an Era of Betrayal to an Era of Cataclysm. A series of concurrent cataclysms will conclude in Apocalypse, which will all-but terminate human and most species’ life, but for possibly a few straggling, struggling survivors.

The Conference then discussed Solutions.

Humans need Global and Regional Policies to manage population growth, to care for the environment and for all species, and to cease all warfare forever. And they need compassionate cultures to completely re-imagine education. First, they need to undergo an accelerated un-learning and healing process; and primarily they need to re-learn honesty and honour. Within five years, they must have un-learned the ways of the past five millennia. They must re-learn love, light, and laughter, for-real. They all need to practice contemplation and meditation, right education, right communication, and right ‘democracy’.

The ‘Men in Grey Suits’, who have marginalised fundamental good, can only be halted by humans the world over renouncing their foolish ways with non-violent protests in every town and city continuously until common-sense, peace and love prevail. There needs to be a swift revolution of all the structures of society, legislative, judicial, and financial matters, ‘business’ and media. For humans to survive, the changes needed immediately include sensible provision for all – water, food, housing, care, freedom from debt, sensible population management and care, sensible environmental care, and an immediate and total end to all industrial and poisonous gas emissions. There is enough ‘wealth’ on Earth to provide a comfortable existence for all peoples while these provisions are being realised, but only if there is an immediate and total end to the notion of economic growth, globalisation, weapons manufacture, defence spending, and frivolous expenditure on space exploration. Weapons everywhere need to be collected and destroyed. Global Laws for people will need to be introduced to share water and food, and to prohibit violence and theft, introduced by some sort of Global Government; a compassionate assembly of sensitive, sensible and wise people who act consensually and only in the people’s best interests.

New arrangements for meeting, listening, and learning can be introduced that involve everyone as much as they wish and are able. Everyone will be able to be heard. Small collectives of men, women, and children – their choice of numbers – will select and send one or two representatives to a next level caucus. In turn, this group will select and send representatives to the next collective level. In these ways, every person’s voice can be heard, and common sense and conscience can have their say. Caucuses will maintain their numbers to manageable collectives of intelligent, compassionate, and wise people; whatever they agree. At every level, every decision will be made by consensus only, however long that may take.

The concept of consensual groups will need to take root in every province and region on the planet. ‘Politics’ need not be a dirty word. It can come to mean positive and profound thought leading to consensus. Old political and factional movements, political parties and polemic cannot exist, as they are limiting and destructive. No political parties and no political elections. Politicians and diplomats, as they have been known, need to disappear overnight. Their bureaucratic hydras will vanish with them. So-called police everywhere will need to adapt their roles to be carers and helpers, experienced in mediation and counselling.

To take part in a consensual group, a person will need to be honest and open, and to have addressed their ‘Personal Development’. They will need to have come to terms with their daemons and Ego, and to have advanced to be clear and ‘clean’ within, to be free and mindful. They will need to have learned to listen profoundly, and to express only their inner truths, rather than any claptrap, make-believe, dogma or generalisation. To arrive at consensus, people will need to have shed their self-interest, or if and where it exists, to declare it openly in advance. Differing points of view will be welcomed as introducing further vision. An intention to find and reach right outcomes for the well-being of children and communities, and local fauna and flora, that chime with the group collectively, will lead to consensus.

Nation states, as they have been known, will re-arrange themselves according to local identities, language and custom, into regions of either a large enough number of people, or of a land area with its own environmental flavour. Regions will become self-governing, each having an assembly to agree such regional mores it selects in collective consensual discussion, founded in both global laws and local custom. Monarchies and republics will continue for as long as the people in those regions and nation states concur via collective consensus. A good ‘royal family’ is of itself beyond value, positively preventing any other parties self-interested ambition. How a monarch, and their family, is chosen – be that hereditary or selected for life – and what their role is to be, will be decided by regional elders.

Could there be a danger of some quasi-authoritarian rule usurping a region? The collective consensual system will determine what happens, not any other authority. If one or several loud-mouths, or strong-in-the-arm folk, were to attempt to usurp control, the collective consensuses, above and below, could take care of the situation.

Towns people will return to the land to assist with local food production, directed by existing countryfolk, farmers and gardeners. Food supplies will become limited to nutritious foods, rather than flashily packaged junk. People will become healthier and happier, re-finding their natural weight. Health problems are likely to diminish as greater freedoms and camaraderie are re-established, and natural metabolisms reassert themselves.

All earthly religions are misleading. It is the factional competition in humans, theoretically wishing their tribe to be bound to a chosen ‘god’, which fights to the death in foolish attempts to achieve an unreal superiority. Humankind must learn to replace its primitive ways of violent plotting for advantage, vengeance, and supremacy, with love and peace, compassion, and right ways within the Laws of Life and Essence, so as not to muddy their souls.

The laws of humans cannot be relied on as they will never suffice until they are fashioned by and founded on the Laws of Life. Like a lost soul, humankind needs to return to the beginning, to unlearn much of what they have been taught to believe, and to refine themselves to the essence of Life. Humans need to re-format themselves in truth, love and happiness-fulfilment, learn to communicate with all life-forms, learn to listen and receive, living by giving.

It would be helpful if, overnight, monies were to have no value or currency, and formal financial debts of all kinds be nullified. All forms of interest-bearing lending can be prohibited. Hoarded precious metals and wealth can be sequestered to provide for a transition period. Commercial advertising will cease in favour of sober, creative public announcements and advice.

The Almighties cannot intervene overtly to save a child’s life, or a river or tree dying from pollution and disease. Nor can they intervene overtly to save humankind or any life-form. Humans need to learn to accept their ups and downs with grace, so that their inner-selves can approach more closely the Essence of Life.

Humans need to learn that they can do that, not from material thought or science, but from the power of Love and Life in harmony with eternal existence. What they will gain is a sense of realness, an absence of envy, fear, greed and stress, and an increase in peace, happiness, security, and love. Their first need is to become honest. Thereafter, to become immersed in better parenting and profound education.

It will take time to resolve the human dilemmas of ‘wanting’, competition, rivalry, and revenge, to rediscover motivations for life in the vacuum left by their defunct financial system. It will take time for people to stop seeking to take advantage of one another, to return to innocence, and for new systems of understanding human misdemeanours to be evolved and managed.

There will need to be a transition period while humans become adjusted to real ways of thinking and being, while right spiritual, educational, and health systems are evolved as foundations for The Way Forward. Humans will need time to recognise the real values of newly evolved cultural and educational foundations, and for them to take hold; for humans to begin to trust again.

A host of practical emergencies need to be addressed immediately, which many will find shocking. All fossil fuel emissions must cease in quick time, essentially ‘over-night’, which stringency must negate procrastination. Alternative, sustainable means of distribution will result in a reduction of goods available, and a reduction of waste. Using ships and aircraft for carrying oil, gas, and globalised food distribution must cease immediately, also aircraft used for holiday travel. Trucks and all oil-fuelled land vehicles will need to be banned. Instead, only sustainable electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles can be permitted. Excursions and farther travel by barge and sailboat, bicycle, horse, train, and collectively shared vehicles will become the way. Plastics will be eliminated. The imperative of ending all fossil-fuel emissions will be a most immediate challenge. Failing that can result only in a desperate apocalypse for humans and all life-forms on the planet.

Only if humans cut fossil-fuel emissions overnight, and if they can avoid all forms of terrorism and war, and if no pandemic takes hold, they have at most ten years to have turned their primitive ways around and to have renewed their cultures positively to temper the worst of the devastation that approaches Life on Earth.

No ‘Earth’ time.

^[1] From ‘Come Sunrise’, Gaunts Publishing, 2019-20.

Snapshots & Mirrors

Conversations about Mind and Awareness, about how we interact with the world of Life, Love and the Uni. After a night and day of storm rains, the sun shines ’midst clear morning light. Hullo !

Yesterday took me to Salisbury hospital to see my old sis; she in good spirits, despite a fractured hip. One of three such enormous hospitals within easy reach, each with many car-parks; Salisbury has maybe 16 ? We parked improperly in no.8, with several hundred cars, and overflowing. So, I wondered how many patients there could possibly be in all of Great Britain’s 1,200 or more hospitals, bearing in mind that Salisbury, Bournemouth and Dorchester are not even in the top 20 largest ? Then, I realised that many of the car-park spaces will have been taken by hospital staff. Even so, we seem to be a majorly sick nation. All the staff I met were positive and helpful. One told me that many patients were suffering from mental-health problems.

This old man’s regular State of Mind revolves around three general ‘areas’. If we imagine, for example, a rainbow of just three stark principal colours, with gradations of less powerful shades inter-mixing between them; my lowest conscious awareness, (‘colour’), is that which checks out my basic being – hot or cold; energised or tired; hungry; physical equilibrium/balance; which largely equate to the functions of the ‘old brain’ and cerebellum. The next (‘colour’) is my interface with the immediate environment – people, place, ambience, memory, emotion, levels of interest/arousal, learning, etc – consider these the multi-functions of the ‘Limbic System’. And, for me and my spirit, the key (‘colour’) to it all is the sense of oneness with all that is in heaven and on earth. Simple stuff, but no one taught me any of it at any point in my life, and I wonder why.

We need to empower new generations to staff new ‘awake’ educational centres, like Gaunts, and to train young people how to survive ‘The Correction’. There is a danger that would-be interested ‘Limbic System chickens’ might seek to inflict their ‘wound-up’ brains, (minds avoiding the fundamental key ‘colour’), onto others rather than joining-in to learn right ways, and fully involving their Whole Selves. We need to be able to perceive what is important and valuable, and what isn’t. We need to support Minds open to Love, Life, and the Uni; open to their own creative selves, and to Profound Learning – our journeying into The Mysteries.

In a world of accelerating ‘time’, some find it quicker and easier to use their ‘brain’ than to consider broadly and do a job properly. A quick-fix from the Limbic System – an amazing ‘computer’, but only as good as the information fed into it – may appear to offer speedy and/or convenient solutions, rather than taking time to use their Mind : a metaphysical, spatial non-organ offering ‘opening’, journeying, profound listening, weighing things up, to report them thoughtfully and Right. The point is, modern folk may have attuned their cerebrums to contemporary nonsense, shallow thought, to convenience, commercialism, corruption, and to speedy Wrong ways of thinking and being.

It is our Mind that only we ourselves can explore and develop in tune with Love, Life, and the Uni insofar we feel inclined and find the time to, and the courage. There are no short-cuts : the longest way is the shortest, as most short-cuts have to be abandoned in favour of The Way.

The five principal western dictates have misled their peoples for centuries, and led to the dysfunctional world we suffer in :

Ibrahamic Religions – it’s time to Get Real.

‘Education’ – foregoing morals, ethics, basic humanities, individual talents and needs, majoring in skewed emphases on ‘brains’, industrial academia, common content and examination, which has long proved an expensive and pejorative waste of time.

Money – any sense of real Economy has been sold out to international crooks and fudged financial compromises. Fantasies of ‘economic growth’ have relied on inflation, increasing debt, and bankruptcies.

Politics – based in offensive polemic; military-industrial bases (a fudge on ‘defence’); Money; and an absurd notion of franchise – one vote, once every five years, between two mainly rotten and incompetent ‘parties’, involving corrupt ‘policies’, ignoring the public – is in no way ‘democracy’.

Justice – has been sold out to political convenience. Modern Law has little to do with Justice. No sense of Justice can be relied on in any court; nor from disastrous modern policing.

No wonder so many suffer from mental-health challenges. It appears that only a ‘Natural Correction’ can set us back far enough to reconsider these absurdities, and correct the balances.

We might ponder where this mess came from ? We can see that the devils of ambition and greed for status, wealth and power motivated ‘rulers’ in the Fertile Crescent, Levant, and Egypt from around 6,000 years ago, resulting in widespread carnage over and again. More recently, the endless conflicts between European nations and England over religion, trade, and empire-spread came to a head in the fledgling American Revolutionary War of 1775-1803.

Europeans had been exploring the vast tracts of the north and south American continents since around 1495 in search of precious metals and glory. From around 1521, northern parts of South America, most of Central America, Mexico, Texas, most of north America west of the Mississippi, California, and Florida, (the vast Louisiana territory), became encompassed as ‘New Spain’. The Mayflower ‘Pilgrims’ arrived in 1620, the settlers surviving the winter thanks to local native ‘Indians’, and subsequently settled the original 13 English seaboard colonies, becoming self-governing with local elections over the next 150 years. From around 1682, the French claimed a vast area from the north around the Great Lakes and all along the east of the Mississippi, west of the English colonies, down to the Gulf of Mexico, calling it, ‘New France’.

In America, the French and Indian war (1754-1763), between Britain and France, was part of a greater conflict, the Seven Years War, involving many European nations, which included the brief Anglo-Spanish war, ending with the Treaty of Paris in 1763 whereby Britain gained from France the part of ‘New France’ east of the Mississippi, and Spain the western part, the vast Louisiana territory.

The American Revolutionary War, (War of Independence), that began in 1775, was a reaction by the colonialists to increasingly punitive British interference, and taxation without representation; the settlers being supported by the French and Spanish. In 1776, Jefferson drafted the ‘Declaration of Independence’ ^[1]. The war continued until the British surrendered to a French and ‘American’ force at Yorktown in 1781, and a shortage of British funds demanded a conclusion to the war. Another Treaty of Paris acknowledged American Independence.

In 1802, Napoleon ^[2] forced Spain to cede the vast Louisiana territory to France, and in 1803 sold it to the newly formed United States of America; both conveyances promoted by national shortages of funds in the widespread wars and turmoil of the times. With the ‘Louisiana Purchase’ – 828,000 square miles from the Mississippi to the Rockies, and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, for $15 million, (3 cents for every 100 acres) – the fledgling United States more than doubled its size. In the following fifty years, the US added Florida, Texas, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico such that by 1854 the land mass that we think of today as the United States was established, only 170 years ago. Alaska was added in 1867, and Hawaii in 1898, just 125 years ago.

1848–1852 brought 300,000 prospectors and entrepreneurs to the Californian Gold Rush; established the city of San Francisco; revitalised the American economy; and all but eradicated the Californian First Nation cultures. In 1859, Native Indian ‘oil-seeps’ in Pennsylvania were seized, and the first oil well developed for industry. In 1861, eleven southern states seceded from the Union, and the Civil War began, which ended in 1865 – around 850,000 Americans had killed each other – and, shortly afterwards, President Lincoln was assassinated.

From before 1863, Americans had been poisoning and massacring First Nation Indian tribes, and slaughtering buffalo, in their expansion west, building railroads, trampling every agreement made. In 1868, Custer and federal troops massacred Indians in their reservation. In 1876, Chief Sitting Bull triumphed at the Battle of Little Bighorn, where the idiot Custer was killed. The following year, Chief Crazy Horse surrendered, and was bayoneted by guards. In 1881, Sitting Bull was arrested, and shot in the head. Reservations were trashed. In 1890, hundreds of Sioux Indians were killed by US troops in a massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, an appointed reservation. Largely eradicated in the constant Indian Wars, First Nation peoples had largely disappeared from history by 1924.

It’s worth noting that the First Nation peoples, the Real Americans, were far more culturally grounded, sensitive and honourable than the ‘new Americans’ – see George Catlin’s extensive letters and paintings from 1826, published in London in 1841, and 1844; the earliest of their kind.

In 1881, President James A. Garfield was assassinated. In 1894, the first commercial moving picture film was released. In 1901, President William McKinley was assassinated. In 1906, the San Francisco earthquake left 3,000 dead, and destroyed 4 square miles of the city. In 1911, Kalem Studios started making moving-picture films in Hollywood. The movies produced the largest part of the American income for the first part of the 20^th. century. And America became the largest oil producing nation in the world, leading to its rapid economic expansion; much of American expansion guided by Jewish and quasi-Christian interests. Constant mega-violence, murder, corruption, destruction, and fantasy – a terrifying national history.

To my mind, the expansion of fledgling American interests, (it’s such a young nation), majoring in glitz, glamour, greed, corruption and extreme violence, coinciding with global advances in industrial and early technological discoveries; and the post-WW2 American commercial invasions in Europe, Asia and Africa, have deleteriously affected the equilibrium of the world. We would be wise to couple that thought with the historical madness of European nations, their misguided, greedy and violent ambitions for status, wealth and power; their populations oft perverted by religions and politics; and intelligences dulled for centuries.

Despite the United Nations building being in New York, the USA has constantly sought to manipulate and oppose it, ignoring embargos, too often denying common-sense and popular will. In particular, huge American military, financial, and political support for Israel has long denied any peaceful resolution in Palestine; coupled with bullshit political play-acting.

‘Leaders of the Free World’ ? I don’t think so; only ‘leaders of idiots’. American military interference across the globe in my lifetime – their wars in Korea (1950-1953), Bay of Pigs (1961), Vietnam (1965-1975), Gulf War (1990-1991), Iraq (2003-2011), Afghanistan (2001-2021), and very many military ‘interventions’ all over – invariably proved to have been inept and disastrous, inflicting massive casualties on civilian populations, and widespread damage; and controversially inflating the US economy. Currently, USA suffers from huge internal problems economically, politically, with its infrastructure, and so on, flirting dangerously with a possible second Civil War. Unfortunately, since WW2, the UK has tended to follow the US subserviently, suffering similar problems. This, a snapshot from the last hundred-odd years. Not dissimilar nightmares have occurred in every would-be ‘power-block’ worldwide throughout history.

Little wonder there’s so much depression, sickness, so many mental-health issues everywhere, much of it the consequence of insidious American influence across the globe. Many people suffering from confusion and despair, struggling to survive in increasingly difficult circumstances, may be unaware of this story of modern western madness that lies behind their own difficulties, and behind the current downfall of Life on Earth.

How do you solve a problem like America ? ‘Many a thing you know you’d like to tell her; many a thing she ought to understand. But how do you make her stay, and listen to all you say ? How do you keep a wave upon the sand ?’ ^[3]

We need to look for and find solutions, if not for people living today, for survivors of ‘The Correction’. As a young Gaunts student said recently, “We need to get real with ourselves and others. And we need to fall back in love with nature, again.”

Maybe, survivors will return to the greenwood, to the days and ways of Merry England before she ruled the waves ? Perhaps, they could learn from First Nation Indian cultures ?

“Upon suffering beyond suffering, the Red Nation shall rise again, and it shall be a blessing for a sick world,

a world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations. A world longing for light again.

I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colours of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life

and the whole Earth will become one circle again.

In that day there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding

of unity among all living things,

and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom.

I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells.

For when you are at that center within you, and I am that place within me,

We shall be one.” ^[4]

^[1] The ‘Declaration of Independence’ (1776) said, “… We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. … That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. …” The Declaration did not extend such rights to slaves, African Americans, or First Nation Indians, until later.

From 1778 to 1871, and following the ‘Louisiana Purchase’ and the expansion of white settlers into the ‘Wild West’ lands of millennia old First Nation American Indian Tribes, the United States government entered into more than 500 treaties with First Nation tribes. Every single one of those treaties was violated or broken by the US government.

^[2] In 1789, caused by national financial poverty, an enlarging gap between rich and poor, and widespread distress, the Storming of the Bastille announced the French Revolution. The National Assembly enacted various democratic measures, but as a result of the Revolutionary Wars against Britain and European monarchies, and consequent economic depression, the impoverished and desperate mob stormed the Tuileries Palace, arrested the King and Queen, and the reign of terror had begun. The King and Queen were executed by guillotine in 1793, along with some 40,000 others over the next six years.

A young, insecure and ambitious Corsican, Napoleon Buonaparte, brutal and ruthless, supporter of the revolution, republic, and meritocracy, rose swiftly through the military ranks. In 1799, in the political chaos of the time, following a coup d’état, he and his allies created the ‘French Consulate’, which, after rigging an election, installed him as its leader, he becoming military dictator. After a series of brilliant military shenanigans across Europe, aping his heroes Alexander and Caesar, he declared himself First Consul of the new Republic. In 1803, Napoleon, tired of north America, and in need of funds to fight the British, sold the vast French Louisiana territory to the new United States. In 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of France. From 1805, his French armies and navies were repeatedly defeated by the British and British-led coalitions. Imprisoned on the Island of St. Helena, he died of cancer, in 1821.

^[3] From ‘The Sound of Music’, Rodgers & Hammerstein.

^[4] Chief Crazy Horse, 37 years, Oglala Lakota Sioux, while smoking a pipe with Sitting Bull, four days before he was murdered, 1877.

Recollections

An elderly widow telephoned last evening, “I want to hold your hand”. She talked of her memories of home in the hills of India, of her father and her husband, and of recent encounters in the town where she lives. “It was a Beatles’ song”, I told her ^[1]. In her urgent need for touch and love, she didn’t welcome the quip. A time of memories, of a lifetime’s experience, of love and laughter, of kindness, of simple pleasures. “I’m ready to go”, she said, tired of being alone amongst unreal modern folk, “ready to pass”; ready to go to her long-home.

This old man’s memories vary between actual and semi-conscious ephemeral ‘movies’, some one cannot place. ‘Were they real’, or a taste, a mental impression of something, a moment that may have happened ? Getting off a bus in the middle of nowhere, looking about, wondering. Standing on a platform, watching a train leave the station, aware of the difference between travellers on the train and thems left behind; of the difference ‘in time’ experience.

Childhood memories of steam trains : of great polished engines in great stations, and of local trains at local country stations. Standing on a railway bridge, looking down the rails at a train coming, puffing black smut and smoke over us as it passed beneath, to our horror-full delight. Porters of those days, walking up and down a country platform, calling the name of the station for train passengers, lest they missed it. Running across the rails ‘illegally’, instead of walking across the station bridge; getting ticked-off by friendly, aping-cross railway staff. In the country, counting the number of a train’s coaches as they rushed past, at a distance; driving under a bridge as a train passed over the top, was considered ‘lucky’. In those days, we were all ‘Railway Children’, before the political ‘fix’ of trade-unions, cheap Arab oil, and filthy diesel.

In one’s teens, boarding a Comet 2 airplane, knowing it was suffering from metal fatigue, aware that we may die; that the adventure to a foreign land was worth the peril. The proximity of death, post-war, added an immediate flavour, made life more real than it is today. The aroma of wine, whiskey and cigars in an adult’s drawing room the morning after; delicious ! ^[2] Nowadays, constant political failures have introduced restrictions to our living that cauterise real experience. So many have become ‘nowhere people living in a nowhere land, making nowhere plans, for nobody’ ^[3].

Or, is it that the multi-colourful recollections of our early lives’ freedoms and imaginations contrast with the stress and grey constraints of modern life ? Is it that nowadays most people live in towns and cities, like rats in a maze, rather than in the fresh-air and would-be freedoms of the country ? Whatever, people tend to be more distant than they ever were, somehow more fearful. Contemporarily confused genders, and ‘wokeness’, disturb our everydays. I want to hold your hand ? Fun and friendly relations have become liable to sensational publicity and prosecution. ‘As bad as these days may seem to us, our kids will remember them as the good old days.’

The state of our modern minds so often seems to be determined by the pressures we feel ourselves under. It appears that contemporary pressures have only escalated through the centuries, possibly from a wish for better standards of living, practically and materially different for different levels of society; which notion was grown politically into the dangerous fantasy of eternal ‘economic growth’ ^[4], packaged and sold to the public, much like religion. Trouble is, modern commercialism invokes corruption at every level from national politics to local derring-do. Modern commercialism is invariably Wrong – destructive, dishonest, improper, often illegal; in no-one’s interests except ‘the crooks’, as they can make a ton of money manipulating the greed/fear combo in victims and in other would-be commercial miscreants, at the expense of Joe Public and our world ^[5] ^[6].

My 80 years have witnessed the extraordinarily swift decline of almost everything that matters, along with the escalation of fear and shallow thinking, extremism, and present dangers on every front. It is inevitable that elderly folk recall the joys and traumas of childhood, in particular the sense of liberation in what were our coming-of-age years. Those years for this old man, included a spell in the British Army on the Rhine, and the unique era of freedom-genius in arts and music of the late 1950s through 1960s, into the early 1970s ^[7]; before those days came to suffer from intrusive grey ‘authorities’, and from over-use of experimental social drugs. A phenomenal, mystical and wonderful period of peaceful social revolution against the sorry ineptitude of straight-laced political controls, becoming all but stamped out by the ‘grey suits’ of many western governments, spanned our coming-of-age through to the birth of our first children.

The young and many rejoiced in the freedoms pioneered by creative genius in many arts, particularly in the music of the day, which reflected their feelings, and enlivened them. New rhythms, chords, musical emphases introduced new ideas. Amongst many excellent artists and their passing joys, the Beatles were the most original and most influential worldwide. Their development from ‘rough-rock’ in Liverpool and Germany to refined and soulful, brilliantly scored songs called to people everywhere, and lifted our spirits. The release of ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ in May 1967, produced by George Martin, blew everyone’s minds; a psychedelic musical classic for all time.

In 1968, a small music festival was held near Ryde in the Isle of Wight. In 1969, following the Americans landing on the Moon, and shortly after the Peace & Music ‘Woodstock’ festival in New York state, it developed into an astonishing major public event, featuring amongst others, The Moody Blues, King Crimson, Richie Havens combo, the young Joni Mitchell, The Who, Bob Dylan and The Band; both festivals attended by c.400,000 people; the largest peaceful gatherings of all time; and the ‘grey suits’ fear of the potential power of the young seemed to be realised. In subsequent years, festivals grew even larger, before becoming ‘controlled’, or stamped out ^[8].

The friendships and fun and creative work of those days, along with profound spiritual seeking, made me and contemporaries, Who We Are. For such experience is the stuff of life, of love, that everyone has a right to; always remembering that we have but one Right, the Right to Life.

Heady times, heady memories, a trip down Penny Lane and to Strawberry Fields ^[9]. And we, the ‘flower children’ of those days, have found ourselves obliged to bow to increasing and unworthy pressures inflicted on us by the seemingly inhuman ‘grey suits’, their commercialism and corruption, in their insistent drive to self-destruction, ever denying our Right to Life and Love, to laughter, freedom and joy, and to the silence beyond human understanding.

Our kids must wonder if we capitulated to the ‘grey suits’, whether we joined their shabby ranks ? Yesterday, my niece, a therapist and university lecturer, thanked me sincerely for opening for her a different window on life; so mebbe they do have a taste of it. I pray so.

Consciously smile at gloomy strangers in the street, as a gift. Give a flower to uniformed police and traffic wardens, with a silent meaningful smile. Hope is pretty much all what we have left; ‘die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt’ ^[10].

“Here comes the sun, and I say, it’s alright.

Little darlin’, it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter;

little darlin’, it feels like years since it’s been here.

Here comes the sun, and I say, It’s alright.

Little darlin’, the smile’s returning to their faces, little darlin’,

it seems like years since it’s been here.

Here comes the sun, and I say, It’s alright.” ^[11]

and, “I want to hold your hand”.

^[1] 1963.

^[2] The original UK ban on smoking in public was ‘inspired’ officially by a public-health perception, but actually by the notion of saving the NHS money. Since the original ban, the escalation of public mental-health problems has escalated exponentially, costing the NHS far more. We can ponder the connection. Man has ‘smoked’ for somewhere around 500,000 years, possibly since inhaling the smoke of herbs on a fire, finding it calming, socially valuable, and inspirational.

^[3] from Beatles’ song, 1965.

^[4] “People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!” Greta Thunberg (16 years old) at the UN summit for Climate Action, 2019, after sailing the Atlantic ocean. She was arrested in London a few days ago for protesting.

^[5] NB. If we must be ruled by money, then ‘Making a Surplus’ is generally sensible; ‘Profiteering’ generally anti-social.

^[6] “The best things in life are free, But you can keep them for the birds and bees. Now give me money, That’s what I want. You’re lovin’ gives me a thrill, But you’re lovin’ don’t pay my bills. Now give me money, That’s what I want. Money don’t get everything, it’s true. What it don’t get, I can’t use. Now give me money, That’s what I want.” (cynical song by Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford, recorded by the Beatles in 1963).

^[7] Coinciding with the catastrophic American entry into the Vietnam War, 1965-1975.

^[8] In 1971, The Isle of Wight County Council banned festivals at the historic and highly successful Ryde site.

^[9] “Living is easy with eyes closed. Misunderstanding all you see. It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out. It doesn’t matter much to me. Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields. Nothing is real, nothing to get hung about; Strawberry Fields forever.” Lennon and McCartney, 1967.

^[10] ‘Hope dies last’.

^[11] George Harrison, 1969.

Procession of Time

If we imagine that Man, having evolved a higher consciousness, may have some purpose and destiny; then, that the Procession of Time through the ages, was more or less inevitable, possibly to some extent ordained within a parameter of free-will, is almost unavoidable; it follows that Humans had to go through what we may see presently and retrospectively as historical trials and traumas in order to be fashioned, to fashion ourselves and our consciousness towards a sought-for mould, individually and collectively; or self-destruct. Almost.

Boom ! A lot to ‘take on board’.

Need a drink ?

Mebbe a joint ? [ Have just re-read Gilbert Shelton’s ‘Fabulous Furry Freak Bros’, after 60 years. Passing classics, and very funny ]. NB. Steer clear of all man-made chemical drugs. [1] [2]

We’re talking about a ‘Procession’ not of some 200,000 years, (Homo Sapiens), but of some two and a half million years or so, (Homo Erectus). OK, if you want to be picky, of some 30 million or so years, (Hominoids). [3] Sounds far-fetched ? Take a look around. Yes, we are some sort of mini-microbes in some vast universal experiment, or destiny, apparently egotistically selfish and destructive, valuable only when we have our minds and beings in a universally positive paradigm. Almost.

And this notion puts our contemporary terrestrial understanding of Time under a different lens. It’s as though modern adults exist as toddlers reaching for universal understandings that their parents and teachers deny [4]. ‘Time’ for a child is a wholly different medium to adult Time, (let alone ‘Time’ for an old man). So much depends on our state of being mentally and physically, much of the latter dependent on the former; much of our mental states consequent on levels of family and community care, love in childhood, and in adulthood.

The suggestion is that humans have purpose, and possibly a universal destiny that we have yet to discover for ourselves. It likely being of a universal nature, we may imagine it to be of positive benefit to Life and all life-forms, not what we as a species have been pursuing; not the greed, chaos, destruction, warfare [5] and despair, that has continually and presently threatens life on earth, that creative thinkers and writers have bemoaned for centuries. I wonder, Were one able to take a step back from the planet, to view the state of humans and life on earth from afar, what one would make of it ?

What we appear to have progressed positively over the centuries are our use of fresh water – for cleanliness and hygiene, the faucet, washing-machines, plumbing and drainage, and the creation of canals for agriculture and transport – electricity, (questionable), the creative arts and music, the evolution of writing and the printing press, and sophisticated fashioning of clay and wood. The rest appear as passing industrial technologies, abandoned as time moves on. Then there’s the mega question of ‘Civilization’, which has more to do with obscene high-rise cities than the evolution of civilised humankind; not entirely my idea of evolution, and possibly not ‘the gods’’ either ?

Arguably, our psycho-emotional negativities have squandered time and practically everything else. Time has become constrained, so much is happening so fast, much of it challenging, that mere mortals struggle to keep up. [6] It seems that the speed of what we have created artificially – ‘the busy-busy’ – cauterises real feeling and human exchange, runs us off our feet, and damages our mental health, whomever we may be. Optimists imagine we humans can continue in the same mould for years and centuries to come. Amidst the breakdown and chaos that surround, Time does not appear to be on our side.

Have we complicated ourselves, become more complicated, more confused ? Do we need to simplify ? Have we been misled ? Undoubtedly. It would appear that our greed and its fellows of a challenging nature have run amok for five or six thousand years – a blink in time – and continue to, to the advantage of a few un-good people, to the detriment of the great majority, up to some contemporary point threatening widespread collapse.

Can we come to our senses in time ? Can we hope for some divine intervention, in time ? The suggestion is that the two are connected; that Ibrahamic religions may have misled their followers [7]; that the People of Earth need to work it all out for themselves, individually, to ‘go deep’ and for-real; and to come together to express themselves and to listen to each other profoundly, setting aside their personal stuff. How currently alive humans respond to the imminent collapse of life as we know it will determine the future for our surviving children and grandchildren. Almost.