Survival of the Fittest?

Poor Darwin, little did his know…

For how long? For how long will the fittest survive?

Does it matter? Shall we live long enough to contract the dozens of diseases which seem to be the predominantly the domain of the old?

BBC News reports that “In 2010, 1.3 million of over 65s had cancer. The figure is predicted to reach 4.1m within 30 years.” Add to it Alzheimer’s, dementia, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, angina pectoris, hypertension, strokes, various other heart diseases, and start thinking. Isn’t nature trying to tell us something?

What?

Think about it. It seems that Nature (capital N, if you will) is telling us that we are doing something wrong.

It used to be that some claimed to be World War II survivors. Then came survivals of massive earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and some other major natural disasters. Now we take a few pills and we call ourselves “cancer survivors”, “liver transplant survivors”, I heard of “car-accident survivors”. Soon we shall hear of “headache or stomach-ache survivors”. Then the name will apply to Asian flue and Syphilis.

Give me a break!

However, with the exception of fairy stories propagated by the Vatican, no one ever was declared a “life survivor”. Not one. There may be a reason for it. If the illustrious scientists extend our death throes for a few extra years, will that really make us happy? Is that what we want from what most call “life”? Our body matures, stops developing by the age somewhere between 18 and 25. After that? Well, after that for a little while we maintain our equilibrium then, first slowly, then faster and faster we advance towards death. It’s a long, often painful, process.

No matter how many trillions of dollars of our money the scientists spend trying to extend the dying process of our bodies—we shall die.

Guaranteed.

It’s not a question of if only of—when.

Isn’t it time for people to begin thinking of a “different type” of survival? Something that does not involve our slowly dilapidating, gradually incapacitating bodies; our waning memories, our shrinking sight, hearing, muscle tone…

When will people accept that they are immortal? Not their bodies, which are subject to the laws of the physical universe that the scientists are not even beginning to understand, but their real Selves. 

If you'd like to know what might lie in our future try one of my novels from the Winston's Trilogy. It is called Winston's Kingdom. 

 

Atlas Shrugged as do the Republicans

Let me make one thing quite clear. At heart, I am a republican—but not in a million years would I vote for any of the versions of republicanism that pollute the American expression of the concept today.

The young man aspiring to becoming a VP of the USA is said to be an admirer of Ayn Rand. As a matter of fact, so was Alan Greenspan, the ex-Chairman of the Federal Reserve (the only organization in the US which seems to operate outside the laws of the land) and he hasn’t done the economy much good either. Or so I am told.

So let them take the example from Atlas Shrugged, a novel I would have enjoyed more if it were exactly half its length. Nevertheless, Ayn created a reality she called “Galt’s Gulch”, where the “brains of the world” (i.e. of the USA), built a town protected from the ungodly eyes of the masses by a “ray screen” of invisibility. There they, the (principally business or financial) brains, patted each other on the back, telling themselves how magnificent they were, how marvelous it was to be protected and apart from the working classes. A little like a “Gated Conclave” of the rich in Florida.

I have a suggestion.

Let the rich, the 0.001% of Americans, use their untold billions (trillions?) of private money they’d accumulated to buy an island, somewhere, anywhere, and follow Any Rand’s solution. Let them create a “Mitt Gulch” or a “Ryan Gulch” and protect it with whatever means they want. I promise not to come near it. Let them stew in their own fat.

There would be but one condition. Only the rich would be allowed on the shores of the Mitt/Ryan Gulch. No one whose hands were ever soiled by an honest day’s work would be allowed to join the “chosen few”. Oh my—this sounds almost biblical, which is just as well. The present day republicans love to misrepresent the Bible.  (“Don’t love your enemies, kill them instead. You make more money that way.”) Let them enjoy their hidden Atlantis. And good riddance.

I give them about a month.

Then they would beg for the “workers” to come and be exploited by them. For minimum wage, of course. They would prove, once and for all, that Daniel Defoe was right:  that “No man is an island unto himself”. No matter how rich. 

PS. You might want to try my version of Atlas Shrugged, the Headless World, which at least offers a lasting solution. You might enjoy it. 

Nightmares a Foretaste of Tomorrow

Each time a man or a woman draws a gun on TV—in entertainment—they diminish our concept of the value of biological life. They diminish the value of the greatest gift the omnipresent consciousness evolved for us. They diminish our concept of becoming to meaningless entertainment.

The universal law holds that ignorance of law is no excuse for breaking it. Hence nightmares.

Nothing is eternal except consciousness. It is intangible and thus it cannot be destroyed. Nevertheless, people who diminish the incredible gifts that the benevolent universe has showered on us are likely to be subject of aeons of nightmares. Real or imagined killers, for whatever reason, will face ongoing nightmares of their own making. This fact should be enough to stop killing.

Why?

Because we still don’t understand the concept of true reality. The fact that an actor pretends to kill a human body is of little consequence. It’s what it does to our minds, to our state of consciousness that matters. Pretending to kill is as deadly to the purpose of biological life as physical death itself. What matters is not what happens to our bodies, but to our minds. And those seem to enjoy death.

And death, mental death, plunges us into stasis.

But… let’s face it, not many believe such contentions; and this in spite of thousands who have already experienced the foretaste of nightmares in their sleepless nights.

We like to pretend to kill people, on TV or in the movies. It’s such fun, isn’t it? After all, as Arnold Schwarzenegger once explained, “it’s just pretending”.

Well, in heaven that’s all there is. ‘Pretending’ is the only game in town: the only reality. Whatever is in our consciousness becomes our reality. And that includes wholesale murder, no matter how entertaining.

The problem is, again, that we cannot kill our consciousness. If we enjoy murder, crime, stealing, rape, perversions, and so on, and so forth, all these experiences become anchored in our subconscious. And later, after we leave our body, there is only one reality. The reality that we have created while enjoying all those juicy, bloody tidbits on TV. Sooner or later we shall learn that whatever we store in your subconscious becomes very real in our future. As Yeshûa said, “the father judges no man.” We do a great job of it ourselves. We are the sole judges of our actions. We alone bear the consequences.

And we are immortal. Future will last a very long time. And whatever we see on TV, is recorded, forever, in your subconscious. Be it heaven or… hell.

Our salvation does not lie in the words of any preacher but in our own, personal, convenient, remote control. We can either use it or pay the piper. No matter who blows pipes—angels or devils.

It’s our choice.

The Brain—a 100 billion-neuron puzzle?

I had the pleasure of listening to a Charlie Rose program, which displayed the opinions of learned doctors, including a Nobel laureate, analyzing the workings of the brain. Charlie is good. He managed to put together a team of people who in smiling unison chose to present an abundance of ‘what’, but not a single ‘why’.

Just imagine. A group of distinguished specialists in the field of neurology, with a good dose of Ph.D.’s, all sharing with us their years of study, years of research delving into the mystery of our brain.

The human brain. The same structure as the brains of other mammals, a bit larger (of course, elephants leave us far, far behind), more convoluted perhaps? We have larger bodies than most primates; hence we need a larger, more complex operating system. Squashed in our skulls are 80 to 120 billion neurons. The learned doctors didn’t really know. Perhaps a few more billions of dollars for research and they will buy an abacus to find out. 

It is a very complex structure, they said. Very complex. The most important part, the cerebral cortex, takes care of executive functions such as self-control (this doesn’t work so well for me), planning, reasoning, and abstract thought (these don’t seem to work for most other people). The scientists even know which parts are connected to which specific roles, such as languages, or seeing, and listening, and even remembering, though they weren’t quite sure about that last one.

“It’s sort of flexible. Malleable? Adaptive?” they marveled.

Marvelous, they all agreed. So did I. The most marvelous, complex biological computer. It’s all there. It does everything… we don’t know how, yet, but, well, let’s face it, we only got down to it, in earnest, about thirty years ago, when we could peek inside. When we could observe what’s there. When we could scan the neurons.

“Give us more money and you’ll see what else we can do. It’s expensive, you know,” they agreed in unison. “Very expensive.” 

I listened spellbound. For an hour.

Let me explain.

In all this time not one, not a single one of the learned scientists—not even the Nobel Laureate—even suggested, even implied, never mind asked—who is the operator of this magnificent computer? Who operates the cerebral cortex? Who gives it instructions what to think, what to work on, and when?

I prefer not to ask. After all, we have ten times as many viruses in our body as we have cells. Who can tell who gives the brain instructions? They sounded like a group of technicians discussing how the engine of the $10 million Formula One racing car had won the race—not once mentioning the driver.

Still, someone or something must give instructions. 

Judging by Charlie’s program, it couldn’t have been any of his illustrious guests. They only looked at the results, never bothered about the cause. Otherwise, surely, wouldn’t someone have asked?  

Surely, they all must have suffered from some DELUSIONS. 

Matter

Nothing, absolutely nothing, can exist in ‘heaven’ unless it was formed on ‘earth’. Or on any other physical, ‘material’ planets that proliferate the material universes. This is what, unfortunately, Peter had failed to explain to Paul. 

Heaven, like Hell, is nothing more than a state of consciousness. To give it substance, we must create it. It must be created from that which originates in the source of infinite potential, and then split into an illusion of duality. It is the duality that ultimately gives the intangible source a tangible reality, at least in our consciousness, a reality that can be experienced again and again. This is why the master of reality, Yeshûa, is reputed to have said: “I would that you were cold or hot”.

He was advocating duality.

He was referring to the necessity of the material world in which we, the sole-creators of heaven, must live fully, must immerse ourselves in the life of the material universe completely, and live lives filled with new experiences, yet always knowing the none of it is real. What we are really doing is enriching our consciousness. Finally, while immersing ourselves in ‘materiality’, we must never forget that this is not our true home, that here we are merely passers by.

Light is white, yet aren’t all colours contained within it? Dualistic reality is what prisms to do light. The same is true of everything that emerges from the source (you can think of it as the unconscious). Only when split into its infinite diversity can we fully appreciate its richness.

There is another problem. While we are all individualizations of the Omnipresent Consciousness, let us never forget that at a higher level of perception the concept of ‘you’ and ‘I’ tends to diminish, if not actually disappear. This is a little hard to understand, but by making the material reality a ‘better’ place, we enhance the inner reality for everyone. Some say that is the only reason why we were born: to make this a better place. Now we know why.

Nevertheless, each time we enhance the material reality, we enhance our own ‘private’ home (our subconscious) that some call heaven. It is our individualized way of looking at reality that makes the heaven ‘private’. Not the consciousness itself. The riches are available to all, but not all can perceive them.

Does this make things any clearer?

And of one thing we can be quite sure. People who spend endless hours ‘praying’, or, I am sorry to say, who keep running to their churches, are wasting their lives. That is not why they were born.

Within and Without

There is a single most fundamental difference between the 'religious' and "beyond religious" relationship to reality. Those who conform to religions, always externalize the divine. They invariably place their ‘god’ up there, somewhere in the clouds.

This is probably the saddest part of religions. They also assure everyone of the necessity of suffering (Buddha didn’t help in this), of heaven being some nondescript location in the esoteric cosmos, of the existence of eternal hell, or heaven for that matter, and last but not least, assuring everyone that they are all incurable sinners for which their most merciful loving God will punish them with eternal damnation.

I wouldn’t believe in such a horrid god if you paid me, nor would I want to settle for an “ever-after” in a heaven where for all eternity I’d be bored to tears, if only I had eyes to excrete them.

Contrary to all this religious propaganda (sorry padres and madresses), none of the above has anything at all to do with the teaching of the man they call their saviour.  When accused of blasphemy of calling himself the “son of god”, Yeshûa replied simply that all who do the will of god are, by psalmist’s definition, children of god. And, he hastened to assure them, the “scriptures cannot be broken”. I never heard a single priest asserting this truth.

The saviour part comes from Yeshûa’s name, which in Hebrew simply means: “Jah is salvation”. Or, to put it in our lingo, the god within is the only god that can save you. And the god within, it has been established, is I AM.

We have all been bamboozled for 2000 years. Please, please, let us wake up. We are all children of the “most high”, who is not up there, somewhere, but tries hard to be recognized within you and me, within our hearts. The “most high” refers to an elevated state of consciousness, not to the moon or distant planets. Please read the original, not the twisted half-truth perpetrated by career-oriented clergy. And since you and I, are individualized states of consciousness, the “most high” is our ultimate potential.

Bingo!

My mother spent 100 years in her body being a “good Catholic”. She was also a good person, doing good for others. No priest ever told her that the material world was set on automatic, nor that the will within her was the most powerful force in the universe; nor that to leave her body she had to identify with that power within, and that, in fact, this power is divine. No one told her any of that. And I, at the time, didn’t know it either.

She spent the last three years of her ‘life’ flat on her back, periodically in her own excrement. She deserved better.

I once wrote a book about it. It is called The Gate, subtitled “Things my Mother told me”. You’ll find sadness but also humour in it; and an inexplicable smile. Her smile. Yes, she could smile even then.

If you want to avoid her fate, I suggest you read it. It might help. 

The Mystery of the Subconscious

Our physical body is a direct consequence of knowledge (memories) stored in our subconscious. To put it simply, if we think ‘sick’ long enough, put enough emotion into those thoughts, and encode that thought into our subconscious, we shall get sick. Alternatively, we can tie ourselves emotionally to an idea, good or bad, and watch the consequences develop. We make up what we are.

The good news is that we have the power to realign our memories to correct most, if not all at once, negative inputs with which we may have been born. Your body is made up of between 50 and 100 trillion cells. In addition, we are hosts to 10 times as many viruses and other microorganisms. If you can control the comings and goings of that crowd, you are a better man/woman than I. Hence, the subconscious.

Nevertheless, there are ample examples of how we differ from the physical body we have created. A person who lost a leg, or an arm, or for that matter a loved one, such loss is manifested only in the physical reality. In his or her dreams their body is whole, the loved on is very much alive, and often carries traits much improved from those they displayed while in physical form. Parenthetically, a phantom limb is another good example of this. Basically, in our subconscious we remain whole.[1]

Unless we decide otherwise.

Unless we imbed in our subconscious such infirmities, or losses, so deep that, those deficiencies are experienced in the reality that our subconscious displays. At least for a while.

The ancients Hebrews called the subconscious ‘soul’. At least, that is how the various religions translated the Old Testament word nephesh. As so often with scribes, a lot was lost in the translation. Nephesh is ‘animal soul’, meaning neither more nor less than the subconscious, which we, humans, share with most animals. Certainly with e.g. all mammals, certainly dolphins, and all other fauna which displays conscious ability to remember. After all, as I’d stated many times before, our subconscious is little more than memory storage. Dreams, in turn, are the foretaste of our true, much more permanent reality, the religionists refer to as heaven.

The real you, or I, or anyone, is the immortal, indestructible, unchanging individualization of the Omnipresent Consciousness. It is, as we all know, the I AM. It is the true Self, which enjoys the incredible riches that our subconscious has accumulated over the infinity of time.

Aren’t we lucky?

[1] Please, forgive my bluntness, but neurologists’ attempts at the explanation of these phenomena sound more like mumbo-jumbo than most of what various theologians came up with in their peregrinations.

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