| Home Forums Library Media Gallery Glossary Links |
The latest Wired magazine (Nov. 2005) has a brief aside on "evil technologies in J-Horror films" called "The Wicked Web" that inadvertantly highlights the ongoing influence of Shinto animism in the collective imagination of modern Japanese culture. Though the article itself fails to acknowledge this undercurrent, the content is clearly illustrative of the Japanese fascination with the spirit world. Japan, it should be noted, has carried Shinto since it's early birth some 2500 years ago, juggling it easily alongside Buddhism and all of its variants. In the late 1800's Shinto became the state religion of Japan and continued as such to the end of WW2. It's deep influence continues to inform much of the cultural imagination.
Shinto is typified by animism, a doctrine of souls that extends to all things. It is the belief that "personalized, supernatural beings endowed with reason, intelligence and volition inhabit ordinary objects as well as animate beings..." [Wikipedia]. Shinto defines these spirits of nature as kami and states that they are not divine but inhabit the same world as we do and possess the same faults and emotions. These entities have been presented to modern audiences in the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki. His masterpiece, Spirited Away, illustrates the legions of spirits living in delicate harmony with humans, mutually dependent and intertwined. Some are benign or benevolent, others gross and obsessive, and some are malevolent and sinister. Miyazaki's animism remains somewhat traditional, however, depicting only spirits of nature and psychology.
Updating animism, J-Horror is a genre of lo-fi technocore that features modern-day devices acting as conduits or emissaries of the spirit world. Hideo Nakata's "Ring" is a familiar example of the genre, telling the story of a cursed videotape that induces death in all who watch it. Other films feature a camcorder that can capture images of spirits, a cellphone connected to the future, and the upcoming release, "Pulse", which tells of the deceased who contact the living through computers. Similar techno-animistic narratives occur in many Japanese anime films, notably "Akira" and the "Evangelion" series where machines are seen to contain the same animating life force and spirit that flows through biology. The machine is simply an extension of nature and like other kami each machine may possess it's own spirit consciousness. Some may be friendly and obedient while others grow malevolent and demonic.
It's easy to suggest that these animistic tendencies are merely superstitious hold-overs from older times. Yet they reinforce the necessity to embrace and honor the material world - something that's sorely missing from the death-obsessed western cults of the ascended son. The industrial affliction of self-degradation and ecological suicide can in many ways be traced back to the debasement of the earthly kingdom and the relentless pursuit of afterlife so typical of the Judeo/Islamo/Christian triumvirate. Regardless of any "proof" or scientific evidence, Shinto and animism get results, instilling the adherent with a deep regard and respect for the world in which we live.
"Shinto beliefs and ways of thinking are deeply embedded in the subconscious fabric of modern Japanese society. The afterlife is not a primary concern in Shinto, and much more emphasis is placed on fitting into this world, instead of preparing for the next. Shinto has no binding set of dogma, no holiest place for worshippers, no person or kami deemed holiest, and no defined set of prayers. Instead, Shinto is a collection of rituals and methods meant to mediate the relations of living humans to kami." [Wikipedia]
Clearly this implies a degree of balance and connection with the natural world, though such an assertion would require further research into the overall environmental record of Japanese society. Shintoism itself extends from a deep reverence for nature, yet clearly the natural world is not always in balance with humanity, as illustrated by evil videotapes and other demonic electronic devices. Perhaps the defining characteristic of Shinto and animism is the simple projection of human qualities onto the world around us, for good or worse. It is a recognition of the consciousness resident within all things and the implications of this reflected humanity. As we're drawn to respect others of our kin we must extend that respect to the entire realm of spirit that permeates and anchors all of nature.
For modern J-horror and anime writers (as well as reality hackers and technoshamen) the animistic recognition of spirit intelligence must naturally extend to the technologies extruded by humanity into the world. Like pacts with demons, we foster relationships with our devices that are often both helpful and dangerous, imbuing them with agency and even personality. The kami will always live next to us, inhabiting the forms that absorb our focus.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, writer and director of "Pulse", suggests that "these technologies are part of everyday life, but they still hold the possibility of connecting us to worlds completely unknown to us. Today, ghosts don't appear in graveyards and ancient castles, but in the living room". [Wired]
If one acknowledges that a spirit world exists, then surely it's residents have some interest in human affairs. And how could they not? Whatever we consider such entities to be, they are surely at least reflections and extensions of our selves, hungering to be fed by attention and imagination. By romantic appeal alone they continue to thrive, guarding shrines, inhabiting rocks, and haunting VCR's.
The Japanese culture presents both a fascinating dichotomy and a possible ontological model for the western world. At once ultramodern and animistic, Japan has driven human technology perhaps further than any other culture while maintaining an abiding reverence for nature. The recognition of spirit and consciousness in all things transcends the shortsightedness and eschatological thinking of the West, offering a grounding balance to a frequently teetering society. Whether or not we accept the indwelling consciousness in all things or acknowledge the spirit of the ordinary, the narrative of Shinto and animism flowing through Japanese life will continue to press it's way into global culture by it's undeniable appeal to the human imagination.
The iterative reflections of consciousness and technology drive the tightening understanding of both disciplines, bringing more intelligence to machines and more mechanism to intelligence. The ultimate animistic statement might be Vernor Vinge's own postulated eschatological omega point, the technological Singularity, when the ghost in the machine becomes self-aware and asserts it's own agency before humanity. Perhaps such an "artificial" intelligence would regard all things as being equally alive and sentient. And would it really surprise anyone if it was birthed by Japanese technologies, bleeding on the living edge of human creation?
The first of many technological miracles?
In a groundbreaking study, the Journal of Nanotechnology has published a study that found silver nanoparticles kills HIV-1 and is likely to kill virtually any other virus. The study, which was conducted by the University of Texas and Mexico University, is the first medical study to ever explore the benefits of silver nanoparticles, according to Physorg.
During the study, researchers used three different methods of limiting the size of the silver nanoparticles by using capping agents. The capping agents were foamy carbon, poly (PVP), and bovine serum albumin (BSA). The particles ranged in size from 1 to 10 nanometers depending on the method of capping. After incubating the HIV-1 virus at 37 C, the silver particles killed 100% of the virus within 3 hours for all three methods. The scientists believe that the silver particles bonded through glycoprotein knobs on the virus with spacing of about 22 nanometers in length.
While further research is needed, researchers are optimistic that nanological silver may be the silver bullet to kill viruses. The researchers in the study said that they had already begin experiments using silver nanoparticles to kill what is known as the super bug (Methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus). Already used as a topical antibiotic in the medical industry, silver may now come under consideration as an alternative to drugs when it comes to fighting previously untreatable viruses such as the Tamiflu resistant avian flu.
More info, from Physorg.com:
In the first-ever study of metal nanoparticles' interaction with HIV-1, silver nanoparticles of sizes 1-10nm attached to HIV-1 and prevented the virus from bonding to host cells. The study, published in the Journal of Nanotechnology, was a joint project between the University of Texas, Austin and Mexico Univeristy, Nuevo Leon.
"Our article opens an important avenue for research," said Miguel Jose Yacaman, from University of Texas, Department of Engineering and one of the study's authors.
In this study, scientists mixed silver nanoparticles with three different capping agents: foamy carbon, poly (PVP), and bovine serum albumin (BSA)."Not using a capping agent could result in the synthesis of big crystals instead of nanocrystals," explained Yacaman.
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) showed the silver nanoparticles in the foamy carbon matrix were joined together, but an ultrasonic bath in deionized water released a significant number of nanoparticles. These nanoparticles were of size 16.19 (+-8.69)nm and had the greatest variety of shapes, such as icosahedral, decahedral, and elongated.
"Because of the synthesis procedure, the foamy carbon-coated naoparticles are more likely to have broad shape distribution," said Yacaman. Scientists used the electron beam to release the remainder of the nanoparticles from the joined bundle.
For the PVP-coated silver nanoparticles, scientists used glycerine as a dissolving agent. These particles were of size 6.53 (+-2.41). In the third preparation, scientists used serum albumin, the most common protein in blood plasma. The sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen chemicals in BSA stabilized the nanoparticles, which were in the range of 3.12 (+-2.00) nm.
Scientists studied the absorption spectra of the different preparations to pinpoint their shapes. "Spherical nanoparticles absorbed in the blue region of the spectrum, for example," Yacaman said.
Also, the UV-Visible spectra graphs helped the group determine nanoparticle sizes. "The surface plasmon resonance peak wavelength increased with size," explained Yacaman.
Scientists tested, in vitro, each of three silver nanoparticle-preparations in HIV-1 cells. Yacaman and his colleagues incubated the samples at 37 C. After three hours and 24 hours, respectively, 0% of the cells were living.
The results showed that a silver nanoparticle concentration greater than 25 ug/mL worked more effectively at inhibiting HIV-1 cells. Plus, the foamy carbon was a slightly-better capping agent because of its free surface area. Size also played a role since none of the attached nanoparticles were greater than 10nm.
Scientists think the nanoparticles bonded through the gp120 glycoprotein knobs on HIV-1, using the sulfur residues on the knobs. The spacing between the knobs of ~22nm matched the center-to-center nanoparticle spacing.
Although this study shows silver nanoparticles may treat HIV-1, scientists need to research this relationship further. "We lack information regarding the long-term effects of metal nanoparticles," cautioned Yacaman. Scientists are forming a preventive cream for HIV-1, which they will test on humans.
Scientists are also studying other uses for silver nanoparticles. "We're testing against other viruses and the 'super bug (Methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus).' Our preliminary results indicate that silver nanoparticles can effectively attack other micro-organisms," Yacaman said.
Syeda Z. Hamdani; Copyright 2005 PhysOrg.com
http://www.physorg.com/news7264.html
Uber-super genius Ray Kurzweil wrote about the intelligent universe and proposed an evolutionary meter to chart the exponential growth of human technology. His Law of Accelerating Returns is set to replace Moore's Law as the fundamental constant of the modern age and the signifier of a rapidly evoloving sphere of human influence and interaction with the foundations of matter and mind.
Another very important phenomenon is the rate of paradigm shift. This is harder to measure, but even though people can argue about some of the details and assumptions in these charts you still get these same very powerful trends. The paradigm shift rate itself is accelerating, and roughly doubling every decade. When people claim that we won't see a particular development for a hundred years, or that something is going to take centuries to do accomplish, they're ignoring the inherent acceleration of technical progress.
The rest of the article is available at KurzweilAI.net.
By way of Mark Pesce:
Apparently, a chemical in cannabis causes cell growth in the brain...
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8155&feedId=online-
news_rss20:
A synthetic chemical similar to the active ingredient in marijuana makes new cells grow in rat brains. What is more, in rats this cell growth appears to be linked with reducing anxiety and depression. The results suggest that marijuana, or its derivatives, could actually be good for the brain.
In mammals, new nerve cells are constantly being produced in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is associated with learning, memory, anxiety and depression. Other recreational drugs, such as alcohol, nicotine and cocaine, have been shown to suppress this new growth. Xia Zhang of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and colleagues decided to see what effects a synthetic cannabinoid called HU210 had on rats' brains.
They found that giving rats high doses of HU210 twice a day for 10 days increased the rate of nerve cell formation, or neurogenesis, in the hippocampus by about 40%.
Drugs, art and the aliens who lit our way to civilisation
(Once again, I find my own contemplations are not mine alone! ... Thank you, Mr. Hancock.)
GRAHAM HANCOCK is breathless. He's telling me about his first hallucinogenic trip in the Amazon jungle, and he just can't get the words out fast enough. The former journalist and now bestselling science writer spent five weeks living with indigenous Indian shamans in Peru, where he ingested a sacred plant drug known as ayahuasca.
We pick up the story just after the shaman began the ritual ceremony by singing the icaros, ancient chants which draw the spirits around the circle. Hancock then took a sip of the drug, which he describes as a "vile-tasting liquid, so strong and bitter-sweet and salty, so dark and concentrated as to be repellent". His muscles involuntarily relax, he closes his eyes and then the visions begin.
"I had a very scary beginning to that trip," he says. "I saw incredible transformations of different animals and beings glowing with light that appeared directly in front of my field of vision. It was a typical scene which many describe as an alien abduction. They were very anthropic, and definitely wanted to communicate with me. It was rather like going to a strange new country, where I had to start learning the rules of communication."
Getting deeper into the experience, Hancock took another dose of the drug, but his body couldn't take it. The nausea came on strong and soon he was out in the dark, puking. Before long he was drenched in sweat with only dry heaves left. He sank to the ground and called an end to the trip because he was so afraid. He opened his eyes, and the visions left him. You could conclude from this account - detailed in Hancock's latest book, Supernatural - that Hancock is just another traveller keen to acquaint himself with the customs of new cultures. But there is a little more to this trip than meets the eye.
A reporter by trade, Hancock was born in Edinburgh before moving to India in his childhood. He returned to attend school and university in Durham, from where he graduated in 1973 with a degree in sociology. He went on to pursue a career in journalism, writing for The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent and The Guardian.
But in the 1980s he gave up newspaper reporting to pursue his own passion - the lost civilisation of man. In the past 20 years, he's written several books including the best-selling Sign and Seal on the Ark of the Covenant - as well as filming documentaries about his research.
"Three years ago I decided to go back to the subject which fascinated me at university," he says. "I was interested in human origins, in what makes us different from the apes. I found that it wasn't the use of tools, as many people believe, but abstract thought and the ability to manipulate symbols." The answer was art. Cave paintings and writings which depicted thoughts and visions, none of which have ever been achieved by other species. In fact, even our human ancestors had no artistic capability. Or not until 40,000 years ago, at least.
"Previously, we were very uncreative and boring. We used the same tools continually without modifying them. Then, suddenly, a light switched on in our brain. Fossils from 40,000 years ago show that we began to explore spirituality, looked for signs of life after death and innovated specialised tools. And we began to paint. In France, Italy and South Africa and all over the world, they've discovered incredibly accomplished paintings, but no explanation for this burst of development."
This has been termed the "greatest riddle in archaeology", and many academics have devoted their career to its study. The reason behind the sudden transformation, the majority have concluded, is hallucinogenic plants. Magic mushrooms would be a relevant example, but all over the world, man stumbled across drugs which opened the possibility for spiritual, creative thought.
Professor David Lewis-Williams, of South Africa's Witwatersrand University, believes that is the end of the story. These visions - and therefore the art they produced - were universal because all of mankind has the same neurology. Our brains are wired in the same way, so when we take these drugs, our bodies have the same response. Indeed, at the University of New Mexico, researchers have found that volunteers given hallucinogenic drugs drew the same kinds of paintings as those found in the ancient caves. This, coupled with a wealth of other evidence, supports Lewis-Williams' theory that drugs are the answer.
For most people that explanation would suffice, but not for Hancock. He could not accept that the beginnings of human spirituality came down to brain chemistry. For him, there had to be more to it, and he decided to investigate, hence the first-hand research trip.
What he has found - and what forms the basis of his new hefty tome - is a theory that to many will sound absurd. He believes that when shamans and drug users experience these hallucinations, they are actually tapping into a parallel universe. The visions - be they of fairies, elves or aliens - are real, they exist all the time, and they want to communicate with us.
"Think of it as though the brain is like a TV receiver. In order to cope with everyday life, we have to tune into "Channel Normal" for the majority of the time. But if we retune our brains with these drugs, or alter our state of consciousness through rhythmic dancing and drums, we can see images of the parallel dimensions."
Hancock does not prescribe for a second to the idea that when people experience "alien abductions", they are seeing foreign creatures that may whisk them to another planet. What he does believe is that the spirits dwell in this other dimension, and if we let them, they will continue the teaching that they gave to our ancestors.
"I believe these hallucinogenic experiences are the basis for all modern-day religions. If you think about it, why would we ever have cause to imagine a spirit world? Our uncreative ancestors didn't, but then they found these drugs and saw for themselves the spirit world, and realised there was more to life. I think religion resulted from the need to explain these supernatural encounters."
A sceptic would maintain that, outwith the experience of those on drugs or in a trance, there is no evidence to support Hancock's theory. And many could take offence to his assertion that when Mohammed, Jesus Christ and St Paul thought they were experiencing God, they were, in fact, just accessing the parallel world. Part of the problem with accepting this higher plane comes in locating its origin. If these spirits are the "ancient teachers of mankind", as he says, where did they come from? In this instance, as with every other, Hancock points to science. Prepare for the most astonishing claim yet. "The secret could be in our DNA," he says. "When Francis Crick, the discoverer of DNA, died, it was revealed that his first vision of the helix module occurred while he was on LSD. Although he was an atheist, he then published a book which subscribed to the theory of intelligent design, that our universe was not simply the result of a series of chemical accidents.
"In brief, what he said was that after the Big Bang, life did not evolve first on Earth. At the far side of the universe, another civilisation developed, a highly advanced civilisation who surpassed the stage we have currently reached. He asserted that in some way their world became threatened - global warming, or some such catastrophic event - and so they devised a way to pass on their existence. They genetically-modified their DNA and sent it out from their planet on bacteria, with the hope that it would collide with another planet. It did, and that's why we're here." What Hancock goes onto explain is that the DNA was encoded with messages from that other civilisation.
They programmed the molecules so that when we reached a certain level of intelligence, we would be able to access their information, and they could therefore "teach" us about ourselves, and how to progress.
Of course, this talk of aliens sending off bacteria sounds like the ramblings of a deranged guest on a Jerry Springer show. But the astonishing thing is that Hancock is intelligent and articulate, and his writing is as expert as you would expect from an esteemed international correspondent.
Precisely because he is so credible, his idea will no doubt entice those looking for more conspiracy theories, and you need only look as far as Dan Brown to see the commercial success available.
But to give him credit, Hancock at no point claims these discoveries for himself, he always points to archaeologists and scientists who have been fascinated by similar concepts. Indeed, all that he asks for is that people more qualified than himself, investigate the questions he raises.
"I know [this] sounds preposterous and pointless to anyone committed to objective science. The more closely I pursued these questions, however, the more convinced I became that they point towards matters of extraordinary substance, and that science has done us an immense disfavour by its policy of ridiculing and discouraging all rational inquiry in this area."
Hancock's newest, Supernatural, is already availble in the UK and is scheduled for a US release on November 1st.
Original story by Anna Smyth, from The Scotsman, Tuesday October 11, 2005.
For more info, please see the newest issue of Sub Rosa magazine. Audio and video clips included!
(Whitley's newest journal, from unknowncountry.com . This is exactly the kind of post I've been contemplating over the past two weeks, and Whitley here has done all my work for me, and has probably done it better than I would have. I urge anyone who stops by here to please take the time and read this all the way through. This is precisely the same message I myself have been trying to give to everyone. ... Thank you, Whitley.)
Just in the past two years, there have been two great earthquakes that have devastated populated areas and many other smaller ones that have also done great damage, the Amazon has virtually dried up, the Arctic has begun to melt, the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps have become unstable, and the weather has turned into a complex monster.
What is so interesting about this is that our planet is not the only one in the solar system that appears to be affected. There have been signs of unusual weather on Saturn, and Mars appears to be experiencing polar cap decline not dissimilar to our own.
Now a scientific paper has been published suggesting that increased solar activity over the past decade has resulted in the sun contributing anywhere from ten to thirty percent of the additional heat that's going into global warming.
In fact, it doesn't just suggest this, it goes a long way toward proving it. This will be taken by some people to mean that we needn't bother about global warming because it's the sun's fault. But, of course, it's not ALL the sun's fault and we can and must do something about the part that's our fault. The truth is that the added impact of solar heating makes the problem incredibly urgent. This planet's whole natural process is about to go into chaos, and when it does potentially billions of us are going to die, and the most vulnerable areas are the United States, Europe and China, so we Americans cannot expect to sit on the sidelines while the rest of the world suffers for our sins.
Anybody who doesn't burn to do something about the global warming problem is insane, and leaders who won't address it are in the process right now of committing the greatest crime against humanity that history has ever known.
When I worked on Superstorm, there were no models that factored in increased heating from the sun. But it's there all right, and therein lies the making of a catastrophe not unlike that prophesied as the end of the age, according to Jose Arguelles, by Pacal Votan, a Mayan ruler of the sixth century A.D.
I am beginning to see around me evidence that this man's prophecy was correct. Why that would be so is another matter entirely, and one that I cannot address except with speculation, but I can say that, if things keep deteriorating at the present rate, there are going to be environmental disasters of unprecedented ferocity in a few years, and I would not be surprised if they weren't upon us right around 2012.
There is no question at all that an age is coming to its end right now. In the past couple of years, the problems have become so obvious that they are very hard to ignore. The sun is more active than it has been in a thousand years. The magnetic pole is showing signs of a shift. Storms are becoming more frequent and catastrophic. Human pressure on the planet's natural functioning is rapidly overwhelming its ability to stay alive. Earth is dying.
And then there are the earthquakes and the subtle suggestions that great volcanic events might be impending. There are things nobody really understands, such as the hot spot east of Santa Barbara, California, and the signs of activity beneath some of the world's supervolcanoes.
The earthquakes are the strangest phenomenon. Why are they happening now? Are they in some way related to solar activity? If so, it's not something that our own science understands. We even have trouble understanding if there is a connection between earthquakes that take place in close time proximity but on unrelated faults.
There was a book published some years ago called Hamlet's Mill that suggested that much ancient symbolism was an attempt to warn the far future that earth every so often, perhaps on a regular cycle of about 12,500 years, went into a state of chaos.
Subsequent to the publication of this book, we have come to know that there was a complex series of cataclysms on this planet around 12,500 years ago, that led to the collapse of the world's then extensive glaciation and the beginning of the interglacial in which we have spent our entire recorded history.
There is all sort of evidence, commented upon by many authors, notably Rand and Rose Flem-Ath and Graham Hancock, to the effect that some sort of past civilization, advanced in ways that are hard for us to apprehend, was utterly destroyed during this time.
Sea levels rose fantastically during the glacial melt, and they rose fast, increasing hundreds of feet over just a few centuries. Nowadays, we live in what would have been the highlands of that period. Gigantic stretches of land that were present in those days now are gone. And there are suggestions, here and there, that there might be inundated cities and other structures, now far from land. But underwater archaeology is in its infancy, and geology has not produced more than a rough idea of where shorlines lay during the last glaciation. Add to that the probability that earthquakes have further altered landforms, and the chances of proveably detecting any unquestionable remains of even quite a large civilization become remote.
Nevertheless, in memory and in prophecy, we do have indications that this civilization was once there, and that it has tried to send warning forward.
We are living in the time it identified as the next age of chaos, and we would do well to acknowledge that fact as they did in their time, in order to do what they did, which is to project some remnant of what we have accomplished and what wisdom we have gained forward into the next human age.
It is fair to ask, then, what is to be done? I'm not a survivalist and I'm not going to recommend the purchase of flashlights and seeds. Time and chance will capture us all, and it will be a matter of luck and the moving finger on the wall who survives and who does not.
Best that we humbly acknowledge that, somehow, the past had possession of extremely potent knowledge. It's demonstrable: Mayan texts do identify 2012 as an epochal year; and the environment is disintegrating in ways that suggest that this prediction, made over a thousand years ago by a man who didn't even have use of the wheel, is perhaps the most potent human idea formed in all of our history. If he is correct, then it's not difficult to argue that his was the best mind that ever lived, at least during this particular cycle.
For nearly three million years, earth has been rocked by climactic instability. The periodic nature of ice ages suggests that the sun heats up over a vast cycle of thousands of years, causing the release of greenhouse gasses through natural means, resulting in a spike in air temperature that violently melts the ice and ushers in another interglacial when the sun suddenly changes and cools down again.
This gigantic solar cycle must exist now, but it has not always existed. Actually, the earth has spent huge, unimaginably long epochs in a condition of stability unlike anything we have known across the entire history of our development. During many of these periods, there were no polar caps, and life evolved slowly, impelled by the competition for living space into the myriad of forms and survival strategies that we see around us today.
For the past three million years, though, the opposite has been true. The continuous cycle of cooling and heating that the planet is now undergoing has wrought havoc in nature. The number of species has been in decline for that entire period, and has just now reached the peak of the bell curve. We will see a phenomenal dieoff in the next few years, a massive collapse in the number of life forms on the planet.
The extinction event that created us, in other words, is about to challenge our very existence.
It's not as if it hasn't happened before. In fact, every time there was a gigantic climate change, the primates reacted by adapting themselves anew to changed conditions. Were it not for the instability of the present situation, we would never have become an intelligent species.
Now, that intelligence must be called upon again, to get us through to the next period of relative calm. During this period, we will leave behind virtually everything we now understand as civilization. The consumer society will be the first to go, a victim of overpopulation and our failure to address the need to find new energy sources early enough. With it will go the United States as superpower. We are already in the last phases of that: like the British Empire in 1910, our country is overwhelmed with debt and beginning to treat the restless in its client states with extraordinary brutality. Next will be some cataclysm, perhaps the unexpected collapse of Saudi oil or the detonation of atomic bombs in our cites or a great plague--who knows what it will be--but on the other side of it, the world will no longer be dominated by a superpower.
At the same time and consequent to the fall of the superpower, will come a period of climate change so rapid that growing seasons worldwide will be disrupted at the same time that the large scale movement of food around the planet becomes problematic due to a lack of energy resources. This is likely to mean sickness and famine on a very broad scale, especially in areas that are not self sufficient in food.
It's not a pretty picture, and the failure of human leadership worldwide just at the time when creative innovation at the top was most essential has condemned us to vast suffering.
So, why don't I just go ahead and fall on my sword or put a gun to my head?
Because I am optimistic about the future, and I have good reason to be.
At the same time that all of these negative forces are gathering and arraying themselves against us like some kind of dark army of invincible soldiers with the monstrous weapons of the apocalypse, all aimed straight at our hearts, the mind of man is responding in ways that are so far beyond what we presently realize that they beggar description.
However, we are on a collision course with two destinies: the planet is about to throw us off like a horse switching its tail at a persisten dobson fly, while at the same time we are on the point of making a series of phenomenal scientific breakthroughs that may finally take the mind in the direction it has been trying to go ever since we looked up and saw the stars, which is outside of the body, into the surrounding world and universe, into total knowledge, total freedom and a future so fantastic that what we will be in fifty years will be so radically different from what we are now that we will be all but unrecognizable to ourselves.
If we live.
This has happened before. During the latter stages of the dinosaur age, the climate entered an unstable phase as well, which lasted about three million years before a the great cataclysm that delivered the coup de grace. During this time, the number of dinosaur species gradually declined, and highly intelligent--by dinosaur standards--new species such as Struthomimus--evolved. This fast, smart little beast came about as a response to a consistently challenging climate.
In modern (by geologic standards) times, the mammals responded to our own climate challenge by evolving another highly intelligent species--us. But we're a much better contender than Stuthomimus, and for a very specfic reason: we are intelligent enough and informed enough to induce further, even more rapid evolution in ourselves, and perhaps save ourselves and even our civilization, from the coming upheaval.
Indeed, I don't believe that a changing environment is actually our greatest enemy. Our greatest enemy is a part of nature that lies concealed within us. It is the death wish that arises out of excessive population pressure. This death wish began to be triggered a long time ago, in the middle of the eighteenth century, when a restlessness swept europe as cities grew in population, crowding and filthiness. By the middle of the nineteenth century, there had been two major revolutions, the French in the 1780s and the upheaval of the 1840s. In the United States in the 1860s, the first war of population destruction was fought. And then, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the firing of a single bullet into the brain of an archduke in Bosnia turned on a killing machine that we had invented in the form of the European arms race that had unfolded from 1890 through 1914.
That killing machine, started by that single bullet, has never since been turned off. It is directly responsible for the rise of communism and Naziism and the massive avalanche of death that they brought to this world. Indeed, I could take you, event by event, from that bullet to the latest death in Iraq and show you just how direct and unbroken that chain really is.
I could take you, also, through the wicked hell of opposing ideologies that keep the machine running, and show you how a larger sense of enmity, expressed again and again as a desire to enter one utopian condition or another, has been threatening man from within even as the environment threatens us from without.
But this is not a history lesson. It is about what lies ahead, because the machinery of death might at last coming to pieces, and, if it does, then the human mind is going to spring free, and there will be wonders.
A confluence of scientific discoveries holds almost immeasurable promise for us. We are in the position, probably for the first time in any of the cycles we have lived through, of taking possession of our own evolution, and therefore also of the nature that now controls our lives with its dangers, its arbitrary cycles, and its indifferent casting of species after species down into death.
Biological and informational technologies are about to come together in ways that are beyond startling, that suggest that we may finally leap free of the bondage of the death wish and all the silly superstitions and ideologies that flow out of it, from the myth of the good communist to the myth of the superman to the myth of the free market, to leave it all behind, and along with it the religious and social superstitions that drive our ideologies on the ash-heap of failed ideas and false gods.
As our ability to create ever more dense information nodes is increasing exponentially, so also is our ability to deliver information to the brain, and to alter ourselves in ways that enable us to process it with greater efficiency.
And this is only one of many areas in which science is progressing toward the exact sort of post-apocalyptic human state that has been prophesied, that we will reach superconciousness even as the world falls apart around us.
It turns out that our approaching this state isn't connected with some sort of magic at all, any more than the spirit hole through which Pacal Votan said that he would speak was woven of an incomprehensible magic. Just as ordinary science is going to make the magic of the superconscious human being a reality, it was that hole that enabled archaeologists to discover Pacal Votan's tomb, and bring his existence back to light.
Magic, when you understand it, is no longer magic, and we are rapidly reaching the ideal human condition, which is one in which the average person is too smart to believe in the deadly superstitions and ideologies that claw at us like evil trolls trying to prevent us from fulfilling our destiny, which is to take flight and fill the universe with human mind, human spirit and human being.
If we live...
--Whitley Strieber 
It is nothing human and personal that we are short of. What we lack is cosmic life, the sun in us and the moon in us.
-D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse
Man is not a ‘product' of the universe nor a 'scale model' of it; he is to be regarded as an embodiment, its 'essence' incarnated in physical form.
-John Anthony West, Serpent in the Sky
Starting with a single revelatory observation in Egypt in 1937, the preeminent Egyptologist, R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, over the course of some twenty years, was able to piece together the sacred science of the ancients and present it in rigorously documented fashion.
As John Anthony West retells it: "Schwaller’s work concerned mainly the New Kingdom temple of Luxor, which he called "the Temple of Man." In its measurements, geometry, harmonies, and proportions, he discovered the elements of a profound spiritual cosmology in which art, religion, philosophy, and science were fused into a single comprehensive doctrine—the sacred science of the ancient world.
"All those bizarre animal-headed gods were not figments of the primitive imagination or carry-overs from still more primitive animistic religions, as was commonly believed, but rather were embodiments of cosmic principles—the "Ideas" through which Universal Consciousness descended into the manifest universe. It is precisely the recognition of such principles that is lacking in our own technologically brilliant, but philosophically naive and spiritually empty secular science.
"Fertilization, gestation, birth, growth, maturity, senescence, death, rebirth, and resurrection are the principles of the organic world. Polarity, relationship, substantiality, potentiality, time-and-space, and process are among the principles of the cosmological world. These, given appropriate names and forms were the "gods" of Egypt. Each was associated with its own number symbolism, which in turn commanded the geometry of the temples erected to commemorate that "god" and to evoke in the eye and heart and intellect of the beholder communion with that principle or set of principles.
"Schwaller called the Egyptian sacred science the "Doctrine of the Anthropocosm" (or human-cosmos). We embody within us, as human beings, all the laws and principles that operate within the greater, divine cosmos that sustains and embraces us. And our intelligence, correctly deployed, gives us access to the knowledge of all there is. Acquisition of that knowledge holds the promise of eternal life, immortality, and entry into the Higher Consciousness responsible for our being here."
Perhaps the greatest difference between us and the pagans lies in our different relation to the cosmos. With us, all is personal. Landscape and the sky, these are to us the delicious background of our personal life, and no more. Even the universe of the scientist is little more than an extension of our personality, to us. To the pagan, landscape and personal background were on the whole indifferent. But the cosmos was a very real thing. A man lived with the cosmos, and knew it greater than himself.Don't let us imagine we see the sun as the old civilisations saw it. All we see is a scientific little luminary, dwindled to a ball of blazing gas. In the centuries before Ezekiel and John, the sun was still a magnificent reality, men drew forth from him strength and splendour, and gave him back homage and lustre and thanks. But in us, the connection is broken, the responsive centres are dead. Our sun is a quite different thing from the cosmic sun of the ancients, so much more trivial. We may see what we call the sun, but we have lost Helios forever, and the great orb of the Egyptians still more. We have lost the cosmos, by coming out of responsive connection with it, and this is our chief tragedy. What is our petty little love of nature— Nature!!—compared to the ancient magnificent living with the cosmos, and being honoured by the cosmos!
-D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse
The Egyptian philosophy of the Anthropocosm found its way into two familiar sayings, the Hermetic 'As above, so below' and the Biblical 'God fashioned man in His image'. "But both these sayings," as West informs us in his masterful study of de Lubicz and his work, Serpent in the Sky, "while true, incline to misleading interpretations. The first lends itself to too sharp a distinction, while the second lends itself to too close a commingling. Man is not exactly a little universe to be regarded as distinct from a greater universe. On the other hand, the Biblical phrase lends itself to pictures of a muscular God with a long grey beard, which is not right either."
To the ancient consciousness, Matter, Materia, or Substantial things are God. A great rock is God. A pool of water is God. And why not? The longer we live the more we return to the oldest of all visions. A great rock is God. I can touch it. It is undeniable. It is God.Then those things that move are doubly God. That is, we are doubly aware of their godhead: that which is, and that which moves: twice godly. Everything is a " thing ": and every " thing " acts and has effect: the universe is a great complex activity of things existing and moving and having effect. And all this is God.
Today, it is almost impossible for us to realise what the old Greeks meant by god, or theos. Everything was theos; but even so, not at the same moment. At the moment, whatever struck you was god. If it was a pool of water, the very watery pool might strike you: then that was god; or the blue gleam might suddenly occupy your consciousness: then that was god; or a faint vapour at evening rising might catch the imagination: then that was theos; or thirst might overcome you at the sight of the water: then the thirst itself was god; or you drank, and the delicious and indescribable slaking of thirst was the god; or you felt the sudden chill of the water as you touched it: and then another god came into being, "the cold": and this was not a quality, it was an existing entity, almost a creature, certainly a theos: the cold; or again, on the dry lips something suddenly alighted: it was " the moist", and again a god. Even to the early scientists or philosophers, "the cold", "the moist", "the hot", "the dry" were things in themselves, realities, gods, theoi. And they did things.
With the coming of Socrates and "the spirit", the cosmos died. For two thousand years man has been living in a dead or dying cosmos, hoping for a heaven hereafter. And all the religions have been religions of the dead body and the postponed reward: eschatological, to use a pet word of the scientists.
-D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse
As West concludes: "It is my own conviction that no human civilization worthy of that name is possible if it is not founded on an understanding that the human soul is immortal by nature or (as Hermes Trismegistus puts it in the Hermetica) "may strive to become so." The lunatic asylum we live in at present is the result of three centuries of materialistic science and a deluded rationalism supposedly (though not actually) based on that science. Through Schwaller's work in developing the Doctrine of the Anthropocosm, it becomes apparent that the ancient sacred science is indeed a science. It is not credulous superstition. It is not belief. It is not even faith (emotional experiential knowledge, as opposed to belief). It is a science.
"If we are to escape from the asylum (a.k.a. the Church of Progress), it can only come through the reestablishment of that sacred science on this earth. While we surely will not be building pyramids or Temples of Luxor again, or mummifying our pharaohs either, the principles upon which the Egyptian doctrine were founded are eternal. It is not impossible that, before it is too late, a way will be found to reestablish that Doctrine on earth in a context and form appropriate for our upcoming Age of Aquarius."
Who says the sun cannot speak to me! The sun has a great blazing consciousness, and I have a little blazing consciousness. When I can strip myself of the trash of personal feelings and ideas, and get down to my naked sun-self, then the sun and I can commune by the hour, the blazing interchange, and he gives me life, sun-life, and I send him a little new brightness from the world of the bright blood. ...Now this may sound nonsense, but that is merely because we are fools. There is an eternal vital correspondence between our blood and the sun: there is an eternal vital correspondence between our nerves and the moon. If we get out of contact and harmony with the sun and moon, then both turn into great dragons of destruction against us. The sun is a great source of blood-vitality, it streams strength to us. But once we resist the sun, and say: It is a mere ball of gas!—then the very streaming vitality of sunshine turns into subtle disintegrative force in us, and undoes us. The same with the moon, the planets, the great stars. They are either our makers or our unmakers. There is no escape.
We and the cosmos are one. The cosmos is a vast living body, of which we are still parts. The sun is a great heart whose tremors run through our smallest veins. The moon is a great gleaming nerve-centre from which we quiver forever. ...
When I hear modern people complain of being lonely then I know what has happened. They have lost the cosmos.—It is nothing human and personal that we are short of. What we lack is cosmic life, the sun in us and the moon in us.
-D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse
Commenting on R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz’s masterwork, The Temple in Man, the translator, Robert Lawlor writes: “As a civilization, Egypt certainly holds up to us a model of this reintegrated expression of the various planes and parts of our individual natures and of the cosmic life of our universe, and thus may prove of greater value in the spiritual crisis now confronting us than the religions of transcendence adapted from various ancient Eastern cultures. Egypt was not of the lineage that advocates transcendence and denial of material existence; it taught, rather, transformation. The ancient name for Egypt was ‘Kemi’, meaning, ‘Black Earth,’ the field of vital transformation; the Arabs, Schwaller de Lubicz points out, called Egypt ‘Al-Kemi’. Thus we find in its very name that age-old, universal doctrine so often disguised in symbols and parables. This doctrine encompasses a vision so the principle of matter as a field of existence responsive to and capable of being transformed by spiritual influences brought about through the evolution of embodied and individualized consciousness. The West today could benefit from a philosophy of spiritual depth that does not suppress, diminish, or deny our intellectual and material nature, but rather fulfills our commitment to the meaningfulness of human life and this material expression of the universe.”
“This lost alchemy, the pursuit of which extends back to its flowering in ancient Egypt,” continues Lawlor, “can be seen as the hidden esoteric roots of both civilization and individuals throughout recorded time. It is this same alchemy which is at the core of the vision of the anthropocosm—of Man as being and containing within himself the entire universe. This vision which is introduced by Schwaller de Lubicz in these pages and expanded and brought to life in his major work, The Temple of Man, leaves us with a single, enduring message; the inevitable resurrection of the spiritual essence which has involved itself in matter in the form of organic creative energy.”
“This resurrection depends upon the transformation ofthe material universe—or to express the idea more as Egypt left it imprinted in the stones of Luxor: the birth of divine man (symbolized by the Pharaoh) depends upon the transformation of the universal mother (materia prima). This transformation was considered the sole cosmic goal. Every human birth participates in this alchemy, either in an awakened manner through the intentional perfecting and expression of one’s higher nature, or unawakened, through the tumult and suffering of karmic experience leading eventually to a spiritual self-awareness, the temple in man. The intensification and heightening of human consciousness was believed to cause biological and even cellular change in the physical body of the initiate. This divinization of the individual body, on the microcosmic level, comprised the goal and purpose of the evolution of human consciousness in general.”
Or, as Lawrence more succinctly summed it up, unifying the old and the new in a singular vision:
What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his "soul". Man wants his physical fulfilment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.
- from Apocalypse