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THE SOUL OF TODAY: THE SPIRIT AS THE SIGN OF THE TIMES

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By Kingsley L. Dennis

Source: Waking Times

“If we do not develop within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve to something higher.” ~Rudolf Steiner

Humanity is passing through a difficult phase in its development, and of concern is the potential risk of being plunged into deeper states of materialism and automatism. These two states are often in cooperation together, for the deeper we become embedded in material forces then the greater are the influences that can make us act without conscious thought or intention. It can also be said that there are certain forces, or agents, in this current time that are pushing for greater immersion into materialism in order to paralyze or prevent humanity’s spiritual development. In this regard, even the notion of anything ‘spiritual’ has come to be either ridiculed, diluted into commercialism, or hijacked into pseudo-spiritual forms (such as corporate retreats and online guruism).

It is important that we now cast a critical eye upon the state of human society and the nature of our times. This is not to criticize but to draw attention – to be aware of its aspects – as if to shine a light upon it. It is necessary to look beyond the ‘scenery of external affairs.’

For those people caught up within the external civilization of the moment, with its impacts, distractions, and stimulations, it is difficult to acknowledge the existence of knowledge and perceptual understanding that lies beyond the conditioned senses. Yet it must also be said that now is the time for people to live, and be guided, more in accordance with inner, or esoteric, principles than ever before. It is this connection with one’s inner life that brings greater awareness onto external events. And without this awareness, this degree of perceptive insight, then we allow greater concentrations of power to be wielded in the hands of the few, who will exercise this control over the masses in a negative way. What is necessary is awareness and intention emerging through each individualized person. It is this state of individualization, as opposed to group/mass behaviour, that marks the correct stage of human development for these times.

Taking the work of Austrian thinker/mystic Rudolf Steiner, the state of human perception and awareness can be recognized as relating to three soul stages: sentient, intellect-mind, and consciousness. Within the stage of sentient soul (i), the human being lives primarily within the world of the senses. They are drawn into their passions, desires, and are easily manoeuvred or manipulated into following trends, politics, and mass movements. These people form the majority, are swayed by the media, and are the general masses that move with the machinations of the mob.

They are influenced by the ‘influencers,’ convinced by the consensus narrative, and swim in the mainstream. The second stage, that of the intellect-mind soul (ii), represents the person of the intellect who strives to free themselves from the rash impulses of the senses. They are aware of these tendencies yet steer themselves by rational thinking. They also attempt to keep their feelings under check and express their heart’s desire through critical engagement. At the same time, this rational ordering often allies such people with conservatism, dogma, ideologies and a sense of righteousness. As they can manipulate others, so too can they be manipulated by their own allegiance to fixed systems. They can be blinded by ideals and uncritical of their own weaknesses.

Such people can appear exceedingly clever whilst lacking humanity. Broadly speaking, such people fill the ranks of the political and leadership organizations. And the third stage, that of the consciousness soul (iii) has yet to fully emerge within the current epoch. It is this stage that deals with the formation of the aware individual who is not easily influenced or swayed by the emotional-psychological masses, and the strategies employed for these persuasions.

The phase of individualization within humankind was, and continues to be, a necessary step to release the human being from the previous mode of group consciousness. The egoistic self was required in this transference into individualization. Yet the danger now is that this operational ego grows beyond its function and becomes a dominant aspect of the human being. Acting and striving from the egoistic self is what leads to the imbalance and inequality of the world. The stage of individualization is bound up with increased egoism, yet this is a necessary relationship to reach the depths of self-realization. It becomes troublesome when the ego, instead of leading to inner growth, gets projected externally and becomes the major aspect of the outward personality.

This can lead to stunted inner growth and continued external ego projection. The extremity of this is when a person sinks back into group consciousness and seeks security within a group environment. This can lead to cultic tendencies, as well as nationalism and other ideological and religious groupings. Part of the polarity tension in world affairs has been the pull between the dominant egoists and the group mentality masses. However, it can also be recognized that this stage of growth has to be lived and experienced in order to be moved through. The strains and stresses increase when people seem incapable, or are disallowed, from moving beyond this stage of human development. In this case, the person remains at the level of the lower ‘I’, which is a mass phenomenon and below that of full individualization.

The lower self becomes the dominant expression of the personality, and this can literally run amok, getting entangled in passions, persuasions, disagreements, and disputes. The worst case of affairs is when societies establish structures, systems, and forms of management that cater to this lower stage of human development. People are then caught in a loop, where the base behaviours of this lower individualization are sustained and supported, deliberately creating a civilization of stagnation and stunted growth. The task here is for people to take the direction of their life into their own hands.

The human being must establish an intention to develop their aligned individualization for it seems that there are forces opposed to this human evolvement. For this reason, it is now essential that a perceptive state of consciousness (referred to in Steiner terminology as the consciousness soul) is allowed to emerge among those people receptive and prepared for this. The consciousness soul can be said to elicit higher morals and values within the individual. This requires also that the person has an inner freedom and the ability to perceive and act beyond the confines of social conditioning. This is a form of perceptual thinking as opposed to programmed thinking. The human being has it in their power to transform themselves whilst participating in active life. In fact, life provides friction for the transformational process. And this transformation takes place in the innermost self, which later can be projected outwards into life. It is not enough to affect correct behaviour if the inner life is stunted (as is the case with so many people, especially those most visible upon the world stage). As Rudolf Steiner put it:

‘For every human being bears a higher man within himself besides what we may call the work-a-day man. This higher man remains hidden until he is awakened. And each human being can himself alone awaken this higher being within himself. As long as this higher being is not awakened, the higher faculties slumbering in every human being, and leading to supersensible knowledge, will remain concealed.’[1]

Steiner also considered entropic forces (what some would call ‘evil’ or de-evolutionary forces) as a necessary part of human development. Such forces create the friction that fuels potential development, such as the friction between the road and the tyre helps create the movement of the car. To a degree, such forces are unavoidable in physical existence. All development is a matter of stages, and each stage must be reached before attempting the move to another. Where is humanity at this current scale of development, we may wonder?

Each person must decide for themselves how they wish to live life. It can be said that a person who is ignorant of this decision, or who negates making such a decision, is more likely to fall under the sway of entropic forces, for it is these forces that target/attract the unaware or lazy souls. This recognition should encourage us to make perceptive choices in life. In every sphere of human life – whether social, cultural, or political – there are forces in operation that represent spheres of activity of greater magnitude than most people are able to realize. There are ‘universal forces’ that have been in contention – in motion – for a very long time. As for human beings, all motion, all movement, requires effort. That the many are unaware of this, only places more emphasis upon the responsibility of the few who are aware. This has always been the case and is likely to remain so for the time ahead.

The inner impulse towards working for the greater good of humanity – the ‘macrocosmic good’ – comes out of genuine understanding and not general emotions or mass psychology. It is also the responsibility for such aware individuals to gain an understanding, a level of perspective, for perceiving the events of our time. It is this understanding of forces behind events at face value that helps in the growth of the consciousness soul. Just as we can recognize there are occult forces in play in the physical realm, so too does this suggest that there are forces operable beyond the physical domain. To not acknowledge this is the same as seeing the branches of a tree swaying in the wind and to consider that the branches are moving of their own accord and under their own volition. It is a fundamental error to mistake secondary phenomena for primary causes. And when a person acts out of limited understanding, there is the potential to serve not the good but ultimately the contrary. In terms of entropic forces (my term for ‘evil’), they cannot be banished for they form a part of existence; rather, they are to be transmuted into good for them to be overcome. And this is the task of our times, the task for the spiritual soul of today.

What is needed is a re-cognition and refocusing upon metaphysical realities. Rudolf Steiner stated that if all human beings were to decide that they did not want higher development, then this potential for development would come to an end. It is therefore the responsibility of those with awareness, and inner cognition, to maintain within humankind the urge for inner evolvement. The present task for responsibly aware people today is to seek out that knowledge which comprehends not only world forces but the primary causes of events in this phenomenal, physical realm. In doing so, the person is able to raise themselves beyond petty inclinations and selfish, egoistic behaviour. This is not a denial of physical reality but rather a strengthened recognition of the primary realm of spirit.

To conclude, it can be said that there are forces coming through into this realm that humanity has limited knowledge or experience of. This is not something to be afraid of, for these forces are a part of humanity itself. We-You-I are part of the same consciousness, only that material existence – the physical life – has split, divided, and splintered these aspects. Humanity, for the most part in recent times, has been living as if a partial existence – a semi-existence – for it has been cut-off from recognition of its Source and the greater field of consciousness. The planet Earth, as well as other planets in the solar system, are entering a new alignment where it shall be easier for these correspondences to be made. That this age was coming has been known for a long time by other groupings that have power and influence within human civilization.

For this reason, these groupings have come together to create conditions across the planet – physical, mental, psychical – that would attempt to halt the emergence of greater perceptive consciousness. The attempts being made across the planet are for the realization of anesthetizing certain aspects of the human being so that it is less receptive to ‘spiritual’ or metaphysical truths and their correspondences. In other words, humanity is being further cut-off from its inherent connection to developmental impulses. Yet this approach has only a limited range of success. Humanity’s faculties can only be ‘blinded’ for so long. Evolutionary, developmental forces are far more powerful than supposed by these planetary power groups. At the same time, we need to recognize that events of world history are symptoms of the occurrences on the metaphysical level of reality, where primary, non-material aspects have their existence. These essential, primary phenomena have their impulses that come into being within the physical world of secondary phenomena. For most of humankind, these primary aspects are the unknowables.

It is time to become receptive to the forces available to us so that as a human being we can be of assistance rather than ignorant or, worse still, a hindrance. For those people capable of developing their understanding and receptivity to such impulses, it is time to begin the journey to know of the unknowables.

THE POWER OF THE VOID

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By Gary Z McGee

Source: Waking Times

“The power of the Void is the power of wombness in us all, the power of true creativity.” ~Peggy Andreas

The status quo is a juggernaut. It’s excessive. It’s overreaching. It’s ominous. It is so massive that it’s closed off from the underlying essence. It is so extensive that it’s lacking. It is so supreme that it’s extreme. It is so ubiquitous that it’s stifling. It is so vast that it must be checked by something greater than it is lest it spiral out into corruption.

What is greater than the vast somethingness of the status quo? The vast nothingness of the void. What is more powerful than the unimaginative zeitgeist? The creative power of the void. What is always bigger than the existing condition? The potential reconditioning force of the void.

The void is between worlds even as it creates worlds. It is the primal source, the vital core, the perennial roots, the primordial seed. It is all at once a lodestone, a whetstone, a steppingstone, and a Philosopher’s Stone.

It’s the floating nothing, the blindman’s target, the flow state between the bowman’s mind, the arrow, and the bull’s eye. It is the pivot point where all points point. It is the darkness that shines all light.

Indeed. The seed of somethingness can only grow from the heart of nothingness—the almighty void, the birthplace of all things, the great womb from which we are all born. Even the status quo is merely one of its infinite creations.

The void is not only a place of death and disorder, but also the birthplace of order. It’s the state in which the caterpillar is annihilated in the cocoon. It’s the place where the Phoenix is reborn. It’s a sacred space where bludgeoned aspects of the profane status quo can unwind and flourish. It’s a vital humus for human creativity.

Even regarding imagination, the void is the state of mind where No-mind and mindfulness intersect to become curiosity and wonder.

Those of us mindful enough can tap into the curiosity and wonder of the void and avoid the stifled certainty of the status quo. From the seat of No-mind (healthy detachment), we see how everything is connected to everything else. We see how the mind of Everything holds the heart of Nothingness, and the void of Nothingness holds the core of Everything.

Sometimes in order to open our mind we must lose it. Sometimes in order to cultivate mindfulness we must embrace No-mind in the void. Sometimes the only way to discover that the “door to our jailcell is open” is to lose the mindset that conditioned us into thinking that we were trapped in the first place.

Thus, the power of the void is the power of creativity in the face of contentment. It’s the power of audacious questioning in the face of accepted answers. It’s the power of imagination in the face of rigidity. It’s the power of humor in the face of self-seriousness. It’s the power of death and rebirth in the face of excess and stillbirth.

Have no illusions, the status quo is the pinnacle of contentment, accepted answers, rigidity, self-seriousness, excess, and stillbirth. It is our responsibility alone to flip the script, to turn the tables, to push the envelope, and to stay ahead of the curve. Nobody else can do it for us.

If we can gain mastery over the void, we can gain mastery over the status quo. Just as the master must integrate the darkness within him to become whole, we must integrate the void within us to become creative. Otherwise, the status quo consumes us. Otherwise, we drown in cultural conditioning. Otherwise, the Matrix has us by the balls, and the blue-pill-poppers will have outflanked our red-pill-popping courage.

But if we can gain the courage to create through the integration of the void, we can avoid the stifling trap of the status quo. We can rise above stagnation, complacency, comfort, and certainty. We can transcend the unhealthy scene and transform ourselves into a thundercloud fat with healing rain.

We can seize the lightning that splits the cosmos and fall in love with the split. Realizing that we are the split. We always have been. And that’s okay. We attain healthy detachment by understanding that we are a creature that must constantly negotiate its own delusionary attachment to being a thing separated from cosmos.

The power of the void is the power of holistic detachment in the face of illusory attachment. From the void we can see how our tiny self is outflanked by the mighty cosmos. We can see how petty our stress, anxiety, and existential angst really is. The grand scheme of things becomes a mighty hammer that shatters the glasshouse paradigm of our small-mindedness.

The void teaches the power of rebirth and creation from the ashes of death and destruction. It digs up the skull of God and props it up like a scarecrow. It drags the bones of the Phoenix across the desert and into the Garden of Rebirth. It blackens the sun and dances in the shadows, kicking up dust, and dousing the fires in Plato’s Cave. It awakens those who have pretended to be asleep.

From the self-inflicted wreckage of the void, we emerge more robust and antifragile than before, fixed by having been broken, whole by having been split in half, healed by honoring our wounds and brandishing them like trophies atop the summit of our having fallen apart and come back together again.

From our mastery of the void comes the unity of summit and abyss inside us. The wisdom gained at the summit guides us through the lows of the abyss. The courage gained in the abyss helps us navigate the highest heights. The unity of both gives us the power to create and to destroy in the face of that which seeks to fixate, stagnate, and perversely preserve conditions at the expense of healthy change. It gives us the power to overcome the status quo and to become a force of healthy change to be reckoned with.

IT’S ALL A DISTRACTION… BUT A DISTRACTION FROM WHAT, EXACTLY?

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By Dylan Charles

Source: Waking Times

In a recent conversation with a close friend we were talking about the insane firehose of fear-inducing narratives coming from the talking heads on TV, and she commented that, ‘it was all just a big distraction.’

I hear that a lot. It’s all just a big distraction.

Perhaps it’s true.

But a distraction from what, exactly?

I’m going to zoom all the way out for a few hundred words here. All the way out beyond the distraction from the economic and globalist reality bearing down on all of us. All the way out beyond the cultural revolution underpinning the agendas being pimped on us by mainstream media. All the way out beyond the technocratic, bio-fascist takeover coming from the world’s largest and most-overfunded organizations, like the WEF. All the way out, even, beyond the dehumanization and depopulation agenda becoming evermore clear to the layman in today’s post-Covid authoritarian world.

I’m going full spiritual here, because there’s something big that warrants your attention. Something which all the news, narratives and punditry never even skirt around, much less touch upon.

And that is the fact that you are so much more that what the material scientists and policy makers would have you believe. You’re being distracted from your connection to your higher self, to spirit itself.

It’s been a fascinating journey writing and publishing at Waking Times for over ten years. We’ve discussed in great detail the works of pioneering thinkers like Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock, and even brought renewed attention to the works of people like Rudolf Steiner, Carl Jung and other intellectuals who’ve helped to walk us over the gap between science and spirit. The message that always stuck with me is that the true value of being human, as opposed to a mind-controlled robot, is their uniqueness, individuality and our unique human capacity experience wonder, mystery, and inspiration.

And we need inspiration right now. It’s the antidote to fear. And we need to wonder about the big picture. Your connection to your higher self and all the courage and humanity to be found within that. We need to wonder what we truly are, without all the dense commentary and negative social thought loops keeping us bound to the stupidity inherent in pop culture and group think.

What are you, truly?

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” ~Carl Sagan

Yeah, something like that.

The thing is, when you lose track of, or allow yourself to be distracted from, this reality, the walls of the world close in on you. You forget about the present moment and look at the future as a foe whose power comes from the failures of your past. You forget that you’re endowed with the power to create, as Paul Levy reminded us in a podcast I did with him. You forget that your natural state is independence and courage, and you forget that you always have instant access to access these qualities, should you desire to call them in.

When you’re distracted from the reality of your own sovereign standing as a unique and potentially powerful spiritual being, you’re unable to set your own sails according to your own life passions. You are rudderless in a sea of mediocrity and conformity, and thereby perpetually seek the false sense of security and safety that comes from thinking you’re part of a tribe. You self-sabotage and engage in all kinds of senseless self-destruction in order to numb the pain of denying your

Your connection to spirit is what gives your life meaning in a world where phoniness is front page news all day, everyday.

The reason why this connection matters is because you’re being put to the test. The test is whether or not you can keep yourself together through all of the bullshit we’re doggie-paddling around in, so that you can still manage to be effective in your own life rather than becoming food for the hostile beings that feed off fear and anxiety.

So, above all the information, data and reasoning required to find material truth in this world, you need to be connected to who you really are, and you need to know what’s right for you. Not what they say is right for you. These are distinctly different things. You need a connection to your spirit. Your higher self. You need access to the best part of your being.

The part of you that doesn’t need public consensus in order to make a decision regarding your personal health. That part of you that doesn’t check to see what everyone else is doing before declaring whatever it is you truly want out of this magical life. That part of you that wants to you be healthy, balanced and vital in a world of poison and pollution.

When you don’t know who or what you are, you look outward towards others to complete this complex puzzle. When you don’t know who you are, you deny your own inner wisdom. You concern yourself with things you have no power over. You live your life seeking approval, people pleasing and over-obligating yourself. When you don’t know who you are, you leave the door wide open for fear, self-doubt, worry, and overwhelm.

If it’s all a distraction, then it’s time you refocus and recover your energy and power from the rigid, thought-controlling social discredit system being built up around you. The only thing that can save any of us is if all us remember who we are.

“A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.” ~Lao Tzu

M=EC2 – THE MEDITATION EQUATION

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By Kingsley Dennis

Source: Waking Times

‘When one begins to meditate, one accomplishes the only really free deed in this human life… we are completely free in this. Meditation is the archetypal free deed. – Rudolf Steiner

Arguably one of the world’s most famous equations is Einstein’s E = mc2 where energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. I am now proposing my own equation, which likely will be nowhere near as recognized or celebrated. Nevertheless, I feel it has worth sharing. Here it is: M = EC2 What does it signify? It means: meditation equals extended mind times contact and communication. At this point, I feel that some explanation is required. Here goes.

Philosophers, artists, and scientists have been debating for centuries the questions concerning human consciousness: what it is and how it emerges. The question of human consciousness has also been at the heart of many wisdom teachings, although these have tended to be based on revelation rather than investigation and empirical research. Over the course of these varied discussions, debates have been divided between the materialistic approach (the mind is contained in the brain), and what may be rather loosely termed as the ‘spiritual-metaphysical’ worldview (the mind exists outside of the brain). In recent decades, thanks largely to the advance in technologies, scientists have been able to map and study the human brain – including neuronal patterns, brain disorders, and pathways of human thinking. Yet this has led, in main, to an increased certitude among many scientists of a material view of human consciousness.

In other words, consciousness exists as a by-product of the physical brain and, as such, cannot exist without brain function. This is the dominant view amongst materialist thinkers and scientists. In more recent years however, and with the further research into nonlocal and field phenomena, investigators have been re-visiting mainstream theories of human consciousness. Specifically, as the unified field theory gains more support pointing to the nature of a nonlocal, interconnected cosmos, a different perspective is emerging on how consciousness may operate. And an understanding on the true nature of consciousness will validate and give meaning to the act of meditation; specifically, how meditation may provide access to contact, and possibly communication, beyond the material realm. First, we need to explore current concepts and perspectives on human consciousness.

Concepts of Consciousness: 1 – The Turbine Theory

The dominant mainstream narrative concerning human consciousness is that it is generated by the brain as a form of by-product. This has been referred to as the ‘turbine theory,’ whereby just how electricity would be generated by a working turbine as a by-product, so too is human consciousness the by-product of a functioning human brain (motor). This theory postulates human consciousness as being local and produced from something tangible. Also, when this producer/motor stops functioning – i.e., the brain ceases to be alive – then consciousness, and related streams of experience, likewise stop. Medical science has gone a long way to validate the ‘turbine theory’ of consciousness by repeated experiments on how impaired brain functioning results in distorted consciousness.

The basic premise of this understanding of consciousness is that neuronal networks in the human brain have evolved to such a high state of complexity that they produce a level of self-consciousness above that of any other animal on the planet (except perhaps dolphins, porpoises, and whales). Here, the degree of consciousness produced by each specific living creature is related to the level of biological complexity. In recent years, there have been renewed calls for a neurological basis for consciousness. For many scientists working in this field, consciousness is a by-product of complexity; thus, complex systems produce varying levels of consciousness, and ‘how much consciousness they have depends on how many connections they have and how they’re wired up.’[1] Despite recent scientific theories of consciousness, most still cling to the basis of an old paradigm ‘turbine theory.’

In other words, that consciousness is a secondary phenomenon resulting from primary activity located in the human brain. Regardless of the attempts by mainstream science to strengthen their outlook on consciousness, this ‘complexity-produces-consciousness as a by-product’ perspective has so many holes. The many holes in this dominant yet conservative theory is owing to a range of experiences that throw doubt upon its validity. Challenges to the turbine theory of consciousness have come, as one example, from increasing evidence of ‘after death’ conscious experiences.

Concepts of Consciousness: 2 – The Cloud Theory

According to the orthodox view, consciousness ceases when the brain dies – i.e., no generator, no current. For many, this may seem like an obvious deduction. However, evidence to the contrary clearly contradicts this theory. Many cases have shown that human consciousness is maintained even though a person is technically declared brain dead. The near-death experience (known as NDE) has been reported by sufficiently large numbers of people who were declared brain-dead. Conscious experience in brain dead people has been reported in almost 25 percent of tracked cases. The NDE phenomenon has now been widely researched and discussed by many credible sources.[2] Furthermore, this phenomenon is not new and there are accounts of NDEs occurring in medieval times.[3] The existence of consciousness – a by-product of brain activity – in the absence of brain function cannot be accounted for by the mainstream turbine theory. There are also numerous indications that human consciousness exists in cases of permanent death. That is, many years after a person has died their consciousness remains available for contact and communication, such as through channelling or forms of ESP. There is now enough credible evidence to put doubt into the mainstream theory that consciousness is solely a by-product of localized brain activity.

One way to account for these anomalies would be to suggest that consciousness is in some way conserved beyond the brain – that is, as a nonlocal phenomenon. In this hypothesis, consciousness is something stored external to the brain. This can be framed in terms of a ‘cloud theory’ of consciousness, as this is similar to how information would be conserved on digital platforms accessed by computer networks or other cloud-enabled devices. Likewise, using this analogy, the mainstream ‘turbine theory’ of consciousness would be akin to an old-fashioned computer without Internet or built-in-memory that would lose all its data once switched off. In this regard, the cloud theory posits consciousness as nonlocal, rather than localized within the brain. Furthermore, the cloud theory allows for not only individual consciousness to be stored, and be recalled, but multiple.

This perspective of accessing multiple consciousnesses, beyond the individual one, is reminiscent of Jung’s collective unconscious. This theory would appear to support the observations of psychiatrists and consciousness researchers who have induced altered states of consciousness in their clients, including past life regression. When in altered states a vast majority of people have the capacity to recall almost everything that has happened to them, as well as in previous life incarnations. Moreover, their recall is not limited solely to their own experience but can also include the experiences of other people as well.[4] This cloud theory therefore suggests something akin to a collective field of consciousness that makes complete information available relative to the mode of access. This perspective shares similarities with the scientific research on the Akashic Field[5] and Morphic Resonance.[6] However, despite the appropriateness of the cloud theory of consciousness, it too does not account for all observations.

Concepts of Consciousness: 3 – The Unified Field Theory

In various recorded accounts of altered state consciousness, it appears that contact/access is not only made with traces of one’s nonlocal consciousness but also with distinctive separate conscious intelligence. That is, with an active consciousness that is not the consciousness of a human being. Such experiences, once the realm of mystical, shamanic, or indigenous traditions, has increasingly entered mainstream culture. Previously, such ‘encounters’ were labelled as supernatural or simply conveniently ignored as a quirky anomaly. However, as western science has developed its exploration of the inner realms (such as in transpersonal psychology and similar practices), such experiences have become more widespread and thus need to be accounted for. From this evidence a remarkable conclusion arises: that human consciousness can connect, and often communicate, with conscious entities that not only manifest a sense of self, but also carry distinct memories and information. This experience can neither be accounted for in the mainstream turbine theory nor the cloud theory of consciousness. We now need to consider yet another concept – that consciousness is a unified field phenomena with holographic qualities.

The unified field theory posits that consciousness may manifest in spacetime yet originates from a source that exists in a realm beyond spacetime.  In other words, consciousness has its origins in a deeper dimension (in a ‘unified source field’) and yet manifests through physical-material reality. This concept would suggest that all forms of localized consciousness are expressions of a unified consciousness field that is beyond spacetime. The implications of this understanding are that consciousness is not ‘in’ the brain, ‘produced’ by the brain, nor ‘stored’ beyond the brain. Rather, the human mind is a localized aspect of a conscious intelligence that infuses the cosmos from its source beyond spacetime.

This may be a hard pill to swallow for many people. However, when we examine the phenomena that is consciousness, this perspective makes a lot of sense. The viewpoint of this new model says that the brain receives and interprets consciousness, which is an interrelated aspect of the cosmos, and then projects this as the individual mind. Yet the brain does not produce consciousness. This understanding, which is now increasingly supported by the very latest scientific findings, points toward a Unified Source Field (USF) as generating what we perceive as spacetime. The materiality of spacetime is thus a holographic projection, coded from an underlying cosmic intelligence-field. It is this underlying intelligence-field that is the source of all material reality and conscious life. Every element that emerges into physical reality is simultaneously interrelated with the underlying Unified Source Field. As such, each material element in existence is also in contact and communication with this unified intelligence-field. Human consciousness – the human mind – is at all times connected to a deeper dimension of Source consciousness.

A Deeper Dimension: Consciousness, Contact, Communication

The understanding that consciousness originates from a deeper dimension of reality beyond spacetime has been embraced by many well-known spiritual figures, mystics, visionaries, artists, and even a handful of intuitive scientists. It may one day come to represent the dominant understanding amongst humanity (as it perhaps once was). The universe has already been recognized by mainstream science as exhibiting an incredible – almost impossible – degree of coherence. Now we may know why this is. It is because there is no random cosmos, no separation of materiality and immateriality, no empty space, no ‘out there’ and ‘in here.’ Everything – absolutely everything – is an integral part of a nonlocal conscious field whose origin is a Unified Source Field (USF) existing beyond the spacetime dimension. What this implies is that there is an inherent form of order to the material dimension. The cosmos, and all aligned aspects within it, adheres to an intelligent, conscious impulse toward coherence and connection.[7] Perception too, as an attribute of consciousness, trends toward greater conscious coherence (awareness) and connection. At the core of this drive for connectivity, I suggest, is an urge for conscious awareness of Source (the Unified Source Field). And so, this leads me back to the equation at the beginning of this essay; what I call the meditation equation: M = EC2.

Meditation equals extended mind times contact and communication. Meditation has from time immemorial been a part of human life, even if not formally recognized as so. Meditation can take only a second. A quick pause of chatter in the mind. A momentary close of the eyes. A transitory step back from the entanglement in physical reality. A fleeting respite from external stimuli. A brief break from the outer world to focus upon the inner. And the inner world is expansive – it is where the origin resides. And in this state, contact can be made with those aspects in existence beyond our material reality. And with contact can also come communication.

As human beings, we are already in contact and communication with aspects beyond our perception or acknowledgment. We only do not recognize such contacts as so. The inner nudge, the inspirational idea, the coincidental happening, the inexpressible sense, the indescribable knowing. These are the contacts humanity has. What if we consciously take it to the next level by intending to listen to such contact? What if we then ask for communication? We can give ourselves permission to start asking for contact and communication whilst in a meditative state. By showing acceptance, and readiness to allow for contact and communication beyond our physical senses and sense-reality, we are acknowledging the interrelatedness of all life. And life wishes to communicate amongst itself. Sentient life wishes to be heard, and to share.

Life is not meaningless nor without purpose. Our inherent connectivity transcends localized space and time. The human being is intrinsically connected with the cosmos and with Source consciousness. One day, it is hoped, this understanding will be, for all of us, as clear as pure water; and we will laugh gently to ourselves thinking how it could ever have been otherwise.

MATERIALISM & THE LOSS OF SOUL

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By Kingsley L. Dennis

Source: Waking Times

The non-material, or non-visible, realm does not lie dormant. It is active, constantly. It is what infuses and makes possible the world we know and see. The intangible realm of vital forces is what we often call the ‘spiritual’ dimension for within it lies the conscious intelligences that establish material life. Spiritual matters have long been an abstract thing for many people. Yet they are no longer to remain abstract – they are now to flow into culture not only through ‘spiritual channels,’ but through all manner of ways, including people. The flow and merger between the suprasensory world and the sensory world (the realm of the phenomenal), has always been in operation. Only now, it looks set to increase.

Materialism is all good and well – yet up to a certain point. This is recognized by some as the ‘Fall’ – the deep immersion into physical reality. To a certain degree, this immersion into physicality was necessary for developing individualism and to perceive existence in relation to Source. Once this recognition is gained, then begins the ‘return journey’ back to Source/Origin consciousness. However, if a species remains too long within the grip of materialistic forces, then a hardening – or deadening – can occur that crystallizes certain faculties and organs of perception, which leads to an evolutionary stagnation. As such, the stagnation of evolvement can be due to the over-influence of entropic forces. The impulse of spiritual knowledge (developmental forces) descending into the physical world has been opposed by other forces that do not wish for people to discover their inner freedom. Yet this time, this moment in human development, has been foreseen and, on some levels, even planned for. What is to come about has been viewed as inevitable by those who know what is at stake.

The entropic forces that exist in opposition aim to ‘over-materialize’ materialism. They intend to deepen the entanglement within physical matter, and to create artificial material forms that would not have arisen in the natural course of human evolvement. This is a matter of exercising certain powers upon the physical plane. This is being applied in such a way as to block a renewal of human culture beyond materialism and to direct it into a new form of materialism, a more etheric form that seems un-material. This is what I refer to as the ‘fallacy of materialism’ – the digital-virtual realms, whilst seeming contrary to physical-materialism, are in fact working to deepen human entanglement in material forces. These digitized spaces, because of their sense of non-physicality, are really an etheric manifestation of materialism. Or rather, a realm of theoretical materialism. Theoretical materialism signifies a reality construct that does not need to be physical to the touch, yet it is based on, or is a projection from, a material foundation. Within both the theoretical and regular mode of materialism, the human being is encapsulated within an amalgamation of material processes. It is also a world of facts and external evidence that a person becomes lost within. All life experience proceeds from this material realm, and this conditions the human being to gain a view of life that is factually based, and to accept that there is no other reality except this world of materialism and factual experience. Any notion of the soul or spirit – the transcendental impulse – is either regarded as being a by-product from material reality or is rejected altogether as a false notion. This is the power of the immersion into matter-reality.

Deep materialism finally becomes a cosmology of entropy and decline. It leads to mechanical, artificial modes of thinking that eventually brings about a stagnation in those forces driving human development. If continued, these materialistic forces carve out a path of technological advancement and evolution that further blocks vital, spiritualized forces. In this route, the human being strives for greater material benefits yet neglects the vital human forces of spiritualized connection. Our current epoch is concerned with the development of the material world; and if the human being is not to degenerate totally into a mere accomplice of machines, then a path must be found which leads from the mechanical impulse towards a life of the spirit. However, entropic forces are in play that are opposed to forms of spiritualization (spiritual freedom), and which work to reduce and, eventually, dispose of spiritual seeking and to replace it with an ethereal and otherworldly ‘virtual paradise’ where all needs can be fulfilled-by-illusion. A part of this ‘supra-materialism’ is the notion of immortality that is arising through transhumanist tropes. This can be referred to as the immortality falsehood as it works not through the spirit-soul but through a prolongation of the physical life experience by merger with machinic forms. This is a mode of potential immortality within the physical sphere but not within the spiritual. In the end, it is an entrapment for it disavows the inner spirit release from the physical domain. This can lead to a state of soullessness within the human being as the contact with Source becomes, over time, diminished. Or, perhaps this materialistic, transhumanist agenda will attract those people already without full spirit-soul incarnation.

It may be that there are people walking around in physical incarnation, in physical bodies, yet who are lacking, for want of a better word, a soul. Rudolf Steiner made note of this a hundred years ago when he stated

‘…a kind of surplus of individuals is appearing in our times who are without Egos [‘I’], who are not truly human beings. This is a terrible truth…They make the impression of a human being if we do not look closely, but they are not human in the fullest sense of the word.’ 1

Steiner warned us to be aware that what we encounter as human beings in human form may not always have to be what it appears to be. He stated that the outer appearance can be just that: appearance. He went on to state: ‘We encounter people in human form who only in their outer appearance are individuals…in truth, these are humans with a physical, etheric, and astral body, but beings are embodied in them, beings that make use of these individuals in order to operate through them.’2 What this refers to is that human bodies can be vessels for other beings to operate through.

This makes us realize that the world of ‘spirit’ may not always be what we have thought it to be. In other words, it may not be all divine light and ascension. It also involves the aspect of discernment. For there are players and forces that wield a great deal of influence within the physical world. And some of these influences act through the presence of certain individuals that may appear outwardly ‘normal.’ In this light, a completely different kind of spirituality is at work in present-day humanity. It may be inferred, without sounding dramatic, that certain power groups, and their important individual members, are influenced (and perhaps dominated) by a non-human species of being that are intent on implementing non-human objectives. Such groups and individuals would, in this case, exhibit a distinct lack of ‘soul’ – i.e., empathy and compassion – and would appear to others as displaying almost sociopathic tendencies.[i] Yet at the same time, such people can appear unusually charismatic and are able to exert great influence over other people, especially with their words and speeches, whilst being themselves emotionally stunted.

To consider this further, such beings might be motivated in their actions to attempt to block other human being’s connection to their own individual inner/spiritual impulse. By a range of actions, they could focus on distracting people away from the notion of a metaphysical reality and of their inherent connection to Source (or a realm of vital conscious intelligence beyond matter-reality). In extreme cases, such players might even target the bio-psycho human body in an attempt to sabotage the vessel so as to make it a less viable vehicle for soul-spirit incarnation. What else might they hope to achieve? Again, referring to Rudolf Steiner, he stated that: ‘Their objective is to maintain the whole of life as a mere economic life, to gradually eradicate everything else that is part of the intellectual and spiritual life, to eradicate the spiritual life precisely where it is most active…and swallow up everything through the economic life.’3

By hijacking cultural, social, and economic systems, the focus turns away from the inner life, which tends to be more active once people have satisfied their primary needs (see Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs). Also, if there are uncertainties, disruptions, and fluctuations in these systems, then people can become psychologically influenced in a negative way. That is, for those people who come under the domination of such economic forces – i.e., are subservient through debt – they are more likely to experience a loss of personal empowerment and will. If we take only a cursory glance at the actions of many incumbent leaders, politicians, corporate businesses, financial institutions, and more, we can see a clear lack of any soulful behaviour or intent. Quite the contrary, many of these individuals and groups seem determined to curtail human freedoms, sovereignty, and inner empowerment. If Steiner were alive today, he would no doubt say that what we are currently witnessing upon the physical plane is an act of soulless terraforming of the planet and a controlling manipulation of the human life experience by nefarious forces that have anti-human aims and intentions. Perhaps this is why so many people today are experiencing depression, frustration, and apathy – a paralysis of will – from which they feel unable to resolve. This gets manifested as a sense of weariness and dissatisfaction that is projected out into their everyday lives.

Because of this, and other factors, the consciously aware person of today is being asked to step into their role as a physical representative of sacred life. It is important that metaphysical realities are never diminished or disowned, and that the life of the spirit remains healthy and strong in expression within physical life. If there is ever a struggle against the human soul, then we may be witnessing this in these current times. We would do well to remember that each person possesses that special treasure that can never be taken from them. And this is the true eternal and genuine immortality. These are the times to be soulful, and to bring forth the human spirit.

References

1 Cited in Grosse, Erdmuth Johannes (2021) Are There People Without A Self? Forest Row: Temple Lodge, p31-2

2 Cited in Grosse, Erdmuth Johannes (2021) Are There People Without A Self? Forest Row: Temple Lodge, p60

3 Cited in Grosse, Erdmuth Johannes (2021) Are There People Without A Self? Forest Row: Temple Lodge, p63

WHY IS NON-CONFORMITY YOUR GREATEST ASSET IN THESE STRANGE TIMES?

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By Dylan Charles

Source: Waking Times

Have you noticed that in most of the great works of dystopian science fiction and cinema there’s a recurring theme of mass conformity to uncomfortably rigid and enforced social norms?

There’s always an impenetrable bureaucracy which has reduced the masses to statistical averages to be more efficiently managed. The system is never benign and loving, because paradoxically, at the top of the pyramid there always resides a single individual ruler, who is invariably psychotic, having no contact with reality. His psychosis is mirrored by the masses, and paradoxically, the individual is overrun by the mass so the the mass can be overrun by an individual.

The citizen-collective in these stories is intrinsically recognized as inhuman, unnatural, malignant and dangerous. It is compassionless, irrational, illogical and excessively emotional. To behold such a well-behaved and compliant hive stirs the primal fear of dying before death, of not-living while alive, and of an existence devoid of meaning.

The hero in these stories is always the lone individual who finds it unbearable to subjugate his autonomy to the herd. As much as he understands the consequences for non-conformity he simply cannot refuse the risk of rebellion, and is compelled to covertly express his distinctiveness. Once he experiences the thrill of making some small departure from the standard, he is thereby morally obliged to further differentiate himself, ultimately arousing the fury of the state which aims to brutally suppress him in order to maintain its position of absolute authority.

George Orwell’s 1984 is a favored example of this because the book takes you inside the mind of someone who cannot resist the pull of inner authenticity, self-integrity and truth. Aroused by truth and love, the protagonist, Winston Smith, is simply incapable of squashing his internal drive towards individuation from the party-mind, and sets out on a futile endeavor to experience the joys of having a genuine human existence… if only for a moment.

“So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.” ~Winston Smith, 1984

I won’t spoil it for you, but it doesn’t go well. He gets a short glimpse of what life could be like outside of the prison of total obedience, but is quickly punished. And horribly so.

Our natural drive towards individuation and authenticity is such a powerfully buoyant force that to subjugate it requires a tremendous counter force. Fear is typically what does the trick. Fear is the glue that holds the collective together.

What many people don’t realize is that this same story plays out metaphorically in our personal lives all day everyday, and without a proper understanding of how the mind seeks safety amongst the tribe, we’re at the mercy of the default programs running in the subconscious mind.

This is where we are wired to conform to the group, because the subconscious mind is the survival-seeking mechanism at the root of consciousness, and it compels us to pursue the safety of not being rejected, abandoned, ridiculed or ostracized. It looks at what everyone else is doing and it imitates, emulates, copies, and mimics the most common behaviors it sees in the tribe around us, now matter how insane or psychotic they are.

It has the faulty perception that to exist outside of the tribe is fatal, when in today’s society, the opposite is true.

But the good life lies beyond the herd, because by its very nature, the herd is a reduction to an average. It is by definition mediocre.

Just look at the quality of the average today. Unhealthy, unhappy, broke, dissatisfied, depressed, emotional, disconnected, dysfunctional and delusional. Being average here is deadly.

The good life is found in your authenticity and individuality. This is the part of you that has access to those non-average, non-mediocre experiences which make life worth living and inspire you to live deeply into your definition of success. Without the nuances of individual experience and authentic expression, life is dull, stupid, frightful and boring.

Culturally we have a history of valuing the individual in his own right. We’ve always revered him over the collective and credit the ingenuity and creativity of individualistic, non-conformist thinking for shaping the system and circumstances which built the foundation of the prosperity we enjoy today. This is reflected in a few excellent quotes from some of our most revered American authors, speaking from a time when there was no herd mentality, only individuals collaborating to build something unique:

“All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.”~James Fenimore Cooper

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” ~Henry David Thoreau

“They [conformists] think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world… Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members… Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist… Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Again, your best, most prosperous life is dependent on your willingness and ability to differentiate yourself from this sick tribe. The subconscious, however, wants you to feel safe, which is not the same thing as being safe, nor happy. And this is why your individuality is essential to real happiness and prosperity. It represents the drive to express your most extraordinary qualities, which is required to bring your true nature to completion.

Carl Jung elucidated this process of individuation, which is the psyche’s journey toward full maturation and independence. Individuation is, as he put it is, ‘to divest the self of false wrappings.’ The false wrappings of today’s world are revealed in how you self-sabotage and how you hold yourself back from your potential.

What repetitive behaviors do you engage in that you wish you didn’t? Where did the programs for these behaviors originate? Are they yours by choice, or are they learned from others, perhaps your family or tribe of origin? What do you repeatedly do, or not do, that takes your further and further from living the life you deserve and desire?

Here’s a final quote by Carl Jung on the importance of expressing your uniqueness and allowing for your individuation.

“Insofar as society is itself composed of de-individualized human beings, it is completely at the mercy of ruthless individualists. Let it band together into groups and organizations as much as it likes – it is just this banding together and the resultant extinction of the individual personality that makes it succumb so readily to a dictator. A million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one.

Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally shortsighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though one would think that the world had seen more than enough of what a well disciplined mob can do in the hands of a single madman… People go on blithely organizing and believing in the sovereign remedy of mass action, without the least consciousness of the fact that the most powerful organizations in the world can be maintained only by the greatest ruthlessness of their leaders and the cheapest of slogans.” ~Carl Jung

HOW TO OVERCOME THE FEAR OF MORTALITY

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By Gary Z McGee

Source: Waking Times

“I believe in everything; nothing is sacred. I believe in nothing; everything is sacred.” ~Tom Robbins

Some say death is a compass. Others say it’s a crossroads. Some say death is the beginning of time. Others say it’s the end of the beginning. But no matter what people say, death is nonnegotiable. It is coming for us all. We ignore this knowledge at our own great peril.

Staring into the headlights of our own death, some of us are consciously aware of these lights, but a lot of us are unconscious to them. For some of us, the lights are speeding right towards us, and death is nigh. For most of us, the lights are far off, dimly lit on the horizon. But all of us will eventually be ran over by the vehicle of Death.

So, what is a stumbling, fumbling mortal to do? How do we square the circle of knowing that we will die? How do we navigate this Mobius Strip of doom? How do we loosen the noose so that we can at least live a decent life?

Knowing how to deal with the fear of mortality is probably the most important life skill that we can have. But it’s a two-sided coin. On the one side, the fear of mortality is the fear of death. On the other side, the fear of mortality is the fear of life. Both must be honored, honed, and humored before sublimity is ours.

The fear of death:

“The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety. The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.” ~Irvin Yalom

Know this, right at the jump: There is no escape. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. A life well-lived is a life lived staring death in the face. You can’t be an adventurous artist or a drunken spirit and still be a law-abiding citizen or solid oak in a comfortable yard. If you want to get drunk, you have to accept the nausea and the hangover. If you want to say yes to sunlight and adventure, you have to say yes to filth and danger.

Everything is within you, demon and diamond, power and pain, the laughter of life and the trepidation of death. Say yes to it all, shirk nothing. Don’t try to lie to yourself. You are not going to live forever. You are not immortal. You are a butterfly in a tsunami. Don’t fight it. Surrender to it. Let it guide you. Let it drive you. Become one with the tempest. You have this one life. Make the best of it.

Reconcile your mortal fear, assimilate your existential angst, integrate your death anxiety. Defy death by confronting it head-on. Die inside it. Burn off the dross. Lose your sentimental baggage, your naivete, your innocence. Then resurrect yourself into a person with the fortitude to handle the pain. For Pain is the ultimate teacher. Especially the pain that Death teaches. Learn from it. Let it shape you. Let it sharpen you into an instrument worthy of magnificence. As Atticus cryptically stated, “Let my death be a long and magnificent life.”

In the end, death makes philosophers of us all.

The fear of life:

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” ~Louise Erdrich

Life will break your heart. Oh well. Let it break. Your heart was made to break open, suck the whole of experience into it—good and bad—and then come back together again. That’s what makes you stronger. Paraphrasing Samuel Becket here: Ever loving. Ever broken hearted. No matter. Love again. Break your heart open again. Break it better.

Life is less about receiving flowers, rainbows, and sunshine and more about how well you navigate thorns, storms, and darkness. Don’t avoid the thorns at the expense of the rose. Don’t avoid the storm at the expense of adventure. Don’t avoid the darkness at the expense of seeing beyond the light. Pain should not be avoided at the expense of wholeness; wholeness should be embraced at the risk of pain. As James Hillman powerfully stated, “We are composed of agonies not polarities.”

It’s what you do with these agonies that will decide the wholeness of your life. Being whole is not never breaking. Not at all. Being whole is breaking and then coming back together again stronger than you were before. And it never ends. It’s a constant: get wounded, mend your wounds, and then transform them into sacred wounds. That’s a well-lived life.

Another way of looking at the life-death-rebirth cycle is in terms of wholeness. There is no point in the cycle that is not the beginning and the end of every other point in the cycle. That is what you are. You are wholeness perceiving fractured aspects of the whole as points along the way.

During dark times, when it feels like you’ve been buried in failure and pain, remember this feeling of wholeness, and then flip the script and imagine you’ve been planted instead. Now all there is left to do is to take this wholeness and bloom into sublimity.

Discover the Sublime:

“There are heights of the soul from which even tragedy ceases to look tragic.” ~Nietzsche

When you assimilate your fear of life and death, you experience a state of cosmic sublimity. You rise above all the pains and pleasures, all the ups and downs, all the fear and angst and hunger. All the heaviness of mortality slips away into lightheartedness. Amor fati overwhelms you and all you can do is step into the powerful role of being love itself. You fall in love with being in love with your fate.

In this state of cosmic sublimity, all the pain, all the pleasure, all the ups and downs, all the fear and love of life become mere ingredients for your own immortality project, your magnum opus, your ultimate work of art.

Where a plant blooms into a flower, a human blooms into a piece of art. When you’re in the throes of an artistic process, you are flourishing. You touch the Philosopher’s Stone. The transcendent shines through the art. The sublime shines through you. It all comes together in that sacred space between life and death: surrender.

The cosmic sublime is an ontological pivot point, a perspective in which death is also rapture and resurrection, and the death of the ego is linked to creativity. It’s a movement into psychological depth.

If you want to discover the sublime, meditate on death. Meditate on eternity. Meditate on interconnectedness. Meditate on pain and probability. When you become deeply aware of your mortality it gives you a sense of purpose and energy. Find ways to transform this purpose and energy into vitality, creativity, and power. Seek expansion. Transform energy into synergy. Express the infinite in the tangible and bounded form of a work of art. Bring magic elixir back to “the tribe” and change the way the tribe sees the world.

Nostalgic for the Future

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By Edward Curtin

Source: Behind the Curtain

Despite its pedigree as a fundamental element in civilization’s greatest stories, nostalgia has come to be associated with treacly sentimentality, defeatism, and spurious spiritual inclinations.  Homer, Vergil, Dante, the Biblical writers, and their ilk would demur, of course, but they have been dead for a few years, so progress’s mantra urges us to get on with it.  This is now.

But now is always, and like its twin – exile – nostalgia is perpetual.  The aching for “home” – from Greek algos, pain + nostos, homecoming – is not simply a desire for the past, whether in reality or imagination, time or place, but a passionate yearning for the best from the past to be brought into the future.

Nostalgia may be more a long ache of old people, but it is also a feeling that follows everyone along life’s way.  Its presence may be shorter in youth, and it may be brief, intermittent, and unrecognized, but it is there.  Surely it grows with experience.  As everyone knows, a taste, a smell, a sight, a sound, a song – can conjure up a moment’s happiness, a reverie of possibility.  Paradise regained, but differently.  A yearning recognized, as with seeing for the first time how Van Gogh’s blue paint opens a door to ecstasy or a line of poetry cracks open a space in one’s heart for prospective love.  Hope reborn as an  aperture to the beyond reimagined and made possible.

There is no need to ever leave where we are to find that we are already no longer there, for living is a perpetual leaving-taking, and the ache of loss is its price.

But like all pains, it is one we wish to relieve in the future; and in order to make a future, we must be able to imagine or remember it first.  We are all exiled in our own ways. Home was yesterday, and our lost homes lie in our futures, if we hold to the dream of homecoming, whatever that may mean to each person.  But it also has a universal meaning, since we dwell on this earth together, our one home for our entire human family.

You may think I am engaging in fluff and puff and flimsy imaginings.  But no.

All across the world there are hundreds of millions of exiles, forced by wars, power politics, poverty, starvation, destructive capitalism, and modernization’s calamitous consequences to leave their homes and suffer the disorientation of wandering.  Emigration, immigration, salvaging bits of the old in the new strange lands – thus is their plight.  So much lost and small hopes found in nostalgic remembering. Piecing together the fragments.

But in a far less physical sense, the homeless mind is the rule today.  There are very few people these days who don’t wish to somehow return to a time when the madness that engulfs us didn’t exist; to escape the whirligig of fragmented consciousness in which the world appears – i.e. is presented by the media – as a pointillistic painting whose dots move so rapidly that a coherent picture is near impossible.  This feeling is widespread.  It is not a question of politics.  It crisscrosses the world following the hyper-real unreality of the technologies that join us in a state of transcendental homelessness and anxiety.  All the propaganda about a “new normal” and a digital disembodied future ring hollow. The Great Reset is the Great Nightmare.  Nothing seems normal anymore and the future seems even less so.

The world has become Weirdsville. This is something that most people – young and old – feel, even if they can’t articulate it.  The feeling that all the news is false and that some massive con game is underway is pandemic.

Here is an insignificant bit of nostalgia.  I mention it because it points beyond itself, then and now.  It has always been nostalgia for the future.  I think it is a commonplace experience.

When I was in high school, there was a tiny cheese shop on Lexington Avenue and 85th St. in New York City near the subway that I took to and home from school.  It was the size of a walk-in closet.  Thousands of cheeses surrounded you when you entered. The smells were overwhelming.  I would often stop in there with empty pockets on my way home from school.  The proprietor, knowing I was in awe of the thousands of cheeses, would often give me little samples with pieces of crusty French bread.  He would regale me with tales of Paris and the histories of the various European cheeses. He would emphasize their livingness, how they breathed.  By the door was a large basket filled with long loaves of fragrant French bread flown in every morning from Paris by Air France.  These were the days before every supermarket sold knockoff versions of the genuine thing.  Each long loaf was in a colorful French tricolored paper bag.

Those loaves of bread in the French colors always transported me to Paris, a place I had never been, but whose language I was studying.  Then, and for years afterwards, I was nostalgic for a Paris that was not yet part of my physical experience.  How could this be? I asked myself.  One day I realized that I was not nostalgic for Paris or the cheese shop, nor for the cheese or the bread, which I had tasted many times, but for the paper bags the bread came in.  Why?

This question perplexed me until I realized my notion of nostalgia was wrong.  For those bags had always represented the future for me, the birds of flight a sign of freedom beckoning as my youthful world expanded.  My nostalgia for the Air France bags was a way to go back to go forward, not to wallow in sentimentality and the “good old days,” but to read the entrails for their prophetic message: the small-life world is limiting – expand your horizons.

It was not a question of jumping on a plane and going somewhere different, although that in time would also be good.  It was not an invitation to revisit that cheese shop, as if that were possible, for the store was long gone and in any case it would not mean the same thing.  It was not a desire to become a teenager again. You cannot repeat an experience, despite F. Scott Fitzgerald writing:  “You can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can.”

The past in that sense is quicksand, a death wish.  For many people (and this is the prevalent understanding of nostalgia as an exclusively negative way of thinking), embittered nostalgia is their way of denying the present and the future, often by the fictitious creation of “the good old days” when everything was supposedly so much better.

But nostalgia can also be an impetus to create a better future, a reminder that good aspects of what has been lost need to be regained to change the course of the present’s future trajectory.

Today most people are bamboozled by world events, as an idiot wind blows through the putrescent words of the media sycophants who churn out their endlessly deceptive and confusing propaganda on behalf of their elite masters.  Given a few minutes peace of mind to analyze this drivel – a tranquility destroyed by the electronic frenzy – it becomes apparent that their fear, anxiety, and contradictory reports are intentional, part of a strategy to pound down the public into drooling, quaking morons.

But many people in their better moments do recall times when they experienced glimpses of a better life, transitory as those experiences might have been.  Moments when they felt more at home in their skin in a world where they belonged and they could make better sense of the news they received.  Not lost and wandering and constantly fearfully agitated by a future seemingly chaotic, leading to dusty death in a story told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

I suggest that those nostalgic moments revolve around the changing nature of our experience of space and time.  There was a time when time was time and space and speed had some human meaning, for people lived within the limits of the natural world of which they were a part.  As I wrote once before:

In former days you could cross over to other people’s lives and come back with a different perspective, knowing what was obvious was true and that to exist meant to be composed of flesh and blood like all the others in different places and to be bound by the natural cycles of life and death, spring and fall, summer and winter. There were limits then, on the land, water, and even in the sky, where space too had dimensions and the stars and planets weren’t imaginary landing strips for mad scientists and their partners in celluloid fantasies.

In that rapidly disappearing world where people felt situated in space and time, life was not yet a holographic spectacle of repetitive images and words, a pseudo-world of shadowy figures engaging in pseudo-debates on electronic screens with people traveling from one place to another only to find that they never left home. When the mind is homeless and the grey magic of digital propaganda is its element, life becomes a vast circinate wandering to nowhere. The experience of traveling thousands of miles only to see the same chain of stores lining the same roads in the same towns across a country where the same people live with their same machines and same thoughts in their same lives in their same clothes. A mass society of mass minds in the hive created by cell phones and measured in nanoseconds where the choices are the freedom to choose what is always the same within a cage of categories meant to render all reality a ‘mediated reality.’

Nostalgia is always about time and space. In that sense, it is equivalent to all human experience that also takes place within these dimensions.  And when technology has radically disrupted our human sense of limits in their regard, it becomes harder and harder to feel at home, to dwell enough to grasp what is happening in the world.

I believe that many people feel nostalgic for slower and more silent days when they could hear themselves think a bit.  When the sense of always being on the go and lacking time predominates as it does today, thinking becomes very difficult.  To think, one must dethrone King Rush and silence Queen Noise, the two conditions that the speed and noise of digital technology render impossible.  Tranquilized by the beeping trivia pouring out of the omnipresent electronic gadgets, the very devices being used by the elites to control the masses, a profound grasp of the source of one’s disquietude is impossible. The world becomes impossible to read. The sense of always being away, ungrounded, and mentally homeless in a cacophonous madhouse becomes the norm.  One feels sick in heart and mind.

Most people sense this, and whether they think of it as nostalgia or not, I believe they feel that something important is missing and that they are wandering like rolling stones, as Dylan voiced it so poetically, with no direction home.

How does it feel?  It feels lousy.

So it’s not a question of returning to “the good old days.”  The future beckons.  But if we don’t find a way to rediscover those essential human needs of slowness and silence, to name but two, I am afraid we will find ourselves speeding along into an inferno of our own making, where it’s noisy as hell and not fit for human habitation.