This conversation between Webster Tarpley and Libertarian Adam Kokesh is worth watching. Kokesh has no real answer for Tarpley’s assertion that Ron Paul economic plan would be genocidal. Kokesh also concedes that the libertarian project lacks any plan to correct the existing distribution of wealth. It’s amusing watching Tarpley refusing to be drawn into a theoretical discussion about libertarians versus ‘big government’ and staying focused on what’s actually happening.
Webster Tarpley says explicitly that US sponsored death squads were responsible for the Houla massacre that is being used to undermine the Assad government in Syria. He does not present any independent evidence for this assertion but as far as I can see there is no independent evidence for the assertion that the massacre was perpetrated on orders from the Syrian government or even by their supporters.
The US, UK and France are very insistent that Assad should step down, as they were insistent that Gaddafi should step down in Libya. The whole drive seems to be ‘regime change’ rather than the resolution of a humanitarian crisis. It is difficult not to see a ‘conspiracy’ to take over the Middle East, especially given the testimony of US General Wesley Clark:
http://youtu.be/9RC1Mepk_Sw
http://youtu.be/h8JJo1RrgVc
Occupy is interesting to me because it feels like a conversation. It’s like something gelling that everyone can be part of because the emphasis seems to be reaching for consensus through conversation rather than doctrine. I don’t think that its strength is in defining or implementing solutions so much as creating non-hierarchical and non-coercive spaces, physical and psychosocial, where solutions can be worked out.
http://youtu.be/BXkg465J8rQ
This is a good interview. I like Ventura’s last shot “You’re very good at hitting buttons. I can see why they hired you.” Morgan often comes across as ignorant and discourteous to an embarrassing degree but maybe it’s just a style.
Today I completed a total of 13.5 km on the treadmill which is the most I’ve ever done in a day. I read an email from Oxfam inviting applications for their London Marathon team. I thought about it and wasn’t worried about the 26 miles but was daunted by the prospect of having to commit to raising £2000. However I decided to do their ‘Great South Run’, which is 10 miles in Portsmouth at the end of October. My commitment is to raise a much more manageable £300.
I’m keeping a record of my training/progress on The Daily Mile website.
‎”Angels are stunned when they hear that there are people who credit everything to nature and nothing to the Divine, as well as people who believe that their bodies, in which so many wonders of heaven are gathered, are fashioned out of nature, and even that this is the source of our rational capacity. On the contrary, if people would just raise their minds a little, they could see that things like this come from the Divine and not from nature, and that nature was created simply to clothe the spiritual and responsively represent it on the lowest level of the design. They compare such people to owls, which see in darkness, but see nothing in the light.”
-Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, p. 139
Swedenborg makes an interesting point. Some people may see this as a denial of evolution and other scientific descriptions of the material world; I don’t know Swedenborg’s work but I don’t see that in this passage. He is not disputing materialist or natural description, he is just saying that this is not all that there is. Evolution is not denied if there is a meaning and even an intention behind it that cannot be apprehended by science.
‘It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’ Matthew 4:1-4
In Matthew 4:1-4 Jesus is making the point that our being is sustained not just by the natural order but also by divine intention. To be whole we need to be aware not just of nature but also of the divine within and behind nature and on which the natural order hangs. The passage is part of the description of Jesus being tempted by Satan during his forty day fast. Satan attempts to tempt Jesus through a small thing, bread to satisfy his hunger, and through a large thing, the promise of worldly power. In a wholly materialist world, ease and power are obvious goals; in the world of the divine their pursuit means distraction from the real and entanglement in illusion.
There is a very similar story in Buddhist tradition where Buddha is tempted by Mara:
Tradition has it that at this time kings who exercised rule oppressed the subjects over whom they ruled. As the Exalted One saw men punished and persecuted under the rule of these wicked kings, he was moved to compassion. And he considered thus within himself, “Is it not possible to exercise sovereignty without killing or causing to kill, without conquering or causing to conquer, without sorrow or causing sorrow, with justice and righteousness?”
Now Mara the Evil One perceived within himself the thought that was passing through the mind of the Exalted One, and he reflected thus, “The monk Gotama is considering within himself, ‘Is it not possible to exercise sovereignty?’ It must be that he now desires to exercise sovereignty. And this thing which is called sovereignty is an occasion of heedlessness. If he does exercise sovereignty, I may be able to catch him off his guard. I will therefore go and arouse his ambition.”[1]
Accordingly Mara the Evil One approached the Teacher and said, “Reverend sir, let the Exalted One exercise sovereignty; let the Happy One exercise sovereignty, without killing or causing to kill, without conquering or causing to conquer, without sorrow or causing sorrow, with justice and righteousness.” Said the Teacher to Mara, “Evil One, what do you see in me that makes you speak thus to me?” Said Mara to the Teacher, “Reverend sir, the Exalted One has developed to the full the four bases of spiritual power. For should the Exalted One resolve, ‘Let the Himalaya, king of mountains, be turned to gold,’ that mountain would turn to gold. I, too, will do with this wealth all those things which can be done with wealth. Thus you shall rule justly and righteously.” Then said the Teacher:
A mountain made of gold,
Of only gold alone,
Given to one — not enough!
Knowing this, live steadily.
Having seen where suffering has its cause,
How can a person turn away to pleasures?
Knowing the “assets”[2] as attachments in the world,
Let such a one by training subdue them.
With these stanzas the Teacher aroused and alarmed Mara the Evil One. Then he said to him, “I will admonish you yet again, Evil One. I have nothing in common with you. Thus do I admonish you.” So saying, he pronounced the following stanzas:
Happy are companions when the need arises,
Contentment is happiness with just this and that;
Happy is merit when life is at an end,
Abandoning all suffering is happiness.
Happiness is it to serve one’s mother here,
To serve one’s father, too, is happiness;
Happiness is serving ascetics here.
To serve brahmanas[3] is happiness.
Virtue till old age is happiness;
Happiness is faith planted firmly;
Happy is the gaining of wisdom,
Not doing evil — that is happiness.
— Dhp 331-333
Both Buddha and Jesus are pointing to the ‘divine’ reality. Attaining Nirvana/Enlightenment is the same as entering the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s the ultimate attainment and nothing in the ‘natural’ world comes close so Buddha and Jesus may think about the way the world is run but without any desire to become political leaders; they offer the gift of spiritual liberation which is far beyond political liberation or financial freedom.
Guilt and blame tie us to the past. Remembering the past and learning from it is important but I don’t think we really learn from the past when we are reacting to it, still psychologically tied to it. The past, our experience is what it is; the present moment is a consequence of the preceding moments and yet it is unique, fresh. Being tied to the past stops us experiencing this freshness.
We cannot be free if we allow our now to be defined by our past. I think Krishnamurti said that we hang on to the past because we fear the unknown I think we also fear the freedom and responsibility that letting go of the past entails.
Without the past, without being defined by the past, we cannot compare ourselves with others. It is said that some people have to ‘hit bottom’ before they change; that they have to lose everything. Of course this is not a good strategy for anyone wanting to change as ‘hitting bottom’ often kills you. I think we have to free ourselves from measure or comparison whether that is is with others, with a past self or with an idealised self.
In the act of accepting and giving forgiveness we let go of guilt and blame and create a discontinuity with the past. This was the fundamental insight of Jesus who prayed ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’. Jesus is not proposing some sort of deal with God or suggesting that God might follow our example; he is saying that forgiveness is there anyway but we can’t accept it until we forgive others because our dwelling on their sin keeps us tied to our own. We are told that when someone hits us we should ‘turn the other cheek’. From a materialist point of view this doesn’t work but from a spiritual view the thing is over and it’s a new moment; an material person would be hurt, shamed, but to the spiritual person it’s just another moment. Krisha, intrestingly, says the same thing but comes at it from a completely opposite angle; when Arjuna says he doesn’t want to kill his relatives in a war Krishna points out that he cannot kill their essential selves, the Soul (the Atman). It’s the same thing, spiritually, because from this perspective it doesn’t matter if your attacker kills you or you kill him .. No hard feelings anyway.
The parallels and complementarity between the teachings of Krishna, Patanjali, Buddha and Jesus are interesting. They are all about making a complete break with the past and fully embracing Reality.
Letting go of the past is not just letting go of the past but of our past projections or fantasies about ourselves in the now or in the future.
Matthew 6:34
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
What Jesus and the others are saying is on a spiritual level; not a material level. On the material level we may have to plan but we are not worrying about it. Just doing it. Buddha in talking about letting go of desire is also talking on a spiritual level. In the material world there must be desire but we don’t have to be tied up with it spiritually.
http://youtu.be/SjSGFQYZAm0
Dennis Kucinich is basically saying that the US is like a bully pushing the other guy to provoke a fight or to psyche himself up for an attack. The aggressive nature of the US is now beyond obvious. It seems pointless to comment on it anymore. Can there be anyone who doesn’t see this?
I watched this video of a lecture by Ingo Swann. Interesting despite the limited attention span I seem to have these days. I remember reading about Swann and ‘remote viewing’ many years ago; he is one of the world’s most famous psychics. Here he reminds us that science cannot tell us how consciousness arises and cites Roger Penrose.
Penrose says that consciousness is not (only) ‘computational’ but arises from the physics of the world. I don’t understand what that means but what Penrose is saying is that science does not understand consciousness because it is looking in the wrong place; that it is a problem for physicists not biologists and computer scientists. Swann is saying science cannot understand consciousness in general and psychic phenomena in particular because they are outside the physical realm that science deals with. Mind is ‘experiential’ and is intuitively understood. Swann points us to Patanjali’s sutras and makes the point that Sanskrit is a more appropriate language in which to discuss mind because it is more experiential while English is more material. The Patanjali connection is really interesting and I need to reread the sutras.
Although Swann says that science or the scientific method cannot comprehend the mind so mind science cannot be approached by science alone he references research which he sees as indicative of psychic phenomena and predicts that defence agencies will be looking into telepathy as they looked into remote viewing in the 1970’s.
Dreamviews.com, a site about lucid dreaming may be worth looking at. I’ve been vaguely interested in exploring lucid dreaming for a long time, in fact since I read about become awake in the dream in one of Carlos Castaneda’s books where he suggested looking at your own hand in the dream. I tried this and it worked. More recently I have had a few episodes of lucid dreaming but mostly I don’t make an effort to recall my dreams.