Dave Pollard is a brilliant KnowledgeManagement expert as well as philosopher and environmentalist. I have linked to some of his posts before, and will probably continue to do so for some time to come. He wrote another incredibly insightful and important to read article about how the American (and International) economy is a scam that is on the brink of collapse.

From his website How to Save the World: The (Nearly) Impossible Challenge of Creating a Sustainable Economy (Part One)

There is something happening here, and it's been going on for a long time, driven by greed, political expediency, and a sustained and sophisticated campaign of misinformation about how a healthy economy is created and measured. It is quickly coming unglued, and the consequences of this deception are going to wreak havoc on us all for decades. It is possibly the greatest fraud and theft in the history of civilization. Here's how it works:

1. The government has to lie about the real increase in the cost of living, and the real levels of unemployment and misery among its citizens. This is in its interest, since admitting bad economic news is hazardous to politicians' health.
2. The government then has to artificially suppress interest rates, so that they, and corporations, can borrow money virtually free. As a consequence, since borrowing has no cost, there is no need to repay it; it can be refinanced indefinitely, and left for future generations to worry about. 
3. To keep money supply high enough that it is freely available to all borrowers, the government needs to print masses of new money. To conceal this, it needs to stop reporting the true money supply, as the US government has done.
4. To lock in foreign suppliers of cheap goods and services in struggling nations, the affluent nations need to develop co-dependent relationships with these countries, such that they are forced to accept payment in an essentially worthless currency.
5. To lock in citizens, the government and large corporations need to work together to enable the large corporations to generate staggering profits, increasing by double-digits every year. So-called 'free' trade agreements, massive subsidies and tax breaks, the continued availability of essentially free money, deregulation, liability indemnification, allowing price-fixing oligopolies, union-busting and massive offshoring etc. all allow this. As a result, stock markets soar, and citizens (unable to obtain any return on risk-free investments while the real cost of living is rising by 7% or more per year) are forced to pump all their investments into these stocks, including their pensions.

Click here to read the rest of Part 1.

And click here to read Part 2, equally intriguing.

This kind of stuff makes me think very hard about what the next steps for a recent graduate should be...

I was stumbling today and I came across an art 'special project' called Eyescapes.

It was quite surprising considering that the image I used yesterday for my poem With Jaded Eyes looked almost exactly the same as the eyes in this project. Definitely quite beautiful to behold the gateways to the soul.

If you want to see other work by the same artist click here to go to their website.

Here are my two favorite eyes:

[link]

I wrote this poem today...wanted to share it.


6 22 08 With Jaded Eyes

There is only one trend
One heart ache
And one beating

There is only one time
One thank you
And one meeting

…

I am no poet
But I hear of what they speak

Certainly I am no poet
But I smell of what they reek -

The shattered sighs of love in life

…

Every pulse a chance
Every glimpse a dance
With this sacred science

But the veils so thick
And the change so quick
That something darts away

And yet that something always to stay

The blind leading the blind
And yet only buried treasure can be mined
Unearthed within, we discover the only thing –

Love sifted into light.
Love lifted into sight.

Love beats between streets and heights
Love breathes between wrongs and rights
Love casts stones as it unearths new tones

To be sung by love’s choir
Which is all beings only hire.

…

So here we meet with jaded eyes
Full of someone else’s ties,
Begging softly to be undone.

The story of love is as the sun –
Burning away all but one

Thank you.

[Sunrise in Palm Coast, FL]


The title gives it away quite plainly...

I was checking my inbox, which was looong overdue (sorry about that!), and one of my new gaia friends Niamh recommended two poems by Max Ehrmann, Life and I Go My Way. Here they are, with two more of his poems.


Life

I sat with the stars on the hill of life

And looked at the world below.

I ran with the winds where winds begin

And followed them where they blow.

 

I lay by the sea on the beaten rock

And rode on the farthest wave,

I watched by a child on its night of birth

And followed it to its grave.

 

And love in the still of the star-flecked night,

When earth was all strewn with gold,

Has lifted my heart like the chords of  song

Oft sung in the world of old.

 

And though I have not understood all this,

Made up a laugh and a wail,

I think that the God of the world knows all,

And someday will tell the tale.



I Go My Way

All round is haste, confusion, noise.

For power and wealth men stretch the day

From dawn till dusk.

But quietly I go my way.


For glitter, show, to taunt the crowd,

Desire-tossed in wild dismay,

Men sell their souls.

But quietly I go my way.


The green of all the fields is mine;

The stars, the night, the wind at play,

A peaceful heart, while quietly

I go my way.


A Still Soul

Maybe you have a still soul that

goes murmurless like water

 in the deep of rivers;

 

And perchance you wander

silent amid the din of the world's

grinding barter like one journeying

in strange lands.

 

You, too, with the still soul,

have your mission, for beneath the dashing,

noisy waves must ever run the silent waters

that give the tide its course.


The Human Heart

I journeyed from university to university, and I saw everywhere the past rebuilt before the eyes of young men and  young women - Egypt, Greece, Rome; language, architecture, laws - saw the earth and sky explained, and the habits of the body -

          Everywhere chairs of this and that, largely endowed.

          But nowhere saw I a chair of the human heart.


- Max Ehrmann

(Thanks for the poems.)


--------------------------------------


And now, the only song I wrote my last semester of college. I wrote a couple of poems, so perhaps I will post them in the future. I hope you enoy it.



2 22 08 Mystery Surrounds

I find it hard to learn who you are
But our eyes have danced from afar

And maybe I’ll see you again
It’s not a race but I want to win!


I’ve spent too many hours alone
And you’ve spent too long unknown

Unravel the smile you hide
I want you to feel alive!


Who knows what is next?
Life is beyond complex
Mystery is surrounding me!


I will probably be blogging much more in the near future...maybe the next month or so. Until then,

Much love and peace.

(thanks to Shakexy)


As some of you may know, Albert Hofmann died yesterday.

MAPS (Multidisiciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) provided a list of different news coverage and this interesting obituary.
 
----------

Albert Hofmann, 11 January 1006 – 29 April 2008

An Obituary by Dieter A. Hagenbach and Lucius Werthmüller

At the age of 102 years, Albert Hofmann died peacefully last Tuesday morning, 29th April, in his home near Basel, Switzerland. Still last weekend we talked to him, and he expressed his great joy about the blooming plants and the fresh green of the meadows and trees around his house. His vitality and his open mind conducted him until his last breath.

He is reputed to be one of the most important chemists of our times. He is the discoverer of LSD, which he considers, up to date, as both a "wonder drug" and a "problem child". In addition he did pioneering work as a researcher of other psychoactive substances as well as active agents of important medicinal plants and mushrooms. Under the spell of the consciousness-expanding potential of LSD the scientist turned increasingly into a philosopher of nature and a visionary critical of contemporary culture.

Until his death Albert Hofmann remained active. He communicated with colleagues and experts from all over the world, gave interviews, and showed great interest in the world's affairs, although he decided to retire from public life already a few years ago. Nevertheless he welcomed visitors at his home on the Rittimatte, and opened the door for late in the evening.

He managed to keep his almost childlike curiosity for the wonders of nature and creation. In his "paradise," as he would call his home, he enjoyed being close to nature, especially to plants. During one of our last visits he said to us with luminous eyes: "The Rittimatte is my second most important discovery." It was always a unique experience to stroll with him over his meadows and to share his enjoying the living nature all around.
Gratefully and lovingly we grieve for an outstanding scientist, an important philosopher, a dear and true friend, and our member of the board.

Albert Hofmann was born on January 1906 in the quiet small town of Baden, Switzerland, as the eldest one of four children. His father is a toolmaker in a factory where he meets Albert’s mother-to-be; when he falls seriously ill, Albert has to support the family. That’s why he decides for a commercial apprenticeship. At the same time he starts studying Latin and other languages, since he wants to take his A-levels, which he succeeds in at a private school, paid for by a godfather.

In 1926, at the age of twenty, Albert Hofmann begins to study chemistry at the University of Zurich. Four years later he does his doctorate with distinction. Subsequently he works at the Sandoz pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratory in Basel, a company to which he proves his loyalty for more than four uninterrupted decades. (In 1996 Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy merged to become Novartis.) That’s where he mainly works with medicinal plants and mushrooms. He's specifically interested in alkaloids (nitrogen compounds) of ergot, a cereal fungus. In 1938 he isolates the basic component of all therapeutically essential ergot alkaloids, lysergic acid; he mixes it with a series of chemicals. He then tests the effects of the thus derived lysergic acid derivatives as circulatory and respiratory stimulant – among others LSD-25 (Lysergic acid diethylamide). Because the effects observed fell short of expectations, however, the pharmacologists at Sandoz quickly lose interest in it.

Five years later, following a "peculiar presentiment," Albert Hofmann devotes himself again to LSD-25. On 16 April 1943, while synthesizing, he is overcome by unusual sensations – "a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness," – which prompt him to interrupt his laboratory work. "At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxication like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight too unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away."

Three days later, on 19 April 1943, Hofmann sets out for the first voluntary LSD trip in the history of man. Because he cannot yet judge the enormous efficacy of the drug, he takes, at 4:20 pm, with 250 microgram a relatively high dose – and gets to know the hallucinogenic power of the substance with all its intensity.
With his discovery of LSD Albert Hofmann has caused a snowball effect, which turns into an avalanche in no time. It influences the late second millennium – at least in the Western world – to an extent, comparable only to the "pill". Consciousness researchers respectfully spoke of an "atom bomb of the mind."

To worldwide setting-in research Albert Hofmann makes essential contributions. So he is, in 1958, the first one to succeed in isolating the psychoactive substances psilocybin and psilocin from Mexican magic mushrooms (Psilocybe mexicana); in Ololiuqui, the seeds of a climbing plant, he finds substances related to LSD. He isolates and synthesizes substances of important medicinal plants in order to study their effects. His basic research blesses Sandoz with several successful remedies: Hydergine, an effective one in geriatrics, Dihydergot, a circulation- and blood-pressure stabilizing medicament, and Methergine, an active agent applied in gynecology. Hofmann stays with Sandoz until his retirement in 1971, last as head of the research department for natural medicines. From then on he devotes more and more of his time to writing and lecturing. He increasingly wins recognition for his scientific pioneering ventures: he is given honorary doctorates by the ETH Zurich, the Stockholm university, and the Berlin Free University; and he is called into the Nobel Prize Committee.

Here, outstanding contributions to research were honored – but Albert Hofmann's life's work comprises much more. From the start he took a favorable view of efforts by physicians and psychotherapists to include LSD into new approaches for the treatment of manifold chronic diseases. But LSD isn't only useful with special diagnoses – it's Hofmann's firm belief that the "psychedelic" potential of this "wonder drug" could be beneficial to all of us. In LSD-induced altered states of consciousness its discoverer doesn’t only see psychotic delusions of a chemically manipulated mind, but windows to a higher reality – true spiritual experiences during which a normally deeply buried potential of our mind, the heavenly element of creation, our unity with it reveals itself. "The one-sided belief in the scientific view of life is based on a far-reaching misunderstanding," Hofmann says in his book Insight – Outlook. "Certainly, everything it contains is real – but this represents just one half of reality; only its material, quantifiable part. It lacks all those spiritual dimensions which cannot be described in physical or chemical terms; and it’s exactly these which include the most important characteristics of all life."

It’s not the single consumer alone who profits from chemicals which help to understand these aspects of the world; for Hofmann it could help to heal deficits the Western world chronically suffers from: "Materialism, estrangement from nature (...), lack of professional fulfillment in a mechanized, lifeless world of employment, boredom and aimlessness in a rich, saturated society, the missing of a sense-making philosophical fundamentalness of life." Starting from experiences as LSD conveys them, we could "develop a new awareness of reality" which "could become the basis of a spirituality that's not founded on the dogmas of existing religions, but on insights into a higher and profounder sense" – on that we recognize, read, and understand "the revelations of the book which God's finger wrote." When such insights "become established in our collective consciousness, it could arise from that, that scientific research and the previous destroyers of nature – technology and industry – will serve the purpose of changing back our world into what it formerly was: into an earthly Garden of Eden."

With this message the genius chemist turns into a profound philosopher of nature and visionary critical of contemporary culture. The critical distance from the LSD euphoria of the hippie- and flower power-driven ones Albert Hofmann has never given up, however; that he has fathered a "problem child" he already emphasizes with the title of one of his most known works. He always underlines the risks of an uncontrolled intake. On the other hand he never tires of emphasizing what's the basic difference between LSD and most of the other drugs: even if used repeatedly, it doesn't make addictive; it doesn't reduce one's awareness; taken in a normal dose it’s absolutely non-toxic. The total demonizing of psychedelics, as pursued by the mass media, conservative politicians, and governments from the sixties onward, he never could understand; for him, there is no reason why mentally stable persons in the right set and setting shouldn't enjoy LSD. All the more disappointed Albert Hofmann was when, in the late sixties, he had to see it happen that the use of LSD was worldwide criminalized and prohibited – even for therapeutic and research purposes

The impetus for a change emanating from the impact of the international Symposium "LSD – Problem Child and Wonder Drug" in 2006 in Basel, at the occasion of his 100th birthday, quickened him to say that "after this conference my problem child has definitely turned into a wonder child," and he regarded this development as his most beautiful birthday present.

And after just shortly before his 102nd birthday, he enjoyed taking notice that the first LSD study with humans has received the permission from the Federal Office of Public Health in Bern, which he called the "fulfillment of my heart's desire."

His life has become an ideal for many for how we can reach a great age in mental and physical vigor by retaining a childlike curiosity.

Albert Hofmann repeatedly expressed his conviction, that his mystical experiences and his trips into other worlds of consciousness, which he experienced first spontaneously as a child and later during his experiments with psychedelic substances would be the best preparations for the last journey which everybody has to go on at the end of her or his life. He has retained his curiosity for himself for his last journey.

--------

May we all promote his words and wisdom in these interesting times on planet Earth.

"Wisdom is like the rain. Its source is limitless, but it comes down according to the season."

Bowl of Saki snippet from February 19:

"The final victory in the battle of life for every soul is when he has
abandoned, which means when he has risen above, what once he valued
most. For the value of everything exists for man only so long as he
does not understand it [my italics]. When he has fully understood, the value is
lost, be it the lowest thing or the highest thing. It is like looking
at the scenery on the stage and taking it for a palace. Such is the
case with all things of the world; they seem important or precious when
we need them or when we do not understand them; as soon as the veil
which keeps man from understanding is lifted, then they are nothing."

Another big boost for open access reporting from Ars Technica:

...Harvard University has started to throw its weight behind the spread of Open Access publishing. Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences has voted to require faculty to make copies of their research freely available through the Office of Scholarly Communications.

One of the great promises of the internet revolution has been the democratization of knowledge. Armed just with a computer and way of connecting to the internet, it is possible to find information on just about any topic known to humankind. In academia, the spread of the digital age has been most effective. Instead of having to spend hours in dusty stacks looking for the right volume of an obscure periodical, a few seconds using PubMed, Google Scholar, or any one of a number of databases will often yield up an electronic copy.

Read the rest.

I was lying in bed last night after finishing A Moth to the Flame: The Life of the Sufi Poet Rumi by Connie Zweig (recommended by zaadzster Julian) earlier that day and 50 pages of SES Ken Wilber before turning off the lights (almost done!). I was contemplating the role of suffering in evolution and love while witnessing my fleeting thoughts. Donnie Darko's sounds came in and out from above my room as I pondered. Mad World as composed by Gary Jules drifted its haunting yet captivating melodies through the floor...

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow

And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very mad world mad world

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me

And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very mad world ... world
Enlarge your world
Mad world

What a brilliant song...it captures the fragility and seeming spuriousness of life. The utter mediocrity of the modern life seeps into our waking consciousness every now and then and we realize that we're going nowhere. The man of modern life suffers not from the hardship of physical struggle with the earth but from the psychological torment of not evolving and not loving. Instead we consume...over and over and over again in the name of capitalistic narcissism. Our new clothes and toys and cars are empty; they do not satisfy. What is this suffering? What sustains us? Where is this all going...?

"All of your sorrow exists for one reason - that you may end sorrow forever." - Rumi

This quotation agrees well with the idea of being born in limitation in order to discover the limitless. But oh the pangs of separation from infi-ternity! To not be able to love other people because we love ourselves burns our hearts and destroys the natural vivacity and spontaneity of love-as-being. We must shed the love of self. It is the goal of Sufism - fana = annihilation (of ego).

"And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had"

In some strange way this part of the song relates directly to what A Moth to the Flame is about: the agony yet necessity of dying to the self. There is a nihilistic freedom to death, but from a spiritual perspective it is a submission; a surrender to God. Islam = submission. But Rumi says that we must not surrender ourselves to sharia (Islamic law), or even tariqa (inner path), but to the immediate immanence of God-consciousness. Of course he knows quite well that through sharia and tariqa one may cultivate the ability to perceive God-consciousness, but ultimately we must destroy every indirect bridge to God.

"This sanctuary is not what you seek. The holiness of the human heart  - that is the real mosque. The moment we proclaim His name, the domes and minarets dissapear. He alone remains."

He/She/It/transgendered God alone remains before and after this universe and individual consciousness. And after annihilation, baqa = remaingness (of God). The ground of being, this emptiness, is the remaingness of God-consciousness.

The man of God
    is drunk, but drinks no wine;
He is full, but eats no meat.
The man of God
   spins with ecstasy,
   and doesn't care about food or sleep;
He is a king beneath a simple cloak,
A diamond amidst the falling ruins.
His wisdom
   is born of the supreme truth,
   not from the pages of a book.
   He is beyond faith and doubt,
   he knows not right or wrong.
The man of God
   has bid farewell to Nothingness (causal consciousness)
   and has returned in all his glory. (nondual consciousness)
   - Rumi

What an amazing book: A Moth to The Flame . I will blog more about it...

From LiveScience:

DNA molecules can display what almost seems like telepathy, research now reveals. 

Double helixes of DNA can recognize matching molecules from a distance and then gather together, all seemingly without help from any other molecules, scientists find. Previously, under the classic understanding of DNA, scientists had no reason to suspect that double helixes of the molecule could sort themselves by type, let alone seek each other out.

The spiraling structure of DNA includes strings of molecules called bases. Each of its four bases, commonly known by the letters A, T, C and G, is chemically attracted to a specific partner — A likes binding to T, and C to G. The scheme binds paired strands of DNA into the double helix the molecule is famous for.

Scientists investigated double-stranded DNA tagged with fluorescent compounds. These molecules were placed in saltwater that contained no proteins or other material that could interfere with the experiment or help the DNA molecules communicate.

Curiously, DNA with identical sequences of bases were roughly twice as likely to gather together as DNA molecules with different sequences.

The known interactions that draw the bases together are not the factor bringing these double helixes close. Double helixes of DNA keep their bases on their insides. On their outsides, they have highly electrically charged chains of sugars and phosphates, which obscure the forces that pull bases together.

Although it looks as if spooky action or telepathic recognition is going on, DNA operates under the laws of physics, not the supernatural.

To understand what researchers conjecture is really happening, think of double helixes of DNA as corkscrews. The bases that make up a strand of DNA each cause the corkscrew to bend one way or the other. Double-stranded DNA with identical sequences each result in corkscrews "whose ridges and grooves match up," said researcher Sergey Leikin, a physical biochemist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Md.

The electrically charged chains of sugars and phosphates of double helixes of DNA cause the molecules to repel each other. However, identical DNA double helixes have matching curves, meaning they repel each other the least, Leikin explained.

The scientists conjecture such "telepathy" might help DNA molecules line up properly before they get shuffled around. This could help avoid errors in how DNA combines, errors that underpin cancer, aging and other health problems. Also, the proper shuffling of DNA is essential to sexual reproduction, as it helps ensure genetic diversity among offspring, Leikin added.

-------

Interesting...The researchers don't seem to understand why this 'telepathy' takes place, but I'd be curious to see if the theory of morphic fields and resonance explains this phenomenon.

I haven't read more than a few articles about morphic fields, but after reading the above article I went to Rupert Sheldrake's website and read the article entitled Morphic Fields and Morphic Resonance: An Introduction. In it, I found some intriguing parallels with this DNA telepathy.

"I suggest that morphogenetic fields work by imposing patterns on otherwise random or indeterminate patterns of activity. For example they cause microtubules to crystallize in one part of the cell rather than another, even though the subunits from which they are made are present throughout the cell.

Back to the DNA article:

"Previously, under the classic understanding of DNA, scientists had no reason to suspect that double helixes of the molecule could sort themselves by type, let alone seek each other out."

It seems that morphic fields create probablistic blueprints for this 'seemingly magical' sorting ability.

"Morphogenetic fields are not fixed forever, but evolve. The fields of Afghan hounds and poodles have become different from those of their common ancestors, wolves. How are these fields inherited? I propose that that they are transmitted from past members of the species through a kind of non-local resonance, called morphic resonance..."

"I believe that the natural selection of habits will play an essential part in any integrated theory of evolution, including not just biological evolution, but also physical, chemical, cosmic, social, mental and cultural evolution..."

"The morphic fields of social groups connect together members of the group even when they are many miles apart, and provide channels of communication through which organisms can stay in touch at a distance. They help provide an explanation for telepathy. There is now good evidence that many species of animals are telepathic, and telepathy seems to be a normal means of animal communication, as discussed in my book DOGS THAT KNOW WHEN THEIR OWNERS ARE COMING HOME. Telepathy is normal not paranormal, natural not supernatural, and is also common between people, especially people who know each other well. "

Hmm...seems in the right direction to me. Anyone have some interesting experiences related to telepathy?

Sheldrake's "natural evolution of habits" reminds me of my writing on evolution through probability structures. These morphic fields are fields of probabilty, fields of potential interactions. These fields retain histories of past 'behaviors' and reflect constant dialectic with the environment. The universe exists due to the localization of "non-local resonance."