Cosmic Xing: Shamanizing Our World Towards Light & Love

COSMIC

XING

Shamanizing Our World

Towards Light and Love

Kor Gable

Order this book online at www.trafford.com

or email orders@trafford.com

Most Trafford titles are also available at major online book retailers.

© Copyright 2010 Kor Gable.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Circotasu (cover art)

Ruth C. (cover photo)

Iris (Editor)

Note for Librarians: A cataloguing record for this book is available from Library and Archives Canada at www.collectionscanada.ca/amicus/index-e.html

ISBN: 978-1-4251-5901-6 (Soft)

ISBN: 978-1-4251-5902-3 (e-book)

Our mission is to efficiently provide the world’s finest, most comprehensive book publishing service, enabling every author to experience success. To find out how to publish your book, your way, and have it available worldwide, visit us online at www.trafford.com

Trafford rev. 02/23/2010

www.trafford.com

North America & international

toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

phone: 250 383 6864 ♦ fax: 812 355 4082

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

1 Hmmm…

2 Is the Cosmos xinging you?

3 Wake-Up Call

4 Fire in the Middle

5 Worlds in Collision

6 The Gods of Edin

7 Apocalypse Then

8 Crystal Fire

9 The Unknown Mind

10 That Which is Skyward

11 The Invisible Shadow

12 Meditation

13 Quantum Physics

14 The Secret

15 Whole-ing

16 Soul Force

17 The Dreamtime

18 Brain Circuits

19 Avatar

20 Indigo Crystal

21 Initiation

22 Now what?

OPEN INVITATION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ENDNOTES

Man did not create the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

—Chief Seattle

Acknowledgements

First, I would like to acknowledge my many and varied spiritual teachers, especially my shamanic ones, both in this world and the next, along with all my spirit helpers for guiding, protecting and empowering me on this journey. Without them I would have had nothing to write.

Special thanks to my Mom for her unconditional love and support while writing this book; to my good friends and colleagues, Dr. Viktor Benedek and Imre Csorba, for their support and encouragement; and to all my other close friends (you know whom you are) who were part of the experiences that made this book possible.

Light and love to all of you!

Preface

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

—John Lennon

I AM AN artist! And many of the most amazing and meaningful events in life were happy accidents. In other words, they showed up when I wasn’t looking, when I least expected them. That is how shamanism came into my life. I was pursuing a career as a Rock’n’Roll musician when I fell into it. I certainly never dreamed I’d be walking this path, let alone writing a book about it.

Someone once said to me, You always find what you’re not looking for. I said, Don’t you mean, ‘what you are looking for?’ He said, No! You find what you’re not looking for because anything you are looking for has already found you. That’s a twist. As the late great John Lennon of the Beatles said, Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

We all have an ability to tap into and draw sustenance from an invisible realm. We have all experienced what we call inspiration. It was this that opened the doors to what I would in time call the spiritual dimension of the universe. It may seem strange that the same hidden force or energy that inspires the creation of Rock songs and other works of art also reveals the sciences and the timeless spiritual truths that all the great teachers have taught.

I remember well the first time Lady Inspiration visited me. I had just bought a guitar and started learning chords. Within a couple of months, I was able to sing along with my own strumming. I learned some Beatles songs, which gave me an instant social life and an overnight popularity with girls. I was still in High School, in my last year, when one night, I went to a party and heard a fourteen-year-old kid play a cute little love song. It sounded like something the Beatles wrote… But I knew all their stuff and I didn’t recognize this one. Then one of the other kids leaned over and whispered, Little Mike, he wrote that song.

I was impressed.

Later I asked him, How did you write such a great song?

He said, Oh, I just made it up.

Then it hit me! There is no great hidden secret to artistic creativity; you just make up stuff and work with it until it sounds or looks good. So I, too, started making up songs, and instantly felt an exhilarating energy flowing through me. I felt alive, more alive than usual, as though something came into me and augmented my life-force.

That’s inspiration.

When I was a child, I wanted to be a movie-maker. As a teen I was bitten by the music bug (yep, the Beatles) and I wanted to be a rock star. By the time I was pushing the big Three-O, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be anymore! Doors did not open for me in the movie industry, and I didn’t fare any better in the music business. In a last ditch effort to break into the scene, I went to California. It was there that a friend took me to a lecture on something to do with the mind. I went rather reluctantly; certain I would be bored. What did I know? That evening answered a whole lot of questions I had been asking for over ten years!

I was hooked.

The subject was Hawaiian Shamanism, the Kahuna Tradition (commonly known as Huna). Its concepts were so simple and made so much sense, I just had to get into it. And I did. But even stranger than the sense it made to my head were the feelings it stirred in my heart. By the end of the evening, I felt that I had come home, that I had finally found where I belong. I’ve never felt that way about anything else. I spent a year and two months immersed in its study, getting myself shamanized. That time-period and what I learned not only changed my life, it also saved my life (and I’ll share that later in the book).

I came back to Canada, and once my friends saw my transformation, they wanted me to teach them whatever it was that I learned. I wasn’t quite ready for that, I was still a newbie at all this. To make a long story short, after some arm-twisting on their part, I finally capitulated and did a small workshop in my living room. Through that, I discovered that I not only could teach this, but more importantly, that I loved it! It was also thanks to the insistence of my friends that this book came into being. As someone who flunked English at High School, I never thought I would ever author a book. Yes, John, life sure happens while you’re busy making other plans…

Creativity is an unpredictable thing. Its chief ingredient is inspiration. Without it, nothing happens. Every artist knows this and can attest to how fickle Lady Inspiration can be. She comes and goes as she pleases. You can’t control her, force her or manipulate her. All that you can do is be ever ready to receive her. Inspiration seems to come from within with the feeling that you are making it all up, but its source is outside of us… Sort of.

Sooner or later, all good artists come to realize that their best work didn’t come from them but through them; that there is some kind of higher power or wider consciousness at work when one is in the throes of inspiration. I realized this early in the game and started questing to understand its true nature. In due course, I found it to be a separate level of reality or creative consciousness that comes from somewhere above (as in a higher realm of being) but manifests through us from within our hearts and souls. In short, spirit is responsible for inspiration (in-spirit-ation).

To live creatively, manifesting all you need as you go-THAT, I think, is the real game! Anyone can create great art, but the greatest work of art is always the artist himself-when the artist becomes the work of art.

In retrospect I now realize that while I was dreaming about a career in film and music, parallel to those pursuits, I had also put a lot of my free time and energy into questing for the meaning and the purpose of life. I didn’t know then that all those thoughts would eventually manifest somewhere down the line.

And that, in many ways, is the central message of this book-watch your thoughts, for they are your reality, and they will manifest somehow, somewhere, sometime… No exceptions.

In a spirit of freedom, I welcome you into my universe.

Happy reading!

Kor Fitzgerald Gable

February 2010.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

—Helen Keller

Introduction

Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, they are the only ones who ever have.

—Margaret Mead

SHAMANISM is NOT an easy subject to write about because it is not what most people think it is. There is a lack of adequate frames-of-references for it in our culture, and there are many stigmas and superstitions attached to it. To the average twenty-first century denizen of planet Earth, shamanism is as an old, worn-out primitive belief system that belongs to the Age of Dinosaurs. Many view it as a dark ignorance-filled religion practiced by our cave-dwelling ancestors. This is partially true-it is ancient, and our distant progenitors did practice it. However, it is far from worn-out, and it is hardly a collection of ignorant superstitious beliefs. Actually, it is a very deep, time-tested knowing system, which has as much relevance today as it did in ages past. It does, however, need a little conceptual re-framing and cultural tweaking to upgrade it to present world conditions, but with that done, it can become the much-needed new paradigm for a future world civilization.

Shamanism is an ancient spiritual tradition of pre-modern man, practiced by our ancestors long before the first organized religion appeared on earth. Religion is actually a recent development in the evolution of our consciousness, a little over 13,000 years old. Shamanism dates back at least 35,000 years.

Religion may have been a good idea when it first came, but in the last 6,000 years, many religions have been losing all signs of spirituality. By the Dark Ages, it devolved into a convoluted set of rigid dogmas, ignorant superstitions and blind beliefs.

Then came science, which is less than two thousand years old. It burst onto the scene during the Renaissance as an extreme reaction to the staid religious doctrines that froze the collective mind and soul of humanity. It sought to balance things out but ended up going in the opposite direction to become totally materialistic to the detriment of man’s spirituality. These two great institutions of learning-science and religion-have polarized humanity into two opposing camps of thought and belief with each side further splintering into countless factions of bickering sects and ideologies. Shamanism, in a way, is an amalgamation of science and religion, a unified and harmonized combination that offers a middle path to living a more balanced life, both spiritually and materially.

SPIRITUALITY

It is for this reason I chose to sub-title this book Shamanizing Our World… I could have easily called it Spiritualizing… No doubt, that would have been more acceptable to the mainstream, but spiritualizing doesn’t quite cut it. The word has been so over-used and abused by both the clergy and the laity that it lost it’s oomph a long time ago. Nevertheless, spirituality is precisely the thrust of this book-real spirituality. Nobody can argue that the world is drowning in materialism. It is in need of greater spirituality; but of a kind that works, that isn’t just a once-a-week lip-service for an hour to a set of ideals no one can live up to. Religion and science have failed in this regard. Shamanism looks promising because it is actually the epitome of practical spirituality. It is more than spirituality as we understand it. It is also materiality. It is not a sacrifice of one for the other but a unification of the two-the spiritual and material in harmony for a whole and complete life.

These days, the new paradigm in awareness is about achieving wholeness and abundance on all levels-material wealth going hand-in-hand with spiritual riches-not just for the few, but for all of humanity. The Mayans call this the Fifth World of Unity and Abundance into which we are now entering. This is the vision of the New Millennium, the balance of Yin/Yang forces in the Tao, and the Kingdom of God on earth. I propose that shamanism is the pathway to it.

Shamanism doesn’t demand that we sacrifice our material welfare for spiritual salvation. Nor does it accept a purely materialistic way of life without spirituality. It holds the two worlds as one, like two sides of a coin. Shamanism is about spiritualizing the material and materializing the spiritual-the root of true religion and true science.

COSMIC XING

The title of this book came to me in a meditation. Cosmic is a no-brainer, but when I got the word, Xing, I heard it as zing, and saw it spelled out on my mental screen as x-i-n-g. I had no idea what it meant. I had to look it up. Phonetically, zing is 1. Vitality, animation, or zest. 2. a quality or characteristic that excites the interest, enthusiasm, etc.: a tourist town with lots of zing. 3. a sharp singing or whining noise, as of a bullet passing through the air. X-ing (hyphenated) is short for crossing (as) to cross something out or mark something with an X (as in) to cross out an error. 2. to indicate a choice, as on a ballot or examination: to put an ‘x’ in the box beside your choice.

How appropriate, I thought. Humanity stands on the threshold of a transition the likes of which it has never known before-and maybe never will again. The Cosmos is calling us to take the next step in our evolution-not in our biology, but in our psychology. We are at the crossroads (X) of our collective destiny. We also have a choice (to ‘x in’ the direction we wish to go). The world is zinging-obviously-everything has speeded up so much in the last century as to make our heads spin.

There are two aspects of Shamanism that need to established from the start:

1.   It is an inner tradition, a systematic approach to understanding the universe in both its material and spiritual aspects with a clear classification of the various Cosmic Laws behind all manifestations, both phenomenal and noumenal, for which the shaman is a repository.

2.   It is a spiritual practice, which can be expressed in an endless variety of ways through culture and ritual, of which the shaman is the quintessential creator and keeper.

In other words, shamanism has inner teachings and outer practices. One is about the knowledge and understanding of the eternal spiritual principles that govern the universe, and the other is the manner in which we apply these principles in our daily lives.

We know almost nothing about the former, which makes the study of the latter difficult. When archaeologists uncover ancient artifacts of strange-looking objects and mysterious implements, they often have no idea what they mean or how they were used. We understand arrowheads and stone-axes only because we still use similar tools today, otherwise, they’d be just as baffling to us.

The same applies to cultural customs and appearances. Shamanic rituals are shrouded in mystery and often seem bizarre, strange and alien because we don’t understand the inner meaning and significance it has for those who practice it. Most of what we find in literature about shamanism expounds only on outer practices in their multifarious social and historical contexts-and much of it is derogatory and defamatory. We can’t fault the authors for this because unless they were initiates of the inner knowledge, they could not begin to write about it. Hence, they could only report on what they observed outwardly and filtered through their own limited frames-of-reference.

Those that were initiates did not write about it because the tradition was oral and sacred. The secrets were passed down from generation to generation from master to apprentice as proprietary information. Shamans had the responsibility of keeping their knowledge safe from those that would misuse or pervert it. Whether you agree with this or not, that is how it was.

In their defense, as one who knows enough about their inner traditions, I can say with certitude that shamanic knowledge is very powerful. Shamans can manifest what we call magic or miracles-like instant healing, weather control, commanding the elements, and changing the course of people’s lives. That kind of power in the hands of an immature soul is like giving a child an atom bomb to play with-not a good idea.

Things are changing though… Today, humanity has a lot more knowledge. We have advanced greatly in science and technology. Science has enabled us to understand reality in ways that former generations could not. Quantum Physics in particular is bridging the gap between science and religion. And religion itself is becoming more scientific as well. Humanity at large is now ready for a higher level in collective consciousness.

Ergo, this book is not another treatise on shamanism in its social and historical aspects nor a simplified New Age belief system with modernized cultural window-dressing, but a deeper exploration of the Core Knowledge that shamans of both the present and the past still carry. Keep reading and you’ll be pleasantly surprised as to what you will find. You may also be shocked, for some of this knowledge will contradict everything you have ever been taught to believe in. However, in the end, you will see that shamanism is not as alien as it seems and that most of humanity is already shamanic in nature-at least potentially.

NOT A RELIGION

It is also important to understand that shamanism is not a religion. It’s a spiritual tradition. What’s the difference? Religion-as we know it-is mostly the worship of a supreme Deity. Shamanism is working with that Deity. We call it God; they call it the Creator or Great Spirit. The common element is that both systems believe in One Single Source for everything that exists.

Put another way, religion is spirituality in theory (talking the walk); shamanism is spirituality in practice (walking the talk). In one, you are asked to believe in spiritual realities without question because a book says so, while in the other, you explore and come to know spiritual realities through direct experience. Many people these days are making a distinction between being religious and being spiritual-and realizing that the latter can be had without belonging to any church or religious order. Man was born free, but lost it, and is seeking to get back to it.

Science is also a religion-sort of. It is as much a mental construct as any belief-system. However, it is much closer to shamanism in that it seeks to know reality through experimentation-i.e. direct experience. Its only limitations are the parameters we set as to what may be scientifically investigated and validated-such as only material things-but this, too, is changing.

In religion, authority is rigid and centralized-usually in a holy book to which everyone is expected to conform-including the clergy that interprets it for you. In shamanism, authority is flexible and decentralized where the spiritual experiences of individuals contribute to the system. This makes the tradition dynamic and adaptive. While the shaman has a measure of authority as a spiritual leader, he is more of a guide to truth than a dictator of it. Put another way, in religion, the people serve the system while in shamanism, the system serves the people.

CLOTHES THAT FIT

Do clothes make the man, or does man make the clothes? In religion, customs and rituals are used to generate spiritual states or feelings in adherents, which often does not work because unless one knows their true inner significance, rituals can all too easily degenerate into blind imitation or an exercise in going through the motions. By contrast, in shamanism, customs and rituals are created by the spiritual states or feelings of the practitioners, which work every time because once you understand a spiritual principle you can put your heart and soul into it and create your own ritual around it.

To put it another way, a ritual is only a container for a spiritual process-like a cup is for water. Once you drink the water, you can throw away the cup. Religion focuses on the cup, while shamanism drinks the water. For shamans, any cup will do-they are not attached to cups-and that is why shamanic rituals vary so greatly. Religions get very attached to cups and ornament them in fancy ways-hence, religious rituals are much more rigid and homogenous around the world. But no matter how beautiful the cup is, it is useless without the water (the spirit).

One thing that still amuses me is how religious people condemn native traditions as idol worship. When they see shamans performing ceremonies facing stone statues or images of their gods, they scream Idolatry! Yet what are our churches filled with? What are all our statues of a dying god (Jesus) and images of the Virgin Mary, saints and angels laid into glass mosaics? Aren’t they idols?

Ah, but that’s different, you might say. Yes, it is, because we are conversant with the symbolism of our iconography. But to an outsider, it would look like idolatry-the worship of graven images. They might even think we worship death and pain or the morbid embodiment of a sadomasochistic demigod out of some horror movie. After all, the predominant idol in most churches is a bleeding, suffering and dying god-man on a cross.

ANCIENT ROOTS

Earlier I said that shamanism is an amalgamation of science and religion. In actuality, it is not an amalgamation of anything because it evolved as a whole system from the start. Shamanism existed long before the appearance of both organized religion and empirical science. It dates back more than 300,000 years according to archeological findings, and millions of years if we believe indigenous legends. According to the latter, it developed as part of man’s synchronistic evolution in a symbiotic relationship with this planet. In other words, the prehistoric cave man had a remarkably high degree of spiritual awareness-and according to the most recent anthropological findings, it was much higher than we ever suspected.

Shamanic legends confirm this. They hold that our ancestors’ awareness was cosmic at one time. We were a telepathic race without language because none was needed. There is evidence of this because there is an ancient tribe of Australian Aborigines that still live this way. They are the oldest remnant of prehistoric man on earth. They don’t even have a shaman because they don’t need one-because the whole tribe is already shamanic.

COSMIC INTERFERENCE

Shamanism is actually the trunk of the tree from which religion and science branched out. This happened some quarter of a million years ago due to a most unlikely series of events in man’s natural evolution-close encounters with a highly advanced alien race that modified our species and jumped us forward into our evolutionary future by at least a million years. This caused The Fall of Man (supposedly from grace) and severed his inner connection to the Divine.

Lest such a scenario seem too far-fetched, the legends of indigenous people all around the world are filled with stories of sky gods mingling with us on earth. The Old Testament of the Bible is rife with accounts of gods in our midst and the sons of gods cavorting with the daughters of men. This is further reinforced by the many Sumerian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman legends about a pantheon of gods that once ruled on earth. Lastly, the entire hullabaloo in our own time over UFOs and Secret Government cover-ups of an alien presence has more to it than they would want us to know. The mass-media regularly discredits those who knows anything about it by painting them as paranoid conspiracy theorists or a deluded idiots suffering from hallucinations or mental illness.

There are people on this planet who know the truth-and they are not talking. The aliens are here-and have been for a long time-and they are both hostile and friendly (just as we are). They took over this planet and made a grievous mistake with us, which they have been trying to correct it ever since. They are intimately associated with and inextricably entwined in our religious and social evolution. They have contributed significantly, for better or worse, to the present condition of our race on this globe.

Shamans know about these aliens-and have known about them for a long time-but they have a different connection with them. They call them Sky Brothers and Star People. They understand them on a spiritual level as part of the creation of the universe. They don’t fear them as many do.

So while it may seem as though religion evolved out of shamanism, it actually came from the aliens as a separate and artificial add-on in their attempt to salvage us from the Fall they caused. It was their attempt at damage-controlling the mistake they made. The reason religion causes so much inner turmoil in the soul of man is because it is alien to him and doesn’t jive with his true nature. It requires inordinate amounts of self-contortion to live with it. By contrast, shamanism is much easier because it is part of the genetic and spiritual inheritance of our own evolution on earth and not an imposed system from the outside.

FORWARD TO BASICS

Ancient man lived in harmony with nature, with all the elements and other creatures as beloved little brothers. It was in his nature to do that. He felt safe and familiar within that matrix because he evolved with it. He needed little in the way of fabrications to augment his lifestyle-the odd loincloth here, animal robe there, a few hunting and gathering tools, and simple shelters for safe rest. That was the shamanic way of life-having much; needing little.

By contrast, modern man lives against nature, always at odds with it and afraid of its elements. He fears and hates his fellow creatures-including his fellow man-and kills them for both survival and sport. He is not familiar with the environment and finds it alien and threatening. It is as though he doesn’t belong here, and instead of respecting it, he is hell-bent on conquering and dominating it. He not only fabricates what he needs, but also what he thinks he needs. He lives in a synthetic inorganic artificial world. That is the civilized way of life-never happy no matter how much he has.

He thinks he is greatly advanced, but he is still a cave man. His dwellings of concrete and steel are just fancier forms of rock, scraping the skies like mountains. Yet, despite all this, there remains a remnant of the shamanic way in his soul as witnessed by his need to get out of the city, go camping, hiking, fishing or hunting-back to nature, back to basics, to the ways he once knew a long time ago. However, he can only do this for brief periods as a weekend get-away or a yearly vacation-certainly not as a whole way of life. Some do break away and embrace a more rustic existence, but they are few and far between.

Now, I’m not suggesting we dump our modern ways and go back to living like primitives in bushes and caves. We have come too far for that. Rather, I’m proposing that we retrieve our shamanic past from ancestral times and bring it forward into the present to help us modify, balance and harmonize our way of life for an even more advanced civilization than what we have now. So it’s not back to basics but forward to basics.

Nor do we have to go far to find our shamanic heritage. The past is with us right now embodied in living shamans on earth. We don’t see them because we aren’t looking for them, but they are around. Hopefully, this book will give you a pair of shamanic glasses that will enable you to see some them-at least those that will allow it, for shamans know how to be invisible.

Mayan legends have it that at one time we lived in a virtual Paradise. We lost that with the first Ice Age. Since then, we have had many great civilizations-now also lost-that were highly advanced. Traditional shamans tell us they were radiant and spiritual. Some were even more technological than ours is today, but with a clean technology. As a rule, however, most past civilizations were low-tech and high-spirituality.

Today we live in a high-tech/low-spirituality civilization-some might even say no-spirituality civilization. We have become technological giants but remain spiritual midgets. But even as our native brothers have a deep spirituality to offer us, we have advanced material skills and benefits to offer them. So in the end, trading-in our material civilization for a more spiritual one is not the answer. The merging of the two into a high-tech/high-spirituality paradigm is! We have only had one or the other so far, but now, for the first time in history, we can have both/and.

Since shamanism embodies this kind of unity as a workable paradigm, it is becoming increasingly appealing to an ever larger number of people from diverse ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Both Eastern and Western Europe is experiencing quite a revival of interest in shamanism. Many of her countries are studying it at high academic levels in Universities and Colleges with some of the most brilliant minds in the field.

Young people are especially attracted to it because it offers them a sensible approach to spirituality in this material world, and workable solutions to our many and varied existential problems. It unites the practical with the spiritual, the pragmatic with the mystic. It offers something to both heart and mind, body and soul equally. It is currently seeping into every area of life-science, religion, education, business, government, social institutions and other human organizations. Even among the indigenous people of the world where shamanism is at the core of their way of life, it is on the rise as a return to the old ways.

This new movement of energy is reshaping and remolding our perception of ourselves, our perception of each other, and our perception of the world we live in. It is giving us a new way of thinking about the way we create our lives-both individually and collectively. More and more people are feeling this current. They may not be able to put it into words, but they sense it on a visceral level. The paradigm is shifting. People are awakening. Groups everywhere are feeling that something huge, something entirely new and unique is coming our way…

*   *    *

The Dawning1

—Words & Music by Kor Gable

© 1978-2008. All rights reserved

Vs 1 There’s a new sun on the horizon A new day is dawning

All the signs are showing (that) a new age is on the rise

Vs 2 There’s a new world that is coming The old one will soon be gone And before too long, everyone will see

Chorus: This is the dawning of a new day

The likes of which no one has ever seen before

And though we’ve seen a lot, just wait! You’ll see much more

Vs 3 There’s a new wave of emotion Everyone is feeling

It’s only the beginning, soon you will know.

Refrain:   Take a good look around you.

See the destruction that surrounds you. Leave it all behind you. Yeah…

You are no longer a part of that!

Vs 4 So take the hand of someone beside you And share with them your love Lift them high above all the sadness of the world

Vs 5 With your heart, reach out and touch their spirit Embrace them with your eyes Only love can change our lives If we want the world to be one/won

Fin Take the hand of someone beside you. (And share. love…)

1 Hmmm…

The most exciting phrase in science is not Eureka!

(I found it!) but ‘Hmm… that’s funny…!’.

—Isaac Asimov

LIFE AFTER BIRTH???

TWINS IN THEIR eighth month inside the womb had the following conversation…

One: We are getting quite old you know, and soon we will have to leave this world. Do you believe in life after birth?

Other: Of course. There has to be something after birth. It makes no sense to go through all this development for nothing.

One: I disagree. I see no indication that there is any life after birth. What could there be?

Other: I don’t know. Perhaps there will be more light; maybe we will walk on our own two feet and eat with our own mouth.

One: That’s ridiculous. Walking? Even if we could, there’s nowhere to go; and to eat with a mouth, that is laughable. After all, we are nurtured by the Umbilical Cord. That alone precludes any possibility of life after birth because already the Cord is too short, and if it is ever cut, we will surely die.

Other: Or maybe we will survive in a different way.

One: Yeah, but you’re forgetting one thing; no one has ever come back from the afterbirth to tell us about it. Therefore, it’s only logical that birth is the end of life.

Other: I don’t believe that. I think we will survive and meet Mother, and She will take care of us.

One: Mother?! You believe in Mother?! Man, are you ever deluded! Pray, tell, where exactly is this Mother?

Other: Well, everywhere, all around us. Thanks to her, we are alive. Without her, we would not exist.

One: That’s crazy! In all my experience here, I have not seen any kind of Mother anywhere. That’s proof enough that she doesn’t exist.

Other: That’s not true. Mother exists. In quiet moments, we hear her muffled singing, and at times, I feel her gently stroking the world around us. You know, I truly believe that life really begins with birth. Image444.PNG

THE UNPAYABLE PRICE

It has been said that the source of all wealth is our brain-the philosopher’s stone or the mystic’s gem of inestimable value. The following story should make you go Hmmm.

The origin of the Chess game is unknown. Some attribute its invention to the Biblical King Solomon or to the Greek god Hermes, others to the Chinese mandarin Hansing. Some surmise it originated in India sometime around the 6th or 7th century AD, crossed over into Persia (Iran), and then on to Europe.

As the story goes (the one I heard), there was a certain King back in some Dark Age who, being bored out of his tree with the usual mindless court games, set up a contest for all the artisans of his realm. He asked for the invention of a game that was simple enough for a child to learn yet complex enough to entertain adults indefinitely. The winner could name his price, which the King would pay if the game pleased him. After seeing many new games, the King took a shine to one in particular-the game we call Chess. He fell in love with it.

The happy King, true to his promise, asked the inventor to name his price. The inventor said, Put one grain of rice on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and keep doubling it until you reach the sixty-fourth square. No problem, said the King, thinking he got a real deal; after all, the inventor could have asked for the Kingdom; so the Monarch commanded one of his servants to toss the man a sack of rice. The inventor refused to leave, saying, Your Majesty, that’s not enough. The King replied, Okay, give him two sacks, but the inventor still didn’t leave, saying, That’s not enough. Okay, give him a cart load. To make a long story short, the exasperated King, after increased efforts to pay the inventor, called his top mathematician to calculate the exact amount of rice needed to send this guy packing. When the mathematician presented his calculations, the befuddled King learned to his dismay that there was not enough rice in the world to pay the man-that’s how astronomical the number was. The poor inventor had to settle for a tiny fraction of his asking price-like permanent residence in the King’s plush palace, all luxuries included, and a guaranteed lifetime of wealth and financial independence. (Awww shucks!)

Try it yourself with a penny on the first square, doubling it as you go. I used a calculator. By the 20th square, I had 31,727,049,209,966,328,060,988,882, 944 pennies, which comes to $317,270,492,099,663,280,609,888,829.44. On the 21st square, my calculator conked out, unable to display the number. I tried the same calculation on my computer, and by the 30th square, a pop-up message said Out of memory. I was not surprised when upon reaching the 31st square, my whole computer system crashed… Hmmm. Image452.PNG

CHICKEN ALCHEMY

We all know what a chicken is, but Alchemy is a superstition from the Dark Ages. right? Wrong! Alchemy was yester-millennia’s science, the predecessor to modern chemistry. A chemist is simply an alchemist without spiritual ethos. Alchemy was, among other things, concerned with the transmutation of one element into another. In its higher aspect, it dealt with the transformation of man’s lower animal nature to a higher, divine one. The material metaphor for it was turning lead into gold. Whether alchemists ever succeeded in doing this or not is beside the point. The whole thing is just a metaphor-or is it?

Early chemists were convinced that transmuting lead into gold was impossible-after all, a chemical element was supposed to be an indivisible substance. Atomic science proved that wrong. We now know that radioactive uranium turns into lead as it decays. We also know that smashing apart the atoms of one element gives us two new ones; the only thing is, it’s far from an elegant process. It requires huge particle-accelerating chambers and tremendous amounts of power-and the results are meager at best, yielding only small amounts of isotopes with half-lives calculated in nanoseconds.

Meanwhile, her henpecking highness the hen has been practicing alchemy for ages right under our collective noses-and apparently in the barn with the cock. A couple of decades ago, some European scientists noticed an oddity-chickens lay eggs! Right! Now that in itself is not earth shattering; but what amazed them was the amount of Calcium found in the egg shells. Given its Calcium-poor diet, the question was, where does the chicken get all the Calcium in order to manufacture her eggs? It was always assumed that it came from its diet. It was soon discovered that the grains in a day’s meal didn’t provide enough Calcium for half an egg shell. They theorized that the chicken must extract it from its own bones, but that didn’t fly either because after laying a dozen or so eggs, you’d have a boneless chicken-now that might be great for the fast-food industry, but not for the poor bird.

Then they noticed another oddity; namely, that in addition to gobbling up grains, the chicken also selectively pecked notable amounts of grain-sized stones. It was always thought that said pebbles aided the chicken in digesting her grains. Yet when any chicken was cut open and cleaned, no pebbles were ever found in its gizzard. Folks, what we have here is a double mystery-the case of the vanishing pebbles and the case of the mysteriously appearing Calcium.

Clearly, the chicken raised more questions than the egg-or is it the other way round? The scientists were stumped until an atomic physicist suggested that the chicken may be manufacturing the Calcium its own body by transmuting one element into another. On closer examination, it was found that chickens don’t just gobble up any kind of pebble. Oh no! They peck up mica-a Silicon-rich stone. The physicist suggested that the chicken makes Calcium out of Silicon and presented a simple molecular formula for his argument.

The atomic weight of Silicon is 28; Calcium is 40. To get an eggshell, we need to fuse Silicon with another element whose atomic weight is 12 (28 + 12 = 40). It just so happens that Carbon is 12 and is abundantly available in all grains (Carbohydrates). The chicken can easily obtain all the Carbon it needs from its diet, fuse it with Silicon from the mica, and voila! Eggshells galore-and she gets to keep her all her bones too! Ladies and gentlemen. the chicken is an alchemist, transmuting Silicon into Calcium in her sleep without particle accelerators, atom-smashing chambers, or terawatts of electrical power!

Taking the math a step further, let’s look at how we might turn a base metal into gold-at least in theory. There are two ways we can go with this: 1. atomic fission (splitting an atom in two) and 2. atomic fusion (joining two atoms together). There may be more than two ways, but they might require complex processes using three or more elements involving a highly esoteric science of subatomic physics or a simple but unknown natural process we have yet to discovered.

In any case, Lead has an atomic weight of 207.2. Gold is 196.9. In a successful splitting of a lead atom, we would end up with Gold (Au 196.9) and Boron (B 10.81). There is a discrepancy of-0.5 in the split weight, which means that a few random electrons and protons would have to come from somewhere-like a third substance, possibly a catalyst needed for the transmutation process. The fusion method is equally esoteric. It requires Silver (Ag 107.8) and a rare metal called Yttrium (Y 89.1), which when fused together, yields Gold (Au 196.9). Even though the math is simple, the process may be anything but.

I think that the main reason we can’t transmute elements through modern chemistry is because we take a mechanical approach instead of an organic one. Rather than trying to do it outside of nature, we should be looking at how nature herself creates elements in the matrix of the earth and take into account all the organic and/or inorganic processes, including quantum principles, involved in the creation of all mineral matter-and work in cooperation with it.

I believe that man will one day know how to do this and the human race will be alchemical. Perhaps when we finally discover how to make gold, we will enter the long-awaited Golden Age. I suspect the Universe will keep this a secret until man has evolved spiritually enough to not let gold tempt him or seduce him into wanton power and greed. Image459.PNG

THE BUMBLING BUMBLEBEE

There are those who say that too much knowledge can prevent learning. Hungarians have a saying, You can’t see because your eyes are in the way. Perhaps we need to unlearn a bunch of stuff to know anything.

According to aeronautic engineers, the humble little bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly. Why? Its construction is not aerodynamic; its wingspan is too short and narrow for its body, which is too large and heavy for its wings. By all rights-and known laws of physics-the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to get off the ground, let alone fly. But no one ever told the bumble bee that. so it goes ahead and flies.

In other words, you can pretty much do anything if you don’t know any better. Freeing the mind of its limiting beliefs-what it knows or thinks it knows-is, in itself, alchemy.

The mind is a most peculiar thing. It turns you into whatever you constantly think about. There is a story about a Zen master who was teaching his apprentice how to be at one with the universe. He gave the novice a simple exercise-to sit in a hut and contemplate an ox until he achieved oneness with it. After a few weeks, the master called him to come out of the hut, whereupon the latter answered, I can’t! My horns won’t fit through the doorway. Image467.PNG

DIMENSIONS

We are all familiar with the concept of 3-D that comprises length, width and height. We are also aware of a fourth dimension called time, which is the measurement of an object’s duration of motion through space. Our bodies, being such objects, are free to move in any direction in 3-D, but when it comes to time, we can only move one way-from past to future-or to be more precise, we don’t actually move through time; rather, it moves at a seemingly fixed rate.

Time travel has always fascinated man. Imagine