An Allegory ?

An Allegory ?

It is generally accepted to be in monumental bad taste to relate dreams but this one was so vivid and puzzling until I related it to my wife. She immediately said: It sounds like life. At the risk of boring the pants off everyone within reading distance it went along these lines.

There was I sitting in this bar in central London, perhaps near where I worked for a decade or two near Farringdon Station and Saint Bart's hospital and the former Smithfield market. You know how hazy dreams can be. Well the next thing I noticed was a large Bentley style limousine parked outside, blocking the narrow road, as it would in that area. On enquiry as to who it was waiting for? You. I was told.

The temptation to enter the plush vehicle and allow myself to be swallowed by a combination of its paraded delights. Not least the superb creature barely visible through the darkened smoked class of the limousine. Decades earlier and this might have presented a problem though I felt confident enough to doubt such. What sort of a test was this to present all temptations as a miss mash of choice?

Staggered yes. Confused yes. Where were all these desirable wish fantasies springing from? Surely not from my hidden frustrations or desires? What really got me thinking were the rather large gentlemen in the background to each and every cameo. The menace was overt and well presented, no possible room for misrepresentation. It was a pleasant surprise to wake up and discover, real as it had appeared it was a just a dazzling dream.

You can have anything you want in life as long as you can pay for it.

Top Emma enthusiastic.

Middle me: pensive.

Bottom image: Parading , Lewis.

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Going Through the Time Barrier.

Going Through the Time Barrier.

I now have to hand the second monthly edition of the English language version of : The Light Divine. After the editorial the next article deals with : Time Management : the Secret of Success. As usual the articles are laced with excellent advice and anecdotes. The downside, as ever, is the heavily weighted negative view on the progress humanity is making toward its own self destruction.

As is so often the case with views presented in an unbalanced way showing too much emphasis on one side or other of the argument the initial tendency is to accept almost uncritically the view heavily canvassed. It takes time to marshal the opposing or even the lightening values to add to the mix. This technique is often witnessed with Radio and TV programs, where an aggressive sound bite can be inserted, not leaving time for a riposte.

My own efforts to bring the ideas of the major religions and other sound and beneficial approaches to life, and its furtherance, for the good of all, seems now with the passage of so much time to have been a massive waste of time. That is if you accept the arguments and the pictures drawn by those looking to exploit the negative side of the equation.  So often I feel downcast myself that my original article was not the charismatic and explosive tract, it should have been.

Why not? Perhaps because my talents and presentation skills as a writer were not up to the standard necessary, to do justice to the theme. Then there is the view often advanced with great justification; that the time had not come for such revelation. Over the period of the past few months as I have felt my abilities and confidence as a writer with something worth saying increase, my salvation has been the internet.

Seeing how some of the blogs with followings of many thousands with some this sets the standard, but my efforts and interest is to grow my efforts with real value. Naturally I realize in even taking this tact with what is presented lays my efforts open to abuse, a negative in itself with the internet method of approach.

Those who see the Rio+20, Earth environmental climate Summit as the last chance saloon, do mother nature a disservice. Certainly the cards seem to be heavily stacked against her, but has divine retribution still have a card or two to play? One point should perhaps be made a little clearer, if required, is that the title,'Going through the Time Barrier,' refers not to a physical break through such a barrier, as the illusion of such due to the acceleration with the speed of change as people and nations, commerce and social interaction come together in a far more positive and co-operative than before.

The Abyss.

 
The Abyss.

Once the hurdle of unloading the new knowledge had been completed and a suitable distance evolved from the point of impact it might seem reasonable that any normal self respecting individual in a democratic society would start to count his fortune and wonder, if and when the recognition would begin. Naturally it was already appreciated that there was a difficulty with the aspect of acknowledgement and recognition.

These two, of perhaps the most satisfying of achievements, with the vast majority of the achievers of any nation under normal circumstances were met as the individual grew in status and passed through the many levels to the pinnacles of society, during their lifetime of productive working. Either by solid effort, invention, research, innovation , or by literary, artistic or social or political effort considered to be to the general good of the people.

Where though does the odd character fall into this pattern when his thoughts and knowledge create a rift so wide the author is unable to fully explain his quantum leap? Four decades have passed still the chaos is obvious,  but the strength of the old ways has been sufficient to put up a shield to defend the myths and insufficiencies of the status quo. Many of the establishment elite remain unconvinced of the effacy of the new knowledge.

Fortunately, unlike his detractors, the author of the new knowledge was in no real hurry to get involved in the day to day scrummage to prove out his theory as he was completely convinced time itself would unravel the conundrum, he had set, both to himself and to the world at large. Time and a massive team of human brains working together, and competitively apart, would produce a working understanding.

Almost as if sent by Creation itself: a new and soon to prove a vast communication driving force and motivator, the World Wide Web was born: The Internet. Timothy Berners-Lee, its founder, constructed the network as a tool to help himself and fellow scientists to keep in touch with each others work more efficiently than hitherto. This single innovation was within a decade or two to accelerate the rapid change spreading across the globe.

The media as the media so often do quickly hung a label round the neck of the new movements of revolt and revolution in various parts of the world as this or that ' spring, ' the word spring implied the birth of a new order and with it new hope that corrupt agencies would be swept away by the uncorrupted youthful revolutionaries. Unfortunately things are not that simple, too many tenuous links with an undefined strength nurtured by fear and horrors indelibly etched into the psyche by war.

The First Hurdle?

The First Hurdle?

All of us and that naturally enough this means everyone from the top of the tree down through the hundreds of grades, divisions and sub-divisions, right down to the very bottom of the heap, have heard or at least understand, once old enough to appreciate the facts of life, that you cannot take it with you. What is referred to in this case is perhaps a little more than appreciated under the old belief system. So let us examine belief.

Under the old belief extracted from the natural cycles of earth, fire, water, and air; then supplemented over the centuries, by rituals supported by the; cleverest, strongest and most persuasive of the population many ideas and fears grew up. So to answer these general questions of the people and to keep them orderly and submissive to the desires, wants and needs of the elite, an invisible barrier of understanding was created.

The invisible barrier of understanding was created after many centuries of trial and error, when it was finally conceded that each civilisation produced  its own success only to the point when they had created a society that gave them the power of gods. At this point the society became unstable and disintegrated due to total lack of basic humanity. With everyone a god nobody was prepared to concede to another.

With the world coming to terms with the aftermath of WW2, in the nineteen forties. It was understandable that even the major industrial and wealth creating countries had drained away a great deal of their resources. A new generation impatient with the old ways that had brought ruin twice in less than fifty years, allowing a change in the balance of power. Sage heads of Europe had a solution which was not endorsed by all.

One of the great and some would say over riding tenants of belief before the two world wars, in the twentieth century was that might was right, and if not, the politic way was to go along with the strongest power. Whether that was in the playground with the biggest bully, or later when the mature adult society kept more or less to the agreed framework of laws passed by the governing elite. There was a flaw though.

The big flaw with both the Greek and Roman societies was that each had to rely on a large slave population from which to draw much of its menial labour. The renewal of this supply of slave labour, had to be supplemented by war. This flaw, built in by the ancient acceptance of military dominance, merely served to endorse the natural order, observed in nature: might, speed, agility, cunning, dexterity, and team work.

Of course the almighty may have given mankind dominion over the animal kingdom, but it now seems patently obvious from many of the advances humanity has made in the past century or so, that was not meant to be the limit of the horizons that should challenge the creation of the almighty. Already the ingenuity, fertile imagination and the development of abstract manipulations allowing many advances in life extension cycle.

Essentially many believed with the end of W.W.2, two basic warring theories had been exhaustively analysed with the loss of many thousand of lives but many remained unconvinced. WW1 was held to be the swan-song of the monarchical system. WW2 being represented as a resulting clash of ideology, from a botched agreement in 1919-1920. WW2 ended in 1945. Peace though was still a far off dream.

The leading lights of the war, as politicians the world over, were keen to put their stamp on any agreements to be made and endorsed for the victorious aftermath of the world war. It soon became common knowledge that the efforts of the United Kingdom to save the day, were yesterday's news. The reluctance, as so often happens, for the defeated leader to retire gracefully from the scene soon began to tarnish matters.

It is an old saw but one that great and small alike, men and women, so often ignore: no one likes to be indebted to others. The debts that you cannot repay are the most difficult to manage with good grace. This was especially the case where the clash of the Treaty of Roman, came into existence, in January 1958, and immediately created a further raft of problems.

The offshore irritant, as one leading European politician put the case of the United Kingdom, had a new theory that might answer the problem facing them all. The main trouble was it required time to be thought through, developed and considered in depth. In any case the main problems were to manage the use and distribution of resources as they stood. Not introduce an esoteric solution that complicated matters.

The article: Going Through the Time Barrier, landed on the desk of the editor of the New Scientist publication. in 1973. Coupled with several other articles, it was easy for the recipients, to the various organs of public enlightenment, to reject and effectively dismiss unsupported arguments from an unknown untried intellect. A quick check had shown the author had been placed in a local psychiatric hospital: end of story.

Of course it was far from being the end of the story. While the author's offerings were being collected, collated and analysed the whole episode was placed under a D notice. A security device to stop any unauthorised leaks to the general public via the media. As matters then evolved over the next several weeks then months, this was the ideal solution to a very delicate problem. It gave everyone time.

Time was of the essence. Time to analyse. Time to assess. Time to reflect, and time to wonder. Naturally those on the periphery of the event initially saw it as some sort of lightening strike from the almighty. Fortunately the power and abilities of this writer, although untrained and unorthodox, in presentation and subject had already alerted the authorities to an intellect of unusual perspective and aspect of understanding.

This was not the first time this individual had come to the attention of the authorities, in 1953, and 1955, while serving in the Royal Navy his disturbing mental upheavals drew attention to himself and were quickly glossed over by the relevant authorities. These affairs were such as to make him look for a quiet unchallenging life on his discharge in late 1955. Slowly though his desire to write asserted itself.

During the early sixties, after a short story correspondence course, his impatience to complete his first novel based on his boy seaman naval training at Shotley reasserted itself and was completed. After its rejection, and only too well aware of its over emphasis on detail and generally not to a standard of which he was satisfied, the whole was placed out of harms way as he reflected on his next move.

That is how matters remained until his reawakening in mid December 1972. What triggered this upheaval and brain storm has not been satisfactorily recorded.The mental tremors lasted at gradually diminishing intervals until the early nineties: occurring in 1979, 1982, and 1992. With retirement in 2001, and time to use the Internet and start a blog. The idea surfaced to try to have another attempt to understand why.

Universal Truth ?

Universal Truth ?

'Pride and Prejudice,' [1813] Ch.1. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.                 Jane Austen 1775-1817.

My wife has set me a problem. Nothing new in that you would probably think. In setting this problem entirely unsuspectingly she may have hit on a completely new vein of thought which had passed me by for some considerable time, years in fact. Or merely put the mockers on forty years of effort and kidding myself that I had solved a fundamental problem, to reveal an obscure red herring of enormousness proportions, that had been clogging up the progress and smooth flow of humanity's evolution toward a more peaceful and productive life style. For the moment though my problems are more mundane. Bins to be removed to the back of the house. Breakfast to prepare. Ironing to make a start with, been putting that one off for a few days.

What brought the whole matter to a head was the Magazine 'Akhand Jyoti,' [ The light divine ] {www.awgp.org}, which was given to me to read, and furnish an opinion. I had been doing so over the course of the past week including exerts to my wife, which I felt often illustrated anecdotes of moral tales or life lessons, similar and sometimes from the Bible. The essence of the magazine, while Hindu, also appeared to incorporate stores and life lessons from other sources. The illustration of Androcles and the lion, being an example.

After several days of reading these items to my wife, and comparing them with my own efforts, which had caused her so much anguish in the past. She finally put her opinion on the line: Just what is so marvellous about them? They are just Universal Truth, the sort of things you learn with your mother's milk. Then to cap it she quoted the opening line from Jane Austen's, Pride and Prejudice, [ top of page ]. Certainly a definite, riposte of quality to put the argument in a category. Which was that of a middle class lady two hundred years ago, where options were decidedly limited. In the past half century or so many universal truths have been laid in the dust of 'progressive thought and action,' the phrase hardly has a single unifying component.

Not to mention the pecking order of moral and ethical of rights and responsibilities of the group. With tie-in reference and deference to the human rights, and total inconsiderate selfish individual responsibilities. Over laid with health and safety consideration, once again with the demeaning of the individual's right to place themselves in danger to accomplish what : instinct, faith and determination often successfully accomplished, before society allowed nanny's apron strings to strangle its initiative. 

When offered the magazine to read I had been discussing with my friend how much better the world would be if we could get together and pool all the good stuff we believed in and got rid of the bad, which divides us and leads to conflicts and worse. I used one of my favourite illustrations of the compromise, using the cake division. The trouble is if you carry on dividing it all you end up with is a few crumbs. Why? He replied: that it is because everyone finds it too difficult to give things away. They prefer to keep what they have. Regrettably there were plenty of illustrations to that view, of my own, which showed how this opinion was correct. One that has bugged me a great deal since retirement is the difficulty with parting with clothes and other items there is little further use for, but they become difficult to give away. The problem is the history, the mental baggage of times past.

Nevertheless despite often making it clear that what I was writing was really only an update on times past, my ideas and theories did have something to offer. The trouble was I could see and hear her frustration. My rants, short tempter bursts and occasional impatience, spoke more to her of the bar-room bore, or the trade union agitator, fighting yesterday's war. Than a man with intellectual status, and an incisive mind camouflaging a new approach to love, life the universe and everything. Who really had found the mental leap the most difficult to acknowledge: my long suffering wife or myself? Even now with the whole matter coming through so abundantly well, I had to suppress the odd pang of self-doubt. Even so instinctively now I knew there was no way I could, would, or even should explain to her just what the nitty-gritty of my ideas were that had been fine tuned and now about to be launched through my blog onto the world at large.

So what is this, Universal Truth ? that we all learn at our mother's breast? For me it is the strength of the will to survive. The will is the basic survival tool of the brain to enable it to survive long enough to develop a mind with which to link to the brain. In the development of the most highly evolved life form on the planet, humanity. There are many, many dozens of other complex changes progressing throughout the body, without specialist medical expertise it would be foolish to detail any programme of these changes in their sequence to the build up of the mature adult. It is a given though that each child is developed along the various lines it is fortunate or less so to follow. These will include, country of birth, family group, number of siblings, status of parents, quality of teachers. The child's ability to adapt their own temperament to suit the mature adults they come into contact.

Naturally this process of adaptation, and continual adjustment of perspective, will continue for the rest of the individual's life-span. It is my belief that this life-span can be considerably extended where the mind is not allowed to become cluttered with negative thoughts to the extent that far too much time is allowed for dwelling on past errors of deed, or judgement. Essentially a mantra of: remembrance of things past, live and dwell in the present, dream and plan for the future. Simple but how quickly it can be forgotten in the mad rush to live in the future, if only in the mind? Or perhaps especially in the mind.

Like many breakthroughs and changes of life style longevity, will most likely build gradually as the older generation gets used to the confidence that numbers will give to the survivors. Then there will be help to begin to break away from the dependency of a retirement age set in stone, which can in many cases be a death sentence in disguise, and certainly to  the manual workers, who need to be weaned off the bone crushing labour that has sent so many to early graves in the past centuries.

A Feeding Frenzy.

A Feeding Frenzy.

We all know that this one refers in the latest popular jargon in the media when they get the whiff of a new, breaking story line that will sell their newspapers or magazines. Anything goes that the press designates the sacrificial goat of the hour or day. The main thing that it does not signify is that anyone least of all the destitute, starving or poorly will get feed , it is merely an expression taken from the frantic activity seen when the local fish in a pond seeking to maximise its share of the food thrown into the water. In the past few weeks it has been a revelation to me to lose about fifteen to twenty pound of weight, lose besides a taste for food coupled with a slow digestion; result, so far the weight has remained off.

Though to a degree I have regained my taste for food, I believe the result may be down a lessening of the desire to eat as much as before. Time will tell if this is correct. It could be the completion of my arguments regarding the new perspective releasing a large degree of frustration. From what I understand ; over eating, smoking and drinking, in fact most obsessive behaviour can be down to frustration. Should this prove to be the case and I feel it will, it could be the first plank in my case to build a more rational structure for tomorrow's society. Naturally enough nobody is going to take a jot of notice of my opinions, theories, conjecture about the past, present or future, especially when even my long term wife appears to believe I am merely peddling basic natural truth. I sincerely hope it is her way of keeping me grounded?

Which of course I am. The question is how do you break out from the voice crying in the wilderness; endeavouring to show that the natural truth you are presenting has been turned upside down and inside out. When you think about it there must be a parallel between what happened with the Greek Intellectual World, where the planets went round the sun, and fifteen hundred years of church hierarchy stupidly, before a timid cleric put the record straight again?  That  this new view of nature and its long term life expectancy will completely revolutionize the whole perspective of life on earth and finally bring the much needed sanity of humanity to fruition, and out of the bog standard mental scrapyard it has been struggling with for the past several hundred years. Now however by the wonderful inventions and many other creations that have caused the human ego to inflate itself to that of godlike status and proportions, the human race has run itself into a blind alley; arrogance and greed, fuelling, debt, deceit and corruption. Perhaps it is time to look again at the parable of the wise and foolish virgins?

Yes, it has all be written before, in the West and the East, without doubt, North and South as well. To me what is in fact strange is that so many things I learnt many years ago are only now truly being revealed to me in their correct context. You see for example the simple truth of the observation; we all have feet of clay. Whatever our accomplishment may be you can be assured it would not have come about without the help of others, the more difficult, the more help you will have to have to succeed in the task.

James Bond and all that Jazz.

James Bond and all that Jazz.

Sir Winston Churchill is reputed to have placed the spy on the top most pinnacle of the warrior caste. Of recent times though the the spy's status has rather slumped, I would suggest, in the public imagination and esteem. The alleged exploits of MI5, MI6, and the CIA, with others over the past few years, to counter the exploits of those who would disrupt the British and American ways of life. Of course in many ways Sir Winston, had a relatively clear cut situation to hand down his opinion and judgement. Now with the threads of conspiracy, intrigue; religious and secular interwoven: the whole laced with moral, ethical and financial corruption, who can give an objective assessment of the way out of the quagmire?

In the past century the human race has solved many outstanding problems in its attempts to consolidate its destiny as the master species on the planet. Nevertheless these advances have in many ways only exacerbated the problems that already were crying out for solution. One of the greatest areas in which these advances have occurred is in the field of communications. It is now over half a century since Sir Winston made his opinions known on the status and utility of the spy, and in recent years it has been a fertile field of debate as to whether the spy is an anachronism, best confined to the comic book antics of the James Bond films, or whether the human race still has a large, and sinister, yet definable role within state security for the spy's activities?

It can be said that the naive, and those with rose tinted spectacles, are often the quickest to shut away in the cupboard marked, 'obsolete; not wanted on voyage,' to anything and everything that can cloud their vision or minds, to the darker side of human nature. Amongst these well meaning folks this country and perhaps the whole of western civilisation, have been blighted by this premature desire to follow the best of all possible worlds in their ambition to claim the accolade of leading peace-maker? How better to claim this than by creating a level playing field from which even those handicapped by the three legged stool of uneven dimensions will easily master the art of equality with grace?

Surely the time has come to see these bogus machinations for what they are? before the whole system turns sanity and logic completely on its head ?