An elderly widow telephoned last evening,  “I want to hold your hand”.  She talked of her memories of home in the hills of India, of her father and her husband, and of recent encounters in the town where she lives.  “It was a Beatles’ song”, I told her ^[1].  In her urgent need for touch and love, she didn’t welcome the quip.  A time of memories, of a lifetime’s experience, of love and laughter, of kindness, of simple pleasures.  “I’m ready to go”, she said, tired of being alone amongst unreal modern folk, “ready to pass”; ready to go to her long-home.   

  This old man’s memories vary between actual and semi-conscious ephemeral ‘movies’, some one cannot place.  ‘Were they real’, or a taste, a mental impression of something, a moment that may have happened ?  Getting off a bus in the middle of nowhere, looking about, wondering.  Standing on a platform, watching a train leave the station, aware of the difference between travellers on the train and thems left behind; of the difference ‘in time’ experience.  

  Childhood memories of steam trains : of great polished engines in great stations, and of local trains at local country stations.  Standing on a railway bridge, looking down the rails at a train coming, puffing black smut and smoke over us as it passed beneath, to our horror-full delight.  Porters of those days, walking up and down a country platform, calling the name of the station for train passengers, lest they missed it.  Running across the rails ‘illegally’, instead of walking across the station bridge; getting ticked-off by friendly, aping-cross railway staff.  In the country, counting the number of a train’s coaches as they rushed past, at a distance; driving under a bridge as a train passed over the top, was considered ‘lucky’.  In those days, we were all ‘Railway Children’, before the political ‘fix’ of trade-unions, cheap Arab oil, and filthy diesel.

  In one’s teens, boarding a Comet 2 airplane, knowing it was suffering from metal fatigue, aware that we may die; that the adventure to a foreign land was worth the peril.  The proximity of death, post-war, added an immediate flavour, made life more real than it is today.  The aroma of wine, whiskey and cigars in an adult’s drawing room the morning after; delicious ! ^[2]  Nowadays, constant political failures have introduced restrictions to our living that cauterise real experience.  So many have become ‘nowhere people living in a nowhere land, making nowhere plans, for nobody’ ^[3].

  Or, is it that the multi-colourful recollections of our early lives’ freedoms and imaginations contrast with the stress and grey constraints of modern life ?  Is it that nowadays most people live in towns and cities, like rats in a maze, rather than in the fresh-air and would-be freedoms of the country ?  Whatever, people tend to be more distant than they ever were, somehow more fearful.  Contemporarily confused genders, and ‘wokeness’, disturb our everydays.  I want to hold your hand ?  Fun and friendly relations have become liable to sensational publicity and prosecution.  ‘As bad as these days may seem to us, our kids will remember them as the good old days.’

  The state of our modern minds so often seems to be determined by the pressures we feel ourselves under.  It appears that contemporary pressures have only escalated through the centuries, possibly from a wish for better standards of living, practically and materially different for different levels of society; which notion was grown politically into the dangerous fantasy of eternal ‘economic growth’ ^[4], packaged and sold to the public, much like religion.  Trouble is, modern commercialism invokes corruption at every level from national politics to local derring-do.  Modern commercialism is invariably Wrong – destructive, dishonest, improper, often illegal; in no-one’s interests except ‘the crooks’, as they can make a ton of money manipulating the greed/fear combo in victims and in other would-be commercial miscreants, at the expense of Joe Public and our world ^[5] [6].  

  My 80 years have witnessed the extraordinarily swift decline of almost everything that matters, along with the escalation of fear and shallow thinking, extremism, and present dangers on every front.  It is inevitable that elderly folk recall the joys and traumas of childhood, in particular the sense of liberation in what were our coming-of-age years.  Those years for this old man, included a spell in the British Army on the Rhine, and the unique era of freedom-genius in arts and music of the late 1950s through 1960s, into the early 1970s ^[7]; before those days came to suffer from intrusive grey ‘authorities’, and from over-use of experimental social drugs.  A phenomenal, mystical and wonderful period of peaceful social revolution against the sorry ineptitude of straight-laced political controls, becoming all but stamped out by the ‘grey suits’ of many western governments, spanned our coming-of-age through to the birth of our first children.  

  The young and many rejoiced in the freedoms pioneered by creative genius in many arts, particularly in the music of the day, which reflected their feelings, and enlivened them.  New rhythms, chords, musical emphases introduced new ideas.  Amongst many excellent artists and their passing joys, the Beatles were the most original and most influential worldwide.  Their development from ‘rough-rock’ in Liverpool and Germany to refined and soulful, brilliantly scored songs called to people everywhere, and lifted our spirits.  The release of ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ in May 1967, produced by George Martin, blew everyone’s minds; a psychedelic musical classic for all time.  

  In 1968, a small music festival was held near Ryde in the Isle of Wight.  In 1969, following the Americans landing on the Moon, and shortly after the Peace & Music ‘Woodstock’ festival in New York state, it developed into an astonishing major public event, featuring amongst others, The Moody Blues, King Crimson, Richie Havens combo, the young Joni Mitchell, The Who, Bob Dylan and The Band; both festivals attended by c.400,000 people; the largest peaceful gatherings of all time; and the ‘grey suits’ fear of the potential power of the young seemed to be realised.  In subsequent years, festivals grew even larger, before becoming ‘controlled’, or stamped out ^[8].  

  The friendships and fun and creative work of those days, along with profound spiritual seeking, made me and contemporaries, Who We Are.  For such experience is the stuff of life, of love, that everyone has a right to; always remembering that we have but one Right, the Right to Life.

  Heady times, heady memories, a trip down Penny Lane and to Strawberry Fields ^[9].  And we, the ‘flower children’ of those days, have found ourselves obliged to bow to increasing and unworthy pressures inflicted on us by the seemingly inhuman ‘grey suits’, their commercialism and corruption, in their insistent drive to self-destruction, ever denying our Right to Life and Love, to laughter, freedom and joy, and to the silence beyond human understanding.  

  Our kids must wonder if we capitulated to the ‘grey suits’, whether we joined their shabby ranks ?  Yesterday, my niece, a therapist and university lecturer, thanked me sincerely for opening for her a different window on life; so mebbe they do have a taste of it.  I pray so.

  Consciously smile at gloomy strangers in the street, as a gift.  Give a flower to uniformed police and traffic wardens, with a silent meaningful smile.  Hope is pretty much all what we have left; ‘die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt’ ^[10].

“Here comes the sun, and I say, it’s alright.

Little darlin’, it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter;

little darlin’, it feels like years since it’s been here.

Here comes the sun, and I say, It’s alright.

Little darlin’, the smile’s returning to their faces, little darlin’,

it seems like years since it’s been here.

Here comes the sun, and I say, It’s alright.” ^[11]

 and, “I want to hold your hand”.  

Copyright © Gaunts Publishing 2023.

^[1]  1963.

^[2]  The original UK ban on smoking in public was ‘inspired’ officially by a public-health perception, but actually by the notion of saving the NHS money.  Since the original ban, the escalation of public mental-health problems has escalated exponentially, costing the NHS far more.  We can ponder the connection.  Man has ‘smoked’ for somewhere around 500,000 years, possibly since inhaling the smoke of herbs on a fire, finding it calming, socially valuable, and inspirational.

^[3]  from Beatles’ song, 1965.

^[4]  “People are suffering.  People are dying.  Entire ecosystems are collapsing.  We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.  And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.  How dare you!”  Greta Thunberg (16 years old) at the UN summit for Climate Action, 2019, after sailing the Atlantic ocean.  She was arrested in London a few days ago for protesting.

^[5]  NB. If we must be ruled by money, then ‘Making a Surplus’ is generally sensible; ‘Profiteering’ generally anti-social.  

^[6]  “The best things in life are free, But you can keep them for the birds and bees.  Now give me money, That’s what I want.  You’re lovin’ gives me a thrill, But you’re lovin’ don’t pay my bills.  Now give me money, That’s what I want.  Money don’t get everything, it’s true.  What it don’t get, I can’t use.  Now give me money, That’s what I want.”  (cynical song by Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford, recorded by the Beatles in 1963). 

^[7]  Coinciding with the catastrophic American entry into the Vietnam War, 1965-1975.

^[8]  In 1971, The Isle of Wight County Council banned festivals at the historic and highly successful Ryde site.

^[9] “Living is easy with eyes closed.  Misunderstanding all you see.  It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out.  It doesn’t matter much to me.  Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields.  Nothing is real, nothing to get hung about; Strawberry Fields forever.”  Lennon and McCartney, 1967.

^[10]  ‘Hope dies last’.

^[11]  George Harrison, 1969.

  If we imagine that Man, having evolved a higher consciousness, may have some purpose and destiny; then, that the Procession of Time through the ages, was more or less inevitable, possibly to some extent ordained within a parameter of free-will, is almost unavoidable; it follows that Humans had to go through what we may see presently and retrospectively as historical trials and traumas in order to be fashioned, to fashion ourselves and our consciousness towards a sought-for mould, individually and collectively; or self-destruct.  Almost.

Boom !  A lot to ‘take on board’.

Need a drink ?

Mebbe a joint ?  [ Have just re-read Gilbert Shelton’s ‘Fabulous Furry Freak Bros’, after 60 years.  Passing classics, and very funny ].  NB.  Steer clear of all man-made chemical drugs. [1] [2]

We’re talking about a ‘Procession’ not of some 200,000 years, (Homo Sapiens), but of some two and a half million years or so, (Homo Erectus).  OK, if you want to be picky, of some 30 million or so years, (Hominoids). [3]   Sounds far-fetched ?  Take a look around.  Yes, we are some sort of mini-microbes in some vast universal experiment, or destiny, apparently egotistically selfish and destructive, valuable only when we have our minds and beings in a universally positive paradigm.  Almost.

And this notion puts our contemporary terrestrial understanding of Time under a different lens.  It’s as though modern adults exist as toddlers reaching for universal understandings that their parents and teachers deny [4].  ‘Time’ for a child is a wholly different medium to adult Time, (let alone ‘Time’ for an old man).  So much depends on our state of being mentally and physically, much of the latter dependent on the former; much of our mental states consequent on levels of family and community care, love in childhood, and in adulthood.

The suggestion is that humans have purpose, and possibly a universal destiny that we have yet to discover for ourselves.  It likely being of a universal nature, we may imagine it to be of positive benefit to Life and all life-forms, not what we as a species have been pursuing; not the greed, chaos, destruction, warfare [5] and despair, that has continually and presently threatens life on earth, that creative thinkers and writers have bemoaned for centuries.  I wonder, Were one able to take a step back from the planet, to view the state of humans and life on earth from afar, what one would make of it ?

What we appear to have progressed positively over the centuries are our use of fresh water – for cleanliness and hygiene, the faucet, washing-machines, plumbing and drainage, and the creation of canals for agriculture and transport – electricity, (questionable), the creative arts and music, the evolution of writing and the printing press, and sophisticated fashioning of clay and wood.  The rest appear as passing industrial technologies, abandoned as time moves on.  Then there’s the mega question of ‘Civilization’, which has more to do with obscene high-rise cities than the evolution of civilised humankind; not entirely my idea of evolution, and possibly not ‘the gods’’ either ?

Arguably, our psycho-emotional negativities have squandered time and practically everything else.  Time has become constrained, so much is happening so fast, much of it challenging, that mere mortals struggle to keep up. [6]  It seems that the speed of what we have created artificially – ‘the busy-busy’ – cauterises real feeling and human exchange, runs us off our feet, and damages our mental health, whomever we may be.  Optimists imagine we humans can continue in the same mould for years and centuries to come.  Amidst the breakdown and chaos that surround, Time does not appear to be on our side.

Have we complicated ourselves, become more complicated, more confused ?  Do we need to simplify ?  Have we been misled ?  Undoubtedly.  It would appear that our greed and its fellows of a challenging nature have run amok for five or six thousand years – a blink in time – and continue to, to the advantage of a few un-good people, to the detriment of the great majority, up to some contemporary point threatening widespread collapse.

Can we come to our senses in time ?  Can we hope for some divine intervention, in time ?  The suggestion is that the two are connected; that Ibrahamic religions may have misled their followers [7]; that the People of Earth need to work it all out for themselves, individually, to ‘go deep’ and for-real; and to come together to express themselves and to listen to each other profoundly, setting aside their personal stuff.  How currently alive humans respond to the imminent collapse of life as we know it will determine the future for our surviving children and grandchildren.  Almost.

You may like to read our Charter [8].

Copyright © Gaunts Publishing 2023.

[1]  Including mass-produced pharmaceutical drugs, (natural aspirin, OK)

[2]  NB2 for HM Fuzz.  No, neither I nor anyone here indulge in anything illegal.

[3]  See ‘The Wise of Time – What Ever Went Wrong ?’, Gaunts Publishing, 2021-22.

[4]  See ‘the Busy-Busy’ in ‘White Elephants and Rainbows’, Gaunts Publishing, 2007 – “On the way home, Mthunsi tells me they are losing their sense of extended family.  There’s a shedding of local communities.  People are becoming more insular.  Increasingly, they spend less and less time with uncles and aunts.   I ask him why this is so.   He is sad and uncertainly ashamed about it.   It’s because they are becoming ‘busy-busy’, that and the need to earn a crust.    Money seems to have an opposite effect to what is claimed.   It seems to limit their lives rather than add to them.   I ask about ‘busy-busy’.   It’s when they get a car, he says.  It takes up so much time.   I think he means more than cars, telephones and televisions too.  Later on, he braves himself to tell me a secret.   It’s something quite dreadful and deeply worrying.  They are losing their sense of sharing.  The world of total sharing they have known, that is of a value beyond expression, is getting lost.  Their world is shrinking to the single self and immediate family.   In the struggle for better living standards, they are becoming more selfish, which is limiting their existence.  It is very worrying, a deep fear, a deep wrong, he does not know how to cope with.  He watches it happening, and lives in exemplary ways at home and at work.  Nevertheless, it’s like a creeping plague they can do nothing about.” –  Xhosa perceptions.

[5]  Active wars at time of writing : Afghanistan, Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia*,  Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Israel, Ivory Coast, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico*, Mozambique, Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria, Palestine, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, and Yemen.  (*Drug Wars).  Minor conflicts not included.

[6]  NB.  Time is not money.

[7]  Jeshua was a fine teacher and healer.  Saul-Paul, known to be a ne’er-do-well, never heard or set eyes on Jeshua, his contemporary.  See ‘Come Sunrise’, Gaunts Publishing, 2019-2020.

[8]  Pls NB.  A list of Gaunts Publishing works is available on request.  The publications can be read at Gaunts, but most are not available for sale or dissemination.

The ancient concept of illusion has itself become illusory.  The science-cum-hi-tech movie, using money as its life-blood, obsesses politicians and public alike; the realm of philosophical and spiritual thought and feeling touted nowadays as illusory.  And it is this very material outlook that has amazed and blinded western populations for a century or three, to the extent that modern religions (of the last circa 2,500 years) have been found wanting, and/or used to propagandize the unwary into military uniforms for vastly destructive and cruel actions.  And it is the pursuit of this wicked, grand-scale illusion that has obsessed generations of egoic wealth cum status cum power-brokers, broadly degrading life on planet Earth, its air, water courses, soil, forests, natural species, humans too, and so on, destroying so much of Life and Love.  

Failures of family care and nurture, and near-total failures in educational notions and practices have produced rootless ‘authorities’ chasing quasi-orthodox fantasies based on crazy industrial ‘economies’, in particular the military-industrial complexes that lie at the heart of western ‘economies’.  

Commercialism loves a growing population : the more people there are, the greater the prospect of ‘making money’ : the greater the competition and corruption; the greater the pillaging of Earth’s natural resources; the larger the militaries; a self-nourishing madness that only destroys widely and deeply. 

Que faire ?

As any child will tell you, it is addiction to the notion of money and material gain that lies at the root of adult madness.  One can imagine that millenniums ago simple metallic (or other) coinage represented a creative and generally sensible means of exchange.  Modern, digitalized fiat currencies, automatically exchanging themselves in nano-seconds, in corrupt societies, do not, cannot fit the bill; tend to minimize human life experience, to constrain ‘Life, Love and the Universe’ ^[1] . 

As planet Earth and its inhabitants face increasing wildfires, flooding, widespread pollutions, melting glaciers and polar ice, terrible warfare, increasing wealth-gaps, mass poverties, hunger and homelessness, hopelessly inadequate governances inflict ever-increasing improper ‘controls’ on ever-greyer populations beset with mental-health issues.  We lurch towards inevitable disaster; most likely a conjunction of colliding breakdowns, or a drift into global conflict ^[2], or some form of natural ‘Correction’.

If such observations are commonplace, solutions appear elusive, as the madness has overtaken Life, globally.  We may imagine that survivors of the ‘Correction’, when they have time from ensuring their families’ and mini-communities’ raw survival, will seek to reconnect with Real Meanings, found in essential feelings of ‘Life, Love and the Universe’, in meaningful spirituality, based in ruthless honesty and openness, in Love and Care, in the essence of Life and Love.   

It is this same that the Good People of Gaunts have pursued these last 35 odd years, and continue to.  You may like to read our Charter.

Copyright © Gaunts Publishing 2023.

^[1]  The Institute of International Finance calculated Global Debt in June 2023 at $307 trillion, the highest ever.

^[2]  Generally, speaking, the world’s public accept that the Gazean Hamas are Terrorists, said to be in the ISIS mould, as they indiscriminately mutilated and murdered Jewish women, children, old and young, and festival participants, taking around 150 Israeli civilians as hostages, in their three day wanton rampage into Israel on and after Saturday October 7^th.  Hamas terrorists are seen as an extremist wing of the same political party that was elected in Gaza in 2006.  However, it must be recognised that the large majority of Gazean Palestinian inhabitants are young, peaceful citizens, suffering under the interminable 15 year-long Israeli blockade of Gaza, and are not part of the Hamas war on Israel.  Thus, the renewed Israeli bombardment of Gaza, and imminent ground, air and sea invasion, which is declared will be the total eradication of Hamas, (Netanyahu), that everyone remaining in northern Gaza, old and young, is likely to suffer extreme prejudice.  “We’ll turn Gaza to dust”, (Jewish soldier), and dust it has become from Israeli bombardment. 

The ’Jewish National Homeland’ issue has troubled the world for a hundred years or so, since before the informal ‘Balfour Declaration’ in 1917 supporting “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people . . .  It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil or religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine . . .”.   For as long as anyone knows, Jewish people have been widely despised the world over, one can only imagine from individual personal experience.  Presently, there are large Public Protests in favour of the Palestinians in many large cities the world over, embarrassing to Western Nations, who refuse to support the beleaguered Arab Palestinians in the Levant, their natural homeland, (unlike the United Nations and the rest of the world who largely support them), constantly repeating the misleading mantra that ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’.  However, Israel has chosen to desecrate the Palestinian people, their rights and property, improperly and illegally since its brutal occupation of the West Bank following the 1967 Six Day War, ignoring endless UN edicts; and desecrating Gaza and its people too.  As a plumber told me yesterday, “It’s God’s fault for choosing them as his people”. 

At the time of writing, Hezbollah, mainly in Lebanon, are escalating as yet minor offensives across Israel’s northern border, and Iran has threatened retaliation if the US takes an active part.  (The US has sent two carrier groups to the eastern Med; and UK a smaller naval contingent, in support of Israel).  If Israel exceeds any reasonable exercise in Gaza, and if Hezbollah escalates its offensive in the North, the world can expect a hideous multi-nation conflict.

Our life and times sit on a knife edge.

We may imagine the Old Brain – the Reptilian Complex (brain-stem and mid-brain) at the base of our brains – being the nearest to the earth of our three notional cerebral systems, is the more earth-bound, governing our essential systems from breathing and heartbeat to digestion and sex in all their manifestations.  And we may imagine what used to be called the Limbic System, the apparent next stage of early mammalian awareness, encompassing root cerebral motivations, imitation, emotions and responses, trifling in and out of near-focussed consciousness, dancing with raw survival.  If we imagine the Cerebellum to be the facilitator of rhythm, movement, coordination, uprightness, physical balance and orientation, (attached behind and below the neocortex), that leaves the vastly greater mass of the Neocortex, surrounding and enclosing most of the rest, which we ‘see’ as developing, pioneering, possibly evolving the human species and whatever passes for ‘intelligence’, closest to the sky.

  The giraffe, prized by Bushmen, is the earth’s tallest creature – closest to the sky – grown that way to feed on fruits, leaves and twigs out of reach of others, and to see farther than others; generally passive and protective; its young being vulnerable to shorter-legged feral predators.  Up close in the wild, a male can be nervous of man, appearing to be protective of a mate more than afraid.  When hunted, they can be elusive. 

  And there are those wonderful trees growing ever heavenwards.  Magnificent Oaks, Beeches, Chestnuts, the phenomenal Gum tree autumn spectacular, the ubiquitous Plane trees, dancing Birches, wondrous Wellingtonias, and many others rejoicing worldwide; our wisdom friends, providers and protectors.

  There are the birds, what’s left of them, calling, singing, alarming, playing in the air, flying in the heavens.  Once, sitting on a mid-Himalayan peak, I watched an eagle gliding for more than 20 miles without twitching a feather.  Another time, in southern India, an eagle circled around and around over me while having an outdoor massage under a tamarind tree.  And, I would hope, that all children have rejoiced in dawn choruses, and in wrens and robins in their gardens and will have listened to nightingales in early summers.  Species closer to heaven. 

  And there is us – upright, two-legged humans – long-evolved from the four-leggeds, despite skeletal, joint, and organ challenges, (knees, hips, lower-back, shoulders, elbows), growing skywards; multi-generationally, instinctively, adapting to different environments, and intuitively ‘reaching for the sky’.  Historically, successful hunter-gathering techniques and protection awareness led to cooperative collectives, settlements, and food cultivation; to relationships with dogs and horses; to realised communication; to self-awareness; and to something else : to awareness of a greater intelligence out there somewhere ‘in the sky’, and all around. ^[1]

  In the great scheme of things, however foolish Man may appear to be nowadays, there is that about some part of most which appears to reach for greater understanding – unfortunately, too often ‘scientifically’, being man’s egocentricity at work, seeking ‘terrestrial knowledge’.  ‘Spiritually’ being an almost undefinable reaching for whatever goes on in the heavens; a seeking for Oneness with wherever we all came from, for understanding meaning and purpose, for which our brains prove to be limited, unable to fathom much, because those cerebral ‘routes’ have been buggered by wrong belief, wrong teaching, wrong mores, confused, and inadequate.   

  Each needs to find that essential additional dimension within (and without) which for now we will call ‘Mind’; that part connected to our soul – our essence – and to the vastness, the Cosmos, to Life and Love.  Many decline the journey from ‘fear of the unknown’, looking for shortcuts, looking for notions of others that seem to chime, anything but settle down to do their own work, perhaps because there is so much else going on in their lives, relationships, sex, children, home, family, friends, diets, exercise, worries, contacts, business contracts, and more recently, sadly, mobile/cell space-invaders, social media, scams great and small, advanced claptrap, and the rest.

  That most forewent seeking the essential; sought alternate, nihilistic ways to justify their existence, quasi-nitro-fertilising their egos, led to millennia of carnage, environmental degradation, and so on; to humankind’s destruction of Life on Earth; to the impending ‘Correction’.  Surely, any clear-thinking person can see that we’ve got it all wrong; clear-thinking meaning someone whose intellect isn’t obfuscated by the manure of ‘false civilization’ ?  Ask a child.

  So, Who Are We ?  Who Am I ?  The generational question haunting every adolescent teenage and young adult ego; and so often nowadays, the child-abused, lost, ecstasy generations.  

  The journey for each is long and challenging; there are no short-cuts; the longest way – the full, concentrated route, with our many detours – turns out to be the shortest; takes many years of inner travel, travail, through the forest of troubles, to reach the river, or impenetrable barrier of life and death of the ego.  First, there arises a self-created opportunity to find one’s way to a yet-to-be-seen vision; thence to ‘view’ and accept the unknown, unique journey ahead.  

  We may already have discovered the falsity of ego; now we begin to perceive our inner essence, our soul, is a part of we’ll call ‘universal soul’; that our amazing brains – a part of the chariot – are there for ‘us’ to use, as directed by ‘mind’, our connection to ‘universal soul’, if only we will ‘listen’; that ego, a naughty element of ‘brain’, is our tester, one of many personal teachers; that all life forms offer us learning, will communicate with us, if only we will be our true selves, listen and learn, and communicate mindfully; that our safe path is to ‘listen’, and follow, and trust.

“ If you cannot trust yourself,

Whom can you trust ?

Who can trust you ? ”

  ‘Westerners’ share not dissimilar notions of age-structured so-called ‘education’ into which they feed their young, conveyor-belt style, guaranteeing a confused uniform-cum-unique product to emerge; ‘the more automatic the system, the less to worry about’.  What are imagined to be ‘Leading Schools’ are often expensive private businesses, making enormous profits, which the mass of also-ran, tread-wheel ‘State Schools’, some impregnated with political prejudice, have to try to keep up with.  Fatuous People Automation, just about sums it up; a theme that runs throughout bureaucracies.  That they all miss the point with 99% of kids is very relevant : humans have continuously cocked-up for centuries.

  The Point ?  Humans consist of two notable parts : we are Human-animal Beings and ‘Spiritual Beings’, both; the lifetime transformation from human-animal to ‘spiritual’ appearing to be ‘the journey’ – The Point.  We are all aware that we never stop learning until the day we die; that ‘learning’ is one of the features common to all humans.  Of all species, only humans are aware that they are aware.  We are conscious that we are ‘Conscious’; that we have a Higher Consciousness than other species.  We may suppose there is a reason for this; that this Higher Consciousness has purpose and destiny.  Egoists imagine that we humans are given the wherewithal to hold mastery over every other species, to rule, to grasp anything we want; hollow pyrrhic victories for ‘the fittest’.  Contrary to the nonsenses pedalled by foolish politicians, our governance has been generally abysmal.  We are facing global catastrophes on every front; a decreasing few will die ‘naturally’.  We may suppose the egoists have got it wrong.

  Planet Earth appears to be a school for learning; we humans appear to be pupils in the arts of Life, Love, and the Universe, for our lifespans.  We like to learn; we learn naturally; but for what ?  Where does it lead ?  What comes after ?  And we wonder what will happen to our pathetic egos when we die.  A while ago, back in those same Himalayan foothills, a wise man told this story  .  .  .

  Let us imagine that every non-stop night rolling around the globe, hundreds of millions of human copulations occur; and that the gods fertilise many with pure Love.  In the heavens, clouds of pure raindrops accumulate until the right time comes, when a hundred million raindrops fall to Earth, each separately here and there, splash !  

  Each raindrop wakes up with a bump and looks around as far as it is able, which isn’t far.  Each, imagining that it will explore, starts to roll a little downhill until it bumps into another, and they become friends.  They continue their bumpy downhill ride until they mix with others and form a tiny rivulet, which in time joins up with another, and they brook together, playing, singing, and dancing, feeling yay !  Onwards downhill our brook merges with another, becoming a stream; later, joining a river of others, rejoicing in sharing Life with fishes, otters, watering birds, swans and their cygnets.  Onwards, ever-growing with new friends joining, until our river has become so large it separates into a delta before joining the Great Ocean.

  The immense Great Ocean travelling here, there, and everywhere, visiting every corner of the globe; a vast, phenomenal togetherness.  And his majesty the sun shines down on this creation, catching the tips of waves and surf.  Some days get hotter, and the heavens decree what we know as evaporation, and some of our raindrops are drawn from the ocean to ascend to the greater Oneness whence they came, to meld once again with heaven, and pure Love.

  So be it.

Copyright © Gaunts Publishing 2023.

^[1]  See ‘The Wise of Time’, 2021-2.