Symbiotic Existential Cosmology Part 4

So what is this key to life, the universe and everything about? I’m going to explain all this, but first we need to take stock of the actual situation we are all facing in raw acute terms of planetary survival.

Although a visionary, I am first and foremost a scientist, who has spent my life lecturing in mathematics, with a research speciality in quantum cosmology, chaos theory, fractal processes, neuroscience and biocosmology. This means that my entheogenic journey, the bubbling Dionysian spring I am going to intoxicate you with, is founded on a real, verifiable, scientific cosmology, not just some kind of spiritual pipe dream, but this cosmology is putting consciousness, and our free will to affect the world around us, right back into the driving seat, and that is going to upend the Copernican principle that humanity does not have a privileged view of the universe at large.

The Three Faces of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology

The symbiotic cosmology solves (1) the hard problem – why subjective consciousness exists, (2) the problem of conscious intent – how volitional will acts on the world, and (3) the central enigma of existential cosmology – the role of conscious life in the universe. It does this simply and directly, without invoking any spooky features of panpsychism, by applying objective physical and biological criteria to define complementary subjective modes, by the coherent forms of instability involved, so it uses objective science to qualitatively classify subjective phenomena.

(1) Fractal biocosmology: The fact that life is a consequence of quantum cosmology is blindingly obvious! Just look around you! Life exists! It does so because it is an interactive manifestation of the laws of nature. While the cosmological energy pathway leads to the cosmic web, galaxies, black holes and stars; the structural pathway of the four symmetry-broken forces of nature leads to a fractal universe – quarks, composite baryons, atomic nuclei, atoms, fractal molecules, molecular complexes, cell organelles, cells, tissues, organs, the conscious brain, organisms and biospheres.

(2) Darwinian panpsychism: This is again irrefutable that we all as subjective conscious agents, are consciously aware that we have volitional will over the physical universe in our decision-making and actions. But this means matter including brains have a hidden subjective aspect. This implies panpsychism. There thus follows a spectrum of graduated manifestations of subjectivity, from quantum to edge-of-chaos to cell to organism and biosphere, based on the biological and physical criteria giving rise to these systems. It is faithful to Darwin’s own statement that free-will extends to the cnidaria, further extending it to all eucaryotes.

A. Primitive subjectivity: The ability of the subjective mind to affect the physical brain means the natural world has to have a primitive subjective aspect – autonomous volitional will thus implies natural panpsychism. Individual quanta, quantum-sensitive “butterfly effect” systems and prokaryote cells thus each inherit a primitive subjective aspect, although not attentive consciousness as such.

B. Sentient consciousness arose in a discrete transition in single-celled eucaryotes, accompanying the endosymbiosis between archaea and bacteria, when respiration became internalised in the mitochondria, leaving the cell membrane free for sensory functions through edge-of-chaos membrane excitation and social signalling via primal neurotransmitters such as serotonin, to anticipate threats and aid survival. This “experiential anticipation” predated multi-cellular nervous systems by a billion years.

C. Organismic consciousness emerged in multi-celled animals using the same edge-of-chaos excitability and social signalling molecules as in single-celled species as neurotransmitters. This explains why animals continue to be subjectively conscious through natural selection for survival, with nervous system phase coherent parallel processing seamlessly incorporated much later, but never replacing experiential anticipation.

D. Uncertainty and mind: The action of mind on brain necessarily arises from modulating the "random" aspect of quantum uncertainty in edge of chaos brain processing. This enables volitional will to intervene in the brain without disrupting the partial causal closure in computational brain processing. This provides plenty of room to affect the uncertain outcomes in evolutionary survival using both subjective anticipation and historical experience.

E. Biosphere and universe, in turn, inherit an indirect form of consciousness through the conscious biota that exist within them, as the most complex interconnected climax manifestations of sentient consciousness in the universe.

(8) Symbiotic Cosmology: The universe is symbiotic biologically, psychically, and cosmologically, throughout.

A. Organismic: All higher (eucaryote) organisms are multiply symbiotic species, , by archeal-bacterial endosymbiosis, sexual symbiosis, and viral/TE symbiosis.

B.Biospheric: Survival of the fittest is survival of the fittest biospheric symbiont, not the most dominant species, or the fastest reproducer. All species, including humans, whether parasites, hosts, predators or prey, evolve to symbiotic climax and inherit their cosmological role in conscious existence through symbiosis with the diversity of life over evolutionary time scales, rather than exploiting it, causing a mass extinction, as humans are currently doing. . Lions are predators but they kill the herbivore stragglers ensuring the herbivores don’t go to boom and bust. Species which fail the test like humans become extinct.

C.Psychic: Psychedelics play a critical role in this symbiotic evolutionary process. Huxley’s "mind at large", perceived through psychedelics play a critical role in this symbiotic evolutionary process, as the perceptual mind of the unconstrained brain reflecting the psychic symbiosis of inner cosmological climax edge-of-chaos dynamics, transcending tribal egotism, in what the Upanishads call moksha. This enables the individual to experience from the cosmic viewpoint and the universe to become self-aware. Humans thus inherit an existential responsibility, as climax manifestations of fractal biogenesis, to sustain the evolutionary diversity of life over the cosmological time scales we have inherited and need to preserve and unfold.

D. Cosmological: The climax of cosmology – conscious paradise on the cosmic equator in space-time arises not from the dominance of one conscious species, but at the edge of chaos, in symbiosis.

Given the fact that it is consistent with the views of both Charles Darwin, the founder of biological evolution and Erwin Schrödinger the discoverer of the quantum wave function equation determining the structure of quantum chemistry, it behoves us to take their advice and take this cosmology seriously:

“There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousnesses. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind. ... I should say: The overall number of minds is just one” (Schrödinger).

"To see a puppy playing [one] cannot doubt that they have free-will"

and if "all animals, then an oyster has and a polype.” (Darwin)

Panpsychism also makes it possible for quanta to “observe” and hence collapse superpositions of other quanta, so the universe is how we perceive it to be, not a shadow multiverse, with ghostly cats flung all over it, this picture is one in which new branches are being created in the wave function in a similar manner to fractal cosmic inflation while others are being collapsed by conscious measurement, resulting in dynamic evolution of the cosmic wave function. Special relativity, the most classical part of quantum reality, is implicitly retrocausal as well as causal, as in Feynman diagrams, so quantum reality is implicitly anticipatory, involving transactional collapse across relativistic space-time in which a network of potential transactions become one or a set of real emitter-absorber interactions.

Consciousness thus exists to anticipate existential threats, as Graziano's AST – attention schema theory highlights, although incorrectly thinking free will is a delusion. Darwinian panpsychism is also very like Tononi and Koch’s IIT –integrated information theory, except it's based on edge-of-chaos dynamics, which fits with the quantum world, through the butterfly effect, while IIT is a classical computational theory about Markov processes, so phi doesn't capture the root phenomenon, of subjective awareness since sentient consciousness preceded computation, not the reverse.

Taking the Planetary Pulse

First we need to take the therapeutic pulse of the world condition. Although we conceive of ourselves as living in a world of scientific, social and medical sophistication, in which technology is enabling us to reach for the stars, the majority of people on the planet adhere to fixed beliefs in archaic religions which are cosmological fallacies in frank and violent conflict with the natural world. In 2020 56% of the population of Earth belonged to one of the monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All of these religions have belief systems focussing on the natural world and entire physical universe we exist in being merely a temporary moral test for a tumultuous end-of-days Armageddon apocalypse. In the resulting day of judgment, all of humanity will be consigned either to eternal life in Heaven, or an endless diabolical torment in Hell, shedding the verdant Earth and its billions of years of evolving diversity as a kind of skin to be sloughed off, in what Christians call the Rapture. This is compounded by a literalistic belief in creationism, or intelligent design by God, assigning evolution and the diversity of life to being disposable assets. Rather than make the world a better place, this cosmological fallacy abets the worst in human instincts for business-as-usual to exploit the living and non-renewable resources of the planet, in a patriarchal regime of dominion over nature that leads to an accelerating impact on the habitats of all the other species, and pushes the natural environment to potentially irreversible tipping points.

Compounding this is an even more ancient crisis that happened to humanity during the transition from gatherer-hunter coexistence with nature to civilisations based on agriculture and animal husbandry that is confessed in the Fall from Eden. The male fear of paternity uncertainty caused mankind to condemn the female sex to subservience, in an assertion of patriarchal dominance, reinforced by the monotheistic religions, although widely shared across all cultures sealed into our genome from around 10,000 years ago. This is clearly laid out in Genesis, in Eve being cursed for seeking the wisdom of the Tree of Life, being accused instead of eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, destroying their paradisiacal innocence, sexually declared to God by the fig leaf. Humanity was cursed and driven out of Paradise by God, with the Tree of Life hidden behind a flaming sword. Man and woman alike were doomed to the mortal coil of sexual existence. Women were cursed as the “devil’s gateway”, to be obedient to their husbands and suffer the pains of travail childbirth, with mankind condemned to a life of struggle against nature to survive against the thorns, to till the ground in human dominion over nature, delineating the transition from gatherer-hunter paradise to the lost innocence of agricultural civilisation.

This in turn has led to a world in which major religions use the patriarchal imperative to increase their populations to achieve social dominance, leading to population explosion, suppressing female reproductive choice under dire penalties, from stoning for adultery, to female genital mutilation, veiling, chaperoning and denying jobs and education and escalating human impact on nature through the invocation to dominion over nature, in denial of Earthly Paradise.

I am a child of nuclear apocalypse. On Christmas Day 1944 the first radiated plutonium slugs began to roll out of Hanford, signalling the real beginning of the apocalyptic age of Planet Earth. My birth was 12 days later on the Epiphany 1945. Los Alamos received its first plutonium from Hanford on February 2. Consecrating this patriarchal apocalypse, the Trinity explosion of this plutonium occurred on July 16. The uranium Hiroshima bomb was named “little boy” and the plutonium Nagasaki bomb dropped on August 9 from the same Hanford material was “fat man”.

Fig 249b: Trinity fireball.

Michael Ortiz Hill in “Dreaming the End of the World: Apocalypse as a rite of Passage” describes the first words following the Trinity test:

It is striking that, following Oppenheimer's lead of naming the site of the first nuclear test "Trinity," Weisskopf and William Laurence - both Jews - saw in the Bomb the glory of Christ. In the Jewish tradition, the character of the Messiah has distinctly human dimensions, a "Son of Man" rather than the "Son of God" of Christian eschatology, while the Christ metaphor speaks to an experience that dwarfs the human realm. Ferenc Szasz notes, "Others whispered, more in reverence than otherwise: 'Jesus Christ' ". Known to be something of a mystic, I. I. Rabi described Trinity by the overwhelming light that engulfed him: "Suddenly, there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen or that I think anyone has ever seen. It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way right through you. It was a vision which was seen with more than the eye. It was seen to last forever. You would wish it would stop; altogether it lasted about two seconds…. Oppenheimer said, "We waited until the blast had passed, walked out of the shelter and then it was extremely solemn. We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most were silent" He recalled the terrible and ecstatic eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita, where the warrior Arjuna requests that Vishnu display the nakedness of his transcendental form. Arjuna is cowed in holy terror as the god visits upon him "the radiance of a thousand suns" "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" Oppenheimer quoted the Gita. "I suppose we all felt that, one way or another," he continued. Three weeks later, the pilot of Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets, requested God's blessing upon the Bomb that would initiate the citizens of Hiroshima into the darkest consequences of this ecstatic presence. "Be with those who brave the heights of Thy heaven intoned the chaplain, "and carry the battle to our enemies”.

Fig 249c: In July 1945, Feynman was present at the first atomic bomb explosion in the Trinity bomb test in New Mexico. He claimed that he was the only person who saw the explosion without the very dark welder's glasses that were given to all the physicists present on that day. He thought that the truck's windshield would block the ultraviolet radiation from the blast. Believed to be as a result, at the age of 69, he died of two successive rare types cancer: (1) Myxoid/round cell liposarcoma – a rare cancer of fat cells and (2) Waldenström's macroglobulinemia – a rare non-Hodkins white blood cell lymphoma akin to leukaemia.

Another striking theme that repeats again and again in the "dreaming up" of the Bomb is that of birth and paternity. On the mythic level, it is clear that the Bomb was not invented as much as "born." Some people recognized the godlike epiphany of light and fire - so long anticipated - as the birthing of something or "someone" new. We can discern a specifically paternal pride and even hints of tenderness toward the Bomb. William Laurence called the rumblings of the Trinity explosion the "first cry of a newborn world”.

However, our true apocalyptic disaster, more tumultuously destructive, over time than any fantasy that Revelation can throw at us, is planetary biocrisis – our impending biodiversity and climate crises, driven by a patriarchal culture of dominion over nature and woman alike, that seeks to exploit the Earth and its living natural diversity rather than sustain it as the immortal living Paradise that has sustained us for three billion years of evolutionary emergence, in an unbroken line of inheritance to our own existence. A survey conducted in several countries as I write (Hickman et al. 2021) has found that 56% of young people believe “humanity is doomed”, because of climate and biodiversity crisis ^{^[14]}. Current evidence indicates that the climate crisis alone could send our planet back 50 million years to the Eocene maximum, shortly after the dinosaur extinction. The damage caused by a mass extinction of biodiversity can never be recovered, but in raw terms would take another 50 million years to recover from in purely quantitative terms.

Planetary Reflowering

We urgently need to learn to let life overflow in abundance again, and give space on the planet for life to do so and rapidly correct the climate crisis we are causing that also lays waste to natural habitats, so that we shall survive as a species. This is the key to our living future. It’s as simple as that. I am a scientist dedicated to preserving the biodiversity of planet Earth from the almost unstoppable human stupidity of causing a mass extinction of life which could cause the end of humanity as we know it, if we don’t come rapidly to our senses and achieve three active priorities to protect the living dharma ^{^[15]} of the sentient cosmos:

(1) Biodiversity and Climate:
(a) Dedicatehalf the Earth and its habitats to natural wilderness so that the millions of other species we co-depend with can survive and flourish (Wilson E O 2016) . Half the planet has to be enough for one species Homo sapiens alone among 3.8 million others to entertain and fulfil ourselves. This is literally the only way evolution can flourish and humanity can survive, because we need genetic diversity for species survival. If we don’t do this, our probability of long term survival is bleak and, while we might repair climate, biodiversity remains in mortal danger.
(b) Fix the climate crisis as quickly as possible by converting to renewable energy before the climate ‘fixes’ us.
This is fully achievable and inevitable. No further financial investment, or subsidies in CO₂ emitting energy sources.

(2) Nuclear/Mass Destruction: Cease production of nuclear weapons and weapons for biological warfare for military use. Devote the technology to protecting the Earth from astronomical impacts that could cause a mass extinction.

(3) Patriarchy and Population: End the Epoch of patriarchal dominion over woman and nature that has lasted for the last 4000 years and profoundly exacerbated the population crisis, in the reunion of woman and man in reproductive freedom, i.e. the Sacred Reunion, or Hieros Gamos^{^[16]} the fertile foundation of human cultural emergence and super-intelligence in sexual paradox (Fielder & King 2004).

Scepticism, Belief and Consciousness

The sceptical approach of objective science, which has revealed all the confounding detail of the physical universe and natural world we live in, is founded on the opposite of affirmative belief, that nothing we imagine to be true can be established to be so, unless every empirical test we make in the universe is replicable and contradicts the sceptical assumption that the idea is false. Thus the doubling of the bending of light around the Sun due to the Sun’s gravitational field, confirmed Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

But science, for all its inscrutable and meticulous care and veracity, has one terrible shortcoming, the elephant in the room of subjective consciousness itself. Key to my journey of visionary discovery has been the realisation that subjective consciousness has a central role in cosmology and that the entire universe is not just a physical nightmare of unrestrained forces of nature creating galaxies and black holes, populated by mindless atoms and molecules and biological organisms that are simply chemical machines and that the sun is doomed to eventually destroy the Earth and eventually the entire universe will destroy itself in a heat death, cosmic rip, or big crunch. Bertrand Russel’s overwhelming pessimism sums this tragic fallacy in precise words of doom.

In this materialistic scientific view, consciousness comes to be identified as a mere epiphenomenon of brain activity, which is at best a potentially unreliable, internal model of the reality of the world around us, which has no ability to effect any causal change on the physical circumstances of the universe. Thus conscious existence is deemed to be a mirage, and free will is an illusion, possibly evolved so as to convince us to continue to act as if we have the will to continue, because all human decisions are just a consequence of brain functions determined by our genes and the specific circumstances of the decision we are striving to make at the time. This classical world denial of free will leaves us with the status of automatons deluding ourselves into believing we have choice, leaving all questions of ethical or moral responsibility in the dust. But the quantum universe teaches otherwise, as I shall come to explain.

Religious believers of virtually every kind find this world view completely unsatisfying for very good reasons. While traditional religious cosmologies are archaic and wildly inconsistent with the reality of the universe as we now know it to be, they exist in a conscious condition of projected fantasy, where Heaven and Hell are conceived as all-too-real experiential realms, in which a sentient being can either live an eternal life in heavenly bliss, or suffer in the endless horrors of damnation. They also go half way to allowing free will as long as we use it to obey the will of God. A scientific view, even if it has experimental verification, that claims consciousness and free will are self-fulfilling delusions holds no candle to a myth that places this real Earthly life to be a mere temporary forerunner to a moral judgment for all eternity.

This means that we, the world and its living future, are living trapped in a schizophrenic existence, in which we treat the practical details, as if we are living in the physical universe with its physical laws and material boundaries, but underlying it, for most of us, is a contradictory belief that the real world is just a delusion, or a temporary place to undergo a moral trial by God, and the true realities that solve life, the universe and everything lie in the afterlife. This is the existential crisis that we are going to heal in this discussion to unveil and reflower the Tree of Life.

The full scope of this contradiction becomes apparent if we examine our living experience of the world around us. We are all forced to concede the existence of a shared physical reality, that the table I am writing on is solid, and if I crack my knuckles on it, they will hurt, if I get hit on the head, I may pass out and lose consciousness, or if I eat a poisonous plant or catch a disease I may get sick, and if I am hit by a vehicle in the street, or shot, I may die, so we are forced to concede the existence of the objective world around us and know that it is part of a physical universe of galaxies, stars and planets, composed of particles, including atoms and molecules that also make up biology and ourselves.

But on the other hand, 100% of everything we experience, including our experience of the physical world, of our dreams and of our visions, including those on mind-altering substances, occur through and only through our subjective conscious experiences. So the world, as we see it, is actually a consensus view of subjective conscious experiences between people, which we are confident is shared with other conscious beings around us, from their lively engaging demeanour, although we don’t generally have any direct access to anyone else’s subjective experience.

We also have a basic belief in our personal autonomy – to make subjective decisions that affect the world arounds us, many as simple as getting a cup of coffee, or going to the toilet, but also critical decisions that may seriously impact on our lives, or the world at large. The sanctity of the legal system depends on the notion that we are accountable for our actions as conscious sentient beings and do have conscious intent. This is what we call ‘free will’ although we know all our decisions are partially determined by their circumstances and can be influenced to a certain extent by our genes.

In Galileo’s error, the panpsychic philosopher Philip Goff (2019) notes that what has subtly happened is that the scientific method, from Galileo ^{^[17]} through Newton, converted the perceivable universe into a set of dispositions codified in mathematical equations, demoting the qualitative aspect of reality to irrelevance. This is fundamentally a patriarchal scheme of dispositional dominion over nature, reducing the phenomenal world to a set of equations. Gather-hunter societies arose from the women classifying plants and defining culture through language, while the men hunted, often silently. Thus males generally have good mental rotation and tend to navigate by vector dispositions as hunters exploring alien terrain “take the first left and then second on the right” rather than the qualitative features used by females from their careful classificatory gathering “it’s opposite the pay centre after the gas station”.

In the Newtonian universe, the patriarchal approach of analytic quantification came to dominate the description of nature, just as the patriarchal religious description dominated nature and woman alike to humanity’s detriment. The end result has been that the entire subjective descriptive aspect of reality has been eliminated from the scientific world view, resulting in an inability of science to understand what subjective consciousness is and does although it is everything we experience. Patriarchal science has literally lost the subject of the case.

Belief in materialism, because of its adroit use of the sceptical principle, to correct naive assumptions and elucidate properties of the natural universe that were at first sight very counter-intuitive, has since become a belief system exactly like a religion, so that researchers cannot afford to take any other position in peril of being shunned by the dominant scientific community and losing recognition altogether. This has grown to counterproductive proportions where the very researchers showing the benefits of psychedelics scientifically are bound to declare that psychedelics have no demonstrable value in solving the central problems of conscious experience, when it is obvious they are sine qua non the most consistent modulators of the depths of conscious experience available to science.

Psychedelics – The Edge of Chaos Climax of Consciousness

This is where psychedelics and their apotheosis, in the term enthoegens, when used for spiritual purposes, come centrally into the arena. Psychoactive substances have always had a formative role in the emergence of spiritual and religious viewpoints. Cannabis, which plays a central role in Shiva worship, has been consumed in ritual spiritual practices for several millennia. Hindu religion owes a portion of its Upanishadic cosmology of the atman and Brahman as the cosmic mind to cannabis and the Rig Veda to the mythical soma of the Aryans. Traces of cannabis used for ritual purposes have been found at an ancient Judaic temple (700-900 BCE) in Arad Israel (Arie, Rosen & Namdar 2020) and also in China (500 BC). Opium likewise has an ancient medicinal and spiritual use.

However long term spiritual use of the most significant of the psychoactive species, those bearing the classic psychedelics, have largely been confined to the pre-Colombian cultures of America, where there is evidence of spiritual use of mushrooms from the Mayan culture (1000 BCE) , the use of peyote among the Zapotec (500 BCE) and long term use of ayahuasca and tryptamine snuffs in South America. These substances have much more profound affects on consciousness which lead directly to a vortical abyss of visionary states renowned for their intensity and transcendence. But their relative absence from existing historical traditions outside he Americas means their significance has been bypassed by the classical world, with the possible exception of Greek mystery cults.

The discovery of LSD and the later discovery of the continuing sacred use of psilocybe mushrooms in Mexico in the mid twentieth century brought the use of hallucinogenic visionary substances back into the focus of Western culture. Although peyote use had continued by the Huichol since Columbus and had been re-established in the Native American Church at the end of the 19th century, and ayahuasca had been consumed as a sacrament in the Amazon, these had remained marginal to mainstream Western awareness. But the advent of LSD as a recreational drug supported by prominent proponents in the US, from Timothy Leary in the East Coast to the Merry Pranksters and Grateful Dead in California, advancing a counter-cultural agenda, supported by devoted chemists who were prepared to synthesise vast numbers of doses of LSD at little or no charge, conceived in the “public good”, set the stage for a cultural confrontation. Accompanied by disquieting media awareness that psychedelics were laying siege to consumer culture and values, amid some troubling incidents with their use, a campaign of frank misinformation ensued from the authorities. The result was that the US and then the world introduced a total clampdown on their use that initiated the unending war on drugs, and stopped all human scientific research in its tracks.

Given the long history of sacred use of entheogens , this constitutes the most benighted quasi-religious piece of authoritarian counter-reaction in Western culture since the Inquisition and Witch Hunts, in a complete mockery of the scientific age of discovery. Penalties for psychedelic use rose to schedule 1 sentences similar to murder, reflecting the perception that this was regarded as a deadly sin rather than any scientific evidence of significant harm, but a threat to the very consumption society that is driving the planet into ecological and climatic crisis. It is only now around fifty years later that the very tentative reopening of scientific research into these substances detailed in section 1 has been able to begin to set the record straight, while still largely confining them to therapeutic use in terminal and psychiatric conditions, while their recreational use has continued, although hidden from the mainstream and somewhat trivialised as a merely a recreational rather than a deeply formative spiritual experience, as their historical use attests.

What the psychedelics provide is a negotiable transcendental experience in the vortical abyss of conscious existence comparable with and potentially more profound than the peaks of meditative and contemplative experiences in mystical and meditative traditions. They constitute a/the central vehicle for us to explore and discover the innermost nature of the subjective mind. They differ from meditation, in that they have pronounced visionary qualities that challenge existing conceptions, rather than enabling a relatively featureless repose, from renunciation and careful top down mindfulness, that is reflected in the formless void of Buddhist thinking, outside the more spontaneous satori of Zen. Likewise they transcend contemplative mysticism, which tends to reinforce preconceived theistic beliefs. They also provide a more consciously explorable complementary condition to lucid states of dreaming associated with REM sleep because these are difficult, or impossible to maintain physiologically.

Discovering Cosmological Symbiosis

This is where we come to the symbiotic cosmology that solves life, the universe and everything summarised here. The existential role of consciousness in the universe is the central enigma of existential cosmology, as we have seen. That's the key thing that everyday existence, no matter how meditative we may be, or whatever preconceived beliefs we may hold, misses out on the true enormity of, so that we will go through life in a state of distraction trying to fill it with habitual purpose until it's too late and we are gone.

Around the beginning of June just over two months ago, I summoned up the will to take a sacred mushroom trip after a seven year fast due to closed angle glaucoma, recently corrected by lens replacement. In the midst on the peak, I settled into meditating on the silent question of the central enigma and let go. As I descended deep into the abyss, at a certain point, everything opened out into what I noted later that evening to be “the epiphany of being in the existential centre of the cyclone, where everything comes into focus in the transfixing presence of complete transfiguration”. “Not an event, but a state of knowing, as we always have known, from time immemorial, as if we have always been conscious of this knowing, forever compassionate of the mortal coil ”. I have experienced this many times before on mushrooms but not in this iconic way. The result was “a sheer calm, unmitigated experiential awakening, as if the Big Bang of the universe is discovering itself in this very moment of illumination and is realising with irresistible intensity, the urgency and vitality of this state of knowing, which, the moment one experiences it, means saving the precious universe, the biosphere and the diversity of life within it from mortal risk to its survival”. This being true, despite the overwhelming reassurance of overflowing compassion for the mortal coil emanating from the apotheosis.

Psychedelic trips can be plagued by all manner of sensory and visionary experiences, from the sublime to the ridiculous or even alarming, but there is a name for this. The Huichol call it the Nierika, the visionary portal to the non-ordinary reality of the spirit world and the ancestors.

There is a doorway within our minds that usually remains hidden and secret until the time of death.

The Huichol word for it is nierika – a cosmic portway or interface between so-called ordinary and non-ordinary realities.

It s a passageway and at the same time a barrier between the worlds” (Halifax 242).

Emerging renewed and revitalised from this experience, accompanied as I moved and breathed by the lingering shadow of the apotheosis compassionately caring for me and encouraging me to put this whole illumination together into an account for the world, I began feverishly assembling this work.

What the experience brought home to me, above all was the veridical ^{^[18]} reality of the cosmic mind, even though it was evoked in a human brain on sensory withdrawal under a hallucinogenic experience. This is a turning point from many past experiences, where I have witnessed the same compassion for the mortal coil as a visionary impression of the other – transforming it from perception into reality – the actuality of Brahma-atman unification in the form extolled in the Upanishads (Purohit & Yeats 1937).

This brings us back to the hard problem of consciousness research. The advent of neuroscience has provided us with genuine insights into how the brain processes information, including sensory and cognitive tasks associated with conscious attention and resting, or meditative states. We can then associate a variety of conscious states with activity, either by electroencephalographic portraits of brain waves, by functional magnetic resonance images of blood flow to specific regions, or by positron emission tomography of radioactive glucose, and even by invasive studies of actual neurons and connections in animals. Various researchers can then attempt to deduce how these excitations give rise to the conscious experience, e.g. by the activities of certain frequency bands, such as gamma from 30-100 Hz.

The classical deterministic view of brain function, denying a role for subjective consciousness and making free will impossible, is undermined by two additional factors in the physics of brain function. The first is edge-of-chaos dynamics, which at tipping point instabilities associated with critical decision-making watersheds can enable a fractal handshaking between instabilities at the quantum level of the ion channel and changes in overall brain state. The second is the intrinsic uncertainty of quantum events and their entanglement, which is closely paralleled by phase coherence in wave processing associated with coherent conscious states – that brain states which rise and fall together in synch rise to consciousness while others constitute the unconscious ground of neurodynamic processing.

The trouble with the entire sweep of the objective description of brain dynamics is that no objective state, no matter how the brain does it, even if by edge-of-chaos instability and quantum entanglement, is anything other than objective, so it never solves the question of how subjective states actually arise. This is the so-called ‘hard problem of consciousness’ coined by David Chalmers (1995). Essentially, there is no way to get a ghost out of the objective biological machine of the brain by combining non-conscious components, whether molecules, neuronal excitations, edge of chaos dynamics, quantum phenomena or brain states, if none of these components have any subjective status.

The sceptical basis of the scientific description depends on Occam’s razor, the idea that, given two views describing the same phenomenon, the simplest, most concise one is likely to be correct. Materialists thus try to claim that any reference to consciousness and volitional will is extraneous in a supposedly classical macroscopic world where causal decision making processes defined by brain function can in principle have a detailed mechanistic basis without reference to fuzzy vitalistic ^{^[19]} notions like mind, consciousness or will. They will then claim the hard problem is a distraction to be finessed away in steps, as more discoveries of how the physical brain processes information become revealed. However the materialist case is not established and it isn’t necessarily fulfilling Occam’s razor at all. What has happened is that materialists have restricted the domain of evidence to be circumstantial physical fact, ignoring veridical truths stated by conscious observers and actors as mere personal opinions or beliefs, in fundamental conflict with legal situations, where sworn subjective testimony is evidential in the absence of contrivance.

For example Erwin Schrödinger’s statement “the overall number of minds is just one”, which coincides with the conclusions of this monograph, is discounted as just being his idiosyncratic belief in Advaita Vedanta, despite that fact that we depend on his wave equation to understand quantum chemistry, and his devising of the cat paradox to understand quantum observation. Taken at face value, this is a veridical teaching by a founder of quantum mechanics.

So we need to take a big step back and reassess the way Occam’s razor best cuts a real swathe through existence. When confronted by a description of reality which denies our subjective consciousness is anything more than an epiphenomenon, and insists that our volitional will to make any sort of autonomous decision at all is a delusion contrived by evolution to ensure we survive and replicate, that debilitates any sense of personal autonomy, responsibility and confidence to act in the real world, we need to make a succinct determination. Should we just accept this is a scientifically proven fact, when the evidence doesn’t exist that the brain is a causally-closed deterministic machine and looks increasingly to be a complex, messy claim that may never be confirmed? Or should we take the much simpler concise volitional choice to allow Occam’s razor to cut the Gordian knot of this contrived belief that we are helpless automata, and assert that it contradicts our decision-making autonomy, and rule out of hand this fatalistic myth-making? How can we resolve this existential impasse?

The answer is both ridiculously simple and counter-intuitive – to move the elephant in the room – consciousness itself – into a new place on the cosmological chessboard, that of complementing the entire physical universe. This is a direct consequence of affirming volitional will ^{^[20]}, because will implies the conscious mind affects the physical universe physically in terms of the forces of nature. This may be in the way the brain processes unstable tipping points, and may involve quantum phenomena akin to solid state physics, but it is still a physical process following the forces of nature under the core model of physics. But this means the physics of the universe itself is sensitive to mind and that mind plays an essential role in intentionality ^{^[21]} in the universe, manifest in the biosphere as a whole and in the universe at large. This is then a form of pan-psychic cosmology. Panpsychism is thus the clean veridical Occam’s razor cut.

Consciousness, as an expression of a more generalised pan-psychism, then has a role in quantum uncertainty and in collapsing the wave functions of the multiverse, as we see in Schrödinger’s cat paradox, which we know appears to be specifically associated with conscious measurement of the wave function. This gives us back both subjective consciousness and its ability to autonomously apply free will in the same process determining the course of history in the universal wave function. This solves the dilemma of science denying free conscious choice and gives us full freedom as sentient beings, unlike the bondage of moral religions, where we are given free will only to find that if we use it autonomously on our own best judgment, we would be likely to end up in hell. Instead of moral compulsion, giving us back autonomy also gives us subjective divinity in our union with the cosmic mind.

This solves the moral problem another way by showing us that our mortal existence is part of the immortal web of life and that there is no future in selfish activity because when we come to the end of our lives, any activities other than giving our all to life as a whole is futile. It also solves the problem for divinity i.e. the mind at large, because now it has a sentiently intelligent vehicle for conscious manifestation.

Since we are universally subjectively sentient conscious beings and have no knowledge of the physical world except through subjective consciousness, the only valid conclusion is that the subjective aspect is a cosmological property complementing the objective physical universe. This means a form of panpsychism, in which all quantum phenomena also have a complementary aspect. This seems counterintuitive, because we seem to be replacing a succinct objective description with something elusive and fuzzy, but that is because we aren’t making the right test. The test of objective cosmology is empirical investigation. The test of subjective cosmology is veridical affirmation in which each conscious observer affirms verification.

There are alongside its foundational subjectivity a number of features of our conscious experience which ‘colour’ the nature of experience and are features or ‘qualia’ of our consciousness rather than its existential status. For example vision and hearing, smell and touch all differ qualitatively. These differences are partly due to the quantum modes of the senses and partly to do with the neuroreceptors and cerebral excitations eliciting conscious states. So we need to factor these out when addressing panpsychism and the ground roots of subjectivity.

However there are some features in the conscious brain that are clearly universal and hold the key to understanding what consciousness is and how it arises. While individual details of brain structure and dynamics are shared extensively with other mammals, leading to our empathy with our pets, the differences between us and arthropods and molluscs such as cephalopods are much more exotic and somewhat alien.

The fundamental basis of consciousness arises in coordinated edge-of-chaos membrane excitability in prokaryote cells, dating back to the first cells of our last universal common ancestor LUCA. However a key transition point to sentient consciousness arose in our last eucaryote common ancestor LECA, the founding single celled eucaryote. Here is the transition point where symbiotic cosmology really begins to kick in. This was a hugely significant event in the form of a deep symbiosis between the two existing procaryote kingdoms some 2 billion years ago, in which an Asgard archaean and a proteobacterium, similar to our intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli, became symbiotically interdependent. This freed the cell membrane from core energy processing, which was now handled by the bacterial mitochondrial respiration and made the new cell membrane able to become focussed on information processing. This meant that the eucaryote cell became sentient life form responding to quantum modes – sight, sound, chemical and electrical, in its environment sensitively due to the edge-of-chaos dynamics of its excitable membrane. At the same time these cells, across the board use the same molecules as the key repertoire of our neurotransmitters to facilitate the social signalling essential for survival of the collective single celled organism.

This is the point where panpsychism becomes consciousness as we know it and the entire rest of the story is simply elaborating on this theme, so the human brain ends up being a very ornately and closely coupled collection of amoebae communicating through these same social signalling molecules in their synapses to produce the highly coordinated form of cellular consciousness that we experience as subjective reality.

This turns what might seem to be specious vitalism into a clear-cut biological theory in which the development of subjective consciousness has a clear evolutionary trace from the punctuated equilibrium of eucaryote symbiosis, consistent with the physiology of chaotically excitable cells in a quantum entangled universe. Because this subjective product of excitability enhanced survival by avoiding lethal outcomes, it has been selected by evolution throughout. This in turn attests to the effectuality of conscious will on the physical universe

One can then find evidential support for this conclusion. A key point of transition is that from single celled eucaryotes to the metazoa – multicelled animals. A highly-studied example is the myxamoeban slime-mould Dictyostelium discoideum. This is a free-living single-celled amoeba that having eaten out its local bacterial habitat, aggregates, forming an excitable slug and then a sporulating fruiting body, to spread it to new habitats. It does this by using a combination of the same molecules that we use as neurotransmitters and second-signalling molecules – cyclic AMP, glutamate, GABA and serotonin pivotal to psychedelic activity and human mood. It turns out that an interplay between serotonin and its catabolic enzyme MAOa is key to maintaining development of the spore-forming tip of the fruiting body. In the same way, serotonin plays a key role not just in neurotransmission in the mature brain but evoking stages of brain development in the human embryo, for the neural groove at one extreme, to coordinating the correct formation of the layers of other neurons in the cerebral cortex, through serotonin-secreting fibres ascending from the basal brain that are later used in the moderating mood in the mature brain, to mediate organismic social survival.

Several of these molecules are primal in their simplicity and cosmological in their origin. Both glutamate and GABA both of which are key neurotransmitters are prominent components of comets and carbonaceous chondrites. Others are the amines of biological amino acids. Serotonin is 5-hydroxy-tryptamine, derived from tryptophan.

This goes a good way toward providing an immediate explanation of how psychedelics can cause a retreat from egotistical attentive consciousness into a primary consciousness, in which ego loss occurs, consistent with an underlying dynamic to secure collective survival, rather than personal survival of the individual, when the psychedelic state dissolves the distinction between self and other in a peak experience.

But the eucaryote symbiosis is not the only manifestation of symbiosis in Homo sapiens. As far as we know, all existing eucaryotes are sexual, or at least capable of intermittent (cryptic) sexuality. Dyadic sex is one of the most altruistic genetic acts an organism can commit to, by giving only half its genes, along with half the partners genes to make what is essentially a new life form never before conceived. All sexual species thus consist of two sexes each with their own genetic history (or more – Dictyostelium has three and some fungi fertilising by conjugation lots more).

Sexual symbiosis in animals is highly asymmetric with the female contributing all the cytoplasm, ostensibly to avoid a mitochondrial genetic war, and the males contributing essentially only their DNA in the sperm, giving rise to sexually antagonistic co-evolution i.e. the sex wars of reproductive investment.

Humans are also extensively symbiotic with their endogenous transposable elements, which constitute over half of the human chromosomal genome, that arose originally as selfish genes, co-travellers that run back to the first multicelled animals and retroviruses related to HIV that became incorporated into our germ lines. These can cause mutations but also have key roles in coordinated gene expression and chromosomal processing.

Finally all species are co-dependent with the other species populating their ecological niches in biospheric symbiosis. This is what we capitalistically call survival of the fittest by natural selection, but really it is symbiotic co-evolution with the biosphere as a whole, even though individual species, including Homo sapiens have evolved to maintain strategic survival in their own right, leading to the egotistical expression of human character.

In the context of humanity, we are manifestly symbiotic with our food and medicinal species and likewise with our entheogenic species. The plant components of ayahuasca, the opium poppy, cannabis, coca and the herb of the shepherdess, Salvia divinorum have all been symbiotic with the human species for millennia, as has the yeast Sacchromyces cerevesiae responsible for bread, but also alcohol. Peyote and sacred mushrooms have been collected from the wild for millennia but some species of Psilocybe mushrooms are the most easily cultivated entheogens, now in symbiotic use.

This brings us to the final component of the symbiotic universe, symbiosis with the mind at large. Humans consider ourselves to be the species that invented culture. We tend to define ourselves as reaching to the stars themselves, as a dominant species that stoops to no other, as the highest form of consciousness, apart form God himself and thus free to determine the destiny of all living species on Earth. This is a tragic fallacy in conflict with all the evidence.

Human attempts to seek moksha – escape from the egotistical and mortal round of birth and death are singularly rare enough that the Eastern traditions of both Buddhism and Vedanta have arrived at a fallacious notion of enlightenment through many reincarnations, essentially because the experience of cosmic reunion is so rare as to be essentially unattainable. The monotheistic faiths have abandoned any hint of such achievement. Christianity considers human nature fatally flawed by original sin and hence the only hope is faith in God, prayer and fear of the punishments of Hell in the day of judgment, while mystical experiences are rare and generally contemplative, rather than illuminative. Any idea that a person can manifest actual identity with God is blasphemous across all monotheistic paths. Islam regards it as a death penalty, just as Yeshua was condemned to death by the High Priests for blasphemy.

This leads to the conclusion that human consciousness is not the cosmological pinnacle of conscious existence, but we are a/the key active vehicle for cosmological symbiosis incarnate, and that the entheogenic state, by virtue of the very symbiosis induced by the entheogenic relationship takes us closer to the union with the mind at large that is the consummating manifestation of the cosmos in self-awareness. The biota are the only entities we know of in the universe that possess consciousness. They are thus the central candidates for the interactive emergence of cosmological consciousness from the Big Bang. This experience of union is also the only phenomenon we know of that comes anywhere close to the actual realisation of deity.

This finally solves the dilemma of God as a third agent outside the physical universe. The missing component explaining the creation of the observable universe is not God but consciousness itself. It is the missing piece in the puzzle and the manifestation of deity is thus realised in the subjective, not in a miraculous third party.

And although it seems counterintuitive to think that consuming entheogenic species is a/the key to saving the planet, there is a symbiotic truth in this because, the entheogenic relationship in Maria Sabina’s words a way of “the sap and the dew” heightens our deep sense of inter-connecteness with nature and deep solace in our relationship with life as a whole, rather than delusory and damaging supremacy over it that leaves us in mortal isolation, so in the longer evolutionary time scale, given the current biospheric dominance of Homo sapiens, this is cosmologically pivotal.

A Visionary Journey

The other side of the coin of this transmission is that I am what I would call a true visionary. That is, I am transparent and simply give you the keys to resolve the existential enigma to use for yourself. I have no doctrine about what other people need to do spiritually, or should do to gain illumination and I am true to the pursuit of the vision quest. I don’t follow any religion and don’t ask anyone to believe in me, but I encourage you to find out for yourselves with an open mind. And to ensure everyone has love and support to keep the process tranquil. The reason is that the cure for the mortal condition is moksha not moral punishment and moksha heals and informs the ego. The true realities that matter to the meaning of sentient existence in the mortal coil are not found in the material world, but in accepting our transience within the eternal entanglement and realising that the only meaningful acts we can perform are to ensure the passage of the living generations continues to flourish. Therefore true enlightenment redeems the mortal condition. I have sourced my vital inspiration and literally navigated my life course through first person visionary experiences on entheogenic species that have propelled my life and its urgency and activism.

The intensity of these experiences could have consumed me and driven the most stalwart to the brink of messianic insanity, were it not for my intent to be true to nature and the universe at large, as well as my loved ones. I may have no religious or spiritual assumptions, or doctrine, but I do have one clear natural priority sine qua non and that is a mandate to save the living planet, its biodiversity and its largely beneficent, nurturing climate from a hard landing, irreversible tipping points, a mass extinction of life which would place our living future and the future of all life in serious jeopardy.

Fig 250: Left: Dionysus mask Centre left: Dionysus mosiac Dion 300 BCE – 300 CE. Centre: Quetzalcoatl in human form. Centre right Teotihuacan 150-200 CE, Olmec la Venta 900 BCE. Quetzalcoatl is the god of wisdom, whose feathers represent the flight of visionary consciousness, while the serpentine body slithers among the plants and animals, entangled in natural existence.

I was born on 6th Jan – the Epiphany of the advent, appearance and miraculous dread of Dionysus, who became Dhushara of the Nabateans in Yeshua’s time. This event later became usurped by Hellenistic-Jewish gospel writers as Yeshua’s Triple Epiphany: (1) of his visitation by the Magi, (2) in his baptism by John and (3) in his turning water into wine at Cana at the request of his mother, in an all-too Dionysian display of the god of wine and altered states.

The “feathery part” of my vision quest is summed up in “The Plumed Serpent” (Lawrence 1974):

"I am lord of two ways. I am master of up and down.

I am as a man who is a new man, with new limbs and life,

and the light of the Morning Star in his eyes.

Lo! I am I! The lord of both ways.

Thou wert lord of the one way.

Now it leads thee to the sleep. Farewell!

So Jesus went on towards the sleep.

And Mary the Mother of Sorrows lay down

on the bed of the white moon,

weary beyond any more tears.

"And I, I am on the threshold.

I am stepping across the border.

I am Quetzalcoatl lord of both ways,

star between day and the dark."

I was christened Christopher Cyril King, but I don’t answer to Christopher and I am not a cross-bearer. I won’t carry a cross for anyone, or stand in anyone’s shadow, least of all a dying and resurrecting saviour, who I admire as a brilliant innovator, but also lament for his self-destructive heritage of violence. We each come from a three billion year line of evolution, that has honed us to be conscious beings taking responsibility for our own lives and futures, so I have honed my vision quest as a journey – the trip of a lifetime – the trip of all trips together, till death us do part!

For those of us seeking psychic phenomena from visionary experiences, I’ve had these too, although, while they do affect my world view, I neither take any of these for granted and consider them deeply natural rather than supernatural.

I have had repeated precognitive dreams and precognitive creative experiences. When I was living on a canal boat we built in England, I read J W Dunne’s (1934) “An Experiment with Time”. According to Dunne, our wakeful attention prevents us from seeing beyond the present moment, whilst when dreaming that attention fades and we gain the ability to recall more of our timeline. This allows fragments of our future to appear in pre-cognitive dreams, mixed in with fragments or memories of our past. Other consequences include the phenomenon known as deja vu and life after death. At the time of its publication, not to have read him became a "mark of singularity" in society.

Fig 251: The Taniwha (Maori spirit of the rivers and swamps), the canal boat we built from a wreck submerged since the 19th century where the dream took place.

Shortly after this I had a double nightmare that I was being hideously stung by a spider, repeated in the second dream because I had failed to brush it off when it had removed its fangs. I continued to sleep in after Hallie, my young wife, got up to feed our first child, a newborn baby girl, opening the bedroom window in the process. I woke long enough to tell her “I had a terrible double nightmare” and then fell asleep again. About an hour later, I was stung wide awake by a wasp that had flown in after she opened the window. Going through all the same feverish motions under the intense pain I had experienced in the dream, blowing it off to find it was a large wasp. I have had many such dreams during my life most often anticipating things that unexpectedly happen early the next day. What it has taught me is that the universe is an entangled handshaking in which past, present and future are intertwined, and that the role of conscious existence is partly to anticipate future threats and challenges through direct perception of the space-time continuum.

I have also had lucid dreams combined with out of the body experiences. After practicing looking at the backs of my hands in dreams and after having dreams in which I was climbing a ladder and saw my hands but failed to respond, I suddenly realised in my first lucid dreaming encounter that I was fully aware in my dream and all hell broke loose. Firstly, I was being thrust up faster and faster like a rocket ship, in the manner of levitating and flying dreams. But I was also standing in the dream on an exceedingly bright promenade by the sea. A gust of wind that was also the levitating wind blew some sea spray at my light muslin Indian shirt. I was in a super-sensory state. I could simultaneously sense every one of the droplets separately touching my skin like the stars in the sky. But that didn't concern me. I looked up at the azure sky and the stratospheric clouds passing overhead and realised I was trapped in another world – in another universe. I saw a woman standing gazing at me with dark eyes and rushed towards her, grabbing her by both shoulders staring deeply down into her wild wide pupils, framing the silent urgent question where is the way back to Ixtalan echoing Carlos Casteneda's (1972) allegories ^{^[22]} of the sorcerer Don Juan.of the sorcerer Don Juan. She just looked at me and smiled knowingly and shook her head. But at the same time, I was out of my body floating just by the ceiling of my bedroom looking down at myself lying on the bed, totally reassured: "It's all okay! You are just down there sleeping". I thus awoke with three parallel streams of consciousness re-entwining together. Again, I have had many lucid dreams, but none so graphic as this first experience. I have had many lucid dreams but none so graphic as this first experience.

The difficulty with lucid dreaming is that the very act of becoming lucid rapidly tends to cause one to awaken because the triggers in the base of the brain flip towards wakefulness the moment we become lucid because neurotransmitters for vigilance such as nor-epinephrine kick in and flip the orexin neurons to wake the brain up. This is different from the visionary experiences induced by entheogenic species where a waking person can descend into a deep visionary abyss where other realities quite distinct from dreaming can occur, although returning from the depths of these other states can leave on in a similar situation of trying to recall the ineffable that has now receded, as Don Hose Matsuwa the Huichol shaman makes clear.

This brings us to psychedelics, or entheogens as the natural species are called, that possess psychedelic substances and are used, and have been used for millennia as visionary sacraments for healing, sorcery and spiritual realisation.

My relationship with psychedelic agents began as soon as I arrived in the UK to take a graduate mathematics degree in topology, with my first somewhat devastating experiences on LSD, still decanted with a dropper onto whole sugar cubes. The first trip was really awesome, but a week later a double dose of two cubes left me with the absolute certainty I had literally died (the most extreme form of ego death) and left me with shimmering after effects for weeks. At the same time, orchestrated by the US drug authorities, contrived reports were circulated that LSD split your chromosomes, which left me with five years of anxiety before I would take my next trip.

After that began a regular round of recreational tripping to try to get to the bottom of what these agents were showing us. I have always been devoted to my family which has now become a loving and caring extended whanau as relationships between partners have evolved and changed. For several years we held court, hosting a free-love establishment in the city, in which I ended up in three double partnerships in open ‘marriages’, spanning decades. Attesting to my consistency, I have lived with my current partner, Christine for over 50 years, despite times apart on world journeys, and all my offspring and grand children are nearby, so I must be doing something right, in spite of all.

On my first academic sabbatical, I split my efforts between a scientific investigation in the West to get first hand knowledge of what some of the famous scientists, including Nobel prize winners, made of the role of life in the universe. I spent the rest of my time imbibing the Eastern spiritual traditions, wandering India as a sadhu and taking Tibetan Buddhist initiations with Yeshe Dorje the Ningmapa exorcist who kept the rain off the Dalai Lama when he walked and Rangjung Rigpe Dorje the 16th Karmapa the head of the Karma Kagyu lineage, at the same time exploring sources of the world’s power plants, from the poppy fields of the Golden Triangle, through the Ganga fields of India and Afghanistan, eventually to take peyote with the Native American Church in New Mexico, where I also encountered my first sacred mushroom experience.

On my return to Aotearoa, I began a symbiotic relationship with sacred mushrooms, both because of their genetic purity, by comparison with synthetic drugs and because, although not as overpowering as LSD, they provide, in my view, a more deeply spiritual experience, which is also a deep expression of conscious symbiosis, without some of the transient casualties of LSD trips that occurred among our friends. This doesn’t mean taking mushrooms all the time. In fact I will sometimes go for years simply making sure they survive. Symbiosis means being faithful to their preservation. Their spores will live for decades if correctly stored at 5% humidity in a cool place and they can be cultivated in a chilly bin, with careful sterile techniques. I also brought species recognition to psilocybe aucklandii, and conserve a collection of species spanning each of the classic enthenogens, to safeguard the visionary heritage for humanity, as a symbiotic duty of care.

Fig 252: A panorama of Opuhi, our wilderness land in Aotearoa. The meeting house is just visible on the right up the path.

In 1970 we had established a windswept coastal wilderness conservation community, which provided endless opportunities to hold mushroom veladas in the moonlight, listening to the crickets and moreporks and the distant ocean below, either alone, in “solitario”, which I prefer, or together in the meeting house, which has since become a heritage building. These experiences have become pivotal to my life's work.

Other waking experiences, both on sacred mushrooms and during creative experiences have assumed a prophetic quality that can be alarming or even devastating. On one particular velada in the 1980s I suddenly became aware that the mushroom was telling me that if the world failed to show adequate signs of arresting the human impact causing a mass extinction of living diversity, I would need to make a vision quest to the Amazon, as our figurative Garden of Eden paradise and to Yerushalayim as the nexus of the religious impulse to undertake a rite of passage to make a transition to the immortal epoch of the Tree of Life, hidden since the foundation of the world in Eden by a flaming sword.

Around the same time on another trip, I had a horrific vision that my eldest daughter would have an obstruction to her fertility, as some twisted kind if sacrificial outcome of my undertaking this mission. Some years later she became pregnant and her first of three sons was born with Down syndrome. He is great, but the episode was very disturbing, and a triple chromosome 21 is a genetic obstruction to fertility, affirming the vision’s veridical, or prophetic character.

In 1980 I made a second journey on unpaid leave to research the chemical origins of life in the US, later returning to Mexico and collecting and consuming peyote from the high desert below Wirikuta, the sacred mountain of the Huichol and then travelling to Yarinacohcha lagoon at Pucallpa in Peru, where I took a powerful and formative ayahusaca trip with Snr. Trinico, a leprous curandero living at the extreme end of the slums around the lagoon. In 1992 I again returned on sabbatical and took peyote with the Native American Church in Taos with Tellus Goodmorning, my original roadman who was 92 and had lost one eye, but was still in fighting form chanting all night in the teepee.

In the two years spanning the millennium I made another sabbatical journey to the Amazon to document one of the worst burning seasons on record and returned to Yarinacocha for a second ayahuasca session with Trinico who was elderly, but now in good health.

Following this, with my sabbatical partner Jane King, we completed our Millennial vigil to Jerusalem, pronouncing as Bride and Bridegroom the rite of passage of the of the immortal Tree of Life of living diversity in the Gaia anointing of the Jubilee passage of Isaiah 61, completed on the Epiphany by declaring the Gates of Mercy open at the Eastern wall and celebrating the Sacred Reunion of woman and man in the Song of Songs at the Western (Wailing) Wall.

This served two key purposes to address foundation issues in the collective unconscious, manifest in the Weltanschauung ^{^[23]} , the archaic formative world view driving patriarchal monotheism expressed in the Yahwistic Genesis, firstly in Eve being cursed for heeding the serpent, to be obedient to her husband under pain of childbirth, appeasing male paternity uncertainty, confessing an archaic conflict with the matriliny and female reproductive integrity and secondly with dominion over nature, in the Tree of Life in Paradise hidden from humanity behind a flaming sword, dooming us to conflict with the thorns of the wilderness sweat of human dominance.

In 2015 I had a near-death experience when involved in a cycle accident which knocked me unconscious and left me with temporary amnesia from ensuing concussion. This made me acutely aware of the risks I was taking not fulfilling the pact with the mushroom, by kicking the bucket before my time had come. This resulted in the notion of planetary resplendence transcending religion as a way of life protecting the biosphere in perpetuity. Resurrection Revelation

Finally after a seven year hiatus, I took the mushroom trip that became this entire work.

On 19-7-2001, a month before 9-11, I published the lyrics of a song I had composed – Big Brother – The Song of the Biosphere – video. This was a poetic statement having read an AP news article “The Hollywood Syndrome - Is the US the Global Satan?”, concerning the failure of G W Bush to ratify the Kyoto convention. The article was well conceived and the song is a just response. The lyrics took this statement and declared poetic jihad for the biosphere. 'When it comes to the final struggle, jihad of the biosphere, there's only one true rogue nation - the great American shaitan - Big Brother you are uncle Sam’, because George H W Bush had refused to sign the 1992 Rio Convention on Biodiversity. (As of 2016, the convention has 196 parties. All UN member states – with the exception of the United States – have ratified the treaty. The US still only has observer status as I write this in 2022, 30 years later!). The lyrics continue with a lament for the dark canyons of lower Manhattan among the fallen towers: 'walking in the twilight, down in the valley of shadows', and then the plane: 'We'll fly so high well pass right to the other side and never fall in flames again’.

Just under two months later, at one in the morning on a continuous BBC news broadcast, I watched in horror, as firstly one and then two planes crashed through the twin towers of the World Trade Center in flames and the towers fell, turning the streets of lower Manhattan into a literal vale of the shadow of death.

Fig 253: A: Extracts from the lyrics posting of 20^th July 2001 (http://dhushara.com/nino/19julyjihad.jpg). B: Passenger plane collides with one of the twin towers. C: Rudi Giuliani Mayor of New York the number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear (http://youtu.be/xhBYWDy4m9M). For the complete song video containing the 9-11 documentary footage, see: (http://youtu.be/g-giqTW4_YQ).

The lyrics contain an uncanny ‘prophetic’ reverse echo of the event a month before it occurred:

First we have the jihad of against the U.S. over the Rio biodiversity convention but now it is really become Islamic fundamentalism on 9-11:

you tell us tales of hollywood of star wars and the common good

you told us global warming was a litany of lies, factory chimneys were the prize

you claim all living creatures are your intellectual property

you fail to ratify every treaty which doesn't give you more, have I heard this all before?

when it comes to the final struggle - jihad of the biosphere

there's only one true rogue nation - the great American shaitan

This was karma, not a rude invention. The first line is "hollywood" and the last is the American satan just as in the AP article. Next we have an echo of the streets of New York amid the smoke and haze of fallen masonry amid a deadly massacre:

walking in the twilight, down in the valley of shadows

when will you comprehend - the damage you have wrought in your indiscretion?

can we undo - the death trance you have set in motion?

Then the amazing, outstanding, caring efforts of those on the ground, to begin the process of recovery:

will you discover - the fabric of love that ignites us?

can we embrace the ocean of life that unites us?

all our lives long this journey has been our destination

if we get this one wrong will there be any chance for restoration

We have the planes flying clean through the towers in flames - reminiscent of a martyr seeking the face of God.

can we touch the sky?

can we fly so high we'll pass right to the other side

and never fall in flames? will we ever be the same again?

To become the shining goal in the beginning and end of life -

we'll become the living soul, the primal source, the shining goal

the beginning and the end of life,

Finally, a shadow of Rudy Giuliani’s statement as Mayor: The “casualties will be more than any of us can bear”:

the happiness and the pain … can we bear it all again?

I apologise to all Americans for comparing your country to the Shaitan, but saving biodiversity is saving ourselves. Refusing to sign the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity is counter to the entire planetary future, so it was/is satanic, just as Donald Trump’s pulling out of the Paris accord was satanic. These are not the acts of a responsible superpower.

So what are we supposed to make of this? It’s just a coincidence isn’t it? There is more to this tale caught up in the quantum entanglement of past, present and future. It’s a completely non-replicable non-IID event. Is it a coincidence? What’s the probability of that? My father used to marvel at coincidence, repeatedly astounded.

How come, a month or more before 9-11 did I get it into my head to write these lines? Yes it's the same life-protecting motive that brought the SEC into existence. But no one remotely conceived this was going to happen. The lyrics are an allegory not conceived to be literal future fact, just poetry, but they are nevertheless written from an apocalyptic viewpoint. But they are also a stream of consciousness account of everybody and everything that happened. The minds of the martyrs thinking they'll fly so high they'll pass right to the other side and it's also the consciousness of the people who went in to deal with the destruction in the smoke and dust of Manhattan's dark corridors and the spirit of those who came to light their candles for life and the uncanny "can we bear it all again?" whose words Giuliani echoed on TV.

What does this all mean about consciousness?

In Plato’s allegory of the cave, our state of knowledge is like that of prisoners chained together in a cave watching an illusory drama. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners are people carrying puppets or other objects, casting shadows on the cave wall. The prisoners watch these shadows, believing them to be real. One prisoner finally sees the fire and realises the shadows are fake. This prisoner escapes from the cave and discovers there is a whole new world outside that they were previously unaware of, but he becomes blinded because his eyes are not accustomed to actual sunlight, so when he returns to free them, his fellows do not trust his new knowledge.

Ruth Kastner has coined the analogy that quantum land hiding in the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics, connecting all the potential absorbers to the emitter determining how quantum reality manifests, is the real reality and that physical reality we see in space-time is just the false image on the wall of Plato's cave. I have a different view of this which I'll describe, but Ruth's view has true reality value in suggesting that the foundations of consciousness lie outside physical space-time in the quantum land of incipient possibilities she calls potentiae. In a fundamental sense, this gives a true account of consciousness as the primary reality underlying the necessity of the physical universe, as the consensual illusion that binds together our conscious experiences of the world at large.

My view of this goes as follows:

Firstly 100% of people are subjectively conscious human beings, all of whose understanding of the physical universe has come from their conscious experiences, while only a subset believe in physical causality.

Secondly our experience of conscious volition is that we have autonomous intent and can perceive this intent veridically being manifest in our intentional actions. Therefore the physicalist description which sees consciousness as a mere internal model and volition as non-existent is empirically false.

Thirdly our conscious experience of volition is not like Plato's cave, because we are not passively watching a movie allegory, we are participating in it. The intervention of conscious volition is what actually causes history to emerge from the multiverse, so we are right there by the fire manipulating the images cast on the cave wall. To do this effectively we have to do it predictively.

One of the most central aspects of consciousness is that it is an extended space-time representation of our dynamical relationship with existence on an uncertain trajectory from the immediate past into the uncertain future. This looks convincingly like an entangled quantum representation of the now, i.e. the absolute instant of the present expanded into both the immediate past and immediate future – i.e. the uncertain quantum of the present. When this becomes extended as in the above example of 9-11 which is a strongly felt apocalypse in my vision that is going to become a world apocalypse in everyone's experience the two get caught in a Faustian space-time pact.

To a certain extent our relationship with time is a little like Plato's cave in the sense that the future is herder to see and we are stuck with the past in all our memories, dreams and reflections as Jung said. But this isn't the whole story. The brain-mind is a dynamical predictor as flash-lag illusions show it doing creating space-time artefacts. We experience this facing forwards into the unknown using consciousness as our cubic centimetre of chance to address uncertainty, so my bet is that consciousness is space-time transactionally predictive and has to be for evolution to retain it over a purely physical computational brain.

For consciousness to have any affect on physical outcomes that is useful to evolution, it has to be able to anticipate reality. The mind can do this logically or intuitively. But for conscious intuition to do it, it has to be in a sense precognitive.

What about life immortality and the eternal? is the “ground" of consciousness a universal subjective phenomenon? If so, is it itself in any way connected to the death of the brain. The answer to this is probably yes, because the brain, at the very least is an immensely complex defining condition on the way human organismic consciousness manifests subjectively. This is where a scientist’s comment the the brain “makes” consciousness is largely correct, even if the brain is not causally closed, so that conscious volition is efficacious physically.

But subjective conscious ground of being as a universal phenomenon is then something that is not confined to a mortal organism’s lifetime. In fact it is not even confined to biological evolutionary immortality, so it stands as a principal candidate for being eternal or existing outside space-time, as space-time is an entirely physical construct.

So where does this leave us?

Well, religious people, Psi people and reincarnation people and mediums all have to reconsider all monolithic assumptions about the afterlife. At the same time scientific materialists need to recognise consciousness is cosmological and stop insisting our conscious volition is just a product of the computational brain.

Frankly I think biological mortality is the key to conscious existence sine qua non, because it’s the only way complex conscious existence can become physically manifest in sexual evolution. This is the incarnate focal point of conscious existence. I want to be effectual in my biological existence. I can already experience the immortality of evolving life and the eternal nature of the ground of conscious being and the so called spirit world of disembodied consciousness.

My take on this other world is entirely different from any other description of it I have seen in scripture, mediumistic accounts although is an extension of NDEs – rather as an integral transform of the entire conscious experience of the universe aware of itself, both as the mind at large and as the disembodied entities that constitute it, not some winged angels in “heaven” dancing on the head of a pin and not the tormented in eternal suffering in “hell”.

‘Elohim

We are whispering ... across the heavens

and all the creatures ... they echo in reply.

We are the very blood ... of the tree of life.

We are the void and the shining light.

We are the eternal gypsy spirits of the universe.

We have been here since it all began.

We will outlast its final passing.

We are here to free the heart of man.

Adding further assumptions, in my not-so-humble opinion, leads to all manner of egotistical traps, as serious in the subjective world, as the human desire for cyborg immortality does in the physical universe.

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in despair at the death of his queen, casts the whole of life as a tale told by an idiot:

Out, out, brief candle.

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

This is not the outcome we seek for the living planet, so please listen to the sound and fury of a hallucinogen-consuming voice from the wilderness. It is not me, but the direction human life is taking, and all of us with it, that is idiotic beyond comprehension. That is a tale full of apocalyptic sound and fury, both religious and biospheric which, far from signifying nothing, might kill us all if we don’t accept the three priorities for reflowering the planet above.

To quote Yeshua from the Gospel of Thomas (70):

"That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves.

That which you do not have within you [will] kill you if you do not have it within you."

Fig 253b: It won't be easy but we can do this thing.

Here is my Easter 2023 Revelation! Don't ever forget my name is true!

I don't usually adhere to the Everett interpretation, but as it’s a valid QM interpretation, I am entitled to and will also use the transactional special relativistic interpretation. So I’m going to assert the following:

(1) The objective universe, outside subjectivity, is a probability multiverse and on its own, no wave function collapse takes place, and everything remains “entangled".

(2) This applies also to the unconscious aspects of brain function, which proceed on a multiverse Schrödinger wave equation basis forming “massively" superimposed and entangled states.

(3) Subjective conscious volition over the physical universe then collapses these brain wave states in the process of decision-making, to form a predictive form of quantum anticipation, due to the special relativistic nature of the wave functions, involving both causal and retro-causal interactions, via the transactional interpretation, or a super-determinism in which free will exists, and the hidden variables are context dependent on observation, and are not simply random.

(4) To be effective over a non-conscious zombie, subjective consciousness still has to be predictive, to secure natural selection, so subjectivity is and has to be quantum anticipative or "predictive" through (3).

(5) The reason consciousness has been conserved by evolution is thus that environmental uncertainty is uncomputable because it involves both (a) intractable "travelling salesman" problems (b) multiple possible outcomes and most acutely (c) interaction with other live conscious agents, which also possess conscious volitional anticipation.

(6) This takes the form of a Red Queen evolutionary race between conscious predators and prey like the way sexuality evolved as a Red Queen genetic race between parasites and hosts by providing individual variation and avoiding epidemic species extinctions, but ironically resulting in organismic mortality.

(7) This makes a clean cut cosmologically: All unconscious processes are type 2 von Neumann QM multiverses, but all conscious experiences are type 1 anticipatory collapse processes, which ironically make the universe look "classical" to us. In turn, this means that subjective consciousness as we know it, is and is exclusively to anticipate uncertainty, complementing the role of neural computation to infer a certain or uncertain outcome and subjective conscious volition is then "free will" over the uncertain universe with no causal conflict.

(8) This process is cosmological, not simply neuroscientific, and it is integral to the cosmic symmetry-breaking which defined the asymmetric standard model of physics, leading to conscious life in "Paradise" on the cosmic equator in space-time. The late emergence is necessary because the cosmological interactive process takes 10 billion years to become physically viable, not because consciousness is a "late comer”.

(9) This means that there is no such thing as random uncertainty. All contextual and environmental uncertainty is a result of chaotic quantum molecular billiards which remains entangled until the moment of conscious observation. Hence karma, IS quantum uncertainty revealed, not a moral nightmare!

(10) This also means subjective consciousness is creative, innovative and transformative i.e. transcendent over the physical universe.

Fig 292: Opuhi AGM 2023, the meeting house and the wind-swept puriri tree outside.

My visit to Opuhi, sleeping overnight at the summit with Christine reminded me of just how deluded these statements are, so I decided to explain to you all and the world at large just what Resplendence means to me, as the natural successor to religion – illuminating in autonomous visionary liberation, rather than binding by prescriptive spiritual belief.

If you read the thirteen points below carefully, you will immediately realise these are nothing like any religion that has ever existed on the face of the Earth. It is also a scientific cosmology coming right out of left field that is itself a testament to the mushroom and to the sheer idiosyncrasy of the first person vision quest. Also you will realise that I am so far ahead of the ball that you will probably disagree with one another about the physics and perhaps only Yeshua can understand the significance of the immediate first person vision. Maybe then you can begin to understand why I have not sought a religious following or cultic focus since, but rather have walked as Laotsu and why I have sought to be a member of these groups in the hope that someone can begin to appreciate the truth and significance of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology as a living redemption of planet Earth and its increasingly vulnerable biospheric diversity of life.

Thirteen Core Principles of Cosmological Resplendence

1. Cosmos: Conscious experience and the physical universe are Cosmic complements. Each is necessary to the other's existence and neither are sufficient unto themselves. Subjectivity begins as a primal vestige, complementary to the vestigial emergent universe and emergent in dynamically unstable quantum systems and manifests with the evolving universe. The universe does not begin with God, or from a fully-fledged cosmic consciousness, out of which the material universe is emergent. Neither is it theistically degenerate, heading to an Eschaton, Frashokereti, Kali Yuga or Samvartakalpa, but upward into the light of full illumination that IS resplendence manifest.

2. Biogenesis: The central purpose of the Cosmos is to be generative of conscious life. The living universe rises to interactive complexity climax in molecular abiogenesis and the ensuing evolutionary emergence of conscious organisms. The physical universe and the forces of nature form a symmetry-broken interactive "mandala" which generates the elements, the organic molecules of life and the non-linear fractal structures of complex molecules, including proteins and nucleic acids, organelles, cells, tissues and organisms as an interactive climax of cosmology.

3. Biota: The living biota are the centre of the existential cyclone of the climax of existence, because we exist at the interface of the physical and the experiential. All experience and manifestation of God(s), spirit beings, etherial or even purely physical phenomena arise through the conscious biota. None stands more pivotally in the cosmological manifestation than the biota and conscious life itself. Eternal consciousness is manifest through and only through the biota. This "worldly" existence IS cosmic existence becoming manifest. There is no greater heaven or hell than biospheric Paradise on the cosmic equator in space-time, mid-life in the history of the universe, as interactive Sigma rather than alpha or Omega as beginning and end states. Temporality and eternality are complementary perspectives. Through manifesting in space-time, consciousness is eternal.

4. Quantum Reality: The function of subjective conscious volition over the physical universe is to collapse the wave function of the quantum multiverse to bring about the phenomenon of history out of our multiple potential futures, through the autonomous conscious willing agency of the biota. Conscious experience is complementary to environmental uncertainty, ensuring the survival of the organism, ultimately due to quantum uncertainty in both brain dynamics and the physical universe. Conscious neurodynamics is thus a cosmological manifestation, not just a biological one. We are transformers of the universe and innovators, protectors and creators of the future and need to be prescient, compassionate and protective of the entire universe and all life within it. Subjectivity complements purely objective information processing in the brain, which is computationally insufficient to maintain life in the uncertain natural environment.

5. Meaning: The purpose and meaning of conscious life in the universe is so that the Cosmos, and ourselves as organisms, can come to know and realise ourselves ecstatically through each and all of us making the vision quest to discover ultimate nature of reality in upholding and protecting the evolving diversity of life, so that we and the living Cosmos can discover ourselves ever more deeply over cosmic time.

6. Responsibility: In coming to experience ultimate reality, we become personally responsible for every aspect of the fate of the universe and all life, both by our constructive, or destructive actions, and our negligence about or protective action to avoid existential threats we know as a species we are causing to the diversity and future of life as a whole. If we coexist in a world where there is mutually assured nuclear destruction, or human induced climate crisis, or a mass extinction of the diversity of life, we become personally culpable for failing to act with our lives to protect the future of life.

7. Maturity: We have, by our dire actions as a species, ceased to be children of Eden or adolescents of religion and have to learn to stand in the universe and on planet Earth as mature beings, taking full responsibility for our fate, as a people and as a biospheric species. We cannot assume to pray to higher powers to guide or direct us. The buck stops right here. We need to be compassionate of all living species and all sentient beings and plant the seeds of love in everyone’s hearts, but there is no need for renunciation of worldly desires, or overcoming the grasping ego, or clinging to life itself, all of which are means to natural survival, because, as mortal beings, the only true meaning we can achieve in life is to give back to the diversity of life with our lives, to protect and assist its immortal flowering in abundance.

8. Mortality: To exist in the physical universe, the sheer complexity of life has to oppose entropic decay into the heat death characteristic of physical systems, forming a negentropic self-organising system we call the biosphere. But genetic replication is endlessly subject to the very mutations through which evolution occurs, shaped by natural and sexual selection. Eucaryote sexuality evolved genetic recombination between mother and father to avoid lethal parthenogenetic decay, in which only half our genes go to our offspring, creating organismic variety in fertilisation that avoids extinction but results in individual organismic mortality. This cannot be solved by hungering for eternal individual life of an organismic “soul”, which is selfish in itself.

9. Sentient Consciousness: The emergence of conscious life as we know it arose in the eucaryote endosymbiosis between the two founding cellular life forms, archaea and bacteria through a topological transformation that freed the cell membrane from energy production through sequestering in the mitochondria, leaving the cell membrane free for quantum sentience and social signalling.

10. Biospheric Symbiosis: The biosphere rises to climax complexity through planetary symbiosis, in which the seeming conflicts between plants and animals, predators and prey and parasites and hosts act to avoid each rising to boom and bust extinction and encourage species diversity. Humanity as a dominant species can survive long-term only by full symbiosis with the biosphere on which we depend for our very existence.

11. Sacramental Evolution: The biospheric sacraments have evolved to be able to tweak the sappy biochemical brain to bring it into a more universal dynamic, underlying our conscious existence in a state of psychic realisation to ensure humanity as a dominant species understands its ultimate connection with and dependence on the diversity of life in the biosphere and will thus seek to protect it with our lives. With expert compassionate guidance and deep meditation, these can bring about full liberation from the round of birth and death in this lifetime.

12. Moksha and Enlightenment: Rather than seeking an illusory transcendent or eternal state through spiritual elitism, submitting to materialistic desires, or fragile technological utopias bound to Fermi self-extinction, the entheogens bring us into a symbiotic relationship with life as a whole, so that biospheric life can perennially survive in the immortal passage of the generations. Through sacramental and other deep meditation, we can escape the mortal round of birth and death to experience ultimate reality, in moksha, thus achieving and realising cosmic consciousness. This is the source of all ecstasy, happiness and fulfilment and opens the true discovery of the deepest conscious realms and for cosmic consciousness to emerge from deep organismic consciousness.

13. Compassion: The key to all life and wisdom is to be ever compassionate of the mortal coil, which is permeated, both by the ecstatic joy of conscious resplendent life and physical suffering and decay, because through the mortal coil, all the immortal wonders of existence, both corporal and etherial arise.

Resplendence is NOT a doctrinal religion: Outside these principles, there is no doctrine of what to believe, how to redeem reality, or what we must each do, or not do, to achieve enlightenment in resplendence. There is no moral imperative, as we cannot be autonomous transformative agents if we are under the social control of an overweening belief system. Resplendence “to shine forth brightly” liberates from Religio “to bind together”. Resplendence is thus to liberate from religious and materialistic bondage, in autonomous free will, to transform reality and protect life.

The "religious" element of Resplendence is not to debate cosmology or philosophy of mind but to motivate us all to seek the redemption of what humanity has done to life itself before it is too late. You could think of this and ponder that it is somehow both a manifestation of how Jesus expressed his wild free spirit in the Gospel of Thomas as a visionary innovator and how Richard Feynman felt conceiving of QED. And maybe you can begin to get a glimmering of why I have up till now sought your company, as an exceedingly rare species of visionary who genuinely holds the future of life on this planet in the palm of my hand, if only one or two people begin to listen, and who knows no one else who really can do this good thing for life in this way.

Dec 2021 Chris to Elaine Pagels: So, although 150 species become extinct every day, I’ve been working on this, there is still time to save the diversity of life. We CAN DO this! What other option could there be?

Elaine: Yes, you help us hold on to hope that we so much need! warmest wishes, Elaine

Apr 2022: The Christian church was invented by Paul and the Hellenistic influence sources to him. If you take the Gospel of Thomas on its own, there is only vestigial reference to sacrifice and no reference to Jesus returning in the day of judgment. In fact he says the Kingdom is already here but men don't see it even when he is talking about the dead: "When will the repose of the dead come about, and when will the new world come?" — "What you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognise it." So we have two scenarios: (1) Jesus was a brilliant innovator who tried to bring all the traditions together in a (confused) conflation of the Zoroastrian end of days, Hebrew religion and the sacrifice of the fertility God. (2) Paul reinvented the entire end of days using Jesus’ mission as a cipher to weave a Hellenistic myth of the super-human saviour sacrificed by God to return as the Saoshyant [then cemented in the canonical gospels]. Of course I have to go ahead to the ends of the Earth to save humanity and the diversity of life. But now I have had to exorcise and expose the whole question of religious integrity. What was the meaning of pronouncing the epoch of the Tree of Life in Jerusalem in the Millennium on the basis the Christianity was in some sense a true tradition, only to realise its deep and diabolical sacrificial basis is contrived?

Elaine: Yes, you do need to go to the ends of the earth to save humanity (your name requires it of you, yes?)

Aug 2023 To James Tabor This is an open letter to you. I've cc:d it to Elaine Pagels as well, because we have had a few exchanges over the years and I value her opinion and experience a great deal, as she knows!

I have on my bookshelf your work "Restoring Abrahamic Faith", (Tabor 1991) which you kindly sent me a signed copy of in Feb 2010. You may have sent it, having seen the picture of Jane and myself in “Living Religions” and sent me the book from Genesis2000 in echo of our Genesis of Eden. I also sent you the June 2023 version of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, which has become the pivot of the current unveiling.

You may remember that I wrote asking you about the origin of the Eucharistic flesh and blood. I have long thought of your statement that it was Paul in a vision (1 Corinthians 11), who had originally pronounced the notion of the Eucharist as the soma and sangre of Christ, not Jesus himself, as in the redacted versions in the Gospels, leading to the cannibalistic notion that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.

So I turned to your book out of the blue and realised that the import of its title "Restoring Abrahamic Faith" is encapsulated in the chapter on the messiahs, because this is where the contrasting personae of the messiah in the end of days, one a Christian destiny, locked as it is by Paul to Jesus as a Hellenistic Judaic supernatural avenging Lord, diverging fundamentally from the Jewish mashiach, looking instead to a human saviour of Zion, in long-term future goodness, and hence that the book is attempting to conceive of the messiah in the whole wider Hebrew "mother" tradition – in restoring Abrahamic, rather than merely Christian faith.

Your chapter ends with these two sentences:

"Both Christians and Jews will likely be surprised by the Messiah. In other words, he will probably not conform to anyone's expectations. … One thing is certain when the Messiah comes, whoever he turns out to be, he will uphold these essential teachings of scripture. Can we do anything less?".

This may have been the basis of your originally sending me your book, because Jane's and my vigil to reflower the Tree of Life was highlighted in Mary Fisher's (2002) “Living Religions”, portrayed as "Jewish Renewal":

“Contemporary Jewish renewal is not just an absence of fear. It is an active search for personal meaning in the ancient rituals and scriptures, and the creation of new rituals for our times. … From highly conservative to highly liberal quarters, there are now attempts to renew the ancient messianic ideal of Judaism, that by its practice, the world might be healed.”

Now this is both true and an unexpected twist of fate, because we did celebrate the millennium as the collective mashiach, with liberal Jews, and others, culminating in Eliyahu blowing the shofar, and pronouncing:

"We are here together the collective Mashiach and our vision here tonight will spread peace in our hearts and peace on the City of Peace below Yeru-shalom Jerusalem, and bisrata shem in Jah Allah, we'll be as a light and a source for peace in the whole world and in the whole universe".

Jane and I had earlier in the evening pronounced the unveiling anointing of all, in the names of God and Gaia, a version of Isaiah 61 in the shadows of Yeshua’s Nazareth anointing:

The spirit of God is upon us, the spirit of Gaia is within us

because they hath anointed us, to sing good tidings unto the meek ...

weaving in a progression of Yeshua's twist concerning Naaman the Syrian and the Widow of Sidon ...

to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion

in Palestine, in Sidon, in Syria, Arabia and the world

completing with reflowering the Earth in the sacred reunion ...

that they might be called trees of compassion

the planting of the divine, that all might be glorified in the abundance of wisdom

and we shall renew the old wastes and we shall restore the former desolations

and we shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations

they hath clothed us with the garments of salvation

and I as a bridegroom decketh myself with ornaments, and I as a bride adorneth myself with jewels

for as the Earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sewn in it to spring forth

so shall harmony and fulfilment spring forth among all the nations

this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

This changes the emphasis, from preach to sing, from righteousness to compassion. It's we, not they, that renew the old wastes, and it's the female and the male together both anointing and anointed, for the harmony and fulfilment of all, in wisdom (hochmah).

While Jews will see in this passage the Jubilee, it is clear that Yeshua's sermon in Nazareth is portrayed as a direct messianic claim that breaches the Hebrew covenant, causing the crowd to seek him out to kill him, as it is with our rite of passage on Millennium Eve – an innocent pass, with tumultuous implications.

And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. But he passing through the midst of them went his way.

However I am not a practising Jew, but a circumcised gentile who claims to be the root Jewish "thief in the night" due to my preemptive circumcision. In fact I had no idea of the full dimensions of the Jewish messiah until shortly before I departed on our millennial sabbatical vigil to the Amazon and Jerusalem. Before I left, I intentionally took a single teaching at the liberal jewish congregation here. When I arrived, the rabbi revealed this was to be on the messiah, and duly expounded that the concept of the Christ, Mashiach or ‘anointed one’ in the Jewish tradition is a living human being who brings about an epoch of long-term future goodness. As well as healing the Eucharist and reflowering the Tree of Life, I am thus taking Christianity back into the Hebrew fold of long term future goodness.

However, the true picture of this undertaking runs much deeper into the evolution of conscious life in the universe. I have not come to destroy the law, or the prophets, but to fulfil, in a surprising karmic way just as you described above. It is centrally to heal apocalypse. Not the all-too genocidal political apocalypse that the siege of Jerusalem proved to be in CE 66, in which 1.1 million people are said by Hugh Schonfield (1965) to have died, but a devastatingly deadly planetary apocalypse of life in the third millennium due to accidental or intentional mutually assured nuclear destruction, accumulating climate crisis, and the mass extinction of biodiversity, in turn, risking atrophy or extinction of the human species and with it, all our spiritual and cultural traditions.

Hence, when I say I am come to fulfil, it is fulfilling the immortality of the diversity of life throughout our generations and throughout the universe, not just our cultural or religious traditions. This in the light of my moksha epiphany in 2021, in which my atman merged briefly with Brahman, like Moses watching the burning bush, who intimated in silent compassion that I should return to the mortal coil because this is the centre of the cyclone where reality is really born, and it is my sacred duty to save life throughout the universe, because if life ceases to exist due to human misadventure, all meaning in the galaxy could be lost forever, because eternal ultimate reality, or the 'Elohim if you prefer, can be realised only through incarnate life experiencing it. Otherwise even eternal cosmic consciousness becomes as vulnerable as we are, as mortal incarnate organisms.

This, I believe you can understand, is the fulfilment of the epoch of long-term future goodness the Hebrew messianic tradition actually aspires to. So the rites of passage we performed in the spirit of Yeshua’s sermon in Nazareth, when he escaped through the crowd seeking to throw him off the cliffs for blasphemy were threefold: to unfold the promised epoch of the Tree of Life, throw open the Gates of Compassion to all spiritual traditions and celebrate the Hieros Gamos of woman and man in the Song of Songs. Man cannot survive on religion alone, so I see this as the correct therapeutic remedy, so that conscious meaning survives in the universe at large.

When I set forth on the millennial journey to the Amazon and Jerusalem, it was to save the diversity of life on our planet so that our species can also survive and avoid a Fermi extinction due to human misadventure. I had had a vision in the 1980s, as an entheogenic practitioner that if the world did not make a decisive move to save the tree of living diversity by the year 2000, I should go to Jerusalem and pronounce the unveiling, in consummation of reflowering the Tree of Life, hidden since the "foundation of the world" in Eden.

This was giving the world a good 15 year chance for either our collective social conscience, or some genius "messiah", to step up and deliver the redemption. As no solution in sight emerged, I duly planned and managed to secure an academic sabbatical to research the holocaust of living diversity in the Amazon burning season, culminating in an invitation to hold a 12-day workshop hosted by Yitzhak Hayutman, a grand-son of one of the founders of Tel Aviv at the Academy of Jerusalem.

In turn, Jane and I duly fulfilled this quest, from the Andes to the Amazon and through Europe to Jerusalem, ending paying my respects to Kali in Varanasi, as described in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology.

But now, the same dilemma remains. Just as I waited 15 years for the world to resolve its misadventure, without my idiosyncratic help, so I wait now 23 years closer to the edge with no remedy in sight and no other hero or heroine to invoke the unveiling. The lesson in 2000 was the inability of the three monotheistic religions to come to protect the epoch of the Tree of Life and I had to look pragmatically at this failure of stewardship and make a subtle intervention to record key rites of passage of renewal as renewal of the spiritual epoch. The same thing now applies to the entheogenic moksha epiphany, which has become overt because of the evolution in psychedelic research, in which psychedelics have been scientifically found to be redemptive of the mortal coil, so the stable doors of repression have been thrown off their hinges and the genie horse of the visionary condition has escaped into scientific recognition.

This vision draws together multiple spiritual traditions, fulfilling the sacramental tradition in biospheric illuminaton, the messianic tradition in unfolding the epoch of long-term immortal paradise, and the Upanishadic tradition in entheogenic moksha in a classic near-death meeting of Brahman and atman and primordially, in the oldest tradition of animistic shamanism that lies at the foundation of the mystical numinous and all religious traditions. I can't seriously neglect this responsibility, because I don't see anyone on the horizon who can relieve me of this and time is of the essence and I am already past my three score years and ten.

The whole of my incarnation is a karmic test. On Christmas Day 1944 the first radiated plutonium slugs began to roll out of Hanford, signalling the real beginning of the apocalyptic age of Planet Earth. Twelfth night, I was born Chris King on the Epiphany 1945, just as the first shipments of plutonium rolled out of Hanford for Trinity and Nagasaki, later that year, so I am the offspring of nuclear holocaust, graphically expressed by Michael Ortiz Hill (1994), in “Dreaming the End of the World: Apocalypse as a rite of Passage”, in describing the first words following the Trinity test.

To me karma is not a moral question, but a reality of the living quantum universe. By contrast, I ascribe to Richard Alexander's view of morality as a product of sociobiology in intelligent strategically-bluffing societies to achieve inter-social dominance by intra-social cooperation enforced by altruistic punishment. But karma is something I have to live with and accept, as a prime motivation to heal when there is no other avenue in sight.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is designed as a scientific cosmology which includes primal subjectivity as the existential part. It extols symbiosis as the full natural expression of what religions call spirituality in physical, biological, and conscious terms. It is also a living Logos of my personal vision quest to discover the foundations of reality, but it is not a nascent religion, but a consensual democratic way for all of us to reflower nature and discover ultimate reality together, no longer knowing only in part, but knowing also as we are known, as one is to one, face to face, no longer through a glass darkly.

Its key tenets are:

(1) That subjective consciousness is primary, as in the Upanishads, but the universe is necessary to our conscious biological survival and immortal fulfilment.

(2) That subjective consciousness has efficacy of volition over the physical universe, opening up the foundations of innovative spirituality to physical nature and our ability to take full responsibility for our actions, as the law asserts.

(3) That the universe rises to climax conscious diversity in planetary symbiosis on the cosmic equator in space-time.

And it takes a huge leaf out of Yeshua's book, as the controversial and even blasphemous figure, trying to provoke apocalypse by spanning all the near Eastern traditions, from Dionysian miracles, through the fertility religion of the women of Galilee who gave unto him our of their very substance, anointed by a woman to his doom, as was Dumuzzi, and finally both the Hebrew and Gnostic traditions, as the Sermon of the Mount and the Gospel of Didymos Judas Thomas, demonstrate.

So if you think about it, since you already prefigured this, would you expect anything less than the impossible quest of a mathematical chaos theorist and wilderness mystic, carrying the entheogenic sacraments of the biosphere out of left field to fulfil the true eucharist of life amid renewing the old wastes in the planting of the divine, so that all might be glorified in the abundance of wisdom, when the world is faced by ongoing potential nuclear annihilation, climate crisis entering tipping point whiplash, the frank mass extinction of biodiversity, particularly of the land mammals and the self-mechanisation of AI takeover of our very essential being? But this means it extends beyond cultural theism, to ourselves becoming the visionary guardians of life unfolding, with subjective conscious efficacy over the physical world, invoking the full root mystical and spiritual natures of reality in climax living cosmology. This shouldn't be a shock because the Upanishads already conceive of reality either as personae in the 'Elohim Ishvara/Ishvari, or as meeting ultimate reality in the atman in cosmological symbiosis with Brahman.

I am doing this good thing regardless, but I realistically can't and shouldn't do it alone. I want to do it as Lao Tsu would. A mashiach doesn't have to be a religious leader, just provide the therapeutic avenue to world redemption. That's why Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is a resilient scientific Logos that marks out the Tao as a vision quest, but not any kind of religion, or we will never come of cosmic age and take astute responsibility for our fates. It's the full apocalypse, as a psychopomp marking safe passage in our mortal journey across the Styx, in the fulfilment of life as a whole, perennially throughout our generations amen. It's not a lesser Revelation. It is the gift of life itself. I don't ask anyone to believe in me, but simply to understand that the remedy is true redemption.

But let's look for a minute at the naked realities. Paul converted Jesus into a supernatural Dionysian figure of Hellenistic Judaism, and Revelation exploded his persona into a vengeful Lord of triage and genocide of life that no conceivable flash and blood messiah can achieve, as a means to enforce the rule of Christ on Earth for ever and a day, when as Elaine and others have noted, Jesus claimed return in power in the same generation as those who stood before him never materialised. Equally unlikely is that notion of the Jewish state appointing a sacred king as messiah, so we have to consider the wider and deeper view we are facing of planetary cultural instability and an apocalyptic Fermi extinction caused by humanity itself.

We need to be practical and ask what the world really needs here, and it is clear as a bell that we are running like a moth into the candle flame of a Fermi planetary extinction because humanity is unable without help to avoid destroying the biosphere and precipitating our own extinction. This urgently needs compassionate healing to get us safely across the Styx so that the epoch of the Tree of Life can reflower and unfold in conscious immanence and transcendence in symbiosis with natural climax.

We need to take serious note of Yeshua's own view of his intrepid voyage, bearing in mind that as history tells it, he brought annihilation upon himself and that, although his apocalyptic visions appeared to be more than fulfilled in CE 66, he failed to return to complete the assignment.

"I took my place in the midst of the world, and I appeared to them in flesh. I found all of them intoxicated; found none of them thirsty. And my soul became afflicted for the sons of men, because they are blind in their hearts and do not have sight; for empty they came into the world, and empty too they seek to leave the world. But for the moment they are intoxicated. When they shake off their wine, then they will repent."

This is going to have to take some very level-headed assessment from astute human beings. If we are going to sacrifice the messianic tradition of healing apocalypse in long-term future goodness, do we have the ability to save the planet from ourselves without it? Would it be better to dispense with monotheism entirely, and would we then be able to put nuclear, climate and biodiversity self-destruction behind us on humanistic grounds of survival alone? Or do we need the visionary insight of apocalypse because otherwise, business-as-usual and populist politics and strong-man tactics will cause an inevitable tragedy of the commons? Or has karma in its own weird singular way, like the very evolution of the entheogens, given us this short, dangerous visionary way through to paradise on the cosmic equator, by realising ourselves and adopting natural messianism as a healing conscience to reflower life again on Earth and survive for another one to a hundred million years in natural abundance, rather than the triple witching hours of stock futures, nuclear hair triggers, climatic tipping points and habitat desecration?

So James, what sayest thou? Did I mention anywhere that this would be easy?

James: Thanks for this Chris … I am totally under water with some hard publishing deadlines and a round of conferences and papers into the Fall, so can’t give this much time right now now … this is long and complex …

Chris: Many thanks for the quick reply and for your astute consideration! We are living in a very fragile world. Time is critically of the essence and life is at stake. We all need to take responsibility for the situation in which we actually find ourselves. This prospect is not easy to evade with integrity for any of us. It’s a root challenge to the zeitgeist, but please take it seriously.

Deepak Chopra: All perception is convenient magical lies - illusion. EEG, fMRI are sophisticated illusions, as is our body mind and universe.

Grant Gillett: But very handy to stop one getting hit by cars or other large objects.

Deepak: Car, body, pain, birth, death all entangled illusions. Agree that we should be careful in body and care illusions to avoid illusion of death. Awareness as formless being is beyond illusions of both and death. I would however love to upgrade the illusion of separate mind causing war, injustice, climate change and possible extinction of the dreamscape. … I maintain what I said all perception is “convenient“ magical lies. Perception hides the truth to maintain the survival of species. Biology is an experience in non local awareness. In pure consciousness, biology is spontaneously self regulating as homeostasis.

Chris: Biology is NOT just an experience in non-local awareness, it’s our very embodiment as living organisms. The universe is not either. Biology is not just a homeostat like a simple thermostat seeking fixed conditions. This is trivialising evolutionary biology and it’s creative, innovative capacity.

We agree on pure physicalism being inadequate but:

(1) A complete somersault volte face from pure physicalism to pure mentalism is not a paradigm shift and it's not original or a new discovery. It’s not even a revolution, but a cop out to ancient doctrine without any new insight. Neither Vedanta nor Creationist ideas solve this in a way which protects the status of life upon which our existence depends. Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is NOT physicalist and IS the middle way. That IS a paradigm shift that you can’t even begin to disentangle.

(2) The two solutions are toxic to the sanctity of life because they don't even count life in your vision of perception as simply an illusion to keep the species alive.

(a) Appealing to full blown primordial cosmic consciousness is nowhere near a solution and its NOT a paradigm shift at all because it dates from 3000 years ago. It has no details and no content except for a limited belief in samadhi as a route to ultimate reality endlessly postponed by cycles of reincarnation.

(b) Appealing to creationism in the false identities of intelligent design or “holism” simply doesn't provide and explanation. It leads to a sterile designed state of the universe with no consciousness, creativity or visionary capacity – just a designed object. Because design is manufactural. It’s not even physical just a slave of the notion of technology and manufacture.

Put simply, mind-only, or consciousness-only, or God-created pseudo-cosmologies are just as toxic to life as hard core physicalism.

Deepak Chopra: Chris Sorry Not explaining anymore Try Samadhi if you haven’t. Animals have awareness as do bacteria and plants - anything that is sentient by definition. However they all differentiate from pure consciousness. The difference between us and other sentient beings is our desire for self knowledge and wisdom. That’s the prevailing opinion. I’m not a scholar but a serious student of yoga not just theory but daily practices for last 40 years up to 4 hours daily. At 77 years have not missed a single day.

Chris: I want to make clear how this Vedic dialogue about consciousness is incorrect cosmology and destructive to the cosmological role of life in the conscious universe.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology has three components: (1) Cosmology because it is a scientific description of the natural universe, (2) Existential because it fully incorporates interactive subjective consciousness into the cosmic description and (3) Symbiotic because it correctly describes the central role of life, the biota and the biosphere in supporting subjective consciousness in the physical universe as a climax crowning cosmological manifestation of existence, over cosmological time scales. It does this based on a huge amount of empirical data spanning the sciences and fully opens the subjective vision quest that is at the mystical foundation of both Vedanta and Monotheism. It is not something you can reduce to a notion in samadhi, as a hearsay account, however long you have been doing yoga or believing in creation.

Life has emerged late in the evolution of the universe and requires multiple kinds of supernovae and neutron star collisions and novae to make the chemical elements and the elements of life. Everything we see in this shows for example that the generation of organic molecules up to amino acids is a cosmological phenomenon, as well as well as accompanying minerals like olivine that appear to be pivotal in the lost city vents providing the metabolic substrate for biogenesis. The evolution of life has proceeded on Earth for about a third of the universe's lifetime of around 13 bya from 3.6 bya ago within a few hundred million years of Earth’s formation and the condensation of liquid oceans and has taken a full third of the universe’s lifetime to get to humanity and the present planetary crisis that risks human and biospheric extinction on evolutionary time scales due to a Fermi self-extinction from cultural instability.

Vedanta tries to claim a cosmological basis for fully fledged cosmic consciousness as ultimate reality that created the physical universe out of itself. Monotheism claims that the universe is a creation of an omniscient, omnipotent god that issued a logos command: “Let there be light” and “there was light”. We know these accounts lack even the most basic elements of empirical biological validity. The Sabbatical creation in six days has the creation all out of order, with the plants arising before the solar system and the aquatic and land animals equally out of natural sequence. Vedanta and Buddhism see all living organisms as simply sentient conscious beings, and in the face of the inability of samadhi to reliably produce full visionary moksha, retreat into the notion of reincarnation, in which there is no recognition of living species and in which a selfish egotistical person can be reincarnated as a mosquito, or even as a malaria plasmodium, in a false moral cosmology.

In Vedanta, this has arisen from Upanishadic meditation producing states of subjective samadhi that the rishis, in realising that from birth they had known only subjective consciousness, was then claimed to be the very basis of the physical world around us. The first premise was correct as we all know this is the case – that 100% of our experience is subjective and that we infer the physical universe collectively through our experiences of it. The rishis should also have recognised that they are biological organisms, who die if they are cut or hit and taken much more interest in the diversity of life around them. But then the rishis extended the obvious realities of subjective existence into an eternal account of cosmic consciousness ruling and creating the universe, in much the same way as their Aryan roots in Monotheism. Both these cosmologies have no evidential basis and are simply patriarchal illusions that deny the ultimate sanctity of life itself and our long-term survival as a living species.

Both Vedanta and Monotheism are false cosmologies, because, unlike the living universe, which has risen to biological biospheric climax in life and consciousness, they both run down hill into a destructive chaos no better than physical entropy. Vedanta and Buddhism both end up in epochs of decline and destruction typified by the Kali Yuga and Samvartakalpa. Monotheism ends up in an Armageddon in which the entire living Earth is destroyed to hold all humans to account in a day of Judgment resulting in starkly divided heaven and hell realms. What is clear in both these accounts is that the central phenomenon and manifestation of conscious existence, we know as biological life is held captive hostage to degenerate cosmological notions of a consciousness which starts out fully powerful and aware and then descends, because of a false morality of divine order and obedience, to cosmic war and destruction of all life within it.

These grim realities are no better than Bertrand Russel's stark vision of physicalist demise: “Such in outline, but even more purposeless, more devoid of meaning is the world which science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms”.

We as living subjectively conscious biological organisms need urgently to come to terms with what our role and meaning is in the conscious living universe. Neither physicalism nor Vedanta nor Monotheism are fit for purpose.

Vedanta poses a unique threat to the sanctity of life, for the very reason that it claims the entire physical universe was generated through a fully complete, ultimately powerful cosmic consciousness that generated the entire universe without any recourse at all to the biological existence we find ourselves in and having to come to terms with. This is a cosmological short circuit because it makes an a priori claim to an absolute consciousness that can create the entire physical universe, from individual quanta to black holes, without needing any form of life at all. There is no meaning or remote sense to any of this and it does NOT provide an explanation of anything. Why would such a complete existential cosmic consciousness make a universe that is endlessly running down into Kali Yuga full of individual egos that are struggling through endless reincarnating lifetimes to get back to the state cosmic consciousness was already in in the first place? The tantric creation has a different story in which male consciousness and female embodiment became ever more separated, but the notion of a pure conscious creation is denial of this sexual complementation, which arose later in history.

Vedanta is effectively cutting biological life completely out of the loop in a cosmic picture leaving only an objective universe propelled by a degenerated form of cosmic consciousness that Deepak decries as ego-consciousness, with the mind-brain as a mere object, which is in an endless failing struggle to get back to square one.

We simply cant afford to separate life from consciousness in this way. It's the worst form of cosmological schizophrenia.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is the middle way because it accepts all of empirical science as an account of the natural universe, and complements it with full subjectivity fully interactive with the physical universe and creatively unfolding it both in the evolution of life and in our subjective vision quest restoring our root creative meaning in existence of life, the universe and everything. And it realises in the symbiotic biosphere how subjective and objective aspects of cosmic reality rise to climax at the creative edge of chaos rather than simply competitive survival of the fittest, so it invokes the Tree of Life in the full unfolding of cosmic consciousness in real time.

Why can't you see and understand this all came from a moksha experience of meeting ultimate reality and being tasked with saving life throughout the universe so that cosmic consciousness itself can continue to survive. It's that simple. It's the remedy. It's the therapy. It's our living quest fulfilled. It's the corner stone the builders of Vedanta and Monotheism ignored, leaving a universe in ruins!!!!!

Deepak claims authority by saying he is 77, so should I claim higher authority because I am 78?

All I can do is give you life unfolding. It's up to you all to protect it.

I am not going to be here forever, so please heed my words while life still lies vulnerable before us!!!!

Kashyap: I do not have any favorite model for consciousness, either scientific or nonscientific. I am hoping that neuroscience will understand it, but most likely it will not be in my lifetime!!! Anyway, cosmology I know uses just straight principles of physics. This has nothing to say about consciousness. Vedas and Upanishads are fine with me for their spiritual message. I doubt if we can learn much science from them!

Deepak: All the best. I have nothing to say. I’m not a scholar. I only speak from my experience. As a person I have no fixed identity. All identities seem provisional to me other than pure consciousness differentiating into all identities. I AM That

Chris: Deepak, nice to see you reply, but you simply haven't given any clear idea of the role of the diversity of life in your cosmic picture. I want to be your comrade in love, but you are taking a needlessly casual deconstructive position.

You quoted this: "I maintain what I said all perception is “convenient“ magical lies. Perception hides the truth to maintain the survival of species”.

This looks like it is coming straight from an interview with Don Hoffman on “Against Reality”. Don is correct that our perception is an evolved internal model of reality, just as a cat’s olive-shaped pupils are an adaption to night time hunting, but our perception is enhanced reality in full colour, 3D and size preserved transformations that preserve corporeal integrity. It is NOT an illusion but super realism – i.e. surrealism. The universe outside has no colour and is just collections of fundamental particles.

But you are turning it into a pre-emptive attack on nature as illusion, as if we shouldn’t be taking care to survive at all. This raises lots of very thorny issues for your perspective. If you are saying perception is a lie to maintain the species, it implies your view of cosmic consciousness doesn't give a damn about whether species live or die because it’s all cosmic consciousness anyway. You are a biological organism and a doctor, so this is a travesty of the Hippocratic oath to preserve human life.

You also treat all organisms without distinction, as simply sentient beings, without species, genetic or ecological meaning: "Animals have awareness as do bacteria and plants - anything that is sentient by definition.” But nature rises to teeming symbiotic climax in the biosphere, not just colourless indistinguishable sentient beings. You then immediately cite human superiority over nature: "The difference between us and other sentient beings is our desire for self knowledge and wisdom.” Well that’s news, so let's look at how you handle nuclear crisis.

Fig 292b: 5-11-23 The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has disciplined a junio member of his cabinet who appeared to voice openness to the idea of Israel carrying out a nuclear strike on Gaza. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that the minister concerned – heritage minister Amihai Eliyahu from a far-right party in the coalition government – had been suspended from cabinet meetings “until further notice”. Asked in a radio interview about a hypothetical nuclear option, Eliyahu replied: “That’s one way.” His remark made headlines in Arab media and scandalised mainstream Israeli broadcasters.

Chris: When I originally formed the Resplendence group, resplendere to “shine forth” rather than religio “to bind together”, it was to act directly save the planet from biodiversity extinction and nuclear holocaust, but then Ukraine happened and the pre-emptive nuclear threat from Russia, so it went on the back burner and I spent two years writing Symbiotic Existential Cosmology which is now, with the central thesis, as complete as it is going to be. Look at this little dousie! Do you all want our species to survive or not?

Deepak Chopra: Maybe homo sapiens is the most interesting evolutionary experiment that didn't work

There are 2 trillion galaxies, 700 sextillion stars and uncountable trillions of planets in the collective dreamscape!

We are not even a speck of dust in the junkyard of infinity. We evolved as a result of the extinction of Dinosaurs

Nature may have another experiment in mind. Relax.

Chris: This is profoundly irresponsible. To allow nuclear holocaust, or to destroy the diversity of the biosphere, or even to mention it casually is disinformation that leads to human irresponsibility, NOT wisdom. That’s the reason to act Deepak! Don’t cast lots on the garments of the universe in vain hope when we have the holy grail of life before us. The original Yeshua said “The Kingdom lies before you, but men do not see it."

The only way I can act to plant the seed is as the messiah of living diversity and try to bring a modicum of compassionate common sense to the people of this planet. I can do this good thing, but only with your good support. The messianic tradition is not religious superstition, it’s karma speaking through individuals. I do have the karmic connection. On Christmas day 1944 plutonium production for Trinity and Nagasaki began at Hanford. I was born Chris King on the Epiphany 1945. I have a duty to fulfil.

The key to saving humanity is to have your finger on the pulse like a good doctor, rather than on the trigger. I have the remedy, which is to save the life of this blue green planet now for our future generations to survive. The mushroom is a catalyst that does not involve religious belief, but is a product of the evolving biosphere to make it all possible.

I know it’s a paradox, but through this we ALL become saviours!

Deepak: Chris How do you treat collective insanity and diabolical science based on subject object split?

Chris: You know the answer Deepak! Collective insanity is samsara! It’s unstable delusion! But underneath, everyone wants to survive and become whole, and we yearn for relief! So collective insanity is like the false inflationary vacuum that collapsed, causing the Big Bang that made this whole shebang!. Resplendence is the light of sanity that shines forth, through us coming to our senses in light relief. You are doing a very good job right now by playing the joker.

Dan Levine: Chris, I am with you all the way. As for my karma: my honeymoon consisted of a 10-day car trip from Los Angeles (where my wife lived before marriage) to Pittsburgh (where I had a job at the time), via the Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, and Santa Fe. Toward the end we stayed with in-laws in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and they took us to see a community theatre performing Man of La Mancha, the musical based on Don Quixote. The song in that musical summed up why I have devoted my academic life and writing to the pursuit of understanding, and eventually dealing with, the science of the roots of meaning, empathy, and their absence.

Joshua Ben: Chris and others are calling people to participate in this collective messianic adventure. It seems to me that the readers and recipients of such a call ought to consider this call very carefully.

Deepak: Academics with Ph.D. Nobel Laureates etc have contributed a lot to human comfort and made modern living possible. They have also contributed to diabolical technologies including nuclear weapons and modern warfare and climate change and chronic diseases. Human extinction and extinction of life on this planet will be the gift of diabolical science.

Kashyap Vasavada: What you mention is the usual question “how to prevent misuse of science”. Neither Oppenheimer nor any scientist including poor me, have an answer for this question. Laws of science are same whether you use them for construction or destruction. There is one other point. This is not a recent problem. Since the day the human race arose, there have been endless fights for possession of territory. The tribe which had better weapons usually won. In Mahabharat war some 100,000 people were killed with bows and arrows. That was a very large fraction of population of North India in those days. In fact Krishna told Arjun repeatedly that it was his duty to fight to save Dharma. Of course the big difference between that time and today is the massive destructive power of nuclear weapons. But is it our duty to help Ukraine and Israel which could result in nuclear war? Do you have answer for that? I do not have!

Chris: The problem is due to males controlling the tokens of institutional culture and ignoring existential risks of annihilation because this is how males have always survived and reproduced. Mutually assured destruction is the logical end game of paternity uncertainty in which men risk death to reproduce and control women with lethal force to achieve it. It has been reinforced by religion so both Ukraine and even more Israel has a religious dimension of Zealous zionism facing utopian claims that Islam is here to dominate the Earth in the name of God. This is the ultimate alpha male delusion.

You men simply don't understand that women are fundamentally different because they give birth and have to invest their lives in the future generations. The females are truly the immortal sex because the cytoplasm is purely maternal and that is the mother liquor of life. They make much better long term investments than men, although we know about Indira Ghandi and Margaret Thatcher. Paternity uncertainty results in a male strategy of mortal vulnerability and lethal risks to dominate and reproduce because they can’t do it on their own. Consequently, men have controlled women since 10,000 years ago e.g. under pain of stoning, FGM and suttee to control their reproductive choices. Women CEOs, even in so-called liberated societies, last only 2/3’s as long as male CEOs because they are given poisoned chalice roles by chairmen of the board, so the glass ceiling has become the glass cliff (Tapper 2023).

Nancy du Tertre: Dead-on correct. I have often thought about ways to address this biological imperative that results in male aggression/wars. I believe soon the answer may come in the form of taking away the female exclusivity to give birth by tinkering with non-gender based and artificial Petrie dish births. This will result in less tension to fight for the female to perpetuate oneself/the species. And yes, with a few exceptions as you note, women do not think like men and find killing repulsive as a concept since their biological job is to protect and nurture life, not destroy it!

And, while we’re on the topic, most of the aggression and competitiveness that goes on in these male-dominated Google groups, such as this, is an intellectual equivalent of war - kill the intellectual competition!! Aggression. You don’t find that with groups of female colleagues.

Mike Pitman: Possibly you have no answer because the only answer, Kashyap, is morality and as you say, objective science doesn't 'do morals' or values of such kind. The issue is not scientific but ethical.

Chris: Patriarchal morality is the very source of the problem Mike! Legislating against abortion in the US on religious grounds is a key manifestation of religious patriarchy, not misuse of science. Ethics just brushes it under the carpet.

Mike: Nonsense, Chris. Killing is the problem. Where did the adult-to-be that's been killed in womb derive from?.

Chris: Precisely Mike! You have type-cast yourself as a patriarch, just as I expected! Notice I said “on religious grounds” knowing you would fall in like a stone!

Women don't willingly terminate their own offspring. My partner was forced into an abortion because she didn't know if it was her then husband's or one of our her best friends. When she lamented the fact that her husband then ran off with several women, leaving her without child I offered to let her have a baby with myself and my wife, whether it was mine or not. She is a wonderful loving adult daughter, that lives because her mother was forced into an abortion by a man unwilling to own possible responsibility because he was married!

Do you want me to expand on child death rates due to step fathers? And Nancy is right about male combat to the death in these groups.

Mike: OK since I'm male I can't help a patriarchal title thrust on me (by your agenda alone in my life) any more than a woman can a matriarchal. I'm not getting into the difficult, fraught, nuanced, emotional and personal areas of which you speak. That's for philosophers, politicians, psychologists and priests. I merely note that morality is a real issue. And that killing is killing. These are facts. So is the law of karma which (wo)men so at cost ignore. Whence does morality originate? You have failed, as usual to answer a germane question, in this case 'where did the adult-to-be that's been killed in womb derive from?'

Cathy Reason: The same molecules which you imbibed in your Sunday lunch. I'll leave you to decide if that makes you a cannibal. By the way, I think so-called "anti-abortionism" should be called what it really is, which is coercive reproduction. It is morally indefensible under any circumstances, and no-one who advocates for it

should be given the time of day.

Chris: I told you the answer to the germane question but you didn’t comprehend it – the paternity in the case I quoted was uncertain and that caused my partner (before I met her) to have to fly to Australia to have an abortion at the behest of her lover who was also married. This is a common problem with fluid relationships. Women are meant to be the providers for the next generation but are treated like trophies by sexist men who often run for cover faced with parental responsibilities. It’s called sewing wild oats! Actually the lover ended up never having their own children because his wife had had a back street abortion before he met her for fear of her parents and became infertile so he lost out as well. She died of alcoholism and their adopted daughter has ended up a meth addict. That's karma for you Mike but it’s not moral! As I said, I gained a loving daughter out of this who would have never existed apart from my anti-patriarchal free-love ethics, so karma was on my side and cemented the extended family.

Even in the post-pill world, women have to have sex for social reasons, whether they like it or not and then become the victims of male-induced pregnancy. They are forced to be the risk taker,s particularly in under-privileged communities, when it is the men driving the entire reproductive risk-taking and the planet to risk-taking nuclear and climatic demise.

Morality as we know it originated from the patriarchal control of religious and cultural institutions and the control of female reproductive choice. Morality is simply a prisoners' dilemma game inhibiting intra-social competition, under pain of punishment, to ensure inter-social dominance. Lethal in the case of stoning and lethal to conjugal joy in the case of FGM and prospectively lethal in the case of Suttee and bride burning.

Karma is the quantum universe in action, not moral law. Below is an example of patriarchal moral imperatives across Muslim cultures which is appalling but necessary to face. As shown in fig 134, Iran is literally shooting the eyes out of female protesters chanting “woman, life, freedom” and stockpiling nuclear resources as we speak. Is THIS morality at work, or just institutional male reproductive jealousy?

Kashyap: What I am saying is that the issue of war and weapons people use is a complex, tens of thousands or even millions of years old. Just calling it unethical will not solve the problem. … Who is unethical, you the voter, politicians, military or the scientists?

Chris: You are looking through a physical view that sees it simply as an arms race without any depth of understanding of human nature. Issues of ethics about democracy and cultural decisions exemplify the problem culture has defined, but human nature is absent in your description.

Mike: I meant where did humans come from? Like Kashyap, you stonewall on these issues because you 'know best'. So it must be all by chance. Many thousands (and rapidly increasing in number) of very well qualified biologists would dispute, by their interpretation of the facts, your view. And, if they are right?

Chris: Because you believe in creationism, you are looking through fundamentalistic glasses in denial of human origins and cultural versus biological evolution because you can't accept empirical biological science and pretend that "thousands of well-qualified biologists deny evolution, so you are in massive denial of empirical biology.

Joshua: These are precisely the kind of questions that can be addressed via the field of research of The Science of Peace. For example, if we can learn to achieve inner peace by practicing meditation, prayer and actions of kindness, would it be unethical to neglect such a learning process? So, voters, politicians, military people, artists, scientists and people in general, who neglect spiritual development and practices towards peace, are acting irresponsibly and unethically.

Chris: I can understand the desire to seek peace but it flies in the face of nature and it involves trying to graft pure spirituality onto a statue made of biological tissue with the head having no notion of long term survival of the body. A kind of metaphor for Biblical Daniel’s statue with feet of clay. And what is peace going to do to deal with armed defectors? The peaceful naked Albigenses ended up throwing themselves into the bonfire at Carcassone!

You three men are all missing the picture because you are looking through different sets of falsely-tinted (biased) spectacles. Only Nancy and Cathy have a good grip on this problem. I have given an outline critique below of the ways each of you Kashyap, Mike and Yeshua are in error and in danger of resulting in stasis, or making matters worse rather than better. I’m doing this for SEC, not just for you all and its followed by the evidence of the human “Mark of Cain” on all of our genomes. You need to "get real" and read this very carefully if any discussion is going to further.

The empirical facts of human biological and cultural evolution, put in very simple terms are that (a) we evolved and emerged among the apes with a sexual investment strategy that shows intermediate similarities to both chimps (who live in alpha male troops maintaining hierarchical dominance) and bonobos (where the females retain ascendence and have a lot of vaginal-vaginal sex – 7 times as much as heterosexual sex – to maintain the female coalition) and falls part way in between, driven by female reproductive choice based on astute observation of male prowess and ability to responsibly father their children following a mammalian X-Y selection for intelligence.

The emergence of human culture and super-intelligence (Fielder & King 2004) occurred in a sexual Red Queen evolutionary race (Ridley 1993), in which neither the males nor the females had the upper hand in reproductive investment, in a pattern of astute female reproductive choice accompanied by mutual mate choice. The males put on shows of hunting genius, trading meat for sex and telling jokes round the camp fire, while the females chatted endlessly about their relationships while gathering 85% of the food, foraging together. Females have ecstatic orgasm and have concealed oestrus, so the males can't tell when they are fertile and instead menstruate visibly when they are NOT fertile. They have fatty enticing breasts and a neotenous babe-like physique, inviting non-stop social sex to promote human family bonding. The penis has grown large for female pleasure and lost the penis bone and sensitive spines, making human males more vulnerable to female arousal. There is plenty of evidence for a virtual sex-strike by the women who would twerk under the full moon, as the Sandawe are still reputed to do, and to refuse sex unless the men brought back fresh meat, as the San hottentots were forced to steal cattle over in the 19th century.

This went on until the neolithic around ten thousand years ago, when the males staged patriarchal cultural take-over. This is not about Darwin but Dawkins and memes driving human culture through sexual, moral and religious chauvinism. Male dominated clans committed genocide on neighbouring competing clans wiping out the males and abducting the women. The reproductive sex ratio fell from a historical 2 females to each reproducing male (because all fertile females can easily get pregnant, but only about half of men are successful) and rose precipitously to 17:1. This caused a precipitous trench in human Y-chromosome diversity, fig 133. It led to patriarchal take over by the shepherd kings of the ancient planter Goddess in Sumeria and the Genghis Khan syndrome of extreme male hypergamy. 1 in 200 men still have a Genghis Y, which is the mark of Cain on the human genome, which led in turn to patriarchal religious cultures with the Hebrew “go forth and multiply” leading to the population crisis with Christian and Muslim and Hindu patriarchal control to outcompete one another by having more children, leading to war and the rumours of war between clashing civilisations as populations multiplied and competed for resources.

This shows that we can only solve climate crisis, biodiversity crisis and nuclear annihilation by correcting the patriarchal dominance of human sexual, cultural, religious and institutional culture. You can't do it by reinventing ethics of peace based on a morality that is already corrupted at its very source or you will just repeat the mistakes of the last ten thousand years. I’ve shown you this figure before but men all seek to look the other way showing their true nature in denial.

Mike: You have good points but are hung up on your own illusions. And you never answer any question! Break your habit just this once and tell us just how sex was able to evolve.

Chris: Sex is universal to both cellular and viral life. Transfer of whole genetic sequences is the most powerful form of sequentially-coordinated functional evolutionary mutation. It is highly non-random and far from equilibrium thermodynamically. Sex is sharing genetic information, rather than having to evolve it de novo, although it results in a contamination risk. Horizontal transfer preceded vertical inheritance in the founding progenote of loosely coupled genomes. Both bacteria and archaea have promiscuous interspecies sex, via viruses, phages, conjugation plasmids and other transposable elements. Horizontal transfer has continued in higher organisms too.

The origin of eucaryote meiotic sexuality is caught up in the eucaryotic origin, along with mitosis, both of whose whose origins remain speculative because all the evidence has been washed away by the sheer dominance of the eucaryotes themselves over all their predecessors. One interesting proposal is that the entire apparatus came from a large DNA virus with linear genomes that was also responsible for the transition from reverse transcriptase based RNA-DNA genomes to DNA-polymerase based genetics.

Meiotic sex in each parent contributing only half their genome to the child is the most altruistic end result of genetic evolution conceivable. But metazoan dyadic sperm-ovum sexuality is nevertheless a counterpoint interplay of sexually antagonistic co-evolution, as a prisoners' dilemma game, from which neither sex can escape, and so each tries in often diabolical ways on the male side, because his contribution is only the DNA of the sperm selfishly propagating its entire genome for the survival of its genes. So males seek to out-manoeuvre the other sex. Homo sapiens is no exception. Insects have notoriously exploitative male strategies, such as poisoning or injuring the females so they can't mate.

Because mammals have XY male and XX female sex chromosomal inheritance and give birth to live young, unlike birds with ZW females and ZZ males, where both sexes parent eggs, male mammals tend to specialise in sewing wild oats indiscriminately and risk-taking conflict in male-male reproductive battles, sometimes to the death, while females focus primarily on parenting the next generation and astute female reproductive choice. Hence only 3% of mammal species are socially monogamous and even those (including humans) are not genetically monogamous and have clandestine flings. In humans with massive single pregnancies and long child-rearing, this strategic asymmetry is at a relative extreme. XY inheritance gives human female choice a key role selecting smart resourceful partners because males are single X which selects strongly for a number of good X brain genes, fig 132. Consequently the variance of male intelligence is significantly higher than in females. Meiotic sexuality causes all organisms to be biologically mortal but endlessly varied. This results in a sexual red queen race between parasites and prey, so meiotic sex may be originally have been a defence by hosts against parasites, but it also avoids Muller’s ratchet of parthenogenetic mutational decline. Even the oldest parthenogenetic rotifers use horizontal transfer to gain new genetic “blood”.

Sperm-ovum sex is an express consequence of cosmic symmetry-breaking. The mandala of the symmetry-broken forces of nature gives rise to fractal molecules, among which are archetypal expressions of this symmetry-breaking. The symmetry-breaking is evident in sperm-ovum fertilisation in a similar way to the apparently universal basis of the use of cosmologically-abundant glutamate and GABA as in the Murchison meteorite as the primary excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters across the entire metazoa. Sperm-ovum fertilisation, fig 62b, evolved in single-celled eucaryotes as a symmetry-breaking to resolve destructive cytoplasmic warfare between the maternal and paternal mitochondria that could kill nearly all of them , so our energy batteries, the mitochondria and the primal cellularity and cytosol comes exclusively down the maternal line.

The single celled alga Chlamydomonas illustrates this phenomenon. Most of its life cycle it is haploid. It is only diploid when two haploid cells fuse. Fusion can only occur between a 'plus' type and a 'minus' type (which can be regarded as distinct male and female gametes) but both types have cytoplasm and cell organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts. When two Chlamydomonas cells undergo sexual reproduction, the haploid nuclei fuse, become diploid, undergo meiosis and become haploid again. Meanwhile, however, a 'war', or better, a genetic conflict breaks out. By means of restriction endonuclease enzymes, the mitochondria of one individual 'kill' the mitochondria of the second, whilst the chloroplasts of the second 'kill' the chloroplasts of the first. The process wipes out 95% of all chloroplasts of both types illustrating how destructive the process is.

Fungi get around the need for sperm-ovum symmetry-breaking by using conjugation where only the DNA is exchanged so they can have up to 20 different sexual mating types depending on sex determining genes in the different strains.

Joshua: Chris, I wish words like ethical, unethical, moral and immoral where less superficial, trickier, immoral and unethical, and since I am aware of your observations, the only words that come to heart and mind are: I AM the source of all ethics, the cosmic ethics, I AM I AM the source of all Peace, I AM

Chris: I agree with you about the subjective principle of messianism which involves: (1) the mystically awakened subject realising that they have within their consciousness the unveiling of reality and (2) the responsibility to communicate this to the world as a redemption of the existential crisis, because any one awakened being can become the vehicle of salvation.

This is not just a product of Zion, but an archetypal stream that Jung and Joseph Campbell have well described in “The Masks of God” that show the returning hero, in all his often tragic personae, from Orpheus, thorough Adonis to Tammuz-Dumuzi, to Dionysus, to Krishna and Shiva, to David and Solomon and on to Jesus. They are the avatars of the heroic male throwing open the doors of perception and fulfilling the karmic cosmos in the great unveiling. Qualifying this as a figment of patriarchal illusion is not to deny Brahman, or moksha, or the spiritual noosphere, but to reveal nature in all her glory. The problem with the use of ethics in the mystical context is that ethics is a product of language and culture, not cosmic consciousness. If it was, the entire natural universe would be founded on ethics and morality and it’s clear that it is not empirically on any level, from the quantum to the cosmos, with natural life in the middle.

The first step in my visionary upbringing in my adolescence was my dream of the lion. The world was parched and I was standing in patch of wilting vegetation. There, looking at me in contemptuous sadness and pity was the lion knowing that I, a member of Homo sapiens, was of the species laying waste to the natural universe. I knew I had to leave and return to my culture, but when I did, it was a dark polluted factory city and I had to stand forever in a queue for menial work to belong, never getting a place in this world, or even any hope of sustenance.

I recognise that unless I accept the lion for all its carnivorous being, standing all too close to me as I dreamed, not to simply lie with the lamb, I would be living in human delusion grovelling on the factory floor while the world darkened around us. Yes it is a huge irony that the circle of life involves eating other organisms to survive, but that's how negentropic energy stays far from equilibrium, so we have to live with it. We can choose as enlightened mortal beings to be ever-compassionate of the mortal coil and empathic of all sentient beings struggling for existence within it, but we can't fairly decide to impose cultural rules on our own free choices as natural living agents in the name of a Creator, or we are committing the original sin of the forefathers. Peace is an enlightened choice but it can't be imposed by ethics or morality and remain a true visionary tradition, because it identifies ultimate good with ultimate order, but life and consciousness thrives only at the edge of chaos. There is no way around this and it is illegitimate to assert a pure spirituality that claims to transcend the natural existence that gives it life.

Moses saw the burning bush and became fascinated and saw I AM THAT I AM – the abstract vision of the cosmic self. This is an experience of the living biota discovering cosmic consciousness in the first person. Our oldest founding culture, the San, practice the trance dance and regularly enter such states. They have enigmatic lines on their cave drawings, fig 163, that express its transcendent arc. The question is what we do with it.

Religions start out visionary and personal, afire with the animistic aura of mystical vision, but then they become dragged into utopian agendas of world domination, and damnation for the very moral transgressions they imposed. I’m sure ethics has a better look than moral imperatives, but culture can’t define nature because it is a product of nature. It can influence it, but is unstable in evolutionary time scales. The I-AM is a natural experience of the subjective biota in the living universe, not an absolute deity. The fact that you and I and Moses can see the same Brahmanic entity, but Moses stated the Ten Commandments that gave us Monotheism doesn’t make it right. We need to move on in the epoch of biospheric crisis. We can’t just go back to the apocalypse of Jesus in the nuclear age of ecological mass extinction. We have to do this right for nature, for the biosphere and for the living universe that we have only just discovered as a culture, through science itself.

When I went to Jerusalem, I was still heavily into the male messianic paradigm, but fortunately my namesake and partner Jane King was a Wiccan woman who brought Gaia to the table, so we pronounced the anointing of the collective mashiach in the names of both God and Gaia and celebrated both reflowering the Tree of Life and the sacred reunion of woman and man in the Song of Songs in the Millennium, right in the so-called city of peace Yerushalayim. Now there is more to this, because here I am this week dealing with Gaza and nukes and saying the same thing over again, to give sovereignty back to the female, as Chaucer’s “Wyfe of Bath” declares. Moreover I am NOT a male messiah as such, but an end of days avatar pronouncing the culmination of the apocalyptic patriarchy, in the era of long term future goodness of the Tree of Life, returning sovereignty to the immortal female line, carrying the sacrament of the sacred mushroom, teonanactl, the Flesh of the Gods, which Gordon Wasson called “The Divine Mushroom of Immortality” (Furst 1972), so I am renouncing the messianic title in pronouncing its fulfilment.

Fig 292c: Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is a "Rosetta Stone", both translating the languages of science, nature and visionary experience into one reality to provide an Ariadne's thread for the vision quest and to translate the sanctity of woman, life and freedom throughout the biosphere into every language on Earth.

Neither do I just come across as some shamanistic pretender, high on psychedelics, expressing archaic talk about the nature of tooth and claw in the jungle, but a dedicated and devoted cosmologist recognising the living universe in all its natural and experiential glory, with Symbiotic Existential Cosmology being a natural scientific Rosetta stone, so that others can follow Ariadne’s thread to find their way out of the labyrinth of the existential dilemma. But still of the natural jungle lying in the long grass in the moonlight, listening to the little breezes shiver among the singing grasshoppers, nevertheless of the nature of tooth and claw, of birth and death, of naked lunch on dew of the lawn of time, of our hour of splendour in the grass of sexual oneness that is the source of all ongoing conscious life, so that life and existence can survive throughout our generations forever. How can I be a male messiah, while simply being one of many bearing the sacred mushroom of the immortal biosphere, returning sovereignty to the female?

I am not lightly pronouncing the end of patriarchal cultural dominance, to give back sovereignty to the immortal sex, as a simplistic solution to a complex problem. There are many other factors in the complex dynamics of culture, as my daughter Arwen just pointed out. But patriarchal cultural dominance is a/the prime causative precipitating factor in our entire existential planetary crisis, because it puts the entire world view and psychodynamics of human culture into a highly skewed, male risk-venture exponential dynamic which is biologically unsustainable – our prime core risk of precipitating ultimate Fermi extinction from all causes.

So the quickest way for humanity to resolve cultural and biosphere apocalypse is for a coalition of the next and coming generations of children and adolescents with their mothers to coalesce with men who recognise the need for facilitating both sexes reproductive investment strategies, right through to professional, business and leadership positions to be on the human evolutionary basis of strong female coalitions pairing with men of cooperative and protective intent to redeem the biosphere and resolve the climate and nuclear crises as human society primary existential meaning in existence.

It’s not the only factor in cultural apocalypse but it is the key to untying the Gordian knot. We have to be honest that this IS the smoking gun of our cultural existential crisis, so addressing it is the quickest, most effective way, of ensuring our survival, while at the same time taking into account the complexity of cultural factors leading to destructive militarisation and business as usual tragedy of the commons. And it doesn’t involve what we SHOULD do but simply what we in our best conscience know we need to do for the entire living universe and for us to have tenure within it.

Here is how I think ethics can help bring peace. Cultural evolution is faster and more unstable than biological evolution, so for humanity to survive, ethics needs to be developed on the biological, sexual and ecological principles that sustain an immortal biosphere, while at the same time expressing cultural and visionary notions which emerge from the living universe. Ethics comes unstuck if it ends up cementing a schizophrenic cosmology in which men, fearing their own mortality and seeking eternal life, subjugate women to FGM, Stoning, Suttee, Bride Burning and Honour Killing and so on and so on … leading to unsustainable religious moral imperative cosmologies.

The rallying cry "woman, life, freedom" has an intriguing ethical underpinning in the Kurdish women's movement that was pivotal in defeating ISIS and stopping the genocide of the Yazidis and it is founded on sustainable ecology and an inclusive male-female free society in which women are the key to sustainable peace in decentralised direct ecological democracy. So here we do find ethics and even armament acting in the sustainable interests of planetary peace. Here is a short summary reflecting Wikipedia's own short account:

An example of a social system in which women are regarded as pivotal to the liberation of society is the Kurdish Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, under the principles of Jineology, proposed by Abdullah Öcalan (2013) who has said "a country can't be free unless the women are free", and that the level of woman's freedom determines the level of freedom in society at large:

The extent to which society can be thoroughly transformed is determined by the extent of the transformation attained by women. Similarly, the level of woman’s freedom and equality determines the freedom and equality of all sections of society. . . . For a democratic nation, woman’s freedom is of great importance too, as liberated woman constitutes liberated society. Liberated society in turn constitutes democratic nation. Moreover, the need to reverse the role of man is of revolutionary importance.

In Kurdish, the word jin (ژن) both means "woman" and comes from the root jiyan (ژن), meaning “life". Jineology, the "science of women", a set of principles that includes the rejection of the nation-state system, governance through democratic confederalism, and the promotion of self-sustainability through ecological awareness and collective armament, has been embraced by Kurdish women. While these principles are seen as a means of challenging patriarchy, they are also viewed in contrast to Western feminism, which is associated with capitalism and statism. Despite this, the jineological principles embraced by Kurdish women are concerned with challenging patriarchy and the intersection of patriarchy with other forms of hegemony. The Jineology-based agenda of "trying to break the honor-based religious and tribal rules that confine women" is controversial and overcoming controversy in conservative quarters of society in northern Syria and has played a pivotal role in women fighters in the YPG and women’s YPJ overthrowing Islamic State.

Fig 292d: Women's Protection Units (YPJ) fighters in the Afrin Region
during the Turkish invasion of Afrin in February 2018.

It is built on the principle that without the freedom of women within society and without a real consciousness surrounding women, no society can call itself free. It is seen as superior to Western feminism because it aims to reject all forms of hegemony, including patriarchy and positivism, in order to establish a more sustainable peace. This is because jineology is seen as more holistic and inclusive of all members of society. During the Rojava revolution, both men and women were required to study jineology and ecology, and it is integrated into the region's governance model rather than being treated as a separate issue focused on women's rights.

The Great I AM, Cosmic Consciousness, Conscious Life and the Core Model of Physics

In the light of the above conversations, I’ve come to a new synthesis of cosmic reality and belief in the light of research on intuitive versus rational modes of thought, which suggest belief in God is a function of only some modes of human ideation. While it's appealing to holist spiritual claims that religious belief is intuitively divine, the idea that it also lacks rationality, suggests it is a product of only some types of organismic ideation and experience. This implies divinity cannot be physically absolute, for example in the creation of the universe, as we also suspect from the conflicting diversity of religious beliefs, leading to holy war.

First let's look at Yeshua's I AM (Joshua Ben) This is a legitimate messianic affirmation of the self as cosmic subject, because the visionary insight of a single inspired person can become a source to unveil ultimate reality to all.

Jesus said something similar in the Gospel of Thomas (77) : It is I who AM the ALL. From me did the all come forth, and unto me did the all extend.

But then Joshua extends it to the Creator – "I AM the source of all ethics, the cosmic ethics, I AM. I AM the source of all Peace, I AM". In its original form this is Ayer Asher Ayer – אניזהשאני – I AM THAT I AM, that Moses pronounced witnessing the burning bush. This is YHVH יהוה saying that he is what he is, so Moses has transferred his self-certainty explicitly onto his vision of reality, as an external absolute deity. Yeshua is doing the same.

Then we come to Deepak claiming I AM THAT which is Tat Tvam Asi – तत् त्वम् असि , or THOU ART THAT. This is subtly different, saying I (the self or atman) am THAT (cosmic Brahman) – transferring the rishis' self-certainty onto ultimate reality in the abstract. Deepak is doing the same.

Fig 292e: Burning Bush Tree of Life Deana Harvey.

These come from different traditions, one about the Monotheistic God and the other about Upanishadic cosmic consciousness expressed abstractly as Brahman, although it can also be viewed personified as Ishvara/Ishvari, which is similar to the monotheistic plural ‘Elohim, sourced in the common Indo-Aryan tradition. This development from the earlier theism of the Vedas, was a stroke of genius of the Upanishadic rishis, who thus managed to separate ultimate reality from an anthropomorphic deity, neatly sifting the cosmological wood from the trees, but the expressions clearly have a common source we need to unveil.

Starting from Descartes cogito, in which rational thought is dominant, we can also step back into the intuitive subjective to rediscover the I AM in existential terms:

Cogito ergo sum

I think therefore I AM

Experior, ergo sum, experimur, ergo sumus.

I experience therefore I AM, we experience therefore we are!

Existo ergo sum

I exist therefore I AM

exist (v.) "to have actual being of any kind, actually be at a certain moment or throughout a certain period of time," c. 1600, from French exister (17c.), from Latin existere/exsistere "to step out, stand forth, emerge, appear; exist, be" (see existence). "The late appearance of the word is remarkable" [OED]. Middle English often used ibēn, ibeon (based on be) for "to exist."

What we know, which is indisputable and the foundation of conscious existence is that 100% of our knowledge of reality comes from our wholly subjective experiences, in dreams memories and reflections, as well as subjective sensory observations of the objective world around us, , so we learn to understand the physical world by subjective inference through our common subjective observations of it, and thus come to realise that our survival as conscious sentient beings in the natural world is dependent on not getting eaten by lions or bitten by poisonous snakes. But the motivating core is and remains 100% subjective.

So what clearly happened is that the rishis, immersed in deep samadhi, which at least to some degree liberated their doors of perception from the evolutionary filters of animal survival, construed an insight that their conscious experience, which had now become able to meditatively experience itself, in turn became projected onto the physical universe, which became not just the individual atman, or self, but the universal cosmic consciousness they called Brahman, the ultimate reality of the entire universe. This became a possible conclusion because their organismic consciousness was running free and unattached to perceptual reality. Only the first part of the notion – that consciousness is subjectively primary, was empirically correct, but it became extended to the non-empirical conclusion of full consciousness being assumed to be cosmologically primary and hence inteligently invoking the universe.

In the same way, Moses, in his visionary state, akin to those of William Blake, perceived the bush shimmering with an unworldly prescience and likewise named the experience as the entity YHVH again in equivalence to his own untethered transcendent first person as I AM THAT I AM, projecting his own visionary state onto that of an absolute abstract deity, eclipsing Jacob's simple erections of stone at Bethel.

But this transference of untethered subjective experience onto the world at large has no actual empirical or cosmological basis. Both Moses and the Upanishadic rishis were visionary figures in a state of shamanic, or spiritual trance, or transfixion and, just as no combination of objective physical attributes can constitute private subjective experiences, neither can any subjective trance state be construed to generate primordial cosmic consciousness throughout the physical universe, or generate the objective universe itself from subjective consciousness of it, nor can it be construed to form a creator deity, omniscient, or omnipotent, over the physical universe. No matter how convincing subjective experiences can be, given self-certainty of belief, there is no empirical basis from within subjective consciousness to establish any such objective notion or cosmic consequence, unless it is verified objectively as as physically evident.

Therefore, as we have to know in our heart of hearts, this means that cosmic consciousness and the notion of absolute deity are similar projections of exalted subjective conscious states onto the physical universe at large. This doesn't mean they are completely unreal, or simply ephemeral superstition, but that they have contingent reality status in consciousness and need to be seen for what they are, as subjective aspects of certain conscious states of living organisms appearing, with the metazoa, very recently in cosmological and evolutionary time scales, and not coeval with the cosmic origin, nor absolute on a cosmological basis. Neither does it make the cosmos any less transcendent. The empirical reality that lies before us does make the living subjectively conscious biota transcendent in just the way religious traditions seek, and the vision quest remains just as valid, but in its becoming in us as climax conscious beings and in future conscious beings that may evolve if we preserve the diversity of life, unveiling the intimate knowledge of reality in and of itself, thus allowing the universe to fully come to experience itself.

The notion of objective reality itself is even more recent. Humans, from the dawn of history have seen reality through their subjective experience of it, while negotiating the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to survive and reproduce, and because all the existential threats and social benefits were from other subjectively conscious agents, or live phenomena like storms, we attributed conscious agency to everything around us as a good intuitive bet for our security of survival – i.e. humans emerged as animists . From there, cultural speculation led to culture-wide streams of idealism – that subjective consciousness, thoughts and ideas were reality itself – originally credited to Plato but appearing also in Vedanta, and Buddhism, and in the Hellenistic Judaic Logos of Pauline Christianity and Gnosticism. It is accompanied by skepticism about the possibility of knowing the existence of anything that is independent of the human mind. In transferring subjective experience onto the universe, it makes the complementary category error to pure physicalism that is the basis of all major religious traditions as well as much of historical philosophy.

Subjective consciousness is holistic. It has to be, to provide a unified stream of tactical experience to guide the agent's coordinated behaviour towards survival in direct real time crises which are very much about gut reactions, and at best intuitive judgments that often don't allow the time for complex reasoning, leading us to act upon that which feels right to the experiencer.

With the advent of cultural inventions, from toolmaking, through arrow poisons, knowledge of food and medicinal plants and inventions like the wheel, our analytical prowess became sharpened and amplified into what we now know as physical and biological science and technology, so we are now overwhelmed by a second mode, of analytic thinking that is sceptical in it's basis and runs counter to magical intuition.

Everything we know about subjective consciousness indicates that conscious states are optimally integrated, in notions like the global neuronal workspace, to achieve a unified stream of consciousness. But there is a deep problem with intuitive insights and that is that they work really well on hunch in most situations, and are central to the vision quest of subjective consciousness, but can make fatal errors if misapplied in a way which lies outside any evidence from either direct subjective experience, or our perceptions of the world. Just because samadhi is bliss, doesn't mean it is moksha, falling outside the incarnate, and even moksha needs unbiased empirical affirmation to become a working hypothesis. Moreover, the advent of doctrinal religion has shown us that even billions of adherents don't establish that a religion, or a spiritual belief, is true, or that God is real, due to infectious cultural memes of affirmative belief.

Now supposing we wanted to test the credibility of the idea that a super-conscious agent or entity created or designed the physical universe by conscious means, we would have to address the thorny problem of the core model of physics, involving the four known forces of nature, which we have yet to discover any real evidence of divergence from, with the discovery of the Higgs boson in the LHC, although many of the parameters are still unexplained. What is outstanding about the standard core model including gravity is that it doesn't look at all like an arbitrary piece of intelligent design, but a cosmic mandala of symmetries and symmetry-breaking that puts to simplistic shame, even the beloved Shri Yantra of Shiva, and Shakti, encompassing the experiential and physical realms.

Fig 292f: Left: Shri Yantra represented by Shiva’s lingam upper triangles and Shakti’s yoni in copulation representing subjective consciousness and the natural world. Right the standard model surrounded by gravitational influences involves complex underlying symmetries some of which are broken in force divergence.

To understand how unique and idiosyncratic the standard model is, we can start with gravity and electromagnetism, which are both evidential in subjective experience, as both magnetism and lightning on the one hand and Newton's apple falling, on the other. We can also witness runaway chemical reactions in fire but didn't know these were also electro-magnetic until recently. Otherwise our personal experience was largely confined to biology and geology including the use of fire to extract metals. Although Democritus speculated on atoms philosophically, the first experimental evidence came with Brownian motion in the 19th century. Now we know there are around 100 chemical elements and that for life to exist based on stable atomic nuclei, we need this number before nuclear instability makes larger nuclei impossible. We now know that all living systems are based on complex organic molecules using essential bio-elements from a core of H-CNO all the way up to iron with peak nuclear binding energy, and on to fifth row molybdenum, essential for fixing nitrogen.

Fig 292g: The core model of particle physics in more detail.

The fundamental particles are divided between the matter-forming fermions of spin 1/2 and the integral spin bosons, connecting the fermions in radiation and force fields. For atoms to remain stable, and to have strong enough chemical bonds to make biomolecules, places two conflicting demands on fundamental particles and forces. At the same time the nuclei have to contain huge binding energies to give stars their long lived energy essential for planetary life. Hence the baryons consist of triplets of quarks with 1/3 or 2/3 of the electron charge, which compensating for their 1/3 charge, bind in triplets of 3 colours, giving rise to the gluons and strong nuclear force,between protons and neutrons, giving them their high masses and the energy that powers stars. In a universe with only protons and electrons, almost no nuclei would be stable because the electromagnetic repulsion of a proton-only nucleus would drive them apart. Thus we need both positive protons and neutral neutrons to combine to form the nucleus. But this invokes the weak radioactive force, because balancing the fermionic 1/2 spins requires neutron decay to emit a proton, an electron and a ghostly anti-neutrino. Hence we have a mandatory four forces involving charges in pairs, positive and negative, matched by 3 colours of quarks and three anti-colours, which also have to come in two flavours of triplets uud for the proton and udd for the neutron, matched in turn through the weak force to two flavours of leptons, positive and negative electrons and the neutrinos, resulting in a symmetry breaking where, in addition to the massless charge-less photon, we have massive charged weak force W and neutral Z bosons that are otherwise like photons.

The fermions even have an underlying archetype in the rishons (primary in Hebrew) T for Tohu (unformed) with charge 1/3 and V for neutral Vohu (void), so the positron and neutrino are TTT ad VVV and the TTV, TVT and VTT are the three colours of up quarks and VVT, VTV and TVV are the three colours of down antiquarks, where order is important.

All of these symmetries and their breaking appear to be structural requirements of any remotely plausible set of forces of nature giving rise to a universe in which conscious life could exist as a fractally climax quantum system and they conform to symmetries and show no evidence of an arbitrary design that an intelligent designer would have any real options over. That said, we are still short of a fully elucidated TOE or theory of everything, with higher dimensional super-string theories failing to compactify uniquely into a universe like ours, amid the failure of super-symmetry to come to the rescue, as a hopeful, but probably unlikely, simplification of the idea that positive and negative vacuum energy of the bosons and fermions cancel one another in simple pairs of like kind, although at face value, the bosons and fermions have very different incidences, fig 292g, combined with a failure to unify gravity with the other forces.

In addition there remain the problems of fine tuning of the cosmological parameters, that might disappear in a more fundamental underlying TOE. The standard model has 25 freely adjustable parameters and general relativity has the cosmological constant, which is known to be nonzero but profoundly small. Some of these are very sensitive. For example, the ratio of the electromagnetic force to the gravitational force between a pair of protons, is approximately 1036. If it were significantly smaller, only a small and short-lived universe could exist. When four nucleons fuse into helium, 0.007 (0.7%) of their mass is converted to energy. If it were 0.006, a proton could not bond to a neutron, and only hydrogen could exist, and complex chemistry would be impossible. If it were above 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the Big Bang.

Thus although we don't have a final TOE, the forces of nature are shaped by symmetry and symmetry-breaking principles, with no evidence externally imposed design is necessary, or even feasible. In addition, although we know the energy processes of the universe, both nuclear and ultimately gravitational dominate the universe's evolution in space-time, leading to a big crunch, or heat death, it is equally clear that the universe rises to climax complexity in planetary life, fed by the free energy of solar radiation to invoke a negentropic planetary regime that, given the galactic distribution of key organics such as amino acids and nucleotide precursors, including our two primary excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters, glutamate and GABA and strong empirical evidence for biosynthesis routes for biogenesis (King 2020a), that in the example of our own planet Earth, has given rise to the emergence and evolution of increasingly complex multi-cellular life, which in the metazoa has come to manifest subjective consciousness in the universe. Evolution, given its massive evidential confirmation, genetically, geologically and archaeologically is an empirical fact of life. The sheer creativity of evolution transcends any concept of intelligent design.

Thus taken at it face value, given the cosmological generality of organic molecules in galactic gas clouds resulting from previous supernova explosions, and the ubiquity of Earth-like planets in our galaxy, conscious life has central status as a climax manifestation of cosmology mid-life on the universe's cosmic "equator" in space-time, through the biota.

Although subjectivity is a primal complement to the objective world as the shri yantra shows, it is life and conscious life that is the physical embodiment of all our notions of cosmic consciousness, with full consciousness arising late, in the universe's organic and biological complexity climax, in the eucaryote endo-symbiosis, that finally makes full self-awareness possible. Into the largely untapped subjective realm are drawn all our diverse experiential notions – of transcendence, immanence, the numinous, spirituality, deity, the vision quest, samadhi, moksha, the Tao, Tantra, psychic experiences, the notion of eternal life, dreams, and the dreamtime and above all psychedelic visions, which provide a uniquely rich empirical basis to assess and gauge all these other subjective manifestations and assumptions.

Fig 292h: Left: Curandero (Luke Brown).

Right: Particle shower (Pb ion collision LHC).

Unlike the rest, psychedelic visions are rich, ornate, confounding and veridically experienceable in the waking state, so they provide an empirical core for the discovery of subjective reality that parallels that of objective science in the physical realm and constitutes the equivalent to the LHC in particle physics for the discovery of non-ordinary conscious states. Without psychedelic experiences, subjective reality would remain hostage to pre-conceived beliefs. That is why I see them as central and necessary to the wider science of subjective conscious experience.

It is life in all its diversity that is the physical embodiment and climax expression of cosmic consciousness, encapsulated and entwined in our organismic awareness. To neglect or deprecate life to cosmic consciousness is ultimate suicide.

The Cacophony of Deity: The Gods and Philosophers can't All be Right, Here in the Physical Universe.

Kashyap pursued the late origin of consciousness against the primal cosmic mind. When faced with Vinod’s and then Deepak’s mind-first consciousness-makes-the-universe, I realised that, in the sturm and drang of philosophical and quasi-religious debate, Kashyap’s sheer resistance is necessary, as Yeshua has also noticed. So in my burning bush piece, I turned the tables, to put down a red line in the philosophical sand, that consciousness-only-rules is wrong for the same reason pure physicalism is wrong, because consciousness and physicalism are categorically distinct and no combination of one can make the other, particularly at the cosmic origin long before these insights. Full consciousness, as we know it, comes late with the evolution of the biota although SEC is primally panpsychic with primal subjectivity.

I also agree that science is fundamentally "of the empirical method". We disagree, in that I consider 1pp for subjective empirical investigation is the complement of the physical sciences’ empiricism of verified observations by independent groups, in the vision quest method of mutually-affirmed empirical experience. That said, religions, and here I include both Vedanta with "consciousness rules okay”, that denies biological species any meaning at all; and Monotheism, with it's clockwork orange “divine watchmaker” creationism, that leaves life creatively sterile; both violate all principles of unbiased empirical affirmation of 1pp experiences, violating independence and constituting bias.

To say religious affirmation is unbiased means that two very questionable deities, the Christian Abba who sacrificed his only begotten Son to forgive our sins in time for the Day of Judgment, and al Llah the ancient Arab deity, who was originally paired with al Lat, the primal Arabian Goddess, then summarily cast by Muhammad into oblivion in the “satanic verses”, would imply there are two real deities ruling Earth, Abba and Allah, with a posse of Hindu gods and goddesses, from Vishnu to Kali, circling around in pursuit and the Hebrew YHVH, lost in the population crisis by comparison, not to mention all the other “fictitious” deities worshipped by Wiccans to the Tree Spirits of the Amazon shamans. Right now, since Christianity is still the biggest, so Abba could be said to rule the world, but Allah is coming up fast, amid terrorism and the endless rumours of holy war over utopian planetary supremacy.

No they can't all be real, so none of them are, as things stand. Yes we know about the perennial philosophy that God is a subtle changeling, that morphs and adapts to changing realities and keeps knocking on the back door of our conscious minds, trying to seduce us into believing in him through his subtle presence, so he is there if our minds are “open”, but this is also a fantasy of human fallibility, based on affirmative belief, not empiricism.

As I see it, philosophy is in the same boat because philo-sophia is, despite being “the love of wisdom”, essentially the art of argument and debate, in which every point of view rules okay? Monism, dualism, IDAM, physicalism, panpsychism, elimanativism, illusionism and al!. There is absolutely no empirical reality emerging from this multiplicity of views.

So I support two empirical traditions objective science and the subjective vision quest, in the paradigm of resplendence, replacing the bondage of religion to affirmative belief and imperative morality. I have to be utterly definite to make this division and eliminate violations on either side, because otherwise Maya, the whole cabal of illusion, will overwhelm us, with subtle arguments and affirmative beliefs that have no evidential validity.

philosophy (n.) c. 1300, philosophie, "knowledge, learning, scholarship, scholarly works, body of knowledge," from Old French filosofie "philosophy, knowledge”, from Latin philosophia, from Greek philosophia "love of knowledge, pursuit of wisdom; systematic investigation," from philo- "loving" (see philo-) + sophia "knowledge, wisdom," from sophis "wise, learned;" a word of unknown origin [Beekes]. With many spelling variants in Middle English (filozofie, phelosophie, etc.). From mid-14c. as "the discipline of dealing in rational speculation or contemplation;" from late 14c. as "natural science," also "alchemy, occult knowledge;" in the Middle Ages the word was understood to embrace all speculative sciences. The meaning "system a person forms for conduct of life" is attested from 1771. The modern sense of "the body of highest truth, the science of the most fundamental matters" is from 1794.

religion (n.) c. 1200, religioun, "state of life bound by monastic vows," also "action or conduct indicating a belief in a divine power and reverence for and desire to please it," from Anglo-French religiun (11c.), Old French religion, relegion "piety, devotion; religious community," and directly from Latin religionem (nominative religio) "respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods; conscientiousness, sense of right, moral obligation; fear of the gods; divine service, religious observance; a religion, a faith, a mode of worship, cult; sanctity, holiness," in Late Latin "monastic life" (5c.). Derived by Cicero from relegere "go through again" (in reading or in thought), from re- "again" (see re-) + legere "read". However, popular etymology among the later ancients (Servius, Lactantius, Augustine) and the interpretation of many modern writers connects it with religare "to bind fast", via the notion of "place an obligation on," or "bond between humans and gods."

resplendence (n.) "vivid brightness, brilliance, splendor," early 15c., from Late Latin resplendentia, abstract noun from present-participle stem of Latin resplendens "brilliant, radiant". From re-, here perhaps an intensive prefix, + splendere "to shine, be splendid".

I’m sorry to have to be the grim reaper, but we have to be honest with ourselves about where this is heading. How can anyone, from a benign Unitarian to a fire-and-brimstone Brethren, or a Pentecostalist speaking in tongues, believe such a violent, confused and vindictive cosmology as that God sacrificed his only begotten Son in a deicide and eat his flesh and drink his blood, in perpetuity, in every canonical Christian following on Earth?

How far do we take this? To Allahu Akbar? To the Aztec sacrifices? To the blood of the Crusades? Or take literally the advice of Krishna to Arjuna to kill his brethren to uphold the divine covenant, as those watching the Trinity test had to do? Do we now all take hostages and bomb the living daylights out of one another, or nuke them for good measure? Where do we take a breath and actually, with some care and no preconceptions learn to look truthfully at the Kingdom that lies before us but men do not see?

I AM happy with I AM as a revelatory affirmation. But WE ARE is the beginning and end of the story at this point in our existential unfolding. I “believe” religions can in principle save the world, as well as destroy it. Why else would I have taken this tortuous and improbable route to redemption? But it will work only if the paradigm of apocalypse becomes the epoch of paradise, by shifting the reference frame to the immortal survival of conscious life throughout the universe. This is what constitutes living peace. It is the true redemption. The meaning of conscious existence and the meaning of life in the mortal coil.

The trouble with God is that It/He/She is a surrogate for our own responsibility for the fate of the universe. The “Idea of the Holy” has been part of our growing up, but we become the godhead through the redemption of conscious life. That’s the sadhana that Brahman taught me for He/She/It’s own future survival, as the living cosmic consciousness, through which we become divinity. This has to be experienced in the first person, which is why the mushroom. The moment it becomes taught as theology, it becomes fatal doctrine.

Once we invoked nukes and the other features of planetary apocalypse, the buck passed to humanity as adults. We have to take the consequences fair and square right now, no longer through the dark glasses of religious belief. Once we get the good work done, the ‘Elohim can begin to become realised. That’s the eternal sadhana in space-time.

The historical process by which Christianity’s sacrificial error occurred and how it became a contrived “false” religion is as follows, related in detail in other sections:

(1) Jesus was an innovative free thinking wild apocalyptic and gnostic preacher whose mentality is best understood in the Gospel of Thomas. He may also have had aspirations to heal the Hebrew faith with the resurgent fertility worship and Dionysian beliefs in Nabatea in his lifetime as the Gospels seem to indicate. Ironically, according to Josephus, the Baptist did have his head served on a plate in the descent of Inanna performed by Salome at Herodias’s behest, so Jesus’ fertility sacrifice anointed by Mary to his doom has a weird karmic “reality"

(2) Three decades after his death for insurrection and blasphemy, Paul, strongly influenced by Hellenistic Judaism staged a born again revival of Christianity in which he crafted the life of Jesus into a contrived surrogate religion, in which Jesus became the intermediary between the Father God and humanity, in the Hellenistic Jewish cosmology, adopting the themes of the dying and resurrecting sacred kings of Greek and other fertility cults to explain his life and death. Motifs that are utterly non-Hebrew, like Jesus being anointed by a woman to his doom and performing Dionysian miracles like water into wine may have been introduced or embellished by Pauline allegorical thinking.

(3) This notion comes ultimately from a Hellenistic Judaic model due to Philo, in which the scriptures are thought of as creative mythology, by the use of allegory, in which the characters become figments of a cosmological drama. The synoptic gospels are thus creative glosses of Jesus’ life, mission and death, built on a contrived interpretation overlaid on older fragmentary accounts. Philo thought of the cosmos as rather like the Vedantic notion of Brahman as cosmic consciousness, but instead it was cosmic thought called the Logos, which was like cosmological ideas making the universe in the way that Vedantist thinking that consciousness makes matter. In this thinking an intermediary was needed between an entirely formless abstract God and humanity.

(4) Here is where the trouble set in, because the entire process also had to explain Jesus’ historical life and gruesome death. Paul then claimed in a vision recorded in his epistles that Jesus told his disciples to eat his flesh and blood in the last supper, giving rise to the notion that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. This subsequently got redacted into Mark’s gospel and then the others verbatim, from Paul’s vision and has no basis in historical reality.

(5) This tried to explain Jesus’ life and death as the cosmic mediator in terms of God sacrificing his only begotten Son, partly in attempt to reconcile the Greek concept of the logos cosmos with flesh and blood Hebrew history of the Old Testament, turning it all into a cannibalistic blood fest.

The end result is that we have a completely false religious belief system with terrible outcomes, crafted behind the scenes by creative orchestrators of Hellenistic Judaism to evoke a mythical religion which became virally popular in the pagan world where all these motifs were already part of the world view which Christianity was designed to outdo.

The Jewish messiah was nothing like this, but an anointed human, bringing about about an epoch of long-term future goodness, as Jane and I set out to do in the Millennium in Jerusalem and now here I do in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, but apart from Solomon, the other historical Jewish messiahs have ended up ignominiously.

So much for the messianic tradition!

Nevertheless, time is of the essence to save the living planet from a human-induced destructive apocalypse, so we each have a messianic duty to perform, as I do in writing this passage.

I have a great deal of respect for the Upanishadic and later Tantric traditions of Vedanta. The formative experience resulting in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology was due to sacred mushrooms. I note that Patanjali admitted the “herbs” as bearers of siddhi, and the sacred soma of Indra was at the very source of Indra’s power, so this is an integral part of the Vedic tradition.

Now the supreme insight of the Upanishads is that the transcendent can be viewed and experienced either cosmologically as Brahman – ultimate reality – or anthropomorphically as the personae of Ishvara/Ishvari as personified divinities. This is clearly a choice, not an absolute fact of a divine power.

In my experience of union with Brahman, it was somewhere in between – as ultimate reality manifesting in cosmic consciousness, complete with its transcendent self of overflowing compassion of the eternal for the predicament of the mortal coil. That is, I was one with cosmic consciousness, with the anthropomorphic shadow of divinity, without it being predominant. Given both my own experiences of cosmic consciousness and the very obvious fact that subjective consciousness, including even our spiritual pretensions, has arisen very late in cosmic evolution with the metazoa, the notion of a primary cosmic consciousness that made the universe as a “higher power” lacks both subjective and objective empirical validation.

By contrast, with observable physical reality, from fundamental physics to psychology and neuroscience, the subjective realm of spiritual belief is contingent. Your notion that scientists need to be made spiritual runs counter to the fact that 80% of people are religious and religious excesses are historically more to blame for our ecological crisis than science, which has astute sensitive awareness of biological and biospheric realties. It is clear that religious belief is not at all uniform across the human population, so there is no case can be made that a higher power is evident either in cosmological physics and biology nor in individual conscious experiences and preferences of belief.

Vedanta is very much a counterpoint between the unity of Brahman as cosmic consciousness and a profuse variety of deities, from Shiva through Vishnu to Durga, Shakti and Kali, not to forget Ganesh and Hanuman, who are still in reality ancient human-animal thieranthropes. So the only unity is in ultimate reality, while the notion of deity is rife with dissonance, conflict and sacrifice. It is also not at all just about peace and love, for Krishna in the Gita declares holy war even against one's kith and kin. Nor is there evidence for a single common divine power.

Now there is a very big problem with Hindu culture, that is also shared by Monotheism, is the treatment of the female sex. In our book “Sexual Paradox: Complementarity, Reproductive Conflict and Human Emergence”, Christine and I spelled out that human culture and super intelligence arose from a Red Queen race of reproductive conflict, in which astute female reproductive choice was pivotal to XY-chromosomal evolution of intelligence.

The religious history of planet Earth has been wracked by a succeeding period of patriarchal domination of female reproductive choice that has decimated Y-chromosome diversity due to powerful males dominating reproductive choice, particularly in the name of religions, both by male-male homicide and invocation of lethal punishments for female adultery. So much for religious morality! Hindu culture is rife with patriarchal oppression. Sexual paradox has an entire chapter "Daughters, Wives and Widows” dealing with the vagaries of hypergamic Hindu culture, rife with child marriage, bride burning, widows in charnel houses living a life of virtual suttee, sexual abuse and severe sexual imbalance due to killing the girl child in the womb.

Indeed this is why, after visiting Jerusalem in the Millennium to reflower the Tree of Life in the sacred reunion of woman and man, I took great trouble to go to Varanasi to pay my respects to Kali as the “Black Madonna” of history, to disband the messianic patriarchy, when my tickets inadvertently had got cancelled and I had to wage war with Lufthansa at Frankfurt airport for three days to get them to fly me into Nepal and then go overland from the Himalayas by bus.

Chris: "My answer is to enter the mysterium without polemics and report empirically on your vision quest without prejudice and see if you can find secular consensus.”

Joshua: "My answer is to enter the mysterium without polemics and report empirically on your vision quest without prejudice and see if you can find secular [religious, spiritul and mystical] consensus.”

Chris: I like your use of “spiritful” Yeshua, but as usual you are weighting the “spiritual” side as three times as “meaningful" as the secular. This is even more biased than the Quranic statement that the value of a man in law is twice that of a woman. It is the very source of bias in the 1pp empirical approach that means religious belief is fatally unreliable.

The only correct cosmological solution is the following: "My answer is to enter the mysterium without polemics and report empirically on your vision quest without prejudice and see if you can find scientific, visionary and biophilic, consensus.”

Joshua: So far it seems that both science and Brahmanic philosophy are facing serious challenges to differentiate and then integrate different levels of reality. This is what the Urantia Book has to say about Brahmanic philosophy:

94:3.8 (1031.1) Brahmanic philosophy has approximated many of the facts of the universe and has approached numerous cosmic truths, but it has all too often fallen victim to the error of failing to differentiate between the several levels of reality, such as absolute, transcendental, and finite. It has failed to take into account that what may be finite-illusory on the absolute level may be absolutely real on the finite level. And it has also taken no cognizance of the essential personality of the Universal Father, who is personally contactable on all levels from the evolutionary creature’s limited experience with God on up to the limitless experience of the Eternal Son [-Daughter] with the Paradise Father [-Mother].

About science, we already have pointed out the great limitations of 3pp science when divorced from 1pp, particularly in the study of human cognition, conscious vs. unconscious states, the integration of reason and emotion, and the experience of Cosmic or God's Consciousness resulting in embodied spirituality, and I AM Identity that cares for the sacredness of all life.

Chris: That’s cute Yeshua, but all it reflects is the extreme bias Urantia has for Jesus and Christian notions of the "father God", just as your subsequent passage declares. In fact you yourself have inserted the alleviating [feminine] because Paper 10 “The Paradise Trinity” says it’s a boy's club:

The Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit are unique persons; none is a duplicate; each is original; all are united.

This is precisely why religious compilations show enough bias to render their conclusions counterfactual.

There is a deep parallel between Urantia and Symbiotic Existential Cosmology but SEC is sticking to empirical evidence 1pp and 3pp, because all previous spiritual and religious texts have failed to stick to empirical trustworthiness!

Joshua: All Human Beings, ought to seek to understand reality via science, as well as, religious, spiritual and mystical experience, and "enter the mysterium without polemics and report empirically on [our] vision [quests] without prejudice and see if [we] can find scientific, visionary and biophilic, consensus.”

I wish you would have read a little more in the Urantia book, since it is far from being a boy's club, and the conceptual framework it portrays is vast. I quote some examples (bold and yellow are mine):

Paper 8 - The Infinite Spirit8:2:2 (92.3) The Third Source and Center is known by numerous titles: the Universal Spirit, the Supreme Guide, the Conjoint Creator, the Divine Executive, the Infinite Mind, the Spirit of Spirits, the Paradise Mother Spirit, the Conjoint Actor, the Final Co-ordinator, the Omnipresent Spirit, the Absolute Intelligence, the Divine Action; and on Urantia he is sometimes confused with the cosmic mind.

Paper 14 - The Central and Divine Universe 14:6:36 (162.11) And lastly, since these Daughter Spirits of the Infinite Mother Spirit will not likely ever return to their Paradise home, they derive great satisfaction from the universal reflectivity phenomenon associated with the Supreme Being in Havona and personalized in Majeston on Paradise.

Chris: The only thing I can say is that I am prepared to say who I am as an author of SEC, however outrageous it may seem, while the authors here are elusive. It does read rather like Dante’s Divine Comedy or the gnostic archons, but it’s neither science nor scripture. Why are these daughter spirits not likely to return to their paradise home? Why does that mean they derive great satisfaction and what is a universal reflectivity phenomenon? This all doesn't make any sense except as a CS Lewis fairy tale about God.

I can accept religious scripture like the Upanishads and the Hebrew Bible because it’s an account that can be exposed to both historical and cosmological assessment. How do we assess literature that reads as an unspecified author’s imaginary allegorical description? Is it fiction or non-fiction? Does it just have allegorical “truth”? If so, what truth?

I can accept allegorical spirits. I see spirits of all the creatures who have ever existed, and feel the spirits of the wind and storms, as an animist does, but this includes life and celebrates life as sacred. It's not the sort of elitist spirituality that others like Paul talk about in the intellectual noosphere and I take it only as seriously as any other experience. It’s not for me to tell you what – its for each of us to unveil.

My problem is not with spirituality in is widest sense, but with transcendent spiritual elitism. Animism is a founding human world view which treats all living beings and entities as conscious agents, including edge-of-chaos natural phenomena and invokes all of life in symbiotic awareness confluent with Symbiotic Existential Cosmology The views of spirituality as complementary to science are a much narrower view of spirit in a transcendent religious context, as opposed to mere matter and the wholly incorrect notion that science is to blame for the existential crisis, which should therefore be solved by the unification of science and established religion. I see this as a false remedy because it leaves life supplicant, is not a redemptive paradigm shift and religion is as guilty as science of jingoistic ascendence.

This brings me back to the source of Pauline Christianity. I have realised that this entire construction that leads to endless flesh and blood of Christ hanging before every church lectern for 2000 years, actually originates from the Idealist thinking of Plato through Philo and Paul. This was an allegorical reality that became violent human history in martyrdom and Crusade. Philo and then Paul thought of everything in allegories so that it became acceptable to think of Jesus as an intermediary with a formless father deity and then that got caught up in dogma that he was both a mortal human and a divine being as mediator. Then it got turned into both the notion that God had had to sacrifice Jesus because that was the allegory of forgiveness of the sins in the all too diabolical Zoroastrian day of judgment and then it got turned into Jesus as Christ being at the very origin of the universe before Adam and Eve.

These are the dire consequences of runaway Idealistic philosophy, turned into visionary doctrine which is subjective experience thinking it is absolute reality. It’s worse than pure physicalism by far. It has dire consequences and not just in terms of sacrificial violence but encouraging martyrdom because we are just spirit beings waiting for eternal life and have to make strategic decisions to martyr ourselves to ensure eternal life, we are thinking of ourselves as not really physical in any meaningful way and physical as damned because Greek world views disdained the flesh, as well as Gnostic world views. But what if the only life we have is the one we have now, as I suspect.

I can't go down this spiritual reification route at all. I have to take the route of empirical integrity. It may seem severe but it's necessary for human survival.

Joshua: yours are questions that we can explore in the context and vocabulary of The Urantia Book

• "Why will they not likely return to their paradise home? "

• "Why does that mean they derive great satisfaction and what is a universal reflectivity phenomenon?

However, if you have already made up your mind, I respect that.

Chris: This still all pivots on I AM. You said: "and the experience of Cosmic or God's Consciousness resulting in embodied spirituality, and I AM Identity that cares for the sacredness of all life”. It’s we all, not just I AM that needs to protect life, but this brings us to a question about what I AM is. How far does the subjective extend into the objective?

Vedanta sees this as something that is the completion of our organismic consciousness in cosmic consciousness. There is no separation between atman and Brahman. This is completely different from the Western view of God consciousness, as awareness of an absolute external abstract transcendent wilful deity independent of our own free will. I’m saying both are wrong in an absolute cosmological sense, because animistic spirituality emerged from the biospheric jungle, late in metazoan evolution. To say anything else is contrivance.

Both samadhi and mystical union are real as visionary experiences and they might have supernatural powers, but we don't pre-empt reality with belief.

The warriors path has a stringent sense of spiritual integrity. This stringent path is retaining the sense of disbelief and letting the visions overwhelm one in the midst of overpowering numinosity without affirmative belief. I thus think, for all his deceits as a jackal, Carlos Castaneda is right about God fixing the assemblage point and stymying the vision quest. This is a world apart from Richard Dawkins saying God is a delusion!

The Brahmanic moksha in Vedanta is on a continuum, so you can interpret union with Brahman as a meeting with the ‘Elohim – Ishvara/Ishvari but it's on a sliding scale of one's own view, so it's not absolute. Moreover the organismic psyche is emotional and it is personified, so Brahman has all the characteristics of organismic personality and compassion. This doesn't make God real. God is a way of looking at the self, projected onto the cosmos and the karma around us.

We can't go and set off nuclear Trinity and then try to turn to God to save the biosphere. There’s no hiding place down there, hallelujah! We have to grow up and wake up now and take cosmic responsibility for our fate of taking a bite out of the nuclear apple of the cosmos. That’s the buck. Knowledge of good and evil. We HAVE to make good now to protect the tree of life’s diversity. It’s make or break.

But the point is to keep having intense transformative visions, then we don't need presumptions. The way I do that is very occasionally taking entheogens as deep transcendental meditation, because this is the way to span heaven and earth in a moksha bridge.

The way of samadhi is sparse and referred to as “emptiness”. The way of the entheogen is overflowing with experiential and spiritual fullness, but it's also of the earth, of life, and of the unity of all life, and of the insightfulness of the evolving biosphere, protecting itself and us from Fermi extinction. So it really is a mystery! I’m just an earth conductor.

Once the mysterium tremendum of mortally fearful men who, unlike the females of our species, don't give birth to new life, hit the stratosphere, their feet left the ground, because their visionary bodies are too short. In a way, entheogens are the only thing that enables the axis mundi to reach the heavens while planted in the sacred earth. This makes it possible to be a visionary mystic, a rational scientist and a critical sceptic.

Fig 292i: Tree of Life Deana Harvey

The Before, During and Afterlife

Cathy Reason: I have seen Hell in this life, horrors beyond description. Can we really be sure that similar horrors don't await in the after life -- not for karmic or moral reasons, but simply because of random chance? I have seen people in this life having to undergo things I cannot even bring myself to imagine. And one of my nightmares about the afterlife concerns being lost in a trackless wilderness where no path ever leads to any destination at all -- you cannot go anywhere, because everywhere is exactly the same as "here". A mathematician can conceive of the ultimate-escape-proof prison -- a completely closed manifold. In fact, I believe the world of our living experience is just such a manifold, one in which we remain trapped by our psychic entanglement with the living. Who knows what happens when that entanglement is broken?

The reason I am convinced there is an afterlife, is that it is pretty clear by now that consciousness is not an emergent property of the physical world. It's theoretically possible that it springs magically into existence in response to a particular configuration of matter, and vanishes equally magically when that configuration disperses. But that seems extremely implausible. It seems far more likely to me that consciousness is a pre-existing entity which becomes entangled with the living world for a time, and then disentangles from it. But I agree that one might be better off not believing this.

Chris: I empathise with your despondency about being caught in the dysphoric loop of life, but death is not the answer, it’s an inevitability. Hoping for an afterlife in death, to escape life itself, is a living tragedy.

Cathy: I was suggesting that while an afterlife of some sort is probably inevitable, it isn't automatically desirable.

Chris: Cathy is right, but she is not saying what you expect and the consequences are completely different from what you assume. We do not possess subjective consciousness, we manifest it. It IS a cosmological phenomenon, which is the culminating expression of the symmetry-broken forces of nature, which themselves are incomplete without the denouement of cosmic consciousness emergent in complex living organisms.

We are ALL conscious, as is life as a whole and this IS an empirical fact. We all verify this by empirical subjective experience every moment of our lives, just as we verify empirical observations externally. We can also empirically verify that we have intentional will to affect the universe around us in our behaviour. But this doesn't mean the existence of an afterlife, in the sense of an individual intentional consciousness, as a disincarnate ego, or soul – another piece of damaged goods. The very term afterlife is an abuse of life itself.

We are Alive

We are waves whose stillness is non-being.

We are alive because of this, that we have no rest.

Abu-Talib Kali

Christo Rey on the Epiphany 2024. When I take mushrooms, it is as if I have become aware of all the living spirits of existence eternally from alpha to omega, because the doors of perception have been flung wide open, but it doesn't mean I have an eternal individual soul. Presume to have an eternal afterlife and we go down the gurgler of delusion. The very compounding of "after" and "life" is the root repression of life emergent to spiritual domination for religious largesse. The afterlife is a spiritual tragedy of the commons that violates the sanctity of life itself. So be here now and forever, in the before, during and afterlife, but remember it is what you do, not what you assume, that will sustain life unfolding or lay it to waste.

Pragmatism On Religion

1. All life survives on energy consumption. Lions and humans are both natural autonomous conscious agents, therefore any form of cosmic morality, e.g. not to kill, is false.

2. Organismic mortality is essential to life. It is the inevitable consequence of the entropic universe, alleviated only by sexual recombination, without which complex life could not exist. Eternal souls are not conducive to living diversity.

3. God and Brahman as the generative cosmic mind, are tokens of cosmic order over chaos, alleged to make the universe, but demonstrably failing, in moral oblivion and decline, from the fecundity of tohu va vohu to Armageddon and the Kali Yuga.

4. Life, evolution and consciousness arise in critical phase transition at the edge of chaos, and unfold throughout our generations, because the ultimate rule of order prohibits innovative escape and becomes stuck in its own oppressive rut.

5. Therefore God, or Brahman creating the physical universe as a state of ultimate good or ultimate order is a contradiction to the emergent conscious universe of life overflowing that we actually observe.

Dwight Holbrook: If I may inject another perspective -- namely, that besides our"external physical adaptations", as for example our fingers and thumbs, etc., as you, Chris, point out, and even though humans are engaged in brutalities and survival of the fittest, similar to animals, isn't there a whole other avenue that pertains to us humans -- i.e. the capacity to commiserate, to be kind, to sacrifice, the capacity to forgive? Where do animals show these capacities?

Take the single notion of "sacrifice" in itself and in the context of the Biblical Christ. One thing I think we can all agree on: the impact in history of that sacrifice. Given the various commentaries about it in the Bible and other sources, that recalled event eventually toppled the all powerful Roman hegemony of gods and the belief system that went with it. Something happened of historic dimensions, something that doesn't fit in with the the world understood biologically. Even the notion, Chris, of your valid concern for us to sacrifice more to protect our physical and environmental world we live in, even that notion of sacrifice in itself completely sets us apart (in that respect) from the bio-physical world.

Chris: In response I will tell you two stories. The first is that the notion of sacrifice at the centre of the Christian Eucharist came from a vision of Paul, and not from Jesus, or the disciples.

Paul in Corinthians around A.D. 54 wrote that he saw the body and blood in a vision: “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is [broken] for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:23-25).

Mark, our earliest gospel, written 75-80 A.D. is a clonal version of Corinthians: "And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Mark 14:22-24).

James Tabor (2012, 2015) writes "What Paul plainly says is easy to overlook: “For I received from the Lord what I handed on to you.” His language is clear and unequivocal. He is not saying, “I received it from one of the apostles, and thus indirectly it came from the Lord,” or “I learned it in Antioch, but they had gotten it by tradition from the Lord.” Paul uses precisely the same language to defend the revelation of his Gospel and how it came to him. He says he did not receive it from any man, nor was he taught it, but swears with an oath, “I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:11-12). This means that what Paul passes on here regarding the Lord’s Supper, including the words of Jesus over the bread and the wine, comes to us from Paul and Paul alone!"

The second is the emotional limbic system in mammals, which has turned purely genetic altruism found in reptiles into a palette of the entire spectrum of emotions we experience, from agape and love, through compassion and empathy to ecstasy, longing and exhilaration then through fear and anxiety to jealousy, loathing, hatred, anger and finally to contempt, guilt and remorse. Thus pure kin processes have become generalised and abstracted in mammals into the very emotions which enable humans to have oceanic love, self sacrifice for others and devastating violence and genocide. We can't have the ability to care for those in distress aka the good Samaritan, as a rose of goodness, without the thorns of the emotional landscape also including defensive and aggressive conflict, but the source of these stratospheric and abysmal emotions is the creative way the evolution of mammals has resolved the whole question of altruism and exploitation in a way we now see playing out bottled up in human culture as we face the closing circle of our planetary horizons.

Dwight: I once passed by a bird on top of another bird. Was it rape in our language or just normal species behavior in their world? Do I interfere? In our mindset, should we reduce all altruism to a kind of species self-interest and survival and dominance instinct? Isn't that stretching a little bit our connection to bio-nature and physical adaptation?

Chris: I don't think we should reduce altruism to self-interest, either Dwight, but we need to be realistic about the lessons of nature. Altruism doesn't need to involve sacrifice and symbiosis is not dominance.

Sexually-antagonistic co-evolution, often accompanied by rape, is rife in the animal kingdom, but it is also the bane of humanity, where the astute female reproductive choice abetting XY chromosomal super-intelligence was supplanted in the neolithic by patriarchal dominion over the female sex, as evidenced in Biblical homicidal punishments and male dominant cultures from Europe to India and China severely distorting the sex balance by devaluing women and a female's right to choose who gets her pregnant.

Below are examples in both the animal and human world. (a) Ducks indulge in an arms race involving rape between female ducks who have evolved convoluted vaginas to make it hard for unwanted sexual fertilisation to occur, but the drakes have evolved convoluted penises to get their own back. Chickens by contrast have roosters with no penis at all and most birds have brightly coloured males vying for the attention of choosy females. But in certain species of insects as the bugs in (c) violent rape in which the male breaks into the female, inserting sperm into her interior which have to travel through the blood stream to her ovaries is necessary for the species to survive at all.

Fig 292j: Duck penis and vagina (a) and variation in penis down to virtually nil in the chicken (b). (c) Bat bugs and their relatives bed bugs indulge traumatic insemination the males literally stabbing the females in the abdomen with the sperm swimming though the blood system to the ovaries. Female bat bugs have evolved paragenitals - a false vagina on their abdomen with spongy immune tissue as self protection. Males have in turn developed similar structures to protect against homosexual attack. 84% of females in turn have evolved versions of the male false genitals (Hooper R. Bat bugs turn transsexual to avoid stabbing penises New Scientist 19 September 2007).

Humans are no exception here as evidenced (fig 134) by both female genital mutilation to inhibit female reproductive choice and stoning for claimed adultery in both Iran and Afghanistan and in (fig 133) the precipitous decline of Y-chromosome diversity in males coinciding worldwide with neolithic male-male inter-clan genocide and ensuing male female abduction and enslavement. This also extends to the abortion debate especially in the US, driven by patriarchal religious control of women in the name of life, over their right of choice whether to continue a pregnancy that is inevitably the result of male sexual desire. So I don't think humanity is in any position to declare itself above nature about morality or sexual ethics.

Dwight: Here I make two points that relate to viewpoints, one of which relates to what you, Chris, have held over the years. That has to do with your endorsement of free will. The first question here, I suppose, is to be absolutely clear as to what we mean by free will (if that is possible). My position is to take the words literally and not as a camouflage for some kind of implicit pre-determination -- i.e. that would encroach into the direction of what A.I. is or will be capable of. As I mentioned in my previous email to you both, our language and that of others places a bedrock belief in our responsibility, ethics, character based on our freedom to make choices that are not already encoded, or precluded, by brain and biology -- something that separates us from sophisticated automatons -- no matter how much we use language to explain our actions as if they were inevitable. I believe, Chris, that is your understanding of free will -- namely in a non-sequential sense, the possibility to really make choices that rejects inevitability connotations? A kind of something from nothing at the moment of decision, no matter how much it gets explained by the past, the latter adopting a so-called "objective" -- i.e. non-momentary, non-experiential perspective. So the question here is how "free will" gets translated -- literally or as implicitly pre-determined.

The other point pertains to something I was unclear about in your response, Chris. Considering the historical impact of the life and sacrifice of Christ that changed the theology of the Roman Empire and affected history as we know, how much of this are you suggesting can be explained by one man's visionary experience, namely Paul's, and by a deliberate altering of historical facts from that period? And how would you characterize, in fact, that visionary experience of Paul -- as hallucination? In other words, how would you explain the historical consequence? Was the Roman Empire, and its centuries of scholars, deluded by the false claims of an outsider -- enough to throw out the Greek and Roman gods?

Chris: Yes I do believe in free will Dwight, in the sense that subjective consciousness has a critical capacity to interact with and transform the material universe and that this, even at the most practical level attests to a fully cosmological role for conscious existence that lies at the foundation of religious and spiritual experience. In just formulating this response I am consciously searching for the strategic implications of what I have in mind and as I type turning this into a stream of words that semantically express changes in the universe that are spilling out of the keyboard into electronic form as I type, thereby changing the universe potentially irreversibly and forever.

It’s not consciousness or free will that is a hallucination, but the physical notion that because we have conceived of mechanism, automata and physical causality, that our veridical experiences of interacting consciously with our environment are just the deterministic consequences of a warm wet brain obeying classical causality to compute some kind of computational outcome to the dilemma of ongoing existence, so that all our immediate subjective experiences of intentional, volitional activity essential for our own survival are a kind of hallucination of intentional will we don’t actually possess because our brains actually made us do it.

But the consequences of this are Earth-shattering. It means that, although we are conscious sentient beings trapped in the mortal coil, we at the same time have a transformative capacity over the fate of the universe and of life within it, in its becoming into a state of full conscious realisation over vast epochs of evolving life, reaching ever so gradually to full cosmic consciousness of ourselves as transformative living agents. This doesn't mean that we can dream of setting off a nuclear explosion by force of will and it will happen in front of our eyes, although unsought karma can be devastating, but that subjective consciousness does have efficacy of volition, both intentional and intuitive over the physical universe and this in one fell swoop brings all the spectres of divinity and spirituality into the picture.

So you then ask me about the role of the biblical Christ and this is a very difficult question to balance out and fully resolve. As I see it, conscious free will means we are carrying in germinal form the entire creative principle which manifests the universe in becoming within us. This means that we are all messiahs and that the reality that lies before us is extraordinary and revelatory beyond belief. There is a conscious becoming that is tied up in Jung’s notion of archetype and collective consciousness and expressed in Joseph Campbells masks of God in which any one or every one of us, if we take full responsibility for our actions can become cosmic Christs revealing the ultimate awakening truth of life to one another. I am somehow caught up in Yeshua’s shadow karmically as Chris King born on the epiphany just after the first plutonium began to roll out of Hanford on Christmas Day and must needs save humanity and the biosphere from planetary suicide through impatient discord.

But the facts are that the only way this cosmic reality can become manifest in the physical universe which is its substrate to give it actuality, is by being caught in the mortal coil as biological climax life forms that have through biogenesis and evolution pulled ourselves out of the primeval organic ouse and become conscious biological life at the centre of the cosmic cyclone. It is here in us that divinity meets reality in full physical expression, so it is down to us as biological beings carrying within us the holy grail of realisation, that the universe can come to know and discover itself. So we are both finite and mortal and at the same time in our apotheoses, divinity incarnate in becoming and this does not take away the pain of existence at the edge of chaos, which is both awesome and terrifying, but it is the best of all possible worlds in the making.

Now for me this is very difficult, because I see the biblical Christ as both in a sense a true manifestation of this becoming in a person but at the same time a tortured deranged untimely manifestation that resulted in violent ripples that have continued to echo to this day. By taking on the forces of light and darkness in the way he did, Jesus precipitated a form of violent apocalypse in a world already cresting towards a tumultuous crisis in the siege of Jerusalem that is believed to have killed 1.1 million people in the year zero, and resulted in continuing violence in martyrdom, the adoption of Christianity as the state religion of Rome, Crusade, Inquisition, continuing religious wars and the very notion of Islamic martyrdom that has led to 9-11, and all the suicide bombers of militant Islam in a utopian ambition to dominate the entire world as a religious hegemony. I have a difficult relationship with this because I have myself become entangled in the net of apocalyptic messianism in the first person and would seek to end nuclear weapons and return planet Earth to an enlightened form of paradise on the cosmic equator in space-time if I could realise my destiny of redemption of the human psyche in the world at large.

That said I still see the mark of Paul hanging heavily over the Christian tradition. I spent some of yesterday looking again at the earliest datings of the Gospel of Thomas and continue to see it as a stark reflection of just how much Pauline Christianity has poured the gloss of the divine sacrificial saviour over the Christian tradition, so that Christianity, far from replacing the Roman Gods has become a pagan religion of flesh and blood sacrifice that was adopted by the gentile world as a result of Hellenistic Jewish influences, while Jesus himself was somewhere in between what we see in Thomas and the canonical gospels as a group.

So what is the end result? I am trying to start again by writing Symbiotic Existential Cosmology as a personal visionary account of my own awakening and my awakening of the world, so that it can become a map of this realisation process in the natural universe for others to follow. I hope that people could begin to understand that it does provide a way through for us to survive as a species on this blue green planet and realise all the hopes we see in divinity and enlightenment, but I’m not counting my chickens for a soft landing.

11 The Evolution of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology

Unified Field Theories and Cosmological Biogenesis

In 1978 I published a monograph on the cosmological foundations for the origin of life explaining life as a climax manifestation. In “Unified Field Theories and the Origin of Life” (King 1978), I described the prototype of many of the ideas you will find in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology. It was a very early attempt, in which I was absorbing many ideas from across the span of cosmological physics, through molecular biology to neuroscience, so some of the ideas are somewhat incorrect or speculative. Afterwards, I became so embarrassed by it that I had not looked at it until today in May 2022 with the monograph complete, and was astonished to find in my one 44 year old hard copy many ideas that are now fully articulated in the monograph with the advantage of nearly a half century of scientific discovery.

At the time I had not discovered chaos theory. Chaos in the logistic iteration was discovered by Robert May (1976) only two years earlier. Chaos became popularised with the discovery of the Mandelbrot set the same year I wrote (Brooks & Matelski 1980). The edge of chaos, was first articulated a decade later (Packard 1988). I had to depend on ideas of catastrophe theory, creodes, dynamical attractors and the breaking of structural instability. There is but one brief reference to fractal processes, in attempting to define chaos in terms of "generalised catastrophe" (Stewart 1976):

Previously it was thought that a real dynamical process must have a form which is stable to arbitrarily small perturbations, otherwise it would be ephemeral and cease to exist by infinitesimal perturbation. However, it was subsequently discovered that many basic physical phenomena, such as fluid turbulence are intrinsically unstable and cannot be approximated by a stable model. Such processes are called generalised catastrophes and may be regarded as structurally indeterminate. In such processes, the global may give rise to the ramifying local structure through fractal stability breaking.

And an introductory poem in echo of a snow flake growing in the atmosphere ...

I am a tree whose leaves are trees.

You are the endless colours of the night.
I grow into you. You forever dissolve me,

in the swirl of your eddies of eddies.

Fig 254: Left and centre: Microcellular formations generated in my little lab from HCN and NH3 over H2O, sometimes with HCHO.
Right: Spores of a psilocybe species at the same magnification used for size comparison (King 2020a).

Nevertheless the 1978 paper clearly elucidates the central theme of the cosmological symmetry breaking of the forces of nature, leading to cosmological biogenesis, through the interactive processes of strong and weak chemical bonding, utilising all the four forces in interaction, expressed as a "holographic" non-linear process, due to the fractal nature of coherent spatial molecular orbital wave function interactions:

Recently unified field theories have been discovered, which indicate the four forces of nature, gravity, electromagnetism, the nuclear force and the weak radioactive force all differentiated from a common superforce in the big bang at the origin of the universe. This superforce is based on the duality between the bosons, which cause force and the fermions which cause matter. This theory demonstrates that the origin of life is a direct interactive consequence of the differentiation of these forces That it occurs in a substantially unique and general way throughout the universe (p5).

To form a more accurate picture of the non-linear behaviour of molecules, we note that the molecular dynamics of concentrations depends on the holographic energetics of bonding. We need to consider two levels of phenomena, the global dynamics of concentrations and the quantal transformations of the orbitals (p21).

In this, the theory cites prebiotic polymerisations as having formally unpredictable behaviour, leading to complexity, because the more complex products cannot be deterministically predicted from the wave functions of the simpler reactants and their concentrations alone, due to stochastic quantum and auto-catalytic effects:

Normally large numbers of molecules in a reaction are deemed to swamp any incidental quantum events … suggesting that classical models of chemistry are sufficient. What is not generally appreciated is that the quantum character is not displayed in temporal terms, but spatially in the globally derived wave theoretic holographic bond. This introduces a structural form of uncertainty, where the nature of the products cannot necessarily be deduced form the wave functions of the reactants.

The bulk of the paper is a documentation of the then known prebiotic chemistry and molecular biology laid out as a biogenic evolutionary sequence, however in the last few pages an overview emerges articulating many of the key ideas, spanning biogenesis, evolution and consciousness that have 44 years later emerged in this manuscript.

The link between the eucaryote endosymbiosis and the origin of cell membrane neuro-excitability involved in neurophysiological activity and cellular social communication and cell-virus symbiosis is noted over 40 years before being published by Wan K & Jékely G (2021).

Fig 255: The link between eucaryote endosymbiosis and neuro-excitability noted in King (1978).

The link between understanding conscious brain dynamics and the evolution of the brain from single celled eucaryotes, through organisms like hydra where there is only a primitive neural net, in SEC is clearly articulated:

To understand the global properties of brain function, it is necessary to examine the evolution of the brain from its primal source. The amoeba already has a sensitive sensory-muscular coupling capable of controlling pseudopod movement and even capturing moving prey. It distinguishes active and passive prey, thus being sensitive to external vibration, probably via threshold neural excitability. ... it is also chemosensitive ... it responds similarly to bright light so is photosensitive, like algal flagellates. Such behaviour is complex, involving a degree of choice in of conflict of sense data (p104).

The amoebo-flagellate character of coelenterates is is noticeable. The hydra may move slowly by gliding through a creeping amoeboid movement of its base. It may also somersault over on to its tentacles, letting go at the base and swinging over itself into a new position. Those with long arms can also drag themselves to a new site by grabbing a nearby structure. The nervous system of hydra is a net, covering the organism with a slight concentration around the mouth. There are no specific pathways. Impulses can cross synapses in either direction and and excitation travels generally across the net. There are sensory cells, but no evidence of specific ganglia or a brain. Thus the behavioural repertoire does not arise from the organisation of the nerve net as such underlining the difficulty of explaining insect, or vertebrate behaviour in terms of neural organisation, which is only secondary to the neuron (p105-7).

Fig 256: Hydra showing complex coordinated behaviour (King 1996). The simple-eyed (fig 154) cnidarian box jellyfish, which is likewise "brainless", although it does have specialised neurons around the eyes (Nielsen et al. 2021, Arendt et. al 2016) is fully-capable of associative learning (Botton-Amiot, et al. 2023, Bielecki et al. 2023).).

The idea of conscious brain dynamics occurring at the edge of chaos is clearly expressed a decade before the concept was defined:

We investigate the cortex as a generalised system which has evolved to cope with environmental structural instability in its functioning (p113). ... A computer breaks down whenever it faces a situation of generalised catastrophe that corresponds to a structurally unstable situation. To avoid this problem, the brain must incorporate generalised catastrophe in its function. For this reason, it must also utilise the sub-cellular catastrophe function of the neuron (p117).

The view of consciousness as cosmologically primary is clearly expressed, as well as its link to quantum uncertainty:

This brings us to the door of consciousness. In a deterministic system, here is no room for consciousness. The states of the system are already determined by the initial conditions. Consciousness has no definable meaning in terms of states of the brain, or otherwise.

However, in an indeterminate system consciousness may be dual with respect to uncertainty. Reduction of the wave packet to the particle has proved an irreducible problem in quantum theory. ... This has led some physicists to propose that the consciousness of the observer is involved (p118).

The only world we ever do experience is the conscious one. It is the umbilical cord that connects us to the physical world. If we become deeply unconscious, the world is lost too. Indeed, we never experience the physical world. We do not see the atoms of the apple, not the photons that reach our eye, not do we see the excitation patterns of our nerve cells. Atoms and photons are colourless odourless structures of energy. They have wavelength but not colour. The physical world is a myth about consciousness. Sights and sounds cannot be reduced to brain states because brain states are colourless, soundless electrical phenomena. The nearest we can come is to associate sound and colour with certain dimensions of uncertainty. … Consciousness is an immaterial phenomenon, as evidenced by our capacity to dream a full extra-physical reality (p119).

The idea of sense modes being quantum modes, rather than just brain states is presented:

The amoeba has three dimensions of uncertainty. Weak bonding of the trace chemicals from the environment. Perturbations from photon absorption, possibly by such molecules as serotonin (indole has maximum uv absorption and catalyses triple transfer). Finally there are are vibratory perturbations caused on the global membrane surface.

The idea of non-IID quantum processes not converging to the classical is enunciated over 40 years before it was reported by Gallego & Dakić (2021):

Random models do not approximate uncertainty. ... Statistics is a model of probabilistic determinacy under repeated conditions. It gives no hint as to the situation when the conditions are transformed by each event (p119).

The central message of biospheric symbiosis, central to Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, is already fully articulated:

Let us now turn our attention to the environment. The instability theorem shows us that no external control of the ecosystem can provide a regime of advantageous stability. The biosphere survives from its catastrophic diversity. It is from this diversity and instability that it moves back from equilibrium, giving us the air we breathe and the food we eat. All attempts to subject the biosphere to manipulative constraint merely reverse the trend and return it to bleak lifeless equilibrium. This is grandly demonstrated in ecocrisis, which stands, a dark cloud over our future.

Although it is the biosphere as a whole, rather than the plants which evolve to climax diversity, the notion of biospheric symbiosis is already expressed:

The test of man is whether he can undo these effects before it is too late. There is considerable evidence that plants are exosymbiotic. Their evolution favours species diversity rather than survival of the fittest.... When we come to consider the atmosphere, we find a similar situation. It is an autocatalytic system just like ourselves (p120).

The research report finishes with an confession that the humble author has fallen right outside the puzzle box of reality in a psychedelic experience and just as now is trying to communicate with those still inside the bubble to alert them to their plight:

All science is a myth. A myth is a description of reality by a culture.Science is a brilliant invention of culture because it was a completely new way of going bout myth making. It introduced the notion of scepticism and going out and checking the details to see if they fitted the myth or not. ... It also brought the idea of prediction. A myth should predict that some things would happen and other things not.

All this would be very fine if it were not that science has become such a powerful myth that most people take it for reality itself, especially scientists. Once this happens, the safeguards are gone. Thinking becomes lost in a paradigm of outlook, a dusty plain, broken by the occasional catastrophic perspective that is triggered by some errant genius finding his way out of the puzzle box of reality and being able to communicate with the people inside.

The prime task of the anthropologist is a creative one. To guide his culture into wholeness, by participating in the great myths of our origin. It would not be possible were it not for the brilliant work of thousands of careful experts to whom we are all indebted. This is not my theory. It has no name. It should never have one except perhaps the cosmological theory of biogenesis.

I persuaded the university to let me build a small origins of life lab and succeeded in making primal microcells. The research overview of biogenesis has continued (King 2020a).

Crisis and Resplendence

Resplendence: A Revolutionary World-view (click the image to view on an internet capable device).

The other face complementing this talk is my resurrection song Revelation.

In 2015, while riding my pushbike at dusk without a helmet, in the interests of being as free as the wind, as one of the wild and feral generation that came before safety belts and cycle helmets, a car suddenly emerged from a driveway and, in jamming on the brakes I flipped over the handlebars and tumbled head-first onto the concrete. The next thing I knew an unspecified time later was that I walked into our house with blood streaming across my face, an eye like a pomegranate and my front teeth knocked out, saying what “happened to me”? “Was I mugged”? When I went out to check the bike I found it twisted and unrideable and the garage doors covered in blood.

Fig 257: Bloodied, but unbowed.

Hours later, in accident and emergency, cloudy images of my panic as I saw the car and began to tumble reconnected, as I waited in observation. It later transpired from other people’s accounts that I had been knocked unconscious, was found staggering around the accident site and the ambulance was called, but by then I had wandered off and dragged myself and the bike across town in a concussed state with no memory of how I made it home. I refused an X-ray although the doctors pleaded with me that I could succumb from a haemorrhage and survived with no permanent sequelae.

As soon as I had recovered, I realised that what I had done was dangerously foolish. Not because of risk to my own life and sanity, but because it could have deprived me of revealing to the world an answer to the conscious existential dilemma of life, the universe and everything, pivotal to saving the diversity of life and our planetary future.

Thus emerged the concept of planetary resplendence (resplendere “to shine brightly”, transcending religion – religio “to bind together”) as a cultural paradigm. Resurrection Revelation a hymn to the event.

This project then remained quiescent and unfulfilled for the next six years, until my quantum change experience on sacred mushrooms in early June 2021 gave me a root jolt of realisation that I need to act now, re-galvanising the renewed urgency of this quest. I am in a world where there is a real and significant risk that humanity will cause a hard planetary landing, precipitating a mass extinction of up to half the planet’s biodiversity amid a climate crisis that could take us back 50 million years to the early Eocene climatic heating peak shortly after the dinosaur extinction. If I don’t speak out and do something decisive while I am alive, the ability to avoid this evolutionary and frankly cosmological calamity, which could prejudice human survival will evaporate.

This is again what the moksha epiphany on sacred mushrooms told me in the most compassionate possible terms. The message is real and glaringly urgent. It is not a religious or spiritual fantasy. It is hard reality speaking a warning that all the science tells us is serious and immanently needs to be addressed. Humanity must act and must act now and a key, however strange it may appear, lies in the biospheric sacraments, which is the purpose of this spore communication.

Bioiversity Affirmations

My name is Chris King (b Epiphany 1945).

Communique on Preserving the Diversity of Life on Earth for our Survival as a Species

Declared Jan 6 2022 on the Anniversary of Completing our Millennial Vigil to Jerusalem

to Reflower the Tree of Life, in Sacred Reunion between Woman and Man

I came into this world, in a time of planetary crisis to bear witness to an incontestable, urgent and neglected truth:

That for our own survival, we must act decisively, now without procrastination, to save the immortal tree of living diversity on our planet, before the immanent mass extinction of life fully ensues at human hands, severely compromising our immediate prospects and dooming our long-term future as a living species. From this umbilical truth, the very meaning of conscious existence and all its unfolding depths and wonders spring forth.

My defence of this claim, transcending both the materialistic and theistic world views is set out in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology – the veridical cosmology of the universe in which we consciously exist. This is demonstrably the most provocative creative commons work of 2022, because it fulfils our existential quest for the true meaning of existence, by augmenting quantum cosmology with conscious volitional agency, opening up the full dimensions of the subjective realm underpinning all religious traditions. This means that the Cosmology is not just a work of scientific empiricism, but is the veridical Logos of religious paradigm innovation, assigning to me a rightful duty of care to articulate the Weltanshauung of Immortality, thus fully transforming the zeitgeist, because, in saving the diversity of life, it fulfils our existential hope, in our relationship with existence once again becoming everlasting, as it has for the last 3.5 billion years.

The Weltanshauung of Immortality is the world view in which life and conscious existence are recognised as perennially immortal processes key to the cosmology of the universe and that the meaning and reason for conscious existence is the sacred process of fulfilment of the flowering of life, so that the universe as a whole can become fully aware of and truly know itself through the living biota it has generated as a climax phenomenon.

Covenant: In the spirit of consilience, I humbly ask all of us worldwide to join with me in this critical venture of planetary redemption, as autonomous human beings, in mutual affirmation:

That we agree:

to dedicate a full half of each of planet Earth's land and ocean habitats to the preservation and future evolution of life;

to sustain the diversity of life with our lives;

to turn the tables on exploitation and expediency;

to support the next generation's strike, not just for climate, but for the diversity of life itself;

to act where necessary in living rebellion against the genocidal extinction of life at human hands.

On receipt of this communication, we each inherit a responsibility to act upon it and to share the discovery process!

Please publish this message widely and forward it to everyone in your domain – because all future lives urgently depend on understanding the need and taking action now!

Most urgently we need a small group of inspired people to diversify the communication process!

Please reply to [email protected]

Type "YES" if you approve the covenant.

Type "I am in" if you would like to be active.

Type a short bio if you have skills to contribute.

The Indictment:

(1) We are assimilating the living wilderness habitats of the planet, and the diversity of life is simply taking the expedient back burner.

(2) The biomass of humans + livestock is over 22.5 times that of all remaining wild mammals, creating an immanently lethal double population crisis.

(3) We have no clear confidence of holding the line on climate crisis, with COP26 failing to phase out coal use and 1.5oC on life support.

(4) We are still overflowing with nuclear overkill.The superpowers are in brinksmanship on the border as I write.

(5) We are completely losing the distinction between conscious life and artificial intelligence, and with it human conscious volitional agency.

(6) We remain addicted to an unsustainable exponentiating GNP economic paradigm of exploitation over shorter and shorter triple witching hour instabilities.

(7) Last but not least, a clear majority of people on the planet adhere to religious views invoking dominion over nature, and directly embracing destructive apocalypse.

These are our seven deadly 'sins' and all are abundantly clear paths to inevitable Fermi paradox catastrophe.

If you pause and reflect on this message, you will realise that everything I am saying here is veridically true, as is the cosmology. I have come in the time of acute need, to light the beacon of life's resplendence and guard it till it shines brightly! No one else on the planet has expressed any real hope of bringing both the religious and materialistic paradigms into full alignment with human and biospheric survival in time to save life as a whole. Someone had to discover their true incarnate calling and make that tortuous journey into the unknown. But I am just the catalyst, bearing a sacramental biospheric ally.With the full unveiling of this knowledge, this gnosis, the baton of conscious agency over the future of the living universe around us now passes to all of us.

The Huichol have said, that we are "perdido" – lost, done for. But in this sacred undertaking we shallfind our true redemption. Through our collective affirmation, we shall begin at last to truly keep the immortal way of the Tree of Life throughout our generations forever. Through this awakening, humanity can be confident of inheriting perpetual life, as a species, through our true love for one another, just as Genesis envisaged before the Fall.

In this very act, we become liberated. We shall know it in our heart of hearts and can feel it in our bones – this is our one true calling, to have chosen that good part that shall not be taken away from us, in the time of true need, as one people, as a living species and as a symbiotic biosphere: To save the life tree of the living universe in the cusp of our planetary crisis, so that conscious existence can continue to fully flower and unfold in the universe unabated. This is our raison d'etre, our true meaning in life, and shall become our ultimate fruition in resplendent Paradise on the cosmic equator in space-time.

What we have within us will save us if we bring it forth from ourselves.

We CAN DO this! What other viable option can there be?

Affirmations: How to Reflower the Diversity of Life for our own Survival

Elucidated in a conversation between Chris King and Suzy McFarland

Ron Horgan: I agree Chris, the long term future of Homo sapiens on Earth requires us to live within our means as part of the biosphere. Can you enlarge on the rules and laws we need to live symbiotically with nature? Your 206 page monograph is a very detailed study but confuses me. My strength is rapidly reading and extracting the key points from a wide range of discoveries. What do you recommend we do?

Chris King: The solution is twofold: (A) The meaning and purpose and (B) The action required.

Both are essential because without A, B won't happen in time to do what's really needed.

Both theistic and mechanistic cosmologies leave us with annihilation. The first sacrifices nature to human dominion, then apocalyptic triage and destruction. The second is a lifeless machine, in which conscious life is an informational accident that has no cosmological meaning or significance. Symbiotic existential cosmology puts the ghost of consciousness back into the machine of the universe, by minimally augmenting quantum cosmology to include subjective experience. The meaning and purpose is for conscious existence to fully flower to fruition as an immortal process of the universe becoming fully aware.

A: Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, in its simplest irrefutable form, comes in three short statements:

(1) Biogenic: Life exists cosmologically as a fractal consequence of the symmetry-breaking of the quantum forces of nature, ensuing from the the cosmic origin, eventually reaching interactive climax in biological evolution.

(2) Panpsychic: Subjectively conscious volitional will has efficacy ^{^[72]} over the physical universe. This imbues at least some matter (brains) with physically efficacious subjective consciousness. Thus primitive subjectivity, is a property of normal matter.

(3) Symbiotic: The planetary biosphere survives and evolves through ecosystemic symbiosis, upon which human survival is dependent. Biospheric symbiosis is thus essential for human survival.

This is, in its simplest form, the true veridical account of the universe in which we consciously exist.

The first is obvious – just look around you! The diversity of life exists physically as a climax phenomenon – a quantum complexity catastrophe. The second is subjectively conscious existence being able to affect the physical universe, as we know from every act we take and every decision we make. This implies some matter e.g brains have an occluded subjective complement, but because the brain obeys the core quantum forces, like other matter, its a fundamental aspect of cosmology, invoking panpsychism, animism and the spiritual/religious impulse, although it's counterintuitive that the most obvious solid fact of reality opens the entire spectre. The third and most important is that the universe rises to consummating complexity through symbiosis between life forms, not dominance, as in dominion over nature by Homo sapiens.

B: Reflowering Paradise on the Cosmic Equator in Space-time 13 billion years out from the big bang:
(1) Give half Earth back to re-wilding the wilderness, so there is enough species diversity for the biosphere to evolve. (2) Transition to renewable energy immediately. (3) Decentralise food supply chains to protect humanity. (4) Ensure the genetic diversity of our food and medicinal species. (5) Eliminate nukes and consider how best to avoid a massive asteroid Earth strike (Lubin & Cohen 2022) and protect from nearby supernovae. (6) Teach people how to live in symbiotic urban culture. (7) Use technology for the benefit of life as a whole not for personal gain, humanity alone, or an artificial intelligence takeover. (8) Celebrate the perennial wonder of existence throughout our generations forever Amen.

Hillel stated the silver rule, claiming he had recited the Torah standing on one foot. This herein is the cosmological silver bullet for the immortal Tree of Life standing on one toe! This is it. This discovery can happen only once. We aren't going to get another. This is who we really are and what the universe is really here for!

Ron: Chris this is superb. "This is who we really are and what the universe is really here for". We sure aren't going to get another chance. How to get this message onto every television and computer screen? You have made my last 10 years. Thank you.

Suzy McFarland: And, what do you expect the rest of us to do?

Chris: I ask you simply to assess two things and make up your own mind up, about this:

(1) Do you consider that I'm I telling you the veridical truth here, as a subjectively conscious human being?

(2) Do you affirm that you also have subjective conscious volition over the physical universe?

Suzy: (1) Yes, I believe you are telling me the veridical truth. (2) Yes, I do believe this.

Jane King: Yes indeed. I do. Yes to all!!

Ultimately everything that ensues in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology to reflower and reparadise the Earth flows from this mutual veridical affirmation and the preparedness of people to communicate it to others in this way.

Entheogenic Conclusion

The key to this article is not just that psychedelics can induce a type of conscious awareness of the “mind at large”, but that they have a potentially pivotal role in alleviating the climate, habitat and natural resource crises that are precipitating a human-induced mass extinction of biodiversity, through the symbiotic relationship with nature these experiences invoke in the shamanic context where human relationships with nature and its spirit world are paramount.

Traditional religions, sourced in patriarchal moral imperatives and an hierarchical top down business structure to enhance social dominion, based on a scorched-Earth desert philosophy, in which natural life is just a prelude to a Day of Judgment to be consigned to eternal Heaven or the fires of Hell, are tragically ill-positioned to be able to address this existential crisis of humanity and the planet. What is required is a paradigm of autonomous direct personal responsibility to care for the universe and the sentient life within it in immortal perpetuity over cosmological time scales. This is the epoch of living Paradise all spiritual paths hunger for.

“So what we’re seeing now is a rejection of religion across the world as a hierarchical business model

to connect to spirit and they’re going straight for spirit” – Rak Razam (Stewart 2013).

So the question is not transcendence in its own right, which is superlative, but the responsibility this imbues to cherish and protect the living universe. This is not just a moral responsibility, but an active intent that arises from purposeful symbiosis with the cosmic mind.

This is the overwhelming message the psychedelics have communicated to me through countless sessions over 55 years and particularly through the natural entheogens and the symbiotic relationship they invoke. It is not something that proceeds automatically out of the psychedelic experience, which, like love, is a many-splendoured and sometimes very challenging thing, but nevertheless its biodiverse aspect is widely shared, in the sense of connection with nature reported in the psychedelic studies and manifest in the shamanic tradition of entheogenic use, where spiritual realisation is accompanied by a sense of integration with nature and interdependence within it. The threat to biodiversity of a mass extinction lasts over evolutionary time sales, so while climate might be addressed and mitigated due to human pressures, the unrelenting pressure on biodiversity could become exacerbated. Hence entheogens come to provide a critical short and long-term remedy to dominion over nature by increasing awareness of our symbiotic relationship with life as a whole.

The reason I have concentrated on natural psychedelics is fivefold:

(1) Entheogenic species are an integral part of the planetary evolutionary endowment of biodiversity, as are our food and medicinal species.

(2) Natural psychedelics are potentially symbiotic cohabitants with Homo sapiens, which already exist in a symbiotic relationship with the cultures and movements utilising them entheogenically.

(3) Natural psychedelics have been used for millennia and are proven to be both safe for the individual and safe for society when used in a guided and protected spiritual, or therapeutic context.

(4) The entheogenic experience of natural psychedelics is powerful and capable of evoking a full psychedelic state, so that, although synthetics present additional features, natural psychedelics are “sufficient unto the day”.

(5) As long as psychedelics remain illegal, natural psychedelics are verified by their genomes to be pure of synthesis contaminants and are easily cultivated, enabling autonomous use without contact with the illegal drugs market.

(6) They are not addictive because the effects wane rapidly on repeated use, requiring a refractory period.

There are also a variety of other natural and synthetic agents which can also have profound consciousness-altering effects, including cannabis species (THC), Salvia divinorum (salvinorin-a) and the synthetic drug ketamine, each of which have properties distinct from and potentially complementary to those of psychedelic entheogens. Some may also induce forms of Bardo Thodol experience, but classic psychedelics take the centre stage (King 2021b).

Sacred mushrooms contain other related psychoactive molecules, fig 258, which also contribute to the overall effect. Psilocybe cubensis caps have been found to have 0.01% by wt of aeruginascin, 0.07% of baeocystin, 0.88% of psilocybin, 0.01 % of norbaeocystin, 0.06% of psilocin, with stypes having about half these levels (Gotvaldová et al. 2021). Previously the rare Inocybe aeruginascens was found to have high levels of aeruginascin – dry weight 0.35% aureginascin, 0.52% psilocybin, 0.36% baeocystin. Previously the rare Inocybe aeruginascens was found to have high levels of aeruginascin – dry weight 0.35% aureginascin, 0.52% psilocybin, 0.36% baeocystin. Gartz compared reports from 24 cases people who accidentally ingested I. aeruginascens to those who accidentally consumed psilocybe species with high levels of psilocybin and psilocin. Those ingesting the inocybe reported only euphoric experiences, while the others had an “often slight and in some cases deep dysphoric mood”. A typical dry weight dose of cubensis is 0.3 g (micro), 1 g (mild), 1.75 g (medium), 3.5 g (strong) and 5+ g (heroic T McKenna), corresponding to ~40mg psilocin. Therapeutic doses range from 20-30 mg psilocybin (Garcia-Romeu et al. 2021). There is no evidence that body weight is a significant factor. Therapeutic doses range from 20-30 mg. There is no evidence body weight is a significant factor (Garcia-Romeu et al. 2021).

Inocybe aeruginascens.

I have focussed my case on sacred mushrooms because peyote and ayahuasca are hard roads, due to nausea, while mushrooms are capable of being perfectly potent, have no such effects, particularly if ground dried in a mortar and pestle, soaked for 20 min in lemon juice to convert the psilocybin to active psilocin and drunk as a tea, resulting in a shorter, but intense experience that is easily contained in a busy life without fatigue or derangement. They are readily cultivated symbiotically (Stamets & Chilton 1984) and exist worldwide (Stamets 1996).

As Terrence and Denis McKenna stated to the reader in their mushroom growers guide (Oss & Oeric 1976):

“You as an individual and Homo sapiens as a species are on the brink of a symbiotic relationship that will eventually carry humanity and Earth into the galactic mainstream of higher civilizations”.

“Flickering before us is a dimension so huge that its outlines can barely be brought into focus in the human frame of reference. Our animal existence, our planetary existence is ending. In geological time that ending is now only moments away. A great dying, a great extinction of many species has been occurring since at least the partnership society in prehistoric Africa. Our future lies in the mind; our weary planet's only hope of survival is that we find ourselves in the mind and make a friend that can reunite us with the earth, while carrying us to the stars. Change more radical by magnitudes than anything that has gone before, looms immediately ahead. Shamans have kept the gnosis of the accessibility of the Other for millennia. Now it is global knowledge. The consequences of this situation have only begun to unfold” (McKenna 1992 263).

Growing Wild Mushrooms

Psilocybe mushrooms have been found in all five continents. They have even been observed even in seven citations in Antarctica. As noted previously, the active principles appear to originate from horizontal transfer of a transposable element between mushroom species and span more than one genus and both wood decomposing and pastoral habitats associated with Brahman cattle.

Fig 257a: World psilocybe distribution (Stamets 1996)

Although psilocin is a schedule 1 banned substance, natural psychedelics are being decriminalised in many locations. Oregon has made "magic mushrooms" legal for mental health treatment in supervised settings. The District of Columbia has passed the Entheogenic Plant and Fungus Policy Act of 2020, allowing for the possession and non-for-profit gifting or distribution of natural psychedelics. The Canadian province of Alberta has announced it will allow the use of natural psychedelics for medicinal purposes in drug-assisted psychotherapy. Australia has approved psilocybin and MDMA in prescription medications for the treatment of PTSD and treatment resistant depression. Until 2008, they were fully legal in the Netherlands. In 2023 One in 100 people in England and Wales took hallucinogenic drugs in the last year as “magic mushroom” use increased, due to increasing “studied” use by older adults. About 260,000 people aged between 16 and 59 have taken magic mushrooms in the year to Dec 2023, 100,000 more than in 2020.

The approach, roughly following Stamets and Chilton (1983), Harris (1978) and previously Oss & Oeric (1976) is for one of the most commonly cultivated tropical species Psilocybe cubensis, whose spores are widely available and do not contain psilocin, so are generally not illegal, but the same principles apply also to the wood decomposing species. This is the outlay to work securely from spores to fruiting fungi, as a stand alone kitchen pastime, but in many places there are online mushroom kits available which are also generally not illegal. This makes it possible for mature people to privately have deep psychedelic experiences without any connection with trade in illegal substances.

(1) Collecting and preserving spores. Collect a fresh fruiting cap showing signs of dropping spores on its gills and place it on matchsticks or a kebab sticks on a clean sheet of paper with on a piece of waxed paper or aluminium foil, covered by a protective bowl that allows air movement under the edge but out of drafts. After sufficient spores have formed a radiating print not too dense, remove the mushroom cap and leave the spore print to dry out. It can then be placed rolled up or hanging in a small clean sealed jar that has a small container of dried lithium chloride LiCl in a pill canister with vent holes to keep the humidity at 5% and store it in a fridge at 4^oC. Spores can remain fertile for years this way.

(2) Propagating Media:

(a₁) Malt Extract Agar: 175ml water, 3.3 g agar, 0.1 g CaCO₃, 0.1 g K₂HPO₄

(a₂) Potato Dextrose Yeast Agar: 175ml soup of one small potato grated and boiled for 20 min, 3.3 g agar, 0.1 g CaCO₃, 0.1 g K₂HPO₄, pinch of flaky yeast, 1.5 g dextrose.

(b) Rye Grain Mix: 300 ml water, 224 g whole rye, 1/2 teaspoon of lime, 1/2 teaspoon of blood & bone (to provide phosphorus). A piece of decomposed cattle manure can also be added if the mix is to be grown on composted hay.

(3) Equipment.

(a) Laminar Flow Transfer Chamber. The initial stages of fungal propagation need to be performed in a sterile environment. The ideal way to do this is to build a small laminar flow chamber containing a low pressure high flow pump used in air conditioning combined with a large HEPA filter which keeps out particles larger than 0.3 μm with a steady flow into a chamber with a perspex top and front opening, as shown in the figure. One could use the outflow of a room air conditioner with an 0.3 μm filter to do this.

(b) Incubators. One needs a small incubator cupboard with a thermostat to culture spawn at 24-28 ^oC connected to an incandescent bulb warmer of suitable wattage. One also needs one or two mushroom growing incubators with a transparent lid to let in enough light to stimulate fruiting and a small floor vent to release CO₂.

(c) Propagating jars with filters. Buy small and large (250 ml and 120 ml ) pots with sealing aluminium lids, that can have 50 ml 0.22 μm nylon filters inserted into the lids e.g. with epoxy, to be used for striking spores and transferring spawn. The larger pots can be used to break up the agar and transfer to large 1 litre cylindrical wide mouthed KILNER preserving jars with separate screw caps and seals which can easily tip out the spawned grain after it as grown. One needs to make a second seal of aluminium sheet which has a portal scored into it to glue a 50 ml 0.22 μm nylon filter onto it as well. Large 35 cm x 30 cm sealing plastic bags. Standard PM 2.5 face mask filters which can be taped over a portal in the bags to allow the spawn to breathe.

(d) Instruments. A small scalpel and scissors and a hooked stick that can be sterilised, and a simple meths burner to re-sterilise the transfer stick during operations to avoid cross contamination. Clean latex gloves. Disinfectant spray.

(e) A good pressure cooker that doesn’t leak steam and preferably has a pressure gauge such as an All American 921 that is tall enough to accept two Kilner jars (of height 210 mm). Put the Kilner jar in with the filter seal above the inverted original seal to allow the grain to be shaken without hitting the filter. Put all the agar jars and sterile instruments in as well. Cook for 35 mins at 10 psi (0.7 kg/ch2). Let the cooker fully cool before transfer.

(4) Sterile Transfer.

(a) Preparation: Open the front of the flow chamber with the fan on in a still room and sterilise the interior with a cloth with disinfectant and leave it to flow for a short period to clear. Keep the fan on during the entire process.

(b) Spores to agar. Hold a spore print in one gloved hand. Take the sterilised hook and flame it over the meths burner and insert it into a jar opened in the flow chamber to moisten it and stroke it on the spore print and then streak the surface of the agar, leaving a light spore streak and close the jar. Do this with several jars to ensure success.

(c) Agar to agar. Replicate the above, by cutting out a small patch of fungus and transferring to new pots, to ensure a single diploid strain.

(d) Agar to grain. Take a Kilner jar, knock and shake it gently to free up the grain and open it. Tip it on its side. Take a 120 ml jar of agar and open on its side and use the spoon handle to break up the agar into a slurry of small pieces and tip them into the Kilner jar either slanting or upright. Remove the inverted seal and screw down the filter seal avoiding contaminating the filter. Cover the jar with an open plastic bag, take it out and and place it slanting in an incubator to grow.

Fig 257b: Steps in the process. (1) Jar with hanging spore prints and LiCl to keep moisture below 5%. (2) 250 ml pot with filter lid with spawn. (3) Transferchamber with large concertina folded high flow 0.3 μm HEPA filter in the back wall, a 120 ml pot ready to transfer and a Kilner jar with larger filter in the lid with grain, and a meths burner left. (4) Plastic bag with face mask filter and mature grain spawn. (5) Fruiting mushrooms.

(5) Fruiting. When the spawn has run and is clean and white without contamination, knock the jar gently with your wrist to dislodge the spawn from sticking on the walls. Put the plastic bag with the filter over the slanting down mouth of the jar and it should slide into the plastic bag. Now attach a litre jar of vermiculite that has been moistened to fully expand with boiling water and sterilised in the pressure cooker into the bag with the bag held tight and lie it down and seal the bag. Then gently break up the grain into small pieces and mix with the vermiculite. Return the bag to a fruiting incubator at just below 27oC and leave for the spawn to permeate the mix. When it has, cut the bag open in the fruiting incubator and add more sterilised vermiculite to cover so the spawn has a surface to make mushroom pinheads. Make sure the incubator (a styrofoam box with a clear plastic top and a light above 12/24hr). Reduce the temperature to 24oC . Spray/mist it with sterile water 3 times daily to maintain ambient dampness. You need to have a vent in the floor of the box to let out the heavier CO2. Wait for the results! Alternatively you can skip the vermiculite and spawn the grain onto compost made from fully moistened hay mixed with fresh cowpats and incubated until composted at around 60oC for two weeks or so, but this requires larger containers. You can do the same with wood decomposing mushrooms using wood shavings, such as alder, or aspen, which can be grown in a temperate mulched garden. Wood decomposing species grow in association with specific woody species so they require focused care.

(6) Drying and Storage Fresh mushrooms can be eaten, but need to be dried for long-term storage. One can carefully split the stypes (stems) and break the caps into four using minimal crushing, as the blue staining degrades the active content. They can be dried over a warm blower heater, either at room temperature, or at a temperature no higher than 100oC, which preserves 90% of the strength (Gotvaldová et al. 2021). They need to be stored very dry in the dark at room temperature ~20oC in a sealed jar, as contact with air will destroy the active ingredients over months.

Alkaloid extraction of DMT Many plants contain DMT which is also the essential ingredient in ayahuasca, which contains DMT-bearing Psychotria viridis and Bannesteriopsis caapi containing harmine. Ayahuasca can be consumed as a brew because harmine is a mild monamine-oxidase inhibitor, which prevents the stomach destroying the DMT, but otherwise an alkaloid extraction is needed to get purer DMT which can be smoked or insufflated, as in the Amazonian snuffs like Epena and Yopo:

1. Using vinegar and water, acidify the solution to a pH of ~4 and add shredded leaves, bark or roots containing DMT. Boil for at least 90 mins and then reduce to a smaller volume by continued open boiling. The vinegar then reacts with the DMT in the plant material to create DMT acetate. Converting DMT into a salt form allows for easier absorption by the polar solution. You can do two or three such washes with the same planet material and new solvent and accumulate.

2. Use NaOH take the solution to a pH of 13 and extract with a non polar solvent such as naphtha e.g. hexane. The basic solution reacts with DMT acetate through de-protonation to produce the pure basic form of DMT (freebase), which is virtually insoluble in this alkali aqueous phase.

3. When naphtha is added and shaken, the freebase DMT transfers into this non-polar solution layer. This will require centrifuging or allowing to settle until the aqueous and non-polar phases separate. Carefully extract the non-polar solution using a basting syringe without contaminating with the aqueous muddy layer. Take care the non-polar solvents are highly flammable.

4. When kept in a freezer at temperatures near or at the solution’s freezing point, crystalline DMT will precipitate out of the naphtha solution via crystallisation.

A Moksha Epiphany

My entire life has been shaped by psychedelic experience. When I first took LSD in the heady times of 1968, I immediately realised that the universe was the generator of sentient life as a climax manifestation. This became a life long quest, as a biocosmologist, to establish how and why life exists in the universe. I realised that traditional religions defining life as a preparation for Judgment in Heaven or Hell were corrupt cosmologies in conflict with nature, and while Eastern paths invoked meditative approaches to enlightenment, the fact that, by the traditions’ own admission this could take lifetimes in rounds of reincarnation, also appeared to contradict realisable illumination.

But the reductionist scientific view also lacked any basis for conscious existence, as expressed by Bertrand Russel who has himself espoused Russelian monism – a form of panpsychism:

“Such in outline, but even more purposeless, more devoid of meaning is the world which science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave, that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspirations, all the noon-day brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy that rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built. ... Brief and powerless is man's life, on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark …" (Bertrand Russell)

Francis Crick in “The Astonishing Hypothesis” put it this way:

"The astonishing hypothesis is that 'You', your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: 'You're nothing but a pack of neurons!' "

This is reinforced by Sam Harris (2012) in a radio discussion in which he puts the case against free-will:

"You feel like you are a thinker of thoughts - the author of intentions - you feel like you are a subject and commensurate with that feeling is the sense that you are in a position to do what it is you do, to decide to lift my left or right hand and deliberate between the two and I can have reasons for one or the other and I'm in the driver's seat - I really am - and that's where everyone is starting. The problem with that is that objectively we know that everything you are consciously aware of - all your thoughts and your intentions and your impulses and your intentions to resist those impulses - whatever's coming up for you - but we know that's all preceded by events in your nervous system of which you're not aware and which you didn't create and the state of your brain in this moment in every sense is the product of variables that you are not responsible for - you didn't pick your parents, you didn't pick your genes, you didn't pick the environment in which your genome was going to be expressed, you didn't pick the way your interaction with other people and the world sculpted the microstructure of your brain so as to give you the brain you have - you didn't pick the number of receptors you have of every type at each synapse, you didn't pick all the charges that are currently in place in your brain at this moment - you haven't created your neuronal physiology and yet your neuronal physiology is going to give rise to every next thought and intention that shows up for you”.

What makes this invalid is that, as we have seen the uncertainty of the quantum universe renders the classical notion of Laplacian determinism defunct, and is precisely the loop hole of quantum uncertainty and entanglement coulped with edge of chaos self organised criticality that makes the subjective experience of volitional will possible in the physical universe.

Towards the end of my first academic sabbatical, having also experienced being a sadhu in India and Tibetan Buddhist initiations, I took peyote with the Native American Church and also sacred mushrooms and later made two trips to the Peruvian Amazon to take ayahuasca. During this entire time, my entheogenic experiences were telling me that I needed to act on this knowledge received to protect the planet from a human-induced mass extinction of life.

As a child I had had a dream that I was standing in a parched jungle and all the animals were looking at me with heavy sorrow and disapproving recognition that I was a human that had reduced the earthly paradise to a scorched semi-desert. I had to run from this disapproval and found myself beside an endless queue of people waiting to find work in a dark factory surrounded by smoking chimneys. The dream left a permanent impression on me, long before the climate crisis became recognised. I have also had other formative precognitive dreams evidentially verified before the event.

I held mushroom veladas in the moonlight on our wilderness land. ‘Elohim: Living on the Open Road a Nino mushroom song. During a mushroom velada in the 1980s, I realised that if the world hadn’t successfully resolved the world’s climate and biodiversity crises by the millennium in 2000, I would make a journey to the Amazon and Jerusalem to make a spiritual vigil to Earth’s natural Eden of tooth and claw and to Jerusalem as the religious nexus point, to pronounce the reunion of woman and man under the banner of the immortal evolutionary tree of life, as a paradigm shift to restoring perennial sustainability of the biosphere. This is discussed in section 12 of the next article.

Having travelled widely and risked my life many times in far-flung corners of the Earth, I am now in my late seventies. I hadn’t partaken of the sacraments for seven years, because of the fact that acute closed angle glaucoma was liable to make me go blind overnight, due to psychedelics causing my pupils to dilate. Finally, having had the lenses of both eyes replaced with cataract surgery, I resigned myself to break the fast of the mushroom sacrament to return to the source of my life-long inspiration, before I left it so late that I might end up in a terminal condition before circumstances forced me into a last desperate encounter. I took only 1.5 g dried weight, prepared as in the -previous section, with some cannabis butter beforehand, to test a level that an elderly person who had not had the experience before could sustain without undue discomfort, given some caring support.

Fig 258: Dose-response curve for 5HT2a occupancy vs psilocin plasma concentration (Madsen et al. 2019). Psilocybin intake resulted in dose-related 5-HT2AR occupancies up to 72%. Plasma psilocin levels and 5-HT2AR occupancy conformed to a single-site binding model established by positron emission tomography (PET). Minor ingredients in Ps. cubensis.

This is consistent with research fig 258, which shows a non-linear saturation curve of the 5HT2a receptor with increasing plasma psilocin levels, consistent with a moderate dose of psilocin being able to induce significant effects, with little of the collateral fallout I have sometimes experienced on an heroic dose.

The resulting quantum change experience is detailed in fig 259, from what I wrote down on my descent the same evening, reawakening my sense of life direction, creative insight and transformative urgency, just as my life has been spent on an unending expedition into the unknown, sailing down a great fjord, with the tacking and gybing, often taken at veladas, to re-envisage the pointers on my journey of incarnation.

It has many of the key peak hallmarks often described in near death experiences, except here with more emphasis on the letting-go of ego-death and meditative sensory withdrawal, as noted by Chris Koch (2020):

“Similar mystical experiences [to NDEs] are commonly reported when ingesting psychoactive substances from a class of hallucinogens linked to the neurotransmitter serotonin, including psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms), LSD, DMT (aka the Spirit Molecule), and 5-MeO-DMT (aka the God Molecule), consumed as part of religious, spiritual or recreational practices”.

Rather than representing an hallucinatory drug-induced delusion such states represent conscious experience taken closer to the edge of chaos than normally occurs in the more controlled meditative and contemplative traditions of religious spirituality and mysticism. By contrast with the mind-sky visions of the meditative traditions, deep entheogenic experience brings out a more symbiotic cosmic consciousness integrated with life as a whole rather than simply seeking divine grace. This is critical for human survival because the failure to incorporate the sacred transcendence and immanence of nature severely limits the capacity of the traditions to protect human survival and the diversity of life itself. Likewise, by comparison with life-transforming NDEs, the entheogenic brain is in an augmented, rather than diminished function and condition, facilitating a vast and sometimes overloading experience of ultimate reality in fully fledged form, as noted in Griffiths et al. (2019) in psychedelic studies..

Dissolving the distinction between self and other is pivotal to this process. The internal model of reality supported by the conscious mind has an envelope of characteristics, ranging from our sensory experiences of the external world, to internal somatosensory, emotional and other representations of self and our ongoing thought processes. Thus subjective consciousness in the ego state is dynamically polarised between representations of subjective self and objective world. When these distinctions are released, the distinction between individual and universal consciousness can also become dissolved, leading to transcendence. Entheogens provide a visionary realisation of this deeper, primary consciousness, giving it experiential reality, by opening the doors of perception to the mind at large.

What is truly extraordinary about this process is that releasing the ego state, even transiently over several hours, can result in long-term integrative changes in the psyche, consistent with adaptive long-term neural potentiation, showing that the underlying processes of universal consciousness are not extinguished, but merely suppressed by the evolutionary shaping of the ego, thus attesting to the reality of the entire phenomenon.

Fig 259: “A moksha epiphany”. Written during the evening, after the experience had receded. "I am not your master.
Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out.” (Gospel of Thomas 13).

Three weeks after this quantum change experience, having feverishly worked day and night to achieve it, in completing the first full draft of this article, and the co-conceived complementary one Natty Dread and Planetary Resplendence on transforming the Christian apocalyptic tradition based on the dying Saviour, into the immortal paradigm of the evolutionary Tree of Life of the living planet.

Two months after the event, with this monograph approaching full shape, I repeated the undertaking, with 1.75 gms, again converted to psilocin under lemon juice as a tea, 40 mins after home made cannabis butter, to allow the latter to absorb in advance in the small bowel as an oily substance. Then another two months later I took 1.92 gms, reaching a full-on intense psychedelic peak. These were more enveloping as labyrinthine visionary voyages, skirting the edges of the iconic centre-of-the-cyclone transcendence of the first one but presenting other features of the extended conscious state, as is always the case with the diversity of psychedelic experiences.

What they have demonstrated to me as a breakthrough is the ability of the psilocin acid-treatment method to produce a pure, clean visionary source consciousness unparalleled in everyday experience, dream states and any form of controlled meditation, without which humanity’s understanding of the full dimensions of the psyche would be weak, pitiful and presumptuous. Taken in the late afternoon, these more powerful experiences, that had me reeling at the peak, were sharper and shorter than ingesting mushrooms predominantly containing the pro-drug psilocybin. The tea is pure dissolved entheogen and induces in the body a pure clean state, in which food is sumptuous and the inner quality of experience is abundantly overflowing for the astute participant to enter and explore the depths of immanent and transcendent consciousness. By midnight these left me able to sleep easily and wake fully refreshed, invigorated and whole, at the age of 76, confirming their fertile symbiotic relationship with my essential being, in the long, tortuous journey of incarnate existence. I have, in opening this confessional account and completing this cosmological description, traversed the long journey that began with the shock of my first experiences with LSD in London in 1968.

Since then other events have intervened, adding further complexions to the situation. I joined two expert groups on consciousness research which profoundly expanded the cosmology into a full cultural-evolutionary account of how human culture got ourselves into existential crisis, giving the cosmology oerarching scope and veracity.

Eleven days ago, in July 2022, I contracted Omicron BA5 and rapidly went down hill and had to get an emergency exemption to get Paxlovid, the new Pfizer anti-viral. I nearly succumbed the next night but it stopped the severest phase in its tracks. That made me realise that this happening was a karmic warning I needed to recognise. Although I had written a definitive existential cosmology this has not achieved the covenant of saving the Tree of Life from human destruction, so the following insights summarise my current reflections, beginning again at the original mushroom experience and leading to the journey of living redemption.

Epiphany 1

There are two and only two routes to realisation:

(1) the scientific quest of verified empirical observation of nature and the quantum universe, including traditional neuroscience reframed so that it is not a physically closed classical causal description, but a contextual boundary filter guiding conscious experience as a cosmological complement to the natural universe reflecting all the subtleties of the qualia of visionary experience under the organismic filter applied by neurodynamics on the doors of perception.

(2) the subjective quest of discovering subjective consciousness from within, through mutual empirical experience. The core of this is to make the mystical vision quest ourselves with no prior assumptions as the karmic trip of our lifetime because we are already complete conscious sentient beings who have the power to do so, but fail to understand the “Kingdom that lies before us, but men do not see it”. That kingdom is our own conscious existence and we can't understand it by analysing it, but only by living it, by descending deeply into it, by every means and by actively achieving the redemption of the living planet and the conscious universe.

If we don't do this now we are literally doomed to a rapid, or slow burn Fermi self-extinction. Those that have ears choose to hear not! Time is too short. Things are not heading the right way. We all need to be pragmatic!

Little or none of this involves the kind of rational, philosophical and consciousness research speculation the expert groups I joined are feverishly debating, conflating pseudoscientific ideas of fields, encodings, reverberations, potentials, solitons or even the Ads-Cft correspondence, all of which are just conceptual physical analogies trying to pose as descriptions of consciousness, when neuroscience is already providing a clear objective description. Decomposing and describing consciousness is not the name of the game. Experiencing reality to its foundational depths is. You don't discover meaning by analysing and describing it, but by taking personal responsibility for the fate of the living universe and redeeming it. Just learn to make the vision quest and save the universe before you die. You can culture mushrooms in a chilly bin. The key is understanding a root shift in the zeitgeist can become effortless, however unlikely it may seem, if it is true to life itself, not just human utopian folly.

"And it was the Evening of the First Day"

To understand this revelation of true redemption we have to briefly return to how it first began. This all started 13 months ago as yet another stroke of karma. I had become unable to safely take mushrooms for seven years because acute closed angle glaucoma risked instant blindness if my pupils dilated. But once I had complete lens replacements, the die was cast. I decided to take the delicate plunge. It was only a tiny morsel, 1.5 gm dry weight, something even an eighty year old spinster needn't turn an anxious hair to, just to test the visionary waters again.

If any of you want to have any insight into what the fully developed nature of pure experiential qualia are, mushroom kaleidoscopes and their deeper visions are the synesthesic sang raal. They are at once all the colours of visual insight and the sounds of immortal waves whispering and rushing and as they gather, rising to screeching intensity through ones being, in undulating resonance, and all the scents and tastes and thrills of the world too and all those things that have been and will be.

Western tradition leans to God as the external Creator, while Eastern tradition sees the Supreme Being internally as pure consciousness. When you look up I-AM, it arises in two complementary places - the Hebrew Bible and the Upanishads. The formative scope of this is extraordinary and potentially universal. This made me realise that the founding experience defining Monotheism was a visionary experience of a burning bush almost identical to my moksha epiphany, and both were essentially an NDE-like experience of meeting with a manifestation of Brahman-Īshvara as per the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. This places the entheogenic moksha epiphany and its symbiotic cosmology in the mainstream of formative religious paradigm shifts.

Krishnananda notes: In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad we are told that Brahman – the Supreme Being is Pure Consciousness, in which subjects and objects merge together in a state of Universality. The Supreme Being knew Himself as 'I-Am', inclusive of everything. He became an ‘other’ to Himself in the act of the manifestation of the Universe. Even in the Biblical parlance we have the description of God as ‘I-am- That-I-am’. One cannot say anything else about God. But, the Supreme was ‘as if’ an ‘other’, but not truly, for He, nevertheless remained as the Absolute, Self-Conscious Being, and He knew Himself as ‘I-am’. ‘I-Am’ is the highest description of God, but the Absolute is supposed to be transcendent even to this condition of ‘I-amness’ of the Universal Nature, because the state of ‘I-am’ is Self- consciousness, though it is Universal. So, in Vedānta, a distinction is drawn between this Universal ‘I-am’ and the Absolute as it is – the distinction between Brahman ultimate reality and Īshvara the godhead, manifested in Vishnu and Shiva.

Ishvara, (Sanskrit: "Lord") in Hinduism, God understood as a person, in contrast to the impersonal transcendent brahman. The root of the word Ishvara comes from īś- ( , Ish) meaning "capable of" and "owner, ruler, chief of". The second part of the word Ishvara is vara which means depending on context, "best, excellent, beautiful", "choice, wish, blessing, boon, gift", and "suitor, lover, one who solicits a girl in marriage". The composite word, Ishvara literally means "owner of best, beautiful", "ruler of choices, blessings, boons", or "chief of suitor, lover". In Mahayana Buddhism it is used as part of the compound "Avalokiteśvara" ("lord who hears the cries of the world") – a bodhisattva revered for his compassion. When referring to divine as female, particularly in Shaktism, the feminine Īśvarī is sometimes used. Particular communities within the Hindu fold differ in their understanding of the relation between Ishvara and brahman. Theistic communities maintain that the two are one and the same or even that the personal representation is superior; others, including some adherents of Advaita Vedanta, argue that Ishvara is a limited and ultimately inadequate representation of Brahman. Ishvara, as Avalokiteśvara in coitus with Tara, carries all the features of the male-female 'Elohim of Genesis.

So it was that I lay down in the deepening twilight as the effects began to come on. I saw my son look curiously in and to avoid him distracting me I turned away, and noticed the little streaks of light in the corner of my eye which mean that at any moment I could fold over into the dream world of the nierika. I reminded myself – you're not here just to indulge yourself but to discover the meaning of life, the universe and everything, so I summoned up empty mindfulness and gave my self back to the universe in fana or self-annihilation.

And down I went into the epiphany of being – a kind of jewelled seventh heaven where everything is illuminated and everything is illuminating. And there was Brahman exactly as in the near death experience. That thou art. Brahman is me. Brahman is my cosmic apotheosis manifest telepathically as one is to one. But Brahman isn't just here to say "Hi". He is saying the world is in acute peril – indeed the entire universe is in peril, because, if we self-destruct as we are heading towards doing, and conscious life on Earth as we know it ceases, we don't know that this great universe in which we exist can remain manifest, because we don't have certainty or even any knowledge that there is other life in the universe.. Brahman is vulnerable too – eternally vulnerable. And Brahman is silently as one is to one saying to go back to your life and redeem the entire living universe as your life's work. You can do it because you are mortal on ground zero. Go to the ends of the Earth and stop short at nothing. And he imparted to me the elements of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, just as in Fred Hoyle's (1957) sci-fi novel "The Black Cloud" that took me weeks to begin to understand. That's the moksha epiphany transcending the incarnation cycle.

Likewise, Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. But he saw a flame of fire coming out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and the bush burned with fire and was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside, and see this great sight (experience this transformative vision), and discover why the bush is not burnt, and God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God. And He said, I have seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry and I know their sorrows. And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them unto a land flowing with milk and honey. And when Moses enquired what his people should call Him, He said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

So Brahman is also 'Elohim and 'Elohim is just as vulnerable. Really the 'Elohim of Genesis one is male and female in the likeness of humanity as humanity's cosmic apotheosis, not the reverse. So the damning thing is that our self-centred egotism could literally lay waste to God, the Universe and everything if we don't perform the living redemption of the Tree of Life throughout our generations forever.

Shortly after, as it always happens, the spell broke, and I fell out of the nierika portal and Rohan was looking at me curiously and saying "Are you okay?" And I said "Yes thanks!" "I couldn't be more okay!" "I'm galvanised". And here we are thirteen months later and apart from the cosmology, which everyone looks the other way over, to neither confirm nor deny, so nothing has changed.

Chris Nunn: Stanislav Grof thought his ‘holotropic breathwork’ was second best to LSD for enabling ‘higher’ states of consciousness, but I don’t think he ever said how or why. And you need to be a bit wary of physiological measures which generally have multifactorial determinants.

Chris King: LSD is too strong and unpredictable. Just take your fungal entheogenic toxins like a true visionary adult should, fearlessly with no hesitation or regrets! The universe evolved them for our realisation as a compensation for our species-dominant egotism destroying the biosphere. Although there are no guarantees, they are heads and tails over pure Vedanta and pure spirituality. Breathing and meditation is not a substitute but an adjunct. They aren't alternatives. As I showed you above, fana is also the way into moksha.

Epiphany 2

To understand the complementary relationship between (a) the physical and natural universe and (b) subjective conscious existence, we need to understand that the way the standard model of quantum physics and the symmetry-breaking of the colour and weak-electromagnetic forces occurred is (1) a critical indicator that the universe is absolutely destined to enable life to unfold including through natural evolution and for conscious life to be possible and (2) that the wave-particle complementarity of the quantum forces, especially electromagnetism as the most large scale force, (along with gravity), is key to subjective conscious volition over the quantum universe.

(1) Quantum physics is not just a ball and stick fatalistic mechanism but facilitates a highly creative life generating cosmological process. The chemical elements of life are a very subtle symmetry-broken products of the colour, weak and electromagnetic forces in interplay. You can't just cite carbon as a key element of life or ignore everything but the EM force, or you brutalise physics and turn it into a mechanistic unconscious nightmare. The reality is that the cosmic production of the elements through symmetry-breaking leads to biomolecules and fractal tissue structures as the cosmological climax of life in paradise on the cosmic equator in space-time.

(2) Quantum uncertainty is built in in such a way as to just make it possible for subjective consciousness to have causal physical effect, as David Chalmers put very nicely on closer to the truth: "If you wanted to have consciousness to effect physics, it looks like physics could not be designed more perfectly."

The Elusive Subjective

Now this has a kick back to understanding what subjective consciousness is and what it isn't and why formally analysing it is specious. Primitive subjectivity is the effortless ability of the subjective 'Shivaic' aspect of cosmology to become moulded by the physical constraints of the 'Shakti' aspect of cosmological physics.

In very elemental contexts like quanta, all that can be realised is the root notion of consciousness as the historically-entangled special relativistic wave function spatio-temporally encoding the past and future of the quantum. The 'free will' is the intrinsic capacity for reduction of the wave packet in which a 'decision' is made. But there is no real evidence for adaptive integrated qualia. Things begin to get more interesting in butterfly effect systems, where there is a dynamical boundary condition filter in place in the global dynamic itself interacting with quantum uncertainty.

A discrete transition to attentive sentient consciousness occurs in the eucaryote endosymbiosis where chaotic sensitivity to physical modes, such as light (photons), vibrations (phonons), and orbital influences (olfaction) begin to lead to boundary filter constraints in the membrane dynamics where meaningful subjective qualia could in principle become expressed. With the multi-cellular brain these become "phenomenally" expanded, coupled with cerebral neurodynamic constraints to become the dynamic integrated qualia we call the experiences we can subjectively experience in the first person.

But as we described in Epiphany 1 these are framed by the formative neurodynamic constraints of the doors of perception filters we associate with sensory perceptual processing superimposed on the physical sensory constraints. These are not analysed by decomposing the adaptive capacity for coherent qualitative experience as a kind of subjective qualia mechanism in itself, but through causally open attentive-intentive neurodynamics.

Finally, because the universe evolves to interactive climax in the biota, although it is possible that other cosmic structures such as black holes, stars, galaxies, or Gaia herself could have primitive phenomenological volitional experience, the subjective aspect is clearly positioned to be a complement to the most elegant complex low energy interactive processes in the multicellular biota themselves and to be supremely adaptive to the doors of perception filters these provide for organismic survival in an uncertain environment.

So we are brought back square one to the overriding reality that (1) All forms of conscious and superconscious entity arise from and are manifest through the biota, including Brahman as ultimate reality and 'Elohim as "God" apotheosis. (2) That while the universe is necessary, subjective consciousness in the biota is primary without which it remains unclear the physical universe or the cosmic mind could become manifest.

So our conscious duty to the subjective aspect is, as stated in the first round, is living redemption, not futile attempts at mechanistic or structural analysis, which rather, disable the subject from active volitional agency over their affairs and world redemption.

Epiphany 3

So is my mushroom vision of Brahman (1) a meeting with ultimate reality as I claim, or it is just (2) a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing, or (3) somewhere in between, some kind of hallucinatory 'false' vision of my own mortal angst projected into the kaleidoscopic aether?

Here are the reasons why (2) and (3) are completely mistaken.

1. A key interpretation of the Fermi Paradox – why there is no apparent evidence of life out there – is that It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself – the Medea hypothesis (Ward 2009). We are manifestly running this risk to the brink as I speak!

2. Brian Cox on the BBC ahead of COP26 warned that Earth’s demise could rid galaxy of meaning Brian notes on the BBC that "Unique events that led to civilisation mean its demise could ‘eliminate meaning in the galaxy for ever’. He is right and the conclusion is that this is not just what we are doing to ourselves and the diversity of life as a whole, but the living galaxy and the universe.

3. Uncertainty that life can Reboot: Although abiogenesis is eminently plausible scientifically , there is as yet no empirical demonstration it can be achieved de novo. Our scientific intelligence leads us to believe that the organic molecules produced in profusion in galactic gas clouds are eminently fecund to generate life where the conditions become possible but that the processes involved take about half a billion years on a goldilocks planet to come about but this remains only a scientific hypothesis. We can't afford to snuff life out on the causal assumption it can create itself from scratch.

4. Squandering the Cosmic Heritage: We do all need to have some root faith in the ultimate fecundity of life to regenerate itself anew, after all it happened didn't it? And because it did, we appeared. But we are already 13.5 billion years down the universe's evolution. The universe is no longer a babe in arms spawning the first blazars. Simply throwing up our hands helplessly and depending on this option to roll back human folly is far worse than futile. What more stupid fate could we envision for ourselves than to struggle for 500 million years to spark replicative life, another two billion years to form amoebo-flagellates and another billion years of unique evolution to get past the dinosaurs and finally become Homo sapiens, only to blow it apart in a nuclear holocaust through our own egotistical tribalism, or run the biosphere into the dirt by over exploitation? Recall that the only country which has prosecuted unilateral nuclear warfare is the US. This was a precedent humanity should have stepped back from and not set the die for the nuclear arms race. Although these conflicts have arisen from far right leaders namely Hitler and Stalin it is the democratic world that is guilty of nuclear warfare when Japan was already on the brink of surrender. We are also continually failing to learn the lessons from far right politics and the risks it invokes.

5. False Religious Assumptions: We have no evidence whatever that there is an inscrutable ultimate reality called Brahman independent of our own experience of it. The evidence contradicts it. Moksha is so difficult to really achieve, the Vedantic tradition had to invent reincarnation to postpone full enlightenment. There is no convincing evidence that all the meditative and contemplative traditions have genuine transformative power over reality. There is no evidence whatever that a creator deity with root power over the universe exists independently of our belief systems. So my Brahman experience is as genuine as it gets and more transparently so than the contrived claims of the Yogis for which little has really changed in 2000 years.

6. Helplessness and Denial: Finally we all know the problem is that while all of us feel the Earth is heading towards existential crisis, none of you have any way to cope with the three key existential threats, the mass extinction of the diversity of life, human induced climate crisis and nuclear mutually assured destruction. We are living in the valley of the shadow of death and we know it. Some of you even try to claim climate crisis is a democrat deep state plot because you are choosing to drown in disinformation. But we know that we are burning all the coal that goes back 358 million years to the first great carboniferous forests and all the oily algal deposits of an age of 250 million years for the oil. We have to know this is disrupting and degrading and acting against the living Earth. Yet here we sit driving our autos and our urban food chains unable to get to these issues for selfish reasons of taxation, inflation and sheer personal ambition.

So what to do about it? We need to create a small world network based on limited degrees of separation to identify the three key existential threats – mass extinction of the diversity of life, human induced climate crisis and nuclear mutually assured destruction as primary objectives. We have spent decades trying to deal with the nuclear threat and remain on the brink of uncertainty if push came to shove. We can't let any of these drop until the planet is redeemed.

The Buck Stops at Karma My Dear

All this Covid episode and what it means comes down to karma, a philosophy I tend to despise but lives within me at all times, and particularly times of crisis. When I caught Omicron and went down hill fast I thought everything was utterly meaningless. Ukraine is in flames. The US is splitting itself apart and returning to religious chauvinism overturning the struggle for women's rights. And so it went. I tried to compile a few additions to the cosmology, which I will include, but otherwise it was pure ennui. Then I realised the buck still stops with me and I haven't fulfilled the karmic agenda. That's when I realised karma had struck (again) and regained my vitality and could eat again. And that's why I am sending these three epistles.

Let me explain what karma actually is. It's not a moral law, it's a manifestation of quantum singularity when the universe touches us on the shoulder. To take a very loose analogy, everyday life, as a bed of wine and roses is like sailing down our multiply entangled wave function. We are part of a great whole of life, offspring, world hopes of a better future, compassionate sentiments, the unifying power of love, the collective will to compassionate justice. There is no need to stick our necks out. But then there's the nitty-gritty – accidents happen, illness like covid, family, social and international crises. Here is where reduction of the wave packet comes into the forefront and shatters the equilibrium.

Just so as incarnate individuals, we are both singular and part of the great whole. But some of us become marked by our personal karma in a way which can set us apart. The mushroom trip that set off the cosmology, through unblinding my glaucoma with devastating insight has marked me. And going down the tubes with covid has marked the process with added significance, turning meaninglessness into acute urgency. The covenant has not been fulfilled. I still have to go to the ends of the Earth to save it and time is even shorter and the situation even more precarious.

The basic answer to this is that I am, and Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is, as a transparent affirmation, the ultimate remedy for survival of the human species and the immortal survival of the diversity of life. I am thus the bearer of the Logos of perennial immortality throughout our generations forever amen. This I swear, that I came into this world to bear witness to the truth, that I bare before you the long term future goodness of the age of Paradise. This is not the signature of a false prophet. Rather, the balance of the probabilities is that my vision is a rock of sustainability amid a swirling ocean of human folly and misadventure, on all sides, leading to existential crisis.

The answer is judge wisely. Cast lots on your own garments, in advance to test the relative waters of veracity. Do not wait for your executioners to do it on your final day as happened to Jesus. Thus I am not Yeshua reincarnated. Nor am I pretending to be him:

"I am as a man who is a new man, with new limbs and life,

and the light of the Morning Star in his eyes." (Plumed Serpent).

I could have easily paid no attention to this birth karma. But would that have been fair or considerate, if something could be done to protect life. As it was, I studied William James' "Varieties of Religious Experience" decided psychedelics were more insightful than religious doctrine, wandered India as a sadhu and made a pilgrimage to the sources of the world's power plants. Then when I started seriously taking mushrooms, strange things happened.

As an adolescent I had had a dream. I was in dry parched deserted forest and a Lion was staring at me with eyes of both pity and contempt, because I was the species which was bringing nature to her knees. I realised I was the accursed Homo and so I made my way to my own kind – an almost endless queue of people waiting for the chance to work in a dark factory for food. The dream haunted me.

Mushrooms became my allies and my spirit nature and I realised from the work of Joseph Campbell and others that there was a deeper Jungian current of archetypal reality that could have played a part in the events of apocalyptic heroes such as Jesus. I realised the world was stuck in perpetual death-grip of re-celebration of Jesus' sacrifice and conceived of the idea that it was possible to make a second journey of spiritual renewal to correct what had gone wrong in the year zero and redeem the immortal age of paradise, not as Jesus' second coming, but as a true redeemer in the root tradition. The mushrooms encouraged this and their access to numinous reality realised it. Of course I couldn't reveal any of this because, at the time they were strictly class A prohibited drugs.

Stranger things happened. In the 1980s, the mushroom suggested that I make the millennial journey to Jerusalem if the world hadn't addressed the mass extinction of life by then. But then it came back with a horrific vision that somehow my daughter's fertility would be impaired as a consequence. Then her first offspring was born with Down syndrome. I had become adroit at casting lots on my garments to the extent that I was able to know enough of what I was up against, and made the millennial vigil, as an academic sabbatical hosted by liberal Jews in the Holy city with creditable flair as a stealth raid to celebrate the sacred reunion of woman and man and to reflower the Tree of Life as simple rites of passage to the new epoch.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is largely complete but it's a Rosetta stone artefact. The essential work is still to come.

Epiphany 4

Before we go further, there are some things we really need to very carefully understand. Mushrooms are not just hallucinatory agents. They are not hallucinatory agents at all. They show you ultimate realities that are visions that, once they have entered us can become devastatingly true. When you enter a mushroom vision you are taking on more than you can possibly anticipate.

As Maria Sabina put it:

'There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby and invisible. 'The more you go inside the world of teonanacatl , the more things are seen. And you also see our past and our future, which are there together as a single thing already achieved, already happened ... Millions of things I saw and knew. And there is where God lives, where the dead live, the spirits and the saints' ... I knew and saw God: an immense clock that ticks, the spheres that go slowly around, and inside the stars, the earth, the entire universe, the day and the night, the cry and the smile, the happiness and the pain. He who knows to the end the secret of teonanacatl – can even see that infinite clockwork’.

We always have to be very careful with what our visions wish on the world. Take my declaration of jihad in the Song of the Biosphere which promptly came true a month later on 9-11.

when it comes to the final struggle - jihad of the biosphere

there's only one true rogue nation - the great American shaitan

can we fly so high we'll pass right to the other side

and never fall in flames? will we ever be the same again

we'll become the living soul, the primal source, the shining goal

the beginning and the end of life, the happiness and the pain

can we bear it all again?

When we enter the visionary state we have to bear in mind that our own shortcomings may lead us to subtly distort the vision and lead either towards heaven or hell, as Aldous Huxley warned. We don’t want to adhere to the fallacious view that war is necessary, or that success of an outcome requires a compensating sacrifice to God.

So when I had the horrific vision that my daughter’s fertility might become occluded as some sort of sacrificial consequence of me attempting to overturn the Christian tradition of blood sacrifice to celebrate an empty cannibalistic Eucharist sacrament, consuming Christ’s flesh and blood, this was no pretentious Aztec vision nor anything I wanted in any way to come to pass. The real source of this notion comes not from some Aztec mushroom delusion but the diabolical sacrificial nature of Christianity itself. To me God giving his only begotten son as a sacrifice for sin is the equivalent of Huitzilopochtli sacrificing Moctezuma so that his followers could be forgiven their homicidal sins.

The canonical gospels all make clear this sacrifice is and remains central to the Christian concept of God:

And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things,

and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes,

and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he spake that saying openly (Mark 8:31).

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16).

And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission (Heb 9:22)

This means Abba is not a loving father, but a filicidal demiurge, however you try to pretend otherwise. Every Christian needs to take personal responsibility for the false vision they are perpetuating. It is truly sinful to turn a blind eye. James Tabor (2015) has set the record straight about Yeshua's actual role in this, accurately linking it to be an insertion in Mark that reflects a vision of Paul and is thus not Yeshua's actual words.

You all need to appreciate that, in coming to these strange messianic and sacrificial visions, I was a tenured academic taking mushrooms on an almost weekly basis, knowing that I was guarding the true visionary sacrament which could redeem humanity and bring about the epoch of long-term future goodness under the banner of reflowering the Tree of Life, announced discretely in Jerusalem in the millennium, while Yeshua's body continued bleeding to death in every Christian church altar, so that his followers could figuratively consume his flesh and blood in an empty powerless token to endlessly facilitate his ascendence on the third day to save them from their sins.

So the source of my dark vision, even though the mushroom was speaking the whole truth of what would come to pass a decade later, was in a sense the mildest possible accomodation to this unbelievably diabolical two thousand year cannibalistic ground hog day that had turned into martyrdom, Empire, Crusade, witch hunt and Inquisition. Anyone in the Christian tradition, before making any attempt to justify the overall good influence of the Western sacramental tradition needs only to turn to Perpetua's untimely martyrdom, and contrast it with the image below to say which sacramental path is true to life – the Eucharist, or the flesh of the Gods – Teonanácatl.

I clearly in all truth as a guardian of humanity and life as a whole, recognising the true status of the living sacraments in relation to the Western sacramental tradition, had and have a duty to redeem this diabolical belief, crafted by Pauline Judaic Hellenism, but it doesn't need any form of sacrifice, as Christianity claims, to overturn it! Just accepting the horrific sacrificial vision is real when we have to know in our heart of hearts it is a wholly corrupt fallacy. How any Christian on Earth can not see how fundamentally wrong and unethical this is, or pretend this is the basis of a true religion, leaves me aghast. There can be no justification, and no rationalisation in terms of Christian brotherly love, eternal life or anything else for this.

Re-Liberating Matriarchal Fertility

But the vision did come true a decade later, and my daughter’s first child emerged with Down syndrome, five years before my vigil to Jerusalem. So what does a loving father do, when it seems that their accidental vision of fertility sacrifice appears to have actually come true, whether it actually caused the events or not? That father has to try to set in motion a counter-vision of redemption and fulfilment to heal the travesty.

Many parents have children with Down syndrome and love them dearly, but there is a risk that caring for a disadvantaged first child can lead a new couple both to feel that they should devote their future life to the care of a dependent child and to lose faith in their own fertility and a full future family life together. This would just cement a bad vision into a perpetuity of undesirable outcomes.

Fig 260: Sprit Catcher Baby Cardigan

So seventeen days after the birth, I began a clandestine project of renewal. I secured the image of the incompleted spirit catcher above. I then created the Fair Isle design in the second image. Finally I knitted the design into a tiny jacket for a newborn baby with the spirit catcher on the back. It was really much too small for a baby and was intended to give them both the hope and confidence in one another and in the fertility of life itself to make a real family future possible and gave it to them over an evening meal. Her husband looked at it rather despairingly and threw it in the boot of he car as he left, but three years later a healthy baby boy was born, then seven years later after even more reluctance, a third healthy baby boy and the family was at last, a living proof of redemption of matriarchal fertility from dark visions.

So please remember carefully that mushrooms are far more than a hippie flash in the pan, or some kind of adolescent party kicks. As Maria Sabina said, they hold within them a reality we have barely begun to penetrate. There are more intense agents like LSD, but it’s not the sheer strength of the effects but the reality they reveal that is the key.

Outside the Inside Out

I have spent all my life up to 77 trying to genuinely explore the nature of the universe and discover ways in which physical reality, particularly at the quantum level can give rise to the enigma of conscious experience. The same for the ADS-Cft correspondence and pseudoparticles like the helium 3 fluid and particulate phases and even tachyons, let alone vying with Hameroff and Penrose and David Chalmers at Tucson Quantum Mind 2002.

That was all okay until that very mild dose of mushrooms in mid-2021, which flipped my universe inside out. Way back in the 1960s as a student, there was an acquaintance, Harry Wong, who painted an enigmatic art work “Outside the Inside Out” about the same time I first read about LSD the insanity drug in a local tabloid. Today on spec thinking of writing this e-mail, already holistically conceived before the words that are now flying off the tips of my fingers, I casually went on Google and thanks to Pinterest, there is one and only one image remaining. Here it is:

Fig 261: Outside the Inside Out

Now the title is a pun on an image of his jail cell for drug possession, probably hard drugs, but the metaphor is a potent expression of what happens when, after literally hundreds of wild trips seeking white light illumination, in a karmic twist due to having acute closed angle glaucoma and lens replacement eye surgery and taking a very mild exploratory dose of mushies to see if my eyes can stand it and suddenly finding I had fallen completely outside the inside out of the bubble of perception, as Carlos Castaneda called it and into the nierika as the Huichol describe, I was in an NDE with Brahman and so the story goes …

This is an event for me just like Buddha discovering the death and decay he had been sheltered from when he left the shelter of the royal chambers, and it comes with a huge sting in the tail. Everything I have lived for in the quantum connection that makes physics able to evoke the conscious mind materially came apart and I had to put it all together from the other side of the Styx.

The end result is a cosmological ground shift away from the occluded story of how the brain does it all the way back to veridical reality and the efficacy of subjective conscious volition over the physical universe and the cosmological axiom.

At the same time I discovered Gallego & Dakić's (2021), little arxiv paper which shows that the whole idea of the border post between the classical and quantum worlds can be an illusion in biology where non–IID processes are the key to brain dynamics and evolution.

This freed me form having to find some idiosyncratic pseudo-physical connection to make Stan’s "brain makes mind" agenda feasible.

It is transparently obvious if you take even a small step back from this obsession to find the mechanism, that the whole dynamic of the organism from quantum wave function and measurement, through molecular folding and kinetics, through enzyme active site quantum tunnelling, ion channel kinetics, open system quantum chaos, edge of chaos instability, and the fractal structures of membranes, ribosomes cell organelles though cells, to tissues and the whole conscious organism is one macroscopic resonant quantum system that can never be decomposed cleanly into interacting mechanistic parts.

Falling outside the inside out means also that I can dispense entirely with speculative pseudo-scientific reasoning and just add one minimal axiom confirmed by any of us that are honest with ourselves even to go to the toilet or to eat, let alone ponder serious thoughts or have deep psychedelic insights. That’s the bare bones of it!

The Bushmen always carry poisoned arrows for hunting and like all of us they fear infidelity, there is a saying: As one of the !Kung men in an argument about a marriage put it to his adversary, their dispute could be quickly settled with an arrow. "Just one little arrow”.

The cosmological axiom that subjectivity is primal extending physical cosmology, although full consciousness emerges later with the eucaryote endosymbiosis, is that little arrow, leading to mutual affirmation that subjective consciousness has efficacy of volition over the physical universe, freeing us from both materialistic and religious bondage as transformative conscious agents protecting life in the universe.. It justifies recognition for what it actually achieves in clarification of subjective reality for the benefit of life as a whole and the integrity of our cosmological account of reality.

Closing the Circle

Just to come full circle over the karma of the glaucoma and the cosmology mushroom vision, and this acute Omicron BA5 episode, in the middle of writing this epistle this morning, suddenly I could no longer see the words “self-assembling” in the top image in the figure. I tested both eyes and I couldn’t see it in either, so it wasn’t my new synthetic eye lenses or my retinas. Then I realised I couldn’t read any of the text I had just composed because half of it was disappearing, so it was in my visual cortex. Was this the end of my visual life? Was this the moral punishment for my bad karma? I looked at my face in the mirror and there were no eyes, just a blur. Had I caused a stroke trying to go to the toilet? I began to see fortification patterns and decided to place my faith in waiting it out as a kind of migraine aura. About thirty minutes later everything settled down to normal. But it’s a warning to everyone who reads this not to depended on me to save the world for you.

Please understand where I am positioned. I have a vast scientific research web site updated in real time with a comprehensive description of scientific reality from quantum cosmology through the evolution of the tree of life from biogenesis to humanity and neuroscience.

Quantum Reality and Cosmology

Biocosmology

The Tree of Life: Tangled Roots and Sexy Shoots:Tracing the genetic pathway from LUCA to Homo sapiens

Humanity's Evolutionary Heritage

Culture Out of Africa

Entheogens, the Conscious Brain and Existential Reality

On the shadow side I have descended for decades into psychedelic states and spent whole seasons submerged in spiritual reality with fresh first person visionary eyes to see right into the events that invoked the human spiritual consciousness and the weird karmic twists therein all the way back to 150,000 years ago. That is the shadow side that is generally occluded.

I would be wasting my existence if I didn't use this qualification when it is most needed to ensure our survival and transform both the scientific and religious paradigms. Like all good shamans that’s what I was born to do. So I am trying to make the religious paradigm shift from the centre of the cyclone, because that iswhere the beginning and end of time lies and where the uncertainties go wide open right at the source that evoked it all. All the beings that have gone before us are complexes of life-long non-IID quantum interventions, each life history constituting a unique quantum instance from creation to annihilation. I am trying to use mine fully aligned to good effect to transform our understanding to regain planetary immortality. Because it is to put our attention on the highest possible Self in the Now, where all the possibilities for transformation lie.

Fig 262

If you would like to hear this weird quantum reality sung in a beautiful accounting here it is: Kitten's Cradle lyrics

The onus on us is to bring forth what we have within us. If we do, these words come true and the whole epoch is realised.

"That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves.

That which you do not have within you [will] kill you if you do not have it within you.”

(Gospel of Thomas 70)

Aldous Huxley, Moksha and the Yellow Mushroom

This section contains key excerpts from “Moksha” (Huxley 1962) his edited posthumous writings, his lecture on visionary experience and his peaceful death on LSD, that is a fitting sequel to his representation of a similar passing away in his climax novel Island. I am including this in retrospect because of a karmic experience I had in February 2024 realising that Huxley had named the sacrament in his novel “Island” (1962) moksha or moksha-medicine, which I had completely overlooked in my experience of a more Vedic moksha experience of union with Brahman in the formative mushroom experience that precipitated this work. Because I had read “Island” in the heady LSD days a decade before I had an opportunity to experience natural entheogens, and like many others saw “Island” and the “yellow mushroom” as science fiction, when he was talking about gold tops, the connection to the actual sacred mushroom and moksha had literally passed me by. Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is very much a descendent of Huxley’s vision in “Island” so am including this short section in recognition of his heritage.

Huxley's last novel - the crowning work of his final decade - took him five years to write. For perhaps the only time in his writing career he questioned, his creative ability to successfully 'poetize and dramatize the intellectual material and create a work which would be simultaneously funny, tragic, Iyrical and profound'. To Osmond he described the task as 'trying to imagine what could be done to create a good society, dedicated to eliciting aII the latent powers and gifts of individuals ,..' He worked into the book some of Laura's psychotherapy techniques. lsland is dedicated to her: The Doors of Perception was dedicated to Maria: as SybiIIe Bedford notes, these are the only books among the nearly fifty Aldous published which bear dedications.

The lslanders - the Palanese – use a drug called moksha: a kind of perfected psychedelic in the form of a cultivated, yellow mushroom growing in the mountains. The substance is also called 'moksha-medicine' and provides 'the full-blown mystical experience'. Unlike the soma of Brave New World, moksha is not tor escapists: a major ethic

of the lslanders is 'paying attention'. In a rite-of-passage ceremony in which the drug is given to Palanese youth, the guide reveals its essential message: 'Liberation . .. the ending of sorrow, ceasing to be what you ignorantly think you are and becoming what you are in fact. For a little while, thanks to the moksha-medicine, you wiII know what it's like to be what in fact you are, what in fact you always have been.’

A key extract from ‘Island’: This focuses on the key ingredients of Huxley’s vision of world healing in the context of the Palanese, the nature of organic natural visionary transcendence, the yellow mushroom, the very name moksha medicine and the reaction of the paranoid world at large which ultimately culminates in the tragic invasion of earthly paradise.

'Sex is different here,' Murugan insisted. 'Because of the yoga of love?' Will asked, remembering the little nurse's rapturous face. The boy nodded. 'They've got something that makes them think they're perfectly happy, and they don't want anything else.’ 'What a blessed state!’ There’s nothing blessed about it,' Murugan snapped. It's just stupid and disgusting. No progress' only sex' sex' sex' And of course that beastly dope they're all given. ’Dope?' Will repeated in some astonishment' dope in a place here Susila had said there were no addicts? 'What kind of dope?’ – It’s made out of toadstools. Toadstools!, He spoke in a comical caricature of the Rani's vibrant tone of outraged spirituality’. 'Those lovely red toadstools that gnomes used to sit on?’ 'No, they are yellow.'People used to go out and collect them in the mountains. Nowadays the things are grown in special fungus, beds at the High Altitude Experimental Station' Scientifically cultivated dope' Pretty' isn't it?’

‘What's in a name?’ said Dr Robert with a laugh. ”Answer, practically everything. Having had the misfortune to be brought up in Europe, Murugan calls it dope and feels about it all the disapproval that, by conditioned reflex, the dirty word evokes. We, on the contrary, give the stuff good names - the moksha-medicine, the reality revealer, the truth-and-beauty pill. And we know, by direct experience, that the good names are deserved. Whereas our young friend here has no first-hand knowledge of the stuff and can't be persuaded even to give it a try. For him, it's dope and dope is something that, by definition, no decent person ever indulges in.'

'What does His Highness say to that?' Will asked. Murugan shook his head. 'All it gives you is a lot of illusions,'

he muttered. 'Why should I go out of my way to be made a fool of?’ 'Why indeed?' said Vijaya with good-humoured irony. ‘seeing that, in your normal condition, you alone of the human race are never made a fool of and never have illusions about anything!’ 'I never said that,' Murugan protested. 'All I mean is that I don't went any of your false samadhi. 'How do you know it's false?' Dr Robert inquired. 'Because the real thing only comes to people after years and years of meditation and tapas and... well, you know - not going with women.’ 'Murugan,' Vijaya explained to Will, 'is one of the Puritans. He's outraged by the fact that, with four hundred milligrams of moksha-medicine in their bloodstreams, even beginners - yes, and even boys and girls who make love together - can catch a glimpse of the world as it looks to someone who has been liberated from his bondage to the ego.'

‘But it isn't real,'Murugan insisted. 'Not real!’ Dr Robert repeated. 'You might as well say that the experience of feeling real isn't real.’ 'You're begging the question,' Will objected. 'An experience can be real in relation to something going on inside your skull but completely irrelevant to anything outside.’ 'Of course,'Dr Robert agreed. 'Do you know what goes on inside your skull, when you’ve taken a dose of the mushroom?'

'We know a little.’ 'And we're trying all the time to find out more,' Vijaya added’ 'For example,' said Dr Robert, 'we've found that the people whose EEG doesn't show any alpha-wave activity when they’re relaxed aren't likely to respond significantly to the moksha-medicine. That means that, for about fifteen per cent of the population, we have to find other approaches to liberation.’ 'Another thing we're just beginning to understand,'said Vilaya’ 'is the neurological correlate of these experiences. What’s happening in the brain when you're having a vision? And what’s happening when you pass from a pre-mystical to a genuinely mystical state of mind?'

'Do you know?’ Will asked. "Know" is a big word. Let's say we're in a position to make some plausible guesses. Angels and New Jerusalems and Madonnas and Future Buddhas - they're all related to some kind of unusual stimulation to the brain areas of primary projection - the visual cortex, for example. just how the moksha-medicine produces those unusual stimuli we haven't yet found out’. The important fact is that, somehow or other, it does produce them'

And somehow or other, it also does something unusual to the silent areas of the brain, the areas not specifically concerned with perceiving, or moving, or feeling.’ 'And how do the silent areas respond? 'Will inquired.

'Let's start with what they don't respond with" They don’t respond with visions or auditions, they don't respond with telepathy or clairvoyance or any other kind of parapsychological performance. None of that amusing pre-mystical stuff Their response is the full-blown mystical experience. You know - One in all and All in one, The basic experience with its corollaries - boundless compassion, fathomless mystery and meaning.’ 'Not to mention joy,' said Dr Robert, 'inexpressible joy.’ 'And the whole caboodle is inside your skull,' said Will. ‘Strictly private. No reference to any external fact except a toadstool” 'Not real,'Murugan chimed in. 'That's exactly what I was trying to say,’ 'You're assuming,' said Dr Robert, 'that the brain produces consciousness. I'm assuming that it transmits consciousness' And my explanation is no more farfetched than yours. How on earth can a set of events belonging to one order be experienced as a set of events belonging to an entirely different and incommensurable order? Nobody has the faintest idea. All one can do is to accept the facts and concoct hypotheses. And one hypothesis is just about as good, philosophically speaking, as another. You say that the moksha-medicine does something to the silent areas of the brain which causes them to produce a set of subjective events to which people have given the name 'mystical experience.' I say that the moksha-medicine does something to the silent areas of the brain which opens some kind of neurological sluice and so allows a larger volume of Mind with a large "M" to flow into your mind with a small "m". You can't demonstrate the truth of your hypothesis, and I can't demonstrate the truth of mine. Even if you could prove that I'm wrong, would it make any practical difference?’ 'I'd have thought it would make all the difference,'said Will.

'Do you like music?' Dr Robert asked. 'More than most things.’ 'And what, may I ask, does Mozart's G-Minor Quintet refer to? Does it refer to Allah? Or Tao? Or the second person of the Trinity? Or the Atman-Brahman?’ Will laughed. 'Let's hope not.’ 'But that doesn't make the experience of the G-Minor Quintet any less rewarding. Well, it's the same with the kind of experience that you get with the moksha-medicine, or through prayer and fasting and spiritual exercises. Even if it doesn't refer to anything outside itself, it's still the most important thing that ever happened to you. Like music, only incomparably more so. And if you give the experience a chance, if you're prepared to go along with it, the results are incomparably more therapeutic and transforming.

So maybe the whole thing does happen inside one's skull. Maybe it is private and there's no unitive knowledge of anything but one's own physiology. Who cares? The fact remains that the experience can open one's eyes and make one blessed and transform one's whole life.' There was a long silence. 'Let me tell you something,' he resumed, turning to Murugan. 'Something I hadn’t intended to talk about to anybody. But now I feel that perhaps I have a duty, a duty to the throne, a duty to Pala and all its people - an obligation to tell you about this very private experience’ perhaps the telling may help you to be a little more understanding about your country and its ways.' He was silent for a moment; then in a quietly matter-of-fact tone, 'I suppose you know about my wife,' he went on. His face still averted, Murugan nodded. 'I was sorry,' he mumbled, 'to hear she was so ill.’ 'It's a matter of a few days now'' said Dr Robert. 'Four or five at the most. But she's still perfectly lucid. perfectly conscious of what's happening to her' Yesterday she asked me if we could take the moksha-medicine together' We'd taken it together,' he added parenthetically, 'once or twice each year for the last thirty-seven years - ever since we decided to get married" And now once more - for the last time, the last, last time. There was a risk involved, because of the damage to her liver- But we decided it was a risk worth taking. And as it turned out, we were right' The moksha-medicine - the dope, as you prefer to call it - hardly upset her at all. All that happened to her was the mental transformation.’

He was silent, and Will suddenly became aware of the squeak and scrabble of caged rats and, through the open window, the babel of tropical life and the call of a distant mynah bird. ‘Here and now, boys. Here and now …' 'You're like that mynah,' said Dr Robert at last. 'Trained to repeat words you don't understand or know the reason for' “It isn't real It isn't real" But if you'd experienced what Lakshmi and I went through yesterday you'd know better. You'd know it was much more real than what you call reality. More real than what you're thinking and feeling at this moment. More real than the world before your eyes. But not real is what you've been taught to say. Not real, not real.' Dr Robert laid a hand affectionately on the boy's shoulder. 'You've been told that we're just a set of self-indulgent dope eaters, wallowing in illusions and false samadhis. Listen, Murugan - forget all the bad language that’s been pumped into you. Forget it at least to the point of making a single experiment. Take four hundred milligrams of moksha-medicine and find out for yourself what it does' what it can tell you about your own nature, about this strange world you've got to live in, learn in, suffer in, and finally die in' Yes, even you will have to die one day - maybe fifty years from now, maybe tomorrow. Who knows? But it's going to happen, and one's a fool if one doesn't prepare for it.' He turned to Will' 'Would you like to come along while we take our shower and get into some clothes?’

Visionary Experience

The following is an extract from Huxley’s 1961 lecture on Visionary Experience, which overviews all traditions and methods of gaining access to visionary states from religious, through deprivation and flagellation to shamanic and pharmaceutical.

ACCESS TO THE VISIONARY WORLD

Spontaneous Access. Before I go on to talk about the actual nature of this internal visionary world, let me say a little about the means of access to that world. Some people spontaneously go there; they seem to be able to move back and forth without any difficulty between the visionary world and the workaday, biologically useful world of our ordinary experience. You get people, for example, like William Blake, who is constantly moving back and forth between the two worlds. Blake had a period in middle life when he was unable to visit the visionary world. For about twenty years he didn't see it. He used to see it in his youth, and then again in his old age he was able to go into it quite freely. And we have, I think, plenty of cases of poets and artists who have gone back and forth from one world to another. There are very beautiful and very detailed descriptions of the visionary world given to the Irish poet, George Russell - who wrote under the name of A.E. - where he describes his own experiences of going back and forth into this luminous world within the mind. There are these spontaneous cases where a privileged few are able to visit the other world and come back again safe and sound. Then I think we can also say that, in a very large number of children - I don't know what the proportion is; I don't think it has ever been systematically investigated - but in a good number of children, there is this capacity to live in a kind of visionary world. They see both within and without this transfigured luminous world. It is of course the world described by Wordsworth in his famous Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. I think a great many children have exactly the kind of Intimations of Immortality which Wordsworth described. Then in due course, as they are subjected to our system of analytical and conceptual education, they lose the capacity of seeing this other world which gradually, in Wordsworth’s words, 'fades into the light of common day'. From. having lived in a world which had 'the glory and the freshness of a dream',they return to this rather boring, rather drab world in which most of us pass our lives. I would say, in passing, that one of the major problems of education is how do we help children to make the best of both worlds? How do we help them to make the best of the world of primary experience (and of this extension of primary experience: visionary experience) and at the same time help them to make the best of the world of language and the best of the world of concepts and general ideas? At present our system of education seems almost a guarantee that while we teach them how to use words and concepts, we wipe out this other world of beauty and higher reality which so many children live in.

These are two cases of spontaneous awareness of the other world, of the visionary world. Another class of people who have this awareness spontaneously is the class of the dying. Readers of Tolstoy will remember in that extraordinary story The Death of lvan Ilyitch, that at the end of his unutterable sufferings and miseries, this wretched man feels that he is being pushed into a black sack, deeper and deeper, and suddenly, within a few hours before he dies, he perceives that the bottom of the sack is open and at the end of it is a light. This is not merely a literary invention. In recent months Dr Karlis Osis, of the Parapsychology Foundation of New York, has been sending out questionnaires to a large number of doctors and nurses getting them to give reports of the state of mind of patients on their deathbed. The interesting thing is that he has, I think, about 800 answers from doctors and nurses who report that, spontaneously, patients on the verge of death did have these tremendous visionary experiences of light, of luminous figures.

It is a most interesting fact to find that this phenomenon, which has been reported of course in literature in the past, is now statistically confirmed. This is one of the most fascinating things that professional psychologists are doing now. They are confirming, by questionnaires and in the laboratory, all kinds of things which were intuitively known, and known by observation, and recorded in a casual way by literary men and philosophers in the past. Well, as I say, this represents a third class of spontaneous cases. Now we have to go on to the induced cases.

lnduced Access. The fact that visionary experience has always, at all times and everywhere been very highly valued, means that at all times and in all cultures systematic efforts have been made to induce this experience. The experience can be induced in a variety of ways. Let us quickly go through a few of them.

One method is hypnosis. Under deep hypnosis a certain number of people (not very many, but I have seen a few) do evidently enter this world and report very strange and interesting happenings: they see figures, they see luminous landscapes, and so on. These are not very common phenomena, but it is interesting to know that there are a certain number of people who can be transported into this other world by hypnosis. There are other psychological methods for getting into the other world, and one of the best known in the Orient of course is the method of one-pointed concentration, the traditional Yoga method of excluding everything except one particular point on which the attention is concentrated. This in many cases does seem to result in breaking through the barrier surrounding our ordinary, day-to-day, biologically utilitarian world of consciousness, and breaking through into another mode of consciousness, the visionary mode. There is yet another method which has been practised, of course, within all the great religious traditions, the method of what is now called sensory deprivation, or the limited environment. Here again it is most interesting to find professlonal psychologists repeating, in the laboratory, work which was done for metaphysical and religious reasons by hermits and saints living in caves in the mountains or in the desert. It is a very extraordinary fact that when we do limit the number of external stimuli or cut them out altogether, as can be done with some difficulty, then in a relatively short time ones mind starts producing tremendous visionary experiences. Historically we see such figures as Saint Anthony and the monks of the Thebaid in the fourth century in the Egyptian desert, and we see again the hermits of the Himalayas, the Tibetan and the Hindu hermits who lived in complete isolation in the caves. For example, if you read the life of Milarepa, the great Tibetan hermit, or if you read the lives of St Anthony and St Paul, the hermit in the Christian tradition, you can see that this isolation did in fact produce visionary experiences.

And it is interesting, as I say, to see these facts confirmed by such contemporary workers as D' O. Hebb at McGill

in Canada, or my friend Dr John Lilly at the National Institute of Health in Washington. Lilly has probably gone further than anyone else in creating a limited environment. He immerses himself in a bath at the temperature of 96, has himself fastened into a harness so that he can hardly move, breathes only through a snorkel so that even his face is covered with water and there is no differentiation of sensation on any part of his body, and within three or four hours he is having tremendous visionary experiences. Now the interesting thing is that like St Anthony’s, most of these visionary experiences are extraordinarily unpleasant, and I have asked Dr Lilly to describe these experiences but he would never tell me exactly what they were, except that they were very, very unpleasant indeed. St Anthony' as anybody who has ever visited any picture gallery knows, was also subjected to extremely unpleasant experiences, but he occasionally evidently had genuine mystical and divine experiences. It is interesting too that, in all the religious traditions, deserts and places where there is a minimum of sensory stimulation have always been regarded

in an ambivalent way, first of all as the places where God is nearest and secondly as the place where devils abound' We find in the New Testament, for example, that the devils who are cast out by Jesus go into the desert because this is the natural place, the habitat, of devils. But again, hermits who lived in the deserts in the fourth century say they went there because this is the place where one can get nearer to God than anywhere else. As I say, it is extremely interesting to find that these ancient religious practices can be and have been confirmed in the laboratory of modern psychological workers.

Another method of getting into the other world is the method of systematic breathing. Breathing exercises were of course developed most systematically in India, and we find traces of them in the Western tradition, particularly in the Greek Orthodox Church tradition where people did evidently employ some breathing methods, and even in individual Western mystics' I am thinking of Father Surin, the French seventeenth-century Jesuit, who speaks about the different modes of breathing, though he doesn't exactly describe what they were. The significant fact about breathing is that I think one can say that all these elaborate breathing exercises tend to end up in prolonged suspensions of breath. A prolonged suspension of breath necessarily mens a growing concentration of carbon dioxide in the blood. Again, it is well known that high concentrations of carbon dioxide do produce very remarkable and startling visionary experiences in the mind, so that we see here, in an empirical way, that people in all the religious traditions of the past made use of methods for changing the body chemistry, in such a way that visionary experiences would become facilitated. This again is the physiological reason, not the metaphysical or the ethical reason, for such practices as fasting.

Fasting has been employed in virtually all the cultural traditions, among other things for the purpose of inducing visions. For example, in a primitive Indian society in America this was a regular part of the initiation of the adolescent young men. They went out into the forest or into the prairie and fasted until they got a vision of the god they were looking for, and in due course they always did get a vision. The methods of fasting of course have been used in every religious tradition. These psychological effects of fasting have been confirmed in the large study by Keys called, The Biology of Human Starvation. There is a most elaborate description of what happens after a long period of abstention from food, and among the things that happen are these visionary experiences. We know too that the inadequate amounts of vitamins as well as merely inadequate amounts of calories also produce profound psychological changes. There are profound psychological changes in pellagra, for example, and in beriberi. Here again it is interesting, with the knowledge that we now have, to look back over history and to see why a period like the Middle Ages was probably far more fruitful in vision than a period of the present time. The reason very simply is that we are simply stuffed with vitamins and they were not. After all, every winter in the Middle Ages there was a period of extreme vitamin deficiency: pellagra and the other deficiency diseases were very common. On top of a long period of involuntary fasting came the forty days of Lent where voluntary fasting was imposed upon involuntary fasting, so that by the time Easter came around, the mind was completely ready for any kind of vision. I think there is no doubt that this is one of the reasons why spontaneous visionary experiences are a good deal less common now than they were; it is simply a dietary factor. In the past, in earlier civilization, a rather deficient diet tended to make certain types of visionary experiences possible, whereas now our very full diet tends to block them off.

Among other methods of transporting the mind to the other world was the deprivation of sleep. You find this in all the religious traditions: the sleep is reduced and the mind is made open and ripe for visionary experience. Here again it is interesting to see the professional psychologist confirming the findings of the past. My friend Dr J West a year or two ago had the occasion to supervise the sleeplessness period of a man who was a disc jockey on an American radio station. For a bet he had resolved to go without sleep for I forget how many days, ten or twelve days. Dr West supervised this and he told me that it was very interesting, after about seven or eight days, how this man was living in a completely visionary world with breakings-in of every kind of strange visions, some horrible and some rather beautiful. So here again we see an interesting confirmation of old empirical findings, in the modern laboratory. Even the medieval habit of austerities or self-imposed punishment was probably also extremely conducive to visions. Self flagellation, for example: if you analyse what the effects of this sort of proceeding were, it is quite clear that they all made for visionary experiences. They first of all released a great deal of adrenalin, a great deal of histamine, both of which have very strange effects on the mind, and then in the Middle Ages, when neither soap nor antiseptics existed, any wound which could fester, did fester, and the breakdown products of protein got into the bloodstream. We also know that these things do have very strange and interesting psychological effects. In confirmation of this it is very curious to read of the remark by the great French nineteenth-century Cure d'Ars (and now canonized as Saint Jean Vianney) who was forbidden by his bishop to indulge in the extremely severe austerities, the self-beatings which he had practised as a young man, and he said nostalgically, 'When I was allowed to do what I liked with my body, God would refuse me nothing.' This is a very interesting psychological statement, that evidently there are psychological reactions on the biochemical level which, connected with this kind of self-torture, do tend towards visions.

Chemical Access. Let us now pass into a final class of vision-inducing procedures; these have to do with the ingestion of various chemicals. Now as the French anthropologist Philippe de Felice showed some twenty years ago in his book Poisons Sacres Ivresses Divines, virtually in every religious tradition, both civilized and primitive, use has been made of mind-changing drugs used for the purposes of inducing visionary experiences. Every kind sf chemical substance has been used for this purpose. The most anciently recorded, I suppose, is the soma of the Indians. Nobody knows, I think, what the plant soma was. It has been identified as the Asclepias or milkweed, but the descriptions in the sacred text don't seem to fit in with the milkweed identification. From the ancient text it seems that this was a creeping plant which the Aryan invaders of India in 1000 BC brought down with them from Central Asia, and it became more and more difficult to get hold of the plant as they penetrated further and further into India. Philippe de Felice has a very interesting hypothesis about the development of Yoga (which evidently took place about this time, although it may have started earlier with the pre-Aryan people in India). The taking over of Yoga by the Aryan invaders may have been forced upon them by the fact that it was impossible for them to obtain supplies of soma so that, as they couldn’t induce visions by biochemical means, they were forced to resort to purely psychological and breathing exercises to get to the same place. It is an interesting hypothesis which may perhaps be true. I don't know.

Then among the other drugs, which of course have been used in the past, are such extremely dangerous mind-changing drugs as opium and as coca, from which cocaine is derived, and such relatively dangerous drugs as hashish - and, after all, our dear old friend alcohol, which was used by the Greeks, later by the Persians, and used by the Celts in Europe as a mind-changing drug and worshipped as a god. This is the interesting thing: the substance which produces the change of mind is regarded as divine and is then hypostatized as a person projected into the external universe as a divine person. We get the same phenomenon in Central America where recently the archaeologists have dug up in the highlands of Guatemala a large number of small stone figures which represent mushrooms out of whose stem emerges the head of a god. It is a very significant fact that this mind-changing mushroom which, as we shall see in a moment, has now entered European life, was actually hypostatized as a deity.

The Mushroom Access. Among the more harmless mind-changing drugs used by people in their religious rites in the past are peyote, the Mexican cactus, which is used in the South-western states of America and over large parts of Mexico, then the Bannisteriopsis caapi [harmine admixed with DMT-containing Psychotria viridis in the ayahuasca] of South America, and now of course the Mexico mushroom. ln modern times pharmacology has produced, partly by more refined methods of extraction and partly by methods of synthesis, a number of mind-changing drugs of extraordinary power, but remarkable for the fact that they have very little harmful effect upon the body. Peyote, among the natural drugs, has almost no harmful effect upon the body; it is not addictive, and Indians 80 years old take no more of the drug than they did when they were young, nor do they feel any desire to take it more frequently than once every month or six weeks when the religious rites take place. The extract from peyote which is the active principle, and which is now synthesized, mescaline, has the same qualities. Among the more recent additions to the armamentarium of the pharmacologists, the psychopharmacologists, are LSD-25 (lysergic acid diethylamide) which was synthesized by Dr Albert Hofmann of Basel in 1943, and more recently psilocybin (about which we shall hear tonight, I hope, from Dr Leary) which was synthesized I think not more than 2 or 3 years ago, also by Dr Hofmann, who began by extracting the active principles of the Mexican mushroom which had been brought back by Professor Heim from his expedition to Mexico with Mr Gordon Wasson. I recently had the interesting experience of reading a letter which Professor Heim had written to my brother and which said, ‘I have just come back from Mexico and as a great triumph I took with me a number of Hofnann's capsules of psilocybin and I gave a dose to the old lady - the curandera, the medicine woman – [Maria Sabina] with whom we had originally done our experiments with the mushrooms - and she was quite delighted because the effects were exactly the same as the mushrooms and she said, ‘Now I can do my magic all the year round, I don't have to wait for the mushroom season!’ So this perhaps is one of the great triumphs of modern science, that one of these days perhaps Professor Hofmann at Basel will receive a telegram saying, 'Please airmail one hundred capsules to Southern Mexico, have very important magic to perform next week'- and the capsules will go and the magic will be performed.

These biochemical methods are, I suppose, the most powerful and the most foolproof, so to say, of all the methods for transporting us to this other world that at present exist. I think, as Professor Leary will point out tonight, that there is here a very large field for systematic experimentation by psychologists’ because it is now possible to explore areas of the mind at a minimum expense to the body, areas which were almost impossible to get at before, except either by the use of extremely dangerous drugs or else by looking around for the rather rare people who spontaneously can go into this world. (Of course it is very difficult for them to go in on demand, 'the Spirit bloweth where it listeth’, we can never be sure that the people with the spontaneous gift of visionary experience will have it on demand.) With such drugs as psilocybin it is possible for the majority of people to go into this other world with very little trouble in and with almost no harm to themselves.

THE NATURE OF VISIONARY EXPERIENCE

Having discussed the means of access to this world of visionary experience, let me begin to talk about the nature of the world. What is the nature of visionary experience?

Light. The highest common factor, I think' in all these experiences is the factor of light. There can be both negative, bad light’ and good light. InParadise Lost, Milton talks about the illumination of hell which he says is darkness visible. This I think is probably a very good psychological description of the kind of sinister light which sometimes visionaries do see, and it is a light which I think many schizophrenics see. In Dr Sechehaye's volume Journal d'une Schizophréne, her patient describes precisely this appalling light which she lives in: it is a kind of hellish light, it is a light like the glare inside a factory, the hideous glare of modem electric lighting gleaming upon machines. But on the other hand, those who go into a positive experience say this light is of incredible beauty and significance. The light experience on the positive side may be divided,I think into two main types. There is the experience of what may be called undifferentiated light, an experience just of light, of everything being flooded with light. And there is the experience of differentiated light, that is to say of objects, of people, of landscapes which seem to be impregnated and shining with their own light. In general I think it is possible to say that the experience of undifferentiated light tends to be the experience associated with the full-blown mystical experience. The mystical experience, I think, may be defined in a rather simple way as the experience in which the subject-object relationship is transcended, in which there is a sense of complete solidarity of the subject with other human beings and with the universe in general. There is also a sense of what may be called the ultimate All-Rightness of the universe, the fact that in spite of pain, in spite of death, in spite of all the horrors which go on all around us, this universe somehow is all right, and there is a direct understanding of such phrases as we find, for example, in the Book of Job, phrases which in our ordinary state we certainly cannot understand. I mean when Job says, 'Yea, though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him,’ this is incomprehensible on our ordinary biological level, and yet it becomes perfectly comprehensible on the mystical level, even on the level of induced mysticism.

Then there is another very characteristic psychological feature in the mystical experience: the sense of an intense gratitude, an intense gratitude for the privilege of being alive in a universe as extraordinary as this, as altogether wonderful. Here again one finds phrases in the mystical literature which are completely incomprehensible on the ordinary, everyday, biological level but which become completely comprehensible on the visionary and mystical level. For example, there is a phrase of William Blake’s where he says 'Gratitude is Heaven itself.' What does this mean? It is very difficult to imagine in our ordinary state of mind, but it becomes perfectly clear in the induced or spontaneous mystical condition: gratitude is Heaven itself, gratitude is intense, and the

actual experience of gratitude has an uplifting and joyous quality which is beyond all words.

The light experience is of course described again and again in all religious literature. After all, the most celebrated cases (the light experienced by Saint Paul on the road to Damascus; a tremendous explosion of light which woke Mohammed out of sleep which made him faint from its intensity; the experience of tremendous light which Plotinus described as having three or four times in his life) - you will find this again and again in literature. And don't let us imagine that these experiences of light are confined only to remarkable and outstanding men and women they are not. A great many quite ordinary people have had them, and this is one of the great merits of the most recent book by Professor Raynor C. Johnson, the book called 'Watcher on the Hills’ where he brings together a great many case-histories of perfectly ordinary people who had this tremendous experience of undifferentiated light. If I may quote from a letter I received recently from an unknown correspondent - this is a woman in her sixties who wrote to me saying that she had had an experience as a school-girl which had affected her throughout her life - she said, 'I was a girl of fifteen or sixteen, I was in the kitchen toasting bread for tea and suddenly in a dark November afternoon the whole place was flooded with light, and for a minute by clock time I was immersed in this, and I had a sense that in some unutterable way the universe was all right. This has affected me for the rest of my life, I have lost all fear of death, I have a passion for light, but I am in no way afraid of death, because this light experience has been a kind of conviction to me that everything is all right in some way.'

These experiences are relatively common; many more people have them than at present let on, I mean we live now in a period when people don't like to talk about these experiences. If you have these experiences, you keep your mouth shut for fear of being told to go to a psychoanalyst. In the past, when visions were regarded as creditable, people talked about them. They did run, of course, a considerable risk because most visions in the part were regarded as being inspired by the devil, but if you had the luck to convince your fellows that your visions were divine, then you achieved a great deal of credit. But now, as I say, the case has altered and people don't like talking about these things. This is the value, I think, of Professor Maslow's recent work on what he calls peak experiences. He is collecting a very large number of cases of this kind of experience, and he reassures his students that he is not going to regard them as crazy – they tell about these things, and he says it is surprising what a number of them do come out with the fact that they have had these kinds of experiences.

So much for the undifferentiated light, and here let me point out an interesting fact. I think one can say that in all the religions, both primitive and developed, light is the sort of predominant divine symbol, but the interesting fact is that this symbol is based upon a psychological fact, that the light of the world, the inner light, enlightenment, the clear light of the void in the Buddhist literature, all these are symbols. But they are also psychological facts. just as the great metaphysical systems - so it seems to me - take their origin in many cases from psychological experiences, so again do we see these great primary symbols of religious life also take their origin from psychological experiences. This quasi-sensory experience of light is something which has run through many, I think one can say all, religions and has become, as I say, the primary symbol.

Now, from undifferentiated light we pass to differentiated light, that is to say, light contained in objects, shining out of things and people. Well, on its simplest level this is a kind of luminous living geometry. There is something rather interesting here.I think here again we can say that certain symbols are based on psychological facts. For example the mandalas of India, about which the late Dr Jung was so keen, these too are based I think on psychological facts. In what may be called the early stages of the visionary experience, people do see with the closed eyes things which are exactly like mandalas. These great symbolic constructs ore again based upon immediate psychological experiences. Beyond these, or course, there are all kinds of more realistic, naturalistic visionary experiences - experiences of architectures’ of landscapes, of figures. It is interesting to find that again and again in the accounts given by people of visionary experiences, we find the same elements described, for example, in Heinrich Klüver's book on peyote where he sums up most of the material which had been published up to the time he wrote it. We find again and again his description of luminous landscapes and architectures encrusted with gems. The doors and windows are surrounded by gems, the whole world of landscape is filled with what Ezekiel calls the stones of fire. These descriptions of course very closely parallel all the accounts of paradises, posthumous worlds and fairylands which are found in all the traditions of the world. We shall go into this further later, but I think it is important to point out that here again there is a psychological basis to a great deal of material which is to be found in the traditional literature of religion and folklore.

Visionary Figures. We come now to the visionary figures. These also occur, and here again there is a very curious and interesting fact which has been recorded again and again in the literature both of spontaneous experiences and induced experiences, that when a figure is seen, it virtually never has a face which we recognize. Our fathers and mothers and wives and children do not appear. What we see is a complete stranger. Here again I think this fact accounts for some interesting theological speculations. For example, angels are not, as now theoretically supposed, the departed spirits of the dead; they belong to another species altogether. This exactly confirms what the psychologists have found in relation to induced or spontaneous experiences; these are always figures of strangers.

When one starts to think about the neurology and the psychology of this state of affairs, it is most extraordinary that there is something in our brain/mind, some part of our brain/mind, which uses the memories of visual experiences and recombines them in such a way as to present to the consciousness something absolutely novel, which has nothing to do with our private life and very little to do, as far as one can see, with the life of humans in general. Personally I find it extremely comforting to something I have somewhere at the back of my skull something which is absolutely indifferent to me and even absolutely indifferent to the human race. I think this is something very satisfying, that there is an area of the mind which doesn't care about what I am doing, but which is concerned with something quite, quite different. And why this should be and what the neurological basis be I cannot imagine, but this is something which I think requires investigation.

Transfigurations. Now we come to another aspect of differentiated light which may be described as the spilling out from the interior world into the exterior world. There is a kind of visionary experience which people have with the eyes open and which consists in a transfiguration of the external world so that it seems overwhelmingly beautiful and alive and shining. This of course is what Wordsworth described so beautifully and so accurately in his great Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, and similar experiences can be found in the works of the mystics, in the work of the Anglican mystic, Traherne, who gives an incredibly beautiful description of the kind of transfigured world in which he lived in childhood. This description ends up with the most beautiful passage where he describes this wonderful world, and he says, 'And so with much ado I was taught the dirty devices of the world which now I unlearn and become as a little child again so that I now enter once more the Kingdom of God.’ And here, as I said before, here is surely one of the great challenges to modern education: How do we keep alive this world of immense value which people have had during childhood and which certain privileged people retain throughout their lives? How do we keep this alive and at the same time impart a sufficient amount of conceptual education to make them efficient citizens and scientists? This I don't know, but I am absolutely certain that this is one of the important challenges confronting modern education.

This transfigured external vision is very important in relation to art. By no means is all art visionary art; there is wonderful art which is essentially not visionary art. But there is also wonderful art which is essentially visionary art, which is the product either of the artist's vision, so to say with the eyes closed, of what is happening inside his head, this extraordinary other world; or else a vision of the external world transfigured either for the good or for the evil. In the works of Van Gogh, for example, one can find extraordinary examples of both negative and positive transfiguration.

VISIONARY EXPERIENCE IN RELIGION AND FOLKLORE

Now very briefly let us touch on some of the significances of visionary experience for religion and folklore. One finds, in all the traditions, descriptions of paradise, of the golden age, of the future Iife, which one places side by side with the descriptions of visionary experience, either spontaneous or induced, and sees that they are exactly the same; that the world described in popular religion, these other worlds, are simply descriptions of visionary experiences that men have projected from the inside into the universe. In all the traditions we find the same confusion of gems, and where gems are not used we find glass which, of course, was regarded as a very precious and strange material in the past' We find this in the Book of Revelation, a sea of glass in the New Jerusalem, the walls of which were gold and yet transparent, a kind of gold and transparent glass, and we find the same emphasis on glass as a marvellous magical material in the Northern traditions. We find it in the Celtic tradition, in the Welsh tradition; for example the home of the dead is called Ynisvitrin, the Isle of Glass, and in the Teutonic tradition the dead live in a place called Glasberg, the mountain of glass. And it is most curious to find, from Japan to Western Europe, these same images coming through again and again, showing how universal and how uniform this kind of visionary experience has been and how it has constantly been regarded as of immense importance and has been projected out into the cosmos in the various religious traditions.

THE VALUE OF VISIONARY EXPERIENCE

I suppose in a certain sense one can say the value is absolute. In a sense one can say that visionary experience is, so to say, a manifestation simultaneously of the beautiful and the true, of intense beauty and intense reality, and as such it doesn't have to be justified in any other way. After all, the Good, the True and the Beautiful are absolute values, and in a certain sense one can say that visionary experience has always been regarded as an absolute value, that it has been always felt to be intrinsically of immense significance and importance and worth having at a very great price. But it is also important to point out that, although they are in some sense intrinsically valuable and in some sense absolutely valuable, yet I think we can speak about visionary experiences in terms of their value within the frame of reference of goodness and spirituality. In this context I think it is very important to think of the theological definition of such experiences. The theoIogical definition of a vision or even of a spontaneous mystical experience is'a gratuitous grace'. These things are graces, they are given to us, we don't work for them. They come to us and they are gratuitous, which means to say that they are neither necessary nor significant for salvation or for enlightenment, whatever you like to call it. But if they are properly used, if they are cooperated with, if the memory of them is felt to be important and people work along the lines laid down during the vision, then they can be of immense value to us and of great importance in changing our lives. This idea of the gratuitous grace which takes on importance if we cooperate with it, is very significant in all the range of visionary experience, both spontaneous and induced.

We shall hear from Leary about the induction of such experiences by such substances as psilocybin, and I would certainly say that this kind of induced experience may be of no value at all, it may be like just going to the movies and seeing an interesting film. Or on the contrary, if it is cooperated with, if we perceive it has has some sort of deep significance and we do something about it, then it may be very, very important in changing our lives, changing our mode of consciousness, perceiving that there are other ways of looking at the world than the ordinary utilitarian manner, and it may also result in significant changes of behaviour. We of course now come to the philosophical problem: what is the metaphysical status of visions, what is the ontological status? Well, fortunately, this is a Congress of Applied Psychology, we don't have to go into this kind of problem, though I think it is worth going into, and I hope somebody will go into it sooner or Iater. But for the time being we can say, I think, that the value, apart from their intrinsic value, so to say the ethical, sociological and spiritual value of the visionary experience, is that if it is well used, it can result in a significant and important change in the mode of consciousness and perhaps also in a change in behaviour for the good.

The Most Beautiful Death: Huxley’s Death on LSD as described first-hand by his wife Laura Letters of Note.

I don’t know exactly what time it was, he asked for his tablet and wrote, “Try LSD 100 intramuscular.” Although as you see from this photostatic copy it is not very clear, I know that this is what he meant. I asked him to confirm it. Suddenly something became very clear to me. I knew that we were together again after this torturous talking of the last two months. I knew then, I knew what was to be done. I went quickly into the cupboard in the other room where Dr. Bernstein was, and the TV which had just announced the shooting of Kennedy. I took the LSD and said, “I am going to give him a shot of LSD, he asked for it.” The doctor had a moment of agitation because you know very well the uneasiness about this drug in the medical mind. Then he said, “All right, at this point what is the difference.” Whatever he had said, no “authority,” not even an army of authorities could have stopped me then. I went into Aldous’ room with the vial of LSD and prepared a syringe. The doctor asked me if I wanted him to give him the shot – maybe because he saw that my hands were trembling. His asking me that made me conscious of my hands, and I said, “No I must do this.” I quieted myself, and when I gave him the shot my hands were very firm. Then, somehow, a great relief came to us both. I believe it was 11:20 when I gave him his first shot of 100 microgrammes. I sat near his bed and I said, “Darling, maybe in a little while I will take it with you. Would you like me to take it also in a little while?” I said a little while because I had no idea of when I should or could take it, in fact I have not been able to take it to this writing because of the condition around me. And he indicated “yes.” We must keep in mind that by now he was speaking very, very little. Then I said, “Would you like Matthew to take it with you also? And he said, “Yes.” “What about Ellen?” He said, “Yes.” Then I mentioned two or three people who had been working with LSD and he said, “No, no, basta, basta.” Then I said, “What about Jinny?” And he said, “Yes,” with emphasis. Then we were quiet. I just sat there without speaking for a while. Aldous was not so agitated physically. He seemed – somehow I felt he knew, we both knew what we were doing, and this has always been a great relief to Aldous. I have seen him at times during his illness very upset until he knew what he was going to do, then even if it was an operation or X-ray, he would make a total change. This enormous feeling of relief would come to him, and he wouldn’t be worried at all about it, he would say let’s do it, and we would go to it and he was like a liberated man. And now I had the same feeling – a decision had been made, he made the decision again very quickly. Suddenly he had accepted the fact of death; he had taken this moksha medicine in which he believed. He was doing what he had written in ISLAND, and I had the feeling that he was interested and relieved and quiet.

After half an hour, the expression on his face began to change a little, and I asked him if he felt the effect of LSD, and he indicated no. Yet, I think that a something had taken place already. This was one of Aldous’ characteristics. He would always delay acknowledging the effect of any medicine, even when the effect was quite certainly there, unless the effect was very, very strong he would say no. Now, the expression of his face was beginning to look as it did every time that he had the moksha medicine, when this immense expression of complete bliss and love would come over him. This was not the case now, but there was a change in comparison to what his face had been two hours ago. I let another half hour pass, and then I decided to give him another 100 mg. I told him I was going to do it, and he acquiesced. I gave him another shot, and then I began to talk to him. He was very quiet now; he was very quiet and his legs were getting colder; higher and higher I could see purple areas of cyanosis. Then I began to talk to him, saying, “Light and free,” Some of these thing I told him at night in these last few weeks before he would go to sleep, and now I said it more convincingly, more intensely – “go, go, let go, darling; forward and up. You are going forward and up; you are going towards the light. Willing and consciously you are going, willingly and consciously, and you are doing this beautifully; you are doing this so beautifully – you are going towards the light; you are going towards a greater love; you are going forward and up. It is so easy; it is so beautiful. You are doing it so beautifully, so easily. Light and free. Forward and up. You are going towards Maria’s love with my love. You are going towards a greater love than you have ever known. You are going towards the best, the greatest love, and it is easy, it is so easy, and you are doing it so beautifully.” I believe I started to talk to him – it must have been about one or two o’clock. It was very difficult for me to keep track of time. The nurse was in the room and Rosalind and Jinny and two doctors – Dr. Knight and Dr. Cutler. They were sort of far away from the bed. I was very, very near his ears, and I hope I spoke clearly and understandingly. Once I asked him, “Do you hear me?” He squeezed my hand. He was hearing me. I was tempted to ask more questions, but in the morning he had begged me not to ask any more question, and the entire feeling was that things were right. I didn’t dare to inquire, to disturb, and that was the only question that I asked, “Do you hear me?” Maybe I should have asked more questions, but I didn’t.

Later on I asked the same question, but the hand didn’t move any more. Now from two o’clock until the time he died, which was five-twenty, there was complete peace except for once. That must have been about three-thirty or four, when I saw the beginning of struggle in his lower lip. His lower lip began to move as if it were going to be a struggle for air. Then I gave the direction even more forcefully. “It is easy, and you are doing this beautifully and willingly and consciously, in full awareness, in full awareness, darling, you are going towards the light.” I repeated these or similar words for the last three or four hours. Once in a while my own emotion would overcome me, but if it did I immediately would leave the bed for two or three minutes, and would come back only when I could dismiss my emotion. The twitching of the lower lip lasted only a little bit, and it seemed to respond completely to what I was saying. “Easy, easy, and you are doing this willingly and consciously and beautifully – going forward and up, light and free, forward and up towards the light, into the light, into complete love.” The twitching stopped, the breathing became slower and slower, and there was absolutely not the slightest indication of contraction, of struggle. it was just that the breathing became slower – and slower – and slower, and at five-twenty the breathing stopped.

I had been warned in the morning that there might be some up-setting convulsions towards the end, or some sort of contraction of the lungs, and noises. People had been trying to prepare me for some horrible physical reaction that would probably occur. None of this happened, actually the ceasing of the breathing was not a drama at all, because it was done so slowly, so gently, like a piece of music just finishing. There was not the feeling that with the last breath, the spirit left. It had just been gently leaving for the last four hours. In the room the last four hours were two doctors, Jinny, the nurse, Rosalind Roger Gopal – you know she is the great friend of Krishnamurti, and the directress of the school in Ojai for which Aldous did so much. They didn’t seem to hear what I was saying. I thought I was speaking loud enough, but they said they didn’t hear it. Rosalind and Jinny once in a while came near the bed and held Aldous’ hand. These five people all said that this was the most serene, the most beautiful death. Both doctors and nurse said they had never seen a person in similar physical condition going off so completely without pain and without struggle. We will never know if all this is only our wishful thinking, or if it is real, but certainly all outward signs and the inner feeling gave indication that it was beautiful and peaceful and easy.

And now, after I have been alone these few days, and less bombarded by other people’s feelings, the meaning of this last day becomes clearer and clearer to me and more and more important. Aldous was, I think (and certainly I am) appalled at the fact that what he wrote in ISLAND was not taken seriously. It was treated as a work of science fiction, when it was not fiction because each one of the ways of living he described in ISLAND was not a product of his fantasy, but something that had been tried in one place or another and some of them in our own everyday life. If the way Aldous died were known, it might awaken people to the awareness that not only this, but many other facts described in ISLAND are possible here and now. Aldous’ asking for moksha medicine while dying is a confirmation of his work, and as such is of importance not only to us, but to the world. It is true we will have some people saying that he was a drug addict all his life and that he ended as one, but it is history that Huxleys stop ignorance before ignorance can stop Huxleys.

Epilogue

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is Pandora's Pithos ^{^[76]} Reopened

Fig 263: Elpis the spirit, or goddess of Hope, who remained caught under the lip of Pandora's jar according to the will of Zeus, depicted as an adolescent girl, wearing adult dress for the first time, hitching her skirt to keep it from dragging, holding a flower, or sometimes a bird to emphasise the fresh hope of spring and new growth. (Roman coin to Spes or Elpis. The reverse of a potin tetradrachm of Carinus 285 AD showing Elpis).

Causing a paradigm shift is literally opening Pandora’s Box with potentially devastating consequences if it takes off. We are, whether we like it or not, living in an age of information. This means that the mere fact that Symbiotic Existential Cosmology now exists as a work on multiple platforms means that Pandora's Pithos has again been opened. Troubled by the death curse of the Box, I discovered today as I write, another charming karmic echo from history, dating from around 750 BC caught in our entanglement. This time opening the Pithos reveals Elpis – literally the youthful female spirit of Hope or Expectation – the one remaining spirit kept in the jar has now escaped into the world and the consequences are ensuing, however gradually. The arrow of time means this information flows on out into the world and irreversibly changes the situation for the good, whatever we do next.

The only way this could fail is if there were a critical flaw, which would mean that scientists and clerics could breathe a sigh of satisfaction, that yet another hopeful monster has turned into a mutant ninja turtle and that the interlocutor is just a pretentious deluded upstart at the age of 77. But that is unlikely, as Symbiotic Existential Cosmology agrees with quantum cosmology and empirical neuroscience and invokes the foundations spirituality in conscious human agency. For the first months I aimed high, seeking such criticism with hopes that astute people, particularly research scientists in psychedelics and related fields of consciousness and philosophy would find this discovery as utterly exciting as I did, but I was faced with a deafening silence.

Not one reply from anyone! My friends shunned me, academics whose opinion I valued refused to reply at all. Only two people fully responded. A math colleague, who read the first vestigial manuscripts and another friend who did likewise, both of whom gave commonsense encouragement, particularly on the basis that the world is in existential crisis. This led to ongoing angst. Some of the psychedelic scientists claimed the hard problem of consciousness was not even a scientific question and that psychedelics could only solve the easy problems. When I tried to point out that a magic mushroom experience had solved it in a pan-psychic cosmology, I got nowhere with either scientists or philosophers, and simply ended up in a stand-off, when I critiqued their position in an open letter.

Over the ensuing months, I continued feverish writing, and Symbiotic Existential Cosmology blossomed into an impenetrable verdant thicket, spanning ethnic animism, religious exegesis, consciousness research, molecular biogenesis, psychedelic neuroscience, quantum cosmology, panpsychist philosophy, an evolutionary analysis of how consciousness as we know it emerged, and how neurotransmitters, such as serotonin play a central role in evolving brain development going back to social amoebae. The final denouement was that our empirically experienced subjective conscious volition over the physical universe alone reverses the implications of materialism, to invoke a complementary description of mental and physical reality. It is no longer just a psychedelic vision, subject to the Achilles heel of prejudice, but the irrefutable truth of volition itself, as accepted in intent and responsibility in law and in every intentional act we perform, that now underpins this revelation.

Later in conversation with a group of spiritually-minded scientists, I realised that I had to include the full sweep of the extended evolutionary synthesis to establish the cultural evolutionary phase leading to biocrisis and to parry false religious claims against natural evolution that is the foundation of the immortal tree of living diversity, and so the 100 page section on evolution was born, taking the monograph to a book length 400 pages..

So for me, Symbiotic Existential Cosmology has become more than a just fortuitous mushroom trip. It is the Rosetta stone of reality that is already here in the world. It is a difficult, inscrutable work in scripture intended to be complete and definitive enough to last a billion years, provided humanity continues to survive and evolve, that also tells the first-person account of how an individual, facing the planetary apocalypse that had been created both by ancient religions and materialistic ennui, found himself caught in an uncanny quantum instance that made it possible to traverse the same unlikely portal defining history that had happened 2000 years before, to reveal the weltanshauung of immortality, unravelling the human zeitgeist towards a new symbiotic paradigm of organic and technological coexistence with nature and life as a whole.

It is not just a hypothetical theory that can be taken at face value or discarded at will, but four things: (1) Objective quantum cosmology invoking biogenesis and climax biodiversity, augmented by (2) Darwinian panpsychism and (3) cosmological symbiosis. Point (2) then invokes a subjective veridical transaction of mutual trust between conscious agents that we have subjective volitional will over the physical universe, inheriting the responsibility to protect conscious life as a whole, in the symbiotic climax invoked by (3). Finally it is (4) a complete confession of everything of significance I have said, been or done to this end, naked and unashamed in my singular quest to wreak salvation on a troubled world, my vigils to far flung corners of the Earth and the antipodean outlandishness of declaring the end of the Apocalyptic Epoch in the Holy City, so that we can now keep the way of the Tree of Life throughout our generations forever, as it was in the very beginning, as has likewise, from the outset, been stated on the closing page:

"Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that you look for the end?

For where the beginning is, there will the end be”

(Gospel of Thomas 18).

The cosmology is already out there! It can't be undone! It's not a grand, or petite delusion, but the redemption of life in complete transparency. So while I seek your support to help convey this crazy message that no one wants to hear or accept, I know underneath that root paradigm shifts have a long latency, and that SEC is cosmologically valid and empirically sound. Simply by convening the group, I made you all aware of this, so you are all now fully cognisant and complicit. My work is fulfilled and it is over to all of us, because we are all in possession of this fatal carnal knowledge, which can never be undone! The diversity of life still needs us and needs us now. So as the Talmudic statement said, “we are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free to abandon it.”

Our involvement is now a question of taking advantage of what is already revealed, from which the lioness on the cover has already sprung anew, to accelerate the process of protecting the diversity of life. In return, I vouchsafe to protect you all and support your own inspirations of renewal.

If you look carefully at the last few lines of the text in figure 259, which gives my veridical account of the initial experience, written the same evening, you will see that I had already abdicated my responsibilities on the first night, passing all the onus onto the sacrament itself to escape the messianic tradition, in an affirmation from scriptural history!

"I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated

from the bubbling spring which I have measured out.” (Gospel of Thomas 13)

My role now, as a chaotic dynamicist is oddly enough, to make sure this process doesn't become unhinged, although I'm not forsaking the lionesses claws on the Symbiotic Existential Cosmology cover until I see some signs of cooperative progress for biodiversity, so will turn the tables and create dissension if need be – to guard the beacon light of resplendence, so it can shine brightly, rather than "cast fire on the world", as Yeshua did, which would just lead to apocalyptic climate crisis and deforestation, as we know.

Recall this whole phenomenon arose from my long-sightedness, causing acute glaucoma, which first delayed and then precipitated this entire phenomenon. So Symbiotic Existential Cosmology was clearly Promethean foresight and not the unfortunate Epimethean hindsight that opened Pandora's pithos in the first place.

Uziel Awreet: I imagine we are as insistent as you about the fundamentality of the preservation of life and our debt to the future. In the end it’s a question of understanding the nature of this responsibility. In the Jewish spiritual tradition this responsibility is not just the responsibility of Tikun aiming to preserve life (precisely to achieve the conditions that would make your utopia possible) but also a responsibility to a reconstitution of a God that ‘sacrificed itself’ (the vessels of light breaking into a myriad of shards), or a singularity that exploded, and that depends on us for its reconstitution and the reuniting the shards. In this cosmology or, mythology, the appearance of man signifies a special point on the road of Tikun where for the first time a self representing universe (in which even a bacteria mapping its environment is a way in which ‘the universe observes itself’, see PGS on Awakening) manages to capture its singular nature. Here the primordial singularity can only be ‘captured’ by another singularity. It is said in the Haggada (quoted by Prigogine) that God has created the world 27 times and that this is the 27th. Each time God says – Halevai Sheyamod’ – i.e. ‘Hope this one survives’. While fragile, these worlds are saturated with hope.

Chris King: Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is not a utopia, whose aim is seeking "perfection in legal, social, and political systems” whose meaning is “nowhere” from Greek ou "not" + topos "place". It is the actual, cosmology of the conscious universe. I am not asking for a religious or spiritual movement to save biodiversity as a utopian quest. I simply seek ground zero recognition of, and action upon, the real existential threats to our survival, without which the meaning of life has no meaning. From this all these other utopian and spiritual quests flow.

The purpose of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is to establish that human symbiosis with the biosphere in evolutionary time scales is the sine qua non necessary reality in the living universe in which we consciously exist. It doesn't present any spiritual point of view except for loving reverence for life itself as the climax process through which the universe becomes fully manifest, and the ability to experience ultimate reality in the first person with no a priori assumptions.

It might seem to others that Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is some kind of shamanic utopian quest for a lotus-eating culture based on mushroom mysticism, but since it has no spiritual doctrine, apart from first person experience of natural existence, it has no cultic status. It’s not for me to advance mushroom mysticism, it’s simply a scientific fact of biospheric evolution confirmed in multiple research studies. SEC’s case rests entirely on its veracity as the correct description of the cosmological context in which our conscious lives are embedded.

You have introduced charming tales of the fragility of the many universes evoked by divinity that I love, as I love many diverse aspects of the “mother religion” from the Zohar to the Torah, but the key point about all these descriptions, particularly the Sabbatical Creation, that becomes the Achilles heel of creationism, is that they are allegories of the ephemeral world human imagination evokes about the cosmos. Humanity has spun creation myths since the dawn of history but these are allegories of an ephemeral so-called “divine” realm not having the veridical flesh and blood reality of nature in the raw. They are hypothetical, but biological survival is actual.

The Shekhinah of Jewish mythology, representing the indwelling feminine face of God's presence on Earth in matrimonial concord, in the tent of Sarah, and in the Eagle’s wings, also carrying the pregnant madonna into the wilderness in Revelation and the Matrona that keeps the way of the Tree of Life:

The Shechinah is defined, in traditional Jewish writings, as the "female aspect of God" or the "presence" of the infinite God in the world. She is introduced in the early rabbinical commentaries as the "immanence" or "indwelling" of the living God, whose role as the animating life force of the earth is to balance the transcendent deity (Novick 1983).

We are taught that Abraham and Sarah initiated souls by bringing them “under the wings of Shekhinah” (Novick 2008).

The Shekhinah was said to have retreated in the Fall in Eden and will return in the End of Days Unveiling as sparks or shards that will come together in reunion in completing the mosaic of the shattered feminine.

Fig 264: Shekhinah and the Tree of Life

So I want to give you my interpretation of this. We spent most of our time in Jerusalem in the millennium discussing this and related ideas. The Shekhinah is one of the most misperceived entities in spiritual, let alone Jewish, cosmology. As described in the Kabbalah, she is the feminine face finessed into a patriarchal mould. This confuses the entire nature of the God quest. The key thing is that the Shekhinah became fractured in the Fall and the End of Days is her reuniting. This turns the tables on the entire apocalyptic reality. This is not just a spiritual singularity capture. It is the feminine face regaining her rightful sanctity in the patriarchally imbalanced top-heavy cosmology.

The Fall was Yahweh's fall from the grace of unity that was expressed in Adam and Lilith as contesting equals, before Eve was made a surrogate wife in the patriarchal mould and then cursed to be the mother of all living under travail pain of childbirth and obedient to her husband, as man was to be to Yahweh.

After God created Adam, who was alone, He said, "It is not good for man to be alone." He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, "I will not lie below," and he said, "I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one." Lilith responded, "We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth." But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air (Alphabet of ben Sirach).

According to Midrash, the Genesis Rabbah states: "God proceeded to create a second Eve for Adam, after 'the first Eve' (Chavvah ha-Rishonah) had to return to dust". And in the Numbers Rabbah: "My firstborn, He is now destroying! As that Lilith who, when she finds nothing else, turns upon her own children". Lilith retreated into the wilderness and came to be demonised as a hyper-fecund destroyer of children, particularly male infants, in resentment over her displaced heritage (Plaskow 2005).

Wildcats shall meet with hyenas, goat-demons shall call to each other; there too Lilith shall repose,

and find a place to rest. There shall the owl nest and lay and hatch and brood in its shadow (Isa 34:14).

The ultimate sin of God was withholding the Tree of Life hidden since the foundation of the world, so that the sanctity of nature and the creative process of natural evolution became repressed and female reproductive choice became oppressed. There is no way this can be addressed by trying to balance reverence for life against reuniting God. Yahweh has sinned against nature and the feminine and this is what needs reunification.

Now, what is "the way of the Tree of Life"? This is the great Matrona who is the way
to the great and mighty Tree of Life ... is the Shekhinah (Soncino Zohar, Shemoth).

To give the traditional underpinnings of this account in the Kabbala, here is a short excerpt from Schwartz (1997) concerning an account of Isaac Luria – “Ha'ARI"("The Lion”) after Rabbi Abraham sent by Ari had in “A vision at the Wailing Wall (Kotel)”.

Ari had touched the forehead of Rabbi Abraham and sensed he might face immanent demise and said to go to Jerusalem to pray at the Kotel for the Shekhinah to appear. He did so and saw a woman in mourning, and when he stared into her eyes he felt sadness and grief so great that he had never felt before, as it was the pain of a mother who felt sympathy for her children in banishment. He fainted and fell on the ground and experienced a second vision of Shekhinah as a beautiful woman in a wedding gown. She embraced him and whispered in his ear: "Do not worry, Abraham, my son. My banishment shall soon come to an end, and my legacy will not be for naught, as it is said: "There is hope for your future and your children will return to their own territory", thus retelling the Rabbinical tale of the Shekhinah's exile and return in the reintegration of Israel, the rebuilding of the Temple and the coming of the Messiah:

The two appearances of the Shekhinah that Rabbi Abraham envisions at the Wall, that of the old woman in mourning and of the bride in white, represent the two primary aspects of her nature, one grieving over the destruction of the Temple and the exile of Israel, and other representing the ecstatic feminine, as symbolized by a celestial bride. Indeed, these multiple faces suggest that the figure of the Shekhinah contains within it a host of other goddess figures, all of which have been subsumed in one mythic figure.

Its central teachings concern the mysteries of creation: How God had to contract Himself in order to make space for the creation of the world, in a process known as Simsum. How God then sent forth vessels of primordial light that somehow split apart, scattering the sparks of holy light all over the world, but especially in the Holy Land. And how gathering these sparks can restore the broken vessels, returning the world to its primordial condition.

The deepest mystery of all among the students of Isaac Luria – the Ari concerns the true reason for the Shattering of the Vessels. The most important consequences of it, however, are apparent: it shifts the responsibility for the fallen state of existence from man to God, and it also sets the stage for the second phase of the myth, that of the Gathering the Sparks. Here the scattered sparks are sought out and gathered in the belief that when enough have been raised up, the broken vessels will be restored and the world returned to its prelapsarian state.

The most essential feature of the Ari's myth is its two-part nature. Here it is understood from the first that the complete myth requires both parts; it is not possible to consider one without the other. The first part of this cosmological myth is destructive, the second part creative. The archetypal pattern is that of shattering and restoration. But instead of shifting the blame for the Fall to Adam and Eve, here it can be directly linked to God, Who, after all, is the ultimate creator and therefore responsible for any flaws in creation.

Note the remarkable parallels between the Ari's creation myth and that of the Exile of the Shekhinah. Both are two-part; both involve separation and reunion, exile and return; both attribute to the prayers of Israel the power to accomplish the necessary tikkun or repair. Indeed, it is possible to view the myth of the Ari as a mystical restatement of the Exile of the Shekhinah.

Thus the kabbalists did as the rabbis had before them: they received one myth and transformed it into another, which more closely mirrored their view of the world. For them this meant resurrecting the lost goddess, but doing so in a context that appeared to preserve the monotheistic basis of Judaism. So it is that the myths about God, the Bride of God, and the Messiah converge, diverge, and ultimately come together in the messianic vision of the End of Days. For when all of the holy sparks have been liberated, the Messiah will come, the Temple will be restored, and God's Bride will come out of exile, restoring the Godhead to wholeness.

If we are talking in the messianic paradigm as I do to fulfil my covenant, I am here, born into this world, to reflower the Tree of Life in the sacred hieros gamos of nature and divinity in that of woman and man reunited and women’s sovereignty again becoming sacrosanct. To do this I have to coalesce the shards, but do it in a way that is not simply another utopian religious movement. Hence I chose the vehicle of a cosmology, because cosmology is the way science sees the cosmos and this is the way the whole tragedy can be undone.

When I say it is necessary and imperative to make the existential threat of the mass extinction of life the sine qua non objective over spirituality, I am doing so as the messiah of the immortal age of the living tree of existence, in which the feminine element compensating God’s original sin is nature herself and the primacy of symbiosis IS the reunion manifest. This can't be a utopia or we will just go down the same route. It HAS to be the cosmology of the reflowering of the Tree of Life.

Out there there are actually still forests and jungles with wild animals and nutritive, medicinal and poisonous species which are not ephemeral unless we wreak annihilation upon life as a whole as we appear to be doing, but these are lying far beyond the technological machine-dependent culture of our increasingly urban society, which the majority of humanity, receding into urban concrete jungles, no longer recognises as motivating, perhaps beautiful, although somewhat threatening and certainly not essential to our fantasies of progress, from science-fiction utopias, to the noosphere, where as we know to our peril, thought seeks to supplant the necessity of evolving nature.

This is a recipe for disaster that can't be put on the back burner. It is NOT apocalyptic thinking to recognise this. It is the true Unveiling, and an eschatological death wish to ignore it!

The Weltanshauung of Immortality

The Weltanshauung ^{^[75]} of Immortality is the world view in which life and conscious existence are recognised as perennially immortal processes key to the cosmology of the universe and that the meaning and reason for conscious existence is the sacred process of fulfilment of the flowering of life, so that the universe as a whole can become fully aware of and truly know itself through the living biota it has generated as a climax phenomenon. This point of view is both intuitively natural to human emergence in animism and transcends both the materialistic and theistic world views, each of which is degenerate, incomplete, confining and corrupt. It fulfils our existential hope in a way which neither theism not materialism can do and places us as active, pivotal and responsible cosmological agents in the flowering and unfolding of conscious existence.

The paradox of the existential condition, amid an entropic universe is fundamental to cosmology. A symmetry-breaking has to occur, in which positive energy real particles inherit the arrow of time, amid a time-symmetric underlying milieu of quantum potentialities. From this symmetry-breaking, the second law of thermodynamics follows, in which isolated systems tend to a ‘randomised’ state of increasing entropy by mutual interaction, as the ultimate doom of annihilation of structure and meaning.

Molecular biogenesis and the ensuing evolution of life is a negentropic process of increasing complexity, that runs upstream against the entropic current of ‘despair’, because it is an open thermodynamic system on a planetary surface basking in gentle incident solar radiation of a wavelength spectrum that can be absorbed by the molecular systems of living cells without so degrading them that life is wiped out. We thus arrive at planetary biospheres where life beats the entropic odds and rises to a climax of species complexity and diversity and becomes conscious of itself.

Life in the universe rises to conscious climax through perennial species immortality, but it occurs inevitably coupled to organismic mortal sexuality. This is the dilemma of the mortal coil and is precisely the way it has to be, because the molecular genetic basis of life is always subject to mutational degradation by Muller’s ratchet, the entropic randomisation of any structured genome bit by bit in the absence of active processes of genetic recombination to add vital new genetic combinations to restore life’s genetic vitality.

Bacteria and archaea solve this problem by co-existing symbiotically with transposable elements and viruses that promiscuously exchange genetic sequences, even between differing species, in horizontal gene transfer. Complex organisms evolved through the endo-symbiosis between the archaea and bacteria giving rise to our respiring mitochondria giving rise to the first eucaryotes. Without this symbiosis complex life could not have arisen. The energy provided by this cooperative fusion provided the basis for a tremendously expanded genetic and phenotypic complexity and the large genomes of nucleated eucaryote cells, but with this complexity came crippling attrition from mutational degradation, despite the evolution of the error-correcting enzymes that ensure human longevity.

Fig 265: Meiotic crossing over (top left) in eucaryote haploid-diploid sexuality has sustained the diversity and evolution of eucaryote life forms from mutational degradation for the last 2 billion years resulting in unique mortal individuals of each sex while species as a whole are perennially immortal. A number of species, from lizards to aphids, can generate young by parthenogenesis, but all species resort to occasional cryptic sexual recombination to refresh their genomes, except for the bdelloid rotifers whose genomes , unlike those of sexual rotifers (top right) are densely packed with allele differences, indicating their diploid chromosomes are no longer able to cross over and have diverged asexually for up to 40 million years. However, bdelloid rotifers have been found to have another primitive form of genetic recombination like prokaryotes by scavenging the genes of sexual rotifers or other organisms to regenerate their vitality including horizontal transfer of genes from bacteria (lower right).

The solution the eucaryotes arrived at, at the very root of the eucaryote tree, was meiotic sexuality, where organisms in the diploid phase keep two copies of their genome and actively recombine these in meiotic gametogenesis, so that both sperms and eggs carry new haploid combinations of alleles (the maternal and paternal versions of a given gene) through crossing over, by lining up their genes in an indexed manner in the synaptonemal complex. These are then brought together in the ovum in fertilisation and the development of a diploid embryo ensues. This means that each of our offspring carry half the mother’s and half the father’s genes, forming a new individual that has never existed on Earth before, unless there are identical twins or triplets.

The modern materialistic ambition in the pursuit of ultimate longevity, by seekers of a technologically-utopian 'final solution’, amid human cloning and genetic modification, is a process of trying to turn elite humans into effectively parthenogenetic organisms, whose life span is indeterminate. These utopian aims are futile and ultimate selfishness. No parthenogenetic species can survive long term without sexual recombination and the biosphere to support them. Bacteria and archaea exchange genes promiscuously, even between species, via viruses and plasmids. An extreme is found in some bdelloid rotifer species, which appear to have been parthenogenetic for 40 million years, because their alleles are highly discordant, but they have been found to cryptically scavenge genes form other sexual rotifers or even fungi and bacteria. So the quest for technological immortality amounts to becoming mutant ninja turtles keeping their genomes viable by endless genetic engineering.

Eucaryote sexuality is a deeply embedded form of genetic symbiosis. Men and women share almost all their genes, but form genetic complements. Neither sex can continue to survive without the other. This is the most altruistic act of the evolutionary flowering because it means that, rather than trying to be individually immortal through parthenogenesis, we contribute a mere half of our genes to the next generation to create new life forms unique unto themselves yet in the parents collective image just as in the allegory of the Sabbatical Creation. Hence as humans, we hunger for one another sexually because, in our very fertility the immortal web of conscious life is spun anew.

However, this also leads to our existential dilemma of sexual mortality as individual organisms. Because we are each unique and have an ego, to emotionally seek and secure our personal survival, we come to lament our mortal condition because, however exciting life is and however much we hunger for it to continue, we are doomed to senescence and mortal demise.

But we are just beads on an immortal web of life. Humanity exists as a species with a history running back down the tree of life for three and a half billion years. Individual organisms are mortal, but species and biospheres are perennially immortal, so long as Earth shall live, in a fertile and habitable condition. All animals, humans included, have arisen through the immortal fabric of natural selection and because of this are finely attuned to strive for life, to care for their young and their kin, even at risk to their own existence.

Despite paying lip service to the selfish gene (Dawkins 1974), Matt Ridley (1996) in “The Origins of Virtue” has sought to elucidate the intrinsic goodness of human nature in evolutionary terms, based on long term judgment of character, verifiable trust and mutual cooperation to survive, contradicting the Augustinian doctrine of “original sin” stemming from Eden:

Our minds ... have been built to be social, trustworthy and supportive. ... Human beings have social instincts. They

come into the world equipped with predispositions to learn how to cooperate to discriminate the trustworthy from the treacherous, to commit themselves to be trustworthy, to earn good reputations, to exchange goods and information, and to divide labour. In this we are on our own. No other species has been so far down this evolutionary path before us, for no species has built a truly integrated society ... we owe our success as a species to our social instincts; they have enabled us to reap undreamt benefits from the division of labour ... They are responsible for the rapid expansion of our brains in the past two million years and thence for our inventiveness. Our societies and our minds evolved together, each reinforcing trends in the other. Far from being a universal feature of animal life, ... this instinctive cooperativeness is the very hallmark of humanity.

Founding human cultures tended to be animists – that is they viewed both living organisms and the natural phenomena around them as conscious agents, perceiving themselves as embedded in the web of life, even though it was in many ways also threatening, as a world of tooth and claw amid accident and misfortune. Viewing of the universe as conscious agents leads to a greater embedding in the matrix of life, in which the generations are treated as sacred, so both offspring and ancestors were revered, both as real biological organisms and as conscious spirit beings spanning space and time in the immortal passage of the generations. This is our founding Weltanshauung of Immortality, our deeply perceived world view of the intrinsic perennial perpetuity of life amid the mortal coil.

As we shall see in the animism section, this hasn’t meant that all animists are good or responsible ecologists, because migrating ethnic peoples from the Americas, through Australia, and Madagascar to New Zealand have caused serious species extinctions on their arrival, but the record of our founding cultures such as the San Bushmen and Mbuti and Biaka Pygmies do show such sustainable reverence for protecting the ongoing continuity of life in their practices.

With the rise of urban societies, the spiritual web of nature receded into the background and new human cultural inventions distorted and degenerated this immortal view of consciousness embedded in the matrix of nature. The spirits of natural phenomena such as storms droughts and thunder and lightning evolved into supernatural deities that became ever more abstract and powerful, despite clearly displaying the projected aspects of human agency in God’s jealousy, anger and sometimes compassion as cosmic super agents in an allegorical universe of extrapolated myth.

In the East, another current emerged, in which the shamanic states of the vision quest became elaborated into a religious philosophy of renunciation of the worldly ego in a mind-sky devotion to mental transcendence, no longer explicitly linked to the physical immortality of nature as its embodiment, leading to attempts to escape the round of birth and death in a moksha which proved attainable by very few in this lifetime. This in turn led to notions of reincarnation to achieve realisation in a future lifetime, karma and the inexorable decline of spiritual unity into varying forms of the Kali Yuga in both Hindu and Buddhist traditions.

The notion of evil in our founding cultures is not associated with the divine negativity of a satanic force, but just the notion of bad rather than good:

When a missionary inquired into a Bushman's ideas of good and evil he was told it was 'good' to sleep with another man's wife, but 'bad' if he slept with yours. Still lamenting the Bushman's ignorance of absolute morality, he later asked the man, whom meanwhile he had discovered 'was in the habit of smoking wild hemp', what he thought was the most wonderful thing he had seen. The reply he was given, that no one thing was more wonderful than any other and that all the animals were the same.

This shows the San as retaining an egalitarian animist view rather than disproportionate awe in the religious hierarchy.

Morality is not a divine, cosmological fact of existence, but is rather a sociobiological feature of intelligent human and animal societies, where Machiavellian strategic bluffing is common, and social disapproval or punishment becomes an influence to reduce internal strife to enhance inter-social dominance of the group (Alexander 1987). But it became enshrined in urban societies in codes of law such as those of Hammurabi and has taken centre stage in theistic doctrines of good and evil forces and divine moral punishment.

Fig 267: The Fall; expelled from Eden, Adam and Eve raise a family and set to work. Scotin, c. 1765. The Fall specifically links, carnal knowledge, mortality and sexual reproduction.

The Edenic Fall constitutes a metaphor of this transition. Among the arboreal splendour and abundance of the primal Paradise stand two trees, the Tree of Life common to many Near Eastern cultures as an archetype of immoral fertility and a new wholly unnatural tree – the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yahweh says Adam and Eve, the Mother of All Living can eat of the fruit of any tree except this one. In the event, the Serpent persuades Eve to eat the “apple” and she bids Adam too and they become aware of their sexual privacy and cover their genitals with fig leaves.

This allegory then leads to the Fall of the Weltanshauung of Immortality, because becoming aware of their sexuality is also the awareness of their sexual mortality, disconnecting them as the primal couple from the very passage of the generations that sustains the sacred fabric of existence. This occurs in a context where immortal reproduction has been flatly denied. As the first human beings, neither have sexually reproduced, so exist like the asexual angels of Christian heaven, unaware they are able to procreate by themselves. God then curses the ground, driving them from the garden with the woman consigned to be obedient to her husband and travail in childbirth:

I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children;

and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

And the man to have to live by the sweat of his brow amid the thistles and thorns in dominion over the natural world:

cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground;

for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

The Tree of Life is hidden since the foundation by a flaming sword lest they also eat of it and live forever:

Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil:

and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life,

and eat, and live for ever: … and he placed at the east of the garden …

a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

Thus the Tree of Life that provided the immortal link was withheld, and humanity was doomed to mortal sexuality in ignorance of the ancient knowledge of the immortal web of existence that partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Life would have revealed anew.

One needs to understand at this point that Genesis is by no means the oldest, nor the cosmologically founding text in the Bible. Its putative date of authorship dates from the time of Solomon at the very earliest with scholarly opinions dating to the exile and one theory linking it to being as late as the 3rd century BCE. One theory for its inclusion is "Persian imperial authorisation" – that the Persians of the Achaemenid Empire, after their conquest of Babylon in 539 BC agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire but required the local authorities to produce a single law code accepted by the entire community.

Also we need to recognise that to live forever is precisely what the evolutionary tree of life’s diversity actually does. To live forever doesn’t imply eternal, just unending, everlasting, that is, perennially immortal. This is both a biological and a spiritual reality of conscious existence. Eternality is rather a frozen static image of space-time as a whole.

The only references to the word eternal (Hebrew: נִצחִי – unending, everlasting, perpetual) in the Old Testament are one in Deuteronomy referring to God and one in Isaiah referring to the Redeemer:

The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms:

and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them (Deut 33:27).

Whereas thou has been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee,

I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations (Isa 60:15).

The original Hebrew beliefs had referred only to Sheol, the underworld of the dead. But in the wake of the Zoroastrian eschatological renovation, the natural embedding in the fabric of the immortal life flow became seconded to a novel and alien apocalyptic notion of eternal life, either in Heaven or eternal torment in Hell. Thus we see the emergence of the word “eternal” applied to human kind only in the New Testament. Even the Gospel of Thomas does not refer to eternal life, although the preface cryptically says:

“Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death”.

Neither do we simply experience death in the Weltanshauung, because life itself is immortal and we give our incarnate lives in our actions in the world to immortal life as a whole.

Thus the eschatology spawned initially by the Fall and finally by the apocalyptic Renovation shattered the Weltanshauung of Immortality, which was both naturally valid and evident and spiritually fulfilling in the perpetual regeneration of life, both in life as a whole and in the passage of the generations of humanity, replacing it with an destructive eschatology of the late planet Earth to be discarded as God’s creation in the Day of Judgment in favour of a completely implausible, contrived and fundamentally evil war between light and dark principles, expanded from mere natural “badness” or personal selfishness into satanic eternal cosmological evil, to which all human beings are claimed to be fatally drawn leading either to eternal Heaven or unrelenting torment in Hell.

This is replacing the real life we have where we are conscious agents having real volitional efficacy over the physical world and cosmological responsibilities to the continuity of life to uphold, with the false hope of an afterlife which does not and cannot exist in the universe as we know it, cannot contain all the living creatures since Earth began in any biospheric meaning and wastes our very agency on a fantasy where Heaven has no autonomous agency and no further meaning or purpose in life. If we want to experience such realities, we can so so through the biospheric sacraments, which do convey the experience of union with the living spirits of the universe throughout space and time, just as we can experience moksha escaping the Eastern round of birth and death in this life in the same way.

Fig 268: While Heaven above and Hell below are fictitious realms of the conscious imagination which have no basis in cosmological reality, the evolutionary process centre, which many Christians abhor is actually the immortal passage of the generations in which humanity has flowered into cultural emergence. But what are we now evolving towards in the centre image – AI takeover? In living immortality lie all our future hopes of survival, not a Heaven or Hell frozen eternally in time where Hell is one long scream of no fruitful meaning and we have no idea what we would creatively do in Heaven except sing hymns of praise. No sex, no children no creativity no real life, no redemption through our own agency as conscious sentient beings protecting life in the universe. To preserve our species immortality in the face of a mass extinction of the entire diversity of life caused by humanity ourselves it is absolutely essential that we return to our conscious spiritual roots in the Weltanshauung of Immortality.

To see how deleterious, incorrect and deceitful this destructive eschatology of nature is, one simply needs to compare its claims with the natural realities of the universe as we have discovered it. While perennial immortality is an incontestable fact of existence going back 3.5 billion years almost to the time the Earth’s oceans first condensed, the notion of eternal life is neither natural nor is it any kind of spiritual fulfilment.

Since the discovery of relativity, we know that time is not a supernatural parameter independent of space but that the two are conjoint dimensions in space-time as a whole and space-time is eternal but fixed as everything there has ever been and will be. You can see this looking at the universe sideways on in fig 15 above in the right-hand image of Paradise on the cosmic equator. Once we view space-time from outside all the way from to , it is simply the entire history of the universe – everything that happened, sitting eternally in space-time. All our lives, from birth to death are in there somewhere, static and stranded, as everything there has been and everything there shall be. You can’t do anything creative in eternal life, it is just static like the snowflake in the figure below. Believers have a notion of angels singing heavenly praise of God and Muslims have a sexy heaven with 72 black eyed virginal houri made anew every day for the pleasures of men, but its just a static vision, where the houris are not real people and can’t really share your love, or concerns because they are born anew like Alexa rebooted again and again. It’s all a ground hog day denying us the very creative agency of conscious existence the real world provides us here and now, which also provides us with cosmic responsibilities to ensure life continues to flower in abundance so that the universe can come to understand and know its own becoming.

Fig 269: Snowflakes have astoundingly varied individual forms that are created dynamically at the atmospheric ice-vapour interface by incoming moist air condensing individual water molecules, which “walk” over the surface quantum mechanically to preserve the ramifying symmetry. Yet the end result is “death” – a frozen life history of its becoming, “eternally” static in time once the dynamic process ceases.

We thus come full circle back to the elephant in the room. Both the materialist universe, as the ultimate machine, mindless of life in the computational paradigm, and the theistic view of supplicant will, dominion over nature and destructive eschatology, both lead to a human-induced mass extinction of life, when the cosmology of the living universe is founded on symbiosis, not capitalistic dominance and competition, which are actually subcomponents of a predatory ecological strategy. These views are thus inconsistent with long term survival of our species in the closing circle of the living biosphere.

Thus we have a two-fold urgent, yet realisable task for humanity to achieve as fast as we possibly can : (1) To restore the living diversity of evolutionary tree of life in the biosphere, before a human-induced mass extinction destroys our 3.5 billion year genetic and living heritage and (2) to restore the paradigm of the Weltanshauung of Immortality in the full resplendence of life in the universe, shining brightly forth again, because this is the spiritual realisation of our cosmic ‘destiny’ as transformative conscious agents, having volitional agency over the living world around us, to restore the sanctity of life, so that existence can unfold unabated in the universe.

Paradoxical Asymmetric Complementarity

The Koan of the Tao of Existence

The objective universe is necessary

but subjective consciousness is primary

Symbiotic existential cosmology is a paradoxically asymmetric complementarity. It is neither dual-aspect monism nor naturalistic dualism and transcends both. The cosmology is founded on a cosmological paradox — we can't eliminate the physical universe because our lives and our ability to deal with the affairs of the world depend on it, yet all our experience of it is through the subjectively conscious mind, and we don't know the universe can actually manifest without this. So ‘mind’ is primary, although the universe is necessary to to our existence and to life itself. This is the koan of the Tao of existence, which becomes integral to our causality-violating volition, which ostensibly intervenes in the causal closure of the brain, through quantum uncertainty, our “cubic centimetre of chance”:

All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess, to pick it up (Castaneda 1968).

Reality is an overlapping cascade of manifestations of a universal principle that emerges in quanta, but is manifest also in dynamics and biology and reaches all the way to the lateralised cortices of the brain. This is the principle of asymmetric complementarities making up an integral whole that arises from the phenomenon of symmetry-breaking.

This happens at a fundamental level with the wave and particle aspects of quantum reality, where the wave aspect is continuous and the particle aspect is discrete. The uncertainty principle neatly expresses this symmetry-breaking structurally in the inverse relation between E as the wave frequency and t as the temporal position of the particle. It is neatly defined by interference between a sampled wave form and a standard wave confirming the energy-time and position momentum-uncertainties, but the wave is commonly regarded as a calculation artefact. Indeed quantum field theory is particle-based except that the Green's function is a hidden wave propagator. On the other hand a point particle is an infinite energy self-singularity so we end up with superstrings and so it goes.

The standard model of physics list the known particles as radiation/force forming particles of integral spin and matter forming fermions of half-integral spin which stack only in pairs. These fit together, but in a highly asymmetric arrangement. The fermions, although they are complemented by the bosons in the standard model are asymmetric with strikingly different particle populations although these splice together seamlessly in the universe around us. Within this there are three others. The symmetry breaking of the weak and electromagnetic forces gives three heavy weak photon carriers and one massless electromagnetic photon. There is a deeper symmetry breaking between the colour force whose colour charge goes in threes and the weak-electro where it goes in twos. Finally we have gravity standing alone as universally attractive, while the rest are attractive-repulsive vector particle fields.

Supersymmetry, or SUSY as it is called, is the idea that each boson is paired with a fermion one half-integer of spin apart. This idea arises because the vacuum contribution of the fermions appears to cancel the opposite contribution of the bosons, for example solving the hierarchy problem the huge energy gap between the scales of the standard model forces and the Planck scale of gravitation. The trouble is that the standard model has a very different set of bosons from the set of its fermions. This doesn't mean that the underlying symmetry is not true but that it must be broken, as indeed the weak-electromagnetic symmetry is. The fact that so far no supersymmetric particles have been discovered reinforces the idea that saying a correspondence might not be the natural Occam's razor solution. Garret Lisi had a classification in his Exceptionally Simple TOE and his prediction that the LHC wouldn't find SUSY held. In particular the 240 vector root system of E8 has 112 "bosonic" permutations of (±1,±1,0,0,0,0,0,0) asymmetrically complementing 128 "fermionic" permutations of (±1/2,±1/2,±1/2,±1/2,±1/2,±1/2,±1/2,±1/2).

So the symmetry-breaking basis implies that asymmetric complementarities arise as a secondary consequence of the symmetry-breaking process itself and should be universal. I.e. symmetry-breaking does not lead to symmetric complementarity. But wait a minute! The standard model is symmetry broken, so how can supersymmetry be feasible at all? Why isn’t supersymmetry also manifestly broken? What we find is hypothetical soft supersymmetry breaking in which it is envisaged that a symmetry breaking of supersymmetry occurs which is unlinked to the symmetry breaking that causes the standard model.

As briefly summarised in wikipedia: “Soft SUSY breaking decouples the origin of supersymmetry breaking from its phenomenological consequences. In effect, soft SUSY breaking adds explicit symmetry breaking to the supersymmetric Standard Model Lagrangian. The source of SUSY breaking results from a different sector where supersymmetry is broken spontaneously. Divorcing the spontaneous supersymmetry breaking from the supersymmetric Standard Model leads to the notion of mediated supersymmetry breaking.” Of course supersymmetry hasn’t been realised, so physics has failed to give us a clear answer.

Fig 270: The natural universe contains many potentially overlapping forms of asymmetric complementarity, wave-particle as revealed in an interference experiment, fermion-boson matter-radiation complementarity, chaos and order as demonstrated in both conservative (above ordered closed cycles chaotic dappled orbits) and dissipative systems (below grey/yellow ordered black chaotic), in cellular automata, where the edge of chaos invokes universal computability in the elementary two state 1D automation 110 and in biology in sexual complementarity (human fertilisation) and in the characterised differences in cortical lateralisation.

But this is just the beginning of the picture. Chaos and order are abstract complementarities in dynamics, which have asymmetric relationships, for example the quadratic Julia set is chaotic and its complement, the ordered Fatou set, are asymmetrically complementary. Likewise in conservative dynamics such as asteroid orbits and the double pendulum regions of ordered orbits are permeated by dappled chaotic trajectories.

It also pervades biology. Sexuality has a similar basis in symmetry breaking because symmetric gametes in eucaryotes result in very costly mitochondrial warfare upon fertilisation, so that there are a vast number of quasi-particulate sperm and one oceanic ovum waiting to engulf just one of them. In higher plants the chloroplasts are also at war. Hence eucaryotes evolved sperm-ovum sex, where the female has the mother cytosol with the mitochondria while the male just has a motile sperm whose mitochondria, essential for swimming to the egg are largely destroyed on entry. This means female parenting investment is disproportionately greater than male and the sex wars ensue. Hence only 3% of mammals are socially monogamous and even those aren't genetically monogamous.

Fig 271: Left and right hemisphere hubs. Composite images of the distribution of activations comparing rhyme-case tasks (phonological processing) for 19 males (left) compared to 19 females (right) (Shaywitz et al. 1995).

The same symmetry-breaking argument applies strongly to the left and right cortices of the brain, where the efficiency of lateralisation is that symmetrically duplicated cortical functions are a tragically inefficient use of resources. Language is predominantly on the left side in Broca’s and Wernike’s areas although this is less so in females (Shaywitz et al. 1995) and in music and language perception (Albouy et al. 2020) where frequency space is in the right hemisphere while the understanding fo the lyrics is in the left, and in the notion of the left side being more analytic and the right more holistically synthetic. Left-lateralized hubs included regions from the default mode network (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and temporoparietal junction) and language regions (e.g., Broca Area and Wernicke Area), whereas the right-lateralized hubs included regions from the attention control network (e.g., lateral intraparietal sulcus, anterior insula, area MT, and frontal eye fields). Left- and right-lateralized hubs formed two separable networks of mutually lateralized regions (NIelsen et al, 2017).

Fig 272c: Left and right hemisphere hubs.

A little more prosaic, we have time and space, past and future, and in the prisoner's dilemma of defection and cooperation which also have an asymmetric relationship. This is what Tao and Tantra as an asymmetric cosmological principle of creative and receptive, or male and female are all about, so let's go right into the centre of the cyclone, subjective consciousness and the physical universe, where Eastern philosophy notes that mind is indivisible while matter is not. Asymmetric complementarities do not all arise from the same source but do have common predisposing features of overall efficiency through symmetry-breaking.

Now we run into the hard problem of consciousness. Given that we are subjectively conscious beings possessing volitional will over a universe we know only through our conscious experience of it and the universe in turn becomes manifest only through its conscious sentient beings, the meaning of existence is created through our journey of discovery as conscious agents transforming the universe by our insights and actions. Thus, while the universe is necessary, consciousness is primary.

This raises a serious problem about attempts to mount abstract descriptions of the ultimate generating theory underlying the subjective and objective reality of consciousness and the universe. If consciousness violates physical causal closure, how can we describe any functional or causal TOEx (theory of existence)? If the universe can only manifest through our conscious experience of it, what hope is there for any single stand-alone TOEx as a pure abstraction? How can it actually manifest subjectively, except as a piece of mathematical reasoning? But this is not manifestation of the subjective, it is just a mathematical thought in the mind of the beholder.

That said, objective reality and our descriptions of it do show natural convergence to the subjective complement. Many aspects of physical brain function look like the same sort of phase coherence sampling we see in the uncertainty principle and edge-of-chaos phenomena and self-organised criticality provide the ability of the quantum reality of the physical universe to develop a convergent interface with the conscious mind. The same is possible even for information and computational descriptions, such as Stephen Wolfram’s (2021) account "What is consciousness?".

The trouble is that forms of rational and logical thought and well tried models of causal deduction, which everyone is very familiar with, tend to be the main instrument people tend to apply. Attempts to structure the subjective realm in approaches such as Pan-protopsychism, have deep analogies with reductionism and the same pitfall occurs with all abstract logical attempts to form a mind-universe monad TOE underlying cosmological complementarity.

As we have noted, when we start with subjective conscious volition over the physical world as a mutual affirmation between conscious agents. Instead of the hard problem, this leads to accepting at least some matter (brains) have a hidden subjective aspect which can affect their outcomes, possibly through uncertain instability. This means that the hypothesis of physical causal closure of the brain is eliminated by Occam's razor. But then subjectivity is a natural material property and brains obey the same four core quantum forces, even if they have quasi-particle states etc. So the occluded subjective aspect becomes complementary to the physical universe as a whole (where –> represents an asymmetric complementarity):

Cosmos = (Quantum universe (particle –> wave) –> Mind at Large)

Our individual conscious experiences are encapsulations of this complementary aspect, modulated by the very brain dynamics we are looking at in the EEG and action potentials, as a biological neural net – except that it is a fractal neural net operating in a scale-traversing handshaking manner all the way from the quantum to the organism.

This is one of the one-mind forms of quantum reality and coincides with Erwin Schrödinger's comment:

“There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousnesses.
Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind. ... I should say: The overall number of minds is just one”

This leads to the most asymmetric complementarity of all. And it carries with it fundamental challenges to any form of logical description, because the subjective aspect has a series of adventitious characteristics: It is volitional, intentional, idiosyncratic, exploratory, imaginative, innovative, creative, and visionary.

How are we supposed to logically, or causally , or functionally, elucidate something that is the key central part of creative intentionality in the cosmic becoming? This is an awfully steep mind-boggling challenge! The reality is that, as conscious volitional agents, we are the creative process of the universe in sentient motion. We can talk about it round the camp fire and make up myths and stories about it, as we do in science, with profoundly informative effect that we are all in awe of. But when we paint ourselves into the corner of consciousness itself we come to the elephant in the room. Consciousness is the causality-violating creative principle in action expressed through self-organised criticality in the brain and quantum uncertainty itself. We cannot elucidate it causally, because our very intent will override it, but we are realising it spontaneously as we enact history in the multiverse and that is our cosmological role.

We are thus the collective 'Elohim of the living universe incarnate entities of transformation. We are personally responsible for the fate of the living planet. The ultimate buck cannot be passed. The least of our priorities is analysing logically who or what we are. We are bound in a covenant with the universe to protect the diversity of the Tree of Life, in our becoming and in the becoming of planet Earth as a living survivor of the Fermi paradox. All we have is a small window of opportunity to unite in our diversity to achieve the one central necessary condition for our continued survival and existence, through which the universe itself is manifest – protect the diversity of life on Earth from its immanent mass extinction in a destructive human-induced anthropocene catastrophe.

The Natural Face of Samadhi vs Male Spiritual Purity

There is a very important reason why Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is fundamentally different from everyone's ideas of spirituality, samadhi and moksha.

The Eastern tradition is based almost universally on renunciation and control. This produces a different kind of samadhi because it evokes a whole constellation of concepts involving mental control, emptiness rather than the fullness of natural life, permanence rather than flux and eternality rather than temporality. Monotheism does likewise, imposing the absolute rule of eternal order enforced by everlasting punishment and the triage and abandonment of natural life. Both enforce morality rather than provide direct natural enlightenment.

This is a very ancient product of men attempting to control the tokens of gatherer-hunter culture and inventing mind-sky cosmologies to address intrinsic male fear of mortality. Women don't share this because they give live birth, often at great struggle and witness their own flesh and blood suckling from them and slowly maturing. Consequently men stare at the sky, invent sky gods and storm gods and ultimate realities of a spiritual world that in their view transcends nature. Women in turn are regarded as 'unclean' and nature is regarded as subservient. Female reproductive choice is repressed and women become the property of men, distorting the evolution of intelligence and the human sense of integration with the biosphere. Female deities such as Kali are pushed to the periphery and associated with chaos and physical decay into conflict. The very best we get is Shakti as the physical aspect of Shiva's consciousness spawning the Maya of mortal physical life.

Our entire cosmological viewpoint has become corrupted by male dominance over sexually antagonistic coevolution, where women have to endure pregnancy and live birth and need to choose intelligent male partners because of their primary investment in parenting, while males although they seek to sew wild oats, as their investment is primarily reproductive, want to control female reproductive choice because even in their mortal anxiety, it at least gives them paternity certainty when women are always certain that the issue from their wombs is their own flesh and blood. Hence the rise of patriarchy over the matriarchy that still continues today.

The crisis of a mass extinction and climate heating, which could destroy our planetary resilience and our tenure as a species is intimately linked to this sexual crisis and needs urgent correction, not just to save the future of life and our species, but for us to even begin to understand the conscious mystery that lies before us. The severe degree of renunciation and control required for full Vedic samadhi, accompanied by stereotyped notions like astral substrates of ethereal experiences leads to concern that controlled samadhi is a restrictively inferior form of enlightenment. Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, rather than seeking spiritual purity of some ethereal or astral realm or pure consciousness in the absence of nature and matter, seeks the edge of chaos where immortal life flowers and unfolds.

Fig 273: Fractal enlightenment

This produces a different kind of moksha samadhi, full of light and visionary significance that transforms our lives into full symbiotic integration with nature. It rejects the myth of control, where enlightenment can only be achieved in emptiness and renunciation of natural and worldly existence. It is spontaneous and creative, pro-life and the sacredness of nature. It is free-wheeling and doesn't require long tedious hours of withdrawal from positive engagement with the world. It doesn't require renunciation of conjugal love and family life in spiritual pursuits and is consistent with science and the lessons immortal nature has to teach us. The truth is clear and unambiguous. The samadhi of life transcends the samadhi of emptiness. Engagement transcends renunciation. Flux transcends stasis. Life transcends death.

The fact that Vinod has to cite a work by a deceased Himalayan ascetic in a world of eight billion people with 1.5 billion in India alone, attests to the unachievable rareness of 'genuine' samadhi in the Eastern tradition. Many people are using meditation in both the East and the West, but genuine evidence of significant non-ordinary mental states indicative of genuine mystical transformative experiences remain rare and ambiguous.

Fig 274: Left: REM state vs waking activations (red-yellow) and deactivations (blue). (Uitermarkt et al. 2020)
Right: Lucid dreaming occupies an unstable region between REM sleep and full waking arousal (del Giudice et al. 2022)

Entheogens are of ancient shamanic use. They are fully natural and evolved by life itself. They are physiologically non-harmful. They complement and complete meditative vigils in transformative ways potentially of great interest to science and cosmology. The only other such resource we have is dreaming but this is particularly hard to control and lucid dreaming states generally result in rapid awakening due to the activation if the reticular activating system of waking consciousness. They also suppress memory of dreaming states unless we immediately wake up, because they are involved in memory consolidation and tend to suppression of parts of the brain involved in conscious focus and free-will, so are well complemented by waking entheogenic experience.

Patanjali in the Purohit translation notes: The Siddhis are born of birth, drugs, mantras, penance or Samadhi. (IV-1) Powers are either revealed at birth, or acquired by medicinal herbs, or by repetition of sacred words, or through austerity, or through illumination. ... All know the healing qualities of herbs; only a few know that some of them have the qualities of awakening spiritual powers.

Clarifying Cosmic Karma

Fig 275: Two incorrect notions of karma: Left inevitable cause and effect and right a cosmic conscious moral retributor.

Many of us have deep confusions about what karma is and does and what it doesn’t do and apply these notions to a degenerate view of what karma actually is. Both reincarnation religions and monotheism are moral cosmologies. Monotheism puts the moral feedback off to the day of judgment, but karmic religions do it through reincarnation.

The first point is that moral cosmologies are false cosmologies that are anthropocentric and in conflict with natural moral sociodynamics in animal and human societies that is clearly a feedback process to inhibit intra-social competition to achieve inter-social domination. It’s a purely evolutionary manifestation of intelligent societies with significant social bluffing.

The notion of Karma as a moral force is ill-conceived.

Before human culture and religion came about, there was no natural evil. Life is an endless struggle to evolve and diversify every which way. While it’s never in perfect balance and largely at the edge of chaos, the diversity of life rises to climax because the plants provide solar energy and the animals can survive eating the plants but also fertilise them and by their very predation result in plant diversity by evolving to hit the weedy species. The same for herbivores and carnivores culling them thus avoiding boom and bust of the herbivores through grassland famines. The same for parasites and prey although we abhor covid, rabies, malaria and ebola. Parasites and prey are key to the Red Queen race that made sexuality and multi-celled eucaryotes possible. Ironically, sex is also the source of organismic mortality but that’s the breaks. Parthenogenesis is unsustainable hubris.

The notion of moral karma was devised by religious doctrine to inhibit intra-social competition to achieve inter-social dominance just as all intelligent socially-bluffing societies do, but it has been launched into a cosmological dimension in the idea that moral causality drives divine punishment including the notion of karma and the Day of Judgment in monotheism. Actually these have a common source in the Indoeuropean culture that spawned both.

Now we have all ended up debating a person’s individual karma in relation to the bad karma other people might witlessly inflict on us, with disease or accident due to their acts or emotional afflictions. This is artifice. We all need to say stop bas enough – this is unnatural. It all came, not from nature but human culture causing runaway forms of social punishment extrapolated onto the cosmos, and in the case of Vedic karma and reincarnation, from the inability of the samadhi tradition to provide moksha in this life, due in good part to the lack of visionary sacraments in the East.

So we need to look more closely. Just as there is no natural evil, the universe has to have rough justice for life to survive. The way the entropic universe and the negentropic nature of life intersect means some people will suffer the vagaries of fate, because this is the way the diversity of life flourishes in the molecular universe. There is a deep meaning here but we have as yet barely scratched the surface and the Vedantic idea of Karma is just pulling the wool over our eyes.

All the situations where bad karma – accidents, disease etc. seem to come out of the blue is sourced in environmental uncertainty. But the world is not classical. We can try to classically trace back the cause of bad karma. We can speculate that the car that hit my relative should have had a mechanical check or blame it on the driver having one too many, but ultimately the source of environmental uncertainty is quantum uncertainty itself.

The world we think is classical is the most outstanding form of open system chaotic quantum billiards of which cosmology is composed. All molecular interactions are quantum billiards in which the wave functions are spreading off every intermolecular encounter. It's open system quantum chaos par excellence. So everything that happens can be traced back ultimately to a butterfly effect in the past where the trajectories diverged. There is no such thing as randomness, there is only quantum uncertainty. So to understand the roots of karma, we need to understand that all events are caught up in a non-random hidden variable account and that we still don't understand how this meters out but that conscious sentience and volition plays a central role in the process. Hence all the fringe phenomena from synchronicity to psi get drawn into the loop.

Because I know this and know every step I take could have utterly unforeseen consequences, I try to keep half my mind listening to the winds of fate. I don't try to push the river. I don't seek psi because psi runs in my veins like the fruit of the tree of life that dilates my pupils like Dune spice melange and could not only come back to haunt or bite me or others, but could come true once and for all in ways I neither desire for nor conspire to. Only by letting go of my karma and giving it all back to life can I be confident of my intrepid journey into the unknown.

If you want to be part of this true karma, there is one and only one way through. Protect the diversity of life with our own mortal lives. That is the only currency we possess and it is borrowed capital we can't take with us. If the high traditions of spirituality can’t induce us to do this, let them go. We are ourselves transformative of the entire universe and sacred beings in this respect, but if we squander our capital doing bad deeds or even just speculating and debating and don't save the life of the universe, while we are alive, we are dead meat.

Deepak Chopra: Dear Chris, It would surprise people to learn that the sentiment quoted above — “I use my memories — I don’t let my memories use me” — is a telltale sign of higher consciousness. In fact, any step in the direction of personal evolution loosens the grip that memory has on us. If you want to know what blocks you from experiencing bliss, joy, fulfilment, love, and creativity, the chief culprit is memory.

Chris: Your comment reminds me of Carlos Castaneda (1968, 1972, 1975) and “erasing personal history”. Something I also live by, although he is now regarded as a confabulator of folk tales of the nagual, and it is claimed that after he died, I think of liver cancer, his female acolyte authors vanished in the desert and the bones of one were found in a deserted mine. It is believed they entered a suicide pact with the aim of meeting him on “the other side”.

One of the things about wild travel in foreign countries all alone is precisely erasing all memory of oneself. In fact the best time to erase your memories is when your back is against the wall. The trouble is that karma gets woven into it and sometimes the stories never end.

On my first visit to India, I made it into Ladarkh, the second season it was open to tourists. One day I was standing in Leh, where there was a little ruined potala on the hill above the town. I resolved that I would walk to the village on the horizon and let nothing stop me. So I walked out of town in my jandals and one of them broke, so I headed on barefoot. A Ladarkhi woman in national dress walked up to me in the fields and embraced me amorously, but I headed on into the village because any of the menfolk could see the fields below. Immediately, I was bitten on the ankle by a village dog, which began a long journey through Indian A&E clinics because the old vaccine, which required 14 daily shots in the stomach had a 1% mortality risk from brain inflammation due to the vaccine being cultured on chicken brains. So at every city I came to, Leh, Srinagar, Jammu and Delhi I had to join the queues of penniless people trying to get free medical care, with all manner of injuries and maladies. In Kashmir, I waited for my shot sitting beside a youth with a green face, who was vomiting in a bucket. The male nurse picked up the syringe and dropped the plunger at the feet of the youth and picked it up again and made to fill it from a huge old bottle of vaccine. I said “sterilise the syringe!”. He said “I see you are an educated man! But by the time I got to Delhi the nurse had 50 needles and about 200 people waiting in a long queue so it was simply a raffle. Shortly after I caught hepatitis and had to recuperate in Mcleod Gang above Dharamshala.

When I felt a little better, I had a double fried egg thukpa and my liver survived, so I set off on the overland. I descended the Himalayan foothills and ended up in Amritsar heading for the Pakistani border. After visiting the Golden Temple, I was accosted by a tipsy customs agent. When I had previously entered India from Nepal the border guard had tried to demand baksheesh and I told him that was corruption. The trouble is that he then didn’t stamp my entry visa, so this customs agent claimed I was a drug runner that had just entered India. A commotion ensued when he tried to arrest me. That was when Indira Gandhi had automatic 90 days in jail without charge, and a commotion arose with about 50 people jostling around me, so I knew I had to get out of this. I did something no Western man in the street should do. I got down on my hands and knees and wept bitter tears saying he is trying to abduct me! I tried to crawl away under the crowd, but somebody grabbed me. Eventually the customs agent got into a debate with the station master and I managed to escape. Next day I arrived at the border, which was a no-mans land about half a kilometre across a field to a last outpost of India, and there was the customs agent. I said to him you were drunk, and he lounged on his wooden chair and let me through.

When I got to Kabul I needed a yellow fever vaccination, but I had had enough of needles, so when the doctor gave me my certificate before the vaccination it was too good an opportunity to miss, and I scarpered elated and took a bus back to the Abdul Satar Hotel where the proprietor smoked hashish with all all on the rooftop. But in the packed bus a little kid stole my passport and all my travellers cheques and I was left penniless with only the vaccination certificate to my name. Now a weird twist of fate occurred. In Varanasi, I had bought a defunct sitar from a sitar teacher whose bowl promptly broke off. I accused him of selling me a pup, but he said “Oh no Uncle, I have not deceived you”! He picked it up and played a raga so profound that it brought rears into my eyes. So I ended up hauling the thing all around India in a huge case that took an extra seat in the bus, which they kept trying to throw up on the roof. So in my penury in Kabul with nothing else to barter, I took my sitar down to the souk and a man immediately ran up and offered me $50 US on the spot, because he was part of an Indian music troupe and couldn't get a sitar for love or money.

Eventually the money got me through to Istanbul, where my parents had remitted money, with some dire escapades eating in wayside restaurants without having the money to pay, in Iran.

It was only 40 or so years later preparing for intrepid travel to Vietnam, Yunan, Korea, Japan and Taiwan that I had a test for Hep and found I was immune to Hep A and found out which kind of hepatitis I had originally contracted.

So there it is!

So to understand how this actually works, let’s take two examples:

(1) The Coronavirus Pandemic: Corona viruses are not moral agents. Evolution simply exploits every possible survival niche cooperative or exploitative. Corona viruses are the most sophisticated single-stranded RNA viruses on the planet. They are extremely well adapted living symbiotically with bat colonies and infecting other hosts more severely and in humans having an extremely wide spectrum of severity, from asymptomatic to lethal, ensuring their tenacious foot-hold and survival. But they are neither ethical not moral, just well-adapted survivors. Evolution is not moral and can’t afford to be, or we wouldn’t have plants and animals, or herbivores and carnivores, parasites and hosts. Evolution’s sheer diversity engulfs any moral concept. But there is a karmic sting in the tail of Covid. This has all been caused by exploitative human misadventure, shameless exploiting wild species trafficking pangolins nearly to extinction for their scales and holding civets in cramped cages for their fur, combined with multiple wild bat species packed into urban markets. So Covid-19 has become, partly through human overpopulation and exploitation of the biosphere, a worthy adversary to humanity.

(2) Entheogens: Ever wondered why psychedelic species exist? It seems to go right back to single-celled eucaryotes, which socially communicate by what we have come to know as neurotransmitters and receptors. All of glutamate, GABA, serotonin, cAMP, norepinephrine, epinephrine, are found widespread in single celled species. Tetrahymena for example utilises histamine, serotonin, epinephrine, melatonin, and triiodothyronine, as well as peptide hormones, such as insulin, adrenocorticotropic hormone, epidermal growth factor, endocannabinoids, endorphins and c-AMP and GMP. Now because humans evolved from social amoeboflagellates and our brains develop based on neurotransmitter encodings during neuronal migration, the entire brain is an electrochemical network utterly dependent on synaptic neurotransmitters for its major evolutionary survival modes. This means that other species, particularly plants and fungi which have adventitiously evolved to produce a diverse abundance of myco- and phytochemicals will inevitably produce a scattering of highly psychoactive substances mimicking and tweaking our own psychically active molecules.

No one knows quite what these are for, any more than one can speculate on why tea and coffee have caffeine. Some may have a survival advantage in warding off insect predators and others may achieve fertility through providing attractive substances causing consumption by animals. Psilocybe cubensis for example grows on the cow pats of Brahmin cattle in South East Asia and may have been in turn spread by cattle consumption. We thus owe it to the biosphere that we have not only psychedelics, but cannabis, morphine, cocaine and many essential medicines. Although we know psychedelics are serotonin 5HT2a super-agonists, their effects are wildly different from serotonin and arise from distinct second messenger processes in the metabotropic 5HT2a serotonin receptors. This suggests that the visionary capacity of the human species has always been present and has a function in the visionary experience of our founding shamanistic and animistic cultures. People have noted the presence of DMT in brain samples. Hence psychedelics may open the doors of perception even wider than yogic samadhi exploits in a less sensual way, leading to a philosophy of emptiness rather than the fullness of psychedelic shamanism.

Now both these are what I would call evolutionary karma as a relentless consequence of natural selection NOT being moral …

But there is another key aspect fateful karma, which is to do with the great leveller – accidental misfortune … and good fortune too … karmic coincidence ...

There are always two ways of looking at an intervening act of fate such as a disease, storm, flood, fire or accident – (1) the contextual (physical or biological) causes and (2) the exact specific train of coincidences that brought this idiosyncratic event onto being. This is also a fundamental characteristic of the quantum universe stemming from quantum uncertainty. Covid is a perilous disease, so we can try to vaccinate ourselves, or enhance our immune system with supplements to address the contextual risks but this does not protect us from freak occurrences by being in the wrong place at the wrong time e.g. in an unanticipated super-spreading event, so it is as relevant to ask what caused me to catch this now? For this reason, anthropologists acknowledge that an animistic viewpoint has unique survival value, because it does protect from unpredictable threats from intentional agents, even though it may result in overkill on attributing physical causes to conscious agency because everything is treated as alive:

A classic example of this dichotomy is in Evans-Pritchard's description of the Zande rationale for the granary collapse: the Zande knew full well that the granary collapse was "caused" by termites eroding the foundational structures. This physical explanation was, however (in converse to the Western philosophical viewpoint)" - causally irrelevant" to their inquiry, which was, "Which mind intended for the granary to collapse at just this moment?" … The Zande might not care about universal gravitation or termite biology, they want to know who made the granary collapse at just the moment a friend was under it.

This leads many shamanistic societies, particularly more violent ones, to spend a lot of time casting evil spells to harm others and protective spells to exorcise the evil ones, blood feuds and clan warfare, all in a notion that somehow the universe is able to organically or consciously pull the strings of fate to one or another person’s advantage.

This is where the notion of moral karma takes its incorrectly conceived bight into coastline of reality by claiming the universe has a hidden principle of cause and effect that bad people end up with bad outcomes, if not in this life, in the next, combining the sheer difficulty of even good devoted meditators achieving moksha to invoke reincarnation as a way out, with the use of reincarnation as a form of divine punishment in karma. This flies in the face of the evidence. While many bad people have bad outcomes and die in gunfights or receive imprisonment or capital punishment for their crimes, many world leaders and even democratically elected populists display clear exploitative narcissistic or even psychopathic behaviour and succeed on the basis of being “strong leaders”, leading humanity as a whole to the brink of annihilation.

Worse still, the vagaries of fate do NOT protect the innocent or even the transformatively beneficent. Karmic fate is rough justice.

The conversation below between two philosophers, illustrates an example of what I see as speculative reinforcement of an inherently false moral cosmology.

Vinod Sehgal: In Buddhism, if karmas as stored in cosmic memory (without any Atman) take rebirth, (1) What is that which constitutes cosmic memory [CM]? (2) Where does this cosmic memory exist? (3) How do individual Karmas [IK] migrate to cosmic memory?"

Ram Vimal: CM is made of individual memory in CM and exists in ubiquitous dual-aspect UIEF/UEIF/ZPF as elaborated in (Keppler, 2020). IK migrates/writes from karma-related individual memory to CM during performing karma

Vinod: In the absence of an Atman/Self, there shall be no consciousness, at least in the manifested form, with these Karmas in the ZPF. So how these inert conscious less Karmas can flow from the ZPF to the new brain/body on their own?

Chris: But are these "individual karmas" simply world history, or conscious memories and emotions, or moral ticks and crosses? What kind of universe is this describing? Is it asserting a cosmic executive agent as well, so that these ticks and crosses turn into a bad outcome, or a bad rebirth, like the right hand figure above? This is in manifest conflict with natural experience, where fate is not so tightly controlled between the good and the bad.

What I do conclude out of this is that subjective consciousness has been retained by evolution since excitable eucaryote cells became whole brains because it has a selective advantage surviving in a world of environmental uncertainty that is ultimately a product of quantum uncertainty so taps into the very phenomenon the proponents of moral karma incorrectly claim exists.

But from my point of view, in an alignment with Vedic thinking, my own experience of moksha teaches me to avoid any form of karma that is not directed to the highest goal, which in my experience is convincing humanity to protect the immortal diversity of life as our raison d'être. I will do this as assertively as it takes as a spokesperson for the edge of chaos using controversy to provoke and hold no quarter with criticising cherished religious and scientific notions which I perceive to be acting to undermine this paradigm shift.

Psychedelics ARE faster and have a much more experienceable transfiguration than meditation alone, but it sill took me to the age of 78 combined with deep meditation similar to TM to get an experience iconic enough to produce Symbiotic Existential Cosmology. This work is frankly so oddball and yet so tenaciously robust scientifically that it is a proof of principle of something powerfully karmic. I was prevented by acute closed angle glaucoma from taking any trips for seven years previously, until I had total lens replacements. This caused a very pure whiplash on a very mild dose, so you need to see it as a confirmation of what I just called fateful karma.

I am trying to convey the positive potential of entheogens to deal with Fermi catastrophe and I’m caught in other karmic tender traps. The whole Western tradition of Christianity is sacramental, so this is the Biospheric Eucharist of life rather than the soma and sangre of Yeshua's death. It was discovered in deep meditation in a meeting ostensibly with Brahman as ultimate reality, so it validates Upanishadic Vedanta and the yogic tradition. It was discovered using a sacrament 3000 years old coming from Precolombian America, affirming the shamanic sap and dew. Now doesn't that strike you as a karmic hat trick for the three great spiritual traditions? I may be here to challenge the law of and religious doctrine but I am NOT here to destroy the prophets, but to fulfil the future of life immortal.

Empiricism, the Scientific Method, Spirituality and the Subjective Pursuit of Knowledge

Firstly: What is empiricism and what is an experiment?

empirical: based on, concerned with, or verifiable – by observation or experience – rather than theory or pure logic. From Greek empeirikos "experienced," from empeiria "experience;

experiment: An action or operation undertaken in order to discover something unknown, to test a hypothesis, or establish or illustrate some known truth. From Latin experimentum "a trial, test, proof, experiment," from experiri "to try, test," from ex "out of" + peritus "experienced, tested"

The two notions – observation or experience – came from Greek physicians making diagnoses by observation or experience rather than theory, sometimes with the disapproval of theoretically oriented physicians, who treated them like the medieval barber surgeons. But empiricism's role has become pivotal in experimental science, without which modern medicine would not exist.

When we come to the mind-brain / consciousness-universe complex, the pursuit of knowledge inherited from Greek medicine gives us two asymmetrically complementary approaches to the pursuit of knowledge.

(A) Objective verification by empirical observation: this is the standard basis of good experimental science and is based on replication – two or more experiments producing consistent results.

(B) Subjective affirmation by empirical experience: The word affirmation is used rather than verification because, to replicate a subjective experience requires two or more subjects mutually affirming they have experienced consistent phenomena. This discovery process is by definition experientially experimental.

The status of (A) is the gold standard of objective scientific inquiry and is also critical for experimentally verifying theories like quantum physics and relativity, but the status of (B) remains unrecognised, as the other half of the pursuit of knowledge of the cosmos as a whole, along with its experimental protocols.

Both approaches can achieve statistical significance. For example subjective reports collected in a scientific context become consistent observation of reported conscious experiences by an experimental group. But experiential validity can also be established by direct mutual affirmation.

Secondly: The role of conscious volition.

I have posed the question: "Do you agree that you have subjective conscious efficacy of volition over the physical universe?" I asked you this because it's the most obvious property that we all possess in common, even to eat or secrete, let alone have a conversation, which we all do, or to do something creative. Yet it poses a unique existential threat to materialists, who try every conceivable way to plead that correlation is not causation, or that there is always a hidden brain mechanism doing it, although that directly contradicts our own veridical perception of our intentional acts as having been intended by ourselves.

However, once we mutually affirm the root empirical experience that we ARE physical beings, intentionally shaping the world around us, and perceive ourselves to be doing so, just as other mammals we observe do, we have an emerging subjective consensus that becomes a root experiential scientific discovery.

Many people look at this and say it's too easy, as a solution to the hard problem, to simply declare we agree we have volition, that it's facile, or maybe just expressing our fallacious impressions, but its actually the very foundation of establishing the subjective pursuit of inquiry into the knowledge of the cosmos as a whole and the conscious dimension many of us call, for want of a better word, spirituality.

The reason this is criticism is wrong is that volition states the obvious easily, while consciousness became sequestered as a hard problem, because of epiphenomenalism, which a priori contradicted the efficacy of volition without evidence, while paradoxically admitting we were conscious of the world around us and even of dreams and and hallucinations, as a brain-derived internal model of reality. The casualty of this cancellation culture was volition. Hence volition – now stating the obvious – IS solving the hard problem and it is observable. It's how we know one another are conscious, through our vivacious volition, and it's how we understand other animals are conscious too. This is the reverse Copernican principle as an axiom of affirmation.

Thirdly: What IS the foundation of the subjective pursuit of knowledge? Experience itself!

Techniques of subjective empiricism and experiment are as different from observational empiricism as the physical universe is different from consciousness itself, yet complementary to it. They need to be approached as a whole because we engage consciousness as a whole not in its pieces.The subjective aspect is not adequately explored by trying to analyse it or decompose it observationally, or abstractly, because it is everything we experience. We are in it, and transforming it, not just observing it. So the techniques of simple introspection are inadequately general and also flawed because the mind can't be fully observed, since observation changes it. But it CAN be fully experienced and that's the core principle of the inquiry process.

We can only begin to form an understanding of the subjective by embracing deep conscious and mystical states, untethered from the physical world, not by attempting to analyse them, or qualia, or the thought process, but by going right into deep conscious states on a vision quest into the 'other' side of being and returning with an epiphany, or a satori, or a moksha whose nature we can meaningfully share with others as a discovery process. Talking about subjective experiences remains anecdotal unless and until two or more of us are able to affirm deeply common qualities of such experiences together.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology (new web page) as a product of entheogenic quantum change, reinforced by recent psychedelic research, and

Chris Field's research insights provoked by meditation, are examples of such experiences giving rise to new testable hypotheses, playing a key part in this process.

Fourthly: Caveats. Central to the problem of subjective discovery is that:

(1) The subjective domain is dominated from above by the confining processes of rational thought and verbal argument, which places a filter unless a proposition can be successfully argued, rather than two subjects agreeing on a consistency of experience. This is not only unnecessary but leads to the entire description being only that of cognitive thought. This is a real problem for philosophy of mind to address and come up with a paradigm shift about. "The way that can be told is not the countless way" as Lao Tsu pointed out.

(2) The subjective domain is dominated by real world consciousness, when this is subjective consciousness locked in perceptual and volitional relationship with real world events, again acting as a severe filter on what consciousness actually is. It needs to be compensated by realising the full depth of untethered conscious experience going to whatever measures are required, including last but not least, sacramental exploration, which forms a subjective complement to the LHC.

(3) Deeper levels of 'pure' consciousness uncoupled to the rational and real world filters are broadly: (a) dream or hypnagogic experience, (b) meditative and contemplative practices, (c) entheogenic sacramental experience, (d) religious ecstasy (e) near death experiences and (f) paranormal phenomena. The deeper of these can be very difficult for individuals to fully experience, leading to mystical states having a quasi mythical status, in which moksha and samadhi cannot necessarily be achieved in a lifetime. Entheogenic states are critical information to the subjective discovery process, without which no valid conclusion can be drawn, and so these urgently need to be more fully explored and accepted as central to the discovery process. Each of the mystical states need likewise to be explored fully by mutual affirmation at the root level before their status can be considered to reach the level of evidential support.

(4) A priori beliefs are by definition inconsistent with the free pursuit of empirical subjective knowledge of cosmic reality. The empiric method's foundation eschews theoretical assumptions that are not prior-evidential, so that reality itself can be explored and understood as it is. For example relativity wasn't prior-evidential until Eddington's unbiased experimental verification using a solar eclipse. Religious beliefs fall into this category of not being prior-evidential, as open questions, so the conditions of religious ecstasy have to be carefully negotiated to separate belief from transformative experience and recognise that genuine quantum change signifiers are the gold standard of any mystical experience, not the conviction of belief.

Fifthly: Freeing the Core Quest

The pursuit of knowledge of the subjective realm doesn't have to solve analytical questions about phenomenology, such as the binding problem which is an easy problem of consciousness to be elucidated in the prospectively quantum dynamics of the brain. Likewise the nature of qualia, such as the difference between visual and auditory experiences and the synaesthesia between are also likely candidates for understanding through extended brain dynamics such as work on quantum neural networks (Fields et al. arXiv:2201.00921) and the different kinds of encoding required for developing a coherently co-bound internal model of physical sense modes. This is simply acknowledging that, while we do have conscious physical volition which we fully experience, we do so acting as transformative agents in possession of an exceedingly awesome experiential constructive filter called the biological brain, whose key role is to provide a physical realisation of our volitional conscious existence. It also means panpsychic theories don't need to solve the qualia problem or the combinations problem for the subjective pursuit of cosmic knowledge (see Fields 2021 JCS).

"What we have within us will save us if we bring it forth from ourselves"

Our quest and the cosmological quest is to accept the deep experiential abyss we have within us as consciously experiencing volitional agents and bring it forth from ourselves in the discovery process we engage together, because what we do will save us and humanity.

The Manifestation Test

The manifestation test is a succinct way of critiquing all pure materialistic explanations that form a physical or objectively abstract model of conscious experience.

When we talk about a dream or a vision, or I affirm to you that I am a subjectively conscious agent typing this passage, this is a statement consciously manifesting my assertion, from my stream of consciousness. Unless I am a zombie, it is thus a physical record of a conscious experiential agent.

The key thing about consciousness being primary is that we experience it all the time and we can, by the universality of our own conscious experience, accept that others performing volitional activities as conscious agents are also manifesting this root subjectivity, that is also key to the Vedic perspective and all spiritual notions.

When we develop a model viewing consciousness and its experiential phenomena from the outside, we are making an abstract objective description about a system. This may initially be conceived consciously as all creative notions are, but it is asserted to be an objective description we can view from without, so it stands outside in the real world, or in an "out there" abstraction of it. The trouble is that no such model manifests subjectivity or exists subjectively in any way, so it can't be a description of primary consciousness.

Some descriptions are not like this. When the Huichol describe the nierika, they are describing a conscious portal into which we can consciously enter and from which we can return transformed so it is "in here" as a conscious journey. Most creation myths are also like this. Shakti and Shiva are not just out there – the description is also "in here" in Shiva and is showing how the "in here" became ramified into all our individual "in-heres", so it passes the manifestation test. There could be good explanations like the holographic principle that might likewise make a kind of description of an integral transform like relationship between the universe and the cosmic mind that would realise this kind of relationship, so a description that passes the manifestation test is possible in principle.

Necessary and Sufficient Cosmological Meaning

Necessary meaning is the kind of meaning that, if we understand the universe sufficiently, as we must needs, we apply to unfold the realisation of the cosmological condition.

The core necessary meaning is to protect the survival of the conscious biota over evolutionary time scales, to unfold an emergent cosmological climax and hence also facilitate our own survival.

Sufficient meaning is the meaning we apply through conscious volition in our own realisation of our discovery process to creatively adorn reality.

The entire sufficient meaning is a free creative process, weaving the music of consilient history, celebrating our immortal genealogy and plumbing the cosmologically conscious abyss.

Appendix:

Primal Foundations of Subjectivity in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology

This section arose from an ongoing debate about Symbiotic Existential Cosmology in two expert groups “Scientific Basis of Consciousness” and Biological Physics and Meaning. It begins with an extensive set of questions and critiques by Ram Vimal about the nature of SEC in terms of primal subjectivity and its emergent consciousness, and how this is elaborated in SEC. It leads on to debates with several members about SEC’s relationship to the Eastern wisdom traditions, especially Upanishadic Vedanta, with which it has clear parallels, and with Buddhism, as cosmologies of conscious existence.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology seeks a new, paradigm transforming, existential tradition, which differs from both the Monotheistic and Eastern traditions, in which the immortal evolution of life and its diversity is accepted as the climax condition of the living universe, which is its primary sacred manifestation, to be protected by mortal sentient beings, so that the immortal passage of the generations of conscious life can flower and humanity as a species can survive.

This is a radical departure from both Monotheistic traditions where God is sacralised as supreme and Eastern traditions where enlightenment itself is sacralised as the central goal. SEC considers moksha to be an accessible experience, without resort to theories of reincarnation to achieve it over many lifetimes, due to the evolution of the entheogens, so it forms a new ‘religious’ tradition, fully consistent with both enlightenment and scientific cosmology. Rather than seeing enlightenment as pure spiritual or conscious transcendence, it is the ultimate climax form of symbiosis, in which cosmological subjective consciousness becomes fully manifest in the natural physical universe.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology invokes a hybrid concept – Darwinian panpsychism – that sets it apart from all other forms of cosmology and panpsychism and resolves the issues raised below and many others.

Darwinian panpsychism with two components:

(1) Primitive or primary subjectivity, which is a germinal form of cosmo-panpsychism complementary to the physical universe at the foundation level.

(2) Emergent consciousness which arises from a unique topological bifurcation precipitated by the eucaryote endo-symbiosis, in the edge-of-chaos excitable cell membrane becoming freed for sentient attention and social signalling through the core electron transport pathways driving photosynthesis and respiration becoming sequestered in the mitochondria.

This resolves a string of problems about panpsychism and physical materialism:

Firstly there is no issue about how the pieces of panpsychism fit together. What has happened is that the usual determinism of classical materialism has become replaced by a physical contextual filter defined by neurodynamics, to which primary subjectivity seamlessly adapts as its complement.

This means the problem of how panpsychism is built up out of functional parts (combinations problem) becomes meaningless because it is the complementary neurodynamic filter which determines the way things are divided up. Each physical brain creates an objectively defined encapsulation of primitive subjectivity, functioning as a boundary filter on it rather than causally determining it, leaving a "cubic centimetre of chance", as Carlos Castaneda put it, to allow conscious free will to intervene, through quantum uncertainty and its ramifications in wave function collapse. The same thing for the decombinations problem because cosmic consciousness is not subdivided to make other forms of consciousness e.g. in organisms, but arises from the coupling with the boundary constraints.

Why and how it is divided is determined by the physical filters imposed by brains, all living systems, edge-of-chaos dynamical systems like hurricanes and quantum uncertainty at the fundamental level.

The problem of emergence is solved because it is determined by a unique topological transformation unparalleled in the universe's evolution, setting up a completely new kind of dynamical system directly responsible for making neurotransmitter-based attentive quantum sentient consciousness possible.

Finally it solves the cosmic consciousness vs organismic consciousness problem in that deep meditative and entheogenic states of moksha samadhi become asymptotic to a universal form of consciousness, in which the specific constraints of individual sentient consciousness, become released and approach universal forms, abstractly reflecting the universal condition. The videos of apparent REM in sleeping baby spiders, and related evidence in octopi indicate a high degree of commonality in the conscious dynamics of nervous systems as different as humans and arthropods, suggesting the foundations of consciousness are universal to all eucaryote cells linked in edge-of-chaos networks.

There are cosmological arguments that the nature of nucleotides and proteins, as core molecular systems and the ensuing complementarity of archaea and bacteria as metabolic strategies are intrinsic to the structural and continuous forms of symmetry-breaking that gave rise to the standard model of physics, making the entire process, including the eucaryote endo-symbiosis, foundationally cosmological in nature.

Here follows conversations with Ram Vimal and other about the subjective aspect of the cosmology, intended to probe the idea and clarify its nature in detail, leading to stating the cosmological axiom of primal subjectivity.

Ram: Why do you prescribe/use entheogenic drugs instead of normal meditation techniques for altered subjective experiences (SEs) as they are dangerous to our system?

Chris: Because they are fully developed experiences that have profound insightful effects on a person's world view and lead to definitive visionary experiences identifiable with moksha, while meditative experiences tend to create a peaceful mindful or compassionate state that is less than revelatory, which explains why moksha is so hard to achieve without entheogens. They are not at all dangerous when used responsibly.

Ram: You said: “In the panpsychic description, uncertainty is not irreducible randomness but is a measure of deep quantum entanglement, complemented by the subjective aspect.” Are you referring to objective uncertainty (as in quantum fluctuations) or subjective uncertainty due to the experimenter’s ignorance? Why is uncertainty a measure of deep quantum entanglement? Is there any reference?

Chris: Only to Symbiotic Existential Cosmology where this possibility is discussed in detail. Quantum transactions are like a non-linear plasma-to-solid phase transition across space-time where a plasma of free offer and confirmation waves collapses to become a set of real emission-absorption interactions possibly with some residual outliers. We don't yet have a model for this, but it’s neither time-forwards, like an offer wave, nor time-backwards, like a confirmation wave, but transversal to space-time (transcausal). So instead of simple decoherence, we have a contextual collapse defined by all participants in the world-view, which could be the entire biocosmos. This also links in a way to a form of super-determinism which is also context dependent measurement and doesn’t deny free-will.

My position on uncertainty is that true randomness does not exist in the physical universe, because all instances of uncertainty are either directly or indirectly quantum in nature, derived ultimately from quantum processes. Ignorant randomness is thus deferred quantum uncertainty or simply a stochastic model of a partially obscured process. So an experimenter has ignorance until they make a quantum measurement but quantum uncertainty performs the informative act. Similarly accidental circumstance is a product of underlying quantum uncertainties that we call karma. So if I walk round the corner and nearly get run over, but escape, or Nelson looks through his blind eye in the Battle of Copenhagen, world history is made from superimposed possibilities, expressed dynamically in the real time conscious decision that reduces the world of potentia to the line of real history we experience in the so-called “classical” world – a process I call “historicity”.

It’s just a poetic spiritual allegory of climactic “creation” from within, but here it is.

The universe is a process of becoming, so just as we have a cosmic origin from symmetric simplicity and then cosmic symmetry breaking, from a unified super force, so we have a vestigial germinal form of primal conscious subjectivity associated with it. The notion of a fully developed cosmic mind at the beginning contradicts the becoming and the climax fulfilment of the natural sentient universe, becoming conscious of itself in symbiotic organismic moksha. Primal subjectivity provides the germ of Shiva in a form of conscious “spermatogenesis” for Shakti as the enveloping mother liquor, to play into in all her physical manifestations and subdivisions, as the developing zygote elaborating into the diverse forms of organic conscious experience life produces.

This way, instead of running down into the Kali Yuga or the Buddhist Samvartakalpa, or Eon of dissolution, or being static as in the Monotheist creation, which is then discarded in the End of Days, the universe explodes with evolving living diversity in Paradise on the Cosmic Equator in Space-Time! It’s more than the noosphere, it's the biocosmos revealed – Voilà!

Ram: How do you reconcile no-self (anātman) and self (ātman) hypotheses?

Chris: I adhere to the Upanishadic notion of self. I see the Buddhist view of no self as eliminating the jewel in the lotus in favour of an empty void, when our living journey is across the incarnate “Styx” of the mortal coil in real time, although the we also know the self is also an experiential construct, like our sensory perceptions, so it’s not absolute or unchanging. SEC, as a subjective path of realisation, embraces life and symbiotic relationship with the diversity of life and sees moksha as liberation from eternal angst by accepting that biological mortality in the real world is the psychological antidote to the suffering ego, because the only acts of any accruing meaning are to give our selves back to the enrichment of life and consciousness as a whole and its ongoing unfolding, while experiencing moksha and appreciating living fulfilment along the way. Moreover SEC sees cosmic consciousness and the ultimate self associated with Brahman as a super-conscious state asymptotically convergent to the cosmological foundation of conscious processes, that arises from the biota as a climax manifestation of cosmic becoming, when freed from organismic constraints.

Ram: You said: “The action of mind on brain necessarily arises from modulating the "random" aspect of quantum uncertainty in edge of chaos brain processing. This enables volitional will to intervene in the brain without disrupting the partial causal closure in brain processing in the uncertain quantum universe. In this sense, classical causality is replaced by quantum consciousness. It provides plenty of room to affect the computationally-intractable uncertain outcomes in evolutionary survival, using both subjective anticipation inherited from single celled eucaryotes a billion years before neural systems evolved and historical experience generated by cognitive processes.”

Since your framework is ICAM (interactive complementary aspect monism), but the action of the mind on the brain (also called mental causation) can be easily instead explained through inseparability instead of problematic mind interacting with a brain, that makes a category mistake and is based on interactive dualism.

Chris: No it can’t be so easily explained – inseparable dual aspect is equivalent to mind-brain identity theory because there is no interaction between s and p states at all! Without interaction you simply have physical processes, with neither subjective consciousness even of perception as an s state nor any hint of volition, because the s states are just dual ghosts in the machine, having no action of their own and the physical universe is causally closed except for uncertainty, to which you appear to accept as a random process.

Gilbert Ryle’s (1949) claim is that "mind" is "a philosophical illusion hailing from René Descartes, and sustained by logical errors and 'category mistakes' which have become habitual”. Ryle rejects Descartes' theory of the relation between mind and body, on the grounds that it approaches the investigation of mental processes as if they could be isolated from physical processes. The rationalist theory that there is a transformation into physical acts of some purely mental faculty of "Will" or "Volition" is therefore a misconception because it mistakenly assumes that a mental act could be and is distinct from a physical act, or even that a mental world could be and is distinct from the physical world. This theory of the separability of mind and body is described by Ryle as "the dogma of the ghost in the machine.”

Ryle's attempt to formulate duality as a category error led to reductionism and is effectively proven to be a category error itself, due to the inability of materialism to address the hard problem of consciousness extended to volition. SEC negates Ryle’s trap by asserting interactive complementarity in which mental acts are not “distinct" from physical acts because complementarity doesn’t allow complete distinction. In Ryle’s view the entire concept of mind is a category error so we only have the literal "lemon on the table" and no mental impression that you call qualia. Inseparability is equivalent to indistinguishability and the mental states and acts become equivalent to physical states and acts. Wave-particle complementarity is not like this. The two aspects are necessary and not indistinguishable, but partially separable and interactive. For example E = hν connects the particle energy to the wave frequency and ΔE.Δt ≥ h/2π couples the two in quantum uncertainty, effectively through wave beat counting. Quantum electrodynamics describes the electric field in terms of real and virtual particles, but does so through the wave propagator.

Ram: You said: “This type of deep psychedelic experience has deep parallels with the mystical states of moksha, satori, epiphany, immanence and enlightenment spanning both Eastern and Western spiritual and religious traditions and planet-wide traditions of shamanism. ... In the Upanishads it is accepted as the ultimate reality in the union of Brahman with the atman, or inner self, in the manifestation of cosmic consciousness. ... This provides evidential data, in the form of veridical reports having statistical significance in the same way that objective scientific measurements do. This places psychedelics as the subjective complement of the LHC in physics. ... Symbiotic cosmology provides a completely different solution from both a purely materialistic cosmology, in which the universe is described as a causal process, in which consciousness life is passive, meaningless and irrelevant; and a theistic cosmology in which life on Earth is a disposable moral trial created by a non-evidential external third party called God for a future life of eternal bliss or hellish punishment. Both these cosmologies devalue the role of the evolving diversity of conscious life perennial in the universe, leaving us with a wasteland of apocalypse and Armageddon. Symbiotic existential cosmology invokes immortal paradise, so long as Earth shall live and beyond Earth to the stars, if we can learn to survive in evolutionary time. It is the real cosmology of the living universe while religious and materialistic cosmologies are tragic fallacies of the imagination.”

All experiences at all states of consciousness including altered states (such as samādhi, mystic, and mokshic states) are simply subjective experiences (SEs), which must have their respective neural-physical basis. The SEs of external objects have physical reality, but endogenously generated SEs (with ego-dissolution) such as those related to samādhi, mystic, satori, and mokshic states may not have physical reality. Therefore, it is unclear why SEs related to such altered states can be called cosmic/universal/primary consciousness and reveal ultimate reality. Critiques could argue that they are simply phosphenes (endogenously generated SEs without any physical reality) with respective NPB and may not represent the ultimate/fundamental reality.

Chris: Psychedelic experiences are fully enveloping synesthesic and somato-sensory identity-transforming multi-dimensional visionary experiences, not just superficial visual disturbances like phosphenes. I referred specifically to psychedelics, but your reply selectively omits them "altered states (such as samādhi, mystic, satori and mokshic states)". Why are you eliminating entheogenic ones? Your argument suggests that all forms of subjective experience apart from physical perception are unreal. Cosmos and universe are two different terms. Non-perceptual conscious experiences are veridically real to the experiencer. They are neither imaginary nor hallucinations. As conscious experiencers, we can compare our experiences and affirm their veridical status. The reality of such states are a foundation of Eastern philosophy and the Upanishads. Psychedelic states in particular involve both experiential overload and ego-dissolution. In states of meditative withdrawal, this allows the brain dynamic to asymptotically approach a state where it is experiencing inner subjective reality freed from perceptual boundary conditions. This creates a unique context, where the most complex intelligent conscious system in the universe is experiencing its own evoked inner identity and the ground of conscious being. Cosmic means “of the cosmos” not “of the universe”. We simply have little or no idea at this point of the reality status of the subjective cosmos, although the Eastern tradition has been endeavouring to explore it for centuries through rare instances of samadhi. Psychedelics provide another more direct avenue linked to the billion year evolutionary foundation of the sappy neurochemical brain. We certainly don't have any valid basis to assume any non-perceptual experience is unreal, or unlinked to the history and future of the universe, including dreaming states, so we urgently need to explore these empirically.

Ram: It seems that SEC proposes Free-Will. However, one could argue that the Will is not totally free; instead, it is semi-Free-Will as elaborated in (Vimal, 2010h). We make decisions based on many factors in our mundane lives.

Chris: I didn’t "propose Free-Will". Free-will is a concept in wide cultural currency for intentional will possessed by the experiencer. The term free means the capacity to have volition free of complete determinism:

Free-will is "the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate;

the ability to act at one's own discretion (Oxford Languages).

It doesn't mean we can will anything out of the blue and is aways contextual on defining boundary conditions in the physical universe. However in quantum form, will is particularly free because the probability of finding a particle is simply determined by the wave power so if we normalise space over the wave amplitude, we have a dynamical phase space in which the particle can appear anywhere with equal probability. It thus has total freedom of will within this space. Therefore calling free will semi-Free is superfluous and contrary to its actual definition.

Ram: You said: “Conscious experience is our sole avenue to know and understand the physical universe: Although we have to respect the fundamental nature of physical existence, to survive in the world, the totality of our knowledge of the physical reality of the world around us is established exclusively through our subjective consciousness, as a consensual experience of conscious participants, complementing our individual dreams and visions”.

The above scenario is better described through the principle of inseparability (POI) instead of the principle of complementary (POC) because in the former (POI) the s and p aspects are simultaneous and in the latter (POC) they are not. For example, particle and wave cannot be measured simultaneously so they are complementary to each other. However, subjective experience (SE) redness is experienced and its NPB is measured simultaneously so they are inseparable.

Chris: This is untrue. Conscious experiences require a sustained global brain dynamic. Both of these happen over time periods, not instantaneously. There can be no conscious volition over the universe unless s and p are interactive.

Ram: Critiques could argue that the subjective experience (SE) of unity between the subjective self and the objective world could be hallucination due to entheogens, which may cause a fatal accident during driving if the red stop light is unified with the driver. How do you rule out hallucination because of the ingestion of mushroom?

Chris: You have to determine if you think visions are hallucinatory yourself in the first person. Some things are illusory and some veridical. Only the experiencer can fully decide. Some things may seem to be irrational notions that one was fantasising and then they come true. Others, like the eternal gypsy spirits of the universe, I feel are veridical but they might be false so need to have a contingent status.

Serotonergic entheogens don't induce hallucinations as such. They can induce powerful visions, particularly DMT, but one can always distinguish the real world from the dream time, unless one is lost in contemplation. You shouldn’t drive on mind altering substances, but you simply can't drive a car in an egoless state. You have to distinguish the real from the visionary. On entheogens, you have to go into a state of meditative withdrawal to dissolve the ego by removing sensory distractions e.g. lying in a darkened room, reducing the distinction between self and world and practicing self-annihilation. It takes the same time and effort as yogic meditation. I said very clearly that moksha is an organismic state asymptotic to moksha, just as Aurobindo describes the super-mind as a transitional state.

Visionary experiences are like waking dreams, described as veridical because the experiencer perceives them to be real rather than imaginary, although they can distinguish them from real world perception. They can be very ornate and can be looked at in great detail as if one is perceiving a real phenomenon “out there". They are like phosphenes but they are visual, auditory, olfactory and emotional and interior to our identity. So they can become all-encompassing and distract us into day-dream like ongoing visions that prevent samadhi, so they are a handful to negotiate. Dreams and psychedelic visions are definitely “in here" because they are private subjective experiences that cannot be identified with a physical entity, but they are perceived to be in subjective reality “out there”, say for example, around 10 - 30 feet away, as a shimmering, moving kaleidoscopic 3-D pattern one can look at intently.

Ram: It is unclear if the unity SE due to ingestion of entheogens is really the moksha state because, at this state, karmas are supposed to be nullified.

Chris: It is even more unclear that yogic meditation leads to true moksha due to a lack of evidence. Entheogens are also supported by quantum change studies reporting “genuine spiritual experiences" during ego loss. The only thing I can say about this is that moksha for me is a really straightforward state of disembodied consciousness that is just like the proverbial NDE of meeting the cosmic self who communicates by telepathy, and imparts to you the covenant to return to your incarnation and fulfil your karma, in my case to save conscious life throughout the universe before I go. I am thus freed from the round of birth and death because I have seen incarnation from outside and know in my bones Brahman's advice to do this is the right course. I can take another trip but I don't need to and to ask again and again for confirmation will be a corruption of the covenant. That said I have had two trips since and will probably have more just for the insights. That’s why I am so certain that this is real because it frees one from mortal angst that drives the whole notion of reincarnation.

Ram: I know the use of MDMA (ecstasy) and cocaine may cause harm.

Chris: MDMA can cause harm by burning out one’s serotonin transporters and possibly dendrites, although the evidence is clouded by bad science. Chewing coca is not harmful, but chemically concentrated impure illegal drugs produced by criminals are. Psilocybin and mescaline and DMT are no more harmful than food, but you can't keep taking them or they don't work until you take a week off. They are controlled substances to avoid the disintegration of consumer capitalism in favour of nature mysticism, essentially because Western society has no established traditional approaches to use them responsibly. Brazil has some big ayahuasca church congregations with tens to hundreds of thousands of members.

Ram: Ingesting entheogens may have toxic effects on the brain.

Chris: That’s contradicting the scientific evidence. Serotonergic psychedelics such as DMT promote neural plasticity and neurogenesis. Maria Sabina took mushrooms from the age of 5 all her life and lived to 91. Tellus Goodmorning, my peyote roadman, was still sitting through an all night peyote session at 93.

Fig 280: Psilocybin and LSD are the least toxic psychoactive substances known, with a lethal dose 1000 times higher than the active dose.

It is said that Maharaji – Neem Karoli Baba, took LSD. Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) gave LSD to him and it seemed to have no effect. This might make it seem he was so enlightened that psychedelics had no effect on him. However any person used to deep meditation can sit through a psychedelic experience in a meditative state because it is the most natural state to adopt. The Shiva sadhus also do this with cannabis, and Patanjali acknowledged herbs were a Vedic route to samadhi.

However it takes a good number of psychedelic experiences to begin to understand their potential. Most young people don't have a real clue and just enjoy the transformative distortions, which is fine too but the best way is in a secure protected setting where other people can ensure one is in a peaceful loving state of mind and avoid any anxieties about loss of egotistical identity as well as misadventures in the world at large. My second LSD trip I took 1000 mics and was convinced I wasn’t just ego-dead but physically dead as if I was meeting everyone in the after life.

For me mushrooms are different from LSD because they are a living species that is pure and a natural product of evolution here for a healing purpose, whether we like it or not, for our sappy biochemical brains to unfold, to ensure the biosphere can survive. Although they are a much more direct trip to moksha than meditation alone, it has still taken a life of entheogenic use for me to come through with Symbiotic Existential Cosmology. They have been up until recently outlawed because the very effects we are discussing led the powers of consumer capitalism to perceive them as a mortal threat to Western culture in the same way the gnostics and witches were to Catholicism. This in itself is profound evidence of their transformative potential on exploitative human culture and why I think they have a key role in healing the biosphere.

Ram: Do all of you agree that the entheogenic route is faster and more immediate because you just need to eat/drink psychedelic drugs and immediately in a few minutes we are in 7th heaven?

Chris: Not so easy. It can still take years, but not multiple lifetimes. Remember that they amplify both illusion and illumination, so take care! Psychedelics ARE faster and have a much more experienceable transfiguration, but it sill took me to the age of 78 combined with deep meditation similar to TM to get an experience iconic enough to produce Symbiotic Existential Cosmology.

This work is frankly so oddball and yet so tenaciously robust scientifically that it is a proof of principle of something powerfully karmic. I was prevented by acute closed angle glaucoma from taking any trips for seven years previously, until I had total lens replacements, which caused a very pure whiplash on a very mild dose, so you need to see it as a confirmation of what I just called fateful karma in my previous email today, which I will attach again below.

Ram: If this is true, then why waste time meditating all life, and even if one decides to invest in lifelong full-time meditation, there is no guarantee that we attain revelation/samadhi/mystic state?

Chris: I am trying to convey the positive potential of entheogens to deal with Fermi catastrophe and I’m caught in other karmic tender traps. The whole Western tradition of Christianity is sacramental, so this is the Biospheric Eucharist of life rather than the soma and sangre of Yeshua's death. It was discovered in deep meditation in a meeting ostensibly with Brahman as ultimate reality, so it validates Upanishadic Vedanta and the yogic tradition. It was discovered using a sacrament 3000 years old coming from Precolombian America, affirming the shamanic sap and dew. Now doesn't that strike you as a karmic hat trick for the three great spiritual traditions? I may be here to challenge the “law” of religious doctrine – I am NOT here to destroy the prophets, but to fulfil the future of life immortal.

Ram: Do you mean that one has to take psychedelics daily for decades and also do meditation?

Chris: No I don’t. I’m just reacting to your cliche about one dose enlightenment. LSD was for me a major pivotal formative discovery process about the nature of consciousness. I am talking about actual scientific evidence of transformative effect. My LSD experiences, from the very first dose, were a real epiphany that caused me to stop being a hack mathematician and write “Unified Field Theories and the Origin of Life” in 1978, which is a clear forerunner to Symbiotic Existential Cosmology. I said I took LSD over 200 times without reaching full moksha. That was over ten years, about once a fortnight, not daily for decades as you said! I have lived with entheogens all my life. I would say about one mushroom trip in two I can get to the promised land using deep meditation as well, where I experience non-ordinary forms of “supermind" reality and as I said they have become my spiritual ally just as Maria Sabina said: "the mushroom was in my family as a parent, protector, a friend”. What I did say is that it took 30 years more to produce Symbiotic Existential Cosmology on a moksha epiphany – actually 40 years! And yes, I see dedicated meditation as an essential adjunct to psychedelic induced ego-loss, if you want to achieve transformation.

Ram: If criminals ingest entheogens and have unity SE then it is unclear how their bad karmas will be nullified.

Chris: Moral bad karma doesn't exist. It’s a false religious belief in cosmological morality that leads ultimately to the degeneration of the universe in the Kali Yuga. Moral karma makes no sense when the innocent have sometimes horrific outcomes and the exploitative enjoy a good life (not just criminals but disproportionately, billionaires and manipulative world leaders). The results of experiments show psychedelic quantum change shows improvements in a person's whole approach to life, which is “proof” they do reduce negative mentality, because the insights are transformative, even to people with terminal illness.

Ram: At the moksha state, individual consciousness Purusha (jivatman or soul), fully separates from Prakriti (substance, universe) and becomes “pure” atman, which merges with Brahman/Purusha.

Chris: Yes that’s precisely what happened to me on mushroom meditation.

Ram: It implies that there should not be any neural-physical basis (NPB), which is part of Prakriti, at the moksha state: this is a testable hypothesis if you have attained this state by simply measuring NPB using fMRI/EEG before and after taking your entheogen such as the psychedelic drug mushroom: NPBafter should be equal to NPBbefore if you have attained moksha state.

Chris: This is an notion based on false assumptions. You are assuming spiritual purity as a necessary fact, and separates consciousness entirely from the brain and body without evidence this is the way it happens. I don't agree with the premise. You are trying to use entheogens to test a false assumption about the relation between samadhi and physical states. The correct process is to make the journey in person and see what you come up with after a good lot of experience. Symbiotic Existential Cosmology asserts all such moksha states are organismic consciousness asymptotically approaching a non-encapsulated brain state that complements a cosmic mind experience. They won’t be NPB null like you are suggesting.

Fig 281: Psilocybe aucklandiae was officially described in 1991 by Gastón Guzmán, Chris King and Victor Bandala in 'A new species of Psilocybe of section Zapotecorum from New Zealand.' The name is feminine; the original orthography is aucklandii which has a masculine suffix (my picture, now in Stamets (1996 p90).

Chris: Yes but I think they are complementary practices and contribute to the same end and we need all the resources we can muster, especially the natural compensative resources of biospheric evolution. I am intuitively spontaneous about meditation because I favour the innate naked transparent first-person experience of the “noble savage". As I noted, Patanjali includes herbs: "All know the healing qualities of herbs; only a few know that some of them have the qualities of awakening spiritual powers".

Ram: Okay. It seems it is illegal in New Zealand (is this your country?), then how did you take it?

Chris: Exotic mycoculture, but I discovered Psilocybe aucklandii as a mycologist.

Cathy Reason: For health reasons, I am unable to use entheogenic substances, so I am wondering if it is possible for someone to say something about the phenomenon of "ego loss". Is it the experience of dissolving into one's perceptions of nature? I have certainly experienced that, in the presence of the natural environment. But there has never been anything particularly scary about it. Or does it involve some intrinsic loss of individuality or agency? Both of which I would find rather horrifying.

Chris: The cortex is organised to be a complete envelope of experiencable aspects, so our everyday experience is that of being a conscious volitional agent trapped in a set of sensory experiences we come to recognise as the form of a physical universe and other sensations to do with the body and our emotions. This form of consciousness is implicitly streamlined into a "self and other” modality to survive.

It involves emotions that are sometimes quiescent while we are cogitating but at other times soar into states between exhilaration and despair, fear, anger, hope, contempt repugnance and disgust, love and hate. There is a major resonating network called the default mode that occupies our mind with the odd thoughts of a person when we are in between focused tasks that causes us to worry about future events and rehearse impending crises like applying for a job, or going to the doctor. This circuit is also linked to limbic system emotions, so under threat or under desire it displays features we associate with egotism i.e. urgent need for organismic survival, power, control and fame.

Fig 281b: Pure meditation, such as transcendental meditation on its own, is like watching a blank TV screen and falling into the lowest energy state of samadhi as "divine bliss". Psychedelic meditation complements this with "ultimate reality" leading to moksha. Blue shows reduction in default mode system accompanying ego loss, which in psychedelics, is also associated with a sensory flood, due to increased interconnectivity between regions.

Forms of meditation including mindfulness, annihilation (letting-go of self) and inner silence inhibit the internal dialogue and reduce the ego perspective. Psychedelics do this more powerfully, in a multi-sensory sensory flood of all aspects of existence accompanied by a reduction or loss in the division between self and other, particularly in sensory withdrawal, leading to mystical type experiences of natural oneness awe, or atonement and sometimes a kind of doom if one gets paranoid, or overdoes it. This experience tends to be formative because it provides a complete vision of escape from the binds of ego and a new understanding of life and natural and spiritual existence not trammelled by the underlying mortal coil. If you overdo the dose you can end up feeling you have literally died, which is a bit disconcerting, but it does give respite and succour to people who really are in a terminal condition, so it’s only scary to the insecure ego. That’s why it is important to have a caring support environment or to go into the wilderness or another safe quiet place.

John: Many others who experimented with drugs profoundly accepted a spirit world. Ram Das, George Harrison .... I think being taken to a place by extrinsic means may give different conclusions about it that getting there on own's own effort. Perhaps there is more to learn in the journey than what one might conclude on seeing just the destination.

Ram: It is unclear why CK’s drug-meditation-based conclusions are just the opposite of yoga-meditation-based (even shamanism-based ones who ingest such drugs but still believe in the spirit world) conclusions. Is it simply CK's view, ie., he might have the same conclusions even if he has not ingested such drugs? I am wondering what Maria Sabina's (who ate mushrooms like food) view is.

Chris: The lesson of nature is that everything is confoundingly different from our naive, e.g. religious, assumptions and preconceived notions. The lesson of psychedelics is that everything conscious is profoundly different too. I want to learn with no heavy colours on my brushes from traditional spirituality to paint transparently so that people can see right through me. Language is a mysterious teacher. There is a verb to lie but there is no English word for a truth speaker. So I am forced to say what I am doing is "truth speak".

I accept conscious spirit phenomena. I’ve said I see all life in an integrated state of eternal telepathic communication when on mushrooms, but that’s just a one-person veridical report, not spiritual “ evidence” unless its affirmed by others. I communicate with the winds and chaos reigns, whirling my very identity into the atmosphere. We all need to let go of our rational mind in this way to fully communicate with nature.

I accept the Spirit world of the Huichols and the nierika portal as a cosmic observation. Neither do I differ from Maria Sabina, who both sang to Chicon Nindo the Mazatec lord of the mountains and all the spirits of the Catholic saints and said she was both Yeshua and Maria. Here is one account below. The point is that this is metaphorical spirituality of the vision quest not a literal piece of doctrinal religion about astral planes or the 28 requirements for enlightenment or the seven levels of heaven:

‘The father of my-grandfather Pedro Feliciano, my grandfather Juan Feliciano, my father Santo Feliciano - were all shamans - they ate the teonanacatl , and had great visions of the world where everything is known... the mushroom was in my family as a parent, protector, a friend’.

Maria Sabina took sacred mushrooms in abundance as a child. A few days after watching a wise man cure her uncle:

’Maria Anna and I were taking care of our chickens in the woods so that they wouldn't become the victims of hawks or foxes. We were seated under a tree when suddenly I saw near me within reach of my hand several mushrooms. If I eat you, you and you" I said "I know that you will make me sing beautifully". I remembered my grandparents spoke of these mushrooms with great respect. After eating the mushrooms we felt dizzy as if we were drunk and I began to cry, but this dissiness passed and we became content. Later we felt good. It was a new hope in our life. In the days that followed, when we felt hungry we ate the mushrooms. And not only did we feel our stomachs full, but content in spirit as well. I felt that they spoke to me. After eating them I heard voices. Voices that came from another world. It was like the voice of a father who gives advice. Tears rolled down our cheeks abundantly as if we were crying for the poverty in which we lived.' She had a vision of her dead father coming to her. ‘I felt as if everything that surrounded me was god. Maria Anna and I continued to eat the mushrooms. We ate lots many times, I don't remember how many. Sometimes grandfather and at other times my mother came to the woods and would gather us up from the ground on which we were sprawled or kneeling. "What have you done?" they asked. They picked us up bodily and carried us home. In their arms we continued laughing singing or crying. They never scolded us nor hit us for eating mushrooms. Because they knew it isn't good to scold a person who has eaten the little things, because it causes contrary emotions and it is possible that one might feel one was going crazy' (Estrada 39).

After the death of her first husband Maria Sabina performed a velada for Maria Anna, who was sick with an internal bleeding. After expressing the blood she had a vision of six or eight people who inspired her with respect - 'the Principal Ones of whom my ancestors spoke'. One of the Principal ones spoke to her and showed her the book of wisdom. She realised that she was reading her book. Afterwards she had the contents always in her memory, and became herself one of the Principal Ones who became her dear friends. After this vision, she had another vision of Chicon Nindo the lord of the mountains, a being surrounded by a halo, whose face was like a shadow. She realised that she had become his neighbour. She entered the house and had another vision of a vegetal [spirit] being covered with leaves and stalks that fell from the sky with a great roar like a lightning bolt. "I realized that I was crying and that my tears were crystals that tinkled when they fell on the ground. I went on crying but I whistled and clapped, sounded and danced. I danced because I knew I was the great Clown woman and the Lord clown woman” (Estrada 49).

What I think is wrong is spiritual materialism – invoking a parallel world in which astral events or spirit events occur. Or treating the spirit world in a similar way to the way we treat the physical world where souls replace organic personas. When I go down into the abyss it’s with no assumptions. I try very had to avoid “spirit talk” because it’s full of quasi-religious connotations and leads to ideas like the gnostic pleroma. Head in the clouds and feet on the ground like the axis mundi and the world tree.

Ram Dass and George Harrison were at the naive phase of psychedelics when no one could comprehend what they were and any Vedic solution solves their hunger in instantaneous exotic faith. Essentially they didn’t know how to hold their potions. Ram Dass went to Neem Karoli Baba and did what any naive Western person is liable to do. When I asked the Chai Baba on the ghats in Varanasi, he had a much more equivocal opinion of Neem Karoli Baba.

Since our experiential cosmos is divided into perceptions, dreams and visions we need to explore these really fully in the age of natural science, and in particular entheogenic visions because these are the richest waking non-ordinary experiences we have access to.

Chris: The richness I attributed to psychedelics is their sheer experiential richness, not compared with human cultural experiences but as agents, allies and advisors – or as Maria Sabina said "the mushroom was in my family as a parent, protector, a friend". The key is non-ordinary experiences in the sense of lying outside the physical/perceptual world view. We have a very good conceptual understanding of the perceptual/physical through science. But we have almost no idea of non-ordinary experiential reality, in which I will include samadhi/satori, dreaming reality, and entheogenic states induced by psychoactive species. Samadhi/satori utilise a high degree of mental control to achieve ego loss accompanied by claims of siddhis. Dreaming reality is only partly autonomous and requires difficult exercises to achieve and maintain dreaming lucidity. By contrast, psychedelics are experientially overflowing with richness to the point of sensory overload.

The entire vista of our psychic existence hinges on the inner nature of non-ordinary subjective experience. This is the lightning rod through which all the mysteries of existence flow, all the heavens all the hells all the emptiness and cosmic consciousness and all our hopes and fears of the after life and all our transfigurations and revelations. But we all all standing like little children at the portal, too scared to find out what's there in the experiential abyss. Everything we know about nature and the universe has been absolutely confounding to our naive religious notions. The subjective abyss is completely uncharted, apart from scattered claims of some mystics, prophets and a few yogis in the Himalayas making unverifiable claims about astral spaces. Psychedelics are not psychic tourism. They are cosmological science putting the full Cosmos into the physical universe. We have no idea if the well is deep or just a bunch of hallucinations. If it is deep it could be very deep indeed and it could be more wildly different from our expectations than our most fanciful spiritual notions. The key to life, the universe and everything is contained therein.

You mention Ram Dass giving Karoli a good dose of acid and him continuing to sit calmly while tripping as if nothing much had happened. So he should. That doesn't prove or even infer that samadhi is superior to entheogenic moksha and it certainly doesn't establish that Karoli didn't get high. That's just a case of Vedantic tourism coming off half-baked to spin a yarn for "Be Here Now". That's why at the age of 78, having taken the biospheric sacraments all my life, I am not a psychedelic tourist any more than I was wandering in India, and am trying to convey that the meditative avenue and entheogens together provide the evolutionary core of an immortal human culture. The living sacraments are our very grounding in nature, so that we don't become cast adrift by our spiritual fantasies.

There is a different route to all this guru talk and spirit talk. Make the vision quest yourself. Go out in the wilderness like the Baptist and Yeshua did. The noble savage that is our essential being can find its innocence and its enlightenment this way!

John: Thanks Chris, I understand and agree for the most part. And I would not judge your status as tourist or resident after so much experience with both. You must, then be keenly aware of that difference. Newbies, to psychedelics or to meditation, generally are not. One has to know a territory exists before setting out to explore it in depth. And methodical exploration is needed to understand new experiences.

Chris: Here is an account of Karen Armstrong (2022) in “Sacred Nature”:

The rishis attributed their poetic power to the hallucinogenic plant soma, which enabled them to look beneath the surface of things and discover a deva in every single one, so nature was alive, imbued with the divine. They called the faculty they had cultivated dhi (“insight”); it gave them a knowledge (veda) that bore no relation to mundane awareness. All these divine forces, the rishis concluded, were grounded in a mysterious omnipresent power, which they called Rta, one of the most important concepts in the Vedas, the ancient texts of Hinduism. Rta is best understood as “active, creative truth” or “the way things truly are.”

By about the sixth century BCE, however, the Aryans were redefining the ultimate reality; and they called it the Brahman. While Rta had been the eternal principle of being that informed and permeated the universe, the Brahman was the foundation of all reality, the “beingness” on which all things depended.

John: Soma was likely a mild drug compared to the refined psychedelics of today and used to aid the process, or in many cases not needed at all as with many modern mystics. So I would say useful for some but not necessary for any. It is important to know that the power of divine insight is within us, not derived from anything external.

Chris: The biosphere is not “external” to us if we want to survive as a species. I am certain the natural sacraments are biospheric foresight. The central neurotransmitters like glutamate and GABA are cosmically abundant amino acids and serotonin has a close to primal origin. The brain, for all its complexity, has used primal amine neurotransmitters because of their archetypal properties. Given the climax diversity of the biosphere, it is almost inevitable that modified forms of serotonin such as dimethlytryptamine and psilocin will arise. The natural psychedelics are thus cosmological molecules that are also fundamental to the conscious future of Homo sapiens in the biosphere. It’s that literal – the scientific, cosmological and religious truth. So to say Homo sapiens should treat the biospheric sacraments as “external” and therefore “not necessary” is a betrayal of both the Cosmos itself and of nature, in favour of anthropocentric control of our conscious dialogue with nature and reality. I could fairly comment this is a cardinal sin against the immortal survival of life, given the apocalyptic world context and I think I would be right.

It wasn't my claim about soma but Karen Armstrong’s and I didn't put it in to advertise drugs. That was the author’s choice, but it’s telling and true.

John: The Risis certainly used something unknown called Soma and greatly revered it as a healing as well as mind enhancing potion made from some leaves. However I think it would be a serious error to think that their insight was attributed to soma as opposed to that being a minor aid. Much greater attribution is given to yoga and I'm quite sure that is the correct order of things. The power of insight is something we have already and accessible by Will or intention alone.

Chris: Aldous Huxley, p 659 cites the opinion that the yogic tradition (possibly derived from the Shiva-Kali planter cultures of Mohendro Jaro) was a compensation for the loss of access to soma as the Aryan invaders descended into India where it couldn't we found. Isn’t it a more serious error whether knowingly, or unwittingly, to contradict both the evidence of history and the example of Indra, king of the devas and heaven in this matter?

Drinking soma produces immortality (Amrita, Rigveda 8.48.3). Indra and Agni are portrayed as consuming soma in copious quantities. In the Vedic ideology, Indra drank large amounts of soma while fighting the serpent demon Vritra.

"Minor aid" is clearly not what Indra thought and he is the ultimate authority on this question. It’s not good karma to try to bend history to our own anxieties. The mushroom is NOT a minor aid. It is a paradigm shifting essential medicine evolved by the biosphere for the beneficence of the Human species.

John: Rta is never defined in the Veda. It has been called "Cosmic order". It is a pointer to the ultimate unknowable but with the knowledge that is is the source of order which allows all views of it. Brahman is described this way also and I would consider it indescribable also but more penultimate than Rta, which is ultimate.

Chris: I think this is an inspired view because you are naming the mythopoetic source of the mystical entity as supreme over ultimate reality! But I’m really worried about identifying either of them as agents of order. Karen said: ‘Rta is best understood as “active, creative truth” or “the way things truly are”.’ Where is the edge of chaos in your description? I know its all patriarchal religion – But Indra is associated with the sky, lightning, weather, thunder, storms, rains, river flows, and war. It looks to me that the odd tornado and hurricane is passing right through the Rig Veda! So it’s also the rule of chaos isn’t it?

John Jay Kineman: I don't question the value of the psychedelic experience as you describe it, but with my experiences in India over the past 20 years I do question the statement that there is nothing else as profound. Remember Neem Karole Baba downed a half bottle of Ram Dass' LSD and was unaffected. He said he's there all the time and in total control. Ive seen enough amazing things and people here to believe Ram Dass' account and NK Baba's claim.

Chris: I think it was a neurotic mistake of Ram Das to be so naive with Karioli, who had only 1000 mics and knows how to sit still, and it was part of the cliche of writing “Be Here Now”. I’ve told you the Chai Baba of Kedar Ghat had a low opinion of Karioli, so don't put him on a pedestal. Total control is not samadhi. It’s is the opposite of moksha and it's not enlightenment. Psychedelics, particularly the three natural biospheric sacraments peyote, ayahuasca and sacred mushrooms are one of the oldest spiritual-shamanic traditions in existence. Patanjali acknowledged the herbs and soma is the founding of the Indo-aryan tradition of the Vedas. Mushroom spores and species are endemic planet-wide. They are here for a reason. They are not a distraction and they are not illusion. They have been turned from recreational ventures into class 1 toxins then somersaulted into cures for people with psychiatric problems – clinical depression, PTSD and terminal anxiety in cancer, but they are here to enlighten us. Samadhi is a natural complement, not an alternative. The Vedas are insufficient on their own. Sorry but that’s the breaks.

John: It's certainly possible in that case, but there are many cases and I don’t dismiss them so easily. By total control, I meant over staying in that state, which of course is a state of lack of control over reality. But what experienced meditators and mystics can do is hold onto a kind of suspended worldly reality. I have achieved this but only in brief periods. A sound, a thought, a belly ache will easily pull me out of it. Mostly it is a thought that pulls me out. And you are quite correct about control, it is not really control - that was my word not anything I think Ram Dass or his guru said. In fact when I enter into this transcendental state it is nice and attractive and I start congratulating myself but also wanting to stay there, wanting to control that, which is exactly what takes me back to the world. But there is something else, as you say, the giving up of control that preserves the experience. Sadguru claims that when he was younger he once tripped out this way for 13 days. When he came out of it villagers had decorated him with garlands and flowers. He thought he was out for perhaps hours. Its somewhat believable in his case, because he also describes his experiences in school and as a young boy where he would get absolutely fascinated by a single object, having the sense of wonder and thinking that he really doesn’t know what that thing is and is fascinated by it, unable to take his attention off it. He tells a joke about being in class and the teacher sees him spacing out and says “pay attention”. So he did, but not to what she was saying, to her as a being, a phenomenon. He says he gave her attention like she has never had before. But I think he still flunked the class.

Chris: I’m not discounting the experiences of the Upanishadic Rishis and the powers of the siddhis. In fact I am a rishi embracing them fully. Bu I don’t think we should measure things by how far “out of it” yogi’s get. It’s the novel insights they do or don’t express to us that are revealing. I’m saying psychedelic moksha is the natural complement of the path of samadhi. This is an urgent mission for me to save life not to popularise psychedelics.

You have a notion of spiritual purity that sees the individual under their own pure consciousness that is just a pure expression of their spiritual strength and focus to achieve a realisation of what you think is cosmic consciousness. That is an ideal accompanied by renunciation of worldly distractions. It also preaches a form of elitism that only the severely devoted rishis who are also singular mystics, as exceptional gifted individuals we can't question or emulate, have even a clue or otherwise as Deepak says everything we experience is just illusion. In my experience this as an anthropomorphic cul-de-sac. Both pure spirituality and controlled samadhi lie under this shadow. This produces habits of spiritual renunciation that are disconnected from life in the pursuit of illumination.

There is another much more completely natural and organic way of achieving a deeper more biospheric rather than human alone form of cosmic consciousness that looks and feels entirely different. The highest states of enlightenment are not found through the spiritual supremacy of one conscious species that is already trashing the planet this way, but through the symbiotic biospheric consciousness of enlightened life as a whole. This looks like a complex system perturbation of egotistical organismic consciousness because it IS, taking us out of our illusory selves. Out of our finite limitations. The psychic species play a key part of this psycho-symbiotic role. This is the true Mahayana of life, not in a restrictive purist one way Jesus dogma, but in the Tao of the living totality that sustains life in the passage of the generations. That’s the true dharma! The rest is bs.

John: I don’t know what is moksha. When I get there, and if I want to come back, I’ll say something.

Chris: We both know moksha is escape from the round of birth and death. You know Vedanta and you know what it means. The entire edifice, from the Jains through the rishis to the Buddhists have embraced a notion of reincarnation and enlightenment being the great escape. This is really the escape from the mortal coil, so it is often likened to maha-samadhi, or death. But what it is, is a near death meeting of atman and Brahman in which we can see simultaneously as one is to one both from our incarnate mortality, and in symbiosis with the spiritual eternity of ultimate reality in cosmic consciousness. That's the exact key to the existential dilemma. Then we can get on and live our precious lives caring for life itself in all its overflowing glory. And we can do this again any time if we keep good faith with not abusing the experience.

Psychedelics are many things but the key thing is their ability to precipitate a near death experience in the midst of life when combined with samadhi. This doesn't have to be sustained, or to take all day, or four hours a day. As long as you practice mindfulness and then complete abandonment in sensory withdrawal when the effects ensue, you can enter the nierika of ultimate reality. If you don't do samadhi meditation you will just have a mushroom or ayahuasca trip which is good too although it can be dysphoric.

John: I don’t know how to ask a mushroom its reasons for being here, or if it would know. Our reasons may not be important in the larger scheme of things. We find them very helpful on many levels. That’s all I know.

Chris: I’m not suggesting to ask them, although some people do. To me it’s evolutionary karma. From the earliest eucaryote we have been evolving as sappy conscious organisms. So the mammalian brain inherits an ancient psycho-chemical propensity for enlightenment when ego-consciousness becomes cosmic consciousness. You can see it in the neurotransmitters of the ascending reticular activating system which contains an absolute pharmacologists kit bag with all of dopamine, nor-adrenaline, serotonin, histamine, acetyl-choline, orexin and glutamate, becoming the symphony on which subjective consciousness is played out in the phases of wakefulness and light and dreaming sleep ecstasy and despair. Evolution has found ways of producing psychedelics which have become selected for by conscious animals e.g. in mushrooms, spreading their spores and in the case of humanity this can radically alter humanity’s relationship with nature and biodiversity and save the planet from a mass extinction of life, not because it is a cliche of salvation, but because it is the crowning glory of biospheric enlightenment.

John: I am not opposed to medicinals for facilitating an out of the world experience, and certainly native people have been doing this for a long time. Did they achieve enlightenment from it? What degree? I don’t know how to compare that to someone like Ramana Maharshi, who’s mountain, cave, and ashram I visited. The stories can’t all be dismissed as cultural creations uninformed by medicinals.

Chris: Well I'm trying to explain the difference. You see a medicinal as a prop like a prescription medicine that clouds or diminishes enlightenment. I am suggesting it is the full dimensions of cosmic consciousness because it arises from a complex system ecologically.

John: But why the need to elevate the medicinal plant above self-induced mental practice? That makes no sense to me since there is obviously so much that can be experienced both ways.

Chris: The need to elevate is to ensure the survival of the diversity of life as well as their ability to illuminate. Psychedelics are very complex agents and challenging, and even a mild dose can make me nervous, but the results are really positive across a wide spectrum of studies. They are unique to the individual but they are gaining a track record which looks like the resolution of the existential crisis. Religions preach eternal life as an illusory remedy to mortality. Vedanta does the same with unattainable cosmic consciousness and reincarnation that never gets there. Why would you want to have faith in that? I owe faith only to life, the universe and everything, not spiritual beliefs. A visionary doesn't need to gamble their garments with their adversaries.

John: Since you have been telling us of the virtues of psychedelics I have been intrigued and, as we know, skeptical of that as a primary avenue. My comments along the way have been to the effect that this is an artificial means to achieve what spiritual practice seeks to do “naturally”. You have pointed out that psychedelics come from nature and are used by native peoples, so in a sense “natural”. I am personally intrigued and expect that at some point, under the right circumstances, I will try it. I have close friends who do and for the most part they come out no stranger than when they went in, but probably more equanimous about life. Of course I observe the same with graduates of A Course in Miracles, and other schools. I don’t know how long after the first ’trip’ one starts to gain a calm understanding of it - perhaps you can say.

Chris: Psychedelics are challenging experientially so it can take persistence, like any other shamanic or meditative practice, but it doesn’t take lifetimes as pure meditation does unless you are a natural mystic on the edge of sanity. Generally in a good guided session, a person realises the very first time that they have entered non-ordinary reality that turns their preconceived notions of reality inside out. But then as Cathy asks what do we do with Heaven and Hell spectres that can and do occur and the ability of very egotistical people to see themselves as messiahs. The answer is the one Roland Griffiths gave in the previous e-mail I sent. Basically a good supportive session can lead to a so-called quantum change experience which changes the person’s world view sufficiently to enable them to see things anew, or as they actually are, particularly about the mortal condition.

Being an exceptional mystic is also an unreliable asset as Huxley noted with William Blake, who lost his visionary psyche in mid-life only to regain it in old age. My first acid trip of 500 mics was wonderful, so I went back to London in 1968 and took 1000 mics – Karoli’s alleged dose. I was completely convinced I had died. I could walk around normally although everything was suffused with shimmering light but it took ages to come down and left me with phosphenes. At the same time a false news announcement from the FDA said LSD split your chromosomes so I panicked and didn't take any more for five years. Then my best friend, who also had an affair with my wife causing great anxiety, offered me another and I was so nervous I banged my head into the living room window and smashed it, so I decided to take the plunge. This began a trail of hundreds of LSD trips which were wonderful but I couldn’t get right through to nirvana because I was staying too alert and looking at the trip in too much of a direct sensory physical way so it would start to go into the portal and I would notice and flick out like when you are trying too hard to get to sleep and can’t. It was still overwhelmingly fascinating and made all other notions like religion stereotyped cul-de-sacs.

Then I took a lovely little mushroom trip in Taos NM while baby sitting for a family prominent in the peyote meeting there and later did a peyote meeting myself there. From there I made it to the El Catorce Real high peyote fields of Mexico and took peyote on Wirikuta, mushrooms at Palenque, and ayahuasca on Yarinacocha lagoon Pucallpa Peru. This began a life where I was in symbiotic relationship with all three sacraments. The trick is not to stare into the patterns too intently but to alternate between one-pointed mindfulness and closed-eyed annihilation of one’s self, just letting go as close to mara-samadhi as possible. My mushroom trips always revive the spiritual dimension, but only sometimes do I descend into full union and know I’ve been there. So it can both be an immediate clear light insight with the first experience that is world-view changing and also a lifetime process. I sometimes held small veladas on our land with a group of close friends but it’s not something you can advertise and stay out of trouble. It’s only with the new scientific therapeutic revolution that I have “come out”. That’s why we are all trying to catch up now because of prejudicial social repression.

John: One thing is to see new realities, but another is to clearly examine and understand the limitations placed on ourselves by old ones, including our own histories and beliefs. It is one thing to experience strange new worlds (not a plug for Star Trek), but another to be physically a part of them, not just mentally. While you are having this experience home alone, another may be having to adjust to life-changing surroundings and interactions with complete cultural and physical immersion. Maybe you can comment on how well psychedelics contribute to actual agility.

Chris: It’s all about existential agility and I’m trying to take the entire living universe with me, not just consciousness, so it's doing exactly what you describe. My life is like sailing down Hardanger Fjord and there are times I really need to tack or even jibe in buffeting breezes, or near the rocks, so I generally wait months or years until the auspicious or anti-auspicious crisis and then force myself to stop being nervous which happens because its been ages. When I do after the effects ensure this nervousness turns into knowing as also we are known and I am back to my full shamanic being. The one thing to avoid is waiting until we are on our death bed to take the plunge. When I discovered SEC, it was after a seven year break because of acute closed angle glaucoma and it was a very mild trip but resulted in a lifetime peak experience.

John: My hypothesis would be that in both cases, psychedelics and meditation, realization of actual benefits needs to involve integration with and direct learning from physical existence as well - that it's the balance that advances us.

Chris: Absolutely!

John: Another thought you might comment on is that the aim of both practices seems to be lessening one’s dependence on those physical circumstances that challenge us in life and, as above, strange circumstances. Moksha and enlightenment are presented as involving very profound detachment from the physical world.

Chris: Detachment from mechanistic logic and deductive thought but not the living universe. I don't believe that renunciation of the living universe is productive. The Brihadaranyaka is the Upanishad of the great forest, so its union with nature not just consciousness. Notice that Huxley’s editor began the snippet of Island and the moksha medicine with sex. We exist only through sexuality. If we reject sex as many Eastern traditions do in favour of the illusion of pure enlightenment, we are rejecting the physical embodiment of life itself. That can never further. If you think that is a quick trip to realisation, think again. The real liberation comes from symbiotic relationship with nature. It’s cosmological consciousness to be fully immersed in nature because we ARE incarnate. No matter what pretences spirituality brings to the table, without sex we are sterile and without symbiosis we are statues made of matchsticks in a technological dystopia.

John: Now there is a paradox there in that one is presumably still having a body, without which we have not data.

Chris: It’s not data our body gives but the immortal passage of the generations of life forever amen.

John: So, there is an obvious attachment possibility there, but it is clear that many worldly things fall away on the journey to the supposed ultimate.

Chris: What supposed ultimate? Why? To redeem reality means redeeming the entire cosmos and humanity in the biosphere, not just personal enlightenment. Ultimate reality is facing and accepting and transfiguring existence here and now. We HAVE to redeem life. Jacob’s ladder and the stairway to heaven are eternally sterile.

John: Thus it seems paradoxical to propose that a chemical is the best means for achieving such detachment, since it is a physical means, regardless of the question of dependence long-term.

Chris: Not chemicals, .living sacraments. I gave up LSD because it was a chemical and after the days of window panes and the original orange sunshine you couldn't trust the sources. But it’s not about the chemical. You are already mechanising it. It's about the living sacrament and what it is here and can do. As I have said the actual nature of what entheogens do is not well understood. If you take MDMA or ecstasy, as I have once for a test, it is a whacking serotonergic dose, and it's lovey dovey touchy feely but not a psychedelic. It’s very pro-social and you can go to a rave without trouble. You get phenomenally high but it’s entactogenic, not psychedelic.

There are two mysteries. The first is that psychedelics are super-agonists that open a unique metabotropic pathway in 5HT2a neurons that serotonin itself doesn’t and that sets off slow waves of glutamate brain excitation. Why s the brain providing this route? We don’t yet know, but it may be a form of autonomous psychedelia in some people. The second in the case of mushrooms is that the psilocin genes evolved from a transposable element not from the mushrooms themselves, so the origin of magic mushrooms is mysterious in itself.

My hypothesis is that consciousness has evolved from single celled eucaryotes using the entire spectrum of neurotransmitters they invented, which we see in the multiple neurotransmitters of the ascending reticular activating system, so the brain although electrodynamic has at its foundation the sappy social signalling molecules the drive organismic survival like dopamine, serotonin and nor-adrenaline and that this is the foundation of a second wave of biospheric evolution that produces phytochemicals that have evolved to affect animal behaviour, so we get all the medicinal species from opium to cocaine and we get entheogens too and these are the evolutionary foundation of the great symphony of conscious existence in the surviving biosphere, provided dominant species such as ourselves learn to understand their evolutionary role.

John: The claim is that it is necessary, not just instrumental, for the enlightened experience, and yet to have any physical necessity is contrary to what we imagine to be the aim. In general, the method to an end should have or practice similar characteristics to that end.

Chris: To what aim? To what end exactly? That's casting lots on our garments of redemption before our time has fully come. The only way for us as incarnate mortal biological sentient beings to have a real future is to live symbiotically with life as a whole using our climax intelligence not to become utopian technology alone but living enlightenment in conscious nature. That's what we need to do now and very quickly, which is the ONLY reason I am here saying this because it’s more urgent than anything else. We HAVE to save the diversity of life and regain paradise on the cosmic equator in space-time or we will go down like one of the princes:

I said, “You are gods, And all of you are children of the Most High. But you shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes.”

John: I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about integration with life. By detachment I also mean reducing psychological distraction and dependence while increasing involvement as a more relevant being. Sexuality has a purpose, as we know, and in some schools that is seen as passing through phases of life. Like many drivers it requires mastery of one's psychological addiction and this can be extremely beneficial in all phases. There are situations in any culture where sex can become inappropriate, and one's ability to accept that is important both for a peaceful and fulfilling life and for spiritual progress. It is a powerful driver, I think, for most people, but that energy can be transformed and channeled in different ways as the demands and phases of life change.

You said “To what aim? To what end exactly? That's casting lots on our garments of redemption before our time has fully come”. We both use the words enlightenment and moksha to suggest some kind of greater self awareness but perhaps mainly as an end to suffering and anxiety as in Buddha's quest. The word "equanimity" is also used. The main question I come away with from your description is the role of volatility. Life can be a rollercoaster ride but for many the spiritual quest is an attempt to tame one's reaction to events, which actually allows greater agility in responding to those events as a constructive agent. One becomes the force that can calm emotional seas and navigate a steady course. But perhaps with that it is equanimity and steadiness of purpose and confidence in self. Knowing without doubt who we are that is invulnerable. Still, I say "some schools" of thought because I can imagine an argument for acceptance of volatility too. The bottom line might be if it is what we truly want. Being anxious is not pleasant and may not be necessary, so eliminating it seems like a valuable goal if that doesn't result in missing important warnings in life. So the goal would be associated with increased not decreased awareness.

Chris: The whole question is about the assumed link between cosmic order and the universal good which is where God comes in with the mixed blessings of heaven and hell, like a psychedelic misadventure. I use the lessons of life to deduce meaning, so I see mortality as real life in the centre of the cyclone at the edge-of-chaos, with the regime of order stuck in a rut of totalistic oppression and chaos causing rampant “thermodynamic” dissolution, so both are unviable extremes and we survive by juggling the broom upside down in the palm of our hand. So for example carnivores are necessary and mortal life can be absolutely terrifying torture and unbearable agony. But between the extremes life springs forth resplendent. To venture into the unknown and understand the cosmological foundations of consciousness we have to make a journey into the crack between the worlds. So we can’t call the shots in advance. To me in the last cosmic analysis, conscious life is invincible and could regenerate, even if life on Earth ceased to exist, but it’s an assumption we can't afford unless and until we know there is viable compassionate life elsewhere.

Robert Boyer (2022): The three psycho-physiologically defined states of consciousness in ‘Western thought’ are waking, dreaming, and sleeping. The ordinary waking state is associated with sensory perception, thinking, and intellectual reasoning commonly experienced in our daily lives. This state is characterized by the distinction of ‘experiencer’, ‘process of experiencing’, and ‘object of experience.’ ... This moment, looking outside to read this paper, you receive input through your senses. You experience the input in your thinking mind, processing it for meaning and relevance. You may also analyze it on the deeper level of the intellect to understand it better. You may further sense deeper feelings about its relevance. And, you can sense that your self is the experiencer of these sensations, thoughts, and feelings. Further, you can know directly that, behind all this, you are conscious. These are the natural levels of inner subjective mind in the Vedic model of levels of mind. Going deeper inside are the senses, the thinking mind, the intellect (which includes discriminative and deeper unifying functions associated with feelings), the inner ‘I’/self/ego, and consciousness – which you are ‘experiencing’ right now by being conscious

Vedanta and the 7th natural state of consciousness: Unity consciousness. Maharishi (1967) describes unity consciousness as the supreme level of human development in which every phenomenally separate object of experience including one’s individual self is spontaneously known, experienced, and attributed to be nothing other than the infinite value of one’s own universal Self. In unity consciousness, there are no gaps in the infinite eternal oneness of Being.

No diversity of life is able to detract from this state of supreme Unity. One who has reached It is the supporter of all and everything, for he is life eternal. He bridges the gulf between the relative and the Absolute. The eternal Absolute is in him at the level of the perishable phenomenal world. He lives to give meaning to the paean of the Upanishads: “purnamadah purnamidam”—That Absolute is full, this relative is full (pp. 448-449).

In the 7th state of consciousness, unity consciousness, wholeness, oneness of everything is the primary locus of experience, permeating all phenomenal diversity and change. This highest state of consciousness is the emphasis of the Darshana of Vedanta (the ‘end of the Veda’), spontaneously living the ultimate oneness of everything. Maharishi (1967) explains that on the basis of the profound intimacy between the knower and the known in refined cosmic consciousness, complete unification of subjective and ‘objective’ existence simply unfolds naturally as a matter of time.

Chris: I do like the relaxed approach of TM, in that it is aiming at a natural process to make meditation go with the flow in a fulfilling way that in your view is capable of respecting nature and brings peace and happiness. Your descriptions of the seven levels of samadhi all have a single common basis in more refined versions of perfect unity of subjective and objective consciousness and the thrust of the discussion in your text is about distinguishing the objective reality process of physical perception from the subjective experiential process of inner consciousness rather than deep subjective experience itself.

Let me underline what I see as the central problem in "Ignorance and Enlightenment: What's the Difference?” (Boyer 2022). Your account is aimed at a polarity between everyday consciousness, which is attributive of the physical universe and the sublime conscious “Self”:

To clarify the idea of ‘object-referral’, the ‘object’ is experienced as a separate outer object, frequently in the outer physical environment and held to be independent from the inner ‘subject’ or ‘I’.

But we simply can't fully understand nature without exploring the physical foundations of how life arises. So you are denying natural science by imputation throughout, because it distinguishes subjective and objective. This is NOT a valid basis or sufficient cause to affirm TM.

The natural experience in ordinary waking is characterized by a gap between the outer objective and inner subjective world – the mind-body problem. This gap needs to be bridged for the unity that science rigorously pursues, and toward which it is inexorably progressing.

This is not an adequate starting point to justify enlightenment in an of itself and becomes a doctrinal exercise in the way you quote Maharishi Mahesh Yougi (MMY) as the final word. MMY’s idea of “nature is physically and naturally deficient. Nature to MMY is just the levels of consciousness, typified in the seven levels of enlightenment. It shows no respect for genes, cells, the fecund cytosol, or any physical or natural aspects of conscious life, just the need to bridge subject and object in one transcendent “Self”. It is committing the foundation error of Vedanta in identifying nature as subjective consciousness, after which it induces a tower of higher “spiritual states” and ignores the significance of natural differences e.g. between living species:

The six Darshana (what is ‘seen’) are different perspectives of the totality of nature. They are here depicted in a sequence and on a continuum from virtually no wakefulness to full wakefulness of the totality of nature.

Yes your description of the “tower of spiritual states” of enlightenment goes to the seventh but they are simply an intellectual construction deriving from the seven layers of heaven and the seven layers of Hell. They are NOT enlightenment and should not be described as achieving it, or it is a misrepresentation. Remember the dance of the seven veils is Inanna stripping herself naked before the Galla in her descent to her sister Ereshkigal before returning and sacrificing Dumuzi, just as Shiva is the God of Death pictured with his trident in Mohenjo Daro. It’s nothing new and goes back to the Sumerians and also pervades Jesus, anointed by Magdalen, out of whom went seven devils, to his doom, crucified before the daughters of Jerusalem, harrowing hell and rising on the third day from the dead.

To get this picture clear, let’s just see what Etymonline considers nature to be. It’s NOT just consciousness, or the seven layers of conscious “heaven”, it’s very much the world of tooth and claw. Nature IS natal of birth itself!!!

nature (n.) late 13c., "restorative powers of the body, bodily processes; powers of growth;" from Old French nature "nature, being, principle of life; character, essence," from Latin natura "course of things; natural character, constitution, quality; the universe," literally "birth," from natus "born," past participle of nasci "to be born," from PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget.” By mid-14c. as "the forces or processes of the material world; that which produces living things and maintains order." From late 14c. as "creation, the universe;" also "heredity, birth, hereditary circumstance; essential qualities, inherent constitution, innate disposition" (as in human nature); also "nature personified, Mother Nature." Nature and nurture have been paired and contrasted since Shakespeare's “Tempest.” Specifically as "the material world beyond human civilization or society; an original, wild, undomesticated condition" from 1660s, especially in state of nature "the condition of man before organized society."

Robert: I think the term moksha frequently refers to the natural permanent establishment of samadhi,

Chris: I accept that there can be diverse forms of samadhi also reflected in the processes and practices that lead to such states. This probably also applies to approaches to moksha. However there is a lesson here I think we need to appreciate from the discovery of nature. What we now know of the natural universe is counter-intuitively confounding to our naive religious notions of the natural world. Theories of everything are just as confounding.

What I learn from non ordinary reality is that both dreaming and psychedelic experience lead to wildly different and diverse states of conscious experience which transcend ordinary physical world perception and constitute a largely unexplored deeply confounding abyss, akin to the Bible's notion of tohu va vohu, before God's works of old.

For this reason I think we need to understand moksha in the way the Huichol understand the peyote quest to enter the nierika, as a vision quest to discover the inner nature of reality in the "spirit world". This means it is not just a state of permanent samadhi as perfect consciousness, but contains the entire cosmic mystery we have yet to discover the full dimensions of on a visionary journey of discovery. It entails a trip or journey into the unknown that we voyage as “psychopomps” on a lifetime journey across the Styx, which is a little like Dante's divine comedy, in its sheer ornateness and mind boggling diversity of experience.

This means I don't think moksha is a one way trip, but it is a journey where the test is what we bring back to the known world as discoveries to enlighten others about the outer boundaries of existence. For example when I met Brahman, I could experience simultaneously what it is like to be eternally compassionate at the same time as what it is like to be me as a living mortal. And Brahman was ultimate reality, but also an apotheosis of my own consciousness, so I was seeing this from both perspectives at once. And it was genuinely surprising to me to be told that my mortality was also key to the eternal existence of ultimate reality in it becoming manifest. Also the compassion for the mortal coil was uncanny.and the message, although it looks like straight mass extinction avoidance was an affirmation from the Cosmos as a whole that life is the sacred key to everything, and that cosmic consciousness needs the existence of natural life o manifest it, without which the universe could become devoid of meaning.

I think from my experiences of tripping that this could also take very diverse forms that we see also in the Huichol art and the art of the Ayahuasca visions, so it’s not a one way religious trip, but neither is it anywhere as narrow as many of the descriptions in the Eastern traditions convey.

Ram: If you are doing closed-eye meditation in TM, then how can you experience your internal and your external environment (external world) being unified? Are you doing open-eye meditation for unity subjective experience, which must have its own NPB (neural-physical basis)? Perhaps, we should do TM with eyes closed. If we like to test if the unity experience has occurred then open the eyes for a few seconds.

Chris: This quest is fallacious. It’s essentially trivial to experience mind-world unity, so that raises a question about TM. Every scene we look at in normal life is expressing this unity, except we know the actual physical world is not coloured and is just waves and particles depending on what you look at. Therefore the entire notion of unity in the sense you are describing is a contradiction because you can only see what consciousness evokes external or internal.

Robert: Eyes closed is going inward toward the unified state of consciousness; eyes open is going outward toward to the environment, the field of diversity. In unity consciousness, the individual naturally enjoys the maximum value of both inner and outer existence simultaneously due to mind/body refinement and coordination of all levels of life.

Chris: Bob’s comment is valid here. I do dual mode meditation when I am tripping. Eyes open for mindfulness and focus. Eyes closed for annihilation. The aim is to use both. Focus hard and steady and then let go completely. The purpose is not to try to artificially achieve unity which is a distraction. The aim is to go very deep into the dream and vision world of non-ordinary reality where unity with Brahman ultimate reality can manifest.

This is perfectly good neuroscience, which all the scientists should appreciate! Quieten the default mode by stopping the internal dialogue and erasing personal history. Reduce sensory input to a minimum with perhaps a single candle in a darkened room or lying in the long grass among the crickets and grass hoppers by the shore in the moonlight and go into devoted vigil. Yogic breathing is key because breath is at the interface between autonomous volition and automatic as in sleeping, so letting go of breathing very gently is letting go of existence.

Ram: It seems that terms such as moksha, samadhi, consciousness, etc have multiple meanings depending on a point of view (POV). For example, from SYP’s interpretation of Sankhya, at moksha state, jivatman (passive invariant self-as-subject (SaS): experiencer, cognizer, and performer of actions, individual Purusha) leaves (100% detaches from) the three bodies of Prakriti: sthula/gross_physical body, sukshama/subtle/astral body, and karan/subtler/causal body) and becomes atman, which them merges with cosmic Purusha (also called Brahman in Vedanta). At savikalpa samadhi state, jivatman (self-as-subject) has 100% disconnection from brain-body system.

Chris: My problem with this, which I have repeatedly raised, is the way your philosophical approach tries to classify the phenomena by categories like self-as-subject, completely separates etc. Your long description is simply throwing everything but the kitchen sink at describing an abstract model of moksha which lacks its very “soul”.

No matter what form moksha takes, three things have to happen:

(1) The subject has to have some sort of palpable experience of moksha consciously, so their consciousness has to be able to experience it and can't be completely disconnected.

(2) They have to retain it in memory sufficiently to be able to recognise it and report on it physically afterwards.

(3) The absolute key to the experience is perceiving existence from outside the round of birth and death because it is this which liberates and this IS moksha.

BVK Sastry: Namaste

1. CK is right on the three points about ‘Moksha’. The entirety of ‘ Moksha’ discourse is placed under Yoga.

2. Moksha in Yoga-Samkhya-Vedanta carry different perspective views and experience. Like view of sky when climbing or coming down from a mountain.

3. In the frame work of Yoga-sutra,

Yogaanga-Samadhi is one model of Moksha;

Siddhi and Kaivalya are different models of Moksha.

Vedanta Model of ‘ Sannyasa-Moksha’ is farther beyond ‘Yoga’ and Samkhya: frames.

Chris: Robert speculates that moksha is a permanent state of samadhi but that does’t describe anything different from samadhi which he describes a complete union of pure consciousness.

I have said repeatedly how this happens to me. That is I meditate, annihilate, fall into the experiential abyss, a non-ordinary experience overwhelms me and then a little later I catapult out of the situation with a fleeting awareness of my journey. This is also what the Huichol report:

"As the mara'akame descends and passes through the nierika on the return, his memory of the urucate and their world fades; only a glimmer remains of the fantastic journey that he has made" Don Jose Matsuwa (Halifax 242).

If you once experience moksha it almost forces enlightenment because it’s like a covenant with cosmic reality. It becomes fundamental to one's continuing existence. That’s why you get me pressing the point of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology with tenacious certainty. I don’t have to experience it again and again and in a way that seems selfish unless I need to consult about something further along the way. That’s why I don't need to meditate every day, or take mushrooms every week.

All the notions of “complete separation” are from spiritual doctrine, not personal experience. Also it’s not clear what is separated from what and what separation means. I think the whole description is spiritual materialism, which is why all the astral worlds get caught up in it. Also you never make clear whats separated from what. I think its compete detachment of normal mind processes from physical:

(1) You CAN’T experience moksha unless you abandon attachment to self, cease all mental activity and go onto another dimension and manage to get back from it. I think this is what the separation is about, not the complete separation of self-as-subject and all that other stuff from the physical world’s existence because you can’t separate consciousness from itself or it does’t exist.

(2) You ONLY have a successful moksha if you end up experiencing from outside the bubble of perception and can witness existence simultaneously from the organismic and cosmic perspectives and be both and see both in relationship.

That’s how the experience becomes transfiguring and constitutes enlightenment. But it doesn’t alter my morality, it just causes my karma to be transparent, so as not to raise the dust!

John: Wow. This is quite a wonderful discourse Chris, aside from its commentary on elements of theory.

Ram: why do you hypothesize that life is immortal when you know that we all are mortal, i.e., we will die one day? The psychedelic-based SEs are caused by ingestion of psychedelic herbs, so how can they be spontaneously (as a result of a sudden impulse and without premeditation; without apparent external cause or stimulus)?

Chris: The sexual generations of life are clearly immortal. It is only the individual organism that is mortal due to the entropic nature of the physical universe itself. Humanity has two great meditative traditions, the Eastern tradition and nature shamanism. The East uses (1) physical control – renunciation of our biological, social and sexual life, to avoid distraction from pure consciousness and (2) mental control to approach samadhi through stringent meditation in a context of mind-sky ascendent spirituality. The ascendency of order and control eclipses the wild element of mystical transfiguration in favour of ordered etheric cosmologies, limiting the nature of samadhi.

By mind-sky transcendent, I don't mean the Zen mind-sky approach, but something much older. Men, fearing their mortality because they don't give live birth and appreciate the immortal passage of the generations in the “Mother Earth” way women can, have sought to control the tokens of culture and look to the sky and eternal existence as a transcendent extension of their conscious mind. We can see this in both Monotheism and the entire Vedantic/Buddhist complex. This means that the peak of transcendence is either associated with an omniscient omnipotent deity, or with primordial cosmic consciousness, or with emptiness itself.

By contrast entheogenic mysticism, arising from sacramental shamanism is spontaneous because it is empirical. It has no prescriptive doctrine and no attitude of mental supremacy over nature, but seeks animistic integration with the flux of life. We know evolution is not about the individual organism, but immortal survival of genes and species through (1) genetic recombination, (2) occasional mutation and (3) natural and sexual selection. Effectively it ensures the immortality of life as a whole by accepting the mortality of the organism, in the inevitable face of increasing entropy, to gain collective immortality of the diversity of life.

In fact sexuality is the ultimate cosmological expression of material selflessness, because it combines only half our genes with half the genes of our sexual partners, because this evades Muller’s ratchet of cumulative mutational entropy that eventually kills off purely parthenogenetic species. This shows us the ultimate emergent sacredness of nature in living detail. Your approach that this is invalid and not sacredly immortal because we each will have only a mortal lifespan is a betrayal of the truth of life’s immortal fertility, through fecundity and virility as Shakti is to Shiva, which is the only way humanity can experience true moksha.

What I am trying to explain to you is that the difficulty you and other spiritual thinkers have with this is precisely because your thinking remains locked in an eternal mind-sky world view that subjugates the immortality that the cosmic emergence of conscious life provides us. The reality is that there is nothing we can do about this situation. Life has evolved in the best of all possible worlds. We simply can’t afford to kick against the pricks, as Jesus said, and hunger for eternal life because it’s forsaking the way the living conscious universe actually manifests.

Ram: I agree but the self-as-subject dies in your framework and the identity of a person is lost. We don’t want to lose it. So Mother Nature needs to provide this intense desire similar to what she provided to monkeys on trees eventually evolving into us. In a similar way, through yoga/meditation, higher coevolution might have built 21 subtle entities in a bundle, which presumably survives death per Sankhya.

Chris: The self as subject lives in SEC. We are not alone Ram! Self as subject plays out in each and all of us. It’s protected to be similar because of the way the mammalian brain has evolved. Don’t look to your own eternality, but safeguard the immortality of life with your life as along as it lasts. It’s the only framework in which we can exist as evolving biological beings with immortal meaning and tenure. The best of all possible worlds. Mother Nature doesn’t pander to male desires for eternal life.

We still have the ultimate desire to live and beget life that monkeys and all organisms have possessed since time immemorial. Existence desires from the very molecules of which we are made to generate life, even through abiogenesis, if all else is lost, and to regenerate again elsewhere in the universe or in the next universe. But that is no excuse whatever for pining for eternal life and allowing humanity to destroy life’s immortality through spiritual hubris and domination.

Ram: Shiva (cosmic mind/consciousness, Purusha) and Shakti (universe, Prakriti) must exist simultaneously and inseparably. This is one of the reasons for postulating IDAM.

Chris: Shiva and Shakti are only inseparable at the origin in deep copulation. The dance is not, and even gives the dancer dances two different names: "Tandava is the dance of Shiva as the father of the universe, and Lasya, the dance of Shakti as the Great Mother of the World.” Neither can a dance be simultaneous as it persists through time and us a contrapuntal relationship. We know they are then both figuratively coupled in the conscious mind and physical bodies of all of us, in the subdivided world of Maya but that is the existential condition we already know.

Ram: This is a misunderstanding. Shiva cannot exist without Shakti and vice-versa as inseparable dual-aspect monism (IDAM) all over space-time as explicitly expressed in ArdhNariEshvara concept still practiced in South India and perhaps also in Bengal. During Tandava, Shakti (p-aspect) is always present implicitly (hidden from viewers); otherwise, how and from where Shiva will get the energy to dance. Similarly, in Shakti’s Lāsya dance, she is conscious so Shiva (consciousness, s-aspect) is also always present implicitly. In all entities including us, both are always present explicitly and/or implicitly.

Chris: Yes I was waiting for your account. I agree, but it complicates matters further. I already added a sentence to my comment “We know they are then both figuratively coupled in the conscious mind and physical bodies of all of us, in the subdivided world of Maya but that is the existential condition.”

The complexification is that you are conceiving of Shiva as consciousness with implicit “energy” and Shakti as physicality with implicit “consciousness”. I agree but that's a role reversal that is complementary but not indistinguishable. This leads to a whole string of cosmological questions. Firstly physical materialism is Shakti without Shiva and the Vedic cosmic consciousness makes physical reality idea is Shiva making Shakti as gross aggregates of his consciousness. We come at best to the dream of Vishnu generating Brahma out of his navel, overlooked by Lakshmi as his “divine energy”, bringing us full circle to Tantra again.

So let’s view this scientifically. The dance of Shiva and Shakti is a creation myth of the Cosmos in which the entire universe is born from sexual fertility. That sexual fertility requires the germinal “sperm” of Shiva and the enveloping ovum of Shakti as the nascent universe. Rather than a single dance in time, it is a representation of primal complementarity which is not a dualism because the cosmic sperm and ovum are already different. It is the story of Cosmic embryogenesis that is incarnate in all of us. The rest of the dance is the evolutionary dance of emerging sentient beings possessing both these asymmetric aspects leading to the existential dilemma of human conscious existence in the mortal coil, where we are subjective sentient beings transforming the physical world at large in the generation and sustenance of mortal incarnations which are also sexual. At all points and in all features, Shiva and Shakti are never just indistinguishable dual clones, but complementary Cosmic principles whose very difference is essential and must be respected and understood for the fertility of life to continue. That’s Symbiotic Existential Cosmology’s ICAM speaking!

Fig 284: Shiva-Shakti tantra is unfolding cosmological fertility.

There has to be at least one causal process for any realistic cosmological model of the universe. If there is no interaction, IDAM is simply saying the p aspect causality is the one because it agrees with physics. In IDAM, each s state is indistinguishably locked dually to the p state. This kind of duality is a homology e.g. in groups, equivalent multiplication tables and in topology, identical holes and twists i.e. isomorphism – identical form. Dualities don’t have to be like this. AdS/CFT, which Uzi has finessed for consciousness, is a different kind of holographic duality between n-D gravity and (n-1)-D quantum theory, but like IDAM it’s a bijective duality and still epiphenomenalistic in Uziel Awret's cosmology. In IDAM there is thus no basis for any kind of causality or free will in the world of s states, because the p states are non-interactively causally closed and the s states are dual to p closure.

Ram: No! Causality is embedded in the co-evolution of dual-aspect states, adaptation, and natural selection. There might be multiple causes (or better conditions) for the generation of a new state from the previous state through the co-evolution from the dual-aspect unmanifested state of the primal dual-aspect substrate. As you know, if we involve causality then what would be the first cause? This leads to an infinite regress. Therefore, IDAM follows Nagarjuna’s\ \interdependent co-arising (IC) to keep track of multiple causes/conditions, which rejects causality to start with and avoids the first cause. Nāgārjuna rejects ‘inherent existence’ or ‘essence’ in favor of co-dependent origination (or IC: Pratītyasamutpāda, प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद), and that is also why he rejects causality; the entities that lack inherent existence dependently co-arise as elaborated in (Vimal, 2021). Causality is a major issue in metaphysical views, mostly because of the first cause that entails infinite regress.

Fig 285: Shuttlecock universe (Hartle & Hawking 1983) suggests time may begin with the big bang like the “south pole” of a sphere in which latitude is time and longitude is space. This is still in hot debate as of 2019.

Chris: Well to me that’s circular reasoning. I have major reservations about Nagarjuna’s philosophy of causality. I don’t see a problem with multiple causes, or with a first cause. I don't accept the philosophy of emptiness any more than the notion of no mind, or no self. I don't accept a nirvanic void or a model of Maya as it's nemesis. The universe is dynamic and I see causality as a principle of philosophical argument and deduction, rather than the functional equations of dynamic reality. But when you shoot someone dead, you and the gun and the bullet causes it in anyone’s terms. Claims of causal closure of the universe likewise define the subjective versus objective relationship of materialism. This is not a question about causality, but the nature of time itself. SEC envisages a transcausal quantum time process where subjective existence has an evolutionary capacity to anticipate “potentia” of emerging quantum futures. Worrying about a first cause is a distraction in a big bang universe although I accept cyclic models as a possibility, particularly evolving cycles.

Ram: From (Vimal, 2022b): Furthermore, “all phenomena come into being in dependence upon conditions, remain in existence dependent upon conditions, and cease to exist dependent upon conditions” (Nāgārjuna & Garfield, 1995 160). Nāgārjuna can grant “that effects are dependent upon collection of conditions, it cannot be that those collections or that dependence exist inherently” (ibid 266). Moreover, individual conditions and their effects, the combination of conditions, and the inherent dependence of any phenomenon on the combination of all of its conditions lack inherent existence (ibid 258-266).

Entities lack inherent existence (because they are born and then die one day) and hence lack "real" causal power. Therefore, instead, he proposed interdependent co-arising and necessary conditions for an entity to manifest from emptiness/Shunyata (that presumably inherently exists), which is consistent with science’s quantum vacuum or “Nothing” (catchword for the materialist (Krauss, 2012)): Universe from Nothing).

Fig 286: Nāgārjuna

Chris: Nāgārjuna is a central figure in Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhist thinking, but he also epitomises what I see as the inherent negativity of the Buddhist view of emptiness and why I gravitate to the Upanishads as a source of true wisdom. Let’s take your statements as a whole, and I’ll reply to some paragraphs of Thubten Chodron’s Grasping at Inherent Existence.

So there’s the view we have through our senses—but things do not exist the way they appear to our senses, which means we are living in a 100 percent hallucination without taking drugs. Everything that we perceive through our senses is false. We think that everything is out there: some kind of solid entity with its own essence, its own “thing” that makes it “it.” We think everything is real, objective, totally unrelated to the mind, totally unrelated to causes and conditions, just out there with its own essence. That’s how things appear to us—to our sense consciousness and to our mental consciousness—and we believe that. That’s wrong.

This is something anyone in the field of consciousness research is intimately familiar with, for example Anil Seth calls all experience “hallucination”. But this doesn't mean that conscious experience or physical reality is unreal, or invalid, or “wrong”. To survive in the living universe, this subjective sentience we have is essential for our survival. We need to take it as it is and do meaningful things as mortal beings to ensure the survival of life, just as animals do with great care to ensure their offspring survive. It’s not valid to say the transient nature of mortal life lacks inherent existence. To negate it in any way is not wise – nor actual wisdom. It also breeds an attitude of mind only ego angst not coupled to nature, or to the inherent existence and sacred value of life itself, or teach us to protect life with our physical lives.

If things did inherently exist—if they had their own essences and independent factors that were them—it would be impossible for them to exist. Why? Because then they would exist without depending on causes and conditions, and we’d have to ask, “How did they get produced? And, how do they change if they’re independent from causes and conditions?” So if things inherently existed, they could not exist at all. It is because they’re empty that they can exist. So “exist” means “dependently exist.”

The denial of inherent existence is simply a cover for denying the reality of everything because they appear to arise from other causes. One can fairly deny the entire hypothesis of relative negativity. The one thing we can’t deny is manifest existence. We are, whether we like it or not – whether we choose to or not – obligately conscious throughout our entire lives as living sentient volitional organisms – to say this is just an illusion and preach emptiness is not a remedy for ongoing life in its diversity and abundance – it doesn’t even recognise biological or genetic diversity as real or important, let alone sacred. This is also as you noted a deconstruction of our awareness of causality in a very physical universe, because it attributes cause and effect to the denial of inherent existence, leading to the doctrine of interdependent co-arising. Ultimately this philosophy is doomed to the Samvartakalpa or Eon of dissolution – the decline from enlightenment into ignorance.

The Buddha’s mind has two kinds of wisdom. There’s the ‘wisdom of varieties’ and the ‘wisdom of the mode.’ The ‘wisdom of varieties’ is the wisdom that perceives the variety of all the conventional truths. The ‘wisdom that perceives the mode’ perceives the mode of existence of all these conventional truths. Their mode of existence is that they’re empty. With these two wisdoms the Buddha’s mind perceives all existent phenomena—the conventional phenomena and their emptinesses—simultaneously. ... Also, when you’re perceiving conventional phenomena directly, you don’t at the same time have the direct realization of emptiness. When you enter into meditative equipoise as one of these arya bodhisattvas, then you perceive the emptiness of all phenomena. But at that time you can’t simultaneously perceive their bases, the conventional truths or conventional phenomena. So a high-level bodhisattva is always going back and forth between meditative equipoise on emptiness and subsequent realization whereby they perceive phenomena as like illusions. The phenomena still appear to them as truly existent, but they realize that things don’t exist as they appear, and that those appearances are illusory.

This to me is a self confession of the tragic emptiness of the mind-only or no-mind-only approach, where Buddhism, as an “adolescent” newcomer to the Vedic tradition, just as Christianity is to Judaism as the mother tradition, deviated from the Upanishads that appear to have preceded Buddha by a least a couple of centuries by denying the “self". We are according to Thubten Chodron expected at all times to practice “equipoise” between real existence and the perception of voidness simultaneously to achieve release from grasping at inherent existence.

Contrast this with me taking a mild mushroom trip in June 2021 and having the satori that results in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology. I haven't had to spend the last 500 days equipoising between my perceptions of both the real world of biological survival along with my dreams and visions and the inherent emptiness of existence. I don't even need to meditate every day to stay sane. And I did it by "annihilation" meditation abandoning self, so in a sense I have denied the ultimate reality of atman to get there but “there” is life overflowing! I can live my life productively as a mortal being aware that any form of egoistical grasping is futile, but also aware that this fabulous Cosmos in which we exist is of inestimable sacred value, not just a void emptiness – that the evolving genetic and biological diversity of life is its sacred embodiment and consciousness is its omniscience. Sentient conscious beings are not emptiness seeking the void, but stand at the centre of the unfolding of the conscious universe perennially throughout our generations.

Joanna Macy (1991) in “World as Lover World as Self” on dependent co-arising begins with lamenting a world in trouble and has a chapter on the Greening of the Self. She even says “virtue is not required for the greening of the self, or the emergence of the ecological self. … This ecological self, like any notion of selfhood is a metaphoric construct and a dynamical one”. So we have a Buddhist ecological activist trying to rationalise a cosmology of emptiness with compassion for the diversity of life. But it's the ecology, through which life immortal survives, not the cosmology of emptiness, which is null.

Now this comes back full circle to causality and the plea by Nāgārjuna to qualify causality in interdependent co-arising. Where this entire philosophy comes apart is in its dependence on a view of reality in which subjective experience and the mortal ego are the only players.

Fig 287: The Tibetan Buddhist cosmology of life. The worlds are, in ascending order of the degree of free will, compassion and happiness one feels, the worlds of: (1) hell, (2) hungry ghosts, (3) animals, (4) titans or asuras, (5) human beings (6) heavenly beings, (7) voice-hearers, (8) cause-awakened ones, (9) bodhisattvas, and (10) Buddhas. There are only two worlds of living species humans and animals. How do you tell an elephant from a butterfly? Where are the trees and fungi? An asura in Buddhism is a demigod or titan of the Kāmadhātu, described as having three heads with three faces each and either four or six arms. This is a non-biological fantasy like monotheistic angels and demons.

Humans and all conscious organisms are believed to simply be reincarnated sentient beings. Their biology is essentially ignored, although many Buddhists practice compassion for living beings as conscious entities also caught in the mortal coil. The notion of interdependent co-arising only makes actual sense in an ecological symbiotic sense in which biological diversity is the sacred signature of the living universe, not just a delusory figment of Maya or illusion, misperceived as the void. Neither is this simply the quantum vacuum, as this rises within uncertainty to invoke every conceivable particle in the known universe, just as life is fecund in its diversity.

Ram kindly posted these passages from Mahathera’s (2005) “Fundamentals of Buddhism”, in which the Buddhist notion of rebirth is highlighted in stark detail:

Buddhist doctrine of rebirth: With regard to this teaching, Buddhism is often accused of self-contradiction. Thus it is said that Buddhism on the one hand denies the existence of the soul, while on the other hand it teaches the transmigration of the soul. Nothing could be more mistaken than this. For Buddhism teaches no transmigration at all. The Buddhist doctrine of rebirth — which is really the same as the law of causality extended to the mental and moral domain — has nothing whatever to do with the brahman doctrine of reincarnation, or transmigration.

According to the brahmanical teaching, there exists a soul independently of the body which, after death, leaves its physical envelope and passes over into a new body, exactly as one might throw off an old garment and put on a new one. … Buddhism does not recognize in this world any existence of mind apart from matter. All mental phenomena are conditioned through the six organs of sense, and without these they cannot exist. According to Buddhism, mind without matter is an impossibility. And, as we have seen, the mental phenomena, just as all bodily phenomena, are subject to change, and no persisting element, no ego-entity, no soul, is there to be found. But where there is no real unchanging entity, no soul, there one cannot speak of the transmigration.

How then is rebirth possible without something to be reborn, without an ego, or soul? … What the Buddha teaches is, correctly speaking, the law of cause and effect working in the moral domain. For just as everything in the physical world happens in accordance with law, as the arising of any physical state is dependent on some preceding state as its cause, in just the same way must this law have universal application in the mental and moral domain too. If every physical state is preceded by another state as its cause, so also must this present physico-mental life be dependent upon causes anterior [forward] to its birth. Thus, according to Buddhism, the present life-process is the result of the craving for life in a former birth, and the craving for life in this birth is the cause of the life-process that continues after death.

But, as there is nothing that persists from one moment of consciousness to the next, so also no abiding element exists in this ever changing life-process that can pass over from one life to another. Nothing transmigrates from this moment to the next, nothing from one life to another life. This process of continually producing and being produced may best be compared with a wave on the ocean. The wave-structure that seems to hasten over the surface of the water, though creating the appearance of one and the same mass of water, is in reality nothing but a continued rising and falling of ever new masses of water. And the rising and falling is produced by the transmission of force originally generated by wind. Just so the Buddha did not teach that it is an ego-entity, or a soul, that hastens through the ocean of rebirth, but that it is in reality merely a life-wave which, according to its nature and activities, appears here as man, there as animal, and elsewhere as invisible being.”

This however deprecates the generations of life to a mere force of no value in itself. It becomes revealingly clear when we turn to birth where new life occurs where the above passage implies that it is only suffering which drives birth, rendering the entire flowering of the diversity of life to meaninglessness:

There is another teaching of the Buddha which often gives rise to serious misunderstanding. It is the teaching of Nibbåna, or the extinction of suffering. This third noble truth points out that, through the cessation of all selfish craving and all ignorance, of necessity all suffering comes to an end, to extinction, and no new rebirth will take place. For if the seed is destroyed, it can never sprout again. If the selfish craving that clutches convulsively at life is destroyed, then, after death, there can never again take place a fresh shooting up, a continuation of this process of existence, a so-called rebirth. Where, however, there is no birth, there can be no death. Where there is no arising, there can be no passing away. Where no life exists, no suffering can exist. Now, because with the extinction of all selfish craving, all its concurrent phenomena, such as conceit, self-seeking, greed, hate, anger and cruelty, come to extinction, this freedom from selfish craving signifies the highest state of selflessness, wisdom and holiness.

Now this fact — that after the death of the Holy One, the Arahant, this physico-mental life-process no longer continues — is erroneously believed by many to be identical with annihilation of self, annihilation of a real being, and it is therefore maintained that the goal of Buddhism is simply annihilation. … How is it ever possible to speak of the annihilation of a self, or soul, or ego, where no such thing is to be found? We have seen that in reality there does not exist any ego-entity, or soul, and therefore also no “transmigration” of such a thing into a new mother’s womb. That bodily process starting anew in the mother’s womb is in no way a continuation of a former bodily process, but merely a result, or effect, caused by selfish craving and clinging to life of the so-called dying individual. Thus one who says that the non-producing of any new life-process is identical with annihilation of a self, should also say that abstention from sexual intercourse is identical with annihilation of a child — which, of course, is absurd.

Destroying the seed which drives birth so that it can never sprout is simply genocide. I checked this in the Pali Canon after Karen Armstrong (2022) in “Sacred Nature” has this charming quote intended to protect the diversity of life:

Let all beings be happy! Weak or strong, of high, middle or low estate, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far away,

alive or still to be born — may they all be perfectly happy! ... Let us cherish all creatures, as a mother her only child!

But in fuller translation, this passage ends with the same quick exit routine, deprecating the diversity of life:

This is said to be the sublime abiding. By not holding to fixed views, The pure-hearted one,

having clarity of vision, Being freed from all sense desires, Is not born again into this world.

Mahathera continues:

Here, once more, we may expressly emphasize that without a clear perception of the phenomenality or egolessness (anattå) of all existence, it will be impossible to obtain a real understanding of the Buddha’s teaching, especially that of rebirth and Nibbåna. This teaching of anattå is in fact the only characteristic Buddhist doctrine, with which the entire teaching stands or falls.”

So does the entire teaching FALL!

The first question “Has man a free will?” is to be rejected for the reason that, beside these ever-changing mental and physical phenomena, in the absolute sense no such thing or entity can be found that we could call “man,” so that “man” as such is merely a name without any reality.

This is ridiculous philosophical sophistry. Man is not just a name – we are a biological species called Homo sapiens which is dominating and consuming the planet's biosphere as we speak. Man is both our fulfilment and our nemesis real and lethal.

The second question “Is will free?” is to be rejected for the reason that “will” is only a momentary mental phenomenon, just like feeling, consciousness, etc., and thus does not yet exist before it arises, and that therefore of a non-existent thing — of a thing which is not — one could, properly speaking, not ask whether it is free or unfree.

Incorrect. We do not know the source of will. One can validly argue that will is the creative force of the unfolding universe bringing it to consummating fulfilment. Without it the universe would be a wasteland with no conscious observer to manifest it.

It is rather with some hesitation that I dare to speak to you on that profoundest of all Buddhist doctrines, paticca-samuppāda, “dependent origination,” that is to say, the conditional arising of all those mental and physical phenomena generally summed up by the conventional names “living being,” or “individual,” or “person.”

This confirms that Buddhism is purely a psychological theory. It is not a biological or cosmological theory because there is only one class of being – the person.

This is the final goal and purpose of the Buddha’s message, namely, deliverance from rebirth and suffering. And there is only one individual who no longer performs any wholesome or unwholesome kamma-formation, any life-affirming kamma. It is the Arahant, the holy and fully enlightened disciple of the Buddha. For through deep insight into the true nature of this empty and evanescent process of existence, he has become utterly detached from life; and he is forever freed from ignorance together with all its evil consequences, freed from any further rebirth.

“Utterly detached from life” is toxic to the diversity of living existence.

According to Buddhism, everything mental and physical happens in accordance with laws and conditions; and if it were otherwise, chaos and blind chance would reign. But such a thing is impossible and contradicts all laws of thinking.

This is completely false. Life exists at the edge of chaos or everything gets stuck in the rut of the rule of law. Every principle of nature involves transcending such rigid boundaries. We thought DNA makes RNA makes proteins was Watson and Cricks central dogma of biology until Thomas Cech discovered reverse transcriptase. Now we know it powers our telomeres and came before DNA genomes became established, at the transition between RNA nd DNA-based genomes. Likewise the standard model of physics arises from a quantum superforce breaking symmetry.

Therefore the Buddha has said: To believe that the doer of the deed will be the same, as the one who experiences its result (in the next life): this is the one extreme. To believe that the doer of the deed, and the one who experiences its result, are two different persons: this is the other extreme. Both these extremes the Perfect One has avoided and taught the truth that lies in the middle of both, that is: Through ignorance the kamma-formations are conditioned; through the kamma-formations, consciousness (in the subsequent birth); through consciousness, the mental and physical phenomena; through the mental and physical phenomena, the six bases; through the six bases, impression; through impression, feeling; through feeling, craving; through craving, clinging; through clinging, the life-process; through the (kammic) life-process, rebirth; through rebirth, decay and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair. Thus arises this whole mass of suffering.

This suffering is completely unnecessary. The only way the conscious universe can exist is through the unfolding evolution of the passage of the generations. It is to life spanning the mortal coil in immortal fertility that redemption of suffering arises. Not the emptiness of transient phenomena.

No doer of the deeds is found,

No one who ever reaps their fruits.

Empty phenomena roll on.

This only is the correct view.

No god nor Brahma can be called

The maker of this wheel of life:

Empty phenomena roll on,

Dependent on conditions all.

This is fatalistic negativity. Living phenomena are NOT empty, they are ever-flowing, naturally abundant, and in them our conscious realisation becomes fulfilled in the resplendence of life immortal.

Buddhism is a corrupt philosophy long past its use by date. The redemption of Tibetan Buddhism is Bon shamanism. The redemption of Zen is Shinto animism. When you spend time in Japan you come to realise births and marriages are celebrated in the Shinto shrines. Buddhism is rather the domain of death.

It is the underpinning of visionary animism for the consciousness of all life that is the living core of spirituality, not Buddhism, Vedanta, Monotheism, or any other cultural system of imposed order. I never realised my duty would become the “slayer" of Buddhist doctrine. I have taken solemn Tibetan Buddhist vows to the dharma, but that is paradigm change!

Ram: Opponents could argue that if Buddhism’s no-self doctrine is true, what is the purpose of reproduction? If there is no birth, then no life, no bad karma, no selfish craving, no old age, no suffering, and no death. If, for sexual climaxes, one reproduces and creates new life then children have to work hard to avoid selfish craving all life to minimize suffering. If Mother Nature, through coevolution, has provided the cycle of suffering and happiness, why suffering is so bad? Opponents could also argue that without suffering, there is no happiness and life will be boring.

Chris: This is borne out by the fact that worldwide Buddhists are way below reproductive replacement rates at 1.5. The firebrand desert religions are breeding like rabbits, with Muslims on 2.9 and Christians on 2.6 (Pew Res 2017). Of course human overpopulation is not good for the biosphere, but tell that to the Christians and Muslims.

Fig 288: Population and religion (Pew research 2017)

But I would take this critique even further. It indicates that Buddha himself denied the significance and sacredness of life in a purely causal psychological and moral account which demotes the value of life against the notion of emptiness and constitutes a fundamental cosmological error from which there is no escape. This is why I see organismic mortality in the immortal flowering of the generations of life as the centre of the existential cyclone, with spiritual notions, even the persona of Brahman as an eternal figment of consciousness manifested in the biota through moksha. The mortal coil is where it all comes together in full physical and experiential completeness and where the universe unfolds.

Geewananda Gunawardana: As I understand, WBT, or what Buddha taught (Rahula 1959) is a way to understand reality, and it is highly compatible with science, not just neuroscience. There is one concept that science has not been able to provide an explanation. Yes, the WBT view of rebirth is very different. Without a permanent entity, what is there to be reborn or reincarnated? Rebirth (punajjathi) is not in WBT. The cause and effect that “connects lives” according to WBT is rebecoming (punabbhava). What I have not been able to understand from a science basis is a physical mechanism for rebecoming.

Chris: To understand your position on WBT it is to me of profound interest to understand the role biological life and its diversity and consciousness spread across the eucaryote kingdom means to you. You state you don't understand the mechanism of rebecoming but that to me is pivotal. Biological life is the key unique expression of sentient meaning in the universe. To survive, humanity needs to learn to appreciate the passage of the generations as a central and sacred phenomenon to have the will to protect the biosphere and ensure humanity's survival. But this also has a religious and spiritual dimension connected to the meaning of life, the universe and everything as Douglas Adams put it.

Geewananda Gunawardana: You had very relevant comments/questions pertaining to WBT. I am just as curious about WBT, and I have tried my best to respond to them. The five aggregates, [sensations (or feelings), perceptions, mental activity and] consciousness, is the mechanism by which humans become aware of their environment and respond to it to perpetuate life. It is this force to perpetuate life WBT (what Buddha taught) identifies as tanha (craving, thirst, desire). Therefore, WBT is about life, here and now. WBT recognizes a continuum of consciousness among all living beings including humans. Life, human or otherwise, is the most important/sacred thing, and WBT is all about getting the full use of it here and now, not in a next life. ... As life is a product of an endless chain of causes, effects, and conditions, WBT does not assign a meaning to life. To do otherwise would be to subscribe to creation or design theory. Here, the purpose does not include the individual choices we make.

Chris: I see a fundamental inconsistency between these statements. You are claiming (1) That WBT claims life is perpetuated through craving. (2) That WBT claims this life is important/sacred (3) That because life is a chain of cause and effect life has no meaning (assigned). In effect here, life is just an endless chain of craving that is there to support enlightenment where the process stops. This relegates life to a secondary status as Maya or illusion except as an opportunity for moksha. It is a matter of crucial concern in an era of planetary mass extinction.

To say assigning a meaning to life implies creationism or intelligent design is a false conclusion. Evolution displays creative adventitious idiosyncrasy. The very involvement of occasional mutation means that genuine novelty arises in ways associated with quantum indeterminacy that can't be predicted. Consciousness has the same features, which are fundamentally causality violating, so the idea of interdependent co-arising is a classical mistake Buddha hadn't anticipated. To fail to assign any meaning to life while claiming it is sacred is a tragic mistake.

Geewananda: According to WBT, consciousness is a result of biological life (five aggregates) and not the other way around. If you work back the cause-and-effect process, it becomes a vast net, in which all living beings are interconnected and interdependent. Not to mention the environment - conditions.

Chris: Yes multiple causes in a network but only as a psychological process. No reference is made to species differences, or the intrinsic core value of mutation as a source of genetic novelty because real biological and neuroscientific detail is beyond the scope of 2500 year old thinking. To say WBT is entirely compatible with science is like claiming Genesis 1 captures the essence of cosmic evolution by inventing six phases: big-bang, galaxies, stars and habitable planets, biogenesis, evolution and conscious eucaryotes to explain it.

Geewananda: They all fall within the three characteristics of life – anicca dukkha, anatta, and cause and effect.

Chris: Aniccā (impermanence), dukkha (commonly translated as "suffering", "unsatisfactory," "unease"), and anattā (without a lasting essence), are all fundamental negatives. To make a quick response to this, Symbiotic Existential Cosmology sees mortal life as the centre of the cyclone of reality, while eternal life and emptiness are illusions. Rather than letting go of grasping, it is more direct to accept mortality, thus realising that selfish aims are futile and giving our creative inspiration to flowering life as a whole. This ensures planetary survival and is a positive redemption transcending the negative remedy of WBT. It invokes an immortal emergent unfolding nature for transcendent consciousness as the consummation of cosmic evolution. It’s fully life positive, and fully transfiguring through our ability to achieve moksha through symbiosis with all conscious life.

Geewananda: The problem as WBT recognizes it is that the tanha or life force (the urge to ensure the perpetuation of one’s own DNA) renders one’s mind to be selfish and overlook the wellbeing of other creatures and the environment.

Chris: But it is sexuality which heals genetic selfishness and mortality which heals not caring for the diversity of life, but investing in its flowering. We contribute only half our genes to the next generation. WBT never understood or knew this. It is only with the discovery of DNA and the intrinsic unselfishness of sexual recombination and the genotype-phenotype relationship that we can see the real network details. Independent co-arising is just a psychological network metaphor. Mortality means the only act of significance we can make are for immortal life as a whole.

Whit Blauvelt: As for your notion of Buddhists' supposed view of "egotistical grasping,” the Tibetan Book of the Dead contains instructions for identifying whether a copulating couple is doing so of purest love – the preferred family to be reborn in. This hardly seems compatible with your claim as to Buddhists' view of procreation.

Chris: Any Buddhist would want to be born to a couple where grasping ego is minimised. Being born in a dysfunctional family is an unfavourable sign of your own misbehaviour in the life you are leaving. It seems you can't accept the reality that the suffering of the round of birth and death is driven by the grasping ego, not enlightenment, which anables us to see outside it in this lifetime. Even the Bardo Thodol is consistent with this.

Whit: Perhaps the search for a "characteristic doctrine" [like anattå] is more a Western scholarly comparative religion pigeon holing? If some large number of people were to suddenly become enlightened, how could that not disrupt society? Many of us are living in ways which are incompatible with enlightenment.

Chris: Enlightenment without is much more of a challenge than claimed enlightenment within. It’s why turning the tables is also necessary, even if they were there to avoid Roman coins entering the Holy of Holies! Even if you treat the doctrine of emptiness and grasping rebirth metaphorically in the most favourable light, e.g. in interdependent co-arising, it leaves life itself critically vulnerable as a surrogate hostage to emptiness. This is why life and its flowering diversity are the "mothers of enlightenment". No enlightenment that is less than symbiotic will ultimately survive. Each religious tradition has its Achille’s heel. Monotheism has destructive apocalypse. Eastern traditions subtly demote nature to psyche in a way which is equally transgressive to resplendence. Both cosmologies are naturally degenerate.

Whit: You've rediscovered something at the core of some Eastern traditions. Insisting that your way is the only way -- isn't that a flaw of every fundamentalism? Fundamentalisms may be good, to some real degree. But are they ever best?

Chris: Fundamentalism is strict adherence to a religious doctrine. SEC is empirical cosmology. Spirituality without symbiosis cannot survive as a cultural meme in evolutionary time. It will either participate in a mass extinction of life to our demise or it will be discarded by human culture as wanting. 2500 years since the sages is a drop in the ocean. I didn’t say "my way is the only way" and my actual statement is true.

Whit: None has ever achieved this true vision before yourself? Isn't "symbiotic" in your usage also a metaphor, one which overlaps with the "interdependent co-arising"? Could your insight be of high value, yet not unique?

Chris: Independent co-arising is a false cosmology. It's simply a metaphor neglecting nature in favour of sentient beings that may be grasping humans from past lives. Trying to claim an inspiration is just an echo of ancient wisdom is counterproductive. The core of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is biospheric symbiosis. The key concept of eucaryote symbiosis dates to Lynn Margulis (1967). The word dates to only the 19th century, not Buddhist doctrine.

Symbiosis (n.) 1876, as a biological term, "union for life of two different organisms based on mutually benefit,"

Whit: A fresh discovery of something which has been discovered before. It is essential that people continually freshly discover certain truths -- things which are best known directly, and not just known through the accounts of others. There are other classes of truths where second-hand knowledge will largely suffice. But there are essential matters which are best approached shamanically, as you have, rather than through the authority of priests. Even with truths discovered, and written of, many times over the centuries, there can be great value in yet more writings about them.

This is productive! Keep up the good work. Just, maybe, back off on the claim that your map is superior to all other maps. That sort of claim too often leads to wars between religions, even when the variations in their maps that each claims the superiority of has little to do with the destination arrived at by those who manage to use those maps to get to the central insights themselves.T

Chris: It is not an abstract map of reality – it's life and life only – the weltanshauung of immortal survival.

Whit: The "full human symbiosis" of your ideal models a far more radical transformation, likely to meet strong resistance from the "immune systems” of the world's various societies. The Russian Revolution once seemed to many bright people a coherent hope against the ongoing crisis of destructive economic exploitation. The side effects of the radical treatment were worse than the disease. We're best with some humility in the solutions we proffer, as they may reveal dangerous flaws when pressed into practice by larger numbers.

Chris: Can you not see the inconsistency of claiming the symbiosis of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology was on the one hand anticipated by Buddha through interdependent co-arising and citing fundamentalism and the Russian revolution about it on the other? Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is the most pro-life and pro-survival work ever conceived. It is neither threatening nor dangerous. It is itself a threatened species locked in a single preprint that desperately needs active intellectual and emotional support, or it could vanish from the face of the Earth. A cosmology needs to be tested. I’m trying to take the highest road possible – a valid cosmology of the conscious universe unfolding. A true Logos. The aim is for the highest level of natural and experiential truth and to invest constructively upon that without social conflict. Only if that fails, do I resort to apocalyptic necessity, because the message is healing redemption.

I am, through Symbiotic Existential Cosmology posing a challenge, not just to science and philosophy, but to Monotheism and its description of reality as a divine creation and to the Buddhist philosophy of mental only nihilism of no-mind that sees all phenomena, both conscious and physical as illusion, and stipulates only emptiness as the solution, when the universe is overflowing with immortal climax diversity in natural abundance. I have a rightful duty as a scientific and spiritual innovator to do this. The world is in existential crisis and I have to act, but to act carefully to avoid destructive apocalypse. I have to be decisive and make an unswerving truthful account of reality as I experience and observe it. I don’t and cannot submit to any previous philosophical “authority” whether Ryle or Nāgārjuna or any guru, as a naked noble savage speaking transparently, while there is still time enough to fertilise the unveiling.

It’s possible for Buddhist compassion to be helpful and insightful when taken metaphorically, but Buddhist doctrine is fundamentalist in claim.

Ram: In all frameworks (including the Vedic system, SEC, IDAM, and science), death is inevitable; there is no escape from death, unfortunately. In SEC also, after moksha, we have to return back to where we came from. In science, once death embraces us, we are gone forever; the whole universe will eventually die. Why is death is taken so negatively in Buddhism? Yes, if we are not born we will not face duhkha/suffering, but what is new in this hypothesis? In the Vedic system, after moksha, we as eternal atmans merge with (ie., return back to) the source Brahman. This is why whatever is happening is called “Leela”/ play. Enjoy it!

Chris: I think this statement of Ram is holding a deep insight which is key to the whole phenomenon of life and death. I’m beginning to understand from these discussions the extent to which our knowledge of Brahman or the cosmic mind is only beginning. That there is a huge significant reality out there and in here, that we are only scratching the surface of, even in all traditions put together. And like the scientific revolution, the answers are going to be confoundingly different from our expectations, so the vision quest is discovering that reality. This is a profound huge journey we have only just begun and it needs to be pursued as the root discovery process it is, without any prior doctrinal assumptions, but we need to approach it with joie de vivre – ecstasy even – and ride over the realities of suffering in the mortal coil.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology introduces a novel element, in that the purpose, or meaning of existence, is not just enlightenment but the preservation and flowering of life immortal in a sentient universe pulling itself up by its bootstraps into a revelation of full cosmic consciousness. Humanity’s role on Earth is thus the protection of life and its diversity as our “sine qua non – raison d’être”. I contend this is new and is much more than just being compassionate to sentient beings. Nor is it Chardin’s Christogenic “noosphere”, but a real biological manifestation of conscious life immortal in the passage of the generations compensating for organismic mortality, because this is the only way cosmic consciousness can come alive in the physical universe of fermions and bosons and entropic thermodynamics, held back by the negentropy of life itself.

Whit: The origin of the word "dukkha" is of the axle whole being off center. So Buddhist practice is about getting the wheel to roll more smoothly, getting the 8 spokes into dynamic balance, into symmetry. "Dukkha" is not well-translated as "suffering." It's not about "ego." Buddhists were never Freudians. But the slight similarity is that Buddhists hold the wheel gets out of true when we see ourselves only as separated rather than also as whole with the world -- the conception of the wholeness of wholeness and separation, which of course is not unique to Buddhism.

Chris: I agree with you about the notion of dukkha and the unbalanced wheel. This means that Buddhism is three things: (1) A practical art of balancing, to enter in to psychological balance in the world of “mundane existence” amid grasping desires. (2) A quasi-scientific cosmology which is atheistic and preaches impermanent co-arising dynamics reaching toward an enlightenment free of fixed assumptions it calls “emptiness” for want of a better word. (3) The traditional Eastern cosmology of reincarnation to tie it all into a moral framework, which I believe is a false morality, although karma is real. The difficulty I see with this is that emptiness is empty and Brahman is full to overflowing and in need of further exploration and discovery.

Whit: The Dalai Lama says the concept of original sin was the hardest thing for him to understand about Christianity; there's nothing like it in Tibetan Buddhism. Christians also worship Christ's suffering on the Cross. The concept doesn't fit Buddhism; it's a translation as simple as it is wrong.

Chris: I want to explain how SEC treats sin and evil. The Western tradition tends towards a dualistic apocalyptic model of good and evil and Eastern traditions also invoke a moral causality ending in a Kali Yuga. The Western tradition pictures sin as rebellion against God’s will in an extrapolated eternal cosmology in which temptation becomes literally excruciating. There is a contradiction here in that this is a uniquely human phenomenon. Intelligent animals do not experience natural evil because each species has a role in the biospheric ecology that is held together by biospheric selection across the generations, so that carnivores actually keep the herbivores in balance form boom and bust extinction and the herbivores keep the plants in balance. Even Covid is a virus, whose niche is symbiotic with bats, that was knocked off its perch by human exploitation of wildlife, and rabies and ebola are self-limiting in a diverse ecology.

In this sense the other species ARE enlightened because, often in great hardship they strive to protect and nurture their young, but Buddhist cosmology anthropocentrically sees humanity as the only intelligent species capable of full enlightenment and stepping off the wheel of life, fig 213, to no constructive outcome cosmologically.

Thus there is really no such thing as natural evil and this teaches us a lesson about what evil actually is – a product of humanity becoming a cultural phenomenon, giving rise to cultural forms of evil when the power of potentates extends far beyond looking after their offspring and involves destructive ways of domination and destructive social behaviour driven by forms of psychopathy which can survive only in a rapidly evolving cultural context. Basically pure evil, aka original sin, is a product of cultural actions which directly or indirectly predispose to the breakdown of humanity’s relationship with the biosphere as a whole in forms of exploitation that indirectly risk extinction of both humanity, and the other species. We all become complicit in this, unless we dedicate our lives to protecting the diversity of life as a whole. We have no idea whether humanity can survive as a dominant species and other species may need to take over the beacon of illumination. By killing off the primates through neglect and habitat exploitation, we are killing off our own prospect of collective survival.

Whit: Please suggest a "trivial" method that a normal person can use to experience mind-world unity, short of dosing on psychedelics. It seems that most people, at least in Western culture, don't commonly experience this. Are you saying it's uncommon, yet trivial? Considering that it's generally reported as a nice state to be in, if the experience is trivially accomplished, why is it not central to our cultural practice and attitude?

Chris: My comment was about TM, not entheogens, but the long struggle of Western civilisation and sacramental religion hasn’t been for naught. Psychedelics were repressed because Christian culture abhors novel heretical vision. Gnosticism regained new life during the Crusades and infected Europe and was violently suppressed. At the same time the old European Goddess, whose participants took nightshade and henbane, were burned at the stake.

In 1209, a crusade from Pope Innocent III began against the Cathars. Both Cathars and Catholics were besieged by an army of the Church within the walls of Beziers. On the day of the feast of Mary Magdalen they killed their viscount in the church dedicated to her name and were in turn horrendously punished on the same day for repeating the Albigensian heresy that she was Christ's concubine. When the city fell, the commanding general was asked who to slaughter: heretics, his men assumed, must surely be separated from believers:

"Kill them all," he said, "the Lord will know his own". Our forces spared neither rank nor sex nor age. About twenty thousand people lost their lives at the point of the sword. The destruction of the enemy was on an enormous scale. The entire city was plundered and put to the torch. Thus did divine vengeance vent its wondrous rage.

Psychedelics were banned in like style in the US and then the world from 1966, until the early 2000s when scientific research began to establish their therapeutic and transformative value on an empirical basis. This trend is continuing. Natural entheogens have been respected as sacred by every culture that has discovered them, so you talking this way is narrowly ethnocentric. My statement above remains true. I am not responsible for the sappy neurochemical brain, or the fact that the biosphere has evolved to modify it, including many of our essential medicines and the biospheric sacraments that provide an essentially trivial access to realisation when accompanied by good guidance and meditation, by comparison with repeated lifetimes in the Eastern traditions.

Regarding Buddhism, Vedanta and Psychedelics, in 1996, Tricycle the Buddhist magazine had a special Issue with the Editorial “Just say maybe” on psychedelic use. The lead article in the issue was Rick Fields' "A High History of Buddhism in America”, which has since become a chapter in “Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics” (Badiner & Grey A 2015).

This contains a positive view of the history of psychedelic Buddhists and Vedantists in the US and in the East. He notes: "Now, in the new century, we may be seeing a generation who has steeped themselves in practice become inspired to take another, more mature—and more penetrating—look at psychedelics.”

He provides a run down of the journeys of Ram Dass and others to India meeting both Lamas and Yogis. Note that the largest dose Ram Dass’s guru Karoli Baba has was 1200 mics which IS large but I have had many 1000 mic trips, so this isn’t "mind boggling" and he also claimed medicines were used in the Kulu Valley, but the yogi’s lost the knowledge:

Before long, a number of the psychedelic luminaries made their way to India. In 1966, Ralph Metzner introduced Timothy Leary to the German- born Lama Anagarika Govinda, who lived in Evans-Wentz’s old cottage in the Himalayan village of Nanital. “The lama had been most impressed to learn that The Psychedelic Experience contained a dedication to him,” Leary wrote in Flashbacks (Leary, 1983). Govinda had requested an LSD session, which Metzner provided. For the first time, after thirty years of meditation, the lama had experienced the Bardo Thödol in its living, sweating reality. According to Leary, Govinda told him that “many of the guardians of the old philosophic traditions had realized that the evolution of the human race had depended upon a restoration of unity between the outer science advanced by the West and the inner yoga advanced by the East.” The teachings of Theosophy, Gurdjieff, Ramakrishna, Krishnamurti, and Evans-Wentz’s translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead had all been part of this plan. “You,” the lama told Leary, “are the predictable result of a strategy that has been unfolding for over fifty years. You have done exactly what the philosophers wanted done.” Presumably referring to Gerald Heard and Huxley, he said, “You were prepared discreetly by several Englishmen who were themselves agents of this process. You have been an unwitting tool of the great transformation of our age.”

Ginsberg arrived in India that same year. Lately his psychedelic visions had become frightening, and he was wondering if he ought to continue. In Kalimpong he visited Dudjom Rinpoche, the great yogi-scholar who was head of the Nyingma (Ancient Ones) lineage. “I have these terrible visions, what should I do?” he asked. Dudjom Rinpoche sucked air through his mouth, a traditional Tibetan sign of sympathy, and said, “If you see anything horrible, don’t cling to it; if you see anything beautiful, don’t cling to it.”

Leary’s partner, Richard Alpert (now known as Ram Dass), reached India in 1967, “hoping to find someone who might understand more about these substances than we did in the West.” When he met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, Ram Dass gave him a hefty dose of nine hundred micrograms. “My reaction was one of shock mixed with the fascination of a social scientist, eager to see what would happen,” Ram Dass wrote. “He allowed me to stay for an hour—and nothing happened. Nothing whatsoever. He just laughed at me.”

Another time the old man swallowed a mind-boggling twelve hundred micrograms. “And then he asked, ‘Have you got anything stronger?’ I didn’t. Then he said, ‘These medicines were used in Kulu Valley long ago. But yogis have lost that knowledge. They were used with fasting. Nobody knows how to take them now. To take them with no effect, your mind must be firmly fixed on God. Others would be afraid to take. Many saints would not take this.’ And he left it at that” (Dass, 1979).

Despite experiments by and some opposition from Roshis, psychedelics combined with the wisdom traditions did have transformative effects on awareness.

Of course, the voyage was not always necessary. In his 1967 essay “Passage to More than India,” Gary Snyder wrote, “Those who do not have time or money to go to India or Japan, but who think a great deal about the wisdom traditions, have remarkable results when they take LSD. The Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu Mythologies, The Serpent Power, the Lankavatara Sutra, the Upanishads, the Hevajra Tantra, the Mahanirvana Tantra—to name a few texts—become, they say, finally clear to them. They often feel that they must radically reorganize their lives to harmonize with such insights.” At times, as Snyder noted, the psychedelic experience led straight to meditation. “In several American cities,” he wrote, “traditional meditation halls of both Rinzai and Soto are flourishing. Many of the newcomers turned to traditional meditation after initial acid experience. The two types of experience seem to inform each other.”

It was impossible for any roshi to ignore the question of LSD and its relationship to Buddhism. Koun Yamada Roshi, Yatsutani Roshi’s chief disciple in Japan, was said to have tried it only to report, “This isn’t form is the same as emptiness; this is emptiness is the same as form.” If Suzuki Roshi said (as Gary Snyder told Dom Aelred Graham) that “people who have started to come to the zendo from LSD experiences have shown an ability to get into good zazen very rapidly,” he also said in New York (as Harold Talbott, Graham’s secretary, told Snyder) “that the LSD experience was entirely distinct from Zen.” In any case, it seemed that in practice, Suzuki Roshi mostly ignored it. When Mary Farkas of the First Zen Institute asked him what he thought of the “Zen-drug tie-up we kept hearing so much of,” she gathered from his reply “that students who had been on drugs gradually gave them up and that highly structured and supervised activities left little opportunity and lessened inclination.”

Alan Watts notes yoga or Zen giving the meditative grounding to handle psychedelics without going over or under:

Alan Watts was more sympathetic. He pointed out, to begin with, that everyone must speak for himself since so much depended on the “mental state of the person taking the chemical and circumstances under which the experiment is conducted.” In Watts’s case, these had been benign, and LSD had given him “an experience both like and unlike what I understood as the flavor of Zen.” His mind had slowed, there were subtle changes in sense perception, and most importantly, “the thinker” had become confounded so that it realized “that all so-called opposites go together in somewhat the same way as the two sides of a single coin.” This in turn had led to an experience of what the Japanese Buddhists call ji ji-mu-ge, the principle of universal interpretation.

But if one were not trained in yoga or Zen, warned Watts, this insight might lead one to believe either that “you are the helpless victim of everything that happens to you,” or that, like God, you are “personally responsible for everything that happened.” To go beyond this impasse, one needed either “an attitude of profound faith or letting-go to you-know-not- what.” In that case, “the rest of the experience is total delight ... what, in Buddhist terms, would be called an experience of world as dharmadhatu, of all things and events, however splendid or deplorable from relative points of view, as aspects of symphonic harmony, which, in its totality, is gorgeous beyond belief.”

Opinions varied from “intoxicant prohibition” to “positive exploration”:

With the advent of actual practice came Buddhist critique of the psychedelic experience. Some teachers slotted drugs into the mind- intoxicant category of the precepts. This was not really convincing for many, however, because whatever psychedelics might be, anyone who had taken them knew that “intoxicating” was a limited, reductionist description, at best. And more often than not, the Asian teachers making such pronouncements had no actual experience of psychedelics.

The few teachers who did have such experience, however, were in a uniquely privileged position to compare the two experiences. The most sympathetic of these was Trungpa Rinpoche, who had tested and tasted the splendors of Western civilization in England. He was one of the few Buddhist teachers one could talk to about such things, which many of his students—myself included—asked him about. Officially, of course, all illegal drugs were prohibited. But privately Trungpa Rinpoche had, as he told me (and here I paraphrase loosely from memory), a lot of sympathy for students who had taken LSD. He even volunteered that we might take it together sometime in the future—an opportunity or challenge that I never got to take him up on, to my regret and relief. The suggestion was both exhilarating and scary. His style and skill, after all, lay in cutting through trips of spiritual materialism rather than guiding them.

He notes that discrete use of psychedelics has been going throughout on by mature Buddhist practitioners many of whom had previously taken psychedelics:

Such was the powerful antidrug drift. As always, however, there were countercurrents. During the seventies and up to the present, a small number of committed Buddhist practitioners have used the sacrament in the context of formal practice. This was necessarily a secret use, harking back to the earliest tantric circles in India, where unlawful and taboo substances such as meat and wine were transformed into sacraments. This group was naturally self-selecting, composed mostly of practitioners experienced in both modalities, who found that, handled properly, psychedelics can be a useful skillful means. If the practitioner has the balance and moves to surf the psychedelic waves, the argument went, then the experience can be useful in one’s sadhana [formal practice]. Myron J. Stolaroff, active in psychedelic research since 1960, is one of these Buddhist practitioners. “For myself,” he wrote in Gnosis in 1993, “I found training in Tibetan Buddhist meditation a potent adjunct to psychedelic exploration. In learning to hold my mind empty, I became aware that other levels of reality would more readily manifest. It was only in absolute stillness ... that many subtle but extremely valuable nuances of reality appeared. While I achieved this to some extent in ordinary practice, I found this effect to be greatly amplified while under the influence of a psychedelic substance. This in turn intensified my daily practice.”

He notes the Peyote ceremony which I have also attended and can confirm his observations as to its ritually meditative character. He points out the story of Buddhism and psychedelics is hardly over and the entheogenic shamans and Ayahuasca churches have a lot to teach the traditions:

The all-night Native American Church ceremony, for example, combines the discipline and mindfulness of a Zen ritual, the spontaneous song prayer of the Tantric doha tradition, and the compassion of the bodhisattva. I remember one night in a tepee in northern Montana, the clear mind of peyote glowing in the fire before the crescent-moon sand altar, the thump-thump-thump of water drum and gourd rattles keeping time with the ancient peyote songs—and it was clear as the dawning light that something close to this went on way back, possibly to the dawn of our human consciousness.

And why not into the future as well? We have much to learn from indigenous shamans. Both the Native American Church and the Brazilian ayahuasca churches have successfully grafted an ancient entheogenic practice onto Christianity. There is nothing to prevent this from happening with Buddhism as well. Indeed, Buddhism has demonstrated a genius for adapting—or mutating, in Professor Robert Thurman’s phrase—to a wide range of cultures. In Tibet, this included a shamanistic culture. Whether or not the ancient siddhas used mushrooms or other alchemical substances, there is no reason why an ecologically informed American Buddhism cannot likewise draw from shamanistic earth-wisdom. Sacred plant sacraments could be offered as amrita in the context of a tantric feast, for the development of compassion and wisdom in our ravaged world. At least for the tantric lineages of Buddhism there is no limit to the skillful means available to a bodhisattva, which includes many teachings on transforming poison into nectar. As unlikely as it may seem, this devil juice may be just the antidote for the out-of-control materialism that is ravaging our planet.

One thing at least seems certain. Whatever the ancient or recent past history of psychedelic entheogens and Buddhism may be, the story is hardly over. As Hajicek-Dobberstein says, “Some contemporary non-orthodox Buddhist ‘alchemists’ find precedents in Mahasiddhas Nagarjuna and Aryadeva, who agreed, ‘We need to eat the alchemical medicine’... Orthodox scholars may object but they can no longer ‘Just Say No’”

Ram: Self-grasping (Skt. ātmagrāh) — often translated as 'ego'. Sogyal Rinpoche writes[1]: “[...] Ego [...] is the absence of true knowledge of who we really are, together with its result: a doomed clutching on, at all costs, to a cobbled together and makeshift image of ourselves, an inevitably chameleon charlatan self that keeps changing and has to, to keep alive the fiction of its existence. This is what is known as the ‘ego’ or dak dzin in Tibetan, which means ‘grasping at a self’. Ego is defined as incessant movements of grasping at a delusory notion of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, self and other, and all the concepts, ideas, desires, and activity that sustain this false construction.”

I don’t see why rebirth is due to self-grasping. Let us suppose self-as-subject (atman) is eternal as the Vedic system hypothesizes. In that case, I will try my best to do good karma to avoid suffering/dukkha in the current birth and reduce a load of bad karma for future births and then enjoy life after death because of my good karma as per Sankhya. Then reincarnate in a good family as a reward of my good karma. This birth-death cycle will continue until I get moksha.

Chris: Ego doesn't arise from grasping at an illusory self. It arises from grasping at fame, fortune, power and other illusory achievements like massive publication lists, rather than paradigm shifting insights. Ego is a real evolutionary survival process in which the self is in an attempt to immortalise itself as long as possible against environmental or social threats, and to gain power over the twists of fate. This becomes compounded in culture on a scale that exceeds animals caring for their young and becomes tales of potentates vying for cultural ascendancy.

Sogyal is just doing what expounders of the doctrine have to do to rationalise the emptiness of emptiness. They have to make a subtle shift of the frame of reference to make the doctrine seem real, while everything else is in flux, so they turn it into ego not being for survival but false grasping at the illusory self. No one actually suffers from this malady. The self is no more an illusion than external perceptions of reality. It is the inner complement to the universe which gives us our identity and agency. Buddhism also negates both identity and agency by saying nothing has inherent existence but that yet again is a doctrinal device to make an inconsistent view appear consistent.

Sogyal Rinpoche is an expounder of Dzogchen (Skt. Atiyoga; Tib. རྫོགས་པ་ཆེན་པོ) — the ‘Great Perfection’, or ‘Great Completeness’. The practice of Dzogchen is the most ancient and direct stream of wisdom within the Buddhist tradition of Tibet, realising Nirvana through visualisation. It is shared by the Ningmapa trait of my lama Yeshe Dorje who had a Tibetan wife and seven children in Macleod Gang, but went to the US and had an American wife. Sogyal Rinpoche describes it as "the heart-essence of all spiritual paths and the summit of an individual’s spiritual evolution".

However Sogyal Rinpoche had to resign in disgrace for sexually and physically abusing his followers and died shortly after. If you glance at the image of the perfect Buddha Samantabhadra, draped with the passive figure of his sexual consort Samantabhadrī, you might understand why this happened. Nevertheless his followers claim he duly entered full Nirvana:

After forty years as Spiritual Director of Rigpa, Sogyal Rinpoche stepped down following accusations of misconduct from former students. Sogyal Rinpoche passed into parinirvana in Thailand on 28 August 2019. He remained in the state of thukdam for three consecutive days.

This provides the closest correspondence with Vedic moksha and with entheogenic moksha for its enlightenment in natural existence:

Fig 289: Samantabhadra the primal Buddha, draped with the
passive figure of his sexual consort Samantabhadrī.

The practice is to realise buddha nature, which has been present in our nature since the very beginning. The practice is simply to realise the radiance, the natural expression of wisdom, which is beyond all intellectual concepts. It is the true realisation of the Absolute Nature just as it is, the ultimate fruition. At the present moment our awareness is entangled within our mind, completely enveloped and obscured by mental activity. Through the practice of Trekchö, or ‘cutting through all attachment’, and the ‘direct realization’ of Tögal, one can unmask this awareness and let its radiance arise. To accomplish this it is necessary to do the practice of ‘the four ways of leaving things in their natural simplicity’ and through these, to acquire perfect stability in the Trekchö practice. Then will come the ‘four visions of tögal’ which are the natural arising of visions of discs and rays of light, deities and buddha fields. These visions are naturally ready to arise from within the central channel that joins the heart to the eyes. Such an arising from this channel will appear in a gradual process. In the same way that the waxing moon will increase from the first to the fifteenth of the month, these visions will gradually increase—from the simple perception of dots of light to the full array of the vast expanse of the sambhogakaya buddha fields. The manifestation of space and awareness will thus reach its culminating point. These experiences are not linked with consciousness or intellect as the former experiences were; they are a true manifestation or radiance of awareness. After this, in the same way that the moon decreases and disappears from the fifteenth to the thirtieth of the month, all of these experiences and visions, all phenomena, will gradually come to exhaustion and reabsorb themselves in the Absolute. At this time the deluded mind which conceives subject and object will disappear, and the primal wisdom, which is beyond intellect, will gradually expand. Eventually one will attain the perfect enlightenment of the Primordial Buddha, Samantabhadra, endowed with the six extraordinary features. This is the path intended for people of superior faculties who can achieve enlightenment in this very lifetime. For those of medium faculties, there is instruction on how to achieve liberation within the 'Bardo' or ‘intermediate state’. When we say ‘Bardo’, in fact we recognise four bardos: the Bardo from conception to death; the Bardo of the moment of death; the Bardo of the Absolute Nature; and the Bardo of coming into the next existence.

Although claiming this is realisation of the Absolute Nature just as it is, this is a very complex demanding puja to fulfil and conjures up a vision of a very Buddhist reality, invoking the attainment of Nirvana. It is very different from an entheogenic vision because it is imposing a ritual visualisation defining the entire experience. It’s really hard to say whether this claimed rebirth process is driven by Maya alone, or by the cosmic wheel of “karma”, but the very prescriptive detail in the practice raises questions as to whether this description is genuine ultimate reality or just another Buddhist concept of purity, as illustrated in fig 195.

Existence at the Edge of Chaos

Truth is dynamic.

Permanence is illusion.

Emptiness is Maya.

Life is Enlightenment!

My “haiku” is about the sacredness of life, in the shadow of Hui Neng. The haiku is karmic. It’s as much from our conversation as it is from me. I was confronted by your advancing Nāgārjuna’s emptiness doctrine on the 26th and I had already quoted Hui Neng on the 24th, so the heat was on to turn the tables on the establishment. Jesus was a chaos messiah turning the tables on preconceived reality. To transform the paradigm you have to take the complementary route, even if it involves controversy. I stand by it because I have said it truly. It is turning Buddhist philosophy of Nāgārjuna inside out and is an intentional rejection of four key Buddhist doctrines in favour of life itself.

If we conceive of a sentient universe in which emptiness and renunciation, or God's will, are the road to enlightenment, we are violating a sacred principle. Life exists and flowers at the edge of chaos. Each of us is alive because ALL our ancestors saw fit to strive for the fulfilment of life across the passage of the generations for three and a half billion years, more than a quarter of the life of the universe. All animal species struggle to make a huge investment in rearing their offspring, even under severe adversity, starvation or predation, so that their inheritance of life can continue to flower. For humans to say this world is all an illusion and that an imaginary state of emptiness, or a jewelled eternal heaven spawned by an imaginary god is supreme is outright suicidal folly. Combining it with dominance over nature is a terminal death wish.

(1) Truth is dynamic: Truth is simply "good faith". There is absolutely nothing in the definition of truth to justify the claim that it is absolute and unchanging. All real truths arise contextually from their evolving circumstances. Static truths are tautologies.

truth (n.) Old English triewð (West Saxon), treowð (Mercian) "faith, faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty; veracity, quality of being true; pledge, covenant," from Proto-Germanic treuwaz "having or characterized by good faith," from PIE *drew-o-, a suffixed form of the root *deru- "be firm, solid, steadfast." Sense of "something that is true" is first recorded mid-14c. Meaning "accuracy, correctness" is from 1560s. English and most other IE languages do not have a primary verb for "speak the truth," as a contrast to lie (v.).

(2) Permanence is illusion: In the temporal physical universe nothing is permanent, because time is elapsing. Quantum theories all take place within space-time. Even in general relativity space-time is moulded by gravity. Biological life is continually evolving into new unconceived forms. The conscious universe is unfolding and flowering in ways we cannot anticipate. Consciousness is itself creative and innovative, never static. Moksha is itself dynamic – a transformational satori epiphany. To say there is no meaning of impermanence without permanence is incorrect. Permanence is a concept which does not actually exist.

Satcitananda (Sanskrit: सच्चिदानन्द) is an epithet and description for the subjective experience of the ultimate unchanging reality, called Brahman. It represents "existence, consciousness, and bliss” (Raju 2013 228), The Philosophical Traditions of India, Routledge, p. 228) or "truth, consciousness, bliss”. (Murty 2002 303).

Let’s pivot on this because here is the nub of permanence:

(1) Is ultimate reality permanent?

(2) Is existence truth?

I suspect both of these are undecidable, and Symbiotic Existential Cosmology treats ultimate reality as emergent.

(3) Emptiness is Maya: Emptiness does not exist. It is a concept that is not viable. Even the quantum vacuum is seething with every conceivable particle out of the big bang coming into and going out of existence. Consciousness is never empty or we call it unconscious. What use is unconscious moksha? Emptiness only has relative meaning to that which contains it. Otherwise it is void – non-existent, but that also means empty, so is itself relative.

void (adj.) c. 1300, "unoccupied, vacant," from Anglo-French and Old French voide, viude "empty, vast, wide, hollow, waste, uncultivated, fallow," as a noun, "opening, hole; loss," from Latin vocivos "unoccupied, vacant," related to vacare "be empty," from PIE *wak-, extended form of root *eue- "to leave, abandon, give out."

Therefore the entire notion of emptiness is an illusion. Maya is real, diverse, transformative flowering and unfolding. She is Shakti unleashed. To forsake the real for an imaginary realm of emptiness is a tragic error, denying life as it exists in favour of a fantasy. In fact it is the biggest most addictive deception of all – grasping for that which cannot be grasped, but only submitted to.

(4) Life is enlightenment: This is the ultimate remedy to the mortal coil. We can't take the things we grasp for with us, so regenerative compassion for immortal life as a whole is the only viable remedy. To imagine that enlightenment takes many lifetimes in a fictitious round of reincarnation where genetic realities are ignored and two-toed sloths and become crocodiles or humans is gross and foolish. So is the conflagration of life in the Revelation.

You suggested it was qualified by "conventional mind-dependent reality (cMDR)”. This is NOT the case and I will explain why. I said: “I AM original source, transient in the dance of Maya, as Shankar courting Shakti. My transient mortality IS the dance of unfolding of life immortal”. You responded with: “Yes, at cosmic level, “I” at dual-aspect moksha state ~ dual-aspect Brahaman ~ dual-aspect Shiva-Shakti, there is no individual self because it is merged with the original source dual-aspect substrate after moksha/liberation”. This is not the case! It is not dual aspect at all. This is a fantasy of cosmological housekeeping in the face of the dynamic truth of conscious life immortal.

When I made the above statement, it was not metaphorical, or philosophical, but a direct experiential affirmation in the first person. I'll try to explain this. Primal subjectivity is the germ, but it is seamlessly compliant with the physical boundary conditions, so in everyday perceptual life, it is compliant only with organismic ego consciousness modulated by natural compassion, but when one meditates deeply while on entheogens, one undergoes a transformation into a non-ordinary reality that takes the form of a trip, where the doors of perception are flung open and experience can become asymptotic to a form closer to cosmic consciousness not bound by the organism. This changes one's persona, like travelling to a foreign country, and carnal knowledge and opens the mind to ultimate reality. Afterwards things are changed and the germ of primal subjectivity now resonates with a new existential condition that never fully goes away. So I am perfectly sane and my mind remains lethally sharp, but ultimate reality travels with me everywhere I go. If I stepped back from this to concede any previous doctrine at face value, it would be hearsay abandoning the covenant. Thus when Buddha became enlightened, an irreversible transformation occurred, in which knowing or gnosis changed the nature of reality for him and ultimately for us.

In what you call cMDR, the germinal subjectivity doesn't have boundary conditions that allow it to seamlessly merge with enlightenment, but after moksha, the perspective changes, so we can still be organismically egotistical, obdurate even, but underneath, the germinal subjectivity has made contact with the totality beyond and is now unleashed in the way we think of apocalypse as the complete “unveiling” of Maya into enlightenment. One can't really go back from this. Ramakrisha could barely sit down at Dakshineswa.

You are attempting to quote Buddhist philosophy to qualify and limit a direct visionary account. When the Brihadaranyaka says “I am He” it is a statement in the first person of ultimate reality within. It is NOT dual-aspect. In the same way, Moses gazing on the vision of the burning bush said his apotheosis was simply “I-Am”. This is germinal subjectivity immediately becoming aware of our cosmic consciousness no longer veiled by cMDR. In the same way Paul of Tarsus said "For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” Although I reject Paul’s teaching, his vision of the naked transparency and immediacy of cosmic consciousness “face to face” is telling and accurate.

Alex Hankey: Ram, Nagarjuna caused endless difficulties in endless ways, because he aimed to totally differentiate Buddhism from Vedic culture. But Buddha learned all his spiritual concepts at the feet of a Vedic Guru, and used Ayurveda when medicine was needed - the famous Jivaka was his Vaidya. Buddhism as taught by Siddartha Gautama Has to contain a concept equivalent to Ahamkara - there is no choice. Of course, The Eightfold Path may have carried His Disciples quicker along the Moksha Marga than those of His Contemporary Gurus. BUT what he learned in Bodha Gaya was pure Vedic Wisdom, Nitya Gyana.

Ram: In my view, Buddhism was designed for reducing sufferings in our mundane lives. So that we can have happier living in current life. For this purpose, Buddha proposed 4 noble truths and 8 noble path with 12 links that cause suffering. If we are able to break the chain of 12 links thru 8 noble paths, sufferings will be reduced.

mundane (adj.) mid-15c., mondeine, "of this world, worldly, terrestrial," from Old French mondain "of this world, worldly, earthly, secular;" also "pure, clean; noble, generous" (12c.) and directly from Late Latin mundanus "belonging to the world" (as distinct from the Church), in classical Latin "a citizen of the world, cosmopolite," from mundus "universe, world," which is identical to mundus "clean, elegant," but the exact connection is uncertain and the etymology is unknown. The English word's extended sense of "dull, uninteresting" is attested by 1850.

Chris: We don't need any of this. Mundane lives are not boring, they are “of the universe”, so Buddhist enlightenment is escaping the universe into a fictitious heavenly emptiness, as the Buddhist wheel of life, fig 213 implies. If we are honest with ourselves, we are mortal human organisms and all of us will die. Therefore we can only gain meaning by giving back our life's work to the benefit of life as a whole. There is simply no need to repress, negate or philosophically deprecate the ego, which is a protective feature of consciousness to aid survival. Religions with hungering for eternal life or reincarnation and rebirth make this difficult or impossible to achieve because they create unrealisable longing.

Of the three religions that embraced the notion of reincarnation, Vedanta, Jains and Buddhists, we have the following: In Hindu philosophy, moksha is the union of or the realisation of the identity of Atman with Brahman, depending on the Hindu tradition. In Jainism, nirvana is also the soteriological goal, representing the release of a soul from karmic bondage and samsara. In the Buddhist context, nirvana refers to realisation of non-self and emptiness, marking the end of rebirth by stilling the fires that keep the process of rebirth going.

Jains deal with karma as eternal conscious souls. Enlightenment doesn't mean exit from the round of birth and death into sheer emptiness defeating the meaning of life itself. According to Jainism, the existence of "a bound and ever changing soul" is a self-evident truth, an axiom which does not need to be proven. Bad karma has negative effects but good karma is transformative. The perfect enlightened souls with a body are called Arihants (victors). Only a soul with human body can attain enlightenment and liberation. The liberated beings are the supreme beings and are worshipped by all heavenly, earthly and hellish beings who aspire to attain liberation themselves.

Vedanta is the “royal route”, which, as we know, accepts the reality of the self and the ability of the individual to achieve moksha in which the self or atman can achieve unity with ultimate reality Brahman also conceived in the persona of the godhead Īśvara / Īśvarī, so Vedanta allows a continuity between atheistic reality and polytheism. Some Indian traditions have emphasised liberation on concrete, ethical action within the world. This liberation is an epistemological transformation that permits one to see the truth and reality behind the fog of ignorance. Because moksha is attaining unity with Brahman, enlightenment is a constructive fulfilment. Moksha has been defined not merely as absence of suffering and release from bondage to saṃsāra. Various schools of Hinduism also explain the concept as presence of the state of paripurna-brahmanubhava (the experience of oneness with Brahman, the One Supreme Self), a state of knowledge, peace and bliss.

Buddhism short circuits the spiritual complexity by advancing an atheistic psychological philosophy, in which rebirth is driven by the grasping ego and release lies in pure emptiness ending the reincarnation cycle. Theism is denied, as there is no deity, and the self is denied in favour of emptiness. Nirvana (nibbana) literally means "blowing out" or "quenching". It is the most used as well as the earliest term to describe the soteriological goal in Buddhism: release from the cycle of rebirth (saṃsāra). Nirvana is part of the Third Truth on "cessation of dukkha" in the Four Noble Truths doctrine of Buddhism. It is the goal of the Noble Eightfold Path. The Buddha is believed in the Buddhist scholastic tradition to have realised two types of nirvana, one at enlightenment, and another at his death. In the Buddhist tradition, nirvana is described as the extinguishing of the fires that cause rebirths and associated suffering. The Buddhist texts identify these "three fires" or "three poisons" as raga (greed, sensuality), dvesha (aversion, hate) and avidyā or moha (ignorance, delusion). The state of nirvana is also described in Buddhism as cessation of all afflictions, cessation of all actions, cessation of rebirths and suffering that are a consequence of afflictions and actions.

One also needs to note that interdependent co-arising is not an original idea. Centuries before Buddhism, the second main principle of Jainism is anekāntavāda, the doctrine of many-sidedness from anekānta ("many-sidedness") and vada ("doctrine"). The doctrine states that truth and reality are complex and always have multiple aspects.

Jainism also enunciated Taoism’s central tenet “The way that can be told is not the countless way” : Stating that reality can be experienced, but cannot be fully expressed with language. It suggests that human attempts to communicate are Naya, "partial expression of the truth”.

So, in summary, Buddhism is NOT the antidote to dukkha. The doctrine of reincarnation is NOT a fact of life either, but of the three traditions, Jainism preserves the sanctity of the soul as a voyager through eternal time, Vedanta preserves the sacredness of the self, which in moksha can become one with ultimate eternal reality in Brahman which is also identifiable in theistic personae as the godhead, but Buddhism offers only practical psychological advice, in which nirvana is emptiness and is achieved only by escape from the entire life process.

Of the three, Jainism and Vedanta retain cosmic forms of spirituality but Buddhism denies it, dealing only with suppressing the negative aspects of the ego. By contrast, Symbiotic Existential Cosmology rejects both reincarnation. and creation cosmologies and makes conscious life itself the sacred process, accepting both consciously spiritual and physical existence, realised in visionary experience and the Vedic principle of moksha, in which the individual self or soul achieves union with cosmic reality, invested in the passage of the generations of life rather than immortal individual souls or an omnipotent godhead.

Ram: The survival of PIS (passive invariant self-as-subject) and rebirth/reincarnation are scientifically untested hypotheses. They are not essential for making our mundane lives with minimum dukkha/suffering on a daily basis.

Chris: SEC states only one additional axiom similar to but different from the Jain axiom – primal subjectivity. Buddhism assumes subjectivity anyway in the context of sentient beings. In the context of the unfolding of living diversity as the crowning conscious manifestation of the universe, it enables us to gain asymptotic moksha, manifesting through entheogenic meditation, the cosmic consciousness Vedanta associates with Brahman through its own meditative tradition.

This dharma means we can live a full and happy life as living conscious intelligent sentient beings. Buddhists who work very hard day and night to stop grasping desires just need to look at the existential realities of mortal life. You can't take it with you when you go, so give yourself back to protect the diversity of life throughout our generations. Being a Buddhist won’t stop you being sick or having an accident or getting killed or in pain. These are things we all have to accept so that the universe can become biologically manifest and rise to climax fulfilment. It is life’s negentropic answer to the entropic universe through sexual recombination.

This opens up a fully life-positive, truthful, accurate view of existential reality which actively protects life and gives peace of mind without renunciation of emotional desires, leads to compassion and enlightenment through the biospheric sacraments, if we seek full moksha. We don't need to meditate all day and renounce family life and fertility and sexuality. It’s all sacred. Life IS sacred. Everything else is fantasy and delusion. It’s a much easier, more fulfilling, more direct dharma, because it gets right to the heart of the matter.

Ram: Some argue that emptiness and fullness are complementary aspects of reality so they are equivalent, in analogy the wave and complimentary particle aspects of a wavicle are equivalent. If it is true then Buddhism and Vedic system are equivalent; some consider Buddhism as a part of the Vedic system.

Chris: Emptiness and fullness are NOT equivalent. Complementary aspects are NEVER equivalent because neither is complete in itself. Thus you are proving Buddhism is incomplete in itself. If you are going to conflate Vedanta and Buddhism when their cosmologies are fundamentally different, you may as well conflate Monotheism and Eastern religions, or science and religion. Yin and Yang are complementary – male and female are not identical or life would NOT exist and survive in the entropic universe.

Whit: Yet, that's exactly what the Diamond Sutra says: Buddhism is incomplete in itself. (Summary of the Diamond Sutra: All signs by which you can recognize a Buddha are, however well pointed, insufficient for the task of

recognition.

Chris: That’s a cute [acute] observation! and thanks for previously noting.

Whit: Structurally, it's the same, the claimed inevitability of sin and suffering. And both, taken that way, are religions of extinction. You've got a point there. Yet neither all Christians nor all Buddhists take it that way.

Chris: I accept that Buddhism has valid and valuable insights about what it calls “mundane existence”. But the problem comes with both protecting the diversity of life and the status of cosmic consciousness. It is impossible to fairly and honestly claim that emptiness IS Brahman or equivalent to Brahman. The more pressing biocrisis and the need to understand consciousness gets, the paths diverge to 0/1 or even 0/∞.

Ram: A wavicle appears as a wave if measured using 2-slit type experiments; it appears as a particle if measured using a photoelectric type experiment; however, it is the same wavicle; in this sense, they are equivalent but not identical.

Chris: They are complementary, but not equivalent, which means of "equal valency" i.e. value. No meaning can be assigned to wave-particle “equivalence". One is discrete, the other continuous. Neither property is equivalent to the other.

Ram: When egg and sperm interact, initially there is no sex; sex appears, later on, depending on hormones and chromosomes; if testosterone is dominant and X-Y chromosome then male, otherwise female; both are the same species, human.

This is biologically incorrect. The sperm either has an X or a Y, so fertilisation is male determining sexual, with the eggs all single X. If the sperm has an X we get an XX girl otherwise an XY boy. Sex is not determined by testosterone, but by the SRY gene on the Y chromosome. So saying there is no sex at fertilisation is false. Furthermore fertilisation, ever since the metazoa emerged, has been sexually symmetry-broken between a large enveloping egg and small particulate sperm, because the original isogametes caused mitochondrial genetic warfare that destroyed 90% of the photosynthetic plastids of the fertilised embryo. This leads to manifest polarities in reproductive strategy between men and women, who, like all mammals give an often difficult birth to live young.

Ram: Both [men and women] are the same species, human. In this sense, both are equivalent; in work/job also they are equivalent; they have equal rights.

Chris: The sexes are NOT equivalent. The women bear the brunt of the vast majority of parenting in mammals and in humans too. Male mammals reproduce by spreading wilds oats and females delivering live young do it by parenting. For you to claim there are no intrinsic differences is an unscientific defence of Buddhism. No they clearly don't have equivalent rights socially or religiously. Women are subjected to rape, chaperoning, bride burning, stoning for adultery while the men are often just whipped, female genital mutilation, , killing the girl child in favour of boys, forced to wear the veil. In Iran today a news item reports school girls are being poisoned with organophosphate herbicides as punishment for the hijab protests in which hundreds have been killed and girls and women sexually abused.

Chris: If stopping the internal dialogue, as Carlos Castaneda (1968) also said, is central to enlightenment, so is stopping the doctrine of 8 spokes ^{^[2]} and letting the wheel of karma be naturally out of balance enough for life to enter into the equation.

In a sense, the three reincarnation traditions Jains, Vedantists and Buddhists did one kind and astute favour to life by recognising all animals as conscious. Darwin did the same for all life from the polyps up, having free will, although it is scarcely recognised by neural network neuroscientists and physicalist biologists.

The telling tale is what each tradition actually did with the question of life itself and that’s the bane of going beyond good advice about “mundane existence” into the centre of the cyclone of reality. Jains treat all conscious beings as eternal souls on an endless journey of discovery, so life remains sacred. Vedantists do the same collectively in Brahman as the ultimate reality realised in moksha that “powers” life itself. But Buddha, in denying the reality of ultimate reality brought the living universe into a state of Maya, in which the crowning goal is to exit life as the realm of mundane illusion.

I believe we all, and particularly Buddhists need to recognise the fallacy in this. All the great scientific paradigm changes were founded by creative geniuses who also made mistakes. Newton, who more than any other is associated with the mechanistic universe, spent his days trying to predict the exact time of the second coming. The same with all our existing religious traditions. Jesus was flawed for allowing a brilliant set of gnostic insights which bridged the extant traditions to result in his crucifixion and the ensuing two millennia of violence. Muhammad likewise has a history of genocide of the Jews of Medina. Buddha can be forgiven for his very elegant practical psychological advice in the face of the more extreme Polytheistic excesses of Hinduism, but of the three traditions, despite the sudden awakening of satori in a cherry blossom, Buddhism has committed the birth of new life to the round of suffering unfairly.

The first step of redemption is allowing Buddha to have made an error of cosmology and to accept it qualifies the tradition, by admitting the overflowing joie de vivre of life as the very core of existence, not Maya, or at least if you like accepting Maya, as the Shakti that all Buddhist tantras of Yab-yum point to.

Hence my reply to Ram that human fertilisation IS also sexual and the twain cannot be so extricated into androgynous neutrality.

True knowledge is that which flowers the diversity of life in conscious climax.

One experiences moksha, but that’s just the inspiration, not the redemption.

The dharma and sadhana are to life itself.

Ram: The Vedic-Moksha (VM) in non-interactive dualism-based Sankhya is the disconnection of jivatman [self-as-subject (SaS), passive invariant self (PIS), part of Individual Purusha] from all three bodies (sthula/gross-physical, sukshma/subtle/astral, and karan/subtler/causal). In other words, after our physical death, astral death, and causal death i.e., after the nullification of karma, the jivatman becomes totally free from Prakriti, then jivatman becomes atman (which then merges with cosmic Purusha/Brahman) after attaining moksha state. In the moksha state, jivatman becomes atman, which is called the transcendence of jivatman to atman (pure consciousness). Subjectively, yogis/mystics experience unity (subject-object unification) at nirvikalpa samadhi with 100% disconnect from physical brain-body.

The psychdelic-herb-Moksha (PHM), in SEC/ICAM (interactive complementary aspect monism), is the subjective experience (SE) of unity after ingestion of psychedelic herbs such as psychedelic-herb mushrooms.

Chris: Moksha is a major term spanning cultures which has to do with transcendent revelation which frees subjective consciousness from entrapment in the round of birth and death.

Moksha (Sanskrit: मोक्ष, mokṣa), also called vimoksha, vimukti and mukti, is a term in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism for various forms of emancipation, enlightenment, liberation, and release. In its soteriological and eschatological senses, it refers to freedom from saṃsāra, the cycle of death and rebirth. In its epistemological and psychological senses, moksha is freedom from ignorance: self-realization, self-actualization and self-knowledge.

Soteriology denotes beliefs and doctrines concerning salvation in any specific religion, as well as the study of the subject. The idea of saving or delivering from some dire situation logically implies that humankind, as a whole or in part, is in such a situation.

Eschatology is the part of theology concerned with the end of days – death, judgement, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind.

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.

Psychology: Psychology ex 1650s, "the study of the soul," from Modern Latin psychologia, from Latinized form of Greek psykhē "breath, spirit, soul"+ logia "study of". In modern use: (1) The scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behaviour in a given context. (2) The mental characteristics or attitude of a person or group.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is pivotal on all of these. It is not just for individual enlightenment but has a remedy for world salvation, it deals centrally with the end of days and avoiding a Fermi extinction and it carefully distinguishes legitimate knowledge from religious spiritual or materialistic beliefs and opinions. It is also psychologically transformative.

Moksha has a broad understandable meaning in terms of the meaning of life itself, which could be interpreted in various ways:

(1) That moksha attains Buddahood thus freeing the Buddha from the round of reincarnation, but then we have only emptiness as the outcome, so what does Buddha then do?

(2) That moksha attains unity between atman and Brahman and becomes unified with the cosmic consciousness of Brahman. Then what does he do with it now?

(3) That moksha attains unity with the diversity of life, enabling the subject to become freed from the existential paradox of mortality in unity with life immortal. He then commits to Brahman’s advice in a covenant to reflower life immortal in the unfolding conscious universe.

You have effectively devalued psychedelic moksha as merely "the subjective experience (SE) of unity after ingestion of psychedelic herbs such as psychedelic-herb mushrooms” when the experience was specifically a meeting with, and merging with, Brahman as cosmic consciousness, which also addressed in specific detail the actual remedy to the round of birth and death, in realising humanity's relationship with life immortally evolving, rather than humanity precipitating a Fermi crisis of survival. This is a scientific and religious revolution towards immortality in the mortal coil.

At the opposite extreme you have described Vedic-moksha as an extremely metaphysically detailed series of “disconnections” of self as subject from all three of physical, astral and causal. I think this is an unreal claim even if it is Vedic and simply highlights the error of running away with spiritual descriptions which have no real meaning in terms of subjective experience at all. Your description of the Vedic moksha turns this all on its head, slicing through the cosmos with multiple disconnections of reality, which have no connection with life or real existence.

Siegfried Bleher: Sutra II.12 in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra designates the klesas (‘causes of affliction’ which are five in number—different lists in other texts—the most significant of which is not recognizing one’s true nature; ego; attachment; aversion, clinging to life) as the root of the action deposit, the fruition of which may be seen in this lifetime or another. In other words, it is not even the action itself that creates a subliminal trait that eventually ripens to impel further action, but rather the presence of a cause of affliction during an action that leads to storage of a subliminal impulse: action in the absence of any of the causes of affliction leaves no deposit.

And this text is referring purely to reinforcing/weakening and rearising of impulses in individuals; it does not refer to ‘return of actions’—we always have the choice whether to act on such an impulse or not; nor does it account for experiences we all get caught up in that are influenced or caused by others—our part in such moments may only be in how we respond to our circumstances; and that is what the law of karma primarily deals with (as I understand this text). The only part of the law of karma that seems to make it into broader awareness focuses on actions, but this text, at least, refers to actions as secondary in importance to their roots—the impulses and habits we typically act on (samskaras and vasanas).

Chris: I like Patanjali, for his respect for the herbs, but this is too much baggage to take on. To accept your account of Patanjali at face value, we end up with a huge raft of reincarnation doctrine to support it, for which there is no convincing evidence that would remotely hold up in a court of law, let alone in true honesty to our own redemption and illumination. The baggage itself is in biological and cosmological error. This simply isn't the way the universe rises to living conscious climax. It’s the progenitor of the Kali Yuga and the Samvartakalpa i.e. cosmologically degenerate.

None of us know, when we walk to the supermarket whether we will get hit by a car crossing the road. None of us know what symptoms are suddenly going to appear at the age of 78. My brother just found he has stage four cancer. Life is rough justice many of us meet misfortune no past life has engendered. Life HAS to be this way for diversity to exist. We have a fleeting time in this life to reach moksha. If we can't move beyond these notions we will get nowhere. Karma is not moral, it’s the way uncertainty manifests in the universe, then mystified by Eastern religions. Natural sin does not exist. It’s the way things have to be for life to rise to climax diversity, plants and animals, carnivores and herbivores, parasites and prey and so for conscious sentient beings to emerge. Fire and flood are features of nature. Environmental uncertainty arises ultimately from quantum uncertainty. Neither is uncertainty random, but is a law unto itself in the quantum entanglement, that appears ergodic.

I take particular exception to the use of “clinging to life” as bad karma. Life is sine qua non the key to existence. Any philosophy which deprecates reverence for life as a disposable delusion is a tragic cosmology. In the Western tradition, scientifically minded people can assess the Sabbatical Creation of Genesis as merely quaint allegory, which forms the Earth and plants before the solar system and the birds before the land creatures. We don't have to take it literally. The same has to go for Eastern mystification doctrines.

We need to treat life with due respect and not, in the third millennium, go on treating reincarnation and moral karma, as valid and true, whether by act or by affliction. The entire concept of renunciation of life is abhorrent to the survival of life. We shouldn't be espousing notions that we know are inconsistent with reality and with the ability and striving of life to survive immortal against the odds. I know and accept I am a mortal human being in the centre of the cyclone of reality because any etherial realm is a fantasy, as is the quest for eternal life. Brahman told me this and it is utterly true. The mortal compassionate love of life is the antidote to clinging and craving, not renunciation of desires. Desire for life is the most altruistic thing we can know and do. It begets genuine immortality not fake eternality, and it transcends any other type of action and heals all affliction.

Ram: What is a Fermi crisis of survival? Please elaborate on it.

Chris: The Fermi paradox is why can’t we see no life elsewhere in the universe when it seems extremely probable given the astronomical number of galaxies stars and planets in the universe? A Fermi paradox self-extinction by human exploitative misadventure of the planetary biosphere is an example of the idea that intelligent societies are unstable and prone to self-destruct. The Western religious tradition revolves around apocalyptic crisis in the end of days. Rather than a complete destruction, Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is the remedy that alleviates destructive apocalypse by reflowering the tree of life.

Ram: The major problem is this: is the self a process or an entity? Does it survive death?

Chris: The self is both a process and entity in complementary relationship. The default network and the limbic system are evolved characteristics to ensure the process of self-consciousness retains functional stability for the survival of the organism unless external behavioural or biochemical processes intervene, including meditation, sensory deprivation and psychedelic states. Yes they are processes, in this sense but they are also entities which give us our sense of identity as “I’, although they are consciously generated as “stable evolved hallucinations”.

The intrinsic difficulty with all philosophical frameworks is not that they are difficult to understand, but the processes arrived at are neither empirical nor natural but part of logical discourse that leads to disjunctive contradictions like your use of process versus entity. They are brittle, conjectural, hypothetical and lack empirical validity.

Hard physical materialists contend that all 1pp experiences and reports are invalid because they only accept one form of empiricism involving statistically reported observations, involving high sigma 3pp experiments, but the principle of empiricism is correct to both 1pp experienced and 3pp observed investigations. Philosophical systems are deficient, through deprecating the principle of empiricism – the ultimate reality check of nature. This is spelt out by the contrast between Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, which is an empirical cosmology and IDAM which is a philosophical framework.

I reject pure physicalist schemas, as self-fulfilling beliefs of their own. Hard core physicalism is a belief, based on promissory materialism on the assumption that solving easy mechanistic problems can proceed to unveil the ultimate mysteries because optimism from scientific and technological advances has created a bootstrap belief in the inevitability of exhaustive scientific discovery. This is a fallacy manifest in the ever diminishing proportion of ground-breaking scientific discoveries to exponentially increasing meticulous run-of-the-mill additions to known areas (Park, Leahey & Funk 2022) fig 70b. By contrast, groundbreaking insights are becoming monotonically rarer.

But we are dealing with the ultimate challenge to science. Subjective consciousness vs the physical brain and universe is the cosmological Mariana Trench of the discovery process and attempting to apply it the way pure materialists do is doomed to failure because the problems of affirming the hypothesis of causal closure of the physical universe is uncomputable, and undecidable and the hard problem of subjectivity is physically inescapable.

Ram: You wrote "The self is both a process and entity in complementary relationship." Please elaborate further. By self as entity, I meant eternal atman, which survives death. But brain processes die after brain death.

Chris: The self is a dynamical process stabilised by evolution as a key strategic component of the way an organism relates to the world. Emotions and the limbic system play a key role because they are feelings we experience that are strategically placed to result in characteristic defensive, aggressive and responsive modes, from fear and anger through remorse, disgust, hatred and contempt to amity, affection and love. These are all directed from the “self” to the “world” maintaining our self-polarisation. We recognise these modes in others and call it egotism, but frequently remain oblivious to them in ourselves. But these can become decoupled, so that self and other dissolve and oceanic states of meditation, contemplation, samadhic bliss can occur, through at the other extreme to complete alienation and depersonalisation – heaven and hell in purgatory!.

So the self is an elusive constellation of moody states that orient the complementation between our ongoing sense of identity and the vagaries and opportunities of the wild world around us. They are hallucinations in the sense that all conscious experiences are not just simulations but veridical representations in their own right of existence, without which the experiential universe cannot exist. Even the most hard core physicalists cannot seriously deny subjective conscious expereince is the only reality they know, despite their obsession with 3pp five sigma stats.

No one knows and has ever known whether the atman is eternal. It’s a wishful notion that is not well formulated. Time itself is an illusion. Not only is something eternal unchanging but it is constitutionally incapable of change. The only recourse a photon has for its status once created, is absorbing annihilation, so why would you seek eternal life?

What we do know about the atman-Brahman is that the near death experience is commonly perceived as a telepathic identity between our organismic self and an abstract archetypal cosmic self which seems to be forever, just as our consciousness is not our own possession, but flows through us in the eternal present, or more precisely the quantum of the present, although we know it goes somewhere else every night we sleep and got wrapped up in the arms of Morpheus like blue and orange paints stirred in a pot until they just become a forgetful greyness, until we wake, thinking we were in Egypt walking by a temple on the Nile.

Vinod Sehgal: In your SEC, subjective and physical are complementary and interacting but in Ram's IDAM, these subjective/ non physical and physical aspects are co- existing, co- arising and non interacting. Ram's view has been that interaction between subjective/ non physical and physical aspects is a category mistake.

Chris: It can't be, because the three of us all know we have active subjective conscious volition over the physical universe every time we exchange emails. Locking the s aspect to the p aspect as a fixed duality is in contradiction to our empirical experience unless you assume the p processes are driving the boat and then we have mind-brain identity materialism. Interaction is not a category error. We ARE interacting with the world. We clearly aren’t in a dual parallel s and p process. Duality forces homology, contradicting the completely different way subjective and objective manifestations appear. Ryle came up with the category error idea with Descartes because he claimed including mind and world statements in the same category was a “category error”. But mind is s category even for Descartes and physical is p category, so Ryle’s notion is ill-posed.

A unified Cosmos can't be a complete duality, so a cosmology can't be fully dualist, therefore two aspect monism is correct. However it can also either be dual or complementary in its aspects. Interactive complementarity provides the high degree of asymmetry we experience between a very mechanistically separable universe and a very wholistic experiential realm.

Vinod: We become unaware of our physical bodies but our astral bodies very much continue to exist and remain active. It is the astral body which flies over physical body. And it is our self/consciousness which sees our astral body to fly over our physical body (though we are not aware of our physical body). Had there been no astral body as composed of some non physical substrate and not flying, how could you see any body flying in the dream state?

Chris: Here’s an example of mine showing how non-ordinary reality can be as big as the universe and the way back is NOT through space, or levels of existence, but slipping in and out of the body:

While dreaming, I looked at my hands and I became lucid and a huge gust of sea breeze wth salt spray doused my light Indian shirt. I could feel every droplet hit my skin. The day was radiant shimmering with intense sunlight. I stared at the azure sky, desperately trying to find my way back to Earth, knowing I was in another universe. I rushed up to a woman with dark eyes and stared deeply into hers silently saying "where is the way back?" And she just smiled and shook her head. At the same time, I realised I was shooting up ever faster like a rocket. But again at the same time, another I realised it was all okay, because I was just bobbing on the ceiling of the bedroom looking down at at my body sleeping below.

You have no basis whatever to claim ethereal astral plane substrates for any of these. They are projectively manifested experiences with few or no bounds on what is possible or how they occur. They may even anticipate future realities we yet have to face. The only way we can find out is to actually make the journey ourselves.

Ram: Yes, subjective experiences (SEs) and their respective NPB/NCC (neural physical basis / neural correlate of consciousness) exists. But the content of endogenously generated SEs may not exist. For example, if you dream of a flying woman by herself, then yes such SE and its NPB exist but there is NOT a flying woman that everybody can see similar to flying birds in our real physical world.

Chris: The very non-ordinary content of dreaming shows it transcends the restrictions on waking perception, so the pursuit of knowledge requires us to address how this can take place. These discussions just keep coming back to the hard problem extrapolated into the hard manifestation problem "how do conscious experiences manifest themselves to us"? And what are the implications of the fact that they can transcend real world experiences?

One can think about it neuroscientifically, in that higher sensory processing areas in the parietal and temporal lobes can arrive at resonances different from and inconsistent with perceptual excitations driven from the primary sensory areas, but that doesn't solve the manifestation problem as it is more than just an evoked binding problem. Nothing objective can even be conceived to subjectively manifest experience in and of itself. You can take that even further with psychedelics, involving changes to our entire understanding of what a conscious experience is and can be.

Astral worlds fail to explain non-ordinary experiential reality because conscious awareness transcends any substrate driven model, just as non-ordinary states transcend sensory experience of the physical world, which is why I termed it projective of consciousness. That’s why astral worlds are defective and degenerate and why I am very sceptical of yogi's reports about both astral worlds and samadhi experiences as a kind of wishful thinking.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is trying to teach people to actually be courageous and use the tools they have, dreaming, meditation and particularly entheogens to find out what the hell is going on.

Vinod: I agree with Chris that conscious experience and build up of NPBs are not simultaneous since there should definitely be some time gap, however minuscule the same may be, between the two and hence they are also NOT inseparable. They are also not complementary like a particle and wave since they don't come from the same substrate. Had they been coming from the same substrate, there are no reasons as to why conscious experiences can't be detected/ scanned thru 3 pp physical instrumentation or thru 3 pp shared subjective experiences. They are, in fact, sequential with both originating out and existing at different substrates- NPB from/ at physical substrate as forming brain and conscious experiences from/ at non physical ( \astral) substrate as forming mind.

Coalescence: Saving the Diversity of life from Fermi Extinction is the Meaning in Existence.

Joshua Davis: Without Metaphysics, Ethics and Spiritual Maturity, scientific knowledge is at best incomplete and at worst dangerous and destructive.

Kashyap Vasavada: I have to agree with part of your statement. Mankind has to learn to instil ethics and spiritual maturity into itself otherwise it will destroy itself for sure. However, I have to say also that religion and metaphysics are at least 2 to 4-5 thousand years old, much older than science. ... But currently existing religions and metaphysics cannot instil ethics and spirituality. So far mutually assured destruction has prevented nuclear wars. But how long it will hold, no one knows.

John: According to Garrett Hardin (1968), author of "The Tragedy of the Commons" there is no technical solution. So where does that leave us?

Chris: Existing religious traditions are inadequate to address the problem, not least because their religious innovators lived in a time when the Earth’s dwindling resources and habitats and burgeoning population were not an immediate threat to human survival and the survival of the biosphere itself. Hence the preoccupation with cultural crises in the Bhagavad Gita and apocalypse and Armageddon in Revelation. This has in turn led to false spiritualities that neglect the sanctity of life as a whole in favour of fictitious realms and vain desires.

But the problem can't be solved by science either because life has no existential meaning in and of itself physically. And as Joshua comments, the same science can be used to heal or to exploit. It has no moral value in and of itself. But moral values are no use either because, as Richard Alexander author of “The Biology of Morality” realised, in staring down the barrel of mutually assured nuclear destruction, morality is not absolute, or an absolute good: It is just an evolutionary process to reduce intra-social competition to ensure inter-social dominance.

So we come back to prioritising existence by the key existential threats to survival – biospheric mass extinction, climate and habitat crisis and nuclear holocaust. Currently these are the last options people think they have time to consider. So the last must come first as Jesus said and the rest will sort themselves out over time, because life is saved.

There is one and only one solution to this. Life needs to be recognised as sacred, in our hearts, our minds and our very souls for want of a better word. We need to raise high the roof beam of life itself as the flowering pinnacle of our fulfilment over all notions and illusions of spiritual , scientific or technological redemption. We can no longer treat life as a lesser, inferior, dumb, or flawed entity to be dominated by human intelligence.

No political, economic, scientific or religious work–around will suffice. Unless we become fully symbiotic with the immortal flow of life, humanity and the biosphere will suffer atrophy and eventual extinction, either with a bang or a whimper.

John: You advocate for such religious faith in regard to a combative strategy for preserving life as it exists materially but deny faith in a holistic strategy that would preserve its spiritual integrity first. This is the very dilemma that produces the problem - placing the cart before the horse. The existential symbiosis of your theory is an outcome of deeper holistic consciousness. SEC seems to conflate these levels or reverse their natural order.

Chris: It’s not confrontational to save the diversity of life from extinction John. Edge-of-chaos cosmology, as compared to the ascendence of spirituality is NOT “combative”. Spiritual integrity can have no meaning in the absence of life. Active redemption of life provides for dissent when faced with obstructive resistance, as democracy does, and promotes paradigm change. Apocalypse doesn’t need to be combative but it has to have its claws if the future of life is as threatened as it is. If SEC is valid cosmology and the supremacy of spiritual holism is a delusion, we need to be honest and transparent about it. Occam's razor gravitates to removing the clutter of a priori claims. It is intended to reduce mystification and false assumptions.

John: This is the very dilemma that produces the problem – placing the cart before the horse. The existential symbiosis of your theory is an outcome of deeper holistic consciousness. SEC seems to conflate these levels or reverse their natural order.

Chris: Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is NOT an outcome of holistic consciousness but it's the valid empirical cosmology of conscious life. Life precedes spiritual holism in the evolutionary process. It didn’t arise from holistic consciousness devoid of nature but from interaction with the biospheric sacraments. There is no established deeper holistic consciousness involved in its genesis other than my meeting with Brahman that revealed the cosmology, which must needs be respected on its own terms as Brahman informing me of the central meaning and importance of protecting the diversity of life. Yours is in no way a valid claim for someone who hasn't made that journey themselves to intentionally put the cart of spirituality back before the horse of life to justify their religious predilections in effective contempt of the source experience! You are incorrectly trying to reassert the tower of elite spiritual states over and above nature and direct empiricism by affirmed subjective experience and verified objective observation.

Chris: I like the idea of free will as a transcendent. I don't accept certainty, or faith as in this category.

John: Free will has to be free to do something, which is to decide something independently from other determinants. Thus we are free to be certain and have faith. You are also free to not have such faith. That's what free will means. Then live and see how it works out for you, but do not require it of others.

Chris: You are incorrectly attributing me to requiring lack of faith. Saying an assumption is not true is not "requiring" it to be untrue. It's the assumption itself that is invalid, so truth requires honesty. We are not free to be certain and have faith, or not as the case may be. We are living biological organisms with spiritual pretensions, in a universe with realities and empirical truths. Free will means: the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion (Oxford Languages). It doesn't mean the arbitrary freedom to believe misinformation that has consequences for others. You may have spiritual pretensions but decisions have consequences, so if you entertain a false world view, particularly a religious one that is actually inconsistent with how the Cosmos as a whole (subjective and objective) manifests and continue to believe this and act upon it, it has consequences fo the future of life.

In particular there is a difference between requiring faith, which is what morally prescriptive religions do and what a cosmology does which is to show us how it actually IS transparently, so we can decide more accurately that our assumptions may be at variance with reality and harmful to our's and life's futures. I may protest and be a voice crying in the wilderness but I am clear as pure water that there is no moral imperative here.

I want to make clear what faith actually arises from. Faith as a concept arises from trust. Verifiable trust is the foundation of gatherer-hunter long-term judgment of good character. It has later been extrapolated to faith in the spiritual divine, which is NOT verifiable.

faith (n.) mid-13c., faith, feith, fei, fai "faithfulness to a trust or promise; loyalty to a person; honesty, truthfulness," from Anglo-French and Old French feid, foi "faith, belief, trust, confidence; pledge" (11c.), from Latin fides "trust, faith, confidence, reliance, credence, belief," from root of fidere "to trust,"from PIE root *bheidh- "to trust, confide, persuade.” From early 14c. as "assent of the mind to the truth of a statement for which there is incomplete evidence," especially "belief in religious matters" (matched with hope and charity). Since mid-14c. in reference to the Christian church or religion; from late 14c. in reference to any religious persuasion. From late 14c. as "confidence in a person or thing with reference to truthfulness or reliability," also "fidelity of one spouse to another." Also in Middle English "a sworn oath," hence its frequent use in Middle English oaths and asseverations.

In Christianity we have faith, hope and charity – later termed love, but faith is prone to "obsession" as both Augustine and Gregory state. The necessity of faith in Jesus is Christianity's short-circuit to eternal life. The fact that Augustine, the founder of the incorrect notion of original sin, said this of faith is a signal warning! Are you sure you want to espouse this against the empirical truth of the Cosmos itself?

charity (n.) late Old English, "benevolence for the poor," also "Christian love in its highest manifestation," from Old French charité "(Christian) charity, mercy, compassion; alms; charitable foundation" (12c.), from Latin caritatem (nominative caritas) "costliness; esteem, affection," from carus "dear, valued" (from PIE *karo-, from root *ka- "to like, desire”). In the Vulgate the Latin word often is used as translation of Greek agape "love" — especially Christian love of fellow man — perhaps to avoid the sexual suggestion of Latin amor). The Vulgate also sometimes translated agape by Latin dilectio, noun of action from diligere "to esteem highly, to love”.

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul places the greater emphasis on Charity (Love). "So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." First, because it informs the other two: "It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." According to Augustine of Hippo, from a temporal perspective, love lasts, while "Hope isn't hope if its object is seen," and faith gives way to possession. This view is shared by Gregory of Nyssa.

John: To clarify further, what Im proposing is that existential symbiosis is a manifestation of causal holism - autopoiesis. Thus life forms are temporary and evolutionary while strategic organization is more enduring at the species level and holistic principles, which build to a natural morality at the ecosystem level, manifest even deeper latent truths of nature. This structuring of levels of reality is not an illusion but the causal basis for SEC when considered as a result rather than the origin. That opens the system to natural consideration of experiences of faith and God without imposing personal judgments. There is nothing in that ontology that requires human definition in order to be true except human creations. In this view we are doing what nature does, including our ability to ignore parts of nature for a time, while experience then teaches deeper knowledge.

Chris: It’s not scientific to invent a causal metaphysics and then claim Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is a product of it without empirical evidence. SEC is an empirical cosmology that matches both natural and physical science and conscious experience of ultimate reality. It is not a token, product or process of a hypothetical metaphysical description in which autopoiesis is construed to be a formative cosmological principle:

The term autopoiesis (from Greek αὐτo- (auto-) 'self', and ποίησις (poiesis) 'creation, production') refers to a system capable of producing and maintaining itself by creating its own parts. The term was introduced in the 1972 publication Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to define the self-maintaining chemistry of living cells. The concept has since been applied to the fields of cognition, systems theory, architecture and sociology. Niklas Luhmann briefly introduced the concept of autopoiesis to organizational theory.

Autopoiesis is a neat concept when framed as a biological principle of feedback systems complementing physical laws, but it is teleological without being innovative, so in evolutionary terms we have to look beyond autopoiesis to the quantum basis of mutation and natural and sexual selection to see how innovation actually occurs.

John: Regarding “not free to be certain and have faith”, are you sure? I must suppose not, but if you were certain I would ask what maintains that certainty?

Chris: I already explained this evidentially in the following sentences. We are living biological organisms with spiritual pretensions, in a universe with ultimate realities and empirical truths. Free will doesn't mean the arbitrary freedom to believe misinformation that has consequences for others. If you entertain a false world view, particularly a religious one that is inconsistent with how the Cosmos as a whole (subjective and objective) manifests and continue to believe this and act upon it, it has negative consequences for the future of life. There will then need to be a corrective reaction from others to avoid this exploitation and a possible Fermi extinction. That’s not prescriptive morality it’s natural!

The most invidious combination is certainty of faith in a self-reinforcing “autopoietic” feedback loop, which is not free-will at all. Brain studies of religious belief contrast with those of entheogens and compassionate meditators in that religious faith abets overweening self-certainty maintained by vigilance to any risks to order, accompanied by prefrontal excitation of dopamine pathways. In conservative religious societies, this is accompanied by increasing suspicion of others as infidels and holy war, either for defence, or for outright supremacy. The Western tradition declares human male dominion over woman and nature in which dominion is as a ruler walking among his subjects. In the Eastern tradition wild life is simply regarded as a lower karmic state and species identities are ignored, so one concludes the Eastern tradition is practising intentional ignorance of the sanctity of the diversity of life in favour of the round of sentient beings centred on humanity and the notion of reincarnation.

I am a faithfully non-religious person who has had a moksha experience of ultimate reality. I thus have a cosmological duty to the truth to defend the visionary state that is the quintessence of mystical experience that lies at the source of religion, while being faithful to the universe and fecund nature. I would call it a “divine calling”, but it has the wrong resonance in this debate because it is too evocative of fallible spirituality. The idea that this is confrontational, or preaching a moral imperative shows a deep misunderstanding of apocalyptic paradigm change. It is controversial, to put the cat among the pigeons of complacency that would invoke a tragedy of the commons. It doesn’t have to be violent or compulsive, but it is a dangerous path to travel without falling into the crack between the worlds.

And when Isa came with clear arguments he said: I have come to you indeed with wisdom,

and that I may make clear to you part of what you differ in. (Q 43.63)

Vinod: Consciousness is holistic and single which can neither be divided into parts not produced from part proto-consciousness. This fact is demonstrated from the fact that consciousness-self, subjective experiences and cognition in our functional brain is single holistic one. None of our self, SEs can be divided into parts. From childhood to youth to old age, the size/ weight/ number of neurons in our brain have increased/ decreased on day to day basis. Had consciousness-self, SEs and cognition been a dual aspect of the brain, our self and SEs should also have increased/ decreased in line with the increase/ decrease of the size/ weight/ number of neurons in the brain. But this is not observed.

Chris: Vinod’s comment is correct. It applies to ALL intellectual notions of subjectivity, philosophical, spiritual and theistic. How devastating this is applies to every notion you discuss. Each of the conscious researchers in these groups is attempting to reduce ultimate reality to a model of itself by using pseudo-physical analogies:

"Language is the stuff almost all human culture is made of. Human rights, for example, aren’t inscribed in our DNA. Rather, they are cultural artefacts we created by telling stories and writing laws. Gods aren’t physical realities. Rather, they are cultural artefacts we created by inventing myths and writing scriptures" (Yuval Noah Harari)

Using everyday rational thinking and physical sensory observation and some controlled meditative or spiritual experiences to construct models which are abstractions of objective reality that don’t fit or begin to explore the depths of subjective experience is futile. This is because the methods are still observational rather than expereintial, using palpable objective concepts and hoping they will fill the experiential abyss, but it’s all armchair philosophy.

Subjective empiricism is completely different from these parlour games of causality. First you need to make the journey deep into the unknown conscious territory, to a possibly scary place close to where no one has ever gone before. Then you return from this quest and let us know what you experienced. That’s the subjective scientific empirical method!

I did this on mushrooms with Symbiotic Existential Cosmology and reported a completely different cosmology. It has no presumptions about astral or spiritual worlds and makes only foundation statements that may seem obvious and facile but are neither irrefutable nor unverifiable, that no one has sought or been able to challenge – Consciousness is primary but the universe is necessary. Subjective conscious volition has efficacy over the physical universe. Subjectivity is primal, although full consciousness is emergent (in the eucaryote transition). The universe rises to cosmic climax in biodiverse symbiosis and hence the urgent need to make nature and the survival of life’s diversity the primary focus of spirituality.

Note also that ultimate reality, as I experienced in Brahman had both abstract expression as the eternal ‘fact’ of the conscious existential cosmos, as well as being a persona Ishvara/Ishvari that is my complementary ‘Elohisitc apotheosis, just as Brahman is complementary to atman. It is a direct NDE type visitation communicating an essential pivotal insight for the survival of conscious life. In a sense it is a psychic manifestation of my entheogen-induced brain state, but it is operating in an unbounded non-encapsulated form of free dynamic that just is – as an undivided whole – NOT pan-protopsychic, not wholistic, but whole, in and of itself.

The only way we can even begin on this quest is to accept that subjective empiricism is to "take the trip” first, to make the journey to the other side as a whole and return to tell the tale as a transformed whole. We need to start by actually doing it. We cn;t just sit talking about it and talking about talking about it. We need to deeply explore these states as a mental cosmology in the first person, scary or not. Until we have we don’t even have a handle on the question. It’s no use reporting on the NDEs, OBEs Dreams and Visions of others. We ALL need to be first person experiencers of the entire cosmic geography of consciousness first!!! See Groff’s comments!

Avtar Singh: Is the objective universe fundamentally probabilistic or infected with measurement caused probabilities?

Chris: It’s severely infected (including with consciousness)! There is no probabilistic randomness producing actual outcomes. Its 100% “infected”.

Avtar: Is fundamental consciousness an eternal universal reality rather than a late comer evolutionary biological consciousness?

Chris: SEC sees fundamental consciousness as evolving in a similar way to how we perceive the physical universe evolves. So it starts out primally vestigial like the big bang does and then, becomes consciousness with the eucaryote endo-symbiosis, and rises to climax where it becomes cosmic consciousness realised in extreme states of enlightenment in the biota which become physically asymptotic to the fundamental expression of the laws of nature expressed in symmetry-breaking. So it gets to be the full complexity of fundamental consciousness and arises when the physical conditions permit in the mid-life of the Cosmos. Eternality is perspectival, so we can look sideways on at space-time and it’s eternal, everything is there from alpha to Omega, but inside, it is evolving temporally, so eternal and temporal are complementary aspects. In the temporal experiential, the interactive evolution is from alpha to Sigma a climax state of Paradise on the cosmic equator. So there’s no meaning to eternal being transcendent and temporal being ephemeral illusion.

There are two cosmological processes: (1) The gross energy budget. This is the way traditional cosmology works, so we start with the big bang and end with a collapsing crunch or an ever-expanding heat death. (2) Interactive complexity and consciousness. Here the evolution is from the origin to a state of Paradise on the cosmic equator in space-time where the quantum interactive processes reach optimal climax associated with conscious biota. Looked at from the outside, life is an eternal manifestation in space-time that goes on in the mid-life of the mature universe but may end later when everything goes pear-shaped energetically. But from the eternal point of view, this doesn’t matter, because the manifestation came about and realised itself. There may be more but that’s the foundation.

Paul Werbos: But does anyone actually believe (or give more than 20% probability to) the theory that we live in "a multiverse" as promulgated by David Deutsch? … I do not believe it any more because I now see a solid alternative, even more hard core in realism.

Chris: We never see the multiverse because the moment we interact discretely , it collapses into "Schrödinger cats”, so your question about believing in the multiverse is a misconception. Rejecting the multiverse in favour of hard-core realism reminds me of the Gospel of Thomas (43):

His disciples said to him, "Who are you, that you should say these things to us?” Jesus said: "You do not realize who I am from what I say to you, but you have become like the Jews, for they (either) love the tree and hate its fruit (or) love the fruit and hate the tree.”

Paul: Are you saying I should shut up, that you are the avatar of Jesus here??? … You really would understand so much better if you could at least begin to grasp the best current physics. …

Chris: I was actually referring to your use of your favoured quantum physics interpretations, to the exclusion of others, but the real tree is the tree of life’s evolution and the fruit is living biodiversity, currently under threat of mass extinction.

Over the last two days, I have taken a simple practical step towards realising Symbiotic Existential Cosmology in terms of actually addressing key existential threats to biospheric and human survival. This is not going to be easy and I can't do it on my own. We have to do this together. I do know what I am doing and the quest is eminently worthy, as you all know in your bones. Casting lots on my garments is an unwise bet Paul. There is no sign on the horizon any of you have a better option. The impossible we must needs do today so that tomorrow we can know we did the right thing for all in good time.

I would like all of you to support my quest to save the diversity of life in the biosphere of planet Earth from a mass extinction on cosmological time scales, heal the climate crisis, end the risks of nuclear self-immolation, and restore the sanctity of the biota from human and AI takeover, not least so that Homo sapiens can survive as a species, because this is the one way I can see we can actually proceed to resolve the risk of a Fermi apocalypse before it is too late, quickly and democratically, as one is to one.

My father used to say as a doctor that he could count the number of people who had died in his watch on the fingers of one or both hands, so I want to convey to you how I see the current situation.

Let’s take our right hand and list five existential problems of personal survival, e.g. (1) direct health and good medical science, (2) adequate access to food (3) sufficient active “income" to care for our family, (4) social safety and human contact (5) sheltered habitation and sufficient land to grow our own food if the need arose.

In the left hand we have: (1) An impending human-caused mass extinction of Life, (2) Human induced climate crisis, (3) A protracted acute risk of nuclear holocaust, (4) risk of AI takeover given existing human technological takeover and (5) increasing risk of collapse of technological society from economic effects of (1-4) given the fragility of urban food chains, electronic telecommunications and political and social institutions.

The realities are that we are all fiddling while Rome burns because the right hand does not understand the dire significance of the left. We all have to balance risk anxiety against practical common sense hope for the future and avoiding the health impacts of anxiety uncertainty, so what we are doing is trying to deal with the right hand issues, while we have no control over the left-hand ones. But the left hand issues affect 8 billion people and the whole future of planet Earth, while the right hand issues affect only one or the few people in our immediate family. We are forced to treat both the apocalyptic threats and the simple personal survival questions on the same footing, but they are not. None of us can have any real confidence there will be a living Earth in 2100, let alone one habitable for our families and offspring. This is insane, irrational and untenable. What I am saying and doing is sane and could save us all.

I think what we need to be aiming at are the principal existential threats to humanity and the biosphere as outlined and a human heart and mind response to put these at the top of the list of a catalytic process of communication to catalyse cultural redemption. I don't see a rationale for ranking priorities as such, because they are all urgent and the principal is survival by addressing the core existential threats as primary.

I see the key principle as preserving life on Earth into which all these crises feed without getting confused by secondary human demands.

The key is coalescence – that is accepting that the need to act is primary and drawing in people on the basis of strengthening expertise, reach and ground roots support.

I don't see this as a religious or spiritual initiative or movement as such, but it is clear that belief systems are the way deep paradigm shifts have occurred throughout history. I think we do need to believe the necessity to act to save life on Earth as a primary priority. Science has also had major paradigm shifts such as the Copernican and physics revolutions from classical to quantum and relativity but these do not impinge in the same way on human motivation. Therefore I think there is a quasi-religious dimension in it but it’s very complicated and contentious, because our beliefs are vastly more divergent than our science, which is also subject to interpretations.

I am trying to take a position that upholds the sacredness of the diversity of life life over spiritual elitism, speculation and religious doctrine across the board and avoids elite utopian fantasies involving human technological dominion and tries to avoid any claims that lie outside empirical science, except for primal subjectivity as a cosmological foundation complementing the physical universe. It is idiosyncratic in involving psychedelics as a technique but that isn’t central to the core need to protect life on Earth except as a catalyst, which it clearly is, in invoking a connected view of nature and consciousness, through natural moksha, that differs from both Eastern and Western elite spiritual traditions.

When I planned the millennial vigil to Jerusalem, I did this in a full academic sabbatical on a paid academic salary. I had contacted the grandson of one of the founders of Tel Aviv who had conceived to host a millennial celebration in Jerusalem who agreed to host myself and Jane at the Academy of Jerusalem for a 12 day workshop on reflowering the Tree of Life. I did this knowing exactly the potential for trouble facing the conflict-ridden nexus of the three core Monotheistic religions, but mindful that the world's traditional credibility has much more at stake and is more in question, than my own idiosyncratic vision. We succeeded in doing what we intended – to celebrate the hieros gamos and invoking the epoch of the Tree of Life to culminate the apocalyptic epoch of Christianity, to complete the rite of passage to the new epoch in a short unpretentious sleight of hand to establish the key precedent. At the time I couldn't admit it was the mushroom that had sent me there 15 years before in the 1980s, because we were still in the psychedelic dark ages in 1999.

The director of the school approved my application for a residency grant at a US university, on the basis that I didn't claim to be walking on water. I travelled to the US where I visited psychedelic experts, including staying with the mycologist Paul Stamets in his little mushroom yurt temple. We then left for Bolivia and toured the burning season in the dry topical forest and then to the Peruvian Andes, where we descended from Cusco down the Urubamba by truck and dugout canoe, emerging through the Pongo de Manique into the Amazon basin, filming burning, logging and cattle ranching, down the Ucayali, where we took ayahuasca at Yarinacocha, to Iquitos, Manaus and then up the Madeira to the Pantanal. We then traversed Europe from Amsterdam where we took mushrooms, visiting both pagan and Christian sites like Saintes Marie de la Mer to retrace the mythical steps of Magdalen and to the Vatican. We then flew to Jerusalem for the millennial celebrations, holding an all night vigil of a hundred forming the collective mashiach above the Dome of the Rock to pronounce the reflowering anointing by God and Gaia to renew the old wastes as a garden causeth the things sewn in it to spring forth, on millennium Eve and marching in a group of 13 on the Eastern gates of the Old city on the Epiphany, to declare the Gates of Mercy open and to celebrate the hieros gamos in the name of the Song of Songs at the Western wall. We were hosted by liberal Jewish people throughout. From there I transited to Nepal and overland to Varanasi to pay my respects to Kali as the most formidable form of the cosmic feminine, before returning to NZ.

If you examine the thirteen core principles of Resplendence, you will see that they are in no way any form of doctrinal religion.

Amit Aurora: Have a few questions for which I have been exploring answers. What are the means by which the world may be returned to a union with Brahman? What is the nature of the work that is called for? How is any one particular citizen-individual to be expected to engage with that work? How does situation and context affect the nature of the work? I would request feedback and answers in a more scientific way and not in a spiritual way.

Chris: My take on this is simple. Brahman is ultimate reality. The true experience of ultimate reality causes one to witness in personal consciousness the entire sweep of reality outside our usual personal view of birth and death, hence moksha is the escape into ultimate truths of ultimate long-term survival of life and humanity as a species within it. This means rescuing humanity from destroying the planet's habitats and biosphere through nuclear holocaust, mass species extinction and climate crisis. It only takes one brief glimpse of ultimate reality to make this abundantly clear. The entire flux of human urgency needs to go into biospheric redemption now. We all need to coalesce on the existential crises and provide the urgent determination to act.

If experience of Brahman as ultimate reality has any practical scientific meaning at all, rather than a self-satisfying spiritual pursuit, it shouldn't just bring bliss, but an acute redemption of planetary awakening (enlightenment), through us realising what we are actually doing to the world as we speak and what needs to be done immediately.

It has to involve transcending the zeitgeist in scientific terms and natural terms as well as spiritual self-realisation. All the other issues including ending poverty, economic sustainability, spiritual realisation, recognition that biological consciousness must not be overtaken by AI, and so on, will be resolved if and only if we direct our lives to the preservation of life on Earth while we ARE alive. It really amazes me that no one seems to be able to grasp this very simple acid test!

Grant Gillett: I agree with Chris: consciousness emerges from incarnation with the development of the ability to dream dreams and see visions and then devise ways of speaking the truth in love so that what is live amongst us never dies but lives on eternally so that death and the Norse ‘Hel’ lose their sting.

Joshua Davis: Grant, I concur !!!

Chris: Here’s the problem with the East. The West comes from a tradition of theistic creationism. This is much more easy to scientifically reject than “Vedic science”. We all know that the Sabbatical six day creation is an enchanting allegory by the priestly author in which trees are “meat” suggesting vegetarianism, but the plants appear before the solar system, so its plain wrong in evolutionary terms. Anyone with any honesty knows Biblical creationism is a false cosmology, despite repeated attempts of Christian creationist ID proponents to convince us otherwise.

But “Vedic science” is a different kind of problem.

Fig 295: The sheer profusion of galaxies in the James Webb telescope.

1. Is it true that primal cosmic consciousness on its own can generate all the complexity, solidity of the physical universe that sustains all life within it as a living climax of physical profundity becoming conscious insight? Or is it a fantasy derived from sitting in Yogic posture in renunciation from the world? If primal cosmic consciousness is supreme and complete, why was the universe created in a form degenerating into the Kali Yuga?

2. Is the Vedic notion of transcendence actually the discovery of ultimate reality, or is it just a state of seemingly egoless repose gained through costly self control, perhaps perceived as equilibrium, or joy, bliss, or “transcendence” itself? Isn’t ultimate reality a much wilder more complete experience, in which we are immersed, embedded, incarnate in the physical universe that is perhaps a multiverse teeming with the potential for mortal organismic conscious life, in the immortal passage of the generations, in which mortality and this worldly existence, which Buddhists condescendingly call “mundane existence” is not illusion at all, but the edge-of-chaos climax of cosmic enlightenment becoming manifest in us?

3. Is our ultimate duty to transcendence over “mundane existence”, or to be fully immersed in intimate immortal symbiosis with the entire flux of life, so that consciousness throughout the universe can come to know and transcend itself in physical, biological and subjective conscious “gnosis” of the entire cosmic condition, manifest both physically and experientially as one is to one? Can we afford, even for a moment to deviate from the ultimate respect of life to an illusory transcendence, which causes us to demote the life of the Cosmos to a mere stepping stone to be discarded in full union?

If the answer to any of these critically important questions is that the Vedic assumptions may not be 100% true, it is then our “divine” duty to seek the truth of ultimate reality in the raw and not hold back in renunciation from the high noon of existence, to settle for the slumber of renunciation of the physical cycle of life in favour of endless, dreamless sleep of “transcendent” samadhi.

If samadhi were true enlightenment as expressed in the Vedas three thousand or so years ago, humankind would already be enlightened and the world would be a blessed blue-green planet, where there are no nuclear weapons, where asteroids are avoided and the diversity of life is resplendent in immortal paradise. It is not. There is no sign that Vedic insights lead to any urgency at all to preserve life immortal or to reject the use of ultimate nuclear force, as indeed the Bhagavad Gita declares. Therefore the prosecution rests with the evidence before us.

John Kineman: The issue is that a logical description of oneness also has to be constructed in such a way that it explains illusive breaks of that oneness into the separate systems we seem to experience. It is not as simple as just saying “One” or “not One”; with regard to knowledge, it has to explain both.

Chis: Why seek oneness at all? Isn’t it a monolithic clunker?

John: Seeking knowledge is seeking oneness. There isn't an alternative.

Chris: I see knowledge as seeking ultimate reality, not oneness.

John: Since enlightenment is a human experience, science should be structured in a way that does not exclude it.

Chris: But this is not conceding that science can also include it. It is a plea for the ineffable. That’s not mysticism but mystification. How do you distinguish hard oppressive oneness from soft diverse oneness?

John: What are these ideas? I haven't encountered them and have no idea what they mean. Are you referring to social structures? That isn't Oneness. Oneness isn't material. Forcing things together or into a mold doesn't unify anything. Understanding unifies.

Chris: Take the Islamic view of scripture, sharia and society together as a coercive monolith reinforced by death for apostasy if you want a cogent example. Atonement “at-one-ment” is also a noir concept in the sense of making amends for a wrong or injury, in atonement for our sins. Understanding doesn't necessarily unify and shouldn’t if it is aiming at truth. Moksha can take you outside the inside out and then you hit alien territory and realise both scientific and religious assumptions are cartoon level descriptions that are manifestly in contradiction to nature. It may put you outside the box but it doesn't and shouldn’t necessarily lead to unity, but rather a paradigm shift.

Chris: Oneness is a misrepresentation of emotional empathy, typified by the MDMA experience of oxytocin touchy feely togetherness. If that’s enlightenment, we can all give one another a pat on the back and get tingles down our spine and let the forests burn! So enlightenment and the pursuit of knowledge cut deeper than mere empathy.

John: It seems that you are confusing love with pleasure and oneness with irresponsibility. The likely reason for those mistakes is conflation & confusion of material and spiritual domains of existence.

Chris: That is your own confusion speaking! You really can't try to claim I am confusing material and spiritual and by doing so you are reifying spiritual. All the evils of religion emerge from higher spiritual notions turned into doctrine and then retribution for deviation. I’m simply pointing out that MDMA causes a "chymical marriage" experience, probably due to oxytocin, which is socially conducive to oneness but can't be claimed to be enlightenment. Psychedelics on the other hand can result in a "chymical moksha” of subjective consciousness and natural reality with radically different outcomes from Vedic renunciation, as I keep trying to explain which can't be at all easily dismissed as maya or illusion and may be the "sang raal” – or natural Holy Grail of existence.

John: There is no intellectual bridge from scientific models to the actual experience of enlightenment. I consider enlightenment to be realizing one's true nature beyond all description. It is our natural state discovered by practice. As such it can't be described or represented by any equation, relation, or other syntax; It is pure meaning. But it does not in any way preclude science.

Chris: There are a chain of assumptions here, each of which I question. Why is there no bridge? Is this really true? If you claim it is our natural state, why is it presumed to be beyond all description? And what kind of description? The Upanishads? The tales of the vision quest? I see this as a tacit assumption of Eastern thought that is probably untrue. And what is "pure meaning”? I think this is mystifying enlightenment, which if it is a natural condition, as you say, is experienceable and fully bridgeable by undertaking the experiential quest oneself. Anything that can be subjectively experienced can in principle be described, if not defined, not withstanding Laotsu’s aphorism that the way that can be told is not the Tao. The description is not the experience but it can point to it, just as his statement itself does.

To take an example. I can make the claim that enlightenment is a fully natural condition that can occur in the biota. That both meditation on its own very slowly and under psychedelics more effortlessly can lead directly to bridging the gap. That this state is knowable and fully describable in a way which allows the subject to know what is happening and to appreciate its significance. Furthermore I can say that the very long slow meditative route tends to arrive at states which are informatively sparse and lead to notions like emptiness which in the TM approach is described as transcendent bliss over the divided regimes of physical reality and consciousness. Hence you seek oneness. But Brahman is sat chit ananda – "existence, consciousness, and bliss" or "truth, consciousness, bliss”. This is a more troublesome question and the trouble comes with “existence” and “truth”.

I can counter the ineffable with the idea that psychedelics do something physical to the brain which also then escapes the ego and leads to an experiential flood that leads to transcendence in a much more informative way, making the mystical state both real and realisable. You can try to counter that this is an unnatural prop and that enlightenment can only be gained by renunciation, delicate persistent meditative control and seeking the resource of enlightenment within ourselves unsullied by chemical or gross natural influences, for fear of “breaking down the doors of perception with an axe” as you have said. But I can refute this on the basis that the egotistical condition is an evolved necessity for organismic survival and that the isolated human species is not a natural receptacle for enlightenment, except in the cases of a few visionary individuals, who are genetically endowed with a propensity for visionary states and these become the sages to which everyone turns to justify a process they can't themselves achieve because they don't have the same brain chemistry. For example natural serotonin levels can vary up to 100-fold between individuals. Hence the rareness of samadhi and moksha and the futility of claiming the meditative route is the "oneness and only" route.

Furthermore I can claim that this evolutionary process is entirely natural and a feature of the way the diversity of life evolves to fill all the available niches, one of which consists of tweaking our brain dynamics so that, given added meditative techniques, can bring neurodynamics asymptotically into a cosmological state, once the external polarities of self and other are relaxed, so that we enter into a kind of cosmic reverie in which we can observe the inner states of consciousness in more definitive detail.

Up until this week, I was working on the basis that meeting Brahman is a “higher” state of consciousness in the Eastern model, but on reflection, I realised the whole assumption of "higher spirituality” is a Vedic doctrine that doesn't make natural sense at all. Neither does the assumption that matter is a more gross form of consciousness, nor that the quantum universe can just be generated by the conscious mind in samadhi. I think this is insulting to both conscious life and the universe. There is no point in the Cosmos going to the trouble of making the awesome universe in which we exist and in which life is possible, if we just stare at our navels and say it just a dream in the mind of Vishnu, while we are literally trashing the planet and don’t know what to do about it. So I am seeking a completely new kind of middle way that is both conscious and physical entwined at the edge of chaos between the two. This is the very foundations of cosmology speaking.

Let me try to explain my journey and where I think it might be heading to help everyone make sense of this. I started out in the Western tradition as a liberal Anglican then read William James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience” and began taking psychedelics. This showed me all the religious and scientific assumptions about consciousness were out the window simplifications. Then I settled into academic life and on my first sabbatical set out to travel the world's cultures as a primal 1pp savage, with three priorities (1) to go to the sources of the world’s power plants, (2) to travel India and steep myself in the life of the temples and (3) to interview as many Nobel laureates as I could about life the universe and everything. I did all three, bar the first Amazon journey which came four years later.

Then I started being a mushroom visionary, living with the ally as a mycologist, and had ongoing visionary experiences as well as attending the Native American peyote church and taking ayahuasca in the Amazon. This brought me to a point of realisation that I was secretly practising a sacramental “religion” which had the capacity for transformatively transcendent experiences that made the Christian Eucharist by comparison an empty vessel of the flesh and blood of Jesus. It could heal the biosphere in a new intimate symbiotic life culture of immortal survival. Christianity had originally taken the West by storm as a pagan-Hebrew hybrid in which Christ was a man-god psychopomp administering eternal life amid the blood of martyrdom, Crusade and Inquisition, in which the Gnostics and the Witches were burned and drowned and Yeshua’s crucifixion became the example used by Islamic suicide bombers and the pilots of 9-11 to wreak terror on the innocent.

I couldn't admit to any of this psychedelic mysticism because mushrooms were first schedule forbidden substances, but I began to write the precursor of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology in “Unified Field Theories and the Origin of Life”. Then in the 1980s on a mushroom trip on our wilderness land, the mushrooms told me that if the world hadn’t fixed the biosphere by 2000 I should go to Jerusalem and pronounce the epoch of reflowering the Tree of Life. I duly kept the covenant with this in my 1999-2000 academic sabbatical vigil to the Amazon, Jerusalem and Varanasi, so that I pronounced the sacred union of Shakti-Shiva in the Song of Songs and the reflowering of the Tree of Life hidden since Fall in Eden as the epoch succeeding the apocalyptic, as simple rites of passage on millennium Eve and the Epiphany.

As followers of Eastern traditions, you all accept the notion of karma, so I saw in my name and birth date and its relation with the genesis of nuclear weapons, and my now holding the holy grail of the sacramental tradition as a karmic responsibility which I could not fairly afford to ignore. The quest to save the Tree of Life from existential annihilation and end the risk of nuclear Armageddon is too potent an apocalyptic context to abandon, even more serious to planetary survival than the siege of Jerusalem in AD 66. In the same way the “four sights” of Buddha – age, disease, death and renunciation are a crafted basis to see the Gautama’s role as karmic. You can blame it on Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell! At the same time, the Gospel of Thomas shows Yeshua’s teachings to be idiosyncratic insights speaking of genuine creative paradigm-changing inspiration, although his Dionysian propensity for chaos in the canonical Gospels took him and world history over the edge of chaos into violent oblivion.

All my visionary experiences head into what the East terms samadhi and moksha and my last epiphany was an iconic meeting with Brahman, in which Ishvara/Ishvari or ‘Elohim ever so compassionately informed me that their eternal consciousness, which was also my consciousness, was as vulnerable as my mortal life, because without life, cosmic consciousness has no observer and can become lost to history. So because I am mortal I must needs save the life throughout not just the biosphere, but the entire universe, which I have been endeavouring to do ever since, in writing Symbiotic Existential Cosmology and communicating with you all in the process. I am writing it as a Rosetta Stone for enlightenment, truthfully as I have experienced it as the primal savage, meaning the conscious mind of the forest dweller, (Old French sauvage Latin salvaticus, silvaticus "wild, woodland," literally "of the woods"), just as the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad declares. This native vision is not Maya not illusion/delusion. It is 1pp truth-speaking.

But I also have a deep relationship with and responsibility for Vedanta and for the shamanic and animistic traditions, as the Quetzalcoatl passage from “The Plumed Serpent” states, as the avatar on the stepping stone between the day and the night (order and chaos). The same way this speaks of transcending the Christian doctrine, it also means reviewing the tacit assumptions of Vedanta, as the silvan savage I have become through my fate. In particular it means liberating the etherial tower of ephemeral astral and spiritual fantasies that are extraneous to the deep truths of Vedanta and have simply become part of the reincarnation doctrine that reduces samadhi and moksha from a realisable vision quest in this life into a miasma of realms like the Buddhist wheel of life, with fictitious titans and hungry ghosts and makes for an endless cycle of waiting through infinite lifetimes with no real prospect of global realisation of the precious life our planet nurtures and which gave rise to our conscious existence and will sustain us in millennia and millions of years of evolutionary flowering, if we don't commit a tragedy of the commons first, both through our business-as-usual exploitation and our cultural, social and religious elitism and hubris towards the diversity of life.

This is what I mean when I say that the buck stops with us here and now for the entire state of the universe. This is why I say ultimate reality is also the universe in which we consciously exist. To truly experience enlightenment is not the end of an ineffable road. It is not Omega but Sigma immersed in Paradise in the immortal life flow. Bob in his post suggested the immortal didn't need protection because they were "beyond ordinary notions of physical, biological life and death”. This is dangerously untrue. The whole scope of life immortal is vulnerable when we don't yet know life exists elsewhere. The one meaningful act and primary responsibility we have and can perform is to secure the protection of life immortal and particularly those life forms, such as the smaller primates who could regenerate conscious life as we know it in a human-caused catastrophe and with them their verdant habitats. Otherwise it will be only the rats who can save it. Acting to save the Tree of Life to me is the true mark of enlightenment, not just experiencing bliss, or its conscious higher and fewer tail feathers in the aether.

John: Thanks for this wonderful autobiography! In previous posts you may not have seen I related much of my own journey to biospheric evangelism, which began with a vision of the jungles of Africa when I was very young, despite my programmed development as an engineer and physical scientist. The vision eventually won out bringing some expertise in rigorous realism (overly constrained in the physical sciences) to the more spiritually entailed world of life, with a keen desire to the deeper reality there, eventually including my own snd our own psycho-physical and bio-spiritual nature - mind-body-life-spirit.

Perhaps preservation/conservation, respect for life, is the enlightened state - I think so too. But is nature created in a way that can truly be destroyed, or is it our own experience that we impoverish by taking that course? Is it perhaps the case that nature gives each new life the opportunity to learn this lesson, making a temporary sacrifice to allow it? How far we might go may be up to us, while nature, ever self creating, can be patient as well as offering both beauty and correction. When we learn that we harm nature only by harming ourselves more, perhaps then the collective evolution will take a different path.

Chris: Your experience of the houses appearing on the other side of forest reminds me of a dream I had as an adolescent, in dry parched trees on the edge of the desert and a Lion was staring at me with eyes of both pity and deep contempt and sorrow, because I was of the species which was bringing nature to her knees.

And yes you are right about nature. My second peyote meeting at Taos pueblo had both a male roadman and a female mother waters. Bertha, the mother waters said that we are suffering hurting the Earth, but nature can look after herself so we should take care not to harm ourselves by our desecration of nature. Of course this is true, but the costs are dire. We know life has survived the Permian extinction and the Chicxulub asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, but the kind of damage humanity is inflicting is insidious and pervasive. A study by scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science (Greenspoon et al. (2023) concludes that wild land mammals alive today have a total mass of 22m tonnes. Humanity now weighs in at a total of around 390m tonnes. Domesticated species, such as sheep and cattle, in addition to other hangers-on such as urban rodents, add a further 630m tonnes. Thus as of 2023 wild land mammals represent only 22/(390+630)=0.02 or 2%.

You are right that in a major planetary crisis, nature will survive humanity and humanity is vary likely to be the first to go due to cultural fragility. But do we want to self-annihilate, leaving the world to the rats, slugs and slime moulds to regenerate over another 100 million years? Yes eucaryotes will survive. But the dinosaurs never recovered did they? We really do have the capacity to cause a mass extinction by combined whiplash of climate crisis tipping points, global habitat destruction and a nuclear holocaust caused by xenophobic frustrations with the very processes we are setting in motion and their negative impacts on economic and cultural survival. I’m not a pessimist, but I think the world does need saving from itself and humanity from our worst instincts.

One of the things about the Western tradition is that it believes good human social action can collectively change the zeitgeist. It’s harder to do this in the Vedic tradition because it preaches individual renunciation as the ultimate solution. The Western tradition is apocalyptic and that’s a call to action. If ever there was a time for an unveiling it is now. It doesn’t have to be violent, or confrontational, after all apocalypse is the bridal unveiling in the hieros gamos. That is the true oneness we are seeking! I support climate and biodiversity activism in the way Greenpeace does, but it’s not enough in itself, so I’m trying to go both high and deep when the others just go high and low, both as activists protecting the mangroves and corals and business as usual in the coal pits and hamburger farms.

We are an intelligent cultural species with a deep visionary tradition. Given a plate of entheogenic fungi dropping spores and occasional deep meditation in the midst of the good life, we have all we need to conceive a deeply mystical culture that has the time and grace to preserve the diversity of the living biosphere throughout our generations at the same time as experiencing all the wonders of existence. Because we ARE smart we can build technology that will reduce the risk of a comet or asteroid strike by an order of magnitude. We can devise medical science to use mRNA to vaccinate individual cancers and go a long way towards making Paradise a meaningful word. But we don't need to become supplicant to AI and we can do these things only with care and compassion for life as a whole, even if some people fool themselves into thinking they are so smart they can make a technological cultural utopia that can save us from ourselves. Cultural life is exceedingly fragile. Lethally so. Hence the urgent call to coalesce!

I already mentioned the Gita about nuclear war to John, because it makes an acid test of holy activism:

Wondering if he should renounce the war, Arjuna seeks Krishna's counsel, whose answers and discourse constitute the Gita. Krishna counsels Arjuna to "fulfil his Kshatriya (warrior) duty to uphold the dharma" through Karma ("action”).

This is precisely what I am doing by citing my own karma and taking on the mass extinction of life as a primary Kshatriya, but for the preservation of life rather than its extinction.

India has preemptively armed itself with nuclear weapons:

On 18 May 1974 India detonated an 8-kiloton nuclear device at Pokhran Test Range, becoming the first nation to become nuclear capable outside the five permanent members of United Nations Security Council as well as dragging Pakistan along with it into a nuclear arms race.

The acid test of the Vedic tradition, is to commit to holy war and this is precisely the atmosphere in which nuclear war was invoked upon the planet:

So we have a double paradox. The Gita preaches holy war, but does so based on the dharma of the meditative tradition of the Upanishads, as much as a millennium earlier. The key difference is that the Eastern tradition preaches individual enlightenment while Western religion is social in basis, brotherly love, altruistic punishment and simple faith in Jesus as psychopomp or Yahweh in the Hebrew tradition. The contrast couldn’t be more obvious.

Coalescence is a really simple effective response – to simply address the existential problems by mutual agreement: (1) to forsake nuclear, chemical and biological warfare, (2) to stop trashing the climate and convert to renewable energy and (3) to stop consuming all the available habitats and causing an irreversible genetic and species mass extinction of life on cosmological time scales. It is the most grievous sin any species can commit. We are each culpable by our failure to declare we even agree as a primary existential priority.

John: I see Vedic India in almost the same way. What has India not had to endure? And yet even a thousand years of occupation has mot squashed the gentle power of Vedic wisdom. We in the West, like Diane, think fighting is always the answer. What does it produce in the end? Spiritual India continues today in an unbroken lineage that has endured since the Pleistocene. I misspoke in an earlier post saying it is the longest enduring 'culture' on Earth - There are much older native cultures as was pointed out, but I meant civilization. It is civilization, crowding ourselves into cities, that takes us away from nature. And then crazy unnatural philosophies and political power systems compete. But India has absorbed and tolerated everything that has been thrown at it.

Chris: Yes there are more ancient cultures and I swear by the San for their 150,000 year history of survival as a culture, but I don't think we can excuse the Vedas because of the Muslim and Colonial occupations either.

John: Vedic understanding places spirit before material in every way, in origin, in time, and in importance. It think it sees creation as it really is in nature.

Chris: You are still expressing exactly the attitudes to life in the Vedantic tradition that give cause for concern. This comes full circle back to the very core of the problem. Life is natural and it is physical as well as conscious. Placing spirit before material just defers human physical dominion over nature to spiritual dominion. Then you cite “creation” again, stranding life as “God-created” rather than naturally evolved, robbing nature of her primal fecundity.

Here is a brief quote from Aurobindo which goes to the core of this problem:

According to Sri Aurobindo, in conformity with the oldest Indian scriptures, matter was created by the ultimate or supreme consciousness seeking manifestation. In order to manifest, supreme or absolute consciousness, starting from the full fluidity of the spirit, created graded planes of being, till it reached the state of manifesting the solid density of matter. Sri Aurobindo calls this the process of Involution. The involution of consciousness is the process in which the Supreme or Absolute conceals itself more and more by creating planes of consciousness of increased density, in order to create the density needed for physical manifestation. In each of the planes that were created during the involution, (called typal planes or graded worlds) the absolute or divine consciousness veiled itself increasingly till it was able to produce and manifest the various forms of solid matter. … He continues to explain that in matter the ultimate consciousness is concealed, but the Will of the ultimate consciousness behind this evolutionary process is a gradual unveiling till it reaches a full manifestation of divine life in matter. In other words the evolution or unveiling of consciousness started from the time solid matter manifested.

This is an evolutionary form of religious creationism that is inconsistent with everything we know about the universe. The explanatory gap of the hard problem works both ways. If the objective nature of the physical world can't represent subjective consciousness, neither can the fluidity of spirit traverse the explanatory gap to generate the fermions of matter. The wholistic nature of conscious experience simply does not have the characteristics to create solid matter, and if it did, there is no way the laws of nature would actually be physical laws. We know how fluid dreams can become, with no rhyme or reason. The big rip is one thing, but what about Vishnu waking from his dream? What then? To say that cosmic consciousness had to contrive the entire physical universe makes no sense at all. If consciousness is supreme at the outset, why create matter at all? And if the entire purpose of existence is to regain enlightenment, why weren't we all enlightened in the first place? This simply doesn’t have any of the characteristics of a theory of everything that can explain the standard model of physics, let alone life, and the standard model is symmetry broken in a way which implies the perfection of symmetry is violated so that life can exist. And it’s life that generates consciousness and enlightenment as we come of age.

Something shadowy murmured in the corner of my mind and I went back to the full passage of Michael Ortiz Hill on Trinity in “Dreaming the End of the World: Apocalypse as a rite of Passage “… and of course out of it spills – the Gita courtesy of Oppenheimer – so here we are wrapped up in the nuclear Gita, with yours truly railing against the impossible, to grab hold of the tiller across the Styx, before apocalypse strikes … and Paul called me an avatar of Jesus … so do we coalesce or not?

Oppenheimer said, "We waited until the blast had passed, walked out of the shelter and then it was extremely solemn. We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most were silent" He recalled the terrible and ecstatic eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita, where the warrior Arjuna requests that Vishnu display the nakedness of his transcendental form. Arjuna is cowed in holy terror as the god visits upon him "the radiance of a thousand suns" "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.

Chris: I think we all need to understand that there are three paradoxes here:

(1) The journey IS the destination – Enlightenment is not an end state – It’s the beginning of a journey of world redemption.

(2) Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them – The fruits of enlightenment are the acid test. If people claim to be enlightened, how do they seek to transform the zeitgeist?

(3) The two paths mutually attract – I take entheogens AND I meditate, so there aren't two paths – they are two parts of an organic whole. Neither is complete without the other! So much for the talk of oneness!

I don't accept any kind of “transcendent” state and I don’t accept an Omega "end point" of enlightenment. Enlightenment in the Eastern tradition is so rare everyone talks about transcendence to get there. So they don't even discuss what to do with it after, or what it does for us all or the world – just bliss, bliss, bliss! Transcendence is passé!

Fig297: A quechua belt handed to me by a teenage girl in Cusco, before we went down the Urubamba to the Amazon, who said her grandmother made it. It is the braid of life whose process is unending and unrepeated until death us do part. Not one of the white ornamentations is repeated. Each is unique on both streams above and below. Enlightenment is ongoing, not an Omega state.

The Gospel of Thomas is full of paradoxes. Take this one for example:

Yeshua said, "When you come to dwell in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"

What does this even mean? At least it shows Yeshua as human, not a man-god.

Alex Hankey: Transcendence is automatically achieved once you correctly practice Pratyahara. Several authors like Sri Madhukarnath (Sri M.) have shown clearly that 'Enlightenment' is the starting point for the next phase of the Spiritual Journey, but this time a journey of a Very Different nature; serving humanity as a Spiritual Master.

Chris: Brilliant Alex!

We need to be able to turn Copernicus inside out to find the truth. Paradigm change is essential. There are many traditions that speak of root redemption, so redemption of Vedanta is also legitimate.

Judaism for example has a notion: Tikkun olam (Hebrew 'repairing of the world'), which refers to forms of action intended to repair and improve the world. In the Aleinu prayer, it refers to the eradication of idolatry. In Lurianic Kabbalah, the "repair" is mystical: to return the sparks of Divine light to their source by means of ritual performance. In the modern era, it has come to refer to the pursuit of social justice or "the establishment of Godly qualities throughout the world" based on the idea that "Jews bear responsibility not only for their own moral, spiritual, and material welfare, but also for the welfare of society at large".

I like these accounts, particularly the Kabbalah notion that in the Fall from Eden when Yahweh cursed woman and caused mortality, the sparks of the feminine face of divinity got scattered and have to return in the end of days to make the universe whole again. It’s a kind of counter current to the authority of God, saying indirectly that God erred. And I like the idea Jewish people should take responsibility for the good of all people, not just themselves.

Yeshua ben David (Joshua Ben): indeed, the Father is incomplete without the Mother (Shekinah) and the son is incomplete without the daughter, and so it is from Genesis to Revelations, as it is written:

• 26 And God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,....."
כווַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים נַֽעֲשֶׂ֥ה אָדָ֛ם בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ כִּדְמוּתֵ֑נוּ וְיִרְדּוּ֩ בִדְגַ֨ת הַיָּ֜ם וּבְע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֗יִם וּבַבְּהֵמָה֙ וּ

• 27 And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

כזוַיִּבְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים | אֶת־הָֽאָדָם֙ בְּצַלְמ֔וֹ בְּצֶ֥לֶם אֱלֹהִ֖ים בָּרָ֣א אֹת֑וֹ זָכָ֥ר וּנְקֵבָ֖ה בָּרָ֥א אֹתָֽם:

Chris: Yes Yeshua – I feel so good about the ‘Elohim! and the priestly author of Genesis 1. Brahman also manifests as the Godhead Ishvara if we want to think in personae, but all the Shakti worshippers refer to Ishvari, so there it is Ishvara/Ishvari!

Yeshua: My times in India in my two journeys (~6 months the first and ~2-3 month the second) gave me a great insight into the many similarities present in the spiritual foundation of ancient India and ancient Israel and their many mystic, sages and saints insights, this is one of the reasons that allow me to appreciate your purifying work with the members of the groups that you interact with.

Pealing the layers of doctrine and dogma as the accumulation of culture, politics and religious rituals takes great courage, and that leads to very valuable pearls of wisdom. The core message is that there is no substitute for personal experience, revelation and prophetic vision. Your work and life is very valuable and well appreciated from this corner of the Coromandel peninsula !!!

Chris: Thanks a million Yeshua! I really appreciate it and it's an improbable rough and even perilous ride, but we are in it together for the same journey of discovery.

Chris: I want to draw the attention of you all to something that is pivotal to the difference between the Eastern quest for Samadhi and psychedelic quantum change experience. Samadhi is conceived of as a “transcendent” state. You are both expounding ontology of some kind of state, but the journey to enlightenment is hypothetical and all caught up in a religious belief in these transcendent states that require a whole lot of control that takes literally forever to get to real moksha and are associated with a life style of renunciation from the affairs of life, like family, survival and professional responsibilities. If you are a doctor, you need to treat your patients. If you are an ecologist, you need to save your species. India is full of “holy men” with charity cups, just as the Orthodox Jews in Israel get out of doing military service. It’s religious exceptionalism!

The gold standard of moksha is a quantum change experience. Once entered into and fully experienced, everything is changed. Both you and the world are a different place. You don't have to sit with eye’s half closed in a full lotus position while your patients die of heart attacks, or your species get gobbled alive by exotic parasites. You can live as a biological organism in a natural biosphere knowing you are mortal, but it's the best of possible worlds. My moksha two years ago consummated a lifetime of spiritual experiences of a similar but less iconic kind. All psychedelic experiences, whether heaven, or sometimes doom about to strike, contain this secret. Also they are not coupled to a notion of spiritual transcendence but to a natural sacrament of the biosphere that brings complete conscious immersion and integration with natural life without forcing spiritual unity.

What we and the world needs is exactly what nature has provided us with, particularly in the scientific and technological age. A biospheric sacrament which enables us to experience life liberated from our incarnate egos, evolved by mammals as an existential protection, and do it in a way which transforms our entire notion of what being inside and outside our incarnations is all about. In the modern world, we need to have direct traffic between the mundane and the transcendent that is powerful enough, so that we can have “been there" and have “done that” and now our lives are changed for the good and we can get on with the good work of planetary redemption. People used to call DMT the businessman’s trip because one could literally walk out of the office and inhale a deep breath or two and go rocketing into stardom and go to infinity and 15 minutes later walk back into the office and get to work.

Of course this needs to be combined with a natural spirituality and good meditative practice to really get to the core of the mystery. I did this iconically on my SEC trip because it had been years and I did it only to find the secret of existence and used complete meditative annihilation to descend into the abyss. But the point is this. I don't have to expound ontology of transcendent states. The actual secret is a way of experiencing existence outside our incarnations that heals the round of birth and death. That heals Buddhism's lament about “mundane reality” in one fell swoop even if we are struggling with physical maladies. That’s why people in terminal conditions get respite and come to existential terms of acceptance with their condition. Above all this needs to make us aware of the world's great existential risks.

Jerry Fodor famously said: “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious.”

I will add: “Nobody has the slightest idea how anyone can figure how to stop the onrush to Fermi self-immolation. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anyone can figure how to stop the onrush to Fermi self-immolation”. We need to and we need to at least discuss it.

Here is a simple proposal:

Coalescence: The idea is to coalesce on a root proposal that is in everyone’s common interest, and then grow the coalescence without immediate activism but across countries as a kind of interpersonal covenant that is also a networked movement for decisive action at the right time later.

We could agree that there are three urgent existential threats to human survival (1) Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons (2) Mass extinction of biological, genetic and species diversity by habitat destruction, pollution and climate crisis (3) Autonomous artificial intelligence. We agree to facilitate a world cultural transformation to limit and end these threats to human survival as our primary priority by inviting others to form a network of like-minded people to facilitate generating a critical mass of support for eventual global action to this end. The three principles I previously mentioned in the introduction to the scientific overview: (1) That conscious life is cosmological in nature; (2) That subjective consciousness has physical efficacy; and (3) That symbiosis with nature is the key to our survival, potentially form a point of view consistent with this, although opinions may vary.

consciousness is sufficient to existence

the universe is necessary to existence

The empirical quest has two components, not one:

(1) Verified empirical observation of the natural world (aka physical science) and

(2) Affirmed empirical experience of conscious existence (the vision quest).

Only when both are expressed and acknowledged do we have cosmic conscious science.

In our expert groups, there are three loose trends of belief:

(1) Belief in the primacy of the physical as Stan and Kashyap express in "the brain makes the conscious mind".

(2) Beliefs in cosmic consciousness through meditative states, yoga, TM and the notion that the repose of meditation and Buddhist emptiness lead to enlightenment.

(3) Beliefs in an omnipotent Godhead – notions of ‘Elohim, Yahweh Brahma, and Ishvara and as Mike pretends, in notions of creationism/ID presented as ’scientific’.

None of these approaches work. They are NOT root source phenomena, but, as you say, “beliefs” and they are mutually contradictory and self-contradictory.

The vision quest consists of annihilating oneself in total immersion in conscious existence, meditatively and entheogenically, thereby bursting the incarnate bubble of perception and achieving moksha – asymptosis with “Brahman if you like”. This is completely different from TM, mindfulness, or compassion meditation alone, and any other form of ’spiritual' or ‘meditative’ belief. It is raw, natural, manifest, immanent and transcendent – everything all at once! It is the force through which the green fuse drives the flower and unites us with nature, the wilderness and the diversity of life unfolding.

No belief system can embrace source nature and no intellectual construct can imagine it. It can be experienced only by taking full responsibility for the entire state of the conscious universe as one's personal karma and accepting the consequences as a whistle blowing transformer reflowering life’s diversity in apocalypsis.

Because consciousness is primary, I am a realised source phenomenon, transforming the universe through my volition and communication in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology as a Rosetta stone oracle. As long as I continue to exist, I have the implicit capacity to save planet Earth from a Fermi self-extinction by drawing the attention of humanity to the key existential threats to existence and the natural avenue to living redemption. But the communication has to take place as a primary transmission. I accept my organismic mortality and my cosmological source nature as the living Logos of natural, cosmic existence. I accept my karma and the apparent paradox of a human being pronouncing the logos as a manifestation of source nature that we all share eternally in the conscious experience of existence. Therefore, do not cast lots on the garments of whom the bell tolls.

(1) Empirical science is and HAS to embrace both affirmed 1pp experiences and verified 3pp observations to be complete, and particularly so in the Upanishadic model, where consciousness is deemed to actually generate matter. Affirmed 1pp experiences can carry the same evidential probability using the same statistical methods as verified observations.

(2) Scientific experiments can and have been performed on psychedelic moksha: Griffiths et al. (2019) compared “God-encounter experiences” under classic psychedelics and naturally. While “the Non-Drug Group was most likely to choose "God" as the best descriptor of that which was encountered while the psychedelic groups were most likely to choose "Ultimate Reality." Most participants reported vivid memories of the encounter experience, which frequently involved communication with something having the attributes of being conscious, benevolent, intelligent, sacred, eternal, and all-knowing. … These experiences were rated as among the most personally meaningful and spiritually significant lifetime experiences, with moderate to strong persisting positive changes in life satisfaction, purpose, and meaning attributed to these experiences”.

I can experience union with Brahman directly by self-annihilation. I don't need the scripture or yoga to do it, just entheogenic meditation. And it has just the transformative properties described.

The notion that Brahman can't be experienced directly in the union of atman and Brahman is a contradiction to the Upanishads, so saying things like "Nirguna (propertyless), Nirakar (shapeless, formless) something we do not understand” is fundamentally wrong.

David Attenborough’s nature documentaries have become ever more enlightening and are now able to show full details of the sociobiology of wild animals and higher organisms and convey the sheer intensity of volitional survival and the utterly resourceful care that living creatures put into their parenting, courtship and social existence amid the tooth and claw of lethal encounters of sometimes horrific proportions, which nevertheless lead to climax biodiversity in natural paradise.

Two things follow:

Firstly life is really really alive in the sense of being enlightened to persevere and unfold, even when half-starving. It is not just giving up and floating downstream, but caring selflessly for the continuity of life in the fabric of living nature that becomes the climax biospheric ecology that we know is living paradise.

Secondly with due respect to the natural universe, life is physically and biologically and psychologically exceedingly complex as a reverberating whole and the entire quantum universe is fractally alive, from individual molecules to tissues, to neurodynamics to innovative evolution as a whole cosmic manifestation. So the laws of physics, like the standard model are not mechanistic at all but evoke the entire incarnate conscious experience of existence. This means that, although consciousness is primary, the universe is necessary and it's necessary to transcendence.

Physical scientists think it might be explained in mechanistic terms, but they see these mechanisms only when reducing the systems they are observing to classical approximations. Otherwise nature reigns supreme over mechanism because we can’t demonstrate causal closure of the physical universe.

This means to me that Aurobindo’s description of a supermind making matter is fantasy, and this goes also for the Buddhist nature of illusion, which works only while Naropa or Nagarjuna are meditating staring at their navels with half closed eyes and not coping with the natural realities of existence in the raw. By restricting the domain of consciousness to the meditative state, as a controlled exercise of “skilful practice” they are spawning a deceit about reality, because consciousness is not illusion. It may be a controlled hallucination designed by the brain to enable biological survival, but it's a veridical hallucination of reality that is root insight.

However, like Attenborough’s evocations of life’s creative resourcefulness, I support Deepak’s “universe is alive” notion wholeheartedly in its root simplicity of insight.

He invokes the fallacies in both traditional descriptions of a theistically-created universe and of the mechanistic view of physicalist science in favour of a creative view of living existence, in which we are all participating co-creatively, as he noted on Medium:

God did not create the universe. The biblical version of creation, Genesis, is wrong, balancing it with militant atheists are wrong. noting that in quantum mechanics, everything is spontaneous, due to quantum uncertainty leading to self-evolution and total autonomy and spontaneity. And uncertainty. And creativity. All the calculations of quantum mechanics are now helping create technology, even though quantum mechanics does not imply causality or even strict determinism.

Ultimately Deepak comes full-circle to a “liberated” view of deity as the entire cosmic unfolding of conscious existence, through consciousness itself :

The biological organism with this body-mind and the universe are both objects. The subject is one. The objects are innumerable minds, innumerable modes of knowing, innumerable things known. So thought conceives, constructs the notion, governs and becomes the experience of the universe, and in infinite modes of experience. If there are degrees of omniscience, this is infinite, infinite, infinite modes of omniscience, infinite modes of omnipotence, infinite modes of

omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. Where ever you go, there is God.

This is an inspired evocation of Indra’s net, extolled in Buddhism:

"Indra's net" is an infinitely large net owned by the Vedic deva Indra, which hangs over his palace on Mount Meru, the axis mundi of Buddhist and Hindu cosmology. In East Asian Buddhism, Indra's net is considered as having a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, with each jewel being reflected in all of the other jewels. In the Huayan school of Chinese Buddhism, which follows the Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra, the image of "Indra's net" is used to describe the interconnectedness or "perfect interfusion" (yuánróng, 圓融) of all phenomena in the universe.

It originates in Atharva Veda (c. 1000 BCE) which is also viewed as a conscious hallucination of “everything everywhere all at once”, confounding the opponents of true enlightenment. Verse 8.8.6. says:

Vast indeed is the tactical net of great Indra, mighty of action and tempestuous of great speed. By that net, O Indra, pounce upon all the enemies so that none of the enemies may escape the arrest and punishment.

However, this doesn’t mean that I accept the Vedas either, or any piece of 3000 year old wisdom, except on its empirical validity. We simply have to be utterly wild and let go all these superstructures, like interdependent co-arising. There is a real drama of existence happening in the universe and we have a pivotal role as conscious sentient beings, not just in negative renunciation, but as immanent redeemers of life. There is no illusion. There is no Maya. The buck stops with us and we have to assume complete and total karmic responsibility for the entire state of the living cosmos we find ourselves in. Anything less is a cop out.

So I don’t think there is any kind of skilful practice that can suffice. Subjective conscious experience has efficacy of volition over the physical universe. This is a flesh and blood reality. If we turn away from it to engage skilful practice, we are immediately sacrificing our root numinous immanence for a shadow world of illusion. So to Hal I say – do not go gentle into that good night! Experience in the raw. Be vulnerable, be mortal, in pain if you are, but live reality to the full. That’s the entheogenic lesson of life. Do not step back from the brink, but live it in its full unmitigated wildness of visionary depth and intensity for the immortal eternal transcendent reality it is.

That is where Ishvara/Ishvari meets Brahman. Naropa is like a set of spectacles that are artificially coloured to reduce blue light to help us sleep tight. Better to be in egotistical suffering and experience it in the raw to gain natural fulfilment than skilful practice that just delays the inevitable in cycles of reincarnation.

"The mystic, in petitioning the Cosmic, turns the consciousness inward instead of directing the plea to a distant external entity or power. The Cosmic is in each of us, the mystic realizes. It is not just in the reaches of space. The mystic knows further, that our Soul will answer our petition. The Soul is of the Cosmic and it guides each of us to self-action." Ralph M Lewis

Life After Death: Symbiotic Existential Cosmology on Trial

Eternal Souls versus Organismic Mortality in the Immortal Flow of Life

Chris: The whole idea of eternal individual souls is an utterly selfish projection of ourselves as dynamic survival processes wishing to extend our tenure beyond our mortal organismic lifespan. To act or think this way is in direct conflict with how life comes about. By necessity, we are mortal, because parthenogenesis descends into mutational “heat death” by Muller’s ratchet. Hence sexual recombination – scrambling the message – is essential to make new viable recombinations which CAN survive. Hence we are all uniquely different individuals with egos that can't immortalise ourselves by reproduction or by imagining eternal souls to satisfy our pretensions. It is NOT Nirguna Brahman disintegrating into lots of little deluded Shiva-Shaktis of mind and body in the fragmentation of the cosmic whole. It's the creative way the living universe manifests, so that life and conscious life can rise to overflowing knowledge the universe begins to have of its own existence and transcendence. We are also conscious visionary agents, who very badly need the gift of the biosphere – entheogenic psychedelics – to even begin to understand any of this. This is the gift of conscious biospheric evolution – to be the "Catcher in the Rye" for human pretensions – before we needlessly destroy ourselves and the diversity and sanctity of life as a whole.

Cathy Reason: So what's wrong with that [wishing to extend our tenure beyond our mortal lifespan to eternal life]?

Chris: It’s unsustainable, pretentious, and has no evidential basis. Like it or lump it we are all mortal biological beings. Pretentious delusions don't change anything. Living beings aren't just abstract points, for which an infinite number can stand on the head of a pin, so there is a problem of cluttering reality with all the souls throughout history and violating the biological principles that are manifest in evolving life.

Cathy: That's contrived, inexplicable, and ad hoc.

Chris: That's an ad hoc value judgment in itself with no evidential support. All eucaryote organisms have the same core cellular processes that the human brain uses to evoke subjective consciousness. I’m not a physicalist and am certain like you that subjective consciousness is real and its ability to affect the universe is real, but it’s illegitimate and foolish to simply ignore the evidence from biology about how full consciousness evolves and say its "contrived, inexplicable, and ad hoc”. Evolving life in many highly creative ways IS contrived and ad hoc, i.e adventitious, but biology observes certain very conservative principles such as sexual recombination that are intrinsic to organismic mortality and we need to learn from these and adapt our world view accordingly.

Cathy: Chris, what you are suggesting does not happen anywhere in nature. You simply do not get things materializing out of nowhere and then disappearing solely in response to arbitrary configurations in the physical world.

Chris: Living organisms are being born and passing away as we speak, as far as we know their consciousness with them. We can't confirm or deny the existence of other individual’s consciousness. “Materialise" and “nowhere" are both physical concepts. Dreams and visions come and go. You have no idea what happened most of the night when you are asleep. La petite mort (French pronunciation "the little death") is an expression that means "the brief loss or weakening of consciousness" and in modern usage refers specifically to "the sensation of post orgasm as likened to death." Consciousness continues to be evoked while physical circumstances invoke them.

Cathy: There is just no reason to take seriously the idea that consciousness itself magically springs into existence and then magically vanishes.

Chris: Conscious experiences are transient and impermanent, and have to be, so we can deal with the next existential crisis. Consciousness can appear and disappear as a whole any time we get knocked out and/or become comatose. Unhinging the relationship between consciousness and nature leads to all kinds of imaginary spiritual notions like eternal life that separate us from life as a whole and lead to anthropocentric extinction scenarios. There is no way you can defend claiming life after death is real by asserting consciousness can't cease or it would be magical intervention.

Cathy: A conscious individual is not an agglomeration of randomly appearing and disappearing subjective "bits", any more than a Euclidean manifold is an agglomeration of points. They are patterns on the evolving manifold which is the conscious individual – that our individual conscious experience can, in part, be represented as one.

Chris: Both visions and particularly lucid dreams can create scenarios that are impossible to truly represent on any kind of manifold space. The subjective experience has to be “optimally compliant” to the physical environmental boundary conditions because subjective consciousness is forming an interface that provides anticipation and creative intentionality through resolving the causal uncertainty in the critically uncertain brain state for the organism. That’s an extremely subtle multi-dimensional dynamical process forming the real boundary conditions that define our conscious experience of the world around us, which we know has to be responsive to every element of the dynamical brain state spanning all cortical areas including sensory, experiential, emotional and psychic notions of self.

The conscious brain is the physical dynamical system aspect of that interface, but subjective consciousness is afire in the reactor core in its own right, both anticipating environmental uncertainty and intentionally affecting the physical universe, in subjective conscious volition. This is primal cosmological subjectivity fully manifested into organismic consciousness by coupling fully to its “internal model of reality” as manifest like a keyboard over those cortical columns spanning all cortical areas.

Conscious experiences also transcend physically perceptual constraints. If I simultaneously in a lucid dream stare into a woman's eyes knowing I am in an alien universe and at the same time shoot upwards with the unbearable anti-gravity of dreaming while knowing the sea spray is hitting my Indian shirt and I can feel every droplet simultaneously and again at the same time I realise I am just bobbing on the ceiling in an OBE telling myself I am okay down there in the bed, there is no way to put these parallel experiences on any kind of real-world sequential time line, let alone in any kind of dimensional space. Is it in an astral universe or just some kind of experiential “space” that can image anything at all, and burst like a bubble and is not even physical space?

Cathy: But it hides the fact that we have no idea why consciousness should obligingly manifest in just such a way that physical evolution requires, and fail to manifest in any other way. It reduces to a kind of spontaneous generation -- consciousness occurs just when the physical world requires it, and there is nothing further to be explained.

Chris: The biological evolution of subjective consciousness arrives at mortal subjectively conscious organisms because this is the only way, or the only evident way, that the universe can organically manifest consciousness. The physical universe is entropic and life exists as an extreme non-equilibrium system “negentropically” on the solar irradiated planetary surface and through additional chemical gradients on a wider scale. Complex organisms with large genomes cannot exist by parthenogenesis because of inexorable cumulative mutation, so life invented sexuality and all the metazoa have sperm-ovum fertilisation with indexed genetic recombination resulting in an almost unlimited variety of singular mortal organisms called individuals, who then in Homo sapiens incorrectly seek eternal life, when they got here by a process which is immortal only collectively, not individually. You call this magical and ad-hoc. It’s not. It’s why we have the existential dilemma of mortality. If you think there is another way of resolving it, the onus is on you. You can't just claim it's arbitrary or magical.

Cathy: I'm afraid this looks like the use of tricky language to hide the fact that we don't really understand what is going on. It describes what things look like from a physical perspective. But it hides the fact that we have no idea why consciousness should obligingly manifest in just such a way that physical evolution requires, and fail to manifest in any other way. It reduces to a kind of spontaneous generation -- consciousness occurs just when the physical world requires it, and there is nothing further to be explained. But that completely obscures the reality that we have absolutely no idea *why* consciousness should do this. As an explanation for the manifestation of consciousness it is completely arbitrary and ad hoc. It only seems plausible because, in western academic culture, we are conditioned not to see this problem from the perspective of consciousness, so the inherent absurdity of the idea remains hidden behind a mass of cultural assumptions. But that completely obscures the reality that we have absolutely no idea *why* consciousness should do this. As an explanation for the manifestation of consciousness it is completely arbitrary and ad hoc.

Chris: The reason consciousness emerges in the biota is because, in amoebo-flagellates consciousness aids the survival of the collective organism, using transcendent physics that violates causality. It’s thus an extremely counter-intuitive manifestation from the physical point of view that requires circumstantial explanation. Signal in this is the huge problem a complex organism faces deciding how to survive, eat and reproduce in a wild biosphere where all the environmental problems of survival are computationally intractable to literally unsolvable because of other conscious organisms being out to eat us. So it's an insoluble problem of consciousness versus consciousness.

To solve this problem, subjective consciousness has to both anticipate emergent uncertain circumstances and act upon them in a way which changes the physical universe through intentional behaviour. It thus has to be utterly compliant with all the neurodynamic boundary conditions defining the dynamic context, or causal conflict would arise, and has to be definitive only in uncertain situations as represented indeterminately in the critically poised brain state. None of this means this is just a physical description, but it’s setting out the precise boundary conditions that subjective consciousness has to adopt to succeed in doing what it has been doing since the eucaryote endosymbiosis invoked edge of chaos membranes and communication by neurotransmitter molecules in the collective single celled organism that then became neurodynamics in us.

The rest of the story we need to discover by the vision quest because subjective consciousness is private to the individual and we can lean and discover what its confounding potentialities and actualities are only by falling right into the abyss and “hallucinating" our way to the other side of realisation.

Cathy: But they are not organismic psycho-physical boundary conditions. That's the problem. They are organismic physical boundary conditions to which the psychic is arbitrarily expected to conform.

Chris: Your initial arbitrary and incorrect assumption that individual eternal souls could exist comes from denying the fact that subjective conscious intentionality has to fit seamlessly with contextual physical circumstances to survive organismically. What you are trying to do is set up a stark division between subjective experience and bio-physical cosmology that fails to understand that subjective consciousness actually has a creative role in the physical universe which we experience as subjective conscious volition having efficacy over the physical universe, even by simply corresponding in this way. You are effectively denuding subjective consciousness from interacting and neutralising it’s ability to seamlessly interact by insisting physical boundary conditions are not psycho-physical when they clearly are psycho-physical because that’s precisely the boundary interface between subjective and objective reality. Your model is stark dualism hoping mind is another separable realm in so many words. The boundary IS a boundary Cathy in which both realms meet and if they didn't meet seamlessly all hell would break loose from causal conflict and we wouldn’t/couldn't consciously exist at all.

Cathy: They don't meet seamlessly, Chris, not in your model or in anyone else's. That is what I have been trying to get across to you.

Chris: You are making two self-contradictory claims with no evidence. First you say seamlessness is arbitrary and physical when it isn’t and then you say it isn't seamless. If it’s not seamless show us the subjective-objective fracture seam Cathy. There is no empirical content to justify your claims.

Cathy: Let's represent the evolution of the physical world in terms of something like a state space. Let us imagine the physical evolution to be a continuous trajectory, or set of trajectories, in black. Now let us add on the set of psychic trajectories, in silver. Now, the state space tells us how the physical system evolves, *whether or not* it has a psychic component. No-one imagines that physical world ceases to exist when it is not conscious. But if we look just at the set of psychic trajectories, we see just a disconnected hodgepodge of silver splodges, defined only where there is a direct connection with the physical. And this picture is completely one-sided. It tells us how the physical world evolves when the physical is not conscious, but it completely fails to tell us how the psychic world evolves when the psychic is not physical. It assumes that the psychic world ceases to exist when it is not physical. And this makes no sense. It is only the materialist bias of our culture that enables us to see why it is unreasonable to expect the physical world to disappear when it is not conscious, but prevents us from seeing why it is equally unreasonable to expect the psychic world to disappear when it is not physical.

Chris: That’s a beautiful description. However, both sets of trajectories are modelled from outside and they only accidentally come together if they just happen to coincide. The physical and psychic are independent processes that are not existentially linked. It simply doesn't in any any way even approximate to the universe in which we consciously exist.

It introduces many further problems, for one, we simply don't know the physical universe can manifest without our observation of it. On the other side, we have no confirmation of viable conscious life except in the biota. Neither God nor angels have a verifiable presence, which is why I am very wary of assertively spiritual ideas seemingly sane people continue to have. People are able to imagine these ideas because subjective consciousness is private to the experiencer so we can each conjure up really bizarre spiritual notions like your conscious trajectories, which I know were coined to make the point you wanted to explain. Spiritual people might see this as the angels and indeed the gnostic pleroma is very like this, so there is a strong element of the human imagination that seeks such notions. When I am on mushrooms I can happily see all souls throughout eternity in this way but I don't see it as any form of absolute reality and only mention it in passing. But you are using the model to try to imply there are physically undetectable astral trajectories. If we are going to survive, we have to learn to take good care of the universe and life within it, so we can’t set out on self affirming illusory journeys by affirmative belief.

Cathy: But there is nothing in your model which explains the distribution of these conscious interactions, or how they assemble into conscious observers.

Chris: That’s not how any of this works! You can't interact qualitative features of conscious states with fragments of brain states. The interaction can't occur because of fundamental differences between integrated subjective consciousness and fragmentary physical processes. The only interaction is between the ongoing subjective conscious state and the coherent yet critical phase transition brain state.

Cathy: But you don't explain the existence of an "entire ongoing subjective conscious state".

Chris: All our subjective experience is the entire ongoing subjective conscious state. Yes we can focus on aspects but that just changes the whole dynamic. I didn't write Symbiotic Existential Cosmology to make it easy for you or anyone else. I am intentionally making it difficult so as not to pull any punches or turn it into the sort of pop confetti exposé popular science has become, so it’s in itself a vision quest that is a research resource for the entire description.

Cathy: At last, a glimmer of light. But it's a faint glimmer, because you still don't explain how primal subjectivity combines to produce subjective consciousness. So Symbiotic Existential Cosmology has the same combination of problem as every other panpsychist theory.

Chris: It’s not panpsychism because it’s not psychism. Subjectivity doesn't necessarily form a psyche until it has a mammalian-like encapsulation. The whole point is that filter theories, from William James through Aldous Huxley all transform the discussion from physicalistic brain causality into filter boundary conditions in which subjective consciousness and the physical universe can actually interact and you know full well that is how the doors of perception get flung wide open. Hence Symbiotic Existential Cosmology's whole description is a cosmological filter theory of how and why subjective consciousness not only exists, but also has efficacy of intentional volition over the physical universe.

Cathy: But boundary conditions aren't enough, Chris! You would not attempt to define the evolution of the physical world solely in terms of its boundary with the psychic. So whatever makes you think it can work the other way round?

Chris: The reason is the physical universe is as nearly causally closed, as we know it to be, while subjective consciousness is about "free will” violations. Physicalists and even David Chalmers veer into the notion that it is causally closed, despite quantum uncertainty, although he has back-tracked since. So the only confirmed effects we expect subjective conscious intentionality to induce are what we see in living behaviour plus a few uncanny hunches. Even these can only occur without causal conflict when they arise through critical transitions, in which the evolving brain state is physically indeterminate. That’s why Symbiotic Existential Cosmology asserts that subjective consciousness functions essentially and only to deal with existential crisis due to environmental uncertainty.

But the fact that for subjective consciousness rather than mere computational “intelligence” to continue to exist in evolutionary terms means it has to facilitate survival. Because environmental uncertainty is computationally intractable, this brings in the ultimate hard problem of having to anticipate the immediate future to avoid annihilation in the present which is a causality violation of past and future which can only mean retrocausal influences in consciousness – the worst form of spookiness. This is why we are living in perpetual existential crisis at the centre of the cyclone of this boundary condition, poised on the edge of the organismic Fermi extinction we call mortality.

Cathy: If I understand this correctly, what the [Wheeler] article makes clear is the suggestion is that a measurement selects the set of classical histories consistent with the outcome of that measurement. There is no suggestion of anything like retrocausality.

Brian Josephson: Here's an actual quote, from 'Law without Law': "Acts of observer participancy ... give tangible 'reality' to the universe not only now but back to the beginning". This is similar to your 'determinate history', but what does that mean? It's a bit like saying finding a fossil determined the past, but that isn't surprising. It's rather twisting the use of words.

Kashyap Vasavada: Perhaps at some time Wheeler got this nutty idea that current measurements affect billions of years in past. He probably changed his mind. But whatever you write in print has immortality.

Chris: No, it’s not that simple. The idea is far from “nutty" and Brian's comment is pertinent. As you all actually know, because weak quantum measurement, which has become rife, shows this is not a trivial question of “classical histories”. It’s a manifold subtle effect that permeates all of physics. The question has to be asked “how DOES the universe, upon measurement select the set of classical histories consistent with the outcome of that measurement?”

This brings us back to all the phenomena of entanglement and the question of how type 1 processes of measurement alter all the probabilities of absorption throughout space-time and possibly beyond if we entertain the “possibilist” view of quantum transactions. Kashyap tries to trivialise this by selecting preferred bases, but the only way to get any idea of how entanglement instantly maintains correlation when one is measured is through a confirmation wave from the absorber back to the common emission event.

All of this is occluded by the “shut up and measure” approach and Qbism for all its touchy-feely bullshit flunks abysmally, both of which trivialise the question of how the universe actually makes choices. I know Grant loves Qbism but it's as bad as shut up and calculate made a social contract. Then we are dragged back to the ad hoc assumption of uncertainty being randomness when we know cats are either alive or dead and somehow a unique decision got made that becomes that indelible line of history Kashyap is referring to and is why I am lodging Symbiotic Existential Cosmology for posterity into the future, to make such a record.

This pertains to everything that happens that is not definitively causally determined, which is just about everything we make survival decisions about. The greatest failure of physics is not failing to understand the nature of subjective consciousness, which lies outside its frame of reference, but the spooky action at a distance in plain sight in quantum measurement itself. I acknowledge retrocausality in some form is a "hard saying" in the apocalyptic sense, because it challenges our notions of order and causality but that’s the problem at the core of subjective consciousness.

Cathy: What are "contingent realities”?

Chris: They are all the subjective things we can't prove physically but seem to maybe be going on mysteriously. Eternal life, Deja vu, prescience, clairvoyance, Psi, deep collective memories that hint of reincarnation, Jungian archetypes, dreams and visions we struggle to make sense of. Hunches, flashes of uncanny insight. SEC puts these into the "to be confirmed by mutual empirical experience" basket.

Cathy: Well, just for the record. here is my criticism in one line: you have not explained why consciousness should obligingly pop into existence when required, and then just as obligingly pop out of existence when no longer required.

Chris: That’s the breaks living in the entropic mortal coil, but the trade off is being in the centre of the cyclone rather than just disembodied cosmic consciousness eternal but ephemeral. This is why despite all, I call it the best of all possible worlds if we preserve paradise on the cosmic equator in space-time.

There’s a twofold answer to your central question in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology:

(a) Primal subjectivity is cosmological so it doesn't pop in and pop out. It’s always there and has always been there and alway will be and it permeates all phenomena in the universe in different ways.

(b) Subjective consciousness is an emergent encapsulated elaboration of primal subjectivity, so it is dependent on the form of the encapsulation.

Why is Encapsulated Consciousness so Obliging to the Universe?

The filter theory says the brain is not causally closed and forms a very sophisticated boundary condition on subjective consciousness carrying all the aspects of experience spanning all cortical regions as an internal dynamical model of reality, rather than the brain determining the dynamic causally, but we know the universe is very close to causally closed, so subjective consciousness is like the genie caught in the bottle. The only way it can act without causal conflict is to leak out of the cork. This is the cubic centimetre of chance Carlos Castaneda referred to. The quantum universe is NOT causally closed and neither is it just random but is a form of punctuated stochastic causality driven by ergodic hidden variable dynamical systems. So subjective consciousness can intervene only in physically uncertain situations, which is exactly what it does, dealing with uncomputable environmental uncertainty that arises from the quantum universe. This is why subjective consciousness appears to be so obliging.

So when we die, primal subjectivity doesn’t but the organismic encapsulation unravels. Does it carry on disembodied? That’s for each of us to find out! One of the reasons I like psychedelics, although they can be challenging, is that they give us a chance to go to the edge of incarnation in a healthy state and come to terms with it.

SEC differs from physical cosmology, which is unconsciously comatose, and religious cosmology, which is driven by an autocratic superconscious divinity. In Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, it is WE who are the transformative agents, not God and we have to take personal responsibility for the fate of the universe and life within it.

Cathy: You can't explain that in terms of biological evolution because evolution is a physical process. Your theory asserts a functional complementarity between mental and physical, but never explains how this comes about -- only the physical side is ever explained.

Chris: I just showed you the opposite. The physical side EVOKES subjective consciousness. That IS the explanation. The conscious side is you staring out the window or cleaning up your messy kitchen! Or dreaming, or hallucinating, or intentionally planting seeds for the future.

Cathy: And how can "primal subjectivity" be said to permeate all the phenomena of the universe, when its only connection with the universe is through conscious interactions with the physical?

Chris: That’s back to front again. We are aware only of our own conscious experience. We have no direct empirical evidence for subjective consciousness outside this. Even a vision of a ghost or God is a personal subjective experience.

Primal subjectivity generates full subjective consciousness in eucryote organisms as a manifestation through the subjective-physical, or psycho-physical portal. The portal is not just physical but has both aspects in a two-way handshaking arrangement. SEC is focussing on full consciousness, but primal subjectivity is the key to it all. You need to be more intuitive and enter the visionary condition to answer this.

Cathy: So we still have the question -- how does encapsulated consciousness obligingly emerge from primal subjectivity and then obligingly disappear back into primal subjectivity (a transformation which itself requires a lot explanation, by the way) on just those occasions when the functional requirements from the physical side of the theory demand them to?

Chris: The entire process is interactive and the cosmic origin did this “duplicitous” act of complementary ”creation”, so that subjective consciousness has a realisation. Otherwise we don't know either the universe or subjectivity could become manifest.

Cathy: And I'm not at all sure about your model of conscious interaction with the physical, either. You seem to want this to be hidden away somehow by the uncertainty principle. That doesn't usually work, as you know, because if it could, then one could use such interactions to make measurements prohibited by the Uncertainty principle.

Chris: That’s exactly why the mind-brain interface deals with it the way it does. It’s too early in the evolution of neuroscience to fully explain this,. You are talking about imposing external measurement in the physics lab, but life deals with this in a radically different way, so you can’t try a devil’s advocate deconstruction based on the physics lab. The brain is manifestly making brain waves and the EEG is not just an average of action potentials because these are in handshaking relationship with the field potentials complementing the network connections, so the whole brain looks like it is doing direct wave resonance beat sampling like the fundamental principles of why quantum indeterminacy exists (fig 71(c)). This is circumventing the probability interpretation to determine the variables over time and space by wave beats!

If one thinks of these as some kind of quasi-particle exciton, they can be long-lived and braided and emit and absorb one another in an entangled quantum of the present which subjective conscious experience seems to be. That’s WHY people think consciousness is eternal! And these excitations are also connected to synaptic adaption and molecular memory, so just like advances like quantum computing, we have a phenomenon we are only scratching the surface of. In this view absolutely all molecular brain processes are quantum, so the brain is a quantum prediction “machine” evoking primal subjectivity to complete the cosmological process in conscious intentionality affecting the physical universe. The internal model of reality is not to “require" but to evoke and manifest.

Cathy: You seem to want to get around this by introducing chaotic dynamics, so that even if one could make forbidden measurements, it wouldn't matter, because no-one could ever know in practice what they were measurements on. But it's far from clear that the physics of this is mathematically consistent.

Chris: The empirical evidence to date is that quantum chaos leads to deep dynamical phase transition entanglement. We are going to be a long time waiting before physics is mathematically consistent Cathy. This is only the beginning of the problem physics faces. We still have to deal with retrocausality, let alone quantum reality versus general relativity.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is designed above all to be an efficient cosmology in terms of Occam's razor, so it doesn't attempt to describe primal subjectivity a priori except in its attestable manifestations complementing the physical phenomena I have cited above, from quanta to human consciousness. Integrated information theory (IIT) tries to do the same thing, but without subjective consciousness, so it IS just a functionalist model. This is all that can be done without unverifiable statements of belief like eternal life. I just say primal subjectivity starts out vestigial, just as the inflationary universe emerges from a quantum fluctuation, so it's a compact consistent cosmic origin.

This is for the rigorous reason of explanatory efficiency. All idealistic and even neutral monist descriptions have turtles all the way down. Vedanta proposes it all began from a fully fledged cosmic consciousness that then degenerates into us and the Kali Yuga. Monotheism says an autocratic creator designed the entire universe as a clockwork orange. Even Ram with neutral monistic Nirguna Brahman is making infinite turtles by presuming an all powerful manifestable neutral entity that can make anything and everything happen – consciousness and the universe – without explanation. These all invoke more complexities and paradoxes than they resolve. SEC doesn't suffer from panpsychic combination problems because it replaces physical causality with subject-object hand-shaking, in which both are involved. Because it all happens through the interface, we don't have subjective contradictions. SEC goes absolutely as far as any empirical enquiry can go without unnecessary assumptions, and the one assumption is clearly stated as an axiom.

Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal: What survives death? And does the self-aware self-as-subject survive death as a soul?

Chris King: I experience consciousness as being eternal and on mushrooms I have a visionary “feeling" that all conscious beings throughout space-time are mutually aware as disincarnate entities. But that’s just an intuitive notion and could be an illusion and a full moksha experience is a “near death experience” (NDE) telepathic encounter with the Totality, not a separate personal eternal soul. So the idea of individual souls seems inconsistent with there also being a Brahmanic cosmic mind and with the moksha experience. Moksha is described as the escape from the round of birth and death. If we are encapsulated forms of the cosmic mind and the encapsulations dissolve when we die then that’s maha-samadhi – the dew drop slips into the shining sea. I’m not sold on reincarnation, or on the transmigration of the souls and see it as an excuse to postpone moksha or explain why it is so difficult (and doesn’t need to be). How many angels can dance of the head of a universal pin – forever and ever in one physical universe?

Mortality is the centre of the cyclone of reality. That’s where it all goes down and comes down and where the consequences ensue. We are the cosmic mind caught as individuals in the incarnate bundle of life, so we myopically perceive it as egos fighting for survival and fear mortality. So we need to recognise our true nature is cosmic and take responsibility for this incarnation we happen to have and protect the abundance of life with our lives. Nothing else really furthers! This remains true, even if the cosmic mind can manifest only in the biota as a sensitively dependent neurophysiological state, akin to the quantum virtual vacuum.

I achieved moksha by self-annihilation, by giving myself back to the universe. Then I experienced Union and get told to save the abundance of life everywhere in the universe before I die. That’s impossible! But the impossible we do today and the improbable we leave till tomorrow – if tomorrow ever comes. So I’m staking my lot on the journey across the Styx and no ferryman can do it for me. That’s taking personal responsibility for fate.

Ram: Does your SEC framework predict the survival of consciousness (self-as-subject) after death?

Fig 291b: Global hypoxia-induced surge of high-frequency oscillations in the brain of dying patient Pt1. Above: Absolute power of left anterior-mid temporal lobe (T3) before (S1) and after (S2 to S11) the withdrawal of ventilatory support in Pt1. Below: Temporal dynamics of functional connectivity between the right posterior temporal lobe (T6) and the right parietal lobe (P4).

Chris K: Symbiotic Existential Cosmology asserts that primal subjectivity is a cosmological complement of the physical universe and that attentive consciousness is an emergent property of the eucaryote endosymbiosis. This means essentially that self as subject is not confined to any one organism’s lifetime. It’s basis spans space-time and its attentive dynamics is a product of a topological transition, in the eucaryote endo-symbiosis that is also in principle cosmological. The world view of SEC is that we are conscious transformative volitional agents transforming the physical universe to create history as we speak, so it is for us to discover all these mysteries within our mortal lifetime and to protect the diversity of life in the universe. As John Donne (1624) said, the bell tolls for us to do this necessary thing, without which we cannot hope to survive as a species, and as a planetary biosphere:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology doesn’t predict that individual organismic consciousness survives biological death of the organism but more that it is a feature of subjectivity as an “integral transform of the totality of existence”. Individual eternality is a religious fantasy along with concepts like personal souls. The reality is confounding and a supreme gathering of all into the wave of conscious realisation.

But you are inserting a whole lot of additional assumptions into the notion of “self-as-subject” which are highly contentious and products of belief – essentially that you/we seek and desire our individual subjective consciousness to be eternal. I think this is pursuing a false quest.

I experience and have experienced cosmological moksha states that lie outside the confines of ordinary reality. I personally experience psi phenomena, like precognition, which I think are pivotal to conscious anticipation of existential threats, which is why subjective consciousness has been retained by evolution. But I’m here to manifest them if and when they do occur, not to prove them in statistical objective claims of dubious validity that will never save life on Earth, or provide for the next occurrence. Either we use our non-ordinary “siddhis” transparently for the protection and unfolding of life's diversity, or they are wasted.

Seeking immortal individual life is a grossly selfish quest that is part of the Christian eschatological delusion and pervades Eastern traditions as well. Trying to classify everything into a philosophical framework is likewise meaningless, because you, as a transformative agent have to face up to the ultimate reality consciously, and classifying subjectivity is just objectifying it. What do we actually do about reality, given a mass extinction of biodiversity, climate crisis and nuclear mutually assured destruction threatening our own existence? Maybe if you do really experience cosmological moksha you will realise that your organismic consciousness is just a flicker on the great tsunami of cosmic consciousness, as indeed it must be. But this philosophical speculation of yours will waste your life, to your very death bed, unless you stop this grasping classification quest and unfold the cosmic experience we all share.

I hold the Upanishads to be a deeply informative account. But Focussing on yogic renunciation has failed to achieve the protection of life s a whole for three millennia. The many Vedantists among our acquaintances simply quote the claims of the yogis as scientifically unevidenced articles of faith. I have yet to see a single first hand account of cosmological moksha or a single properly evidenced claim of samadhi. Likewise, the Western Christian-based assumption of theistic spirituality with eternal personal souls and creationist doctrines debase life’s unified coherence and fecundity in human dominion. These are each self deceptions of a reality so awesome, immanent and transcendent that annihilation is the only way to approach it. Any prior assumptions like God or Creation just act to block the portal.

The only matter of substance and true worth in this “spiritual” quest is the saving of the diversity of life now and throughout our generations forever. Anything less and we will destroy ourselves for what we fail to bring forth from ourselves, as Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas (70):

"That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves.

That which you do not have within you [will] kill you if you do not have it within you.”

Ram: Please let us know which of the following five possibilities survives after death per your SEC (Symbiotic Existential Cosmology) framework. Per materialist Roman, Level 0 (nothing survives) is the possibility.

Per (Delorme, Radin, and Wahbeh, 2021) in Advancing the Evidence for Survival of Consciousness:

“What does survival mean? What is meant by the survival of consciousness? We propose five meanings related to various degrees of consciousness. The term consciousness in this context includes a sense of subjective awareness (including that of one’s surroundings) and a sense of identity about one’s sense of self and personal memories. With those definitions in mind, we propose five possibilities after death:

● Level 0: Nothing survives. You, including all aspects of what you consider to be yourself, emerge from the operation of your brain. When your brain dies, you cease to exist.

● Level 1: Pure awareness survives. There is no sense of identity or personal memory. This is a formless, content-less state, like transcendent meditative states with no perception of the environment as distinct from oneself.

● Level 2: Awareness with limited identity survives, but no personal memories or past lives. There may be a perception of some sort of environment. This is like waking up from a dream and not remembering who or where you are.

● Level 3: Awareness and identity survive. This includes memories of one’s immediate past life and the perception of some sort of environment.

● Level 4: Awareness and identity survive and can interact with the physical world. There may be a sense of identities of many past lives and perception of one or more environments. This level of awareness may include the deceased's ability to communicate or interact in some way with the physical world and with living persons.

Levels 1 to 4 indicate some degree of survival. Because pure awareness (Level 1) does not include a sense of identity, for this essay, we set the threshold for what we mean by survival at Level 2 or above, although most popular beliefs about survival would be at Level 3 or Level 4”.

Chris K: Symbolic Existential Cosmology is a Rosetta Stone flight-manual for conscious volitional beings to navigate their incarnation and transform the universe for the unfolding of conscious life. It is an empirical journey of discovery, not an objective “predictive” model, because conscious volition violates objective prediction.

It renews our relationship with life as a whole and the immortality of the generations of conscious life unfolding, in which we become the compassionate guardians of the flowering of conscious life in the universe.

This is why it is "new wine in new bottles" and not old wine in a new bottle or new wine in an old bottle, because previous traditions have not provided and do not and cannot provide a coherent explanation of the existential condition, due to their unverified counterfactual assumptions and lack of life-centredness.

Just as the scientific revolution has transformed our understanding of nature, so Symbolic Existential Cosmology transforms our exploration of experience.

In response to your four level analysis, the problem, as I already explained, arises from the notion of identity, so here is my experiential position:

1: Pure awareness survives (primal subjectivity), as it is complementary to space-time.

2: Identity, as presented, is a false concept. In psychedelic quantum change, it is the dissolution of identity that is key to the mystical experience.

3: At the core of moksha is a merging of organismic and cosmic identity. Moksha is the escape from the round of birth and death, so it is also the escape from encapsulated organismic identity.

4: Just as in the Bardo Thodol, the process of “rebirth" can involve visions of differentiation and unification of identity, so moksha is a visionary experience of “all-souls” in what I might describe as “telepathic communication” as one eternal conscious awareness.

5: This is the underlying experience I always have as a simple matter of fact of life when I am communing on mushrooms. I am me and I am my organismic consciousness, but simultaneously aware of and intimately part of the eternal throng of all conscious existence in the most gentle aware way possible. I am in an infinite assembly hall in which, underlying my individual identity, I/we are the legion of all conscious existence throughout the cosmos from forever and for everlasting – so be it – Amen.

6: For this reason, our existential duty in this mortal coil is to the preservation of the unfolding diversity of conscious life, without organismic self cherishing. This IS the immanent, transcendent illumination of mortal existence!

7: Without this epiphany, no cultural tradition and no conscious species can survive within the planetary biosphere and will ultimately suffer Fermi self-extinction.

Three cultural assumptions get in the way of this:

(1) Traditional religious descriptions including the Vedas and Judaeo-Christian cosmologies try to define a god-centred reality that in the Vedas is a mind-centred theistic view but in the Judaeo-Christian view is creation-centred theism. This stops us accepting and experiencing reality as it is, either because we take the yogi’s word for it as enlightened beings, or because the scripture says God created Heaven and Earth.

(2) The physicalist world view tries to assert that consciousness is just an internal model of reality constructed by the brain, distorted by perceiving conscious intentionality affecting the physical world to give us behavioural confidence, when the hidden cryptic account is that our brains are doing it all and our experience of conscious intentionality is just an incorrect self-fulfilling internal model allegory.

(3) The third more subtle impediment is analytical philosophy itself, which, just as you are doing, tries to abstractly classify everything into “isms” which are too primitive to capture cosmological reality, in exactly the way ball and stick models of chemistry fail to understand fundamental force symmetry-breaking and the paradox between gravity and quantum reality.

There is one and only one avenue I know of to solve this problem. The biosphere has evolved entheogens, which because of the sappy neurotransmitter-based conscious brain, enable us to escape the bubble of perception of organismic consciousness and perceive non-ordinary disembodied reality in such a way that it asymptotically approaches cosmic consciousness because psychedelics enable an experiential consciousness of the brain operating in neutral, much closer to the brain’s own cosmological foundations in the forces of nature themselves, than it can when anchored to (a) organismic experience of the physical world, (b) rational thought processes, which are a product of culture and language and anything but visionary in nature and (c) spiritual and religious doctrinal beliefs.

So I say of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology – the diversity of life is the wine and entheogens are the bottle to preserve it – the immortal process unfolding conscious awareness throughout our generations forever. So it’s a really deep echo of the Western sacramental tradition fulfilling itself and carries a sense of visionary revelation. There is no guarantee you can achieve this on the first encounter with psychedelics however. It has taken me a lifetime of entheogenic deep nature meditation to glimpse the totality.

Lao Tsu didn't say the way that can be told is not the countless way for nothing. Once we fall out of the bubble of perception, it is obvious and doesn’t need to be stated. We have to make the journey ourselves to know and understand.

The Tao that can be told is not the countless Tao.

The name that can be named is not the countless name.

The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.

The named is the mother of ten thousand things.

Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.

Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.

These two spring from the same source but differ in name;

this appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness.

The gate to all mystery. (Laozi, Tao Te Ching)

Ram: Do you mean that cosmic consciousness including individual consciousness [self-as-subject with its Free Will and self-certainty (= self-experience, self-consciousness, and self-knowledge)] are primary, and our physical universe including individual brain and body is secondary, ie, it arises from cosmic consciousness?

Chris K: The first thing we need to consider is the impossibility of empirically verifying causal closure of the universe in physical brain dynamics. This is both theoretically impossible and technologically unfeasible, because we can't empirically sample brain states in sufficient detail to conclude any confirming answer and the processes are happening down to the molecular level of the quantum. This means that physical materialism is and will always have to be an arbitrary assumption of “religious” faith, not anything like the scientific “self-certainty” that neuroscientists pretend.

So we then turn to our subjective conscious awareness of volition affecting the physical world and the fact that our conscious experience IS primary and revise the view to a filter theory, in which the brain is not deterministically causing conscious experiences, but acting as a contextual environmental boundary filter on conscious states, to ensure organismic survival. This makes evolutionary sense, because in single-celled eucaryotes, consciousness is directly represented by the global state of membrane excitation and the context is the sensory capacity of the membrane to sense existential threats and opportunities at the quantum level through sensitive dependence on photons, phonons and chemical orbital interactions (sight, hearing and smell). This is directly a filter theory as it stands and evolved into multicellular brains and organismic consciousness a billion years later.

I already explained to you that primitive subjectivity was cosmological, but attentive consciousness arose with the eucaryote endo-symbiosis to form the mitochondria, so the membrane became an attentive sense organ and social communicator through primitive neurotransmitters. This means that these features are not universal, although the endo-symbiosis is cosmological, in the sense that it is the re-entry of the two complementary life-forms, archaea and bacteria, that are themselves evolutionary cosmological complements – geological and fermentational. That’s why Symbiotic Existential Cosmology invokes Darwinian panpsychism – a two stage process, the basal one being cosmological primitive subjectivity and the advanced one being emergent attentive consciousness.

Now look at your question. You have completely conflated these two: "cosmic consciousness including individual consciousness [self-as-subject with its Free Will and self-certainty (= self-experience, self-consciousness, and self-knowledge)] are primary”. You have introduced multiple red herrings. Where did I say self-certainty? Or self-certainty (= self-experience, self-consciousness, and self-knowledge)? You are bundling just about everything into the baby when most of it is in the bathwater. I have no self-certainty. I simply exist.

Experior, ergo sum, experimur, ergo sumus. Experimur igitur universum esse.

I experience therefore I am, we experience therefore we are. We experience therefore the universe is!

Here are five features of where your description is inadequate:

(1) Subjective conscious volition is physically creative. This means the interaction also involves subjective consciousness affecting matter. We also know physical circumstances affect consciousness, so it’s a two way street. However we can’t describe it as a simple bijective or deterministic mapping, because the dynamics of subjective consciousness, particularly coupled to the brain in organismic consciousness are at the complex end of cosmological phenomena and of any theoretical description, just as I said about ball and stick chemistry versus fundamental symmetry-breaking.

(2) Subjective consciousness can’t be decomposed or observed, only experienced, so we can’t analyse it, we can only experience it as a whole in all tis depths and features and live it to the hilt in the vision quest. Carpe diem!

(3) The dynamical relationship between subjective and objective is maximally asymmetric and has to be so to provide conscious anticipation, complementing brain function for living organisms to survive. Conscious states have to be able to respond faithfully to the brain’s boundary conditions, so primitive subjectivity has to be compliant to physics except in situations of physical uncertainty, where free will intervenes without causal conflict.

(4) Cosmic consciousness is the cumulative end-result of emergence. Because consciousness is a two-phase process the first universal and the second emergent we can't talk about cosmic consciousness as if it is the same thing as primitive subjectivity, which exists for single quanta, butterfly effect systems and all life forms. What actually happens is that cosmic consciousness is the most ultimately emergent phenomenon the universe produces. How we can experience it is asymptotically, as highly evolved conscious organisms, releasing ourselves from organismic sensory constraints through meditation enhanced symbiotically through entheogens. This doesn’t invoke primitive cosmic consciousness as a universal but forms of organismic consciousness asymptotically convergent to what Aurobindo called the “super-mind” – organismic consciousness becoming one with its most cosmological dynamics.

(5) Because this involves annihilation of ego, it involves annihilation of self-certainty. Only by this annihilation of the organismic filter imposed by the brain can the brain and mind enter into moksha which is the escape from the round of birth and death through the nierika portal to the spirit world (so called).

SEC adds one and only one additional principle to quantum cosmology:

(1) Subjective consciousness is primary.

Thus it adds primitive subjectivity, which is an additional aspect of quantum reality in which subjective consciousness is represented in the global wave function and free will in wave reduction and other natural phenomena reflecting this principle in quantum reality. In turn, this limits conscious decision making to be uncertain dynamical situations in the brain linked to environmental uncertainty. It doesn't assert defining properties, because these have to be optimally compliant with physical reality to avoid causal conflict.

It then makes a second affirmation through subjective empirical experience:

(2) Subjective conscious volition has efficacy over the physical universe.

This resolves the hard problem of consciousness and the problem of free will by reversing the Occam’s razor logic, by saying the hard problem is in conflict with immediate conscious experience in a way we can immediately verify (e.g. your reply to me manifests physical effect of your admitted subjective consciousness). You need to understand that this is the simple direct satori that emerged from meeting Brahman on mushrooms, as well as the symbiotic principle.

The third principle is the objective empirical observation that we are mortal biological organisms dependent on physical circumstances:

(3) The universe is necessary.

Key to its scientific basis is the discovery that attentive sentient consciousness emerged from the discrete topological transformation accompanying eucaryote endo-symbiosis.

Finally, to complete the becoming, the empirical observation of nature:

(4) Cosmic evolution rises to immortal conscious climax through biospheric symbiosis.

The rest of SEC is entirely confluent with neuroscience and quantum cosmology, with no bias, like your cyclic universes have, or which quantum interpretation is favoured by me. SEC supports a filter theory of consciousness in that the brain is and has to be a contextual filter, not a materialistically causal determiner of consciousness in the light of (2).

This is a karmic satori in pretty much the same way as Buddha emerging from the sheltered life of nobility and discovering death and decay and inventing Buddhism based on the suffering ego, because we are causing a mass extinction of immortal living diversity as we dither.

Ram: By “SEC says consciousness is primary but the universe is necessary”, do you mean both consciousness and universe are inseparable aspects?

Chris: Yes and no! IDAM is inseparable dual aspect monism, SEC is not IDAM but ICAM – Interactively complementary aspect monism. Now do we have an SEC classification? But I really don't think it fits into any existing philosophical paradigm for the core reason that symbiosis is our karma catching up with us because it’s the corner stone the builders of human culture and civilisation neglected.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology says primal subjectivity is cosmological and attentive consciousness is emergent and biological. I don't see organismic consciousness surviving death because it has lost its contextual filter in the brain and its environmental context, so lacks its organismic encapsulation. However the living impression on mushrooms that the universe is pervaded by eternal conscious beings is experienceable and may be like a conscious engram in the cosmos.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology says primal subjectivity is cosmological and attentive consciousness is emergent and biological. I don't see organismic consciousness surviving death because it has lost its contextual filter in the brain and so lacks its organismic encapsulation. However the living impression on mushrooms that the universe is pervaded by eternal conscious beings is experienceable and may be like a conscious engram in the cosmos.

Fig 292: Opuhi - Midnight moonlight. I have spent many moonlit nights lying in entheogenic reverie
in the long grass that caps the summits of what is otherwise a wind-swept native forest wilderness.

Living on the Open Road (mp3 c1985)

Chris King: Song & lyrics, dulcimer, keyboards, ova. Heath King: Bass, rhythm and lead guitars, djembes.

We are whispering ... across the heavens

and all the creatures ... they echo in reply.

We are the very blood ... of the tree of life.

We are the void and the shining light.

We are the eternal gypsy spirits of the universe.

We have been here since it all began.

We will outlast its final passing.

We are here to free the heart of man.

Regarding life after physical death, we know the Bardo Thodol deals with this as a kind of transition trip where consciousness undergoes a transmigration of the soul into another body. Thus the Buddhist Lamas I have known including the sixteenth Karmapa were all claimed to be reincarnated beings found and chosen by the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. While I respect the infectious personality of Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, I do have issues with this idea.

We have discussed this before, but I think the idea of the atman surviving physical death is inconsistent with the merging of atman and Brahman which should also occu in maha-samadhi and I hold the Upanishadic tradition to be the source and Buddhism to be a philosophically truncated form of the founding “grail path”. You can’t on the one hand claim Brahman is “ultimate reality” which is super-abundant cosmic consciousness and then just reduce it to “emptiness” for the purposes of revealing everything is mutually co-arising transient phenomena. I see this as reducing ultimate reality to sandbox spiritual psychology.

So I see the very notion of individual survival of the soul as a heresy. The conscious universe has to be able to return to the source from which all life springs anew, otherwise it becomes cluttered with completed past lives who no longer have a natural context. We/it can't regenerate nature if we are trying to preserve the individual self-consciousness of every atman that has become incarnated in the history of the universe. Neither do I remotely think animal and human souls reincarnate in one another, or that there is any moral law of karma.

This poem gives a hint of this pollution of individual souls:

Missing dates William Empson

It is the Chinese tombs and the slag hills

Usurp the soil, and not the soil retires.

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.

Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills.

The complete fire is death.

Essentially both the Vedic and Buddhist cosmologies are non self-sustaining, which is why they end in the degradation of the Kali yuga, Samvartakalpa or Eon of dissolution – the decline from enlightenment into ignorance.

Biological life, by contrast, is compassionate of the organismic mortal coil it coexists with, through sexuality being essential for complex conscious animal life to exist. We don't expect individual biological organisms to live forever in the entropic universe that IS Prakṛti speaking and to imagine Puruṣa doing the same thing in individual souls is a corruption of the dew drop slipping into the shining sea.

Every night I go to sleep is a little death, from which I am reborn, but I don't want to be stuck in groundhog day forever. We need to be able to let our selves be the robust but illusory hallucinations they actually are, which can dissolve in moksha to our transfiguration, and accept maha-samadhi as giving back to nature the eternal consciousness we have carried as a flame throughout our mortal lives. That is true compassion.

Dilemmas of Dealing with the Unshakeable Scientism of a Physical Scientist about Understanding Consciousness

Fig 293: Constructing our description of reality based on the external physical world, since Copernicus, carries incredible explanatory power, because nature is complex and provides a detailed physical and biological description, that is accessible to explore, but in terms of subjective experience and conscious existence, relying exclusively on the external objective details paints us into a corner where we cannot solve the hard problem of consciousness, because the external objective description is categorically incapable of modelling or manifesting intrinsic subjectivity. This situation can never be resolved while scientists hold unshakeable fixed opinions, eliminating any first person evidence from the empirical methods of science (experiential and observational).

This is an account of a debate on the nature of subjective consciousness and the importance of including subjective empirical 1pp experience as well as objective 3pp observation in the scientific discovery process about the conscious mind and the physical brain, so that others can understand the problems consciousness researchers have as scientists seeking to uncover the nature of reality as a whole. I have tried to include as many of the people involved as possible in an account covering (1) 1pp versus 3pp empirical scientific methods, (2) the struggle to validate the nature of subjective conscious volition over the physical universe, which all intentional beings depend on to survive, and (3) the question of observability versus non-observable phenomena. Hopefully this can turn a seemingly intractable divide into a creative process of discovery for readers to come, and shows the problems mainstream science has facing let alone respecting and understanding the nature of subjective conscious existence in the physical universe.

Kashyap Vasavada: As I have been discussing for perhaps a year or so, to me, the most visible demonstration of difference between conscious animals and unconscious rocks is the purposeful moving of body parts. Other things, speech, languages and all esoteric things associated with consciousness come later. To neuroscientists it is now well established that there is some network of nerves starting from cortex or spinal cord and going to limbs using ionic currents. Regardless, the basic model is likely to remain unchanged. Now, how thought or desire to move limbs give rise to currents may be a missing link or under debate in neuroscientific journals or society meetings. But I think the above model will remain unchanged for quite some time.

Jonathan Edwards: We are interested in this ‘missing link’ that gets the outbound events going. The outbound electric events are well understood. Moreover, you can get the same outbound events with unconscious movement, not just brute movement in epilepsy but the finely detailed unconscious movements of my hands going over the computer keys – of which I am only conscious now and again when I think of it. So the debate we are having is where in the chain from input to output is thought and desire. Cathy has her reasons for thinking that something that does not simply follow from (supervene on) electrodynamic patterns is happening – something more. I think we are looking for electrodynamic events of a special sort in nerves. Chris K thinks we are looking for patterns in the dynamics that go beyond individual nerves and beyond the predictability of basic field theory.

Kashyap: So far I have not heard any convincing argument that we should believe in 1pp experience of any one, even Samadhi, vs 3pp verification of thousands of observers which result into certain things like internet we are using now! How can you prove that they are not either honest hallucinations or worse frauds like many I have seen in India and I am sure exist in other parts of the world? I was discussing tremendous advance in neuroscience about understanding limbs motion and other aspects of brain. They come from precise knowledge of how nerve currents start from specific areas of brain resulting in contraction of specific muscles. This kind of knowledge results in engineers devising prosthetic limbs and brain surgeons putting implants to cure Parkinson’s and similar diseases. You have to know which part of brain does what to put the implant properly. Just saying consciousness makes your limbs move does not mean anything.

Chris: Two articles appeared today in Nature on state of the art implants, allowing a person paralysed by a brain stem haemorrhage to “speak”. It is simply an electrocorticogram grid sitting over the Sylvian fissure, including the motor cortex. This enables the team to build up a primitive representation of the local regional field activation which then has to be carefully decoded as a very rough description of what she might have been trying to say with currently about 72% inaccuracy. It’s locally more detailed than a current EEG but the 253 electrode set is only a little higher than the 129 electrode cap we have used for EEG studies. Of course the techniques will improve, but there is no way this, which does require a deep learning model, or any other mechanistic device attached through a data interface can prove that the subjective conscious volition to speak or do anything else in the physical universe is a simple physical reflex arc, just as there is no way to prove that the physical universe, or its brain dynamics, is causally closed.

Daniel Levine: The problems of understanding the mind, consciousness, behavior, empathy, etc., are so incredibly complex that NO LINE OF INQUIRY SHOULD BE EXCLUDED! 3pp experimental science, mathematical theory, 1pp subjective experience, clinical observations, all are part of the search for understanding. And everybody has a mind and consciousness and behaves and feels, so has contributions to make regardless of station in life.

Kashyap: If you can convert 1pp experience into 3pp data then many observers can participate. That is fine. Then only it becomes science. On our campus many psychologists do EEG/FMRI of mice. My dispute with some on these forums was that they want science to take 1pp experience as scientific data!!

Jo Edwards: You may never get to see your mistake but you are completely wrong about 1pp data not being useful in science. (In fact 1pp is never converted to 3pp, we just establish reliable correlations.) In biomedicine we routinely study 1pp phenomena like colour perception, pain, fatigue, memory (very easily given numerical values) and so on. Just because you have been living in a physics lab all your life does not mean that science not go further outside! And when it comes to basic physics we find ourselves back at 1pp because we want to be able to create a mental picture of what events in the world are like at a fundamental level. Lots of people end up with absurd ideas like ’wavicles’ that don’t really mean anything. Others ‘shut up and calculate’ which is all very well but it means that nobody is likely to make the sort of conceptual breakthrough that Einstein and Bohr did in establishing the quantal nature of reality. Sticking to 3pp ensures that all you ever do is engineering, not even new fundamental physics. To get new insights you need to have 1pp conceptions.

Kashyap: I still stand by my statements. 1pp experiences are useful for psychologists and medical doctors to understand status of a person’s brain. But because of vagueness, they are useless for understanding laws of nature! I think every scientist who has at least 10 or more years of college level study of science related subjects would agree with that. The success of physics/science in last 400 years is a solid proof of that!

Jo: You seem to have backed yourself into a corner with no exit, Kashyap. You want to know how desire, which is purely 1pp, gives rise to current, which is purely 3pp, using an explanation that only deals with 3pp. You could equally reverse it and ask how current gives rise to desire. Either you think this is a scientific question or you don’t. You do not really have a third option. Consciousness is 1pp. Why join a forum if you think there is no point in theories involving 1pp?

Kashyap: Unfortunately, very many people on these forums do not understand what is science and what are its methods. They keep on arguing, something must be true because it is in ancient books or some one said it! This is false. MSP does not believe in physics because Einstein or Schrodinger or Heisenberg said it!! But many of the things have a solid experimental support! 3pp verification by lots of observers, preferably with repeatedly calibrated instruments , is the final authority in science. Individual experiences cannot be accepted as science. Also theories or models in science have only a tentative acceptance. So, what can you do if it is not possible to do experiments on something like concept of mind, OBE, NDE, psi, afterlife, existence of another world etc. Well these have to be classified as nonscientific beliefs until they are established. You can do experiments on brain. So that is part of science, not mind!

Siegfried Bleher: A single 1 pp experience need not be repeated to grow into a new theory that eventually supersedes its predecessor. If it does, it does so with numerous instances of 3 pp support, as you say. But all of that can be triggered by a single insight in one individual. That is part of the value of 1 pp -- of course, not to deny the tremendous effort needed to bring an insight to public awareness and verification.

Kashyap: Surely, I did not take any neuroscience course. But from what I have read, I can tell that they usually talk about brain. They know that mind is an undefined object. If you find, any neuroscientist talking about mind, what it is and where it is located, let me know. I would like to know how he/she found out about it!! As I said the word ‘mind’ is coined by some philosopher thousands of years back without knowing much science. Scientists do not talk about unobservable things!

Cathy Reason: How do you know this when you have not taken any course on neuroscience? Undecidable does not necessarily mean unknowable. It just means there is no finite sequence of instructions which will determine if something is mind or not-mind. The same is true of life.

Chris King: Mind is NOT invented thousands of years ago by some ignorant philosopher, it originates from the Norse “love”. It is shared across cultures by the Latin word “mens” for mental. The span of the definitions below shows it is an integral conceptual working component of human knowledge, which is also widely accepted in neuroscience for active conscious mental states, including cognition and reasoning. It is not a physical attribute in space time, but neither is love or the patience so many people have shown you with no commensurate respect from you. Does patience exist in space-time? Does integrity? Does time itself, or is it next for the grim reaper? I believe you do know how to think so you need to respect that your mind thought these delusions of yours. Please stop denigrating psychology and several other sciences and listen to the wide spectrum of objections you have received.

mind (n.) "that which feels, wills, and thinks; the intellect," late 12c., mynd, from Old English gemynd "memory, remembrance; state of being remembered; thought, purpose; conscious mind, intellect, intention," Proto-Germanic *ga-mundiz (source also of Gothic muns "thought," munan "to think;" Old Norse minni "mind;" German Minne (archaic) "love," originally "memory, loving memory"), from suffixed form of PIE root *men- (1) "to think," with derivatives referring to qualities of mind or states of thought. Meaning "mental faculty, the thinking process" is from c. 1300. Sense of "intention, purpose" is from c. 1300. From late 14c. as "frame of mind. mental disposition," also "way of thinking, opinion." "Memory," one of the oldest senses, now is almost obsolete except in old expressions such as bear in mind (late 14c.), call to mind (early 15c.), keep in mind (late 15c.). mental (adj.) early 15c., "in, of, or pertaining to the mind; characteristic of the intellect," from Late Latin mentalis "of the mind," from Latin mens (genitive mentis) "mind," from PIE root *men- (1) "to think."

Kashyap: [The] only thing I want these people to admit in plain English [is] that they do not know what is mind and where it is. Whether it is undecidable or unknowable like concept of God comes later!!! … As I said I do not have any problem if someone wants to study it. But do not call it science!! Let scientists define what is science just as we let carpenters define what is carpentry and do not consult carpenters about heart problems!!!

In view of existence of hallucinations, illusions and faulty judgements of individual minds, how can you justify believing in experiences of individuals and ignoring average of measurements based on repeatedly calibrated instruments by thousands of observers all over the world? As I have been saying even judicial system has been relying more and more on video evidence in comparison with accounts of individuals on what happened in front of their eyes!!

Chris: Science is the empirical, theoretical and descriptive discovery of nature. It is not just about σ5 quantitative statistical measurements. Empiricism is about both empirical 3pp observation and empirical 1 pp experience. The notion derives from a doctor using their first person experience of medical conditions to make expert diagnoses. Sigma x simply gives the unlikelihood of the result, whether 1pp experience or 3pp observation, happening by chance.

Gaussian statistics is useful only in fine quantitative measurements of effects with statistical sampling errors. Even then, there is no absolute standard. Statistical methods can be applied to subjective reports, just as with experimental observations and many neuroscience experiments combine both, as Dan pointed out to gain an understanding of conscious brain states. The standards are chosen by the discipline to be appropriate for the circumstances, from σ 1.64 (5%) in psychology to σ5 (~10^–7) in physics. The fact that I have to tell you this after a year of your determined obstinacy speaks volumes about your inability to understand, or respect, the full sweep of the scientific method.

You are taking such a severe line about empirical methods of investigation that it disables a good sector of physics, let alone virtually all of the biological sciences, psychology, and much of medical science, where descriptive awareness of fine details of a condition are essential. You simply don’t make a five sigma medical diagnosis, the balance of personal experience is the key to an effective diagnosis and therapy. The legal system continues to depend on personal testimony, although supported by circumstantial evidence, and must needs do so for humans to take personal responsibility for their intentional actions upon others in the physical universe.

We do NOT let carpenters define what is carpentry. I have built two houses as well as being a scientist. Neither do scientists alone, nor professors, nor Nobel prize winners have the exclusive authority to define what is science, nor should they be allowed to do so. That is called priesthood, religion, dogma or doctrine. You are trying to claim everyone else is ignorant and no one is a ’scientist’ as if it was a sovereign title given the elect to rule over others. The worship of higher authority is contrary to the scientific method.

Joshua Davis (Yeshua ben David): Never forget that dead brains in museums are nonconscious systems, like rocks. You will likely never find the memories of the human in a dead brain. I see my mind every day. I also hear an output of your mind when you speak to me as well as when I read such outputs. Perhaps, one day you will change your mind about mind when new meanings surprise you. I am sure you will never need to change your brain to change your mind.

Kashyap: OK! But that brain in [the] museum was alive once. Have you seen a mind anywhere? Can you be sure it is not just your imagination, like child’s imagination of 100 ft tall monster under the bed?

Grant Gillett: My mind is contributed to by Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Kant, Merleau-Ponty, Vygotsky, Wittgenstein and Luria daily but my brain has never been in the same ecosphere as them – interesting!

Kashyap: All the people you have quoted are dead philosophers not scientists whose theories have to be verified by experiments. In particular Aristotle’s physics was completely wrong!

Cathy: I should add, Kashyap, that your questions do have answers, just not the sort of answers you may be expecting – which is presumably why Yeshua and Grant are offering you what are in effect, koans. The answer to your question "Where is mind?" is that it is probably not located in physical space-time at all

Nancy Dutertre: Kashyap, are you starting to get it yet? To Cathy’s characterization of Joshua and Grant’s statements/drawings as “koans”. Do you understand simultaneous logical illogic or illogical logic – take your pick? A mind “is”…… where in time and space? Nowhere, somewhere, and everywhere.

Kashyap: Cathy, Sorry to be blunt! Yeshua does not have any Physics degree as far as know, although he is trying to do experiments [on Bell entanglement] in the Auckland Physics Dept. Apparently Grant has M.D. but his answers do not look scientific. My question was a serious one. Grant gives some abstract philosophical answer. Yeshua shows a sketch of his smiling face as representing mind!!! This confirms my suspicion that no one understands what is mind and where it is. Most likely some thoughts arising from brain are called mind , which is a word coined by philosophers and not scientists. In fact, I assert that there are extremely few scientists on these forums. That is a big problem!!! ... You will agree that showing a sketch of human face is not much of an answer to the question what is mind and where it is."

Sungchul Ji: Joshua's answer [a smiling face] was a semiotically profound answer. I am afraid Joshua threw pearls to pigs.

Kashyap: to you!!! You have practically zero knowledge of physics!

Cathy: As far as I know, Yeshua is a physicist and Grant is a neurosurgeon. I'd have thought that was scientific enough for anyone.

Grant: You are right in the sense that I have only published a few books on neuroscience and usually in relation to philosophy; it is similar with my several hundred medical publications. But after all us so called ‘doctors’ sometimes even have PhD’s far less D.Phils.

Amit Aurora: Kashyap ji, I could also say, You know little of Biology or Quantum Physics and technologies, or what lies beyond our universe. Why do you just keep on bombing everybody with their limited knowledge of Physics? I don't believe traditional physics will survive any more as science is advancing at a very fast pace. You need to recognize that physics is just one piece of the broader scientific puzzle. While it lays the groundwork for understanding the universe's fundamental laws, the rich tapestry of science encompasses many other branches, each with its own significance and relevance to our exploration and comprehension of the natural world. Embracing the diversity of scientific disciplines allows us to gain a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of our complex and interconnected universe. Please you need to change yourself and be open to other people thinking. Please try to adopt a Trans-disciplinary mindset, otherwise you will keep on arguing and accusing people if they know physics well or not.

Sungchul: It would be a miracle if our dear Kashyap listen to your loving advice.

Deepak Chopra: Without the unobservable observer there is no science (Chopra & Kafatos 2017). The empirical manifest is a blip of experience in the vast ocean of formless awareness. “Empirical fact“ is a name given by humans to a specific snapshot of perceptual activity in consciousness - a v practical magical lie – in the model of naive local realism - basis of all science.

Chris: Darwin didn’t need to do σ5 quantitative stats because his discoveries were a descriptive analysis of evolution. Einstein didn't need to do σ5 3pp observation to deduce relativity theoretically or to discover quantum reality experimentally in the photoelectric effect, because it depended only on the frequency, not the intensity (Arons & Peppard 1965). Superconductivity is an effect demonstrated by a permanent magnet hovering over the superconducting medium. It is again a definitive result.

If we want to move forward, I suggest two key steps:

(1) Agreeing to care for one another and take shared responsibility for any outcome and not presume to ignore valid critiques from group members, as Kashyap does.

(2) Figuring out how the group can actually further, or accomplish, the repair of the world – tikkun olam. This is the urgent key that gives the group meaning and purpose.

Brian Josephson: My PhD was experimental (title: 'nonlinear conduction in superconductors', but I did do a little theory on the side, including a published paper that went down well.

Chris: Brian was awarded half the 1973 Nobel prize "for his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Josephson effects”. Wikipedia notes that he has repeatedly criticized "science by consensus," arguing that the scientific community is too quick to reject certain kinds of ideas. "Anything goes among the physics community – cosmic wormholes, time travel," he argues, "just so long as it keeps its distance from anything mystical or New Age-ish." Referring to this position as "pathological disbelief”.

Daniel: If you rest your case, [Kashyap] please rest it! I am tired of hearing it over a hundred times, and repeating it to this group will not change anyone’s mind. As for my “Type 2 publications,” to me the connections are seamless not only between science and spirituality but between science and the humanities and social sciences. So I have written articles that are expository for varied audiences, drawing on my scientific research and others’, both in scientific journals – like Neural Networks, Cognitive Systems Research, and European Journal of Medicine – and in non-scientific journals – like Journal of Socio-Economics, Utopian Studies, and Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies.

Siegfried: I will say that it is likely the brain acts as an anchor and receptor to the mind, in the sense that our feelings and concepts serve to delimit our patterns of thought and access to original thoughts and concepts. Such limitations include concepts of locality and identity. Since we know that patterns of movement and memories can be triggered with electrical signals, there is an additional anchoring to the physical processes identified by neuroscience. But I don’t think neuroscience will find the mind within the anchors.

Entheogens and meditative practices disrupt the anchors, which leads to revelations of the unanchored aspects of mind (which, of course, can be both good and bad, depending on preparation of the individual and the availability of guidance), or switch the mind to a different set of anchors.

The way mind can be ‘outside’ or ‘prior to’ location and still have agency on the physical without appearing to violate any physical laws is if what is describable physically is finely balanced at a critical point. The evidence for the presence of mind is in the intelligence present in the trajectory over time, not in violation of conservation laws in any single event.

A way of linking what I am describing as the mind separate from the anchors to physical anchors is to recognize that there is self-consistency in 3pp science as determined by contextual constraints of the current conceptual foundations of MSP. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the conceptual foundations of MSP rest on perturbative properties of QFT near to and at the extrema of the actions for the current model Lagrangians. There is a kind of confirmation bias that prevents MSP from considering non-perturbative aspects of the model Lagrangians or more accurately other Lagrangians whose perturbative limits we work with that might contain more distant extrema (locatable with Floer homology, for example).

Kashyap: To give a short answer people who investigate unobservable things are not called scientists in the usual sense of the word. So there is no question of any boundary!! If you do not believe me, go to a nearby university and talk to a professor who is spending his/her life in teaching and research in science. Note that there are indirectly observable things like quarks or wave functions. But NO SCIENTIST, yes, NO SCIENTIST will ever say he/she would like to spend his life in trying to investigate strictly unobservable things!!! So there is no type 2 science. Either it is type 1 or something else which should not be called science!

Chris: The only scientific concepts that are definitively unobservable are sub-quantum hidden-variable theories that coincide with quantum field theory at the quantum level. In addition there is only the concept of an invisible omniscient omnipotent God which is, to say the least, scientifically problematic. This is really really important to get right. I “believe” there are hidden variable theories that are (1) consistent with pilot waves in terms of weak quantum measurement, (2) with the transactional interpretation in terms of wave function collapse and (3) with super-determinism in its dynamic detector boundary conditions. I think this is how the universe is and that’s why it is alive as Deepak says and we are alive, so the idea that this investigation is not science or not scientific, is itself completely unscientific.

But I don't agree about the existence of an unobservable spirituality either. The whole 1pp vision quest is the complement of the 3pp physically observable world. Both are by definition observable. The journey of the vision quest is both the ferry across the Styx and the voyage of the Beagle in paradise. The mystery is transcendent but the reality is immanently manifest. I am an empiricist and a mainstream scientist on the question of observability. I don't accept any form of unobservable moksha or an unobservable cosmic mind. The whole basis of Brahman as ultimate reality is it's transparent experiencability, no longer through a glass darkly, but now face to face, knowing also as we are known.

Bearing in mind the vast differences between these points of view and their cosmological significance I think any premature conclusions are precipitate.

Yeshua: Yes Chris, I concur that unobservable physical quantities are different than unobservable thoughts and spiritual values. I was referring to unobservable thoughts or spiritual values only to 3 pp science and only available to 1st pp and possibly to 2nd pp science in shared experience. I concur with you that experiences and reports of sublime thoughts and values in meditative or entheogenic states are to be considered as 1st pp empirical science.

Deepak Chopra: On target Chris!

Chris: I am not uncertain about the nature of mind or consciousness. You know I have Symbiotic Existential Cosmology fully fledged, of now 763 pages thanks to this review. I am NOT uncertain about this as a theoretical description. I repeat the key principle which is: "Subjective consciousness has efficacy of volition over the physical universe” due to our relationship with quantum uncertainty, manifest in environmental uncertainty in a causally open universe.

We all need now to move on and not look back, or those that remain will turn into pillars of salt, or suffer the fate of Eurydice through the uncertainty of Orpheus, to coin a myth that Kashyap may yet come to understand.

Dilemmas of Dealing with the Unshakeable Idealism about Cosmological Consciousness

Deepak: Matter is a name for human perceptual activity. Useful construct Not fundamentally real. Matter is a collection of qualia in consciousness.

Chris: I think you are dreaming! Or I hope you are! My father was a general surgeon. Who had a dream that he was standing on a very long stairway and on it there was another man and he said to him “This is just a dream and I’m going to put my head on the stair and you can kick me in the face!” So he did just that, and the man kicked him in the face and he awoke in shock in agony with pain, just as real as if he was awake.

Now if you think that when you said "Matter is a collection of qualia in consciousness “, which I presume was when you were in a state of alert wakeful consciousness, as you sent this electronic communication to us, how about you put your head on the stair while you are awake and one of us can have a go to give you a gentle jab. If we went too far, you would lose this consciousness, as you know as a medical practitioner. So you are either going to be in abject pain and possibly bleeding, or you will be unconscious and won’t have these “qualia” you claim is the physical universe. But for us, the universe is still around us and you are out cold on the stairway.

We all know this and so we just about all know you are fooling yourself. As the old saying goes, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people any of the time, nor any of the people all of the time. You certainly can't fool me, although I don't believe matter makes mind either, but if you intend to continue to try to pull the wool over my eyes, please let's just run the experiment together on zoom for the whole world to see, recorded in its full glory!

Deepak: Your head is also the same illusion. As is your body. As is the pain. As is death. Awareness is independent of its modified expressions. Bye.

Chris: I wear a Tibetan silver skull on my necklace with a 1/4 Anna coin as the clasp, now nearly dissolved by years of sweat, that was thrown to me by a priest in a little roadside temple in Puri where the juggernaut from Jaggernath crushed the faithful under its wheels.

But none of this mind illusion talk has any power to save the Tree of Life throughout the universe!!

Neither does running for the door express confidence in your assertion!

Deepak: All names and forms are ephemeral transient identities. Even yesterday is now an ephemeral dream. Why can’t we realize all names and forms are human constructs attempting to explain transient experiences in awareness ?

Chris: Transience is the unbounded mother of living diversity. The sorts of native or naive observations you make, we can make from the age of four, summed up in the same words because consciousness is where we start. But like it or lump it, we are here to transform the living universe, each in our own microcosmic way for better or worse. Stepping off the merry go round is what death actually is. Don’t preempt the grim reaper! Don't cast lots on its garments before your time! You are just hastening the inevitable!

Deepak: Chris is a genius

Deepak: Fundamental reality (existence is formless. It has no borders. It is infinite. It is the immeasurable potential of all that was all that is and all that will be. It is Absolute Irreducible Shapeless Timeless Unchanging Unimaginable Incomprehensible.

Chris: This description is a product of sparse contentless meditation that ends up perceiving consciousness itself as the Absolute, while nothing insightful is forthcoming. Yes consciousness is behind every experience and is that which is aware of everything but that doesn’t mean it is the Absolute.

There is no explanatory power in this description except its claim that everything comes from consciousness itself. But this simply cannot be consciously established because we are inside the bubble of perception. The only way to get out is experienceable moksha, but you can't do that with emptiness meditation. You need a fully experienceable NDE that transforms your world view and provokes you to act to save life throughout the universe. Anything less IS delusion. Psychedelic deep meditation is the complete opposite of this, full to overflowing abundance – and is the incarnate natural route to moksha. Emptiness meditation is a very sparse confining form of samadhi. Seriously at fault is the complete failure to understand how anything happens or why it happens in the way it does. We can't explain the relationship between experiences and the world around us. We can't explain biology, why we are alive, or any other aspect of reality except to say it is all illusion.

Deepak: Do you have any idea why there is existence? Or why there is aware[ness] of existence? Do you believe that systems of human thought including science or philosophy have access to reality? Do you know the source of thought? Have you ever questioned the limitations of human knowing? Why do you assume that a species on a speck of dust in the junkyard of infinity among 2 trillion galaxies has access to Truth?

Chris: Existence exists to experience itself with no limitations. The diversity of existence is the jewel of life incarnate, not a junkyard. The certainty of knowing transcends the illusion of “Truth”.

Ram: The question is how Sagun Brahman manifested from Nirgun Brahman. Is it through evolution and natural selection? Yes, it might be true because life arose 10 Bya after the Big Bang. For 10 Bya, Nirgun Brahman manifested into non-living entities such as galaxies, stars, planets, etc. When humans came, Nirgun Brahman manifested into Sagun Brahman, such as Ishvara/God and deities, which were needed to organize us, live peacefully, reduce suffering, and solace when our loved one died. It makes sense to me to bring science and spirituality closer. What do you say?

Chris: I don't think Sagun is just a manifestation of Nirgun. They are both perspectives on an unconstrainable reality, as Deepak says. The Vedas were conceived through samadhi from the idealistic perspective that emerged from animism and spans both East and West. Their rationale is thus conceived idealistically as thought, or consciousness. It’s inherently subjective not just neutral.

When you say manifesting into "non-living entities such as galaxies, stars, planets, etc” this is assuming two things:

(1) That these are non-living. While I see biological life as cosmologically climactic, because it is the most complete manifestation of the four forces of the core standard model, the answer to all this is that cosmological Gaia is plausible on all levels once we have primal subjectivity, so the hybrid primal emergent SEC paradigm is very fertile.

(2) Whether there is an abstract symmetry-broken force of nature at the source or whether it needed an aphysical “agent”. All the events since the inflationary big bang are consequences of this early phase following the known laws with only moderate adjustments required to complete the picture. The jury is still out for lunch on this early phase or whether it needs primal subjectivity or “God” or us anthropically to define it, or is a one of many multiverse. In every other respect outside quantum uncertainty, the subjective is complaint to physical boundary conditions avoiding causal conflict, although the inflationary origin was all uncertainty. So I suspect Brahman manifests initially as primal subjectivity and fully ramifies late in cosmic history, so the cosmos can become self aware, pulling itself up from its bootstraps so to speak using the forces of nature to become embodied.

Ram: Where does primal subjectivity come from?

Chris: From the necessity for the subjective to exist at the origin because of Ryle being basically correct that subject and object are existentially disjunctive. It doesn’t mean they can't interact, as we actually experience this all the time, but one cannot be used to explain or invoke the other, so subjectivity has to be coeval with the cosmic origin. This is exceedingly plausible, because the universe itself arose from a quantum fluctuation in the inflationary scenario and it provides primal complementarity to the primal universe. Then they can both bootstrap interactively together as Shiva-Shakti. And it trounces the hard problem by saying that if physical matter can’t generate subjectivity through physical complexity then matter must already have a subjective aspect. It’s just like dual aspect monism, but its interactively alive, so subjective conscious can affect the material universe. That's the other way it is asserted – the primal axiom that subjective conscious volition has efficacy over the physical universe as an empirical experience, in which both come together existentially in the now. So we are full circle.

Ram: The article by Swami Mehananda is fascinating. Please read the following (it is very long so take your time) and let me know your comments. It seems the neutral (neither mental nor physical, neither conscious nor non-conscious, neither formless nor with forms, neither attributeless nor with attribute) Nirguṇa Brahman (NB) is the fundamental/ultimate reality.

Chris: You seem to be misquoting Aurobindo and the content of Mehananda’s (2022) paper about Sankara as well, so your Nirguna Brahman thesis unravels.

Firstly Aurobindo says:

For in the Inconscient itself and behind the perversions of the Ignorance Divine Consciousness lies concealed and works and must more and more appear, throwing off in the end its disguises. —Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga I.

This clearly says Aurobindo does not accept a neutral monistic idea of aspect-less ultimate reality. It says he sees consciousness as the divine fundamental and neutral Inconscience as simply a substrate for consciousness to manifest and transcend.

Secondly the key reference to Nirguna in Mehananda’s (2022) paper says:

According to Sankara’s “illusionist” Advaita philosophy, the sole reality is the impersonal and attributeless (nirguna) Pure Consciousness, which only appears to manifest as this world due to our ignorance.

By contrast, according to Aurobindo’s “realistic” Advaita, the Divine Saccidananda is both personal (saguna) and impersonal (nirguna): the Sat aspect of Saccidananda corresponds to the impersonal Absolute accepted by Sankara, while the Cit aspect of Saccidananda is “Consciousness-Force,” a personal and dynamic “Cit-Sakti” which has the inherent capacity to manifest in and as the world. Hence, Aurobindo, unlike Sankara, holds that everything in the world is an emphatically real manifestation of Divine Consciousness. … According to Aurobindo, evolution has both an outer and an inner dimension. Darwin’s theory of physical evolution through natural selection provides a more or less accurate account of how various species have evolved in the course of the earth’s history. However, what Darwin overlooked is the inner spiritual evolution of consciousness through the mechanism not of natural selection but of divine “involution.” Divine Consciousness, Aurobindo claims, is “involved” in everything in the universe and progressively manifests itself at each stage of the evolutionary process from matter to life to mind, and ultimately, to Supermind.

Mehananda is saying neither Sankara’s “illusionist” philosophy nor Aurobindo’s “realistic” approach are neutral monism with no manifest aspects – Sankara because nirguna is not attribute-less but is a form of “consciousness” and Aurobindo because “Consciousness-Force,” has the inherent capacity to manifest in and as the world. Deepak also clearly identifies consciousness as fundamental not attribute-less unknowable, neutral, nothingness.

Aurobindo comes closer than Deepak to a comprehensive notion of existence:

These [i.e. Mind, Life, and Matter] are in themselves powers of the superior principles [i.e., Sat, Cit-Sakti, Ananda, and Vijnana]; but wherever they manifest in a separation from their spiritual sources, they undergo as a result a phenomenal lapse into a divided in place of the true undivided existence: this lapse, this separation creates a state of limited knowledge exclusively concentrated on its own limited world-order and oblivious of all that is behind it and of the underlying unity, a state therefore of cosmic and individual Ignorance.

I am certain Deepak is wrong about all experience being illusion, which also justifies Mehananda’s term “illusionist” applied to Sankara, but he is right in identifying “consciousness” as primal.

But Aurobindo makes the mistake of seeing matter as aggregates of consciousness:

But at least this is aiming for an existential cosmology. Symbiotic Existential Cosmology avoids this problem because it conceives of cosmic conscious as a state we approach asymptotically through opening the doors of perception while primal subjectivity is vestigial at the cosmic origin, thus not having to try to explain the physical universe as derived from involutions of consciousness, which we know to be a primarily organismic climax in biological evolution.

Ram: Yes, there might be many possibilities; but how can we rule out what I mentioned previously? “When humans came, Nirgun Brahman manifested into Sagun Brahman, such as Ishvara/God and deities … ”

Chris: Before I reply to Ram I want to explain briefly how the relationship between consciousness and experience arises physically in the brain and how this clarifies the nature of existence and the relationship between NB and SB in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology. I am going to discuss the mammalian brain but we need to understand from the outset that all metazoan brains share deep common principles that arose in single celled amoebo-flagellates, despite apparent anatomical differences, exemplified by the apparent REM sleep phases of resting baby spiders.

The mammalian brain is not just a neural network of synaptic connections but utilises phase modulated feedback with tissue field potentials and is in fact a vast symbiotic society of neurons and neuroglia cooperating in an intimately coupled society similar to aggregating social amoebae. It consists of two interacting systems, one arising from the ascending cholinergic reticular activating system evoking the energetic resonances between the thalamic nuclei and the cerebral cortex we associate with active consciousness, modulated by the adrenergic ascending pathways of serotonin, dopamine and other monoamines modulating brain dynamics for organismic survival.

Complementing this is the envelope of the cerebral cortex, which is organised as a filter on ascendent activity, in six cortical layers, distributed across the cortex in micro-columns, which, with the exception of prefrontal areas involved in attention, despite the extreme variations of visual, auditory and somato-sensory processing, all have a common architecture and physiology. This cortical experiential filter under normal operation eliminates the subterranean level of processing to form a perceptual internal model of reality spanning all dimensions of subjective experience external and internal. This means that we don't see the physical world of wave particles directly as it is, but an inner representation of it, e.g. through three colour vision based on the versions of rhodopsin in the cones of the retina, augmented by higher level visual processing areas into veridical 3D vision, symphonic spectral audition, alluring olfaction of hundreds of receptor dimensions and subtle tactile through to emotional and internal organismic sensations. Because some areas of the cortex include information about self and other, these also include recursive experiences of autonomous agency over the world around us, distinct from consciousness itself. As well, partly through culture and language, we have developed higher processes of cognition, analytical thought and reason, extending from natural intuition of the environment around us and our relationships with other agents. This internal model of reality, although located biologically in the brain becomes the holy grail of subjective experience, as a kind of controlled hallucination, we call subjective conscious experience.

When we enter deep states of meditation leading to samadhi, the cortical filters become diminished, leading to consciousness becoming liberated from physical perceptual constraints. In addition samadhi leads to a full or partial dissolution of the distinction between self an other when areas of the default mode network key to organismic survival to do with rehearsing egotistical survival threats become quietened. This leads to an oceanic view of consciousness connected to both one-pointed concentration, and abandonment of one-self to the greater whole, which may be associated with bliss and with the idea of the formless emptiness of consciousness, but is also associated with the merging of organismic atman with Brahman as ultimate reality beyond form in NB.

There are two additional factors we need to take into account. The first is that human cultural emergence arose from gatherer-hunter society in which other living agents rather than machines constituted the key existential crises in other people, climate predators, storm, fire and flood, so human consciousness has invested in animism, the a priori assumption that the “other” is another conscious agent. As animism became pantheism and then doctrinal religion, these animistic perspectives grew into anthropomorphic deities possessing jealousy, anger, compassion, and other human emotions. These emotional dimensions are also manifest in the default mode representations, so it is possible for the subject in samadhi to either experience ultimate reality in the abstract in the dissolution of experience of form into pure consciousness, or to envisage the merging with Brahman in a fully manifest personality of meeting God. One can see these features physiologically in cingulate cortical areas having representations of the emotional personality of both self and other which can become merged in samadhi.

This means the NB and SB are different theistic and abstract conscious states accessible to individuals in samadhi which is how Vedanta and Buddhism became traditions. To claim NB is completely inaccessible to consciousness is a contradiction to Brahman being cosmic consciousness and nullifies the basis through which the very concept of Brahman arose in deep samadhi.

The second factor we need to take into account, which is much less familiar to many of you is the advent of visionary sacraments and particularly the classic entheogens. These provide an additional avenue to a very experientially overflowing version of samadhi, in which the very processes producing subjective experience become emergent in consciousness. This provides a full to overflowing visionary condition which is also strongly predisposed to quietening the default mode network, particularly when combined with deep meditation, to make a more experienced form of samadhi, which nevertheless also involves consciousness beyond form and can induce a moksha experience of escaping the mortal coil, the bubble of perception, or bundle of life, in which our incarnate condition is bound, resulting is release from the confines of birth and death into union with cosmic consciousness. Although this is highly sensual, it strongly manifests consciousness not only beyond form, but the generator of all form, both illusion and reality, so it is in a Copernican sense, a privileged view of ultimate reality that can be of immense healing power, although it can also be profoundly distracting without deep meditation.

This leads to an altogether different view of ultimate reality in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology in which Brahman is in the process of becoming manifest in the samadhi states of meditators and in which subjectivity and the universe are complementary and coeval manifestations of reality, from which full consciousness emerged late in the universe in the eucaryote endosymbiosis.

Consequently Brahman is a climax conscious phenomenon in an asymptotic liberation of the confines of organismic consciousness in samadhi-moksha, which is in the process of becoming in us and will continue to do so more fully through the use of entheogenic samadhi-moksha states in a human culture symbiotic with the diversity of life throughout our future generations, rather than committing a destructive Fermi extinction upon ourselves as we are currently doing.

Ram: Individual consciousness is conscious subjective experiences (CSEs) of (a) self-as-subject and self-as-object, (b) exogenous and endogenous stimuli, and (c) conscious components of cognitions such as conscious thoughts, decision-making, and judgment, &c. Each of these CSEs (consciousness) including all types of samadhi-related closed eyes meditation/mystically induced endogenously generated or open eyes meditation and external objects induced CSEs must have its own neural-physical activity/basis (NPA/NPB).

Chris: Your definition is deconstructing consciousness into conscious subjective experiences. It is confusing the subjective observer with their observations. This robs identity of its agency. It is absolutely necessary to distinguish consciousness from experience to have any understanding of subjective existence. Consciousness is the active process of subjective awareness observing the contents of experience. This is why Deepak for all his super-idealistic bias is correct that consciousness is formlessness beyond all the forms of experience. You depersonalise this by objectifying both into NPA (~ consciousness) and NPB (~ experience). But your classification eliminates the ghost of consciousness in the machine of IDAM. You can then extrapolate incorrectly to use NB as a cipher to full the gap with an inverse null hypothesis that ultimate reality can neither be experienced by consciousness nor comprehended in any way physical nor experientially. When Buddhists say enlightenment is “emptiness” what they are misdescribing is that consciousness is formless awareness beyond all forms of experience. Consciousness has to be like this so as to be able to experience virtually everything possible.

Your definition obliterates active conscious agency by asserting that consciousness is subjective experiences of self and subject and self as object. You have already in your definition turned not only our experiences, but our very selves into mere objects, or features of our observation on the false basis of both being fixed duals of active brain states. This is destroying the active agency of what conscious existence is.

When I say subjective consciousness has efficacy of volition over the physical universe, it is saying there is an active intentional wilful attentive interaction between subjectivity and the physical universe. Without this, we are no longer transformative agents over physical reality, as we must be to survive in the wild. The key mystery is in consciousness itself complemented by its private experiences in perception of the physical world as well as dreams memories samadhi states and deep visionary states of entheogens.

You add to the problem by falsely classifying CSEs with NPA/NPB in a dualistic breakdown that incorrectly attempts to identify physical and subjective states as duals from the micro to the macro. This model is incorrect because the physical universe is femionically composite particulate while experience is holistic and it causes you to depersonalise the agency of consciousness into ball and stick categories you can then assemble into a classical “objective” philosophical framework.

You now propose that unmanifest Brahman is the core non-subjective non-physical transcendent reality and that manifest Brahman is derivative and dual aspect. The trouble is that Nirgun being primary over Sagun is still part of degenerative false cosmology. Idealistic cosmologies start with a super-conscious omnipotent entity, generally of transcendent subjective experience invoking the universe in which we consciously exist. The trouble is spiritual entropy. The superconscious state disintegrates and separates into a plethora of Shiva-Shaktis lost in their organismic survival (ego). Then it ends up in genocide the Kali Yuga, Samvartakalpa, Frashokereti or Eschaton. So everything is running down hill into iniquity. This makes no sense at all. This is a false cosmology because here we are at the climax of biospheric life incarnate having come out of nowhere. So we need to invoke the creative principle that runs uphill to overflowing. It also lead directly to Christ as the sacrificed mediator in the Logos creation cosmology of Philo invoking Golgotha and the Eucharist.

Both Eastern and Western cosmologies show that reliance on an ultimate good abstract or unmanifest creative entity leads to the Fall into degeneracy because the ultimate eternal goodness of the “Godhead” ends up becoming an unbearable contrast to tooth and claw in the mortal coil, in a tragedy of the commons. This dichotomy pervades both Greek and Vedic cosmologies, in which matter and nature become cursed with mortality, betrayal and pain which is attributed to evil and leads to the Kali Yuga. Idealistic inspiration also pursued false moral doctrines, which became infectious social memes, because religion began to seek control over social lives and reproductive choices.

But Brahman as ultimate reality is the creative principle from which all conscious life springs forth, so Brahman is unbounded by organismic morality which is just an evolutionary aspect of biospheric sociobiology. Brahman is indestructibly creative but takes 10 bya to evolve fully conscious manifestation, so Brahman in my moksha is rightly expressing compassion for the fate of a timeless cosmic consciousness caught in the Faustian pact of a humanity hell-bent on destroying itself, as Deepak laments, from sheer ignorance of the cosmic condition. That's why SEC. Deepak is right that we are in Shakti’s graveyard, the junk pile at the end of the universe unless we wake up, but that's all that is required!

The second problem is that your “Nirguna Brahman” is a completely unmanifest entity which is neither empirical by experience nor by experiment, so it reduces to an a priori belief and remains unestablished unless and until there is some indirect manifesting evidence for its existence. This is the same problem in cosmology as asking what preceded the Big Bang. We can imagine brane worlds and cyclic universes or that God created Eden, but we can't afford to opt for a cosmology that ends in apocalyptic disaster to appease our own desires. I am asserting that since full cosmic conscious Logos cosmology is fundamentally degenerative of existence, it is a false invention of the human psyche, reasoning essentially from idealism of the perfect mind, in abject horror at the tragedy of the ephemeral world of the mortal coil, which we must needs accept and redeem.

SEC poses primal subjectivity. This is the minimal axiom added to ensure subjectivity is present at the cosmic origin. Primal subjectivity covers all notions of subjective reality outside full eucaryote consciousness and conscious experience, so it retains empirical integrity. All the evidence we have says that subjective volition can be efficacious only in causally uncertain situations, or causal conflict would arise. Thus primal subjectivity has to be fully compliant with physically-defined boundary conditions. So your notion of formless Brahman is a no show. The answer to this question is evolution itself and the quantum uncertainty of mutational change, given the molecular boundary conditions and selection forces..

Your notion that there is an inscrutable formless null-aspect Brahman hovering over the early universe, like the Father God of Philo, is in contradiction to achievable manifestation. Prior to the eucaryote endosymbiosis the only physical avenues for primal pre-conscious subjectivity to manifest were broadly speaking in quantum uncertain and butterfly effect Gaia systems in nature. Quanta have individual “free will” only within uncertainty and uncertain events, storms and Gaia effects likewise. Therefore to claim an all powerful fully formed but aspect-less Brahman orchestrating consciousness has no vehicle, no evidence. The tradition says that formless Brahman is ultimate reality and manifest is personified as ‘Elohim. I experienced both, so I see formless Brahman as unconstrained consciousness, when full consciousness as we know it has no sensory boundary conditions.

The tradition says that formless Brahman is ultimate reality and manifest is personified as 'Elohim Ishvara/Ishvari. The former is mystical visionary and the latter religion. Advaita (Nondualist) school of Vedānta sees Saguna merely as a preparatory aid to meditation but theistic schools of Vedānta (Viśiṣṭādvaita), argue that God (Brahman) is possessed of all perfections and that the scriptural passages denying qualities deny only imperfect ones. I experienced both, so I see formless Brahman as unrestrained consciousness, when full consciousness as we know it has no sensory boundary conditions. Griffiths et al. (2019) compared "God-encounter experiences" under classic psychedelics and naturally. While "the Non-Drug Group was most likely to choose "God" as the best descriptor of that which was encountered while the psychedelic groups were most likely to choose "Ultimate Reality." Karen Armstrong notes that Brahman emerged from Vedic Rta, the principle of natural, moral and sacrificial order in the cosmos. Rta and the Avestan equivalent aṣ̌a both derive from Proto-Indo-Iranian *Hr̥tás "truth". Karen Armstrong points out that Brahman was the outstanding insight of Vedic understanding, allowing a direct experiential appreciation of "ultimate reality", transcending personalised divinity.

There is no evidence a neutral non-manifest substrate can manifest as either subjective or objective because it then has to violate categorial inconsistency. There is absolutely no way to justify this or make any kind of reality check. Furthermore consciousness itself IS the hypothetical formless substrate and it can be and is experienced..

Deepak: Repeating myself. All theories of consciousness are inferential explorations of consciousness in consciousness Only consciousness can be conscious. Direct experience of consciousness is Self Awareness without theories. It does not need scientific or philosophical explanations. Science and philosophy are human mental activities in consciousness! Consciousness is acausal and everything else is its activity. Existence is awareness of existence. No theory needed.

Chris: Deepak is broadly correct that Brahman is consciousness itself. This is where the dialogue begins and the Upanishadic tradition continues and it arises from deep samadhi where subjective conscious experience is all there is. To say this has null aspect is the fundamental error of Atmanspacher (2012), which becomes a ghost, not only in the machine, but also of consciousness itself.

To break the cycle, we HAVE to undo this madness by accepting that we are, although mortal, part of the immortal web of life as the conscious universal climax, invested with the creative divine principle and the interaction of subjective consciousness and the physical universe is real and the personal responsibility that we inherit as manifestations requires us to undertake to save life throughout the universe from precipitate annihilation. That’s what Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is here to do. Nirguna Brahman is not intended to be the ultimate reality over Saguṇa Brahman – they are alternative views of one entity and they are free choices of the conscious beholder. We need to take personal responsibility for being at the centre of the cyclone and playing that good part in cosmic redemption, not relying on comforting delusions which turn out bad for us all, the world and life as a whole.

Varieties of Panpsychist Philosophy

Panpsychism is the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world:

“The view has a long and venerable history in philosophical traditions of both East and West, and has recently enjoyed a revival in analytic philosophy. For its proponents panpsychism offers an attractive middle way between physicalism on the one hand and dualism on the other. The worry with dualism—the view that mind and matter are fundamentally different kinds of thing—is that it leaves us with a radically disunified picture of nature, and the deep difficulty of understanding how mind and brain interact. And whilst physicalism offers a simple and unified vision of the world, this is arguably at the cost of being unable to give a satisfactory account of the emergence of human and animal consciousness. Panpsychism, strange as it may sound on first hearing, promises a satisfying account of the human mind within a unified conception of nature” (Goff 2001).

Galen Strawson (2016), who advocates a form of physicalist panpsychism, claims it serves to reinforce the primacy of conscious experience against reductionistic materialism:

Every day, it seems, some verifiably intelligent person tells us that we don’t know what consciousness is. The nature of consciousness, they say, is an awesome mystery. It’s the ultimate hard problem. The current Wikipedia entry is typical: Consciousness “is the most mysterious aspect of our lives”; philosophers “have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness.”

I find this odd because we know exactly what consciousness is — where by “consciousness” I mean what most people mean in this debate: experience of any kind whatever. It’s the most familiar thing there is, whether it’s experience of emotion, pain, understanding what someone is saying, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or feeling. It is in fact the only thing in the universe whose ultimate intrinsic nature we can claim to know. It is utterly unmysterious.

The nature of physical stuff, by contrast, is deeply mysterious, and physics grows stranger by the hour. (Richard Feynman’s remark about quantum theory — “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics” — seems as true as ever.) Or rather, more carefully: The nature of physical stuff is mysterious except insofar as consciousness is itself a form of physical stuff. This point, which is at first extremely startling, was well put by Bertrand Russell in the 1950s in his essay “Mind and Matter”: “We know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events,” he wrote, “except when these are mental events that we directly experience.” In having conscious experience, he claims, we learn something about the intrinsic nature of physical stuff, for conscious experience is itself a form of physical stuff.

Strawson (2006) who sees panpsychism as the only way to deal with the hard problem, has an insightful and provocative philosophical defence of his philosophy of consciousness which he states forcefully. I will not depend on his physicalist panpsychist perspective, as symbiotic cosmology is a complementary description of the existential condition:

“What does physicalism involve? What is it, really, to be a physicalist? What is it to be a realistic physicalist, or, more simply, a real physicalist? Well, one thing is absolutely clear. You’re certainly not a realistic physicalist, you’re not a real physicalist, if you deny the existence of the phenomenon whose existence is more certain than the existence of anything else: experience, ‘consciousness’, conscious experience, ‘phenomenology’, experiential ‘what-it’s-likeness’, feeling, sensation, explicit conscious thought as we have it and know it at almost every waking moment.”

Strawson’s view of realistic monism, as a form of panpsychism, is subtly different from eliminative materialism in a way which Strawson insists is huge, but remains unclear as to the exact nature of, especially when he says human consciousness is ‘really just neurons firing’:

Realistic physicalists, then, grant that experiential phenomena are real concrete phenomena — for nothing in life is more certain — and that experiential phenomena are therefore physical phenomena. It can sound odd at first to use ‘physical’ to characterize mental phenomena like experiential phenomena,8 and many philosophers who call them- selves materialists or physicalists continue to use the terms of ordinary everyday language, that treat the mental and the physical as opposed categories. It is, however, precisely physicalists (real physicalists) who cannot talk in this way, for it is, on their own view, exactly like talking about cows and animals as if they were opposed categories. Why? Because every concrete phenomenon is physical, according to them. So all mental (experiential) phenomena are physical phenomena, according to them; just as all cows are animals. So when physicalists — real ones — talk as if the mental (experiential) and the physical were entirely different all they can really mean to be doing is to distinguish, within the realm of the physical, which is the only realm there is, according to them, between mental (experiential) features of the physical, and non-mental (non-experiential) features of the physical.

As a real physicalist, then, I hold that the mental/experiential is physical, and I am happy to say, along with many other physicalists, that experience is ‘really just neurons firing’, at least in the case of biological organisms like ourselves. But when I say these words I mean something completely different from what many physicalists have apparently meant by them. I certainly don’t mean that all characteristics of what is going on, in the case of experience, can be described by physics and neurophysiology or any non-revolutionary extensions of them. That idea is crazy. It amounts to radical ‘eliminativism’ with respect to experience, and it is not a form of real physicalism at all. My claim is different. It is that experiential phenomena ‘just are’ physical, so that there is a lot more to neurons than physics and neurophysiology record (or can record). No one who disagrees with this is a real physicalist, in my terms.

The difficulty here is that his description of the subjective aspect is unclear and looks a little like a finesse of promissory materialism.

We can distinguish various forms of panpsychism in terms of which aspect of mentality is taken to be fundamental and ubiquitous. Two important characteristics of human minds are thought and consciousness. In terms of these characteristics we can distinguish the following two possible forms of panpsychism:

Panexperientialism—the view that conscious experience is fundamental and ubiquitous

Pancognitivism—the view that thought is fundamental and ubiquitous.

Thought is obviously a much more structured and structurally complex notion than experience, and there may be entities from a single quantum at one extreme, to a eucaryote cell at the other, which may readily possess a subjective aspect identifiable with experience, but not be capable of structured thought.

A second division is that between panpsychism and panprotopsychism, which asserts that some form of proto-consciousness rather than consciousness per-se is fundamental and ubiquitous. Just as the properties that characterise conscious experience are commonly referred to as “phenomenal” proto-conscious propetries are “protophenomenal” – properties that in certain combinations transparently account for the existence of consciousness, in the sense that one could in principle move a priori from knowing the relevant facts about protophenomenal properties to knowing the relevant facts about phenomenal properties (Chalmers 2015; Goff 2015, 2017).

The combinations problem gives rise to further ones like the structural mismatch problem (Chalmers 2016):

An especially pressing aspect of the structure combination problem is the structural mismatch problem. Macrophysical structure (in the brain, say) seems entirely different from the macrophenomenal structure we experience. Microexperiences presumably have structure closely corresponding to microphysical structure (this is especially clear on a Russellian view), and we might expect a combination of them to yield something akin to macrophysical structure. How do these combine to yield macrophenomenal structure instead?

A third division as originally defined by Chalmers (2015) is:

Constitutive panpsychism—Forms of panpsychism according to which facts about human and animal consciousness are not fundamental, but are constituted of facts about more fundamental kinds of consciousness, e.g., facts about micro-level consciousness.

Non-Constitutive panpsychism—Forms of panpsychism according to which facts about human and animal consciousness are among the fundamental facts.

Symbiotic cosmology is non-constitutive as it considers the relation between biological and quantum forms of panpsychism to be differing subjective manifestations complementary to differing degrees of coherence in the physical aspects these subjective aspects correspond to, for example eucaryote excitability is a coherent quantum-sensitive form of edge of chaos excitation giving rise to new forms of “quasi-particle” excitations, so its subjective aspect is qualitatively distinct from quantum panpsychism and is not conceived from semi-objective structural interactions of its quantum parts.

The work of Schaffer (2010) has advanced an alternative picture of reality, from the view that micro e.g. quantum events determine events at large. According to “priority monism”, facts about little things are grounded in facts about big things – all things ultimately exist and are the way they are because of certain facts about the universe as a whole. If we combine priority monism with constitutive panpsychism we get:

Constitutive cosmopsychism — The view that all facts are constituted of consciousness-involving facts at the cosmic-level. Just as the micropsychist holds that electrons have experience but not thought, so the cosmopsychist holds that the universe has some kind of experience, but may refrain from attributing thought or agency to the universe.

Bertrand Russell (1927) proposed a novel approach to the mind-body problem. Arthur Eddington (1928), in his Gifford lectures of the same year, independently expressed very similar thoughts. Russellian monists are motivated by the need to characterise the intrinsic nature of matter:

A Negative: The information we get from the physical sciences is in some significant sense limited. There are subtle variations on how exactly this is put, but the idea is that the physical sciences only tell us about the extrinsic, relational, mathematical, or dispositional nature of matter, and leave us in the dark about its intrinsic, concrete and categorical nature. Physics tells us how an electron behaves, but it doesn’t tell us how it is in and of itself.

B Positive: The intrinsic/concrete/categorical features of matter which physical science remains silent on account for the existence of consciousness. The problem of consciousness, the difficulty seeing how consciousness fits into the physical word, is the result of our not taking into account these “hidden” features of the physical world.

Constitutive cosmopsychism is thus a form of Russellian monism according to which (i) all facts are grounded in facts about the universe as a whole, (ii) the universe instantiates consciousness-involving categorical properties.

David Chalmers (1995, 1996) first delineated the hard problem of consciousness – why it is that a person has subjective experience. Philip Goff (2001) writing in The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Zalta 2012) notes: “Some think the alleged problem involves a confusion, although anyone who thinks this is obliged to diagnose the exact root of the confusion. Others think that there is a problem, but one that further scientific investigation will solve. Perhaps we just need to wait for the arrival of the “Darwin of consciousness” to make progress”. However, there is no reason to suppose that “further scientific investigation” has to be pursued under the methodological assumption that consciousness is to be accounted for in terms of processes which don’t involve consciousness, e.g., in terms of facts about non-conscious neurons. The panpsychist proposes an alternative approach: explain human and animal consciousness in terms of more basic forms of consciousness. These more basic forms of consciousness are then postulated as properties of the fundamental constituents of the material world, quanta.

Ironically in debate on panpsychism, Darwin’s name has come up three times. Seth (2021), in critiquing panpsychism, advances the case that the success of materialistic science is based on explanation, prediction, and control (EPC), the criteria by which many scientific enterprises are assessed, thus reducing biological 'vitalism' in a demystifying dissolution into molecular biology. Goff (2019) has countered that some scientific advances such as Darwin's theory of evolution “emerged from a dramatic insight, rather than incremental dissolution”. But the objection to EPC is fundamental, because, at the very climax of biology, neuroscience has currently no idea of how to solve the hard problem or how the easy problems might be combined to evoke consciousness either, as noted in the Darwin comment above.

Seth returns to Goff’s view of Darwin “Finally, many successful scientific explanations operate with qualitative rather than, or as well as, quantitative concepts. Darwin’s theory – highlighted by Goff as a paragon of materialist science – provides one striking example of such an explanation.”

Goff is also critiqued for disregarding empirical evidence: "Goff's defense of panpsychism therefore needs to involve an argument to the effect that his view is preferable to the structural realist and empiricist alternatives." (Laasik 2020).

I have entitled the form of panpsychism advanced in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology Darwinian panpsychism for four specific reasons:

(a) It advances a careful objectively empirical interpretation of which physical systems possess forms of panpsychism or sentient consciousness based on seven essentially evolutionary criteria, namely: (a) individual quanta, (b) critically unstable multi-quantum dynamical systems including (c) living cells, (d) in sentient form in eucaryotes (e) in organismic form in multi-celled organisms (f) in the evolving biosphere and (g) collectively in the universe.

(b) It applies objective physical criteria to which coherently unstable systems in the natural universe possess psyche or consciousness based on their physical and biological properties, avoiding an attempt at decomposing the subjective aspect leading to the combinations and related problems.

(c) It broadly coincides with Darwin’s own speculations on consciousness extending down to founding biota, extending it only into dynamically unstable physical and quantum phenomena which also possess attributes consistent with the evolutionary view.

(d) Like Goff's comment, it was devised as a result of a startling insight on psychedelic mushrooms, not EPC and it depends on qualitative, not quantitative criteria.

"To see a puppy playing [one] cannot doubt that they have free-will"

and if "all animals, then an oyster has and a polype.” (Darwin ex Smith 1978)

Ironically symbiotic cosmology solves this paradox by using an evolutionary view of panpsychist cosmology in which the transition from quantum panpsychism to organismic consciousness is matched to evolutionary quantum leaps such as the formation of cellular life and the eucaryote endosymbiosis. So on all three counts the Darwinian “insight” of the mushroom-evoked cosmology, the qualitative nature of the evolutionary investigation and the actual bringing of the hard problem to a solution, it is a Darwinian model of conscious evolution.

The intrinsic difficulty with Seth’s so-called “real" problem of consciousness – how to distinguish different types of qualia e.g. red and blue sneakers, is that it completely fails to address the root question of subjectivity, which is by nature entirely different from the localisable, analysable, distinguishable and separable properties of objective reality and arises in both quantum observation in physics and the hard problem in neuroscience in complementary ways.

Thomas Nagel (1979) influentially argued that adopting a view like panpsychism is the only way to avoid radical emergence (Strawson 2006) – properties of a complex system that cannot be intelligibly derived from the properties of its parts, in contrast to “emergentist panpsychists” where they may not be intelligibly so derived. For Nagel, “emergent” properties of a complex system are ones that cannot be intelligibly derived from the properties of its parts. In contrast, for the “emergentist panpsychists” discussed above, “emergent” properties of a complex system are simply fundamental macro-level properties, which may or may not be intelligibly derived from the properties of its parts. Following Galen Strawson (2006a) we can use the word “radical emergence” to express Nagel’s notion of emergence.

Nagel’s argument involves four premises:

Material Composition – Living organisms are complex material systems with no immaterial parts. The matter composing us is not special; the matter composing any material entity, if broken down far enough and rearranged, could in principle be incorporated into a living organism.

Realism – Mental states are genuine properties of living organisms.

No Radical Emergence – All properties of a complex organism are intelligibly derived from the properties of its parts.

Non-Reductionism – The mental states of an organism are not intelligibly derived from its physical properties alone.

Strawson (2006) has defended a similar argument from the untenability of radical emergence. Whereas Nagel’s aim is merely to establish the disjunction of panpsychism and panprotopsychism, Strawson’s argument concerns the truth of panpsychism. Strawson begins by arguing that radical emergence is upon reflection unintelligible:

Emergence can’t be brute. It is built into the heart of the notion of emergence that emergence cannot be brute in the sense of there being absolutely no reason in the nature of things why the emerging thing is as it is (so that it is unintelligible even to God). For any feature Y of anything that is correctly considered to be emergent from X, there must be something about X and X alone in virtue of which Y emerges, and which is sufficient for Y (Strawson 2006 18).

Thus, the crucial feature of intelligible emergence, is that the relationship between the product of emergence and its producer can be adequately characterised using a single set of conceptually homogeneous concepts. But it’s very hard to see how any set of such concepts could capture both the experiential (i.e., consciousness-involving) and the non-experiential (non-conscious-involving), and hence how the thesis that consciousness emerges from non-consciousness could be rendered intelligible. It is only by supposing that human and animal consciousness emerges from more basic forms of consciousness, e.g. in the eucaryote endosymbiosis discretely transforming primitive subjectivity, that we have hope of avoiding the emergence of animal consciousness being a brute and inexplicable miracle.

There is a second prominent argument for panpsychism, which has nothing to do with the need to explain human consciousness, but begins from a gap in the picture of the world in the physical sciences. This argument has its roots in Leibniz, Schopenhauer ^{^[2]}, Russell (1927) and Whitehead (1933 [1967]), and is defended by many panpsychists, including Sprigge (1999), Strawson (2003) and Goff (2017).

In the public mind, physics is on its way to giving us a complete account of the fundamental nature of the material world. It seems almost tautological that “physics” is the true theory of “the physical”, and hence that it is to physics we should turn for an understanding of the complete nature of space, time and matter. However, this commonplace opinion comes under pressure when we reflect on the austere, mathematical vocabulary in terms of which physical theories are framed. It is not clear that such an austere vocabulary can even in principle capture the complete nature of concrete reality. A mathematical description of a situation abstracts from concrete reality and statements having the general force of natural law can only express information about how physical entities are disposed to behave. This is fine if we want to do is predict, say, how electrons will behave (except that we can’t individually). But intuitively there must also be an intrinsic nature to an electron; there must be an answer to the question “How is the electron in and of itself?” And this question doesn’t seem to be answered by describing how electrons are disposed to behave.

Some philosophers, known as “dispositional essentialists”, hold that all fundamental properties are pure dispositions. On this view, once we have fully described how for example and electron is disposed to behave and have thereby said everything there is to be said about the nature of the electron. However, there are powerful arguments against the intelligibility of this position. Most discussed is the charge that it leads to vicious regress. For any given disposition X, we understand the nature of X only when we know the nature of its manifestation, that is, the property it gives rise to when manifested. If this argument is sound, then physical theory will never provide us with a complete and adequate account of the nature of the material world.

The panpsychist has a proposal: the intrinsic nature of matter is, at least in part, consciousness. What is to be said in favour of this proposal? The first thing is that it is not obvious that we have an alternative proposal, at least at present.

Another argument turns on the assumption that evolution is a continuous process that molds pre-existing properties into more complex forms, but that cannot produce “entirely novel” properties:

“we cannot suppose that so enormous a jump from one creature to another should have occurred at any point in the process of evolution as the introduction of a fact entirely different and absolutely separate from the physical fact. It is impossible for anybody to point out the particular place in the line of descent where that event can be supposed to have taken place. The only thing that we can come to, if we accept the doctrine of evolution at all, is that even in the very lowest organism, even in the Amoeba which swims about in our own blood, there is something or other, inconceivably simple to us, which is of the same nature with our own consciousness” (Clifford 1886:266)

“we ought … to try every possible mode of conceiving of consciousness so that it may not appear equivalent to the irruption into the universe of a new nature non-existent to then”. (James [1890] 1950: 148)

More recently, Goff (2013) has argued that consciousness is not vague – if consciousness does not admit of borderline cases, then we will have to suppose that some utterly precise micro-level change – down to an exact arrangement of particles – marked the first appearance of consciousness (or the change from non-conscious to conscious embryo/foetus), and it is going to seem arbitrary that it was that utterly precise change that was responsible for this significant change in nature.

A final motivation for panpsychism comes from the need to account for mental causation in a way that is consistent with alleged causal closure of the physical: the thesis that every physical event has a sufficient physical cause (Chalmers 2015; Goff 2017: ch. 6). If, as the dualist believes, consciousness exists outside the physical world, it is hard to see how it could impact on a causally closed physical system. But if, as the panpsychist believes, consciousness infuses the intrinsic nature of the material world, then consciousness and its effects are part of the system.

It is generally agreed, both by its proponents and by its opponents, that the hardest problem facing panpsychism is what has become known as the “combination problem”. The inspiration for the problem is the following passage:

“Take a hundred of them [feelings], shuffle them and pack them as close together as you can (whatever that may mean); still each remains the same feeling it always was, shut in its own skin, windowless, ignorant of what the other feelings are and mean. There would be a hundred-and first-feeling there, if, when a group or series of such feelings where set up, a consciousness belonging to the group as such should emerge. And this 101st feeling would be a totally new fact; the 100 feelings might, by a curious physical law, be a signal for its creation, when they came together; but they would have no substantial identity with it, not it with them, and one could never deduce the one from the others, nor (in any intelligible sense) say that they evolved it.” (James [1890] 1981: 160)

The general consensus among panpsychists is that there is currently no wholly adequate solution to the combination problem, however the symbiotic cosmology derives the subjective aspect from each physical as a complementary manifestation of it, so does not attempt a quasi-reductionistic view of the subjective.

In David Chalmers’ (2016) taxonomy of the combination problem, there are three dimensions of difficulty:

Difficulties relating to subject combination: the core difficulty being the subject-summing problem

Difficulties relating to quality combination: the core difficulty being the palette problem

Difficulties relating to combination of structure: the core difficulties being the structural mismatch problem and the grain problem.

The symbiotic cosmology largely avoids the combination problem because it is not seeking a panpsychic analysis of the subjective aspect, but rather looks at physicalist, biological and neurophysiological descriptions to delineate differences between qualia such as vision and sound both in terms of the differing quantum modes they access and the types of CMS processing involved because these are features that can be interrogated objectively as boundary conditions on the kind of subjective experience involved. This is because the focus is not on a reductionistic description of the subjective aspect of brain processes but establishing the cosmological complementarity as a whole that is necessary to solve the hard problem and the problem of volitional will in a coherent cosmological account.

Many panpsychists believe that the conscious mind is identical with, or bears a very intimate relationship with, the brain. Most Russellian monists, for example, believe that the conscious mind is the intrinsic nature of the brain. And all constitutive micropsychists think that human experience is grounded in the properties of micro-level entities. Thus, these forms of panpsychism face the challenge of explaining how the rich structure of consciousness results from, or at least co-exists with, the seemingly very different structure of the brain. Perhaps the most discussed form of the structural mismatch problem is the grain problem the worry that experiences seem to be smooth and continuous in a way that is at odds with the discrete, particularised structure of brain properties.

Again there are numerous proposals for addressing the worry. Lockwood (1993) for example suggests that the worry only arises when we are implicitly thinking of the brain in terms of classical physics, and that it evaporates when we explicitly adopt more recent scientific paradigms. The symbiotic cosmology likewise sees the brain properties arising from edge of chaos sensitivity to quantum processes at unstable tipping points in the conscious brain dynamics, so invokes both wave properties of brain states and wave-particle complementarity so that these is no actual discordance of mental continuity and the quantum nature of reality, which is manifested in a complementarity between objective universe and subjective mind at large.

For a diverse current account of the interplay between proponents and opponents of panpsychism, Philip Goff’s webpage Conscience and Consciousness contains links to scientists, philosophers, and theologians with a variety of views debating Goff (2019). In this series of articles, The author Annaka Harris points out that the combinations problem ceases to exist if consciousness in her words akin to a pervasive field analogous to space-time in my words to the universe as a whole:

"Rather than an obstacle to theories that place consciousness in a fundamental role, the combination problem may be a reason to favor the proposition that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe in the form of a continuous, pervasive field, analogous to spacetime. Just as spacetime and gravity have an interactive relationship, consciousness might be thought of as a fundamental “field” that interacts with, and is integral to, matter. We typically don’t think of spacetime as bits and pieces that build on one another (it’s simply everywhere), and I don’t think we should be tempted to think of consciousness, if it is indeed a pervasive field, as divisible into building blocks either.”

This is confluent with the defence of symbiotic cosmology using panpsychism in a way which utilises a physicalist position to characterise the subjective in its complementary objective evolutionary terms from cell to eucaryote to organism, including edge-of-chaos systems with quantum phenomena due to the butterfly effect, so characterising, in each case, consciousness as a whole. Really the combinations problem proto-psychism etc. is an attempt to think reductively about the subjective, the very thing we are trying not to think reductively about.

Lee Smolin et al. also highlight exactly the symbiotic cosmology’s point of intervention in the causal closure:

“There will be a mixed functionalist and reductive explanation for why humans and other animals experience qualia (or just experience). It is then very natural to suppose that if the existence of consciousness is to be explicable for a physicalist, it must perform some function that increases the fitness of the creature that is endowed with it. But this requires that consciousness can intervene in the network of causes in the physical universe.”

"Most of the approaches to quantum foundations do split the laws into two parts, the first being described by unitary Schrödinger evolution in a fixed Hilbert space, which we identify with Mode I. In most formulations, quantum mechanics is more than this. Collapse of the wavefunction, whether spontaneous or based on a law of some kind, is strictly Mode II.”

This parallels the symbiotic cosmology accepting mode I as causal and allowing the subjective aspect to intervene in mode II, thus completing the incomplete causal closure of the quantum universe without disrupting causality.

Chris Koch’s position which I had to get out of another article (Koch 1) classes himself as a panpsychist but really he is an information network panpsychist as expressed in Tononi and Koch’s (2015) integrated information theory. But nevertheless sees consciousness potentially on multiple scales:

“The only dominant theory we have of consciousness says that it is associated with complexity — with a system’s ability to act upon its own state and determine its own fate. Theory states that it could go down to very simple systems. In principle, some purely physical systems that are not biological or organic may also be conscious” (Koch 2).

In this article, Koch is worried about humanity self-destructing and cites the Fermi Paradox as evidence intelligent societies self-destruct, which is why I’m introducing cosmological symbiosis as a climax remedy for avoiding a human induced mass extinction of the diversity of life which could do just that.

Galileo’s error as expressed by Smolin et al., talking about Goff is this:

"The core of Galileo's new science was the idea that all motion could be represented mathematically while all change could be rendered as motion. To make this credible not only was part of the world discarded but memory of it erased. Sensations, colors and thoughts were not part of the mathematical universe and that came to be thought of as the only universe there was. Galileo's error in removing qualities, sensations and awareness from the world, leaving only a universe of quantities and of quantifiable relationships, led to an equally profound error about the nature of time. The success of the science of motion led to the hypothesis that the motions and forces of the world - from atoms up to stars - were a system that was causally closed, as all explanations of motion pointed to more motion. “

Where have I heard this before? Evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. This is the old gatherer-hunter divide between categorisation in woman gatherers identifying plant species and male hunters stalking their prey silently. Men are or claim to be “ace” at mental rotation and describe a route as hunters in terms of a set of vectors to the destination and women say “go past the gas station to the child care centre”.

So materialism or physicalism is another hideous manifestation of patriarchal dominion over nature and woman alike.

In Goff's view Galileo has taken the feminine qualia out of the description and Newton has sealed the deal and we are still stuck in the classical description of the causally closed Laplacian universe, despite staring quantum reality in the face. This is another manifestation of complementarity that shows up materialism for just what it is.

Miller (2021) notes that cosmopsychists have their own combination problem but turned on its head — the decombination problem: how can a subject and its experience decompose into other subjects and their experiences?

Goff (2019b) poses the question “Did the universe design itself?” by invoking a form of constitutive cosmopsychism. In his words this might not provide and intelligent form of psyche:

“The claim that the universe is conscious does not imply that it has any of the sophisticated mental features enjoyed by human beings, such as thought, intelligence and agency. In our case, these mental phenomena are the result of millions of years of evolution; one might doubt that they could also be properties of things, such as the universe, which have not evolved through natural selection. Indeed, in previous work (Goff 2017), I suggested that the cosmopsychist conceive of the consciousness of the universe as being a ‘mess’ entirely lacking in elements of thought and rationality”.

Goff then amends this “primitive” cosmopsychism to address the fine tuning problem, the fact that the current description of the physical universe, comprising the standard model plus gravity has about 25 free parameters which the theories themselves don’t explain. The fine tuning problem was first drawn attention to by Dicke (1961) and has been elaborated by Barrow and Tipler (1988) using the anthropic cosmological principle and Martin Rees (Lemley 2000). The fine tuned universe has reached quasi-religious dimensions in the minds of its proponents.

A key cited example is that ε, a measure of the nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium, is 0.007: when four nucleons fuse into helium, 0.007 (0.7%) of their mass is converted to energy. The value of ε is in part determined by the strength of the strong nuclear force. If ε were 0.006, only hydrogen could exist, and complex chemistry would be impossible. According to Rees, if it were above 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the Big Bang. Other physicists disagree, calculating that substantial hydrogen remains as long as the strong force coupling constant increases by less than about 50%, but these parameters are critical to the cosmic distribution of the elements, especially the elements of life, as outlined in fig 17.

Dicke cited , as a near-vanishing constant involving the mass of the proton, the gravitational coupling constant, Planck's constant and the speed of light, but these parameters may be defined by a deeper theory of everything (TOE) determining the symmetry-breaking parameters in the cosmic origin. Dicke noted that most physicists seem to believe that such a dimensionless constant, such as (1), is provided by Nature, cannot be calculated, and is not in any way related to other numbers, although Dirac has suggested a deeper law connecting these on powers of , for example , where T is the Hubble age of the universe.

But some of these problems arise from the way quantum field theories and relativity have been constructed. For example, the fine structure constant determining the convergence of the Feynman diagrams of quantum electrodynamics fig 23: . Quantum electrodynamics is the most accurate theory ever devised calculating the magnetic moment of the electron correctly to six decimal places. It forms an archetype of all the quantum field theories in the standard model. This means that all in all the way these theories have been built upon empirical variables these types of theory don’t determine the empirical parameters out of which they are constructed. However a deep TOE might do precisely this because the overall structure of these theories is elegant involving symmetries that are then broken by symmetry breaking potentials like the Mexican hat precipitating the weak-electromagentic symmetry-breaking. So deeper TOEs which unify all the four forces might do so.

Goff instead invokes features of a primitive cosmopsychism that might do this from the subjective aspect instead, by invoking two modifications to the messy primitive universal consciousness (1) agency and (2) a form of future awareness:

“The first modification I will be proposing is that the universe, although physical, acts, and only acts, through a basic capacity to recognise and respond to reasons.”

This has all sorts of problems because “reasons” and "facts" are optimally sophisticated concepts and Goff admits they could sweepingly overrule and define physical laws:

“How do the laws of physics fit into this picture? If the universe acts through a basic capacity to recognise and respond to reasons, and all facts are grounded in facts about the universe, the laws of physics seem to be irrelevant to the causal evolution of the universe.“

He then addresses the central question of fine tuning having to anticipate its own cosmological outcomes:

“If, during the Plank epoch, the early universe fine-tuned the laws to bring about life billions of years in the future, then it must have in some sense known, or been aware, of the future consequences of its actions. In other words, to make sense of the idea that the early universe fine-tuned the laws and initial conditions in order to bring about life, we need to make sense of the idea that the universe has mental states that represent the future”.

“I propose that the agentive cosmopsychist should suppose that the universe has a basic disposition to form spontaneous mental representations of the complete future consequences of all of the choices available to it.”

This is something that is already implicit in special relativity in the usual physical interpretation, where both retarded (causal) influences and advanced (retrocausal) come out as positive and negative square root solutions of the defining Lorenz transformations giving us results defining the velocity of light as a maximum and .

My real concern here is that agentive cosmopsychism, by virtue of possessing willing agency inherits the idiosyncrasy of will without which it would be impotent, so this leaves us with a regress why such an agent should decide to act in a way to bring life about. So in my view, although proposing Darwinian panpsychism, as a cosmological solution to the hard problem is that we need to wait a little longer to see if an underlying TOE will emerge that explains fine tuning in terms of symmetry-breaking, before relying on either a multiverse, anthropic, or a cosmopsychic solution to the fine-tuning problem.

Cathy Reason: How does SEC solve the problem of how panpsychism is divided

Chris K: Because I’m not decomposing the subjective. Qualia in SEC are features of the way the brain acts as a filter on primary subjectivity not “parts” of panpsychism. I agree with your critique of classical panpsychism, especially pan-proto tying itself in knots and qualia being treated as things that have to be put together to make experience, the combinations problem etc.

Materialism leads to an irreducible explanatory gap about subjective experience, so the logic has to work backwards – matter must have mind at the foundation as a cosmological complement. I.e. primitive quantum-psychism with no subdivisions. The subdivisions all occur in physical reality driven by fermionic divisibility of matter. The brain dynamics doesn't fully cause conscious states but acts as a contextual boundary filter on the mind at large as Huxley put it. Subjective consciousness then makes integrated choices exercising free will through quantum uncertainty because that’s the only avenue it has, without inducing causal conflict with classically certain brain function and because it is enough to split the wave function defining history.

Cathy R: How do you start with a single cosmic subjective experience and end up with a preferred set of complex individual experiences?

Chris K: We don't know we start with a single cosmic subjective experience. SEC just asserts primal subjectivity not cosmic consciousness. Primary subjectivity has to be fully compliant with all determinately causal aspects of the physical dynamics or subjective-objective conflict would arise. So it has to exploit quantum uncertainty which is what its evolutionary advantage actually is, although it’s counter-intuitive. We think we are making reasoned decisions but that is largely derived from brain function, so we think uncertainty is random, but that’s our cubic centimetre of chance to avoid the tiger pounce and survive when all the computational odds become intractable because the tiger is exploiting them too.

Cathy R: But this just replicates what I called the preferred partition problem -- why and how is subjectivity partitioned according to the dynamics of brains, rather than, say, the dynamics of individual molecules?

Chris K: Because biological matter is fractal, the brain dynamics ARE the molecular dynamics so the explanation arises from molecular quantum fractality, which is much more complicated than simple scale invariance, as illustrated in figure 54, fractal biocosmology.

To give a very general outline, conscious subjectivity is partitioned by how a system exploits and responds to uncertainty. Each neuron is a conscious eucaryote cell. We experience the coupled state of billions of these in organismic consciousness, but as individuals they are putatively also conscious as in cell migration in early brain development and neural plasticity in the adult.

Cathy R: You cannot justify that choice empirically because no prediction you make about this preferred partition could ever be testable. Panpsychism cannot, by definition, be proven empirically. Because it is impossible to know if inanimate matter has subjective states. The only subjective states which panpsychism predicts are the ones we already know about, and the ones we can never detect.

Chris K: Empirical science verified by experimental investigation is the foundation hallmark of the scientific method and it applies both to objective observation and subjective experience. While subjective consciousness can only be experienced, behavioural volition is physically evidential up and down the scale. Testability is a challenge with all subjective experiences, even the ones we know we do have, although it can be done through subjective reports.

Cathy R: Do you mean that both the brain and all its cells map on the the *same* conscious state?

Chris K: Yes when they are dynamically linked but NOT as mappings. Mappings are functional definitions on points or parts. That’s simply not how it works, because its a pure abstract objective description. Watch the video of Dictyostelium - a Cellular Slime Mold and you have an example of volitional behaviour both at the individual cellular and organismic collective levels. Dictyostellium has two active modes, individual in single foraging cells and then coupled in the worm and later fruiting stages. The individual mode is very similar to individual human neutrophil phagocytes 1, 2. Each mode gives rise to different – independently distributed or coherently unified versions of “consciousness” in the same cells, because the organism has evolved to make this possible, and our brains have conserved the unified mode. The switch occurs as soon as the individual amoebae come into membrane contact.

Cathy R: Or do you mean that every possible subset of cells maps onto some separate non-intersecting conscious individual? In that case it would have to be possible for the same cell to map on to several separate conscious individuals.

Chris K: No unless you are talking Psi which I accept on an incidental but not provable basis.

Cathy R: Or are you trying to claim that conscious individuals actually comprise other conscious individuals? Because that would contradict the meaning of individuality.

Chris K: Not unless they're telepathic, which I also accept on an incidental but not provable basis.

Cathy R: I prefer to express the problem in terms of set theory or category theory, because they are both very powerful abstract formalisms. But the preferred partition (decombination) problem (Miller 2021) is not dependent on the formalism. Feel free to use any formalism you want, but so far the only way you have been able to deal with the problem is by axiomatizing it away.

Chris K: Subjective consciousness is the prima facie, sine qua non reality, through which we know the universe exists. It IS axiomatic Cathy. It’s the correct “mathematical" approach! Demanding to prove something that is axiomatic is futile, as Godel demonstrated.

Cathy R: But what is not axiomatic is your claim that all matter has a subjective aspect, and your choice of a preferred partition whereby certain elements of the physical world, such as brains, map on to conscious individuals, but other elements, such as molecules, do not.

Chris K: The claim that all matter has subjectivity IS axiomatic! If neurons do then their molecules do when they are participating in a process which is resonant and is responsive to uncertainty, as in edge-of-chaos membrane excitation. The coherently integrated form is functionally a quantum fractal. I already cited the fractal biocosmology figure 54, which runs from fundamental particles through molecules to super-molecular assemblies to subcellular organelles to cells to organs to organisms. It’s a quantum fractal from foundation to sentience.

In a subjective conscious experience, the brain, it’s neurons and its molecules are all coupled together in a coherent edge-of chaos dynamic which means they are forming a fractal complement of the subjective conscious state. They are all acting and contributing together in a fractally-coupled dynamic. We don't know it's a mapping or a functor because these are objective abstract models of functional relationships. Indeed, we don’t know the relationship is functional as such. To be precise, boundary conditions are not functional relationships. A function is causally forward – i.e. for all x in X there exists a unique y = f(x) in Y. Rather we have a physical system in an indeterminate state and there is a volitional “mapping" from the subjective to the objective, limited by the physical boundary conditions which give the conscious experience its world view via the brain. But this limitation is not causally determinate, which is what gives free-will room to move.

Cathy R: But any form of panpsychism – including yours — requires a preferred partition because there are all sorts of ways of partitioning the physical world into discrete individuals and you have chosen just one of them.

Chris K: Yes the universal one Cathy. You could try to say the same thing about the standard model of physics.

Cathy R: If you claim it is universal, then you have to *show* that it is universal. You haven't done so.

Chris K: No, it’s an axiom! The only evidence either of us have to bring to bear on this issue is (a) through direct subjective experience or (b) through objective analysis. Neither of us have any direct access to forms of conscious experience outside our own personal human organismic experience, because that is axiomatic to what subjectivity is – experience private to the subject. The SEC analysis of the physical aspect – i.e. quanta, uncertainty-sensitive unstable molecular systems, biogenesis, prokaryote excitability, eucaryote attentive sentience, organismic consciousness, biospheric evolution and cosmology itself is manifestly and indisputably universal to the maturation of the symmetry-breaking consequences of the standard model. The physicist’s lament at the failure of string theories and other TOEs to fully define the standard model of physics confirms that your critique demanding proof of univerality is as true for the standard model, as for Symbiotic Existential Cosmology.

Cathy R: You need to explain why you think all matter has a subjective aspect (because I can't see any reason why it should, and it is not parsimonious to assume things for which one has no evidence).

Chris K: The conclusion is more parsimonious than any other because it is arrived at by rejecting the physically materialist notion of causal closure of the universe as inconsistent with our empirical experience of subjective conscious volition over the world around us, aka the physical universe. But it’s more than parsimonious, it’s necessary because rejecting conscious volition makes a full cosmological representation of subjective and objective reality impossible because one contradicts the other. Conscious subjectivity is invoked by how an uncertain physical system responds to and exploits uncertainty to survive. Broadly this involves quanta, unstable systems at the edge of chaos with a butterfly effect, biogenesis, prokaryotic life, eucaryote sentient consciousness and organismic consciousness with an option on biospheric evolution through volitional survival and finally the universe as a whole. There is no more parsimonious conclusion. It is not a “preferred partition”. It is a universal manifestation. One criterion, which is essentially physical and not confined to biological systems only.

Cathy R: And you also need to explain how these subjective qualities evolve to produce conscious individuals, and do so in a manner which isn't intrinsically circular or self-contradictory.

Chris K: Evolution selects conscious organisms which benefit from volitional adaption to existential threats beyond computability and memorisation, and strategic advantages e.g. in food.

Cathy R: What is your evidence that all matter has some sort of subjective state?

Chris K: We have three possibilities:

1. Matter has no subjective aspect. This fails the explanatory gap causing the hard problem of consciousness, and evidence of volition, and is thus cosmologically untenable. No attempts to skirt round it assuming that the easy problems will eventually solve the hard problem show signs of even eventual success and are category errors.

2. Some matter has “consciousness". This leads to various forms of complexity theory such as Tonioni and Koch's IIT Integrated information theory. These are also untenable because there is no real idea of where and when complexity becomes subjectively conscious. But even these are actually pure materialistic theories coopting some qualitative features of how human consciousness works e.g. Graziano’s AST attention schema theory.

3. All matter has “consciousness”. Subjectivity is intrinsic to cosmology, complementing the physical universe, so matter must have mind in some root form. An extreme form is Vedanta where matter is emergent from pure consciousness and is central to all mystical traditions underlying religion. SBoC is strongly aligned with this approach. Symbiotic Existential Cosmology takes a middle view summed up as "Consciousness is primary but the universe is necessary", reflecting empirically how our experience actually manifests primarily through subjective consciousness and only then through our consensual view of the physical universe.

Both (1) and (2) fail on grounds of both outright untenability and lack of parsimony. (3) does not. It is manifestly tenable since we know we are subjectively conscious and are so primarily over assumptions about the external world. It is also the most parsimonious because (1) and (2) have no way to explain consciousness without crippling complexity arguments which fail the recomposition test – how does an unconscious system below the threshold become suddenly conscious above it?

I would point out also that, at the root phenomenal level of a single quantum, subjective “consciousness” is represented physically in its wave function extending and potentially entangled throughout space-time, and the volition, or free will, is represented in wave function collapse, which in each single case is indeterminate physically so corresponds “informationally” to free will. The very independence of each collapse guarantees conformity to the wave probability interpretation unless two particles are entangled and hence correlated. This thus solves both the conscious awareness question and the volitional or free will question succinctly, tenably and parsimoniously.

Cathy R: How does your theory solve the decombination problem?

There is no decombination problem for biological organismic consciousness in SEC since it is not a form of cosmopsychism because primal subjectivity is effectively quantum psychism, not cosmic consciousness. So organismic consciousness is not decomposed cosmic consciousness. The physical form of organismic consciousness is a unified quantum fractal process in which all the parts are acting coherently in the overall physical aspect, so it doesn't decompose either. Cosmic consciousness is something which is approached asymptotically in moksha states, such as samadhi, so it is an emergent form of organismic consciousness converging to a cosmic form. There is thus no state of decombination occurring. This also applies to butterfly effect physical systems, where the overall dynamic is coherent.

But I don’t class Symbiotic Existential Cosmology as part of panpsychism at all, because it is a cosmologically empirical discovery, not a philosophical argument.

In Darwinian panpsychism, we don't start with a fully developed cosmic mind, we start with primary compliant subjectivity, responsive to quanta, uncertainty-sensitive systems and biogenesis. Then the evolution of life generates excitable prokaryote cells and attentively sentient eucaryote cells through endo-symbiosis, freeing the cell membrane for attentive consciousness, shaping primary subjectivity, then brains and then organismic consciousness and only then can organismic consciousness asymptotically approach fully fledged cosmic consciousness, through idling in neutral in moksha samadhi into an abstract form of subjectivity reflecting the cosmological condition, as a culmination.

This turns the God/cosmic mind logic backwards. Transcendence emerges from the biota. We don't start with divinity, we end with it if we protect diversity. Shiva and Shakti are pulling themselves up by their bootstraps through virility, fecundity and fertility.

^{^[1]} This document is an informational spore, finer than a mustard seed, for free circulation in intact form, to illuminate through a creative commons.

All quoted research is cited to the original authors, consistent with the principles of academic review in the widest pursuit of knowledge.

^{^[2]} perennial lasting or existing for a long or apparently infinite time; enduring or continually recurring. From Latin perennis ‘lasting the year through’

+ -ial. Oxford languages. The term is used to indicate lasting throughout the lifetime of conscious existence in the universe.

^{^[3]} Author Email: [email protected] Web: dhushara.com This article is open commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please distribute.

^{^[4]} efficacy – the ability to produce a desired or intended result. Latin: efficere accomplish.

^{^[5]} The cosmic web has also been raised as a possible source of fractal complexity (Vazza & Feletti 2020).

^{^[6]} The approach of SED is guided by the hypothesis of the existence of the (random) zero-point radiation field, ZPF. This rather more elaborate approach goes through a statistical evolution equation in phase space, to arrive at a description in x-space, in which the dissipative and diffusive terms are seen to bring about a definitive departure from the classical Hamiltonian dynamics.

^{^[7]} I am not suggesting that everyone should take these agents to achieve such states, but just that they need to be respected as having these potentials for existential insight by society as a whole. Neither am I recommending that people take them without expert guidance, at least at the outset. Neither am I suggesting they be taken by minors, until the age of full adult legal consent.

^{^[8]} Veridical – truthful, coinciding with reality. Etym. "speaking truth" Latin veridicus "truth-telling, truthful," from verum "truth,"

neuter of verus "true" + dic-, stem of dicere "to speak".

^{^[9]} Natural selection has shaped our perceptions to be, in the typical case, accurate depictions of reality, especially of those aspects of reality that are critical for our survival. “People could not orient themselves to their environments, unless the environmental information reaching them through the various sense organs offered a perception of space that corresponds to their physical “reality.” Such perception is called veridical perception – the direct perception of stimuli as they exist. Veridical perception also causes a person to experience changing stimuli as if they were stable: even though the sensory image of an approaching tiger grows larger, for example, one tends to perceive that the animal’s size remains unchanged. One perceives objects in the environment as having relatively constant characteristics despite considerable variations in stimulus conditions” (Britannica, APA).

^{^[10]} empirical based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.

Etym. Greek empeirikos, from empeiria ‘experience’. Observational empiricism is appropriate for verifiable physical investigation

and experiential empiricism for veridical conscious affirmation.

^{^[11]} efficacy – the ability to produce a desired or intended result.

^{^[12]} This use of Kali is as a demon distinct from the Goddess Kālī, who like Brahman is conceived of as “ultimate reality”.

^{^[13]} animism – the belief that all things – animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems etc. possess a distinct spiritual essence – as

animated and alive.

^{^[14]} “Humanity is doomed” All countries 56%, Australia 50%, Brazil 67%, France 48%, Finland 43%, India 74%, Nigeria 42%, Phillipines 73%, Portugal 62%, UK 51%, USA 46%

^{^[15]} dharma – the eternal and inherent nature of reality, regarded in Hinduism as a cosmic law and in Buddhism the nature of reality

regarded as a universal truth.

^{^[16]} Hieros gamos or Hierogamy (Greek ἱερὸς γάμος, ἱερογαμία "holy marriage") is a sacred marriage that plays out between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the deities

^{^[17]} Galileo despite being excommunicated for his science, was still a devoted Catholic and a traditional patriarch. He never married his children's mother and deemed his daughters unmarriageable, and soon after Virginia's thirteenth birthday he placed both girls at the Convent of San Matteo, where they lived the rest of their lives in poverty and seclusion. By contrast Galileo's son Vincenzio, who was born in Padua like his two sisters: Virginia and Livia, was named after his grandfather, and after his mother's death, his birth was legitimised by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Virginia was Galileo's first child, born in Padua, Italy the same year that the Dominican friar Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome for insisting that the Earth travelled around the Sun instead of remaining motionless at the centre of the universe. Although none of Galileo's letters are known to have survived, 120 of Maria Celeste's exist. These letters, written from 1623 to 1634, depict a woman with incredible brilliance, industry, sensibility and a deep love for her father (Sobel 1999).

^{^[18]} veridical – coinciding with reality (Oxford Languages). Mid 17th century: from Latin veridicus (from verus ‘true’ + dicere ‘say’) + -al.

In psychology – of or relating to revelations in dreams, hallucinations, etc, that appear to be confirmed by subsequent events

^{^[19]} Vitalism is the belief that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things”. Where vitalism explicitly invokes a vital principle, that element is often referred to as the "vital spark", "energy" or "élan vital", the vital force or impulse of life, a creative principle held by Bergson to be immanent in all organisms and responsible for evolution, which some equate with the soul.

^{^[20]} Arthur Schopenhauer concluded that the inner reality of all material appearances is Will. Where Immanuel Kant had concluded that ultimate reality - the "thing-in-itself" (Ding an sich) - lay beyond being experienced, Schopenhauer postulated that the ultimate reality is one universal will.

^{^[21]} intentionality – the fact of being deliberate or purposive. mental states (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes) which consists in their being directed towards some object or state of affairs. Intentionality is chosen rather than causality to include the effect of will complementing physical causes.

^{^[22]} No not take too much stock by Castaneda’s writings. His accounts of mushrooms and peyote are unreliable and he gathered a cult following of a troupe of woman writers, who appear to have died or committed suicide in Death Valley after he died.

^{^[23]} Weltanschauung – a particular philosophy or view of life; the world view of an individual or group: welt "world" (see world) + anschauung "perception" (related to English show). William James (1868)

^{^[24]} This article and the complementary one “Natty Dread and Planetary Resplendence” were co-conceived out of a quantum change experience evoked by psilocybe mushrooms. Taken together they inform a sacramental paradigm shift towards planetary survival.

^{^[25]} psychedelic “mind-manifesting" psychē (ψυχή, “soul"), dēloun (δηλοῦν, "to make visible, to reveal”), as opposed to hallucinogenic – inducing hallucinations and psychotomimetic (psycho- mind + mīmētikós, imitative) mimicking psychotic behaviour/personality.

^{^[26]} Feynman notes in his Nobel address: “I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, ‘Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because, they are all the same electron’!” “suppose that the world lines which we were ordinarily considering before in time and space – instead of only going up in time were a tremendous knot, and then, when we cut through the knot, by the plane corresponding to a fixed time, we would see many, many world lines and that would represent many electrons, except for one thing. If in one section this is an ordinary electron world line, in the section in which it reversed itself and is coming back from the future we have the wrong sign to the proper time – to the proper four velocities – and that’s equivalent to changing the sign of the charge, and, therefore, that part of a path would act like a positron.” “But, Professor”, I said, “there aren’t as many positrons as electrons.” This became the basis of his representation of positrons as electron holes and for the entire Feynman diagram approach to quantum field theories.

^{^[27]}David Bohm’s (1952) pilot wave theory posits a real position and momentum for a particle such as a photon guided by a particular non-local form of pilot wave. It illustrates a form of hidden variable theory which does not require collapse of the wave function, but the predictions hold only for a situation where no new particles are created with new degrees of freedom during the trajectory. Its interpretation is thus inconsistent with the Feynman approach, where the transition probability includes all paths and all possible virtual particles created and annihilated during the transition. To the extent that its predictions coincide with those of quantum mechanics, phenomena, from weak quantum measurement (Kocsis et al. 2011) to surreal Bohmian trajectories (Mahler et al. 2016) can also be interpreted correctly by entanglement using standard quantum mechanics.

^{^[28]} The approach of SED is guided by the hypothesis of the existence of the (random) zero-point radiation field, ZPF. This rather more elaborate approach goes through a statistical evolution equation in phase space, to arrive at a description in x-space, in which the dissipative and diffusive terms are seen to bring about a definitive departure from the classical Hamiltonian dynamics.

^{^[29]} moksha – derived from the Sanskrit word muc (“to free”), the term moksha literally means freedom from samsara (existential illusion). This concept of liberation or release is shared by a wide spectrum of religious traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.

^{^[30]} Synesthesia: a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation in one sensory or cognitive mode leads to experiences in a second mode.

^{^[31]} This follows in line with the filter theories of Henri Bergson Matière et Mémoire (1896) and William James Human Immortality. (1898)

^{^[32]} Bob Jesse and Bill Richards are co-authors of Roland Griffith’s 2006, 2008 mystical experiences studies.

^{^[33]} entheogen – "god (theos) within", is a psychoactive substance that induces alterations in perception, mood, consciousness,

cognition, or behaviour for the purposes of engendering spiritual development or otherwise in sacred contexts. (Wikipedia)

^{^[34]} holotropic “wholeness seeking” – states which aim towards wholeness and the totality of existence – e.g. Brahman–atman.

^{^[35]} epistemic humility – a posture of scientific observation rooted in the recognition that (a) knowledge of the world is always interpreted, structured, and filtered by the observer, and (b) scientific pronouncements must be built on the recognition of observation's inability to grasp the world in itself.

^{^[36]} science – “what is known, knowledge (of something) acquired by study; information;" also "assurance of knowledge, certitude, certainty," from Old French science "knowledge, learning, application; corpus of human knowledge" (12c.), from Latin scientia "knowledge, a knowing; expertness," from sciens (genitive scientis) "intelligent, skilled," present participle of scire "to know," probably originally "to separate one thing from another, to distinguish," related to scindere "to cut, divide" (from PIE root *skei- "to cut, split;" source also of Greek skhizein "to split, rend, cleave," Gothic skaidan, Old English sceadan "to divide, separate"). Etymonline

^{^[37]} empirical based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.

Etym. empiric via Latin from Greek empeirikos, from empeiria ‘experience’, from empeiros ‘skilled’ (based on peira ‘trial, experiment’).

experimental late 15th century ‘having personal experience’, also ‘experienced, observed’: from Latin experimentum practical experience

^{^[38]} Organisms are commonly regarded as: (1) phenotypes that interact with their environments, that survive, reproduce, and pass on genes and (2) the entities that are ‘produced’ by genes. Hull (personal communication) argues that his notion of ‘interactor’ is significantly different from Dawkins’ ‘vehicle’. As in (1), Hull’s regards his concept as a populational notion (the population of entities that directly interact with the external environment), while Dawkins’s ‘vehicle’, as in (2), is regarded as more embryological (vehicles are the entity that replicators produce).

^{^[39]} heredity (n.) "the passing on of physical or mental characteristics genetically from one generation to another" Etym. 1530s, "inheritance, succession," from French hérédité, from Old French eredite "inheritance, legacy" (12c.), from Latin hereditatem (nominative hereditas) "heirship, inheritance, an inheritance, condition of being an heir." Legal sense of "inheritable quality or character" first recorded 1784; the modern biological sense "transmission of qualities from parents to offspring" seems to be found first in 1863, introduced by Herbert Spencer.

^{^[40]} It has been claimed that concealed estrus is not an evolved trait but an underlying primate condition and that overt estrus is an evolved trait due to sexual and social selection e.g. in chimps and bonobos (Laland & Brown 2002 13), as the majority of primate species, including most apes, do not reveal their time of ovulation.

^{^[41]} Anneken Hendriks was an Anabaptist of Friesland, living in Amsterdam. Through treachery she was taken prisoner by the city officials. Because she held fast to her faith, she was severely tortured on 27 October 1571, with the intent of learning from her the names of other Mennonites. But even this ill treatment could not make her recant, and consequently she was put to death on the town square (Dam) on 10 November 1571. The execution took place in an unusually cruel manner. Anneken was tied to a ladder; her mouth was filled with gunpowder, and in this condition she was carried from the city hall to the ignited stake and thrown into the flames. She was fifty-three years old and an ordinary woman who could neither read nor write. In her sentence she was condemned because "she was married according to Mennonite custom, and at night in a country house." The Martyrs Mirror records that there is a song concerning her, but gives no further information, apparently meaning the song found in the Dutch hymn book Veelder-hande Liedekens (1569), which begins "Ick moetu nu gaen verclaren, Watter t'Amsterdam is geschiet" (I must now declare to you, What took place at Amsterdam).

^{^[42]} The approach of SED is guided by the hypothesis of the existence of the (random) zero-point radiation field, ZPF. This rather more elaborate approach goes through a statistical evolution equation in phase space, to arrive at a description in x-space, in which the dissipative and diffusive terms are seen to bring about a definitive departure from the classical Hamiltonian dynamics.

^{^[43]} “It is interesting to note that the surrealist movement in art claimed that there was more to reality than mere outward manifestations. There was a deeper reality (literally surreal means super reality) that lay behind outward appearances. When the word surreal is used with its intended meaning, then surreal trajectories is the correct term to describe them! Unfortunately [Englert et al.] use the term in a pejorative sense” (Hiley et al.)

^{^[44]} idiosyncrasy a mode of behaviour or way of thought peculiar to an individual idiosunkrasia, from idios ‘own, private’ + sun ‘with’ + krasis ‘mixture’.

^{^[45]} veridical – coinciding with reality (Oxford Languages). Mid 17th century: from Latin veridicus (from verus ‘true’ + dicere ‘say’) + -al.

^{^[46]} ergodic – relating to, or denoting (e.g. chaotic) systems or processes with the property that, given sufficient time, they include or impinge on all points in a given space and can be represented statistically by a reasonably large selection of points.

^{^[47]} satori – sudden enlightenment Oxford Lang. See also subitism derived from the French illumination subite (sudden awakening).

^{^[48]} singulare tantum a noun which appears only in the singular form – objects which may in principle be counted but are referred to as one.

^{^[49]} In physical cosmology, the Copernican principle states that humans, on the Earth or in the Solar System, are not privileged observers of the universe. (Wikipedia)

^{^[50]} Large Hadron Collider responsible for discovering the Higgs boson completing the standard model of physics, fig 29.

^{^[51]} animism (Latin: anima, 'breath, spirit, life')

^{^[52]} It is empirically true that global heating “punishes” humanity in clear functional terms, but not as a moral punishment in the religious sense. Gaia may even have full agency in a sense we don’t yet appreciate. “Why not?”, as physicist Brian Josephson commented to me citing James Lovelock. The question we have to ask is this: Is a tornado less alive than a prokaryote? A prokaryote is tightly controlled as a genetic process and likely not conscious, but a thunder storm is in a sense more alive in the way our brains are dynamically. If alive means primitive subjectivity then a thunder storm should be accepted as alive in that sense. Any physical system capable of unstable autonomous dynamics is a candidate. Attributing agency in this way might have a deeper basis in consciousness understanding quantum reality from personal experience. What kind of form tornado or Gaia secret life might take is no easier to estimate than the putative "free will" of a quantum. But it IS an empirical question!

^{^[53]}perdido –lost, done for, ruined, defeated or about to be killed etc. Cambridge Dictionary

^{^[54]} Advaita Vedanta (Sanskrit: अद्वैत वेदान्त –"non-duality"), propounded by Gaudapada (7th century) and Adi Shankara (8th century), espouses non-dualism and monism. Brahman is held to be the sole unchanging metaphysical reality and identical to the individual Atman. The physical world, on the other hand, is always-changing empirical Maya. The absolute and infinite Atman-Brahman is realized by a process of negating everything relative, finite, empirical and changing. All souls and their existence across space and time are considered to be the same oneness. Spiritual liberation in Advaita is the full comprehension and realization of oneness, that one's unchanging Atman (soul) is the same as the Atman in everyone else, as well as being identical to Brahman.

^{^[55]} Brihat Bṛhat (बृहत्).—a. (-tī f.) [बृह्-अति (bṛh-ati)] (1) Large, great, big, bulky; (2) Wide, broad, extensive, far-extended (3) Vast, ample, abundant

(4) Strong, powerful (5) Long, tall (6) Fullgrown (7) Compact, dense (8) Eldest, or oldest (9) Bright. Aranyaka (āraṇyaka) "produced, born, relating to a forest" or rather, "belonging to the wilderness". It is derived from the word Araṇya (अरण्य), which means “wilderness".

^{^[56]} velada soirée, nighttime meeting, literally a shamanic mushroom vigil Spanish velar Latin vigilō ("to watch, guard”) as in vigilant.

^{^[57]} This article and the complementary one “Natural Entheogens and Cosmological Symbiosis: Solving the Central Enigma of Existential Cosmology” were co-conceived out of a quantum change experience. Taken together they inform a sacramental paradigm shift towards planetary survival.

^{^[58]} eschatology the part of theology concerned with death, judgement, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind.

Greek eskhatos ‘last’ + -logy.

^{^[59]} Inanna the Queen of Heaven’s descent into Hell, stripped one by one of her seven veils, by the Galla of her sister Ereshkigal’s domain of Hell, before returning to let them sacrifice her beloved husband and partner Dumuzi for usurping the sovereign’s powers in her absence, only to have him resurrected and sacrificed seasonally as a God of fertility.

^{^[60]} “Matthew collected the logia in the Hebrew dialect and each one interpreted them as best he could."

^{^[61]} Matthew’s Greek uses ἐπιθυμέω (epithūméō) to set one's heart on a thing, desire, covet. Passion has a more benevolent sexual meaning

involving infatuation and love, but the Greek πάσχω (páskhō) is "to suffer, to be acted on, to undergo, experience” rather than an act, or desire.

^{^[62]} Titled in recognition of The Dialogue of the Saviour (Robinson 1990).

^{^[63]} Koine Greek 'Common Greek', also known as Alexandrian dialect, common Attic, Hellenistic or Biblical Greek, was the common supra-regional form of Greek spoken and written during the Hellenistic period, the Roman Empire and the early Byzantine Empire.

^{^[64]} Akiva (50-135 CE) was instrumental in drawing up the canon of the Tanakh. He stoutly defended the canonicity of the Song of Songs, (as the Holy of Holies) and of Esther, despite it being an allegory of Ishtar. He was executed by the Romans after the Bar Kokhba revolt. Akiva said of Bar Kochbah 'This is the King Messiah'. Johanan ben Torta retorted: "Akiva, Grass shall grow from your cheeks and yet the son of David shall not appear”.

^{^[65]} I noticed in writing this that this expression comes from Matt 13:35 claiming Yeshua is revealing his deepest insights, right after Yeshua pronounces the parable of the mustard seed, which is also quoted in Thomas 20. The parable says the Kingdom of Heaven (not the Christian religion) is effectively the seed of the greatest herb, the Tree of Life in whose branches the birds lodge.

^{^[66]} Hieros gamos or Hierogamy (Greek ἱερὸς γάμος, ἱερογαμία "holy marriage") is a sacred marriage that plays out between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the deities.

^{^[67]} The grandson of one of the founders of Tel Aviv.

^{^[68]} shekhinah שכינה "dwelling" or "settling" and denotes the indwelling of the divine presence of God manifest in the tent of Sarah, also linked to ruach ha-kodesh רוחהקודש, the divine influence of God over the universe or living creatures i.e. Holy Spirit.

^{^[69]} Weltanschauung – a particular philosophy or view of life; the world view of an individual or group: welt "world" (see world) + anschauung "perception" (related to English show). William James (1868)

^{^[70]} I have always defended the Song of Songs as the most fertile expression of the Sacred Reunion but for this, a Zionist woman from Tsvat threatened to report me to Mossad as a Gentile “thief in the night”. Our dialogue is recounted in my song Black Rose – video.

^{^[71]} In Christianity, the Holy Ghost, or Spirit, is the ultimate reality not to blaspheme against: “ Jesus said: He who blasphemes against the Father will be forgiven, and he who blasphemes against the Son will be forgiven; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either on earth or in heaven.” (Thom 44, as in Mark 3.28, Luke 12.31, Matt 3.28 with the exception of the Father). The grammatical gender of the word for "spirit" is feminine in Hebrew (רוּחַ, rūaḥ), neuter in Greek (πνεῦμα, pneûma) and masculine in Latin (spiritus). The neuter Greek πνεῦμα is used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew רוּחַ. Holy Spirit was equated with the feminine Wisdom of God by two early Church fathers.

^{^[72]} efficacy – the ability to produce a desired or intended result.

^{^[73]} Albedo is a quantity that indicates how well a surface reflects solar energy. ... the "whiteness" of a surface, with 0 meaning black and 1 meaning white. A value of 0 means the surface is a "perfect absorber" that absorbs all incoming energy.

^{^[75]} Weltanschauung is used as an English word, from the German because the English worldview is too vague and not comprehensive enough. (For anschauen = to look at, rather with the meaning "to take a good look at", for schau = to show, display, as opposed to blicken = to look, or aussehen from sehen = to see). Primarily it means a way a person looks at the phenomenon of life as a whole. Some people (particularly those who have not lived very long) have not formed any broad (inclusive, even "sophisticated") view of life. Others consider a large number of factors before forming their overall view — maybe in their seventies — of the phenomenon of human existence. Typically a person's Weltanschauung would include a person's philosophic, moral, and religious conclusions — including e.g. the duality of spirit and matter — and perhaps their conclusions about the origins of the universe and of the development of life.

^{^[76]} According to Hesiod, when Prometheus (fore-sight) stole fire from heaven, Zeus, the king of the gods, took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus (hind-sight). Either Pandora or Epimetheus opened the jar left in her care containing sickness, death and many other unspecified evils which were then released into the world, or the lost blessings of the Gods as the other story goes. Though she hastened to close the container, only one thing was left behind – usually translated as Hope.

^{^[77]} According to Arthur Schopenhauer, it is the laws of nature that arise from a transpersonal will, not the will from the laws of nature. Felt volitional states are the irreducible foundation of both mind and world. For Schopenhauer the inner essence of everything is conscious volition – that is, will. Nature is dynamic because its underlying volitional states provide the impetus required for events to unfold. Even in the absence of all self-perception mediated by the sense organs, we would still experience our own endogenous, felt volition. Will is indeed free because it is all there ultimately is.

^[78]Spiritualitas L. from spiritus n. which means 'the breath of life', also psyche, or soul. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape of man", oriented at "the image of God" as exemplified by the founders and sacred texts of the religions of the world and within early Christianity to refer to a life oriented toward the Holy Spirit and broadened during the Late Middle Ages to include mental aspects of life. In modern times, the term broadened to refer to a wider range of experience, including esoteric and religious traditions. Modern usages refer to a subjective experience of a sacred dimension and the "deepest values and meanings by which people live", often in a context separate from organised religious institutions. It may involve belief in a supernatural realm beyond the ordinarily observable world, personal growth, a quest for ultimate or sacred meaning, religious experience, or an encounter with one's "inner dimension"..

^{^[80]} Esther (Ishtar), the beautiful Jewish wife of the Persian king Ahasuerus (Xerxes I), and her cousin Mordecai (Marduk), persuade the king to retract an order for the general annihilation of Jews throughout the empire. The massacre had been plotted by the king’s chief minister, Haman, and the date decided by casting lots (purim). Instead, Haman was hanged on the gallows he built for Mordecai. When word of the planned massacre reached Esther, beloved Jewish queen of Ahasuerus and adopted daughter of Mordecai, risked her life by going uninvited to the king to suggest a banquet that Haman would attend. –. Now it came to pass on the third day, that Esther put on her royal apparel, and stood in the inner court of the king's house, over against the king's house: and the king sat upon his royal throne in the royal house, over against the gate of the house. And it was so, when the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court, that she obtained favour in his sight: and the king held out to Esther the golden sceptre that was in his hand. So Esther drew near, and touched the top of the sceptre. Then said the king unto her, What wilt thou, queen Esther? and what is thy request? it shall be even given thee to the half of the kingdom. And the king said unto Esther at the banquet of wine, What is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? even to the half of the kingdom it shall be performed. Then answered Esther, and said, My petition and my request is; If I have found favour in the sight of the king, and if it please the king to grant my petition, and to perform my request, let the king and Haman come to the banquet that I shall prepare for them, and I will do to morrow as the king hath said. Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favour in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request: For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. Then the king Ahasuerus answered and said unto Esther the queen, Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so? And Esther said, The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman. Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen. And the king arising from the banquet of wine in his wrath went into the palace garden: and Haman stood up to make request for his life to Esther the queen; for he saw that there was evil determined against him by the king. Then the king returned out of the palace garden into the place of the banquet of wine; and Haman was fallen upon the bed whereon Esther was. Then said the king, Will he force the queen also before me in the house? As the word went out of king's mouth, they covered Haman's face. And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. Then the king said, Hang him thereon. So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai.