“We are inconceivably, simultaneously one and different.”
—The great Indian sage Caitanya (and also on a pillow of mine in the front room)

This post is only for committed spiritual nerds or those who have a passion for what the Vedas call jnana (knowledge). If that’s not your bag, don’t worry about it.

If it is, I’ll begin here: It is a truism that a huge aspect of Eastern philosophy and spirituality speaks of a non-dual conclusion to the spiritual journey. In short, that ultimately all is One (or empty, according to most Buddhist paths) and there are no distinctions, no forms, and all of this before us is false (mithya), or an illusion.

This idea for me, however, never explains why this incredible, compelling, beautiful ‘illusion’ arises—or why individuality arises.

Indeed, by definition, it can’t answer this question.

Nonetheless, one theory by the brilliant and prolific philosopher Ken Wilber, if I understand what he’s saying, is that non-duality (emptiness) is the ultimate conclusion, the ultimate truth, we are ultimately God (or Big Mind), and all of this we see before us and within us arose because “God was bored.”

A few of Ken’s wonderful friends (Genpo Roshi etc) and even Hegal with a twist has said sort of the same thing.

May I first begin in humility and a profound awareness of how little I know.

Having said that, for me, the fact that anything—you, me, all of this— arose at all is already a huge crimp in the non-dual ultimate reality (as opposed to a non-dual experience, of which almost all mystic paths speak).

Anyway, this ‘God was bored” idea is so sadly lacking to me that I felt inspired to write Ken a non-dual love poem, because I’m in love with him. That’s right, Wilber-1, Wilber-2, all the way up to Wilber-whatever, like ascending turtles.

It’s true, it’s out, so there. Ken fills my Spectrum of Consciousness—which is arguably not very big. Okay, I’m being a little silly, but here it is:

POEM TO KEN WILBER

Oh you who preach there is not other
I ask you why you have a lover
When you speak of non-duality
I ask you why individuality
arose at all, and you state your case:
“God was bored” in a boring place
which maims your bored ‘non-dual’ conclusion
for non-dual boredom is pure confusion
and if God was bored and that’s your case
why on Earth do you seek that place?
If God was bored and Thou Art That
why is That where liberation’s at?
And with this paradox you face
why teach to seek this boring place?
If God left home to seek some fun
why go back to where there’s none?
For you yourself described it so
so tell us what you really know
If with words you’re only playing
then what exactly are you saying?
If ‘non-dual’ is your loyalty
why collect a royalty?
For if all distinctions are delusion
who’s the ‘you’ in this confusion?
And if they’re not, then what’s denied
is that ‘non-duality’ must be qualified
Ken Wilber, look into my eyes
Why did beauty here arise?
What fear is it, what sad confusion
leads us to this bored conclusion?
For if one is God and two is bored
‘tis more than non-dual can afford
What I see here is contradiction
not spiritual but predilection
Perhaps my own, but who can say?
For we all live in a distinctive way
And I wonder if, like all of us
people caused you such painful stuff
Let you down, like Adi Da
to which we now go la-dee-da
Yet deep inside we’re mad at matter
in subtle ways mad-as-a-hatter
Mad in fact because personhood
was a bully in the neighbourhood
So never a Person now can we see
greater than the folks we be
So instead of surrender to something greater
we make ourselves the Grand Creator
As a spark, perhaps, we’re identical
but God knows I’m not God-in-Full
to say I’m God, unqualified
just medicates the pain I hide
Disassociation need not happen
To be blind upon the path we’re mappin’
Are we truly God, as you tell us
or could it be we’re all just jealous?
Even while lost in samadhi
To say we’re God is insanity
Look, either way, this much is true
God and boredom are clearly two
And it’s not even remotely wise
as an answer to why we did arise
Yes, non-duality may exist
but purely as a Brahman twist
an aspect of the total This
a taste amongst the feast of bliss
And let me say it all the same
I’m so grateful for your massive brain
but for all the teachings that you master
“God was bored” is pure disaster

At this point, it would be grossly remiss and non-dual of me to not say that much of the argument and learning in this poem has been inspired through the teachings of a remarkable Vedic scholar and practitioner, Jeffrey Armstrong—who also has one helluva massive brain.

I can only say, Ken, if I was you, I would avoid this fella in one-on-one conversation, unless embrace and transcend is what you truly want.

For a terrific and inspired article and explanation of the differences between the ideas of the Vedic non-dualist path (led by Shankaracharya) and the distinctivist teaching of the woefully (in the West) ignored Madhvacharya, I really encourage you wonderful seekers out there to read Jeffrey’s article in Hinduism Today, entitled: “Difference is Real: The Life and Teachings of Sri Madhva, One of India’s greatest Spiritual Masters”.

The lower half of the article is Jeffrey discussing Madhva’s philosophy, the upper half Madhva’s biography. You have to sign into the magazine (which is free) to read the current issue.

Of course, if you are God, no doubt you’ve already read it. Hell, you wrote it.

If not, an excerpt from Jeffrey’s article:

“While Madhva’s Dvaita philosophy has been construed as dualism, it, in fact, articulates a view of multiple realities that all have particular natures and are all real.

Madhva’s view is not dualistic, because he did not limit existence to two realities, pitted against one another, but rather described how the various categories of reality are eternally real.

To him, the differences between things are not mere illusions to be denied outright, but rather are a gradient of different types of existence amongst which the eternal souls, who are distinctive individuals, are allowed to choose…

The point of dispute is not whether the material world is a desirable place of residence for the soul, as Madhva and Shankara agree that liberating the soul from matter is the goal of Vedanta.

Where they diverge sharply is on the nature of the soul.

To Shankara, there is actually only one atma, or soul, in the whole of existence, and that great soul is called Brahman.

Due to inexpicable ignorance [hence, my poem], that one soul imagines itself (and thus appears) to be many.

To Madhva, souls are multiple and eternally individual, real and distinct from Brahman, and at the same time one with it in essence…

And here, from the article, are a few great questions that you might want to pose to your spiritual teacher.

In assailing Shankara’s position, Madhva queries: If Brahman is the Supreme, how could there be a greater power that could put it under illusion?

If Brahman has no parts, how can there be a Brahman that is both liberated and not liberated?

If there is no liberated Brahman, how could liberation be possible?

If the world is merely a dream, since many dreams are seen in the world, whose dream is it?

How could someone teach of the non-distinctive Brahman if he did not recognize the need to teach it, which is in itself a distinction?”

These questions remain woefully unanswered, to my little mind. Give me another fifty lifetimes of meditation and nutritional supplements, and I might have some realized knowledge.

Interestingly and ironically, the second to last point of Madhva—”If the world is merely a dream, since many dreams are seen in the world, whose dream is it?”—is echoed by Ken Wilber here:

QUESTION: What do you think of the New Age writers who see a link between mysticism and the weirdness of quantum physics?…They point out that reality at the quantum level is inherently probabilistic. And they say that the act of observing a quantum phenomenon plays a critical role in actually creating that phenomenon. The lesson they draw is that consciousness itself can shape physical reality.

KEN WILBER: They are confused. Even people like Deepak Chopra say this. These are good people; I know them. But when they say consciousness can act to create matter, whose consciousness? Yours or mine? They never get to that. It’s a very narcissistic view.

Indeed. How about ‘I am God’ for narcissism? or “God was bored”?

A variation of Ken’s “God was bored” theme is Ken’s (and friend’s): “It’s no fun having dinner alone” idea. The (perhaps) unintentional massacre of non-duality is hopelessly exposed—thank god, because I love love, I love loving, I love eating with friends and, like I said, I’m in love with Ken Wilber.

Love takes two at the very least. Even if he never calls back, I can long like a gopi—and dammit, I will.

Further, even if Ken is being tongue-in-cheek, which on one level he clearly is, the question still seems to me to be grossly unanswered, with non-duality as the final conclusion hoisted precariously upon this hopeless answer.

We have all heard about the Emperor who wears no clothes. Here, the non-dual ultimate conclusion is dressed to the nines, and claims to be naked.

An excerpt:

Pathways [magazine]: Why does Spirit bother to manifest at all, especially when that manifestation is necessarily painful and requires that It become amnesiac to Its true identity? Why does God incarnate?

Ken Wilber:

I have actually asked this same question of several spiritual teachers, and one of them gave a quick, classic answer:”It’s no fun having dinner alone.”

That’s sort of flip or flippant, I suppose, but the more you think about it, the more it starts to make sense. What if, just for the fun of it, we pretend—you and I—blasphemously pretend, just for a moment—that we are Spirit, that Tat Tvam Asi? Why would you, if you were God Almighty, why would you manifest a world? A world that, as you say, is necessarily one of separation and turmoil and pain? Why would you, as the One, ever give rise to the Many?

Pathways: It’s no fun having dinner alone?

Ken Wilber: Doesn’t that start to make sense?

Even if it did, so much for non-dual as the ultimate, ultimate, ultimate conclusion. One of the paths, sure. But clearly not the most fun path.

A longer bit is here:

And a song for how beautiful and mysterious we are, yes, as individuals and as a whole: Wide Open.

May apologies for where my own ignorance reigns.

Big love to Ken, Jeffrey, Madhva, Shankara, and all the rest of us in the seacrh for who we are and who we might be,

Pete xox

Anyway, here are the two poems. And if the whole world could do me a favour and write to say they are doing well, or better, or just feeling good about their own beautiful, remarkable, indescribable beingness (can you fathom what a being can do?), I would exalt in that.

EVERYTHING ABOUT HER

Everything about her speaks of my impenetrable longing
I am too-not-young to be fooled by such pristine joy
And yet I am the old fool
believing this body cannot be fooled at any glance
by the beautiful scalpel of existence
fragmented diamonds upon my breath
awakening the ports of my desire
trading trinkets that only God owns
A river of life propels through my bones
where energy is a square emcee
An evolutionary picture show
raises and lowers threadbare curtains
casting shadows and dreams in major roles
according to the length of my inhale
the mind
best friend, worst enemy
There is nothing I can do
but believe in something
Someone must be served
What river will I follow?

And the other:

VOICES

My desire to please you
into joy
leads me more clearly
than the light of the morning sun
The desire of my being
towards whom I might be
calls me more loudly than anything
yet less clearly
How can I know
where the two meet
or separate?

Love and more love—and creative flow, and remembering whatever beautiful remembrance it is that you have to remember,

Pete xoxo

What is truly remarkable is the road that Power and its Propaganda machine almost always take (always?) to increase or keep said Power.

Thus, the response by one who believes no unauthorised Power is justified or legitimate—Chomsky and millions, perhaps billoons of other souls—is generally prewritten, with a little bit of reflection.

Having said that about Chomsky, I must say I am constantly shocked by the sheer volume of knowledge in his brain, and how much I learn (about things I never hear about elsewhere) when I read him.

For that, I am immensely grateful. And as one reviewer once wrote, not without qualifications: “To not read Chomsky is to court genuine ignorance.”

The man is 80 years old—remarkable. And if you write him, he will wite back, often the same day. Now that’s a work ethic.

Excerpts from the interview:

QUESTION: You opposed the Vietnam War long before it was fashionable. When and why did you make that decision? Do you feel you made a difference?

CHOMSKY: “I opposed the Vietnam war from the mid-1940s, when the French invaded, a few years later receiving direct US support. But I did not do much beyond signing statements and the like until 1962, when the back pages of the New York Times casually reported that the US Air Force was flying a large proportion of the bombing missions against South Vietnam, with the planes disguised with SVN markings.”

This is Chomsky’s constant reminder that the US in fact invaded South Vietnam when the war started, pushing the rural people in what were called “strategic hamlets.”

I have no expertise on the invasion of Vietnam, but this has always striuck me as interesting. The only quick reference I know of it, believe it or not, came from Malcolm X (about actions being taken by the Kennedy Administration in South Vietnam and elsewhere—”a stance against…Laos and South Vietnam…”).

I found this in researching for the documentary I’m working on:

Back to the interview, Chomsky goes on to say how Imperialistic invasions and bombings are rarely called by the mainstream press “immoral”, but rather “bungling mistakes”. Consider the absurdity of calling Russia’s immoral, brutal, imperialistic invasion of Afghanistan “bungled good intentions”, or how about Japan in Nanking—or one that is rarely described as it must be!, the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, killing over a hundred thousand civilians in a dying heartbeat, and ushering in the atomic age.

The list, in fact, verges on infinite, and reflects more than just Power. It reflects a real, undeniable aspect of human nature, of the human experience. Accumulated Power (be it in the household or politics, or anywhere else, not checked, not nurtured, not tempered by wisdom and a long-term care for others, or something, somehow!), does this.

But enough of my rant:

CHOMSKY: “[At the time of the Tet Offensive], The government considered sending several hundred thousand more troops to South Vietnam, but decided not to because of concern that they would need the troops for civil disorder control at home in the likely event of a mass uprising of unprecedented proportions. We also know that by then [1968] 70 per cent of the US population felt that the war was “fundamentally wrong and immoral”, not “a mistake”—while intellectual elites debated whether Washington’s “bungling efforts to do good” were a “mistake” that was becoming too costly to us (Anthony Lewis of the New York Times, at the outer limits of dissidence within the mainstream).”

Here’s some information I didn’t know (or at least failed to remember). Even the question was enlightening:

QUESTION: You have said the US played a significant role in actions that led to the installation of the Burmese junta back in 1962. What’s the subtext, the background we’re not understanding: What are the consequences of the enormous UK investment in Burma, of earlier US weapons sales, of recent Israeli weapons sales to the junta—and of Chevron Oil’s continued supply of millions and millions of dollars in oil money to the junta?

CHOMSKY: “Burma had one of the few elected governments in the region in the 1950s, and was intent on pursuing a neutralist course. The Eisenhower administration was carrying out vigorous efforts to enlist the governments in the region into its Cold War crusades. As part of this broad campaign of subversion and violence, Washington installed thousands of heavily armed Chinese Nationalist troops in northern Burma to carry out cross-border operations into China. Burma vigorously objected, but in vain. The China forces began arming and supporting insurgent minorities in that turbulent region. In reaction, power within Burma began to shift to the military, leading finally to the 1962 coup.

The matter is discussed by Audrey and George Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy. George Kahin was one of the leading Southeast Asian scholars, virtually the founder of the academic discipline in the US.

The consequences of the US-UK-Israeli operations you describe are, of course, to strengthen the military junta. These matters are unreported and unknown in the US, apart from specialists and activists, because they interfere too dramatically with the doctrine that “we are good” and “they are evil”, the foundation of virtually every state propaganda system.”

And two more excerpts, the Gospel comment quite witty:

QUESTION: Do you find George W. Bush and his wife Laura calling for change in Burma insincere? Do you think the US president’s action on behalf of the suffering and the marginalised in Burma in the wake of Cyclone Nargis would be more justifiable on moral grounds than the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan?

CHOMSKY: “Bush likes to posture as a deeply religious Christian. Perhaps he has even looked at the Gospels. If so, he knows that the famous definition of the hypocrite in the Gospels could have been written with him in mind. One can think of all kinds of ways in which the Bush couple could show their sincerity, were it to exist.

If Saddam Hussein had given some money to hungry children it would have been more justifiable on moral grounds than his gassing of Kurds in Halabja. The same principles hold in the case of Negris vs Iraq-Afghanistan.”

And finally:

QUESTION: Would you give any examples of what could happen if the principle of universality were applied in the world today, between nations that are in conflict?

CHOMSKY: “One example is that Bush, Cheney, Blair, and a host of others would be facing Nuremberg-style tribunals. And the observation generalises very broadly.”

The full article is here.

I have to get back to work—the load is high at the moment. Hope a few of these tidbits were informative and revealing—and help you remember the miracle of freedom for the individual (not as a consumer or a cog in a wheel, but as a person, aware of community and the commons as something vital and prescious). Lots of love to you,

Pete

I’ve been a huge James Taylor fan since I first fell in love and first got depressed (they were almost simultaneous). I also learned a lot of my guitar playing—which is a bit of an insult to James—learning his songs, and his tunings.

Anyway, this is a version of Steamroller Blues from about 1970, I think. James was, by all accounts, in the early grip of heroine, but he’s still as smooth as ever (or maybe that’s why).

I post this because not only is the intro very funny, his self-parodying ad-lib in the middle of his own non-solo is about the funniest self-parodying in the middle of a non-solo I’ve ever heard. God love him. Hope it brings back some sweet memories. And don’ kid yourself, he can play that acoustic guitar.

Working like a dog (a dog that works hard) here in Vancouver,

Lots of love to you—that you may be feeling rich in spirit, in this crazy human journey.

Pete

And something even sweeter, Carolina In My Mind, with a whistling intro.

Heck, and one of my own…uh, how about Jean Paul Sartre?

For those intrigued, here’s the whole Wide Open CD (I have a couple more, too). Feel free to download. Petexo

Actual or perceived. Hm. One man’s crisis is another man’s opportunity—actual or perceived.

A Naomi Klein interview—always deeply thought provoking. Talking about her book The Shock Doctrine, and what the Shock Doctrine is: a philosophy of power that exploits disasters, be they imposed (9/11) or natural (Katrina). The ’shock’ itself of a given disaster—natural or imposed—allows an opportunity for deeply unpopular policies to be pushed through:

“The so-called Homeland Security industry didn’t really exist before 9/11. It’s now a 200 billion dollar industry, which is bigger than Hollywood and the music industry combined. So that’s one of the ways the ‘Shock Doctrine’ was applied after 9/11.”

The questions from Tavis Smiley are good, Devil’s advocate yet supportive questions. Klein says in response to one:

“…I base the thesis of the book not on something I cooked up myself but a body of research coming from top level economists in Washington and prestigious universities—like the University of Chicago, Harvard—talking about the need for crisis to push through these policies.

She says the Bush government are not simply bumbling idiots—au contraie—but in fact deeply “competent”, imposing their beliefs and agendas with great success.

Strange world, but with such immense variation that I am sure a deep strain of great big love and compassion for sisters and brothers everywhere remains a constant, and perhaps eternal, possibility. Stay with it!

Lots of love to you,

Pete xo

Here’s the first part of the interview.

PS: If it depresses you, make sure you watch the second half, too.

Speaking of Wide Open, the song. And this song, Shine, has also been getting a lot of play lately.

Here’s to following that devotion to its source, with gratitude and wonder,

Pete

As humans, of course, we follow our natures to a large degree, and our natures are nurtured by environment, in some mysterious alchemy, resulting in us.

I, of course, have no answers, but, as the Beach Boys once sang…

“Wouldn’t it be nice…” if things were more loving.

CONGO/ZAIRE/DRC

For the historical aspects of the Ali film I’m working on, the Congo/Zaire/the DRC may be noted in two different areas.

One is from the early 1960s. That connection, or at least perceived connection, between Black nationalist groups in America, in this case the Nation of Islam and, more specifically, Malcolm X. Specifically, his support for the eventually assassinated, democratically elected leader Patrice Lumumba.

From Mike Marqusee’s book Redemption Song, pg 117:

Malcolm [X] was overwhelmed by Lumumba, whom he called “the greatest black man who ever walked the African continent.” It was not an accident that he referred to Lumumba in his response to the JFK assassination, nor that he would invoke his name again and again during his own final months.

Lumumba, it is said, was captured and murdered by domestic military forces with support from Western Intelligence agencies. The imposed leader was brutal strongman and thief extraordinaire Mobutu Sese Seko.

The second area is with Mobutu. In 1974, it turns out, he put up (surely not his own) big money for the Rumble in the Jungle—Muhammad Ali versus the invincible George Foreman for five million a piece. For Mobutu, the point of the event was to highlight the greatness of the country he was actually bleeding to death, in all senses of the word.

As Mobutu continued his pathological reign of terror (indeed, prison and terror continued unabated beneath the Stadium while the fight was on, according to Norman Mailer in When We Were Kings), the boxing match was dubbed a back-to-Africa spectacle of solidarity, led by that champion of solidarity and human rights, the inimitable and twice-charged-with-murder or near murder, Don King.

Ah, the material experience. Is this not a fascinating world?

This fight was King’s first really big splash in boxing, as the fight game moved from the Frankie Carbo mafia tranglehold to the Don King (and a few others) stranglehold.

Talk of pensions and unions remain largely non-existant, which can only encourage boxers to fight too long.

PIRATES AND EMPERORS

It has been estimated that Mobutu took 4 billion dollars from the country (in loans payable, no doubt, many via the IMF etc). This was undeniably known by the CIA well into the 1990s, as Mobutu remained the celebrated guest of, among others, Ronald Reagan and former CIA head George Walker Bush.

Anyway, things are still more than difficult in the Congo, unsurprisingly yet ironically exacerbated by rich resources in the country.

This is a quick piece on Mobuto.

This is a piece from Hope In the Time of AIDS. The young girl in the film, Safi, lives in the DRC.

And this is a very brief overview of Colonialism—or, more specifically, the so-called Scramble for Africa.

Life is never as clear as any of these pieces, of course, but they can still be instructive.

Love more!

One letter asked: Why should I trust your blog? I wrote back: You shouldn’t, trust your instincts (there’s an ironic double-meaning in that).

Anyway, because I’m confused by the inner workings of youtube, I don’t know if this return letter to one fella got through, but here it is with a few typos corrected and clarifications enhanced:

Hope all is well. It sure gets heated on the youtube comments there. The person you were going back and forth with certainly knows everything, which makes it difficult. My blog isn’t really free association, as he said, but it is indeed wordy. For that, forgive me.

Anyway, if what I wrote in my blog adds nothing, as he said, then I have nothing to add, because that’s all I know about the piece (which I thought was a fair bit).

The fact that the person says what I wrote adds nothing, when I edited the piece, is instructive in itself, don’t you think?

As for the Shermer-Armstrong show, I once had not a thirty minute version but I think an 18 minute version, for whatever reason. It was digitized, and has long been lost in the collapse and crashing of computers, as they are wont to do (where economics meets science). It’s possible it could have been 22 minutes long, which is standard for a half hour format, but I thought it was 18 minutes.

As I said, I edited the piece to under ten minutes for youtube, and I also cut out all of the negative comments about astrology—in other words ALL of the commentary chosen by Shermer or his producers—because they were irrelevant to the experiment at hand.

For example, the blonde woman’s references to the readings being more psychology by observation than anything else. Jeffrey, of course, didn’t even meet a bunch of the participants at all, facially or even verbally (nine, in fact—all but the first one, which make the woman’s points about psychology trough observation virtually pointless).

There was also a scientist (I can’t remember his name) saying astrology was no more valid than reading entrails—and who has the guts for that?—ha ha ha. Again, this commentary adds nothing to an actual experiment.

Therein were most of the extra minutes, if not all of them.

I left in, I think, nearly all if not all of what Jeffrey Armstrong did and said, and I definitely left in ALL of how Michael Shermer scored the procedure and the results at the end etc.

At the very end I let Jeffrey’s comments finish. They were in fact followed by Michael’s, which were:

“While skeptics will explain the results of our study as due to chance and wishful interpretation, believers will see them as further proof that the stars and planets directly influence our lives.”

I can only imagine what he might have said had the final two scores not have been what they were. A burning at the proverbial stake, to be sure.

Anyway, what is more interesting than any of it, is to read the comments and see the wonderfully spirited yet often outlandish specualtion by skeptics and non-skeptics as to my motivations, or the cowardly nature of my editing etc. Hilarious, but, again, instructive.

Whether astrology has merit or not is not for me to say, but a line in the Bhagavad Gita says we as humans are virtually hopelessly bound to follow our innate, individual propensities, whether we want to or not. The comments definitely show that.

What we could all use, in my opinion, is a little more humour and a lot more love. But hey, that’s just my propensity. Maybe it’s all up to the stars, or it’s in the protoplasm, or both.

Hope this helps. Wishing you well,

Pete

Anyway, here’s the piece on youtube, fun to watch just for itself:

Here’s a link to my original blog—yes, it’s wordy!

And here, in a Coles Notes form, are a few of its points:

In a scenario set up to debunk astrology, Jeffrey Armstrong reads NINE charts in about TWENTY minutes. Most charts are usually given an hour of study each.

EXPERIMENT I: Face-to-face reading with a skeptic. The subject, afterwards, said Jeffrey’s reading “officially blew me away.”

EXPERIMENT II: Nine “blind” readings. Results [scored by Shermer’s team]: 105 of 137—or 77%—of Jeffrey’s statements deemed accurate, ALL scores 63% or over, high of 89%.

EXPERIMENT III: The kicker. Two of the nine, unbeknownst to Jeffrey or the subjects, have their charts switched. Accuracy rating drops to 38 and 21% respectively. Switched back to true charts, accuracy goes to 94 and 92%.

And another:

BEHIND THE SCENES

As for the piece with Michael Shermer, I recently learned from conversation with Jeffrey that, in his opinion, by far the best astrology moments from the ten-hour, three camera shooting day were left out from the final cut (the piece you saw, incidentally, is an abridged version of the original 18 minute version).

For example—and this really did happen (all my jokes aside):

Due to Capricorn rising in her chart, Jeffrey mentioned the first woman’s eyebrows would probably have a tendency towards bushiness. It turns out—cut from the piece—that the woman not only responded “Yes,” as we saw, but for that reason, in high school, she was actually nicknamed “Bush” (go easy, this is a family blog).

Coincidence? Luck? Or is something hairy?

Jeffrey told the charismatic older man and his wife, according to their chart, that they were likely in the middle of house renovations and living there at the same time (due to certain transits in both their charts). They were astounded and said they were—and would never again live in a house while it was being renovated.

And the Asian American woman who said she’d in fact had a strong relationship with her father, didn’t hear (but you can hear it if you listen) Jeffrey say that she might have had a “difficult father relationship” or “separation from father.”

Her father, it turned out, had been in China for something like the last ten years, in which time they had hardly if ever seen each other.

And there are other tidbits too personal to mention.

So you see, both skeptics and charlatans—and all the rest of us—stack the deck.

So there it is, my friends and fellow humans—and god knows it’s not easy being human, knowing so little: the youtube clip, a few clarifying points from my blog, and Michael’s ending.

And the mystery rolls on—and what a mystery it is.

Your eternal pal, in love and solidarity with all seekers and skeptics. The fact is, we’re in a dead heat with your average turnip when it comes to what we don’t know about the universe, the ontology of our origins, and so many other great and potentially expansive questions,

Pete

St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great, who asked him, “how he dares molest the sea.”

“How dare you molest the whole world?” the pirate replied: “Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an Emperor.”

Augustine, for the record, agreed wholeheartedly with this pirate’s conclusion—and the connection to today’s world, of course, is obvious.

Having been so much in the world of interview lately, I recall with great fondness the opportunity I had to interview Noam Chomsky a few years back, at MIT, for Uganda Rising.

An excerpt that is incomplete in that there have been compelling, courageous pockets all through history of Christianity’s ‘revolutionary church of the poor’ roots blooming, but the basic premise of the excerpt is clear—that such revolutionary ideas are seldom encouraged by Power:

Pete: Back to Rwanda and the genocide there, there was something I wanted to ask you about. I’ve read that the Christian Church in Rwanda was often complicit in the genocide, with priests carrying arms and actually being involved in some butcherings and so forth. This shocked me, but then I started to think about history. How would you explain the connection between colonialism and the Church?

Noam Chomsky: Well, it’s a long story actually. I mean, look, the first couple of centuries of the Church, it was a church of the poor. It was a revolutionary church of the poor. That’s what the gospels are about. When you read the gospels, that’s what they say.

It was picked up by the emperor Constantine and he turned it into the church of the rich and the powerful. The cross—which was the symbol of suffering and oppression—became the symbol on the shield of the Roman soldiers. From then on, the church was the Church of the rich and powerful.

It’s changed to some extent—in fact, very dramatically, in Latin America, primarily, in the 1960s and 70s. The church went back to the gospels. It was called the preferential option for the poor. Priests and nuns and layworkers were working with peasants and running base communities in which they studied the gospels as they really are.

You know, that caused a violent reaction. The U.S. went to war against the Church in Latin America. I’ve got a picture right back there [points to his wall] which describes it. The 1980s, particularly under Reagan, was largely a war against the Catholic Church. A massive war against liberation theology and it’s not hidden.

The ’80s opened in Central America with the murder of an archbishop [Romero], and ended with the murder of six leading Latin American Jesuit intellectuals, all by forces closely linked to the United States or trained and armed by the United States—who meanwhile killed tens of thousands of the usual victims.

The full interview is here—and, as always with Noam, full of insights, revelations and unthought-of-angles. I remain amazed by the processing power of the man’s brain, and his remarkable, generous work ethic.

Here’s to freedom, solidarity and love,

Pete