Outlands Community USA - 11 21 08 Llam and Roy's blog

11 21 08 It isn't science

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:11:51 CST

LLAM: And what is it that has you so agitated this fine day?

ROY: String theory.

LLAM: I do hope that you are referring to something in physics and not something about string or twine.

ROY: (grins) Physics.

LLAM: I detect a full-blown rant coming on.

ROY: You detect correctly! But before we get going, what did you think of that fellow the other night who took the Learn Telepathy exercise?

LLAM: What was his percent - 93% correct? Very impressive!

ROY: Well, you and Dioth had gathered round while we were doing it. He actually saw Dioth in some way. Only Anwarii has done that if I remember properly.

LLAM: Actually Valyn has also, but that was on a flyby some time ago. But he was a non-Westerner if that is the right term.

ROY: Right or not it will have to do, I promised not to divulge anything about him, although I'd like to get his permission to post some of the test in the Telepathy section here. Have you noticed that "non-Westerners" generally do better on the test?

LLAM: Oh my yes. They're not bound by Christian culture, or whatever label you want to give it today. Western culture? But it all says you mortal folks can't do that and if you can it's from the Devil. Have you ever met the Devil?

ROY: Yeah. Don't you remember Sara had lunch with him some months back?

LLAM: Oh, oh, yes, I do! Silly old deva I am! But what did you think of him?

ROY: He was kinda hot, actually. For someone who has had the bad press he's had and for so long, he's in a remarkably good frame of mind. I think that I would have said 'the hell with it!' long ago.

LLAM: You didn't just say that!

ROY: (cackling) Of course I did!

LLAM: Well, listen, from the little talks we've had since the last blog entry, you've a lot more on your mind than just string theory. You were going on about what is science and what is not quite a bit there. Why don't you start with that? String theory is pretty esoteric a subject and enough people lose patience trying to follow what you and Yvgeny have discussed in the past.

ROY: Alright.

LLAM: (after a short pause) Well?

ROY: Well what?

LLAM: You were going to start by talking about what is science.

ROY: (chuckles) Oh yeh! Okay. Here goes. Science is that branch of human life which seeks to explain things about the world which are unknown. It usually begins when someone observes something. Then they think about it. Then they try to explain the why and how of it. (scratches head) I have an example.

LLAM: Okay.

ROY: For we mortals, when we stand on the earth it appears flat. Even in the mountains, it just goes on a certain distance to the horizon. Then there's the horizon. Many people in the past said with reasonable certainty that the world was flat and that it had an edge. If you walked to the edge you could see whatever was below and beyond.

LLAM: I suppose that many people tried to do that.

ROY: Many people said that they'd actually done it, but that was fabrication. Early on it was noticed that the horizon was circular and that the sky overhead was like a dome. Those who noticed that were able to deduce that the earth must be round, globular. The proof came in watching ships come into harbor among other things.

LLAM: This is what is called the 'empirical' method, correct? Sound deduction from close observation. And thus we have the beginning of science proper long ago in mortal human culture. I can add another. Eat this plant and get sick; eat that plant and be nourished; eat the other plant and get high. But this was gathering of facts, pretty much, based upon practical experience.

ROY: Yeah, that's the basics. Of course the explanations as to why certain plants made you sick, or why the world was round were pretty fancy and divorced from what was later discovered.

LLAM: I recall very long ago, some of your human ancestors thinking that plants that got you sick or killed you had evil spirits or angry ancestors in them. You all were living in a world where everything was animate in some way. Or you thought it was all animate.

ROY: Everything is animate after a fashion.

LLAM: That is not a scientific statement.

ROY: "After a fashion."

LLAM: That's fudge.

ROY: (glares at Llam) Everything has an awareness.

LLAM: That's different. But that's not scientific either.

ROY: It is the sum total of my experience.

LLAM: It's mine as well, but it's not scientific.

ROY: (long pause)......right. You're right. I can say it, it's my experience, but I can't demonstrate it and others can't have my experience. I have no method, no experiment which others can do to have the same experience. And in that regard, you're right, they aren't scientific statements.

LLAM: I gather that you would need some sort of detection device to see if, say, a rock was animate, or aware. At the very least, anyway. You'd need an idea of what the rock was aware of, or in what way it was animate.

ROY: Well, you just described a part of scientific method. Theory.

LLAM: (smiling) And we have plenty of theories here at Outlands, don't we?

ROY: (laughs) Yup! And many of them aren't really scientific either!

LLAM: I know, I know! (laughing) But can they ever be scientific theories? Not only our thing about rocks, but, say, consciousness? (looks up from computer screen to whoever is reading this) If you're not aware of it, we have a theory, which I think is valid, that consciousness does not reside in the mortal human brain, that it just uses it. Normally human consciousness is in the larger ethereal universe. But it's not scientific because it can't be demonstrated.

ROY: (looks at readers) At the same time it explains things like Multiple Personality.....Disorder - gawd, I hate that word - and maybe schizophrenia. But that's the "tiger explanation."

LLAM: Beg pardon? (looks back at Roy)

ROY: (looks at Llam) This guy is walking down the street and sees a fellow snapping his fingers very loudly. He goes up to the snapper and asks, "What are you doing?" The snapper replies, "As long as I stand here and snap my fingers, this street is safe from tigers." The first guy asks, "How do you know that?" The snapper asks, "Do you see any tigers around here?"

LLAM: (cracks up laughing) (after a pause, looks back out at readers) Hey! That was funny! Laugh a little! (looks back to Roy) How could that be demonstrated?

ROY: Any demonstration would be a far stretch. I mean, way the hell out there.

LLAM: Are you stalling to think of a good one, or do you actually have something in mind?

ROY: I do have something in mind. You'd need someone who was very good at out-of-body. Out-of-body isn't accepted as a scientific fact by and large, but that would be the first thing. Second, you'd need three or four people like myself who can channel. That isn't generally accepted by the scientific world either.

LLAM: Are you thinking of Susan Blackmore?

ROY: Among others, yes. Bu the experiment would work like this. Someone - not the out-of-body person, not the channelers, would write something down and seal it in an envelope. The out-of-body person would open the envelope, read what was written there and then give it back to the writer. Then the astral traveller would leave for a bit and make contact with the channelers, one after the other. The message would be passed to the channelers, who would report to the person that wrote the secret message. Even one channeler getting the message right would be a large problem for many people.

LLAM: So, are you going to give a secret message to Professor Blackmore?

ROY: LLAM!

LLAM: (cracks up laughing)

ROY: So I like her hair, so what?

LLAM: (still laughing)

ROY: And I think she's cute, so what?

LLAM: (still laughing) You mortals! Oh, how hard was that?

ROY: Everybody knows that!

LLAM: Everybody HERE knows that!

ROY: (snorts, looks up at readers) See what I have to put up with? (looks back at Llam) Okaaaaaay, Big Blue. That would be a scientific experiment.

LLAM: (regaining composure) Yes.....yes, it would. When are you going to try it?

ROY: Huh?

LLAM: Have some of the Members and Associates write down a sentence or phrase and e-mail the phrase to others. You visit those others and find out what the message is, then report it back to the people who wrote them.

ROY: (very quiet)

LLAM: (looks up at readers) See what I have to put up with? My mortal steward, who normally is pretty smart, gets dumb sometimes. (looks back at Roy) Well?

ROY: Uhhhhh, yeah. I'll work on that later.

LLAM: Good! Now that we've had them read this far, what is it that is pissing you off about string theory?

ROY: It's not science but its practitioners say that it is.

11 01 08 Conversation with my late girlfriend

Sat, 1 Nov 2008 16:22:01 CST

Llam has graciously asked me to post an extended coversation I have had with my last mortal girlfriend, so - thank you, Llam!

The last mortal woman with whom I lived and whom I can today say that I loved with all of my heart died about a year ago. I was working and she popped into my head and within moments I understood that she had died and had come to say "goodbye." I broke down and wept uncontrollably. This might sound odd for someone like myself who claims to channel those who no longer live and whose confidence in an afterlife is strong. It took a number of minutes to regain my composure and for the "facts" as I understand them to re-assert themselves. When she knew that I could perceive her her first words to me were, "Stop cryin', I'm okay, really, I'm alright." My "belief in an afterlife" had been given a good shake-up but then was re-affirmed. She did not stop by to say "goodbye." She already had plans and visiting me was among them. To this day she stops in occasionally and we talk. She also visits our Member Anwarii in the UK for protracted visits there.

I should tell a bit about our relationship. As she still has lving relatives she's asked me to refer to her throughout all of this by an early nickname I'd given her, "the Other." We met under fluky circumstances in late 1991. She had been a part-time employee at a vintage clothing store and the moment I walked in the door, our eyes met and for me there was an instant "uh-oh" moment. I knew that from that time our lives would be intertwined. They were; it took a few years for her to admit it, but she had had the exact same feeling about me when we first locked eyes. We were by any means an odd and somewhat suspect couple. She was a prototypical Goth girl in her teens and I was a wild-eyed, wild looking hippie in my early forties. She had been living at a home when we met and her contact with her parents, minimal. At first we would meet and go for coffee and talk. We had one thing in common: we both perceived invisible entities. The months passed and I asked her to move in with me. As she was under state care this seemed an insurmountable barrier but to my great surprise and delight both the state and her parents agreed to the arrangement. I was at that time living with my elderly and invalid parents as their care-provider, and I had three children of my own and I had a steady job; these reasons, I was told, were enough for the state to grant approval for her moving in with me.

We were not an intimate couple. For some reason we just did not work together physically. Of course the perception of us as a kind of Humbert-and-Lolita pair surrounded us until she was well into her twenties, but we endured it all with annoyance. I made no bones about the fact that I was crazy about her, but her declarations of love were few and far between. In the ten years in which we were together we often fought like banshees, but, each of us had no-one else to whom to turn. Our arrangement was liberal as well. Occasionally she would meet a young man or woman to whom she took fancy and I would see little of her for a month or several weeks. In 1995 she found a small spiritual group and joined them, and I followed suit. This group - which shall also be unnamed - had few of the trappings of a real brainwashing cult - at first. We both feel that this was largely due to the work of the group's local administrators, caring people who had a genuine affection for us all. I found their teachings interesting but at times more than a little nuts. She found in them a way to deal with the world in a helpful and realistic way. She'd been diagnosed as bipolar, schizoid and sociopathic. In 1997 she moved to Canada for about ten months to join in a work the group had sponsored in Ontario, then back to the USA and back with me. In 1999 she found a guy about whom she cared a lot and moved in with him; our contact diminished and I had heard nothing at all from her until June of 2001. She was now a "klub kid," someone who went to places like the Limelight and Webster Hall in New York City. that summer and fall was probably the most intense part of our years together. But she had developed a terrific drinking problem and after several very serious arguments I threw her out in late 2001. And yes: my heart broke.

She asked me if we could have a talk but in recorded form, that is, in the way in which I've channeled some of the other ethereal people in the past. So what follows is our conversation, written in dialogue form.

Other: Thanks, man. I'm pretty excited. This is kinda like bein on TV, I'm a little nervous. I've always been a private person.

Roy: I remember. Relax, this'll only be read by several thousand people once I get it online.

Other: (laughs) Oh, thanks a lot! Could you put on some tunes?

Roy: Sure. Umm....I don't have much Skinny Puppy, Mike Oldfield okay?

Other: Wow, Skinny Puppy, Oghr. Forgot for a while! Yeah, Mike is okay. That space piece if you have it.

Roy: Some of it. Here ya go.

Other: Thanks. Been a while. (pauses) You know, hearing music is different when you're dead. It's richer, you know? (pause) And I feel it, really feel it now. Huh! Gotta get my shit together here......

Roy: Last night you'd mentioned a number of things that were on your mind. About your life and being alive.

Other: Yeah, I guess we could start there. (eyes blaze) Man, I should have never been born! Or I should have died while being born, or as a baby. Life was always too much for me, it was horrible in my earliest memories. I have no good memories from my childhood, only bad. bad and worse. I used to blame my parents but they were only doing what they do, you know? They were pretty bad as far as being parents go, but I had a home. Or house. We just had no common ground. I was only something like happy if I was doing something with birds. You know I loved birds, still do. But birds didn't live too long, they always left me. I didn't understand that and I didn't like it either.

Roy: Were you in a lot of physical pain, I mean, all of the time?

Other: You knew when I was hurtin, I always told you. Remember how knotted I'd get in my back and shoulders? You'd rub my back for hours, it always helped. But I wasn't so much in pain, hmm. Remember that one Skinny Puppy song, he had a sample in it, "he is extremely, terribly, thoroughly...uncomfortable" in it? Something like that?

Roy: Yeah, I remember. Always wondered what the hell that was from.

Other: I never knew but doesn't matter. That was me. Uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. Like I could never find the right way to sit, to walk or even to lay down. I was always restless like that, just couldn't get it right and it drive me wild sometimes.

Roy: I remember seeing you asleep with your legs crossed and on your belly. Reminded me of a cat.

Other: That hadda be when we first got together, that was the meds I was on. After that I would snuggle a pillow. I felt bad sometimes, I know you liked to hold me in your sleep, but that was like, I just couldn't, okay? Just couldn't do it.

Roy: That was a long time ago.

Other: I know that, I just wanted you to know it wasn't you.

Roy: Okay. (pause) I'm fine.

Other: You accepted that without understanding it, huh?

Roy: Yeh. Lots of things I don't understand, didn't understand.

Other: Aww, ohh...ohh. (smiles) Wish I had really understood you loved me, I didn't know that word well and I distrusted it.

Roy: Hey, when your parents keep telling you they love you and then beat you and force sex on you, the word gets pretty ominous.

Other: I forgot about your mother. What a cunt!

Roy: Your parents were no gems.

Other: Maybe I've done better than you in that. I don't know, they both did what they knew. I used to hate them both but one day I realized they were just being themselves. No matter what they did, and they did, they were dealing with me. I was not an easy kid. But I see how both your father and mother are now that they're both over here. He's changed, she's the same. I feel sorry for her. Up to a point, anyway. There's no excuse to exist with your head in your mortal life when you're dead. What the fuck is the comfort in that? Must be a kind of hell. Being what you always were.

Roy: Before I met you Seima had told me that if I didn't work on my anger I'd live and relive every stupid and petty argument I'd ever had - forever.

Other: With the way you were at the time, I'd say she was probably right. But you wanted better. You got better. For your mother to keep on the way she is, I think she must have known she should change but didn't. Shit happens. She could get out of that crap but it would be awfully hard for her. I saw her a couple of times and I don't think she's accepted that she's dead, except in some nominal way. In the intellect but not the heart maybe. (pauses) You know how I died, right?

Roy: You told me drug overdose.

Other: (laughs) It was more like, "drugs overdose." I was drinking, smoking crack and snorting H. For a couple of days. I went to sleep. I didn't wake up. This was the second time and I said to myself, I'm staying. First time I was in what you called the empty place. I thought being alive was bad. That was worse. But this time I knew what had happened and after my second try at mortality I knew that being dead wouldn't be as bad as being alive was. For me, anyway.

Roy: What happened the second time you hit the empty place?

Other: It didn't bother me because I knew it was there and I had time to think about it. There was nothing bad about it and nothing good. The emptiness, the nothingness is pretty scary at first, but after a little while it's the background. First thing I thought of was saying goodbye to everyone. My little bro. Then you. I didn't know you were that good. Sara greeting me with a hug blew me away, man, I thought she'd want to kick my ass.

Roy: She loved you too.

Other: That took gettin used to. Then those others. And seeing Stro, and Mike, and, oh, Hurrain! Hurrain! Man, that just was so much to take in all at once! I was waiting for Verdy to show up but Hurrain told me your son got him.

Roy: Sure did. He was real drunk one night and in a berserker rage and threw an energy bolt at him. Gone.

Other: Awesome! I knew he had it in him! (pauses, listening) This is Mike Oldfield? What is it?

Roy: It's called 'Amber Light.'

Other: Fuckin awesome! (listens some more) So....is Verdy gone?

Roy: We've had the scopes out. He's around, but not around here. I made a standing offer like I always have. Give up the shit and you'll have a place to stay, work to do and people to talk with. I know he knows. But from what I understand, demons rarely change.

Other: Your intuition that they're humans imploded in on themselves with rage and fear is mostly correct, although there are a few devas like that. (pause) See, that's why it's hard for them to change. You can't make an explosion suddenly implode and vice-versa. It's only when that.....finishes, I guess, can anything else happen. One of these days, he'll be around. Maybe changed, or changing. That has to be hell.

Roy: The times when he talked with me, you know, when he'd suddenly pop up after 3:30 AM, he would be all cold and menace and....it didn't really rattle me much. He would always try to outargue me, which was a mistake.

Other: Outargue you? Only with a baseball bat or gun! (laughs)

Roy: Do you remember watching "Aliens 3?"

Other: We watched them a lot. I remember watching it though.

Roy: There's a scene where one of the Aliens is carrying Ripley to the queen and it came to me, Ripley actually loved the aliens. I said as much and Verdy poppped out and said, "No, she doesn't." Hit him close to home, I guess.

Other: I don't......don't remember that. Probably was him. I remember rolling with you, though. That was fantastic. Sorry I spoiled it by dragging that guy in on it. I thought maybe the three of us would work but I soon realized I had to choose between you, I couldn't.....have you both, or know you were with each other. It was too much.

Roy: That was also years ago. It's okay.

Other: Well, I still feel bad, though.

Roy: Remember what I used to say? I still say it. I don't blame anyone for the things they do when they're in love. You were in love or the next reasonable thing to it.

Other: You think you know what love is?

Roy: (grins) Sometimes!

Other: So what is it? (smiles)

Roy: I agree with the people who say it's part of sexual attraction. It's in our genes. We can't help it. But then along come parents who have the whole thing ass backwards and out come people like you and me.

Other: (grinning) Part of it. But what is it?

Roy: (stares for a moment at the Other) It's the heart's response to sexual attraction.

Other: I think that that's bullshit.

Roy: Huh?

Other: You got it part right but ass backwards. Everything originates in the heart including sexual attraction. If we were just energy without anything else we'd be nothing but love. Guess you have to be dead to figure this out, or most of us have to be dead to know this, but we are energy as will, and that will is love. It's a will, a willing, to be open to the rest of the universe, to give to the universe what it gives us. There's no "which came first" here either, it's, umm, it happens at the same time, umm simultaneous. As we give we are given, as we will so it is willed.

Roy: (sitting with mouth open)

Other: (smugly smiles) You were saying? (laughs)

Roy: (closes mouth)

Other: Okay?

Roy: Uh, yeh. Wow. That....explains a lot.

Other: Like what?

Roy: Just how fucked up we can get. How people like you and I can love but not express it sexually, or how we can desire someone with an intnsity bordering on insanity and not really love them.

Other: You still locked in that?

Roy: (eyes get large) Christ on his throne, NO.

Other: I know, it just surprised me that you said that, not too many people notice that distinction when they're alive. I mean, those who have it in their lives, have that problem. Mine was like that but it was far worse for me.

Roy: We never finished talking about that.

Other: About our reactions to our sexuality?

Roy: yeah. I had a handle on what my problems were when you were still with me, but no solution then in sight. But you mystified me with how you acted sometimes.

Other: Like what?

Roy: Well, I noticed that you generally avoided sex like the plague, but then you'd go......go on a binge as it were, and then suddenly stop and feel disgusted. It was like you couldn't help yourself but had to give in to the pressure, the physical demand for having sex.

Other: It's like going without food, drugs or sleep, sooner or later it gets critical and you have to give in.

Roy: Drugs?

Other: Christ, haven't you figured that out? We must get stoned periodically or we'll go off our rockers!

Roy: Oh yeh, I knew that, I learned it from Ron Seigal's book -

Other: - oh yeah, I remember that now, I read the same damned thing. The fourth drive! But like some people sleep only to have nightmares, for me having sex was a kind of nauseating and terrifying torture. Yet I had to.

Roy: Okay. I figured it was like that, but what?

Other: I could be hugged, but not held. If you held me I'd start to be afraid. And at the same time I would pick up someone's energy, your energy, and it was like being hit with a wave, a tidal wave, it would engulf me, and I would feel like I was drowning. And when someone touched me, I mean, caressed me, it was worse. Fingers, hands, lips, man, they would send these strong waves through me, like my body was made out of water and I was being splashed all over. After a while it would start to hurt also.

Roy: Wow.

Other: Yeah.

Roy: So it was this wave of fear and nausea and eventually, pain.

Other: Yeah. I always said I never had an orgasm while I was alive.

Roy: I always kept my mouth shut about that.

Other: I'm glad you did. I couldn't have explained it then. What everyone describes as a peak of waves of pleasure I felt as awful painful spasms that seemed like they were tearing my insides up.

Roy: What about when you were rolling?

Other: It was the same, only the meaning of the spasms changed.

Roy: What do you mean?

Other: You know I liked S & M, right?

Roy: Yeah, you told me early on. It's not me, though.

Other: I know. But for someone who is masochistic, pain is pleasure. Normally I would experience just pain when I went to bed with someone but when I rolled at least I could experience it as a kind of pleasure. (fiercely) But it wasn't the friggin be-all and end-all of pleasure, it was just, just strong. I blocked too much. My chakras.

Roy: Oh yeah, I know that one! I had a bunch of blocks! I was lucky, I got into kundalini a few years ago. Found two major blocks and got past them. I went to a massage therapist who understood what I was talking about and she tore me apart for almost two hours. She all but threw me out because of all the negative energy she picked up from me.

Other: The static.

Roy: Yeah....the white noise. She probably had to fast and shower for a week after and I felt bad, but she at least opened me up enough to get past the block and to find out what it was. I had an earlier version of myself locked into my heart chakra.

Other: You're not saying a past life, are you?

Roy: I have my reservations about past lives. I have the feeling that I was alive in previous times but from what I've gathered from taking notes about these other lives, I wasn't all "me." I was part "me" and part someone else. Remember I came up with the idea that we explode when we die?

Other: Yeah. Well, you can explode if you're screwed up enough. It's like a nuclear bomb. Too much of a certain kind of energy and BOOM!
You're all over the map in tiny pieces.

Roy: Makes sense. With a nuke it's called "critical mass," get enough plutonium in one place and it'll go off. But this earlier version of me was not all me, I could see parts of myself in him but not all of him was me. He was his own self and parts of others.

Other: Okay, makes sense. Who was he, what was he?

Roy: He called himself "Ethuud the Highwayman." A giant who was feared, he eventually lived in the wild and became a cannibal. Best as I can tell from his name, Ethuud, he might have been Welsh or Cornish. After I had that massage he told his tale and was free. And no longer a cannibal. He and another early-on ethereal member, marie, recognized each other and chose rebirth. They're little kids somewhere in the world today. Huh, as a little kid I was fascinated with cannibalism, I wanted to eat people.

Other: (laughing) Oh god! How old were you?

Roy: Four, five.

Other: Did your parents know?

Roy: Oh yeh! My mother would say, "You can't eat people!" and I would ask "Why?" and get beaten for it. You know what changed my mind?

Other: No.

Roy: Have you ever seen a spider or mantis eat something? Or watch ants eat something? They just clip and grind away at whatever it is until it's gone. I felt for whatever it was, I always saw that happening around the house when I was small. Then I saw the original version of "The Fly."

Other: Help meeeeeeeee!

Roy: Yeah.

Other: Probably explains why you like rare steak.

Roy: Thanks a lot!

Other: (laughing) But you got past the block?

Roy: Once Ethuud was out I was able to go bottom to top and out of my head. And at first I didn't notice the change. It was as if I was always able to love and be intimate with those I loved.

Other: I think the worst part of Western medicine is that even the idea that we have chakras is taken as so much bullshit. It should be the foundation of medicine. Like in China and wherever. At least acupuncture is accepted nowadays.

Roy: Only because it works. The reasons are usually ignored.

Other: Yeah, well, you've run into that with telepathy. And the idea that mortal humans are undergoing genetic change isn't too popular from what you've told me.

Roy: If I want to be totally cold about it, medicine is nothing but a big nasty business. There are caring doctors, no doubt, but the idea behind modern Western medicine is that everyone is sick and everything is a malady or disease.

Other: You just described psychiatry. Everything is a syndrome or condition. Medication, shock therapy and straightjacket. Man, what I endured with those bastards!

Roy: You were diagnosed with bipolar, sleep disorder, sociopathic tendencies and being schizoid, right?

Other: Yeah. None of which was true.

Roy: I figured that out the first week we'd met. You might have been diagnosed as having Aspberger's syndrome today.

Other: That's like a kind of autism, right? Only not so engulfing.

Roy: Yes. And I would leave off the word "syndrome."

Other: You used to say that about MPD - leave off the word "disorder."

Roy: Well, see, here's the thing now. These people are going around and if someone comes along who is overly-senstive, can't relate well to the world, has a number of people living in their heads, it's right away an illness, a syndrome or disorder. My thing is, what if this is a genetic response within humanity to the way the world is changing?

Other: That would mean I was born before my time. It would also mean that tomorrow's people are being classed as sick or crazy.

Roy: Exactly. I would expect that sooner or later someone is gonna put a stop to that. It'll be hard at first, psychology is so entrenched -

Other: It's a business. When the source of income starts raising hell they'll put on the screws. But you can't control people who are obeying their genes. I'm glad I am not in your part of the universe as a mortal, I think it could get gruesome. Stronger meds, really drastic shit like lobotomy and more electroshock.

Roy: I hope not. But those parts of the culture that are poisonously conservative are being assaulted on every front. When I was a kid black and white people were kept apart. You couldn't be gay without losing your job and everything. If you went against the government, most government, you were branded as a traitor. A lot of that has changed in my life.

Other: I think the religious conservatives will try flexing their muscles. They've gotten pretty powerful Look at how fundamentalist anything has grown. It's scary.

Roy: Bill Burroughs used to say that when a cultural group is dying it acts in deparation. I think that's what we're seeing in the world.

Other: The dying act of a wounded animal can be deadly. I guess that's what I'm thinking of. But you're saying that if there are really genetic changes in humanity, these "new people" will not be evolutionary dead ends but will survive? I hope so.

Roy: They have a lot going for them. You heard about "indigo children?"

Other: Yeah. Superkids.

Roy: It's a catchall phrase in a way, but it describes people who are smarter, faster, think and feel differently than others. People who are smarter than others can win if it comes to a conflict. I'm not sure that it will get that far, though. They'll pretty much fill jobs that they have a talent to do and this would be in anything you could think of - media, the military, large corporations. Just think of some fourteen year old kid who has a passion for psychology - but she's one of the new people. She would make a very different psychologist.

Other: Do you think that they would have trouble while getting their diploma? You know, get shot down by the professors and all?

Roy: It's already underway. There are too many students who don't buy the same old crap simply because they know better and can prove it. It'll snowball.

Other: Hope so. Psychology needs a total makeover. I wasn't alive long enough to see the changes you've seen. But I remember what you said about how it was for gay people. When I decided to try something with another girl at least I didn't have that hanging over my head. At first I thought that it would be everything I didn't experience with guys, but it boiled down to the same thing, being touched was awful. One thing was different though. (smiles) I could give another girl pleasure. Without her acting like a pig about it. I mean, like most guys are pigs when they give a girl pleasure. They're really interested in getting off, most of them.

Roy: I still think every man should be in the passive role in a gay relationship for a while. Get treated like an object. They would treat women differently.

Other: I'm not sure. Men compartmentalize their thinking too much. I could see a guy getting his heart broke by some alpha male and then turning around and doing the same thing to a woman - because she's a woman. I still think that men and women are really two different species. I know that as a scientific proposition it can't be proved or disproved, which makes it "just an idea." I know how science works like that. But it's my intuition and I've stuck with it.

Roy: Whether or not you'd get a biologist to agree with you is one thing, but it's common-sense to me. We're just so different.

Other: Not completely. We have a yin-yang nature. Within every man is a woman, every woman, a man. What was that guy's name? Jung? He kind of is where I got the idea, with his anima - animus theory. I think he was a little off the end, though.

Roy: I used to be fascinated with his ideas, but anyone who studies ancient cultures, especially Greek and Roman, would find him cool, I think. And any bizarre facet of Christianity.

Other: All of Christianity is bizarre. It's the most effective......meme in history. A mental virus? That's what a meme is, right?

Roy: Pretty much. It's a thought that takes up residence and won't leave.

Other: Mmm. Well....I think that that's about it. Thanks, man. (hugs Roy) I'm gonna go back to England now. Take care.

Roy: Yeah, you too. Thanks for talkin with me.

Other: (punches his arm) Heh! Hey. Love you, man.

Roy: Love you too.

10 18 08 Of music and myth

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:37:16 CDT

LLAM: I know that you like to wait until we really have something to discuss, and that you like to type it up beforehand and copy/paste it into the text editor here, but today I thought it would be fun to just start talking and to see where it goes.

ROY: Among us mortals the best conversations begin with inconsequentials. Or not knowing where to begin.

LLAM: I think that that's what I had in mind. I think. I do know that we've become somewhat predictable in our chats here, which is fine for someone wanting to read our latest thoughts about quantum or telepathy. We're pretty edge in those two subjects. (pause) Well, I think so anyway.

ROY: I agree with you in this, but for me it's like, well, we did that yesterday, but what shall we talk about today? I call it a kind of boredom, I guess others might say that I, or maybe you along with me, have a shallow thirst for the novel.

LLAM: What's wrong with a desire to see something new?

ROY: Supposedly the desire becomes an end unto itself.

LLAM: I guess that would work for someone who needs to be constantly entertained. The last thing I need is to be entertained. I'm too busy learning about all of you.

ROY: Maybe that's the difference, then. Some people are entertained by new stuff, others assimilate it to use it to grow.

LLAM: I can't picture you siting on your mortal duff and just watching movie after movie.

ROY: I'd rather be making a movie. Or art or music.

LLAM: Or writing. But there is one thing which seems to entertain the whole lot of you, but in varying degrees. Listening to music. I rarely see any of you working on Old Sparky without one of your music folders being played. You're all affected by it.

ROY: Perhaps music doesn't affect you the way it does us? Does music affect you?

LLAM: It does but not in the way that it affects you human folks. It seems to affect you emotionally and physically. Some music, notably dance music, affects me.

ROY: Dance music? You mean like techno, house, prog?

LLAM: (smiles) Yes! I like that Ritchie Hawtin fellow. Umm, Paul Oakenfold, Blank and Jones.....Johnny Vicious.

ROY: (grinning) Really? I didn't know that! Why? Do you know why?

LLAM: Of course! I like the beat. And the sounds, the music that goes with the beat, they are.....well, they make me feel good!

ROY: Wow! That's so cool! Are the rest of you devas fond of dance music?

LLAM: Dioth and Hurrain are. Down in Texas I think that Aknellaten likes the more contemplative stuff. Some of the others here and abroad like it. We have different tastes, just as you do.

ROY: That makes sense. What don't you like?

LLAM: Well, I......I don't know whether it's a matter of liking or disliking anything, I just would not prefer to listen to some of that atonal music that you and Sara Jane are so good at creating. I see that it's well executed and that you both are getting better at editing it, but for me, I get perplexed upon hearing it. I keep expecting to hear a series of notes, umm, resolve, I think is the word, and they don't. Or a note will begin, change but never end. I have tried to just "listen dumbly" as you advise, but even at my best I find myself saying wtf?

ROY: It doesn't do anything for you.

LLAM: That's a good way of expressing it, yes. (grins) I like what I like! I know that there is one genre that you don't like. Opera!

ROY: It's rare that an operatic piece will do something good for me. I think that's it's the intensity of the voice.

LLAM: Yet you can listen to three or four guitars screaming intensely with feedback.

ROY: Go figure! What do you think about that kind of music, like, Jimi Hendrix or the Grateful Dead making music from guitar feedback?

LLAM: Never mind Hendrix or the Dead, I used to watch you in the warehouse studio playing your guitar like that. I would watch you intently, too. Your brain would release a whole bunch of feel-good chemicals after only a few moments and you were off in the ozone. And even though Sara hasn't got a body, she would go off with you, and it wasn't her just being carried by your brain's chemical mix of the moment. Something happened in your ethereal selves that caused your brain to release that stuff.

ROY: What kind of stuff are we talking about here?

LLAM: I don't know the chemical names but it's like a mix of cannabinol and amphetamine. But one chemical. I guess your neuroscientists will find it in a few years.

ROY: The questions of why and how music affects us is ancient, and if someone were to read your answer too quickly, they might think that you're saying that the enjoyment of music is merely a matter of a few chemicals released into our bloodstreams.

LLAM: That's not what I'm saying at all. It affects your ethereal nature first. Your ethereal nature in turn affects your brains, your bodies. How or in what way you're feeling good is translated into biochemical means.

ROY: One of the New Testament writers urged that Christians sing hymns and songs for edification.

LLAM: "Edification," as in, "building up." Well, listening to music that you enjoy, music you love, does build you up, you know. It gives you resources. Your imagination is refreshed and enlarged.

ROY: For me and for a number of people, hearing the right kind of music unleashes a series of visual images. My son shares that with me. It's like there is a story, maybe even a myth, waiting to be told, it's locked up somewhere, somehow, and music unleashes it, lets it be told. I've not thought about it much. But I've experienced it.

LLAM: You know, I've always wanted to ask you about that! I do not have anything like that occurring to me!

ROY: Really! (pause) Is it possibly because you normally don't experience time in the way that humans do, or mortal humans?

LLAM: (laughs) It may! I haven't thought about that either! The only time I've experienced time as mortal humans know it is when I'm actively with you in some way. Talking with you, or observing you with intent. But even in our intensest moments, when you and the rest of Outlands Home visit the Outlands and you have music playing, I do not experience this imagery, I only....observe it occurring in the rest of you. It does fill me with wonder, though. But you may be right, our experience of time and yours are different. Mine when I'm apart from you, is a kind of steady state thing......I don't want to go off on a quantum tangent here, but my experience of time may be an uncollapsed wave state.

ROY: We're nearing the time-out limit, I want to check the spelling at least a little bit.

LLAM: I thought FireFox spell-checked?

ROY: It's not doing it for the entire page. But do you want to continue this?

LLAM: Of course!

ROY: ......so here we are one day later. You know, we have an opportunity to go left from talking about music!

LLAM: To change the subject? Very well! What are you thinking?

ROY: We mortal humans are shot through and through with myth.

LLAM: Nice little rhyme there......

ROY: I've not thought about the nature of myth in a long time, because when I was reading Carl Jung he had postulated that there is a physical reality and a psychic reality. In his example in the physical world the Rhine River may flow from its source into the sea, but if in my psychic reality I think it flows from the sea to its source, then, within that psychic reality it is true.

LLAM: Sounds like a neat and very simple distinction between physicality and non-physicality. Without the quantum physics! (smiles) What he seems to be saying is that all myth is true. Even if it is particularly zany.

Roy: I think that that's what he meant.

LLAM: Mortals have believed some very zany things. You believe that at the moment you are typing out a conversation between yourself and an invisible entity that you call a deva.

ROY: Well, uh, yeah.

LLAM: Which neatly circumvents the need for proof.

ROY: Uhhhhhh, yeah.

LLAM: So that if you believed that I was a two headed cat with octopus tentacles you wouldn't need to validate that, right?

ROY: Uhhhhhhhhhhh.........yeah, right. But you see, there is a great tool within this. I can proceed to type out this conversation as if it's true, as if it really is occurring between you and I. For me, it really is occurring. For others it may be the product of a very colorfully deluded mind - mine.

LLAM: That's exactly the point that I was trying to make. Jung's definition is useful in exactly the way you've described, but it has the limitations that you described as well. Anyone who is skeptical can pass this all by as fancy nonsense. It's not provable.

ROY: That's a virtue, really. There are a number of pragmatic things that emerge from our situation. Here we are, you and I, one physical, mortal human being and one ethereal immortal non-physical being with whom I claim to be in contact, and we have discussed many things of relevance to umm, "my" physical world. I think many of our discussions raised perfectly valid ideas, things that we ourselves have either verified, such as telepathy, or Yvgeny's conversations with me about quantum. Anyone who is curious can follow up on them. To my mind, the circumstances that generate these conversations are incidental. They're not important to the conversation in itself.

LLAM: Oh, I quite agree, but there are those for whom the very nature of these talks are unbelievable. There are people who will read that we claim we are just as you described, living human and immortal deva, and they shall think, "Rubbish!" and move on. What are your thoughts about that?

ROY: You're asking me to take it more seriously than I have?

LLAM: Yes.

ROY: As in, don't dismiss them outright.

LLAM: Yes! (brightly) Your attitude has been, well, if you don't believe it, fine. And I know that you express it that way to show that you have no overbearing need to be right. Which is excellent. But that motive is buried under the larger picture, which for a skeptic reduces to "Rubbish." Such an one will never even get as far as why you don't push much for proof.

ROY: Alright, do you feel that if we talk a bit we might get somewhere in clearing this up?

LLAM: Yes, and I do have an idea. You might create a page here for skeptical people to read. Something which explains our - or your -awareness that there are some people who will dismiss this whole website as one more bunch of loony occultists, and perhaps invite comments and discussion. Perhaps Sara Jane can put together an FAQ of sorts. The awareness of our claims being unprovable. Why they might find reading our pages to not be a waste of time. With one notable eception - and I know that I can't say his name publicly - you've generally dismissed the whole lot as being not worth your time. I understand that there attitude arises from their nature and their education, but dismissing them outright is kind of harsh. You ought show them a bit of patience and understanding. I'm happy that you don't go around bashing materialists wholesale, at least you recognize that they have reasons for their views, but this is a subtlety also lost if someone decides at the outset that you are crazy and that we are all extensions of your imagination.

ROY: Okay, I understand. I've been exhibiting the same kind of skepticism as the skeptics about the skeptics. Broad dismissal and all.

LLAM: I believe that the mortal expression is that you are preaching conversion to the converts. It may generate some fancy talk but no-one would be listening who doesn't take at least some of what we say seriously. So I'm going to close with this and ask you two to get to work on that.

ROY: Okay, will do, Llam!

10 04 08 Llam and Roy 'fess up

Sat, 4 Oct 2008 18:01:34 CDT

ROY: Looks like we both need to talk with each other today.

LLAM: Oh, I agree. Thank you for getting to work on this so quickly.

ROY: I should be thanking you. But, who's first?

LLAM: Would you mind that I began? You've not seen me upset before.

ROY: Yeah, go ahead. I haven't.

LLAM: I've come to a realization about my feelings.....my feelings about mortal humans and we devas. I have come to realize just how much we, or at least I, have short-changed you all, at least as far as our attitude goes.

ROY: Okay.

LLAM: To start, to start....I will never die. As far as I know, I will never die. Wait, wait. I have never been physically embodied. Instead all that I can say is that I've witnessed so many mortal human beings live and die. I see you live, grow old, and usually with great fear, you pass into the unobstructed universe, the unobstructed life. Minus your body. In your lives, all of the lives which I've witnessed, I've seen so many of you who have suffered. (pauses)

ROY: Take your time, bro.

LLAM: I've seen your wars. How you are gradually destroying your world. How one small group of you do their best to control a much larger group.....of you. The famine and the pestilence. Throughout all of it I have always maintained a kind of serenity because of my experience of my existence as an ethereal being.

ROY: Whoa, whoa, I've learned from that serenity.

LLAM: I think perhaps you may have learned from the serenity of Sara Jane, from Roland, from all of those you love. I don't think you've learned from mine. You've learned a serenity, yes, a peace, a lack of fear, whatever you wish to call it. But i sincerely doubt that you have learned it from me.

ROY: Perhaps I've never thought about it. But why do not accept that I feel I've learned it from you?

LLAM: I see that I have been too serene? I need to explain. I have been smug. I've just waited for every human with whom I've had to do to come to the realization that the unobstructed life is a wonderful life.

ROY: But Llam, my experiences have shown that it really is a wonderful life.

LLAM: (Looks down for a moment, then directly at Roy) You didn't always think so.

ROY: Well, of course not, I thought I was going to go to hell, I mean, I believed that no matter what I did I was gonna fry forever.

LLAM: That is kind of peripheral to what I'm thinking. Last night you and Sara Jane were talking about the first time that you died. And you told her how you felt, and for a moment you re-experienced that time. I felt what you felt, that awful sense of loss, your sorrow. I have never felt that before. I never knew how....tied you all are to your experience of being an embodied being, and how at its end you so often realize how precious it was. (bows head)

ROY: Oh, Llam. (holds him) Llam. That time. That time, when I died, I was totally lost. Wasn't fun. (steps back, looks at Llam) We all have that experience though, don't we?

LLAM: (quietly) Yeah.

ROY: There was no Llam there then. No Sara Jane. I had Stro, I had Mauthara but I thought that they were aspects of my own personality, I didn't know, I didn't think that they were real people in their own right. I was alone, really alone.

LLAM: Would you tell the story now? Please?

ROY: Would it help?

LLAM: If you can feel it as you did last night, it would help.

ROY: I've done what is call "abreacting" those emotions. They're still there, just as powerful as the first time, but they've lost most of their impact on me to the point where I don't, I'm not affected, or disturbed by them to the point where I'm panic-stricken as I was that evening. So I can tell it while feeling it, yeah. But I'm not as far as I know bothered by it.

LLAM: You must be grateful for that.

ROY: I am. Okay. It was a party I had had. My friends at that time were over. I was doing what I did at my parties then, drinking to excess and taking drugs of all kinds. This time was different, I had made a thick dark tea of every herb that I knew which contained psychoactive chemicals. And as I drank I kept sipping at this tea. I was getting really stoned. Many of the people there were musicians, some of them quite talented. And one was playing the piano, one was playing guitar. I was playing a recorder flute, settled into cushions that were spread on the floor. I gradually passed out. Nothing new there. But this time I was up on the ceiling and there were my friends clustered around me and they were all upset. I wasn't stoned any more. I was quite lucid and I knew that was having the beginning of a near-death experience. That lasted for a moment. Then I was nowhere.

LLAM: I would say that you had died at that moment.

ROY: I would say it too! But this "nowhere" was also "nothing." It was so nowhere and so nothing that I was horrified and totally panic-stricken. There was nothing I could use as a point of reference. I was this chain of thought, if anything. I'm at a loss, almost 25 years later. I was a thought, or I was thinking. But that's all that I was. And panicking. My thinking turned to what I had been taught about the afterlife. At any moment I expected to see God. I wasn't sure what God was gonna be like, but I was certain that that was next, and that it wasn't going to be pleasant. But I wanted to badly to know something besides whatever I was. I was all that I had. But God never appeared. Then I thought, well, the Devil must be coming. I had lived my whole life fearing the Devil, fearing that I was going to hell when I died and do you know? I was so alone I wished that the Devil would appear. At that time burning in hell would be a relief. But there was no Devil either. And I saw how I had wasted my whole life, how for all that I thought I was, I was a little speck of thinking in the middle of nothing. I began to cry. I wanted another chance. I wanted back and didn't think it would happen. Suddenly I was laying on the cushions and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn't believe that I'd come back, but I had. And although it took twenty years for me to work out what I learned that night, I think that I have.

LLAM: I felt again what you felt. I have never known such desolation. Even so, I know it now, but at one remove. As far as I know I never shall, either. After feeling your feelings, that's what brought me to the realization that I've never let myself understand life as you know it. And I am sorry that I never have let myself. But there is more to this story. There is a deva who took on a mortal existence. At that time I thought that it was odd but of no great consequence. I had no desire to ever do such a thing. In this one way we devas are like you humans, we're all different and we all have our own ideas, our own beliefs and experiences. But this deva is suffering in his mortal frame. I never gave it much thought. Or if I did I thought little of it. But I was brought up sharply about my attitude, my......indifference to the suffering that he is actually undergoing every moment of every day. I realized just how shallow my experience was, how cold my attitude was. I just didn't know what to do, so I resolved to learn from you in a quiet way, as quietly as I could. To pay attention to you all. (smiles) I hope that I've learned at least a little bit! Even though......even though I will never know what you all live with every day, what my dear deva friend lives with, I am open to it now. I see where I have been wrong. So I have asked him to forgive me. I am asking you to forgive me. And if anyone who reads these words has been in touch with me in some way, please understand me, if you are a mortal human being, I have sold you short, I have underestimated you and the lives you live, and I am sorry. I want to do better. To care about you in ways that I am only beginning to understand.

ROY: (long silence) If I don't forgive you, you won't be at peace, will you?

LLAM: No.

ROY: Okay. I forgive you. But Llam, it's like forgiving someone for being blind. Okay, you say it was your indifference, your smugness. I guess I should accept that and not say "but."

LLAM: I would really rather you do not say "but."

ROY: Alright. (long silence) Llam, I forgive you. (longer silence)

LLAM: (looks up) Thank you.

ROY: (punches Llam in the arm) Big Blue! You're welcome. I love ya, dude!

LLAM: (tearfully) I'm beginning to understand that word also!

ROY: (smiling ruefully) So am I!

LLAM: (smiles) So how can I help you?

ROY: (frowns) It's the God thing again.

LLAM: Okay.

ROY: So here I am, proudly calling myself an atheist. Proud and happy that I shed my notions about the big Nazi in the sky. The idea that there is one underlying "person" that we can or would call "God." And yet, I keep coming back to it. This whole long discussion, the discussions I've been having with Yvgeny, I've learned that underlying our universe is a quantum sea of light from which we all have emerged. You, Sara Jane, everyone and everything. You know that I'm an amateur linguist?

LLAM: Yes, quite aware.

ROY: The origin of the English word "god" comes from an ancient ancestral language which linguists call "Indo-Aryan." Much of this language is a painstaking reconstruction which has been done by hundreds of linguists for over one hundred and fifty years. No-one has yet found a document written in this language, but it is a reasonable assumption that it existed at one time. Both Mike and Stro, who were alive long enough ago to know, say that there were languages around a lot like this hypothetical Indo-Aryan.

LLAM: I didn't know this!

ROY: One day about thirty years ago I got it into my head, where this English word "god" came from. So I went hunting in etymological dictionaries -

LLAM: In what?

ROY: (smiles) Dictionaries which attempt to show the linguistic origins of a word - its etymology.

LLAM: Oh.

ROY: And Llam, you know what? "God" comes from an hypothesized Indo-Aryan word, "ghu," which means "the shining."

LLAM: Oh dear. And you made the connection between the quantum sea of light and this word "ghu."

ROY: Yes, I did. (laughs)

LLAM: Is this a bad thing for you?

ROY: Well, damn it, it leaves me back where I began!

LLAM: ......with God.

ROY: Who does not exist, of course.

LLAM: You once told me what happens when you attempt to define something. Do you remember what it was?

ROY: (looks blank)......uhh, no.

LLAM: You quoted one of those Greek philosophers you were once so fond of. Plutarch.

ROY: Uhh......umm......I know! "The more you attempt to define something, the less meaning it will have! It's like water in your hand - the more you attempt to hold on to it, the faster it runs out between your fingers!"

LLAM: Yes! So why bother with silly names? Why not just accept that some people prefer to think of "god," big or small "g," and others, like you, do not. So you've substituted "quantum sea of light" for "god." Fine. Do you absolutely know for sure that there is no God?

ROY: No, I don't know that. I learned that from Kris Michaels. I would have to be God to know for sure whether or not God exists.

LLAM: Can you live with that uncertainty?

ROY: Can I avoid it? is the real question!

LLAM: (laughing, punches Roy in the arm) There ya go, dude!

ROY: (from several light years away) Yeah......!

LLAM: Oh dear. He's out by Andromeda or someplace like that. If you will excuse me, I must go and retrieve our steward. Goodbye for now!

10 02 08 Implicate Order

Sat, 4 Oct 2008 17:57:48 CDT

"Luminous bliss." From the shallows of his mind the words rose like bubbles, came to the surface, and vanished into the infinite spaces of living light that now pulsed and breathed behind his closed eyelids. "Luminous bliss." That was as near as one could come to it. But it - this timeless and ever-changing Event - was something that words could only caricature and diminish, never convey. It was not only bliss, it was also understanding. Understanding of everything, but without knowledge of anything. Knowledge involved a knower and all the infinite diversity of known and knowable things."

from Island, by Aldous Huxley, page 271 of the 1989 reprint edition published by Perennial Library, New York

"The underlying region described by the quantum wave function (called the implicate order by [David] Bohm) is nonlocal, as indicated by the quantum bond. Light is also nonlocalized. That is, if someone could ride a light beam, it would appear that time stands still. This hidden domain can be seen as an ocean of light in which some light rays move back and forth rather than straight ahead, and it is this back and forth movement which forms particles. How this happens is not completely understood because physicists do not have a theory covering this underlying region. But in essence, this view indicates that matter is arrested or frozen light floating in a sea of light, like an iceberg floating in the ocean."

from The Hidden Domain, by Norman Friedman, page 47 of the 1997 edition published by the Woodbridge Group, Eugene Oregon

"I propose something like this: Imagine an infinite sea of energy filling empty space, with waves moving around in there, occasionally coming together and producing an intense pulse. Let's say one particular pulse comes together and expands, creating our universe of space-time and matter. But there could be other such pulses. To us, that pulse looks like a big bang; in a greater context, it's a little ripple. Everything emerges by unfoldment from the holomovement, then enfolds back into the implicate order. I call the enfolding process "implicating" and the unfolding process "explicating." The implicate and explicate together are a flowing undivided wholeness. Every part of the universe is related to every other part but in different degrees."

David Bohm in Interview with David Bohm, by F. David Peat and John Briggs, Omni magazine, January 1987

"Socrates: ...of motion then there are...these two kinds, change and motion in place.
Theodorus: You are right
Socrates: And now, having made this distinction, let us address ourselves to those who say that all is motion, and ask them whether all things according to them have the two kinds of motion, and are changed as well as move in place, or is one thing moved in both ways and another in one only?
Theodorus: Indeed, I do not know what to answer, but I think they would say that all things are moved in both ways.
Socrates: Yes, comrade, for if not, they would have to say that the same things are in motion and at rest, and there would be no more truth in saying that all things are in motion, than that all things are at rest."

Theatatus ss182 in The Dialogues of Plato, volume 4, translated by Benjamin Jowett, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1892

Yvgeny Porchik: By quoting Plato your are comparing David Bohm's ideas to something of which Plato was aware, or perhapa a number of the Greek philosophers of his day. Whether there is motion and rest, or two kinds of motion, it seems as if they knew something of this state within the quantum world, although strictly by intuition.

Roy Waidler: I don't know that it was intuition although it could have been. It's likely that most of the people in Plato's world had a psychedelic experience. There was a religious rite called 'The Mysteries of Eleusis' in which those who partook in it were led through a kind of confession of sins by priests, then brought into a darkened temple and given a potion full of something very much like LSD. After it kicked in there was a musical drama of sorts. No matter what the drama portrayed, and even Stro doesn't know that, the people who underwent the ceremony had to have had at least a glimpse of the ethernal world.

Yvgeny Porchik: Now I understand why you lead the quotations with the excerpt from Island! In itself it is quite lovely and describes perfectly well what I had experienced when I was with you in altered states. What we have come to affectionately call "the Outlands." In my studies I can tell you that I have come to believe that something of David Bohm's "infinite sea of energy" is experienced by those who pay attention. You see, the math allows for such a quantum state, where there is an infinite underlying reality which must be there but cannot be shown. This is the biggest flaw in the whole notion: it can be illustrated mathematically but cannot be proven in the physical sense. And you know that science relies upon peer review, where others can duplicate your work.

Roy Waidler: Nothing that John Bell did, or perhaps John Wheeler, got anywhere to proving or disproving what Bohm had hypothesized?

Yngeny Porchik: No. The fault with David Bohm's earlier models was that they all tried to reinstate a kind of classical physics into the scheme of things.

Roy Waidler: Suppose you explain a little bit about the world of physics for our readers? Anyone who gets past the quotations deserves as much!

Yvgeny Porchik: (laughing) Yes, I know that this is so! It was not so long ago that it was all a big mystery to me! Very well. Physics is the study of physical reality. That is as simply as I can put it. Back in the time of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who lived, what, 2300 years ago? After our friend Plato? It was generally agreed that the world was composed of four major elements, earth, water, air and fire. Some went a bit further and said that these four elements were contained within a fifth, aether. This was a bit refined, in purely scientific terms - something that could be repeated - by Empedocles, who taught that all things are composed of undivideble bits which he called "atoms." Such was the state of practical physics until Isaac Newton. Newton worked out, largely with math, that the universe seemed to run like a gigantic mechanism. One of the principal ideas in Newton's physics was the notion of cause and effect, that if you did "this" then "that" happened. Another was that we lived in a world of three dimensions, length, width and breadth, or height.

Roy Waidler: I'm thinking of a snooker table, or a pool table. You hit one ball which hits others and they move. And a three dimensional picture would be the corner of a room.

Yvgeny Porchik. Yes, that is a good example. In the universe of Newton, things were made of smaller things, which were made of smaller things. They worked together somewhat after the manner of gears in a very large clock. Here is an example of that. It was known in the 19th century that the moon was smaller than the Earth, and that the Earth was smaller than the sun. The Earth rotated around the sun. The moon rotated around the earth. All three of these things, Earth, moon and sun exerted a pull of gravity on each other. The clearest indicator of this are the ocean tides; the pull of the moon's gravity as it orbits our world is enough to pull the water of the seas along with it, creating tides.

Roy Waidler: I suppose that that is how most of see the world, that it all meshes together. But what happened?

Yvgeny Porchik: There were two things that happened. In 1905 Albert Einstein published his papers on relativity. Two things emerged from that. One was that there was a fourth dimension to our world and that this fourth dimension was time. There is no clear way to illustrate that, unfortunately. It can be shown very prettily using math, real and imaginary numbers, but I do not wish to go there now. The other thing that came out of Einstein was that because of gravity at work in these four dimensions, there were, technically speaking, no such things as straight lines. Everything had a curve built into it, only our perceptions did not need that information to help us live, so we did not normally "see" the world that way. Of course it becomes obvious in varied altered states, but they have no practical value for navigating the physical world in an appropriate way. The other "revolution" was the work of a Dane, Neils Bohr. Very simply put, he said that all things may exist as either waves or as particles. You understand waves as something that you see at the seaside, or perhaps in your work with music.

Roy Waidler: My understanding of waves in either water or the air - that is, sound - is that it is an energy moving through them in pulses. In the ocean, the water is actually not moving very much, but it is the energy of the wave-pulses that disturbs it.

Yvgeny Porchik: Yes, and that is called "kinetic energy." I would include light in your example, because light is a series of waves moving through....well, moving through the world, shall we say. Light does not need water or air to travel in wave-pulses, as kinetic energy.

Roy Waidler: Okay, but in each instance you're describing kinetic energy passing as waves through the world. But Bohr said that it can manifest as particles?

Yvgeny Porchik: (sighs) Yes. I suppose the clearest example would be the photon. Today everyone thinks of photons as "particles of light" and up to a point they are correct. When a photon is a particle, it occupies a certain amount of space - not very much space, you know - and because it does, it has a weight.

Roy Waidler: And not much weight either, I suppose.

Yvgeny Porchik: No, not much weight either! (grins) But the totally crazy thing about a photon as a wave is that it does not really occupy any space at all, it merely passes through it. Passes through space as a packet of kinetic energy. Physicists call such packets "quanta," which is where the name "quantum physics" comes from.

Roy Waidler: By this defintion we are actually living in two worlds at once, one of solid matter and a second of kinetic energy which passes through matter.

Yvgeny Porchik: I doubt very much that Bohr would claim as much, but as an oversimplified view, that is correct. His ideas are known as the "Copenhagen Interpretation," by the way. There was one other disturbing thing that arose from the Copenhagen Interpretation, that all things were in an undefinable state until they were somehow observed or recorded. In practical terms, it sounded like they were saying that things did not exist until we looked at them.

Roy Waidler: A few centuries ago the philosopher George Berkeley proposed that a tree which fell in a forest in which there were no people would not make any noise because there would be no-one to hear it.

Yvgeny Porchik: What is the sound of one hand clapping, eh? Lord Berkeley's proposal was interesting but unprovable, and it did in a certain way point ahead to quantum physics. What drives modern physicists crazy is that they of course want to observe the unobservable, to hear that tree fall while not being in that forest, to see this undefined state of the universe while it is....shall we say, a chaotic quantum soup out of which anything and everything might emerge once it is observed. Of course they cannot do this so they do a lot of math to demonstrate that it's there and that it's doing this or that. Many of the experiments conducted since Einstein's day have gone toward unpacking some knowledge about this chaotic quantum soup. Very simply put, these experiments are designed to show that if the quantum world is doing "this," "that" will happen in the material world., or might. Which is how we now have very small particles such as quarks, gluons and so forth which make up larger particles - particles, mind you - such as the more familiar electrons, protons and protons. We will never "see" a quark, although they'll be detectable in the Large Hadron Collider experiments, but we know that they exist. And of course, Einstein's work conflicts with the Copenhagen Interpretation.

Roy Waidler: Is that a tale simply told?

Yvgeny Porchik: I'll do my best! Very simply, Einstein's view said that everything in the universe was predictable if you only had enough information. Bohr's said that you could never know what was coming next, that the best that you could do was have levels of probability that things would occur or not occur. Let us go back to your pool table. In Einstein's view, if you knew exactly how much force to exert on the cue stick, and how much the balls on the table weighed, and what the precise angle was needed to hit the cue ball just so, that it struck, say, the number two ball, you would always get the two ball into the pocket you were aiming for. But with Bohr's view, you probably would sink the shot, but then again, you just might not. But that is modern physics very simply said.

Roy Waidler: Alright. So we have this quantum sea underlying all that is. I suppose my question at this point is, is what Will Farnaby experienced in Island, and what countless other visionaries have experienced over the ages, this quantum sea...this "ocean of light" or "infinite sea of energy;" is this actually an experience of that reality?

Yvgeny Porchik: I wish that it were. It is not. It comes close. It is a vision of that underlying sea, a reflection, a manifestation of it, but it is not as it is in its own state. If it were an actual experience of this infinite sea, everyone would have the same vision and there would be no questions about it. No philosophic or religious quabbles about it.

Roy Waidler: After all of these years of voyaging "out there" I realize that all of my experiences, everyone's experiences are ultimately personal and subjective. As such they are illusion, what the Hindus call MAYA. Is there a qualitative difference between your experience of the universe and mine? I'm the mortal here, you're the ethereal human.

Yvgeny Porchik: Are you asking me to describe my perceptions?

Roy Waidler: (grins) I guess I am!

Yvgeny Porchik: Well, then. I could begin with my perception of myself. I have no visual perception of myself per se, but I know that I am a group of quanta - packets of energy. I f I wanted to, I would see myself as a sphere of light.

Roy Waidler: I've seen all of you as spheres of light at one time or another. Myself too, once or twice.

Yvgeny Porchik: When did you see yourself as a sphere of light?

Roy Wailder: Once when I was dead and another time when I was rolling with Sara.

Yvgeny Porchik: You must have been hit pretty hard in that roll! (laughing) But when I perceive your world in a way in which I can interact with it, I see it almost as you do, only the colors are much more intense and blur from one into another. Physical motion arises up out of intersections of energy. I see sound more than I can hear it, and I see heat and odors. They are kinds of colors is the best that I can do to describe these things.

Roy Waidler: So here's the big question, then. Do things - like our universe - arise from this quantum sea?

Yvgeny Porchik: I am studying quantum, my brother, and the best that I can tell you is, probably. But I too have experienced the vision of it, as described by Huxley, Friedman and Bohm, and I believe that it is there. Wherever there is!

10 01 08 The Information Dimension

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:21:38 CDT

LLAM: Thank you for joining us today, Yvgeny!

YVGENY: It is great pleasure to visit here. You are all looking good.

ROY: You are looking so radically different!

YVGENY: Eh, I got tired of looking like a girl. I have a beard, or did when I was alive. Other things to remind me I am male. I did not want to make the transition to female just yet. I feel more like me now.

LLAM: You are certainly more relaxed. Must be the serenity of Angel Cove!

YVGENY: Yes, Angel Cove is very different from Outlands. Energy is more focused there. That is the serenity of which you speak.

LLAM: .....as opposed to the chaos which is going on here in Clifton!

YVGENY: You said it, not I!

ROY: Well, you need to throw a little chaos into the mix!

(Llam and Yvgeny look at Roy)

YVGENY: He is quoting somebody. Who?

LLAM: (rolls eyes) Heath Ledger as the Joker in the latest Batman movie.

YVGENY: Well, he is joker in his own way! (laughs)

ROY: Well hey, it seemed to fit.......

(Llam pats Roy on the head)

LLAM: My dear Roy, just as everything is normal here, for you, everything fits. Nothing is left out in the cold!

ROY: But everything does fit together!

YVGENY: So in your head you can have a canned ham, a vision of the Buddha and a fractal all in one place?

ROY: (looks surprised) ......yeah! I should pass that one on to Sara. It would make an interesting picture.

LLAM: (drily) I cannot wait. (Roy smiles)

YVGENY: So you are thinking of something about quantum physics. And you'd like my input?

ROY: Oh yes indeedy! According to Einstein's view, because of gravity, there is a fourth dimension, time. Is that right?

YVGENY: Overly simplified, but yes. Space and time are actually one thing called "spacetime." And it is curved because of gravity.

ROY: So the curvature of things is because of gravity? Like, the earth being a spheroid shape?

YVGENY: Yes. And so throughout the universe, but as I said, it is an oversimplification. The example often given is of a rubber sheet stretched over, say, a cylinder, and a heavy sphere - the earth - dropped onto the sheet, where it will sink a bit and tend to go toward the center of the sheet, but it can't, because gravity will give it an orbit about the center. And so with all planets and all stars and all galaxies.

ROY: This is where I always get confused, because I am a heavy visualizer. I can picture the earth on a rubber sheet, but not a complex inage of everything on a myriad of sheets.

YVGENY: This is where you and I differ. I do not visualize, I experience these things as manipulations of numbers. Whether such a thing can be visualized, I don't know. You did a fine job of visualizing state vector collapse, but this is definitely much different.

ROY: That much I understand. But I had an idea and I think it will only make things more confusing for me, actually for a lot of us.

YVGENY: Okay, what is the idea?

ROY: That information is yet another dimension.

YVGENY: So that, in the Einstein view, if taken literally, there are five dimensions, not four? Width, height, depth, time and information?

ROY: Yeah. What do you think?

YVGENY: From what I have been reading, information can be used to create physical objects. Wil McCarthy's "Programmable Matter." Also our friend Evan Walker Harris sometimes trested information as a dimension of sorts.

ROY: I guess I should attempt to explain McCarthy's idea.

LLAM: Go for it!

ROY: (smiles at Llam) Our reality is composed of atoms. Every atom has a nucleus of neutrons and protons, and there is a cloud of electrons about the nucleus. What McCarthy is doing - and I mean, actually doing - is creating something called "quantum dots," which are electrons confined within a very small space, somewhat larger than your average atom, but they behave a lot like atoms. Because they are all the same electrical charge - negative - they repell each other within the confined area, just as they tend to do in an atom. By varying the electrical or magnetic field around the confined area - the quantum dot - these "pseudo-atoms" can mimic any element. McCarthy eventually will create a programmable fabric of quantum dots; although it's just in its rudimentary stages, he foresees it coming to be within fifty years. I would refer those who are interested to www.wilmccarthy.com for a great FAQ and some links to further material.

YVGENY: What I am hearing is, matter can be programmed something like computer software.

LLAM: I think that is very much what he is saying.

ROY: Yeah, and although I loath comparing other things to computers, like our minds, or physical reality, I'll have to go along with this one.

YVGENY: Up to a point I understand why you would dislike the comparisons, but if they work, they should be used.

ROY: My objections....... People like us, who are definitely out on the fringe when it comes to attempting to justify what we believe with some semblance of scientific reality, tend to grab onto the latest scientific research and say, "There! That's what explains it!" It doesn't. It just hides our ignorance.

LLAM: I don't think that that is true in every instance. No matter what skeptics say, realities like telepathy will not go away. I think that we have done a decent job of explaining what it is and what is happening when there is a telepathic communication between two mortals. But we have yet to explain how it works, which is not necessary right now. Also, you (looks to Roy) had a good insight when it comes to explaining how we disembodied folks can not only exist but communicate with you mortals. In saying that we are quantum fields, undifferentiated energy, until we are observed by a mortal mind, and then undergo state vector collapse, that is, takes on a reality, works quite well. And you yourself compared the brain to a computer and a mind to software. Until the software is uploaded into a computer, it's just scratches on a disk.

YVGENY: Or information in an unreadable state!

LLAM: Exactly! Is there anyone alive who can examine the marks on a DVD or CD and tell what is precisely shown with that mark? No, you must put the disk into a computer, which will read the information. And then it will use the information.

YVGENY: Until we come up with a better example, I think that this will work for now. But we should qualify it for the sake of our friend here.

LLAM: In what way?

YVGENY: It is a model of how thing are, what reality is "really" like. At best it is a metaphor. It is not really reality.

ROY: I can accept that!

LLAM: Excellent! Shall we close, then? Thank for for visiting with us, Yvgeny, and send our love to Angel Cove.

YVGENY: It was a pleasure as always, and I shall pass the love. (Embraces Llam, then Roy) Ohh!

08 04 08 The Buddha?

Mon, 4 Aug 2008 20:57:54 CDT

LLAM: Herr Hagenbach certainly sent us a surprise with that latest newsletter from Gaia Media:

It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community – a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the earth.

Thich Nhat Hanh

ROY: I really thought he might have had us in mind, but that's my ego, I think. There are others.

LLAM: For those who do not know who he is, Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk born in 1926, currently living at the Plum Village Monastery in Dordogne, France.

ROY: Did you learn that with your devic abilities?

LLAM: No, I looked him up in a Wiki, there's a good one at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Nhat_Hanh There are also a couple of excellent videos at YouTube.

ROY: What was I doing that you did that without my being aware of it?

LLAM: You were talking with Johanne. I just went down the cable from the modem into the Internet.

ROY: I noo dat. (looking sheepish)

LLAM: What do you know about Buddhism, or perhaps I should ask, what do you know about the Buddha?

ROY: That's like asking Christians who or what Jesus was, you'll get as many answers as people you ask. However, the historical Buddha was a prince who was raised in a sheltered way and got out as an adult to see the world. He saw all of the miseries under which human beings lived and was shocked to the core and vowed to do something, anything. He tried all kinds of religious disciplines, most of them ascetic and got nowhere. Finally he resolved to sit under a tree - a bodhi tree, mind you - and not leave until the answer came to him. The answer did come to him and it was profoundly simple: in Western terms he realized that it was up to him to change things, him and nobody else. He had a number of other revelations that day, which is the way with visions for us mortals, everything comes in a package and we hafta sort it out. Our sufferings are things that are illusory and we embrace them as reality. Our world is illusory. Very simply put we can transcend our suffering by practicing mindfulness.

LLAM: Mindfullness? That has an oddly familiar ring to it.

ROY: (grins) It sure does!

LLAM: In fact, it sounds like Mike Archontas urging us to "pay attention."

ROY: I forget what the word is in Prakrit, the language that the Buddha spoke, but "mindfulness" will translate tolerably well as "paying attention."

LLAM: Now, having gone through that head of yours, and checking a few things out about the Buddha, the name is a title and means "enlightened one," correct? (Roy nods) That means that a Buddha is in some way fully paying attention. To what, I think is immaterial at this point, but I would assume that she or he would be mindfull of the whole world. Somehow! (grins) The original Buddha died like 2500 years ago and a number of Buddhist groups claim that he is reincarnated in the flesh through a number of generations. He could stay in eternal bliss but has chosen to come back to help all of you.

ROY: That makes him a "boddhisatva." The Tibetan Buddhists make that claim about their leader, the Dalai Lama.

LLAM: I find it extraordinary that Thich Nhat Hanh might imagine the Buddha being a community. I find it fascinating, charming even!

ROY: Things go better in some instances when distributed across a network, and such a thing would prevent the focus devolving onto one person.

LLAM: Yes, but it grandfathers the attention to that community of which he spoke. I suppose it would behoove such a group to ignore things like praise and recognition.

ROY: My first reaction, as I said, was "could he be talking about us?" Just quite possibly, but that's not up to us to decide. There are other groups in the world, possibly doing more better than we.

LLAM: O f course. I have in my mind's eye this communal Buddha sitting at individual keyboards and hooked to the Internet.

ROY: That would kinda make the Internet the Buddha, I think.

LLAM: Now there's a thought! (laughs)

ROY: (laughing) Oh, look! There goes another thought!

LLAM: (rolling his eyes) Time to close!

07 23 08 Growth

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:45:42 CDT

LLAM: I really like this Bo Diddley fellow! (dancing) He just entered our end of the world recently, didn't he?

ROY: Yes, he was kinda old. 79 or something. Uhh, Llam?

LLAM: (Eyes closed, swaying) Mmmm?

ROY: We're doing a blog entry at Mosaic Globe.

LLAM: Mmm? Oh! (laughs) Sorry!

ROY: That's fine. Do you have any comments about the sudden growth of the other groups?

LLAM: Yes, I do. This is what we had told you to expect back in 2004. We had asked you to get online so that we could be in touch with 'the others.' Well, now, by golly, we are! But this is just the beginning. From the several groups which now are in touch through Outlands, others will follow. We've successfully taught telepathy to quite a few people, and when you are in touch with our folks on the IM it is very obvious that it is working splendidly between you. Lily Johnson may not be in touch very often by instant messenger but she has had the most amazing growth! She has a large group of devas with her, larger than here, which is just wonderful from our viewpoint.

ROY: Anwarii has pointed out that we are the pioneers in all of this. I suppose that she is right but there were others before us. Dori Hartley and Valyn.

LLAM: What is unique about us is our aggressiveness in seeking out others who have either groups of their own, or who have the potential for gathering groups about themselves.

ROY: Okay. (pause) Llam?

LLAM: This is Nightwish, isn't it?

ROY: Yes. Sleeping Sun.

LLAM: That singer is wonderful. Her name is Turla Turrernen?

ROY: Yeah. Llam......

LLAM: Yes?

ROY: What were you and Dioth and the others doing before you entered our lives?

LLAM: Oh my! We were actually looking for a mortal human who might help us. We have long been aware of how screwed up the mortal world is but with the latest nonsense about 2012 getting out of control we thought that it was time to try something, anything, to stem the tide. To at least offer an alternative.

ROY: How long had this been going on?

LLAM: Hard to say, but it was shortly after that MacKenna fellow began making money off the whole 2012 thing. We devas long ago got used to the idea that "teachers" and "gurus" would be making money from whatever nonsense they were pitching, but THIS......this was too much. So we got to talking and decided to see if there was anyone who would be able to help us.

ROY: How in the hell did you latch onto us?

LLAM: (grins) Well, your personality did have a part in it. It's more of what you weren't.

ROY: Every time I go to say "Huh?" I know I'm in for it. But okay: huh?

LLAM: (laughing) This is from Donnie Darko, isn't it?

ROY: LLAM!

LLAM: (laughing uproariously) You were NOT a "serious seeker." You didn't trust too many people outside of the eight others around you. You didn't practice yoga or meditate, you prefered using other methods. Which you'd gotten quite good at, I must add! Quite the bunch you were the night we arrived! (laughs) You had a temper and you didn't try to hide it, you were really trying to change yourself. Also you had something we hadn't expected, your attitude about mortal sexuality. Completely open. You weren't deluded by the history of Christianity and your profound distrust of it was a big plus. You have absolutely no respect for any system or group that minimizes respect for individuals. And you have Marxist ideas.

ROY: Wait a minute,wait a minute - you're a Marxist?

LLAM: Hell - NO. But you are. Very basic, too, the way it should be, the bourgeosie capitalizes upon the work of the proletariat and it is up to the proletariat to address this imbalance.

ROY: Uh, well, yeah, enough of this "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" nonsense.

LLAM: Which is something we angels have no problems with. Which is why we're not Marxist.

ROY: With the whole universe at your fingertips, there's no imbalance between you, I guess.

LLAM: Umm, right. But now it's time humanity began remembering that as well.

ROY: WHOA! You are one short step away from saying that we can have whatever we want.

LLAM: No, I'm not. The riches of the universe are yours, have no doubt, but accessing them is another story completely. There is no one uniform secret for mortal humanity to learn in how to do this, evry last one of you is different, and too many of you are in desparate straits to even think about it. There is one generalization but it is very broad and hard to apply to specific individuals. It has a Marxist ring to it, actually! (smiles) What were you telling Sara Jane the other day about that D. H. Lawrence fellow?

ROY: Uhhhhhh....oh, his commentary on the Apocalypse made sense in a basic way. He said that there were at least....ummm.....at least two different strands in it, one written by a slave for slaves and the other written by someone who saw theirself as autonomous; that one wrote for people of like mind. (pauses, thinking) Soooo.....the generalization is, slaves will have trouble finding their way to the riches of the universe? And autonomous people will have less trouble?

LLAM: Very well put. But, this is where Christianity and the other similar traditions cause you mortal folks the most insidious problem: you're taught to OBEY. You obey orders rather than pay attention to what is going on around you. You'll never be free of it if you grew up in such a tradition either, but you may certainly minimze its influence.

ROY: Simply by paying attention. I think we're about to be timed out here, shall we continue this later?

LLAM: I would love that. Oh, your videos are marvelous, please make some more.

[It's about two hours since we left off the above conversation]

LLAM: That was a very odd but likable song! Who the deuce was that?

ROY: They're called "The Cocteau Twins" and the song is "Carolyn's Fingers."

LLAM: Oh! .......Cock Toe? What an odd combination.

ROY: No, no, no, no! It's a French last name, "Cocteau!"

LLAM: And this is the Eurythmics? I like this song also!

ROY: I'm....like, really glad, man.

LLAM: You're speaking Hippie English, you only do that when you get excited.

ROY: Dude, like man, we are back at the blog!

LLAM: Yes, we are, aren't we! (smiles pleasantly) I know this one, it's Ben Gibbard and Death Cab For Cutie! Ummm....we were talking about slavery and slave mentality. What were you going to say when we got timed out before?

ROY: I thought that the first video that they made for this song sucked.

LLAM: What?

ROY: Gotcha! (laughs) (Llam looking stunned) I was going to say, there is no way that Marxism could work very well. Up until now.

LLAM: Oh, and I suppose you have a master plan to make it work?

ROY: No, I don't, but I know why it hasn't worked very well up until now, and I have what I think is a great idea. It stems from what we were saying about the Apocalypse and slavery. In the past there have been the revolutions and they all ultimately fail. And that is because religion has made slaves of everyone. You can make a queen or king into a slave, but making a slave into a queen or king, well, there's a problem right there. A slave does not think for her or himself. How in hell will they think for an entire population?

LLAM: So you are proposing to make everyone into kings and queens? Isn't that something like giving nuclear weapons to every single person on the planet?

ROY: No, but you've echoed the.....fear of the ruling elite, or the fear which the ruling elite tells the ruled will happen: you cannot think for yourself, you cannot control your own life, only we know what is best for you. Were you to live free of our control you would perish, maybe even destroy the world.

LLAM: I knew that. (pauses) So you're proposing to free everyone? How?

ROY: You know the answer to this also.

LLAM: (blinks) You wish to teach everyone to pay attention!

ROY: Mike Archontas is working out the details for the video now. No-one is better suited for the job!

LLAM: Oh, I agree! He solved the "langauage problem," he developed the "Learn Telepathy" program, all based upon paying attention. Who's doing the music?

ROY: Probably Sara and I.

LLAM: It would be nice if you could ask that Lennon fellow. I suppose there would be too many legal problems?

ROY: Yup. No way am I going up against Yoko Ono.

LLAM: Why don't you ask Stro and Jane to do some work? You have enough samples that they could work with.

ROY: (thinking) ......yeah! Oh, before I forget, do you know what Gracie and Brynna have been up to?

LLAM: Brynna said that they want to form an online feminist group for women. Living and dead. I'm down with that!

ROY: And with that, we're gonna close and boogie for a while!

LLAM: (dancing) Yessir, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino!

["Jumbaliya" blasting in the background]