The Road to Nowhere

I could have said “Damascus” but I am ever wary of expressing any of my experiences, even metaphorically, in the idiom of any particular faith.

As I have always taken great pains to point out, I am not a particularly good person. Or bad, come to that. Just a middle of the road and by now rather aged Englishman who has had a series of what others of a more conventionally religious persuasion might call revelations.

It could of course be that I experience what I want to see or hear, or that which I expect. Although I do not believe that to be the case.

It is by no means on every occasion I meditate that I seem to sense a different reality, perhaps a higher level of consciousness. It is highly unusual not to feel peace and warmth when I turn inward, but it is not every morning that I feel a connection with something other.

Mornings are best for me. I wake, have a very large cup of coffee, flick through the headlines (ignoring the great majority of what is offered up as news) and then meditate for an hour. My mind in the morning is very clear and soon after waking, my mood is suitable. In the afternoon or evening I sometimes fall asleep when I meditate (although I am often unaware of my state) and my mind does not have that clarity it usually has first thing in the morning.

I recall some time ago writing that I was often refused entrance at the gate to some alternate or other reality. That I would approach the gates and be refused entrance, usually by a form which seemed to be human. A black knight, once, in mediaeval armour plate would not let me pass. Wise men I had assumed were sages of some sort were unable to show me the way. All very symbolic – in a sense, perhaps I was not ready.

More latterly, the human element seems to have disappeared but I am in some difficulty to describe what has taken its place. And yet I become irritated by those who talk of the inexpressible, the ineffable, the numinous. What I felt is describable in words; the difficulty may be that I am uncertain exactly what it is I felt. Feel. It is becoming clearer, more pressing perhaps but there is still a vagueness to it.

In any event, this morning I did read one article of interest. The Guardian’s John Norton had written an article “OpenAI boss Sam Altman wants $7tn. For all our sakes, pray he doesn’t get it“.

Now I have been a man of science in the past. An admirer of human ingenuity. Convinced like physicist Frank Tippler that the way to “god” is through science. I had always been somewhat impressed by Teilhard de Chardin – I still am. He was a scientist as well as priest and believed the universe’s purpose is to evolve to supreme consciousness, an omega point, unity with god. God will be ‘all in all’.

But that article in the Guardian made me lean far further towards de Chardin and away from Tipler. And my meditation seemed to support the conclusion.

I had been toying with an article entitled “Water into Wine” pointing out that the process is far from miraculous. And that the only surprise at Cana was the instantaneous nature of the transformation. Otherwise its just physics and chemistry. And these days no doubt, the process of creating C₂H₆O is pretty well instantaneous. Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Big deal.

But reading that depressing tale in the Guardian made me forcibly and strongly aware that I had simply missed the point. The point being that science has a great, gaping hole in it. It lacks a soul. It is bereft of meaning.

Like so many tech Titans, Sam Altman claims to be a messiah, a saviour of humanity.

“Most of them belong to the church of technocracy, of which Altman is a charismatic member. Devout members of this sect believe that the world is terminally screwed-up, and that the only way to fix it is with tech. They are ecstatic about AI because finally a technology has arrived that apparently could fix everything – economic growth, healthcare, productivity, education, even the climate crisis. Strangely, though, warfare seems to be missing from the list.”

OpenAI seems to be backsliding on its previous insistence that its technology should not be used by the military. Hmm, how very depressing. Altman is seeking $7 trillion and seems to be set on owning the entire world.

And then I closed my eyes and drifted off for an hour. I sensed a something which put Mr Altman and all his Titanic companions into a small box in a far corner of the room. Mere greedy children whose supposed altruism has a very hollow ring.

What was it I felt? Oddly similar to what my friend Keith Hancock describes. A reality so vast and so superior that humanity, its petty cruelties and vanities, became utterly insignificant, meaningless. I’m no so sure that what I felt was wholly benign. Certainly in no way evil, but way above and beyond human concepts of benignity or good and bad.

And I felt with great conviction that Julian of Norwich was right: “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”.

Like de Chardin, Keith talks of evolution. Of greater things to come for consciousness. A rising up, a meeting, a confluence with reality, a deity, call it what you will.

And I’m with him on that, as I have always been with de Chardin. Perhaps technology and science are good things but their goodness pales in comparison with what is really “out there”.

And those who create and wield technology can be very flawed indeed. Their true aim certainly does not seem to be to connect with the divine, to move to something bigger, better, greater. Further up, further in. For all their talk, for all their Brave New World, in my peregrinations this morning the technosaurs, the Titans were revealed as mere pygmies.

Sorry Sam, but that’s just the way it is.

And love, what of love? So many mystics, so many seekers of the divine write of love. I can not. The word doesn’t suit me although the concept does. So yes, I sensed something great and outrageously good this morning but I can not bring myself to call it love. Semantics maybe, but love seems such a human word. Benignity perhaps, something overarching and extraordinary. Perhaps after all that is what people mean when they talk of love. Personally I find the word oleaginous, but maybe that’s my mistake.

Anyway, there you have it. Call it what you will, make of it what you will. I was left with a strong feeling of having arrived. Got there, got the point, seen through the veil.

And I hope and expect my journey to continue.

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!”

Illustration: William Blake, The Annunciation to the Shepherds, illustrations to Milton’s “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”, the Thomas set (composed 1809)