Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Peace

  • ebook Download

    ebook Download

    A Weltanschauung

    A Weltanschauung – 257 Downloads

    The download button above enables you to download a free ebook in epub format to your own device (PC, Tablet, Mobile Phone). You will see the file’s name is A-Weltanschauung-Zeno-the-Stoic.epub and the file size is around 6 mb.

    I haven’t written a fancy introduction or included any further comment at all. Its simply an ebook version of this website for those who find, like myself, that it is a great deal easier reading an ebook than endlessly scrolling through websites.

    As I have often said before, my only real purpose in writing was originally to explain the world to my own satisfaction. My essays have become my garden. Like Candide, I have ceased to wander.

    These days I like to imagine my plea for peace and meditation may make some small mark on a troubled world.

    The front cover features a painting by Poussin – Et In Arcadia Ego. A momento mori. A suitable reflection on the transience of earthly life.

    The ebook contains every post on this website from its inception in March 2018 up to and including 3rd March 2026

    Each post has an image and the text of the post. I have not included the comments made on posts (if any) nor clutter like menus which would have greatly increased the file size and made the book far less readable.

    The total number of posts is 380.

    EPUB (short for “Electronic Publication”) is the global industry standard for digital books. Unlike a PDF, which acts like a static “digital photocopy” of a physical page, an EPUB is designed specifically for screen-based reading.

    Key Characteristics

    • Reflowable Text: The most important feature. The text automatically adjusts to fit any screen size, whether it’s a small smartphone or a large tablet. You won’t need to “pinch and zoom” to read.
    • Customizable Layout: Readers can change the font size, typeface, line spacing, and background color (e.g., switching to “Dark Mode”) to suit their preferences.
    • Open Standard: It is a non-proprietary format maintained by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), meaning it isn’t owned by a single company.
    • Technical Structure: Under the hood, an EPUB is essentially a “website in a box”—a ZIP archive containing HTML files for text, CSS for styling, and images.

    Compatibility

    • Supported Devices: It is the native format for almost all e-readers, including Kobo, Barnes & Noble Nook, Tolino, and PocketBook.
    • Kindle Support: While Amazon previously ignored EPUB in favor of its own formats (MOBI/AZW), modern Kindle devices now support EPUB files sent via the Send to Kindle service.
    • Apps: You can open EPUBs using free apps like Apple Books, Google Play Books, or the Libby app for library loans.

    See the following link to download the file onto your kindle:

    Send to Kindle

    It works very well. Kinde is the only ebook reader I use and I have not tested the file on other devices but it should work fine.

  • War and Peace

    War and Peace

    Lasting peace can never be achieved through violence.

    Having bombed, maimed and murdered its way through Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran the US has the gullible stupidity to claim that it has acted for peace.

    Not that the Arabs, Koreans or Vietnamese are any better. Not that any society is.

    Trump is proud of his “achievements” it seems but then the man is a vain fool. As are his followers. His recent comments on Hiroshima emphasise the depths of the man’s crass ignorance and witless stupidity.

    But of course he is merely the latest incarnation of man’s venal foolishness.

    Remember 9/11? The Arab world has reason enough to hate the US, and yet our neighbours over the pond continue to make the same sad mistakes and were affronted and surprised when the people they had mistreated for decades blew up a couple of skyscrapers in New York.

    And the Israelis – still living their Old Testament dreams it seems.

    What a swine Yahweh was:

    “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”

    “God, isn’t god a shit” – as Randolph Churchill once said.

    And now the whole world seems set on war, once again. How tedious.  Build up your stock of deadly toys, recruit more cannon fodder. Invade and commit unspeakable horror everywhere you can. Take over Taiwan. Nuke the Russians. Crush the evil Chinese. Invade Canada, take over Greenland by force.  Eradicate the Ukraine.

    There are no good people in all this, just bloodthirsty baddies who haven’t worked out the lessons of the past. Perhaps these thugs are aiming for an afterlife in Valhalla. Who knows the depths of their depraved ignorance.

    There are those who seem to like war and violence. The armies themselves. The dictators like Trump and Putin. The psychopaths and nutters. Make America Great Again. And Russia, China, Germany, North Korea….and so on as infinitum.  Grab your neighbour’s minerals, water, gold and metals, precious earth. Erect tariff barriers, cripple them all, those beyond your gates, the barbarians at your doorstep.

    What happened to the  little Indian chap in the loincloth? A true hero, old Gandhi.

    Surely we need more of those? Peaceniks, ban the bombers, tree-huggers, refuseniks, passive resisters.

    More who will turn cheeks, smite motes, espouse modesty and reason.

    Lay down your arms.

  • An Atheist’s Guide to Nirvana

    An Atheist’s Guide to Nirvana

    Transcendence is a reality and can change life for the better. It can be sought out and it can be achieved. The more you have the experience, the easier it becomes to trigger and the more often it comes unbidden and unlooked for.

    The word “transcendence” sounds grandiose and unduly religious – perhaps a less controversial way to describe the experience is Abraham Maslow’s phrase: the “peak experience”. Sounds secular, even scientific perhaps. Less arty, less poetic. But the same thing nonetheless.

    Anyone claiming to have had experience of “transcendence” tends to  sound like a new age hippy.  A religious nutter.  A fake messiah.  A crank, a would be promoter of a sinister new sect.  The reality is that such states are relatively common and the experiencer is more likely to be the man on the Clapham omnibus.

    States of transcendence have been experienced and described throughout the ages. It seems best to view them as an alternate state of consciousness – a different experience  of the physical reality we find ourselves in.  Rather than an entry into a supernatural or non-physical realm.

    Nonetheless, such experiences are radical and life changing. They make the physical reality we inhabit as special and magical as those we describe in faery tales and religious texts.

    Transcendent states don’t have to be imagined or believed in. Anyone can have one and  transform their experience of an otherwise unsatisfactory world.

    Doubtless those of a more traditionally religious state of mind will find my opinions unacceptable (even blasphemous). But  those unwilling to accept religious dogma will no doubt be far more amenable to belief in a different state of mind, a different perception of reality, which does not rely on non physical worlds or realms.  Or gods.

    The latter position is where I find my own beliefs to lie.

    I believe that the world is strange enough as it is and that there is no need to posit  supernatural causes or entities. In addition, transcendent states of mind make it possible to actually experience the sorts of qualia otherwise only described by the various religions.  “The Peace of God”, “Nirvana”, “Moksha” and so on. 

    There are practical routines which can lead us to our own transcendent episodes, and once experienced, our universe begins to look very different.

    It is unnecessary here to dwell on the nature of such experiences, which has been so often dealt with elsewhere, but often those who claim first hand knowledge talk of profound peace, tranquility and a sense of gnosis.

    There is no science to this, no proof of the existence of the state. It is subjective and self-reported, like any other state of mind.  Science is, however, making increasing efforts to track the neural correlates of such states, and brain activity does show characteristic markers in those who submit to tests.

    The reality of transcendence can be enjoyed by anyone who engages  in routines which tend to bring on the experience.  Which seems good enough. You don’t need a scientist or proof when you can bring about a state of transcendence or peak experience for yourself.

    What you make of the experience is, of course, up to you.

    Those of a religious frame of mind tend to see their god or other anchor of their belief system

    I have continuously queried such states over a number of years and god was noticeable by his absence. But then that would be expected – we tend to see what we believe is out there and over the years my atheism has become more pronounced. 

    For around four years I took psychedelics on a regular basis – for much the same reason as Alduous Huxley.  While fascinating, god again refused to make an appearance. Pure ecstasy was to be found in abundance however, and I found myself thankful that psilocybin is not addictive.

    I have found yoga and meditation equally proficient in producing  peak experiences.  I get many of the same bizarre effects, albeit on a less radical scale. I can feel my mind and body profoundly altered and my view of the world becomes clear and benign. 

    Unlike with psychedelics, the experience lasts and the alterations in one’s psyche are, it seems, permanent.

    The changes in my own personality and behaviour have accelerated over the past few years. I have become quieter and more contemplative and ever more sure that our species has it all wrong.  I no longer feel anger at the world – simply quiet acceptance.  Once an ambitious capitalist, I have come to be amused by those who pile up vast dirt balls for themselves, and I no longer believe that achieves anything worth having.

    I note arrogance, greed and aggression all around me. The suicidal mania on our roads, the destruction of our habitat, the callous, careless and selfish behaviour of so many of us. I note with wry amusement the behaviour of our “leaders” and realise that it has always been thus. How “amusing” that the Israelis are now bombing the shit out of Iran, having committed genocide in Gaza. What great lessons, what wisdom they drew from the Holocaust.  And the Iranian mullahs – how valuable their faith has been in promoting tolerance and world peace. 

    It is business as usual in the world at large.  Planning and scheming, grabbing and killing, re-arming and restocking with dread weapons.  Talking of war and annihilation instead of peace and harmony .

    Perhaps though, a better world is possible. Perhaps we will grow up. Perhaps more of us will come to see obscene material wealth for the abomination it is.  And that violence achieves nothing.

    I believe that turning inwards, adopting simplicity, trying to better ourselves might work one fine day.

    Back in 2018 I started a blog called “Weltanschauung”. My worldview is now largely complete. My years of meditation and contemplation have, in some senses, achieved nothing at all. I am no richer, I have no power, I am not famous.

    And yet, in general, I am happy, which is a state I have never before managed to achieve.

    And yes, I do attribute that to my “peak experiences”, my increasingly frequent transcendence to a very different state of mind.  To my many hours of meditation and yoga each day. To my contemplation and my realisations.

    I have proved to myself that a better world is possible, and I take much solace from that. It will not arrive by violent revolution or by the dictat of some imaginary god. It will come, if at all, by slow and incremental change. By evolution perhaps. By a slow realisation that a good life, a meaningful existence, can never be achieved by greed and violence. By more of us turning towards simplicity and peace and realising that nothing more is required.

    I am a man on the Clapham Omnibus, one of 10 bn souls on this planet.  On the Planck scale really – almost infinitely small and insignificant.  And yet I seem to have achieved a different state of mind, which has improved my life immensely.  I cannot help but believe that all of us could and should do the same.  And that if we did, many good things would be possible.

  • How to Meditate

    How to Meditate

    I am no teacher.  All I can tell you is how I meditate and what it has done for me.  Anything else would be a shocking arrogance.

    It is very, very easy indeed. There is little if anything to learn. It is merely a practice which, if followed diligently, regularly and frequently has led many people throughout human history to experience a deep peace and to embrace a certain way of life. 

    Some would make extravagant claims of experiencing their god or the paranormal or some other universe. I make no such claims.  My practice has merely made me see this universe in a different light.  It has made me appreciate reality.

    I believe that meditation shows a way of life which, if practiced by more of us, could lead to a world in peace. Rather than one in endless conflict.

    My first step was to write a list of my goals.  What would I like to achieve in my practice.  How did I wish to become.

    It all started for me with self hypnosis, which, in retrospect, is identical to meditation. Perhaps the difference is that self hypnosis tends to be more obviously goal oriented, although meditation can be used in an identical fashion to achieve very similar aims.

    Here is how my teacher began.  Write, he told me, what you want to achieve on a page of A4.  Each paragraph should contain a separate end, its own goal.

    Then, summarize each paragraph into a single word which best describes the aim you have chosen for that paragraph.

    End up with 5 or 6 separate words and then choose a further and final word which summarises and describes all these separate (but related) goals in a single word.

    Eh voilà – you have your “mantra”.

    Perhaps you seek emptiness (in the Buddhist sense). Perhaps your six words might be something like:

    • Joy
    • Safety
    • Gratitude
    • Courage
    • Right Mindedness

    And perhaps the single word you choose to encompass all of these objectives is:

    Peace

    You will find much has been written about the power of changing your own mind (and hence your life) by the endless repetition of your goals.  How ridiculous that sounds, but I have found it to be profoundly true.

    By choosing a single word, you make life easy for yourself. You only have to remember a single word, not an entire list. The flow of your meditation might work better that way, although I frequently find myself repeating all of my separate goals as well at different points in my meditation.

    Who knows what might work best for you?

    I do at least an hour of “sitting” meditation each day, sometimes more. But when I began my current bout of serious practice, I did short periods of 10 or 15 minutes, two or three times a day, and then worked upwards from that. Maybe that’s all you need, but the more I got into it, the more benefit I got and the more I felt inclined to practice, and for longer periods.

    What is “sitting” meditation? Just what it says – sitting down while you meditate rather than meditating while you exercise or travel on the bus. And oh what a great fuss is made about the “sitting”. You must sit cross legged on the ground, you must have your hands and your fingers configured this way or that. In a word, nonsense. I have found it best to be completely comfortable and not to ape a Tibetan monk. I’m happiest sitting propped up in bed first thing in the morning, with a couple of pillows at my back and my head leaning against the wall. Just do what works best for you. Sometimes I meditate lying down on a grassy bank under a shady tree in Battersea Park, having scooted from Fulham on my push scooter. Sometimes I sit on the sofa in the kitchen or the drawing room, sometimes on my favourite pink armchair in my gloriously studious and old fashioned study, surrounded by treasured books and pictures.

    Feel your way forward. Don’t listen to a lot of bossy, pretentious nonsense handed out by people who have probably never practiced anyway, but are trying to promote their YouTube guru ratings.

    As it happens, I start off by remaining profoundly still for a few minutes and simply relaxing, feeling my breath coming in and going out again. Nothing fancy then, and no more to it than that.

    Then I usually use a self hypnosis technique but that is certainly not a necessity. You can just sit there, continue to relax and let your mind drift, and repeat your mantra now and then as you keep returning to following your breath. The point is not to struggle and not to worry. Not to have grandiose expectations. To realise that you can not get it “wrong”.

    My self hypnosis technique is utterly simple. Again, you can read book after book about self hypnosis and end up chasing your own tail, none the wiser. Confused and agitated and worried. Don’t. When I am relaxed enough I tell myself I can not open my eyes and I try. Could I? Well yes of course but initially the pretence is what matters. Then I count down from 100 and on each count tell myself I am becoming more relaxed, and that is just what happens. I do become more relaxed and eventually the numbers just disappear of their own accord.

    And I’m following my breath all the time. And then from time to time I repeat my “mantra”. What about the intrusive thoughts that crowd into your mind and seem to destroy the very purpose of your practice? Just notice them but above all don’t worry about them. Don’t fret, don’t imagine you are failing if the thoughts keep on coming back. Notice them and pass on. Keep on breathing and noticing your breath, keep on muttering your mantra in your mind. Eventually my experience is that everything just falls into place. After enough practice, your meditation resolves into peace and time doesn’t really seem to pass anymore. I seem to go through periods of simply no thought and periods where images or feelings or emotions come into my mind. Sometimes these are really quite unusual but in my own case at least, never alarming or unpleasant. Or very rarely.

    There are times when I feel agitated or wound up – but it is very rare that eventually I do not settle down and pass into that state where none of it seems to matter.

    If I were to wax lyrical I would tell you (and truthfully) that for me my periods of deep meditation make the world a different and better place for me. I see through a barrier, I see behind the curtain and with an enormous sense of relief and gratitude I recognise Trump and everything else that I find unpleasant and irritating (Elon, greed, violence) are a total irrelevance.

    I see very clearly my own behaviour and determine to better it. I see my “work” and realise how I love tinkering with algorithms (even if they don’t always make money). I see that others are different and that I must respect that. I see how fiddling around playing the piano badly is important to me.

    Some will claim to be “enlightened”, to have had an epiphany, to have seen their god. Well, good for them. All I claim is that I have found peace, and believe me, that is enough.

    Above all the important point is to persevere. Not to give up. Not to assume that just because you haven’t seen god or the Buddha in person that you have failed. There is no failure. What I can say is that day by day my experience becomes more profound and my peace deeper.

    This is where it all becomes rather hard to describe; this is where it becomes a temptation to exaggerate, to fantasise, to claim special insight, to pretend nutty and esoteric powers. To turn into some mad old guru sitting on a stage and preaching. Although I suspect such people are really after the money from their deluded flock.

    No, I claim none of that. What I do claim is that it has become increasingly easy to recover after I have suffered some upset, some imbalance. What I do notice is that I tend to think before I speak. That I do my best not to judge or criticise or provoke. Its hard to imagine peace within without become more peaceable in one’s outward behaviour.

    And again, I’m not claiming any special goodness (let alone special powers). I’m just saying that I am very much surer within myself and very much less inclined to get upset about anything external to myself.

    What I will claim is “pleasure” , or should I describe that as an “absence of suffering” like a good Buddhist? Pleasure sounds a bit too crude and some synonyms my explain my position a little better. I increasingly feel joy – hitherto more noticeable in my life by its absence that its presence. Satisfaction, fulfilment, contentment. And lastly and perhaps most importantly, peace.

    All of that I can claim with a very straight face and no exaggeration whatsoever. So if I were to have the temerity to offer advice it would be simply: plug on, I believe it will happen for you if you just plug on day by day. If you just practice and fall into it. If you just begin to enjoy it and not worry about where you are going and where if anywhere your mediation will lead you. Don’t give up – look at me, and I’m the least likely candidate for success you can possibly imagine.

    But as ever, I witter, I ramble and haven’t even begun on what I call meditation through exercise. Which again I practice every day.

    I’ve never tried yoga but I can imagine it’s wonderful. But I did stumble into slow Pilates and I imagine the effect is very similar. If there is a place and time I could claim “visions” it is on my exercise mat. But I don’t claim any special insight or powers – its just that through this technique I sense overwhelming peace (even stronger if anything than through sitting meditation). And I do have feelings which are very unusual, images, memories, qualia. I think I’ll leave it at that. I imagine this comes to most who practice for long enough but again, its probably best just to let it come. Don’t chase it, don’t get disappointed if at first it doesn’t happen. I suspect that eventually, its highly likely to happen for most people who trog along the trail diligently enough and for long enough. A treat in store perhaps but maybe not the goal in or of itself. I really couldn’t say.

    But back to Pilates. I have to emphasise slowness because that’s the way the best feelings seem to come. To me at least. Probably the chemicals, but who cares and what does it matter anyway? But here is where the slowness happens. I do each of my chosen Pilates exercises slowly with many repetitions and then I simply lie back on the mat and let my mind drift, or repeat my mantra perhaps. I might spend many minutes this sway – just lying there in silence. For example one exercise is to lie on my back and to raise one straight leg up and then back down to the mat. I may do that for 50 to 100 times with the same leg without stopping or resting. At first I could only manage 5 to 10 repetitions but no matter, the after effect if anything was even stronger while my muscles were building strength.

    After each exercise, lying back on the mat, I am flooded with what I can only describe as ecstasy. So I might spend an hour or even two exercising slowly and by the end of it I am in a state of, well, peace I guess is the best way to describe it. The whole world just seems a different and better place and I most certainly feel a different person.

    Does this happen for everybody and if so to what extent? I have no idea – try it and see. But again, keep at it, keep experimenting. Don’t fret and struggle and get disappointed.

    And so there we are. The gospel according to an aging eccentric who has emerged over a period of several years and a state of Stygian gloom into something or someone for whom life seems a great deal better than it did.

    While I may not have discovered the Philosopher’s stone or the ultimate secret of the universe, I have at least reached a stage where I am mostly comfortable in my own skin and with an unshakeable certainty as to what makes for a good or bad world. What makes for happiness and what makes for misery.

    Take me as you find me. Ignore me or reckon perhaps there may be some value in what I have to say. I won’t mind either way. But if anything I do or say is of any benefit to you, then I will be very glad of that, and it will make my endless scribbling worthwhile.

  • Life becomes Meditation

    Life becomes Meditation

    I find that my entire life has become a meditation.  And that it has brought me peace.

    With practice, with introspection and awareness, and with a willingness to embrace change, peace can be found through meditation. Since I have found peace, it seems not unreasonable to assume that anybody can.

    The blurring of the boundaries between life and meditation must have come about of its own volition, since I cannot recall having made any conscious decision on the matter. As the days have drifted by, I have found my mind ever clearer and ever emptier of the preoccupations which seem to engulf those possessing a more driven mindset.

    It is clear to me that, like so many, I have been searching for something my entire life. It is now obvious that I mistook what it was that I thought I wanted. With the benefit of hindsight it seems evident that all I ever wanted was peace, but for so many years I believed I wanted happiness and that is something subtly different.

    And even in chasing happiness, I looked in all the wrong places. Money, different countries, freedom from work, success, fame. Bits of some of which I partially achieved.

    A propensity for deep and perennial blackness developed unusually early, the combination, I imagine, of a less than useful genetic inheritance, coupled with an upbringing in an environment which proved to be not ideal. Again, with the benefit of hindsight.

    To this day I still have dreams about my days as a City lawyer, and of the years spent as an investment banker in far corners of some foreign field.

    I never seemed able to find a way out of my prison. You can not just switch peace on. You can try thinking of nothing and sitting under a banyan tree in a loincloth but it never worked that way for me.

    My nature has always been contemplative and religion has always held a strong attraction. The chanting of psalms, the glory of stained glass. Temples and buddhas, incense and incantation. The tales of a simple life of goodness and decency.

    And yet driven by deep and intractable insecurity from my childhood, I sought money. From a world in which I did not belong.

    My attempts to use meditation to alleviate often severe suffering met with scant success for many, many years.

    And now, almost suddenly, I have met with dramatic success after a renewed and determined attempt.  It’s been creeping up on me, becoming successively more effective, for two or three years.

    Physically speaking, I undertake around an hour of sitting meditation each morning, before even getting out of bed. Often enough I will do a further hour or so during the remainder of the day. In addition, often as not I find myself using the technique while out walking or sitting on the bus.

    The second and equally important daily practice is meditative exercise. For an hour or sometimes two.  Most of us will have heard of the runner’s high, but my own practice does not require me to run a sweaty marathon or pound along on a machine in the gym.

    I undertake resistance exercises, developed, loosely, from pilates. But I suspect that yoga or tai chi would have much the same effect, if I could be bothered to learn the moves.

    And as to the “high”, it is very real, and infallibly reliable.  Scientists say that chemically speaking such exercises may produce endocannabinoids and although subtly different, the mental and even physical effects share a resemblance to that achieved on cannabis or psychedelics.

    The same quale, the same emotions seem to come to mind. Without exaggeration, a form of physical and mental bliss is reliably reproduced every time I undertake the routine.

    Equally importantly, my mind empties. I feel, I am, but I am not thinking. No mind, no problem.

    But returning to the generalities, cause and effect are very difficult to disentangle. Which came first, the horse or the carriage, the chicken or the egg.

    Has meditation changed my life, or have changes I have made in my life made my meditation possible.

    My best guess is that there is an element of both involved.

    Without meditation my life would not have improved, and without some subtle changes in both my outlook on life and my physical practices, meditation may not have met with success.

    I look back on the posts I have made in this blog and I can see these changes writ large.

    In 2018 I embarked on a perhaps foolhardy attempt to eradicate my often severe depression using psychedelics.  They were all the rage – research was emerging every day from the likes of John Hopkins in the US and UCL in London. Papers were being written every day and the usual plethora of capitalist sharks were rushing to set up everything psychedelic.  Documentaries poured out, each more effulgent, each more optimistic.

    I found the reality somewhat different.  Eventually, the use of psychedelics produced, in me at least, serious fear and paranoia.  Which continued for many, many months after I had abandoned this dangerous and over hyped attempt at self medication.

    But I do believe that the catharsis which my adventures brought about has been key in my development.  My writing became prolific and brought about what I can rather grandiloquently call my weltanschauung.  At first I railed against man and the universe, I expressed my deep discontent and despair with our species.  The shocking indignity of birth, illness and decline into death.  The obscenity of the divide between haves and have nots. The endless violence, cruelty and greed which has ever dominated human society .

    Slowly, in conjunction with much thought and word and deed, I was able to let go. To let it pass.  To retreat into silence. To accept that while I would like our world and our species to be very different, the high probability was that all would for ever remain the same.

    I retreated within more and more each day, and found it a place I was very happy to be.  I found myself ever less likely to argue, even to venture a view. Conflict became ever more intolerable. 

    Peace is to be found by burying one’s head in the sand.  By accepting the world for what it is and letting it pass by.  Eventually I found my entire outlook on life had subtly altered and with it my health and wellbeing.

    I still have to try. Sometimes very hard. To bite my tongue, to refrain from expressing any opinion. To live and let live. To cease to blame or to judge. Anything or anyone.

    And that is where I find myself.  Happier attending sext at St Wandrille than  battling at the coalface of grim and selfish capitalism.  More content quietly playing the piano than attending a meeting, or slapping my metaphorical member on the table with my erstwhile investment banking colleagues.

    And if I was not relatively well off and living in relative civilization? Would I find peace in war torn Syria or the hell of the Sudan.  God knows, I hope I don’t have to find out.

    But I do wonder whether, even in those places and those circumstances, I might not find peace.  Living as an ascetic somewhere as remote as I could get.  Keeping my head down and living on nothing.

    Pointless to hypothesize. Senseless to wonder.

    I am as I am. I am where I am. Until I cease to be. And for the first time in my life, that is enough.

  • A Meditative Road to Enlightenment

    A Meditative Road to Enlightenment

    Is it too immodest to suggest that one may have found a path?

    Before I write so much as another word, I must repeat my by now familiar and much used disclaimer. I make no claim to goodness, I am merely a traveller who seems to be making some progress along a much desired road.

    It is hard to fathom what set me on my way. Have I always been mercurial and if so is it the often black side of my moods which made me take my first steps? Have I always sought an escape from a world which seemed (and still at times seems) overwhelming, hostile and incomprehensible?

    I don’t know. All I know is that however the urge arose, I have spent my life seeking something other than what my normal senses tell me is out there, and hence the long journey through religion, philosophy and science to find answers.

    And now at last to committed, regular and serious meditation.

    I can not and will not claim that meditation has provided me with unassailable “truth”, however much it can feel that way in the depths of trance. I am unable to tell you whether there is or is not a god or gods, or when the universe began or will end. I can provide you with no definitive answers on the nature of mind or the existence or otherwise of free will. I can not tell you whether we live in a clockwork universe or whether randomness and uncertainty provide just enough room for a future to be unknown rather than determined.

    Nor can I tell you that meditation is a definitive and certain cure for the melancholy which affects so many millions of people living out their short and small lives on this mysterious little planet.

    What I can tell you, with no trace of hyperbole or exaggeration, is that meditation is a useful and perhaps essential tool for anyone seeking wisdom, a better life. For someone who recognises that while the answers may not all be readily apparent and may never be, quiet contemplation gets you as far as it is possible to go. In terms of balancing your life and finding deeper meaning in a physical universe.

    If it does not make you “good” it does at least encourage you to become “better”.

    And what, for me, does the word “enlightenment” suggest? What do I look for in my search for enlightenment and am I getting there?

    While I would like to see a greater non-physical reality, a godlike power for the good, I have more often seen a vision of what physical reality could look like in the here and now, if we chose to make it so. Equality for all life, an end to poverty, greed and violence. Co-operation, decency, sharing. Care for the planet and its flora and fauna, an end to the virus of human expansion. A focus on happiness rather than the eternal search for more.

    And what of the non material? What of the search for divine revelation, nirvana, moksha, call it what you will. It is there, of that I have no doubt. What it is, I can only speculate, guess, intuit. A vastly expanded consciousness of a type we can only now dimly envisage. Good, bad or indifferent? Perhaps those terms cease to have meaning at that stage; I wonder.

    And practically speaking? How does such a search manifest itself? What do you actually do on a day to day basis in an attempt to ban ignorance and self and let in wisdom and the Good?

    If I led my life again it would be as a full time secular monk, holed up somewhere remote. Living simply and spending my life in reflection.

    And in retirement (when I can tear myself away from my absurd algorithms) that is how I try to lead my life in the here and now.

    My meditation has progressed, developed. Some might call it obsession but more accurately it has become a daily necessity, something I am unable, and certainly unwilling, to do without.

    Each morning I devote two hours to my practice. Mornings seem far the best time for me, since later in the day I tend to drift off in sleep. In the mornings I soon find myself in a cloud of unknowing. A place of fecund emptiness and complete peace. What do I see, what do I feel at such times? Difficult to express really but most days simply good things. Feelings. No particular rhyme or reason, no pattern of thought, simply a contended emptiness where all seems well. And mostly continues to seem well for the rest of the day.

    And then some physical exercise which continues and increases those feelings. And some gentle tinkering at the piano on most days. A few simple classical pieces, the beauty of Bach or Handel or Chopin.

    And that is my life – would that it had always been that way, but better late than never. Always time to turn the page, abandon foolish ways and prejudice.

    And the end? Well it is nigh, of course. But it holds no terror. Hieronymus Bosch was wrong, Dante Alighieri misguided. I do not dream as Gerontius or dread what is to come. A re-absorption in some greater consciousness perhaps or maybe a simple ceasing to be.

    But here and now I determine to live better, to be better and to let what may come arrive in its own good time.

    Illustration: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose by John Singer Sargent

  • Puzzle’s Stable

    Puzzle’s Stable

    We live in Puzzle’s Stable and regardless of what we are told or read or experience, we can not recognize the paradise which surrounds us. Or did, once upon a time.

    We have plundered and ravaged the planet we live on. We have cut down the forests and plants we need to produce the very air we breathe. We have decimated most of the species which once roamed the earth, and we treat the meek of our own kind as fodder for our canons forcing them into killing fields at worst , and at best force feeding them worthless goods at inflated prices. Regardless of the fact that this same consumer worked, often for a pittance, to produce those same objects of useless vanity.

    We have covered the planet with brute ugliness, we have poisoned its skies and its waters with deadly chemicals and industrial rubble. We have created weapons capable of destroying worlds and we use them with glee.

    If we treat our home and its fauna and flora in this way, we reserve worse for our own kind. Those who have tooth and nail slash and burn their way to the top and kill and maim to remain there. Such people seize the planet’s resources, relegating the rest of us to impoverished peasants with no land of our own to feed off.

    Such people force us to fight their battles to our own death. In the name of greed and power and lust. The plutocracy build temples to their own glory, they buy super yachts and private jets. Their friend the tyrant does the same through different means with the same end result. The church of technocracy has come to replace the robber barons. They pretend to be saving the world with robots and AI and phallic moon rockets, but they are the mere successors to the same violent thugs who came before them.

    So what of Puzzle’s Stable?

    The dwarves sat in darkness, they could not see the light. They sat in paradise but could smell only the ordure of a stable, they could taste only straw. They were greedy, stupid, arrogant, selfish, cruel, disloyal. The dwarves are for the dwarves. Their world had an infinitely benign creator, but it was beyond even his power to make them see the wonderful place they had arrived at as it really was.

    And so it is with our world, whether you believe in a creator or not. We have taken paradise and created Gehenna.

    I have spoken much recently of “revelation”. I am embarrassed to use the word in some contexts, much as I am loathe to speak of love. And yet there are senses in which it can be employed so as to give no offence to today’s Church of Science, to today’s believers in a sad physicalist universe.

    For those who do not choose to believe in anything they can not prod or measure or melt in a crucible, it may be defined as “something revealed or disclosed, especially a striking disclosure, as of something not before realized”. Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Einstein had such revelations. As have so many other men in white coats, or outfits more suited to their era.

    To those who may feel that reality comprises something greater than mere matter or energy, revelation may serve the same purpose but the “revealing” may be disclosed elsewhere than in a laboratory or a particle accelerator.

    A friend asked me the other day why I always express doubt. Have I seen reality or not? Has revelation convinced me that something or someone is out there, beyond the fields of force which we are told builds our world?

    I answered that I express doubt for different reasons but that in fact I felt none. Doubt makes me sound less eccentric, less a part of the awful pattern of religion which has and continues to cause such dreadful carnage in our world.

    I feel and have always felt drawn to what some would consider the divine.  Although I prefer to use the term loosely.  Non materialistic causation of some sort. A force or power behind all that we see with agency of its own.

    From childhood I have worshipped the god of Narnia. In adulthood I have included other interpretations, representations of the divine.

    All this I have documented elsewhere on these interminable pages.

    Throughout my life I have sought divine agency, evidence of it. Of a reality other than what we see in our day to day existence.

    I have been at home only in mystery, in the must of ancient churches, in the hypnotic music of chant.

    And so yes, I do believe,  I have no doubt that reality is assuredly not just quarks and photons, weak and strong nuclear or electro magnetic forces.

    And it has come to the point that I couldn’t give a damn what people think of me or my eccentricity. And so I will be unequivocal.

    I feel and see things which others of a more prosaic mindset do not.  I have always had that shiver running up my spine when I listen to Mozart’s Vespers or stare at Poussin or Giotto. When I see a kite wheel in a leaden sky or watch an Atlantic wave crash mercilessly on a remote rocky beach.

    Beauty is real and can not be explained by mathematics or placed over a Bunsen Burner. Well, unless you are a Jesuit and consider witches deserve it.

    I have never felt such a very strong pull until quite recently.  It has become almost overwhelming. Age perhaps, a step further towards death and the ultimate truth have hastened my quest.

    In any event I refuse to apologise for it and am perfectly happy with what daily and deep internal searching is telling me.

    Just as muscle gains strength with use, so it seems with contemplation. 

    When I began this post I became waylaid in a sadness for this world I thought I had contained.  What use are such tirades again injustice and human bestiality.

    Over supper I regained my composure and took up my pen in a more useful frame of mind.

    Humanity has very probably dealt itself out of the equation and if so, I will not mourn it’s demise. There is more than humanity and if we do survive I hope we are severely cut down to size and are persuaded to change our ways.

    But I do not believe in an anthropocentric reality. However much I appreciate the culture of the Abrahamic myth, I do not agree with their basic premise.  God did not create man at the centre of the universe. To hold sway over all else. Man created his own idea of a god who in turn created man. And some have been incestuously worshipping that concept for a long time.

    Reality is stranger and more compelling, kinder and better than the human clones we have worshipped for generations.

    My footing becomes surer as I tread my path. I will continue to beat my drum. I will stray further and more often into realms most think do not exist.

    And one day, that is where I will stay.

  • Peace

    Peace

    Internal or external, the path to peace is the same.

    It is difficult to imagine a world at peace without its inhabitants first having found tranquility within themselves.

    And it is difficult to imagine a person achieving equanimity within, without conducting himself in the right way in the physical world .

    It is hard to believe that anybody would have difficulty in establishing the “right way” to conduct himself, if he really thought about it. But in that unlikely event one need only consult some of the more benign schools of thought which have been around for many thousands of years. Do unto others as the Christians might say, or follow the Buddhist Eightfold Path. Cultivate the beautiful tenets of the Tao. Practice the spiritual and ethical traditions of Sufism, follow the Dharma of the Hindus.

    Or frankly, follow your own good sense. Do no harm to any sentient being, be kind and generous in spirit.

    And above all do not insist that yours is the only way, that your belief system is unique. And that everyone else has it wrong. To do so is assuredly not “right thinking”, not “right action”.

    The exclusive claims of different religions are merely variations of universal truths that have been taught since the origins of man.

    Can inner or external peace arise if I insist I am right and those who do not agree with me are wrong? Can peace in the world be achieved when one set of people believe their god or philosophy is the only truth and seek (often by violence, of thought if not of deed) to convert the heathen?

    History would suggest not.

    But who am I to say? If I were to insist upon the rightness of my own thinking, I would be falling into the same trap as those who have led crusades and jihads. Of those who considered Jews vermin and dealt with them accordingly.

    I can only repeat that these are my views, that this is the way I choose (or, more realistically, try) to lead my life and this seems to be drawing me to a place of peace where I can live and let live. My external actions affect my inner world and vice versa. An increasing level of inner peace is giving me an increasing awareness of the importance of following my own path both within and in the external physical world. And letting others follow theirs.

    The two must go hand in hand – as man thinketh in his heart, so is he. I can not expect tranquility within if I am a beast without. If my inner thoughts and my worldly actions are those of peace, then I can hope to become what I want to be.

    Those without introspection will find it difficult to develop peace within or without. Those who continue to follow the often unconscious desires humanity has traditionally pursued are also unlikely to find lasting contentment.

    I have no need surely, to point out that greed, envy, anger or pride are unlikely to lead to a life well led or to a sense of serenity.

    Read the Noble Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths if you are in any doubt. If you can not fathom good or bad. If you are unable or unwilling to separate the ethical wheat from the moral chaff. If you can not find the way to happiness.

    Wrong thoughts and wrong actions lead to suffering.

    I have felt much change within my self in the months and years since I began this blog. In the beginning there was much anger. A conviction that the world was wrong. That it must change.

    Today I feel that I have been wrong and I hope that I am now “right”. Or at least that I will continue to feel less and less need to be critical or vociferous. And that I will continue to develop a detached understanding and acceptance of all around me.

    Today I feel it of utmost importance that I mind my own business, that I retire from a world I have always found wholly unsatisfactory. And from behaviour that leads and always has led to conflict and misery in a world dominated by self.

    Mea culpa, I have been at fault as much as the next man. Through fear perhaps, or through the inner blackness which has so often plagued my life.

    And yes, through greed, through envy and perhaps one or two other unwise emotions.

    Life is so easy in hindsight but if I had my time again, I must not fool myself that I would live in a better way.

    For most of us, wisdom can only come through experience and that perhaps is the one and only benefit of age. The ability after many years of effort to admit that I was wrong. And to have the energy and courage to start again.

    It will be obvious to any who have been kind enough to follow this, my diary, that I have long known what my path ought to be. That in reality my weltanschauung has been the same throughout my life. That, intellectually, I have always felt the same, known in which direction my true path lies. But it is only very late in the day that I have come to admit this to myself. That I have begun to make an honest and very internal effort to realize within what I have long understood in the abstract.

    For me, the path lies within. Contemplation, reflection, silence and above all coming to know myself is leading me to a place of equanimity. To a place where I can be free not to judge, to a state of mind where I can feel pity and compassion for a beautiful world torn and tortured by ignorance. And self.

    There will be those who insist that I must look to their god. That without worshipping Ganesh or Gilgamesh, without bowing down before some other deity, I will never reach the afterlife but will instead find myself cast into the darkness, or worse into some fiery pit, the likes of which even Hieronymus Bosch failed to to depict with sufficient severity.

    I would say to such people that I do my best in life and if their god can not accept my efforts and will not allow me access to his version of a heavenly afterlife, then I reject him and will happily take the consequences.

    If there are gods, I reject those that are jealous.

    And so back to peace, or rather my version of it. I have meditated in Gothic Cathedrals, in Zen Buddhist monasteries in Japan, in Hindu temples in Singapore. And in our garden shed. In Battersea Park by the pagoda. On mountain tops, in gardens, in fields.

    Does it matter so very much whether I choose to repeat a mantra of my own choosing or to dwell upon the goodness of this god or that. Whether I believe in an emptiness of infinite fecundity or a creator god who stuck it all together in six days around six thousand years ago. Whether I concentrate my mind on loving kindness or upon some representation of The Good of Plato. I think not. But you are welcome to think otherwise.

    What matters is that I seek to be a “better” person in the external world and a happier and more tranquil being within.

    I plod my way towards my goal by the simple means of putting my mind at deep rest and softly repeating mantras of my own making. Soon enough, images appear unbidden and a deep peace settles upon my quietened mind. Such tranquility increases in depth and duration day by day. It often appears unbidden in my waking world and a sense of infinity can stretch before me and around me.

    Seek your own path. Choose or reject a god or a philosophy. But in the end, your way may end up being not so very different to my own.

  • Enlightenment

    Enlightenment

    What is this fabled state of being he wondered. After many years of contemplation, he thought perhaps he might know.

    Is it black or white, true or false, binary or analogue? Wholly on, or altogether off? Or can one claim partial enlightenment, that one has gone some of the way?

    What bold and dramatic claims surround this condition. There was an Age of Enlightenment we are told, but our current age is apparently not so blessed. Saints, gurus and mystics untold are described, or worse, far worse, describe themselves as enlightened. What, one might enquire, is meant by so bold a claim.

    Is light a metaphor? Or do photons thrown out by a raging inferno in distant space have some real part to play in this curious state of being.

    Both perhaps. There are no absolutes it this curious universe, despite the physicists’ assurance that mere matter is all. .

    Enlightenment, he was convinced, was a complex and continuing process, not a blinding flash.

    Perhaps there were those who had sat upon a pinnacle of rock or underneath a tree, in ages gone by, and achieved in some brief instant of time a transformation so absolute that their very nature switched immediately from dark to light. From apathetic banality to saintliness. From a state of ignorance to blissful awareness.

    But somehow he doubted it.

    His own internal landscape veered towards the binary. Periods of intense dark would be succeeded by times when the light of the sun would reappear and pessimism would be replaced, if not by outright optimism, then at least by the conviction that somewhere, not so very far away, lay uplands which basked forever in light. Where a soft wind and gentle luminosity played gently upon alpine meadow and the dizzy white height of towering mountains rose towards a sky forever blue and kindly.

    And yet change had happened, although his metamorphosis had been halting and sporadic, spread over many decades. Slowly still, but with some faint hint of acceleration, pieces of the puzzle appeared to be drifting almost imperceptibly into their designated place.

    Mystery remained – perhaps it always would and yet a clarity began to materialize.

    He had no problem with seeking to improve human life (although it had to be said that these efforts, in his case, had ever been more by thought than by action), but would prefer to seek the betterment of sentient species in general.

    The very search for enlightenment greatly “improves” human life although that is not perhaps the object of mysticism but a side effect.

    He came to believe that gnosis can come by incremental steps and as a result of one’s own efforts. Or at least that had been, and continues to be, his own experience. It had also been his circumstance, that while his inner search had improved his worldly “behavior” it had not (thankfully, perhaps, following St Augustine’s plea) made him any kind of “saint”. Whatever that word is taken to mean.

    And so he had come to a gentle and perhaps slightly melancholic acceptance of life and the way he believed the universe to be. Perhaps his worldview was best reflected by the Book of Ecclesiastes, or the Tao te Ching.

    In any event, meditation and many years of searching lead him (in his more placid moods) to a serene understanding of the way life “is”.

    While wishing for change, he suspected it would occur not through mere human will or in accordance with any individual effort.

    But over eons of time and in accordance with the unseen patterns of the universe itself.

    In which he found his own conception of “god”. And thus, at times, a sense of profound peace.

  • A Mesmeric approach to the Dark Night of the Soul

    A Mesmeric approach to the Dark Night of the Soul

    How many times over the years had he been seduced by the promise of yet another cure, he wondered. Would Mesmerism prove any more effective than any of the other thus far useless approaches which promised salvation.

    Psychedelics they had cried. The miracle cure for all ailments of the soul.

    Not so for his soul, it seemed. Perhaps the wounds were too deep, too old.

    Many joined the great and ultimately useless dance to Widdicombe Fair, in search of the sacred mushroom and the great and the good trampled over Uncle Tom Cobley and All to get there.

    Endless glowing articles in publications which ought to have known better. Hyperbole from the best research facilities in the land. And of course the capitalists hard on their tail. Billions raised. Psychedelic treatment centers everywhere, some charging enormous sums of money for this pipe dream. A course in ketamine therapy for the bargain price of £6,000.

    Those who dared or could afford it, mostly ended up disappointed. Tipped back into blackness when the clinical trials were over and the overly-optimistic papers published.

    Heal thyself said Jesus, cura te ipsum. Know thyself, said the ancient Greeks and perhaps, he thought, it was time to heed such messages. Perhaps he was on his own, the magic potion he sought a mere conjurer’s illusion, an alchemist’s failed experiment.

    And so he turned to meditation. A retreat into silence. After all, the wise men from the East claimed they knew of a way out from suffering for those who would listen. And he sat. And he sat. Sometimes he would wake a couple of hours later and found he had nodded off. Occasionally he would have lucid waking dreams.

    But dawn was never seen. Cracks of light occasionally appeared in the jet blackness of his moods; but it remained night and very, very dark. During such endless absence of joy, the overwhelming desire is to exit. To take that final, irreversible step can seem tempting indeed when one has lived a long life, mostly in deep darkness.

    Abstaining for a while from thoughts of what he macabrely termed the “final solution”, he took up again, after a long absence, with a latter day disciple of Franz Messmer.

    A kindly, intelligent and earnest practitioner, he thought of himself as a priest in secular clothing. For 40 years he had sought to cure souls by means of self persuasion no less. Brought up a Catholic in a rough urban area, he had fought his way to the top against considerable odds and became a healer.

    It is called hypnosis these days and it is said that all hypnosis is self hypnosis. And so this priest would teach, to all who would listen, the art of self hypnosis. A self imposed consent state, where the giving of repeated suggestion is said to be capable of over-writing the destructive scripts which become entrenched in the minds of the wretched.

    Much to his surprise, he found rapid descent into trance a relatively easy achievement. And the deepening of that trance equally feasible. He found himself in a state similar to that which would usually have taken a least an hour of unguided meditation.

    The uninitiated would doubtless scoff at such an endeavor, but those who persevere and allow themselves to believe and want such states, will find them readily obtainable.

    And then comes the use of imagery and suggestion, the imagining (if you like) of the way you would like your life to be. A symbolic word and a meaningful image brings into the mind, during these highly suggestable states, aims and wishes carefully considered and drafted in states of normal waking consciousness.

    Ever a seeker at the doors of perception, long a petitioner begging entrance to other worlds, he found the process altogether satisfactory. While in such states at least, the sun rose and the darkness receded. Sometimes he would find himself in his own past, in a long forgotten room of his childhood. At other times a more fanciful scene would appear – dreams perhaps of strange lands of the past or the future. Occasionally, existence itself seemed to disappear until, sometime later, consciousness would be regained and he would feel puzzled at his apparent absence.

    And so where did he find himself weeks later? In darkness still, or some better lit land. He had ever sought and was still seeking. God perhaps. Some realm where the cruel banalities of human existence had no place. Where original sin had never happened and where fear and want were unheard of.

    With profound gratitude he was aware of the pink glow of rosy fingered dawn. But night follows day in the never ending cycles of the physical world. Need the mind also be ruled by such eternal, destructive cycles he wondered. He hoped that such need not be the case.