Wisdom Masters Press
Michael's Articles - Set One
Hello
from Amber. Michael occasionally writes articles for our community
mailing list members, usually once or twice a month. The articles cover
a wide range of topics, from AI to ancient civilizations, discoveries
in astronomy and physics, archaeological mysteries and much more. When dealing
with certain subjects Michael's articles sometimes contain
information to
which we have unique access. Heather
and I have received dozens of emails from members saying how much
they've
enjoyed the articles, and asking if there was any way to read articles
which were sent to members prior to the time they signed-up for our
community mailing list. So, we decided to create a web page with some
recent articles along with an index, which you'll find right below.
Have fun exploring!
Recent Articles:
September 4th (newest) Quantum Physics and the Ancient Wisdom
August 29th The Extraordinary Mysteries of Ancient Egypt
August 16th Illusions, Realities, and Consciousness
August 4th Advanced 'Stealth Civilization' on Earth?
July 20th Ancient Civilizations, the Ever Expanding Mystery
June 21st Stonehenge, The Ever Deepening Mystery . . . and Merlin
June 8th Letters from the Earth and AI (Artificial Intelligence)
May 28th About our Books - please see this article in our newsletter here
May 18th The Concepts of Oneness
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Quantum Physics and the Ancient Wisdom
Quantum physics is something we hear a lot about, but exactly
what is it? Most broadly stated, quantum physics is an exquisite
refinement in the description of nature. It applies not only to the
sub-atomic, micro-physical world, but applies to the macro-physical,
classical (Newtonian) world as well. The quantum world builds the
classical world. Everything in the classical, macroscopic world is
composed of microscopic units of energy—the quanta—acting in unison.
Consciousness and its various attributes are
parts of the quantum reality in which we live, and from the quantum
perspective this universe is an extremely interactive place. Quantum
physics signifies that we are part of a universe that is a work in
progress; we are tiny portions of a universe looking at itself, and
creating itself. The concepts of quantum mechanics have emerged as
essential elements in understanding both human consciousness and
“reality.”
•“A
fundamental conclusion of quantum physics acknowledges that the
observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved
with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to
admit that the universe is a mental construction. As pioneering
physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: ‘The stream of knowledge is heading
toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like
a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be
an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail
it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Get over it, and
accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial, it is
mental and spiritual.’” —Nature 436:29, 2005, ‘The Mental
Universe’ by R.C. Henry, Ph.D., Professor of Physics and Astronomy at
Johns Hopkins University, primary founder of the Space Telescope
Science Institute (STScI)
• Consciousness and its various mental aspects are part of our quantum
physical universe. And since consciousness arises at the quantum level,
the features of quantum physics are involved in—and represent possible
explanations for—all the countless paranormal phenomena that have been
observed and described since the very threshold of history, and that
modern researchers consistently observe in experimental settings. These
include extrasensory perception, telepathy and clairvoyance,
telekinesis and psychokinesis.
•“Anyone not shocked by quantum mechanics has not yet understood its implications.” —Niels Bohr, Nobel Laureate
“The
so-called miraculous powers of a great master are a natural
accompaniment to his exact understanding of subtle laws that operate in
the inner cosmos of consciousness.” —Yogananda (A.D. 1893-1952)
• Currently there is no single theory of quantum consciousness. In fact a
spectrum of more or less independent models have been proposed. Some
quantum mechanical consciousness options assume space-time
multidimensionality, i.e., that there are more than the four
conventional space-time dimensions, as in modern string theory or
M-theory. Other options assume that several extra dimensions are
associated with a mental attribute and that the individual mind is an
expression of a universal mind through holonomic communication with
quantum fields, an idea that has led to promising holographic theories
(Pribram, 1986, 2011).
The features of quantum theory that make it
not only special but specifically relevant to consciousness can be
summarized as follows:
1) Quantum theory describes the most fundamental level of
energy and matter. In contrast to macroscopic levels, the quantum level
has aspects, such as mass, charge and spin, that are given properties
of the universe, not capable of further reduction or explanation. In
quantum theories of consciousness, it is suggested that consciousness
is a fundamental property that exists at this most basic level of
reality. Some theories are additionally linked to our interpretation of
the structure of space-time, which is seen as being interconnected with
the nature of quantum consciousness (Chalmers, 2000; Nagel, 2012).
2) Another apparent aspect of the universe is space-time,
as described by the special and general theories of relativity.
Although both relativity and quantum theory have been tested to very
high degrees of accuracy, they are nevertheless incompatible with one
another. The gravitational force is the main problem, since the smooth
continuous curvature of space that describes gravity in general
relativity is incompatible with the discreteness of particles/waves
that is fundamental to quantum theory. String theory and loop quantum
gravity have attempted to bridge this gap, but neither are yet regarded
as giving a full picture (Smolin, 2004; Penrose, 2004).
The essential implication of the
incompatibility of relativity and quantum theory is that space-time
represents only a framework created or evolved by our consciousness to
perceive the world we experience around us, and is not an actual
feature of reality itself, an idea that goes back to Sri Adi Shankara
(c. A.D. 788-820), Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), and physicists such as J.
Robert Oppenheimer.
3) Physicists use mathematical entities called wave
functions to represent quantum states. A wave function can be thought
of as a list of all the possible configurations of a superposed quantum
system, along with numbers that give the probability of each
configuration being the one, seemingly selected at random, that we will
detect when we observe the system. In traditional versions of quantum
theory, then, the wave form of the quanta is conceived as a
superposition of the many possible states of a quantum particle or
system. The wave function treats each element of the superposition as
equally real, if not necessarily equally probable from our point of
view. When the wave function “collapses” through conscious intervention
(observation, as in the Copenhagen interpretation), the particular
state such as position for the particle manifests.
The property of randomness is not in itself
particularly useful in theories of consciousness, yet it does offer
insights into the unique abilities of consciousness, and certainly
exposes an enormous chink in any theory of a deterministic structure of
the universe, something examined in particular by the Penrose/Hameroff
model, 2013 (see also Stapp, 2009, 2012). This is further illustrated
by John Wheeler’s delayed-choice version of the famous double-slit
experiment, which demonstrates that “the act of observation changes not only what is observed in the present, but changes what happened in the past as well,”
effectively demonstrating a reversal of the causal flow of time
(Vincent, et al., Experimental Realization of Wheeler’s Delayed-Choice
Gedanken Experiment, Science Journal, 315:5814, 2007).
•“The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” —Albert Einstein
• 4) Non-locality is another special feature of quantum theory. Classical
(Newtonian) physics deals only with local or so-called “billiard-ball”
relationships—in a microscopic system of elementary particles with bits
of matter and energy bumping into one another; and in a macroscopic
system like our everyday world through direct physical contact; e.g.,
to pick up a book, you have to physically grasp it and lift. These
relationships are called “local” in that they involve immediate
contact. Such relationships are also normal in quantum physics.
However, quantum physics also possesses non-local relationships. This
applies where particles have been in some relationship, such as
electrons or photons, in which case they can become correlated or
“entangled.”
For instance, the property of spin on two
correlated particles must always be opposite; if one spins up, the
other spins down. This is not a problem while the particles are in a
wave form, as both will be in a superposition of up and down. However,
when the wave function of one particle collapses (is observed or
measured), that particle chooses one or the other superposition. When
that happens, its correlated particle will instantaneously choose the
opposite position. In experiments, this is shown to happen when the two
particles are out of range of a signal travelling between them at the
speed of light (Bell, 1964; Freedman, Causer, 1969; Aspect, 1982; et
al.; and see, Experimental Three-photon Quantum Nonlocality, Nature
Photonics 8, 2014).
In other words, no mass, matter, energy or
conventional information is transferred through space-time between the
particles via any known means. This behavior demonstrates that the
properties of quantum particles correlate instantaneously over any
distance. As physicist Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., points out, “Quantum
physics provides a modern version of ancient spirituality. In a
universe made out of energy, everything is entangled; everything is one.”
Anyone who does not find this mind-boggling does not understand its
implications. All macroscopic objects, like books and people, are
composed of correlated or “entangled” quantum particles.
5) A remarkable and very special aspect of quantum is
revealed in Everett’s Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI). This
interpretation of quantum mechanics asserts the objective reality of a
“universal wave function” and dismisses the concept of wave function
collapse, in opposition to the Copenhagen interpretation, stating that
there are additional worlds which exist in parallel to our own, all at
the same time.
Quantum mechanics specifies the state of the
universe not in classical terms, such as the positions and velocities
of all particles, but in terms of a mathematical object called a wave
function. According to the Schrödinger equation, this wave function
evolves over time in a deterministic fashion that mathematicians call
‘unitary’. Although quantum mechanics is often described as inherently
random and uncertain, there is nothing random or uncertain about the
way the wave function evolves. The difficult part is how to connect
this wave function with what we observe. Many legitimate wave functions
correspond to counter intuitive situations, such as Schrödinger’s cat
being dead and alive at the same time in a ‘superposition’ of states.
In the 1920s, physicists explained away this
weirdness by postulating that the wave function ‘collapsed’ into some
random but definite classical outcome whenever someone made an
observation. This add-on had the virtue of explaining observations, but
rendered the theory incomplete, because there was no mathematics
specifying what constituted an observation—that is, when the wave
function was caused to collapse. Hugh Everett’s original theory (1957)
is simple to state but has complex consequences, including parallel
universes. The theory can be summed up by saying that the Schrödinger
equation applies at all times; in other words, that the wave function
of the universe never collapses. Everett made no mention of parallel
universes or splitting worlds, which are implications of the theory
rather than postulates. His brilliant insight was that this
collapse-free quantum theory is, in fact, consistent with observation.
Although it predicts that a wave function describing one classical
reality gradually evolves into a wave function describing a
superposition of many such realities—the many worlds—observers
subjectively experience this splitting merely as a slight randomness
with probabilities consistent with those calculated using the wave
function collapse mathematics.
The fundamental idea of the Many-Worlds
interpretation is that there are myriads of worlds or universes in
addition to the one we are aware of and observe around us. Many-Worlds
implies that all possible alternate histories and futures are real,
each representing an actual “world” or “universe.” In other words, the
hypothesis states there is a very large—perhaps infinite—number of
universes and, for example, everything that could possibly have
happened in our past, but did not happen in the past we personally
experienced, actually occurred in the past of another parallel world or
universe. The universe continually divides itself into parallel worlds,
each with an alternate version of ourselves. Everything that could
possibly happen in our future, but does not happen in the future we
personally experience, occurs in another parallel world or universe.
Each decision or choice we make propels us into a world and future we
personally experience, with every other possible decision branching
into an alternate parallel world. Moreover, each decision, choice or
observation we make affects our past, effectively reversing the causal
arrow of time; e.g., choosing to read or not read a letter can determine what it says.
This interpretation of quantum mechanics is
also referred to as the relative state formulation, the Everett
interpretation, the theory of the universal wave function, the
many-universes interpretation, the multiverse, or just many-worlds. As
much as this interpretation echoes science fiction, it is well regarded
by many of the finest minds of all time.
•“In
our universe we are tuned into the frequency that corresponds to
physical reality. But there are an infinite number of parallel
realities coexisting with us in the same room, although we cannot tune
into them.” —Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate, Recipient of the National Medal of Science and the Benjamin Franklin Medal
•“The
general notions about human understanding . . . which are illustrated
by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly
unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture they
have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable
and central place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an
encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom.” —J. Robert Oppenheimer, Ph.D., Wartime Head of the Los Alamos Laboratory
•“The
mystic and the physicist arrive at the same conclusion; one starting
from the inner realm, the other from the outer world. The harmony
between their views confirms the ancient Indian wisdom that Brahman,
the ultimate reality without, is identical to Atman, the reality within.” —Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., winner of the Da Vinci Medallion
•“For
a parallel to the lessons of quantum theory . . . we must turn to those
kinds of epistemological problems with which already thinkers like the
Buddha and Lao Tzu have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our
position as actors in the great drama of existence.” —Niels Bohr, Nobel Laureate
•“We are what we think, all that we are arises with our thoughts, with our thoughts we make the world.” —Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha (circa 563-483 B.C.)
• For those who wish to further explore the concepts and understanding of
quantum consciousness and the potentials of using it, Amber has a
suggestion. Respectfully, Michael
Note from Amber: Covering precisely this subject, our book ‘Quantum Consciousness, Psychokinetic and Extrasensory Powers: A Guide to Attaining True Paranormal Abilities’ (ASIN B07B42VNXH), is available on Amazon for the US here, the UK here, Canada here, Australia here, France here, Germany here, and India and Nepal here.
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The Extraordinary Mysteries of Ancient Egypt
Over ten-thousand years ago there appeared on
the banks of the Nile, as if suddenly descended upon the sands, the
first great civilization of known history. Never has the world become
so fascinated with an ancient culture as it did following the 1798
expedition of young Champollion with young Napoleon to Egypt. Napoleon
returned empty-handed, but Champollion came back with the greatest
mystery of the ages in his grasp. The Middle Ages knew of Egypt only as
a Roman colony; the Renaissance presumed that civilization had begun
with Greece; even the Enlightenment, though it concerned itself
intelligently with China and India, knew nothing of Egypt beyond the
Pyramids.
Egyptology was a by-product of Napoleonic
imperialism. When the great Corsican led his French expedition to Egypt
in 1798 he took with him a number of academics to explore and map the
terrain, and made a place also for scholars interested in Egypt for the
sake of a better understanding of history. It was this group who first
revealed the magnificent temples of Luxor and Karnak to the modern
world, and the elaborate Description de Egypte
(1809-13) which they prepared for the French Academy was the first
milestone in the scientific study of this majestic, forgotten
civilization. The recovery of Ancient Egypt is one of the most
brilliant chapters in archeology.
No people, ancient or modern, have conceived
of building a civilization on a scale so sublime, so great, so
grandiose, as the Ancient Egyptians. Their technology of agriculture,
metallurgy, industry and engineering; the invention of glass and linen,
of paper and ink, of the calendar and the clock, of geometry and the
alphabet; the excellence and sublimity of sculpture and the arts; the
refinement of dress and ornament, of furniture and dwellings, of
society and life; the remarkable development of orderly and peaceful
government, of census and post, of primary and secondary education,
even of technical training for office and administration; the
advancement of writing and literature, of science and medicine; the
first clear formulation known to us of individual and public
conscience, the first cry for social justice, the first widespread
monogamy, the first monotheism, the first essays in moral philosophy .
. . all elevated to a degree of superiority and power that has seldom,
if ever, been reached since.
•“Egypt gave birth to what later would become known as ‘Western Civilization,’ long before
the greatness of Greece and Rome.” —John Henrik Clarke
•“Ancient
Egypt, through the solidarity, the unity, the disciplined variety of
its magnificent achievements, its unexcelled artistic products, and
through the enormous duration and the sustained power of its effort,
offers the spectacle of the greatest civilization that has yet appeared
on the earth. We shall do well to equal it.” —Gabriel Faure
• One of the supreme elements of this enigmatic civilization was
architecture, because it combined in imposing form both mass and
duration, beauty and use. From the time of the Pyramids to the Temple
of Hathor at Denderah, i.e., for some four-thousand years or more,
there rose out of the sands of Egypt such a succession of architectural
achievements as no civilization has ever surpassed. At Karnak and Luxor
a riot of columns raised by Thutmose I and Amenhotep III, Seti I,
Rameses II and other monarchs from the Twelfth to the Twenty-Second
Dynasty; at Medinet-IIabu (c. 1300 BC) a vast but less distinguished
edifice, on whose columns an Arab village rested for centuries. At
Abydos the Temple of Seti I, dark and somber in its massive ruins; at
Elephantine the little Temple of Khnum (c. 1400 BC), positively Greek
in its precision and elegance; at Dcr-el-Bahari the stately colonnades
of Queen Hatshepsut; near it the Ramcsseum, another forest of colossal
columns and statues reared by the architects of Rameses II; and at
Philce the lovely Temple of Isis (c. 240 BC). These are mere samples of
the many monuments that still adorn the valley of the Nile, and attest
even in their ruins the strength and courage of the mysterious race
that reared them.
Perhaps the noblest aspect of Egyptian
civilization was its art. Here, at the very threshold of history we
find an art powerful and mature, superior to that of any modern nation,
and rivaled only by that of Greece. At first the luxury of isolation
and peace, and then, under Thutmose III and Rameses II, the spoils of
conquest, gave to Egypt the opportunity and the means for massive
architecture and a hundred minor arts that so early touched perfection.
The whole theory of progress hesitates before Egyptian art: “We
were astonished by the beauty and refinement of the art displayed by
the objects surpassing all we could have imagined; the impression was
overwhelming.” —Egyptologist Howard Carter, discoverer of the intact tomb (KV62) of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh, Tutankhamun (November 1922)
A special note must be made regarding one of
the most mystifying of all the seemingly impenetrable puzzles of
Ancient Egypt, the origin of the exquisite and lordly Egyptian writing
known as hieroglyphics. Historically, the system of hieroglyphic
symbols appeared suddenly, as if out of nowhere, with no record or
evidence of a long, slow development that would normally be the case
with any sophisticated written language.
Hieroglyphs were from the very beginning
phonetic symbols. An earlier stage consisting exclusively of picture
writing using symbols or illustrations of the intended word or concept
cannot be shown to have existed in ancient Egypt; indeed, such a stage
can with certainty be ruled out. No development from pictures to
letters took place; hieroglyphic writing was never a system of picture
writing or ideographs.
Ancient Egyptian traditions explain this quite
simply: hieroglyphic writing was one of many “gifts of civilization”
provided by Thoth, the Egyptian god-of-all-trades. The voluminous lore
of the ancient Brahmaic and Egyptian traditions relates that in the
antediluvian time of zp tpj (generally transcribed as Zep Tepi),
the “first occasion” or “first time,” mysterious, highly enlightened
“gods” appeared in Egypt, bearing previously unknown technology and
knowledge. The texts inscribed on the walls of the Temple of Edfu in
Upper Egypt contain explicit descriptions of the time of Zep Tepi and the coming of the “bringers of knowledge,” recounting their arrival from “the stars” in a “cosmic egg” bearing the “gods”
who brought the gift of civilization to Egypt, the primary of which was
Ptah, whose rule, the texts tell us, began circa 18,000 B.C. Our
current knowledge does not allow us to improve on this explanation for
the origin of hieroglyphic writing.
Plato (c. 428 - 348 BC) writes that Egyptian
priests kept records of their history going back over eighteen-thousand
years: “Egypt has recorded and kept
eternally the wisdom of the ancient ages . . . all coming from time
immemorial when gods governed the earth in the dawn of civilization.”
The Greek historian Herodotus tells us that
when Hecataeus of Miletus (550 - 476 BC) boasted to the Egyptian
priests that he could trace his ancestry through fifteen centuries to a
god, they quietly showed him, in a hidden sanctuary deep under the
sands, the statutes of three-hundred-forty-five high priests, each the
son of the preceding, making three-hundred-forty-five generations since
their “gods” had appeared in the Nile valley, marking an historical
record extending back some one-hundred-eighty centuries. What were
these mysterious gods?
In ancient times, hieroglyphic script was called mdju netjer—“words
of the gods.” The word hieroglyph came from the Greek hieros (sacred)
and glypho (inscriptions), a term that first appears in the writings of
Diodorus Siculus and Clement of Alexandria. For many years, however,
researchers were unable to read the lordly inscriptions surviving on
the monuments. Typical of the scientific temperament was the patient
devotion with which Champollion, the “Father of Egyptology,” applied
himself to the decipherment of the mystifying hieroglyphics. He found
at last an obelisk covered with such “sacred carvings” in Egyptian, but
bearing at the base a Greek inscription which indicated that the
writing concerned the Macedonian Greek ruler Ptolemy (Ptolemy XII,
c. 117 - 51 BC), and his historically famous daughter Cleopatra
(Cleopatra VII, c. 69 - 30 BC). Guessing that two of the hieroglyphics,
often repeated with a royal cartouche attached, were the names of these
rulers, he made out tentatively (in 1822) eleven Egyptian letters; this
was the first proof that ancient Egypt had an alphabet. Then he applied
this alphabet to a great black stone slab that Napoleon’s troops had
stumbled upon near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. This “Rosetta Stone”
contained an inscription in three languages: first in hieroglyphics,
second in “demotic” (the popular script of the Egyptians), and third in
Greek. With his knowledge of Greek, and the eleven letters made out
from the obelisk, Champollion, after more than twenty years of labor,
deciphered the whole inscription, discovered the entire Egyptian
alphabet, and opened the way to the recovery of an astonishing lost
world.
Champollion’s work was one of the peaks in the
history of history. The ability to translate innumerable inscriptions
found on the walls of ancient monuments, temples, tombs, and documents
has provided us with profound insights regarding the civilization of
the Ancient Egyptians.
Yet inexplicable puzzles remain. Immense
volumes have been written to expound our knowledge—and conceal our
ignorance—of the origin and powers of the culture of Ancient Egypt.
Extant records of their history, preserved through the centuries,
although voluminous, reveal no record of a mythic or heroic age, as all
normally emerging civilizations inevitably have. Archaeological records
indicate that the Nile region was at that time only sparely populated
by a people slowly graduating from a Paleolithic to a Neolithic stage.
Vast mysteries shroud the sophistication of
Ancient Egypt: How did a small stone-age culture suddenly ascend to
create perhaps the greatest civilization of known history? How were
their monumental and wholly unprecedented accomplishments achieved?
What long-forgotten knowledge, abilities and powers could have given
rise to the glorious culture of Ancient Egypt?
•“Ancient
Egypt presents us with an impenetrable mystery. How may we explain a
Neolithic desert people spawning the most majestic civilization of
history? Their rapid ascension from a primitive state to a previously
unapproached zenith of technology and culture demonstrates advancements
that utterly elude explanation. Many of their artistic and
architectural productions are unequaled to this day. What could
possibly explain vast technical knowledge and sophistication appearing
so fully-formed so suddenly?” —Legendary Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, Archaeological Journal
• These imposing mysteries inspire curiosity and ignite the imagination.
There are riddles to be answered and puzzles to be solved. And one
immediately intuits that the quest for answers will bring to light
something profound, something long hoped for yet rarely revealed,
something of immense value. And so it is.
Note from Heather: For insights to the mysteries of Ancient Egypt, an
in-depth examination can be found in our book, 'A Great Master Speaks, Immense Powers of the Ancients Revealed: The True Secrets of Dynastic Egypt', ASIN B00TIYMKFM, available worldwide, including in US here and the UK here.
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Here’s something Michael
wrote in response to a very nice inquiry from a reader, and is a great
topic for an evening read. Have fun! Thanks, Amber
•Illusions, Realities, and Consciousness
Regarding your inquiry about the promising
results you’ve obtained from studying the knowledge expressed in our
books, I’m glad to hear it, yet I would add this: be cautious. Whoever
goes in search of anything must come eventually to one of three
conclusions. Either to say that they have found it; or that they are
still engaged in the search; or that it cannot be found. None of these
conclusions are especially comfortable.
Amongst the ancients, the Peripatetics,
Epicureans, Stoics, and others, thought that they had found true
knowledge. They established the sciences we currently have, and treated
them as a means of reaching certain facts. Clitomachus, Carneades, and
the Academics despaired in their search, and concluded that the most
fundamental knowledge could not be conceived or understood by our
intellect.
Pyrrho and other skeptics and epechists—whose
doctrines were said to be taken from Homer, the Seven Sages,
Archilochus and Euripides, and to whose number were added Zeno,
Democritus, and Xenophanes—said that they were yet upon the search
after true knowledge. They judged that those who thought they had found
it were deceived, yet that it was too early and too daring a vanity to
say that human intellect is not able to attain it. ”Nil sciri quisquis putat, id quoque nescit, An sciri possit; quam se nil scire fatetur,” said Euripides (“He that says nothing can be known / O'erthrows his own opinion / For he knows nothing / So knows not that”).
It may be that they were all right. “Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind,” wrote Einstein, “and
are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external
world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man
trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face
and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of
opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a
mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes,
but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could
explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture
with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of
the meaning of such a comparison.”
Of course, consciousness is the thing most
directly known to us, and, in the assessment of scholars, from
philosophers to physicists, it is the only thing directly known to us.
As the means of interpreting sense impressions and experience through
the transformation of those impressions and experiences into
recognizable symbols in our awareness, it cannot in the same manner
interpret itself. It is the most immediate, most remarkable, and most
mysterious fact known to us. Energy-matter seems less mysterious, even
though less directly known. As Pascal marveled: “There
is nothing so inconceivable as that matter should be conscious of
itself—philosophers who have explored its nature, scientists who have
theorized on its origin—what matter could do that?”
The impressive advancement of scientific
research in recent decades has provided remarkable new windows into
questions of consciousness. Both of the great revolutions in 20th
century physics—the general and special theories of relativity, and
quantum mechanics—have revealed factors that play a fundamental role in
the creation of what we perceive as physical “reality.” They challenge
the assumption that there is a material reality that exists ‘out there’
at all.
•“The world is a construct of our mind’s sensations, perceptions, beliefs, memories. It is convenient to regard it
as existing objectively on its own. But it certainly does not.” —Erwin Schrödinger, Nobel Laureate
•“The
idea of an objective real world whose parts exist objectively in the
same sense as stones or trees exist, independently of whether or not we
observe them, is impossible.” —Werner Heisenberg, Nobel Laureate
• In past centuries it was believed that the physical reality we
experience around us exists independent of our observations—in other
words, that there is an actual, real material reality. Einstein's
relativity, Schrödinger’s wave function, Heisenberg’s uncertainty
principle, Feynman’s sum-over-histories, Bell’s theorem, the Copenhagen
interpretation, and Everett’s interpretation, among many other
advancements in quantum research, have revealed that this is
demonstrably not the case.
•“The
universe itself has no single history, nor even an independent
existence. That seems like a radical idea, even to many physicists.
Indeed, like many notions in today’s science, it appears to violate
common sense. But common sense is based upon everyday experience, not
upon the universe as it is revealed through the marvels of technologies
such as those that allow us to gaze deep into the atom or back to the
early universe.” —Stephen Hawking
•“Atoms
or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of
potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts. The
philosophical issues raised by quantum mechanics apply to the big as
well as the small.”
—Werner Heisenberg, Nobel Laureate, originator of the Uncertainty Principle
• Quantum physics, an exquisite refinement in the description of nature,
not only describes elementary micro-physics but applies to the
classical or macro-physical (Newtonian) world as well. Consciousness
and its mental aspects are part of the quantum universe in which we
live, and from the quantum perspective this universe is an extremely
interactive place. Quantum consciousness signifies that we are part of
a universe that is a work in progress; we are tiny portions of a
universe looking at itself—and creating itself. And it is not only the
future that we determine, but the past as well. Our present
observations select one out of many possible quantum histories and
futures for the “reality” we experience.
•“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” —Albert Einstein
• In recognizing the illusory nature of what we perceive to be “reality,”
and in recognition of the higher orders of reality, we stand on the
threshold of discerning an altogether new model of reality. Nonlocal
behavior provides us with a glimpse of a vastly enlarged view of
nature, one in which the universe is neither possessed of space and
time nor contains a multitude of things—instead it is one, interwoven
thing—even the appearance of separate things is utterly interconnected
in some fundamental manner that, in science, we can experimentally
perceive but not explain. A new model encompassing these discoveries
may replace all others, even quantum mechanics; we may retain a humble
skepticism about even this most incredibly successful of theories—the
wise physicist has been cured of certainty by history.
As Newton himself wrote: “I
do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to
have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself
in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than
ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” —Sir Isaac Newton (A.D. 1643-1727), President of the Royal Society (1703-1727)
That great ocean of truth engulfs the
universe, which leads us, with an abundance of caution, to frame a
question—with such caution because a wrong question will never yield a
right answer. How do thoughts and images held in conscious awareness
actualize forms or events whose probability of actualizing would
otherwise be one in billions?
The ancient wisdom traditions of great masters
and sages propose an answer—as it was admirable expressed to me—that
consciousness, energy, and matter are wholly interconnected; that they
are, at some higher level of reality, one and the same, yet in the
physical dimensions of space and time are perceived and experienced as
different, at least by an ordinary observer. Certainly, in accordance
with the special theory (of relativity), mass is energy and energy is
mass. Where one exists, the other exists; they are in fact one and the
same. Not so clear is how consciousness fits this picture.
Someone you will meet in our books, the Himalayan master Amrita,
expressed that energy-mass is merely a form or aspect of consciousness.
Put more concisely, energy-mass is simply consciousness objectified
within subject-object consciousness. We think of, perceive, and
experience the physical world as solid and real; actually it is nothing
more than an energy construct, ultimately no more substantive than the
quantum field in which it is embedded.
Some people have insisted that when I
witnessed psychokinetic events I actually witnessed “miracles.” If so,
they were no more and no less than the miracle of all reality—a unity
of consciousness producing in an individual awareness patterns of
perceived symbols we consent to call real, yet which continually shift
to reflect the aspirations and dreams of the perceiver, simultaneously
different for each and the same for all—the vast universe with its
billions of galaxies, the stars and their planets, the mountains and
valleys, the highlands and deserts, the seas and rivers, the garden of
life that teems in every niche, elephants and bears and cats, birds and
butterflies, and, of course, all of us. All solidity and permanence in
the physical realm are unquestionably illusions; conceivably only
consciousness is real and eternal, the consciousness of the living
universe.
*
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Is there an Advanced 'Stealth Civilization' on Earth?
You may have seen recent articles by very
reputable scientists openly speculating on the possibility of a
technologically advanced civilization “hiding” on Earth. In a new
paper, a team of researchers from Harvard University and Montana
Technological University speculate that sightings of "Unidentified
Anomalous Phenomenon" (UAP)—bureaucracy-speak for UFOs, basically—"may
reflect activities of intelligent beings concealed in stealth here on
Earth" (e.g., underground or underwater). They propose that UAPs might
not be visitors from space at all, but are ‘cryptoterrestrials,’ an
advanced species hiding on Earth. This concept, though perhaps
initially surprising, gains credibility given the vastness of
unexplored regions of our planet and the sheer number of sightings of
aerial phenomena.
Considering the immense body of accounts of
various types of UFO phenomenon witnessed worldwide and extending back
to the very threshold of human history, it’s probable that most people
familiar with the subject have concluded that extraterrestrial
influences on our planet are real or at least plausible. For example,
in June of 2021, the US intelligence community released its
long-awaited report on what it “knows” about the scores of mysterious
flying objects that have been seen and recorded by the military over
the last several decades. For more details, I spoke to several friends
at Caltech and MIT who are aeronautical engineers, astrophysicists and
specialists who study exoplanets, exobiology and so forth. It was
fascinating. Briefly, several observations emerged.
First, the UFOs, or UAPs as they call them—Unidentified Anomalous, or Aerial, Phenomena—are absolutely “real physical objects." The official report states, "We absolutely do believe what we're seeing are not simply sensor artifacts. These are things that physically exist."
Apparently the years of claiming sighting were "swamp gas," "ball
lightening," "weather balloons" and the like have thankfully come to a
close. Many of the sightings were made by multiple radar contacts,
infrared scans and other types of sensors. Even better, in at least 11
cases, pilots reported a "near-miss" encounter with the UAPs, and when
flying close to them the UAPs reacted by stopping, turning, ascending
and descending in ways indicating they were aware of the military
aircraft, sometimes mimicking or evading the military pilots’ maneuvers.
In one encounter, two Navy F/A-18 fighter jets
were launched from a carrier to investigate a radar contact hovering at
about 80,000 feet above the ocean. As the jets approached, the UAP
abruptly decended from 80,000 feet to a few feet above the water. The
UAP took about 3 seconds to decend 80,000 feet, meaning it traveled at
a speed of 18,180 mph, and its sudden stop just above the water imposed
a deceleration force of approximately 276 Gs.
An F/A-18F pilot described the UAP he encountered as "an
elongated egg or 'Tic Tac' shape about 46 feet in length, solid white,
smooth, with no edges, nacelles, pylons, or wings, and with a
discernible midline axis," which "took evasive action on being approached" and "effortlessly evaded interception." (The F/A-18 Super Hornet is capable of at least 1,300 mph; its top speed is classified and likely much higher.)
Second, they’re definitely not some secret
military project of ours, nor are they something a foreign adversary
like Russia or China might be fielding. “The UAPs exhibit flight characteristics that radically exceed any technology possessed by humans.”
They are able to hover, travel at hundreds to many thousands of miles
per hour, make turns that impose extreme G forces, are able to travel
in our atmosphere, in space, and also underwater. There have been sonar
observations made by US submarines tracking objects going over 500 mph
underwater, and diving to depths beyond the ability of sonar to track.
So what are they? Naturally, there’s
speculation that they’re extraterrestrial craft piloted by aliens—the
word alien comes from the Latin term alius,
“other”—or robotic craft controlled by extraterrestrial aliens.
However, it was pointed out to me by a number of astrophysicists—and
now reported by researchers from Harvard and MTU—that they could very
well be, and are perhaps more likely to be, vehicles used by a
non-human race that lives on our planet, and which may have been here
for millions of years. UAPs like the ones discussed in the report have
been observed worldwide for uncounted centuries. There are extremely
remote land areas on Earth that are scarcely explored, and vast areas
undersea and under-ice that are beyond our reach to explore.
Our planet is about 4.543 billion years old
and our species has only been here for the last 0.004% of the Earth's
history. From our knowledge of the Milky Way Galaxy, we know that the
Earth is an uniquely attractive planet with conditions ideal for life.
Thinking we're the only intelligent species that could ever have been
here is pure hubris. Modern humans have existed for just a few tens of
thousands of years. Who knows what sentient beings may have evolved
here or may have come here in the vastness of the past billions of
years of Earth's history, and what technology they may have?
•“What
does it mean for a civilization to be a million years old? We have had
radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical
civilization is a few hundred years old. A civilization millions of
years old is as much beyond
us as we are beyond a bush baby or a macaque.” —Carl Sagan
• In the Harvard/MTU paper, the researchers suggest a range of
possibilities. First is that a "remnant form" of an ancient, highly
advanced human civilization is still hanging around, observing us.
Second is that an intelligent species evolved independently of humans
in the distant past, and is now hiding their presence from us. Third is
that these hidden occupants of Earth traveled here from another planet
or time period. Multiple regions on Earth were cited in the new study
as worthwhile candidates for investigating the chances of a
cryptoterrestrial species' secret base.
UAP sightings of "craft and other phenomena (e.g., 'orbs') appearing to enter/exit underground access points, like mountains, volcanoes and voids in Antarctica's ice," they write, "could
be evidence that these cryptoterrestrials may not be drawn to these
spots, but actually reside in underground, under-ice, or underwater
bases." The researchers acknowledge that our limited knowledge
of over 80% of the world's seafloors and vast regions of Earth's
landmass and ice caps neither confirms nor dismisses the
cryptoterrestrial hypothesis. They emphasize the need for humility and
open-mindedness in scientific inquiry.
Being open-minded is certainly the proper
approach. NASA has satellite imaging evidence of the remains of an
extensive Paleocene civilization existing under the ice of Antarctica,
including “intelligently-made structures, resembling some sort of
pyramidal and rectangular buildings.” And ice-core derived, isotopic
records from the Paleogene and Neogene geologic periods strongly
indicate that the infrastructure of an advanced civilization existed on
the Antarctic continent millions of years ago, and that the
civilization may have been inhabited for 300,000 or more years. If so,
are the inhabitants still here on Earth? If the inhabitants left
Antarctica, where did they go?
Note from Heather: For anyone who is interested, this subject is covered in detail in our book 'Antarctica and The Lost Civilization', ASIN B09M98VQ9F, available worldwide, including the US here and the UK here.
*
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Ancient Civilizations, the Ever Expanding Mystery
How ancient is civilization on our planet? How
difficult is it to accurately answer that question? For decades the
archaeological community labored under the theory that human
civilization began only after the end of the last Ice Age (circa 14,500
- 11,500 B.C.). The theory conjectured that, prior to that time, humans
were no more than primitive hunter-gatherers incapable of communal
organization or sophisticated abilities, and it was only after the last
glacial period—following the melting of the two-mile thick sheets of
ice that covered much of Europe and North America—that our human
ancestors began to develop agriculture and complex economic and social
structures, sometime around 4000 B.C. Archaeologists therefore
theorized that the first non-nomadic, agrarian societies did not
develop until approximately 3500 B.C. in Mesopotamia, 3100 B.C. in
Egypt, 2600 B.C. in the Indus Valley, and 1600 B.C. in China.
Current archaeological assessments hold that
there was no single “cradle” of civilization, but that several
civilizations developed independently, among them the Near Eastern
Neolithic (Mesopotamia). Research findings indicate that Egypt
developed earlier than the Tigris-Euphrates cultures and rapidly
flowered into a civilization specifically and uniquely its own; one of
the richest and grandest, one of the most powerful and yet one of the
most graceful cultures in history. By Egypt’s side Sumer’s culture was
but a crude beginning, not even Greece or Rome would surpass it.
Contemporary research has unearthed buried
civilizations and discovered submerged cities one after
another—archeology and anthropology now reconstruct an unsuspected
antiquity of man—history proves all history false and paints a canvas
of stunningly ancient and mysterious dimensions. Previous academic
accounts of the origins of civilization and the cultures of the ancient
world have fallen forfeit to finds at archaeological sites around the
world.
•“Everything
we’ve been taught about the origins of civilization may be wrong. Old
stories about great lost civilizations of prehistory, long dismissed as
myths by archaeologists, are set to be proven true.” —D. Natawidjaja, Ph.D., Senior Geologist with the LIPI Research Centre for Geotechnology
• The bulk of the most ancient of these archaeological finds indicate
that sophisticated civilizations existed not only prior to the last
glacial period, but most importantly, prior to the ‘Younger Dryas
Boundary’ cataclysmic event as well. The ‘YDB’ event, which occurred
circa 10,770 B.C., is thought to have been caused by the air-bursts or
impacts of several comets, or possibly a mile-wide meteorite that
impacted Greenland's northern ice cap (the Hiawatha glacier), resulting
in massive shockwaves and firestorms sweeping across the continents and
initiating a 1200 year-long epoch of terminal environmental change,
including devastating cold, perpetual darkness, massive floods, and
catastrophic faunal extinction. See, e.g., Firestone, West and
Warwick-Smith, The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet
Changed the Course of World Culture, Bear & Company, 2006; et alia.
•“It’s
not surprising that large animal species, such as the mammoths, went
extinct during the cataclysmic Younger Dryas period, which dates from
10,800 B.C. to 9,600 B.C. And of course it had huge effects on our
ancestors, not just those ‘primitive’ hunter-gatherers the
archaeologists speak of but also, I believe, several high civilizations
that were wiped from the historical record by the upheavals of the
Younger Dryas.” —James Kennett, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus,
Department of Earth Science, University of California (UCSB)
• We are fortunate that not all traces of pre-YDB event high
civilizations were “wiped from the historical record.” A brief sampling
of such prehistoric evidence includes:
•
• Remote sensing images from NASA missions over Antarctica reveal what
researchers have concluded to be clear evidence of a complex settlement
including “large rectangular and pyramidal buildings”
lying beneath 1.4 miles (2.3 km) of ice that has covered the region for
millions of years (location: Continent of Antarctica). This discovery,
if confirmed, will represent the greatest archaeological find of
history. (For a full account of the scientific evidence so far
available, please see, 'Antarctica and The Lost Civilization', ASIN B09M98VQ9F, for the US here and the UK here.)
•
• The ancient Egyptian ‘Turin Royal Canon’ (papyrus 1874 verso, c. 1279
B.C.) records the reign of the pre-dynastic “Gods of Ancient Egypt” as
beginning in 37,920 B.C. (location: discovered in Thebes, currently in
the Museo Egizio [Egyptian Museum], Turin, Italy).
•
• Gunung Padang, meaning “Mountain of Light,” the site of numerous
megaliths including a 300 foot high pyramid whose base materials have
been dated to 22,000 to 20,000 B.C. (location: Cianjur regency, West
Java Province of Indonesia).
•
• Inscriptions on the walls of the ancient Egyptian Temple of Edfu,
recounting a historical record of Egyptian civilization extending back
to 18,000 B.C. (location: west bank of the Nile in Edfu, Upper Egypt).
•
• Nabta Playa, site of some 25 megalithic structures, including a
calendar circle with sophisticated astronomical alignments, estimated
by research teams to have been constructed as early as 16,500 B.C.
(location: Sahara Desert of southern Egypt, west of Aswan).
•
• Puma Punku, meaning “The Door of the Puma,” site of inexplicably
precise andesite stonework and extensive megalithic structures whose
astronomical alignments date to 15,000 B.C. The tools that were used to
create the highly complex structures at Puma Punku do not exist in the
archaeological record (location: Tiwanaku, in the Andean Mountains of
western Bolivia).
•
• Göbekli Tepe, a remarkably complex megalithic ceremonial center dated
to 12,000 to 9,000 B.C. (location: southeastern Anatolia Region of
Turkey, northeast of Şanlıurfa).
•
• The Great Sphinx of ancient Egypt, whose weathering and erosion
patterns correlated with paleoclimatology and subsurface features
establish that its body and the walls of its enclosure date to 11,000
B.C., and perhaps far earlier (location: Giza Plateau adjacent to the
west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt).
•
• A vast submerged city in the Bay of Cambay, or Gulf of Khambhat,
artifacts from which have been carbon-dated to 9,500 B.C. (location:
Arabian Sea coast of India, bordering the state of Gujarat).
•• The underwater Yonaguni complex, estimated to have been submerged
circa 10,000 to 8,000 B.C. (location: offshore of the westernmost
inhabited island of Japan, 108 km from the east coast of Taiwan).
•
• The extensive sunken city of Dwarka, relics from which have been
carbon-dated to 7,000 B.C. (location: offshore of the Devbhoomi Dwarka
district in the state of Gujarat, northwestern India).
Many more such prehistoric sites—identified
via satellite imagery, ground-penetrating radar, deep-mapping sonar,
LIDAR, and other advanced technologies—are known to exist but remain to
be explored. Archaeologists estimate that only a tiny fraction of the
ruins and relics of our world’s most ancient civilizations have been
found.
•“There
are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of undiscovered ancient
sites across the globe. There are so many previously unknown sites and
structures all over the world . . . what satellites help to show us is
we’ve actually only found a fraction of a percent of ancient
settlements and sites all over the world.” —Sarah Parcak, Ph.D., Satellite Archaeologist, Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Laboratory for Global Observation
• Even when bolstered by modern technology, the reconstruction of early
civilization on our planet is a precarious enterprise. Every day the
sea encroaches somewhere upon the land, or the land upon the sea, as
volcanic lava flows expand islands and continents. Over millenniums,
widely ranging temperatures cause sea levels to rise and fall by
hundreds of feet; immense sheets of ice invade and retreat; full-margin
rupture megathrust earthquakes and super-volcanic eruptions radically
change topography; vast regions of landmass are buried, lakes and
inland seas become valleys, valleys fill, river canyons deepen,
mountain ranges weather away, and some, like the Himalayas, continue to
rise and shift through the action of plate tectonics. To the geologic
eye the surface of the earth is a fluid form.
It is not merely possible but highly probable,
as Aristotle thought, that many cultures arose, developed to a high
state, then eventually lapsed from human memory. “History,” said Bacon, “is the planks of a shipwreck; vastly more of the past is lost than found.” As an ancient Egyptian saying has it: “Mother Earth has shaken many civilizations from her back.”
Legends arise for a reason, and a purpose.
Historical accounts and records are composed of the vague and hazy
vestiges of memory; more of the great secrets of the past have vanished
than have been revealed. Even the earliest accounts of Earth’s history
were composed long after certain truths had lapsed from human memory,
or were considered secrets far too powerful, or too sacred, to be
revealed. Yet legends inevitably arose in which fragments of those
truths were preserved.
From the dawn of earliest civilization on the
Qinghai-Tibet Plateau—the highest in the world, with an average
elevation of some 16,000 feet—legends of a lost civilization have
fascinated and inspired millions with accounts of a mysterious world
hidden deep in the vast wilderness of the Great Himalayan Range.
Although arising from sources widely separated in both space and time,
the legends are remarkably consistent. They relate that this mysterious
world is the dwelling place of an extraordinary community of “sages and
masters.”
Scholars believe that these primeval legends
are the historical precursors of a fabled land described in the oldest
Sanskrit texts, a concealed realm of beauty and knowledge. The
scriptures of the 4000 year old pre-Tibetan Zhang Zhung culture are
thought to be the earliest extant references, yet the same hidden realm
is represented in many ancient traditions; the pre-Buddhist B’on
treaties, Hindu texts of the Kalki lore, the Puranas, in the earliest
texts of the Kalachakra Laghutantra (c. 500 B.C.), in the even more
ancient Kalachakra Mulatantra (c. 900 B.C.), and in ancient wisdom
traditions throughout Asia. The B’on treaties refer to the hidden
sanctuary as Olmolungring, the Zhang Zhung and Tibetan scriptures as Shambhala I lam-yig, Hindu histories as Aryavarth, Chinese as Hsi Tien, and Russian traditions as Belovoyde.
Absent an ember, there can be no smoke; there
is a kernel of truth in all such ancient and enduring legends, and they
cannot be easily, or wisely, dismissed. If this mystical hidden realm
still exists, who resides there? Descendants of the “sages and
masters”? Inheritors of their knowledge and wisdom? From where did they
come? Why do they stay so carefully concealed? What knowledge do they
possess? If encountered, what would they want us to know?
*
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Stonehenge, The Ever Deepening Mystery . . . and Merlin
Ashley and Heather are both from Oxfordshire,
and have been fascinated with Stonehenge since a school outing to
Salisbury Plain they took as children. Now they’re excited about a
recent discovery which, rather than shedding light on any of the many
mysteries of Stonehenge, actually reveals another, really big one.
Michael worked with them to get details from the universities doing the
field work, plus research some archaic history, and wrote the
following. Cheers, Amber
• Around 3200 B.C., Stone Age farmers in Wales'
Preseli Hills built a great monument. They carved columns of unspotted
dolerite, or bluestone, from a nearby quarry, then thrust them upright
in a great circle, precisely aligned with the sun. Exactly what the
circle meant to them remains a mystery. But new research reveals that
several centuries later the giant stones were taken down and
transported along a route that covered about 175 miles (282 kilometers)
to the Salisbury Plain. And there, about 4,600 years ago, they were
placed to create what is still the world’s most iconic prehistoric
stone monument: Stonehenge.
Researchers had already traced Stonehenge’s
slabs of bluestone to the west coast of Wales, from a wild moorland in
Pembrokeshire some 175 miles from Stonehenge. They identified the
quarries where the stones were extracted more than 5000 years ago,
amongst a series of rocky outcrops called Carn Meini. But radiocarbon
dating showed a puzzling gap of several centuries between activity at
the bluestone quarries and the earliest construction at Stonehenge.
Researchers wondered whether the distinctive bluestones had been used
to build other stone circles first, then moved to Stonehenge later.
Over the past decade, archaeologists from
University College London and University of Southampton searched for
ritual structures in the Preseli region that might have provided the
stones and the blueprint for Stonehenge. In recent years, they
excavated parts of an ancient monument called Waun Mawn, where a
handful of toppled bluestones similar to those at Stonehenge form a
partial circle. The excavations revealed distinctive socket-shaped pits
where other huge stones had once stood. Connecting the dots between the
empty sockets and toppled bluestones at Waun Mawn, archaeological
researchers then revealed a circle 110 meters across, exactly the same
dimensions as the outer earthen ditch that was part of Stonehenge’s
original layout. One of the bluestones at Stonehenge has an unusual
cross-section which precisely matches one of the holes left at Waun
Mawn, and another is missing a large chip which was found at Waun Mawn
as well. And, like at Stonehenge, the circle’s entrance was oriented
toward sunrise on the day of the midsummer solstice.
The researchers then measured the last time
sediments inside the socket holes at Waun Mawn had been exposed to
light, using optically stimulated luminescence; they also
radiocarbon-dated charcoal found inside the pits. They estimate the
missing stones were erected between 3400 and 3200 B.C., and then
removed 300 or 400 years later, around the time the first construction
at Stonehenge began. “We’re quite confident the reason they came down is they went to Stonehenge,” said a University of Southampton archaeologist.
What remains as the greatest mystery is how,
exactly, the stones were transported over rough terrain a distance of
175 miles (282 kilometers). The biggest of Stonehenge's stones, known
as sarsens, are up to 30 feet (9 meters) tall and weigh 25 tons (22.6
metric tons) on average. The largest stone, the Heel Stone, weighs
about 30 tons. The smaller stones, referred to as "bluestones" (they
have a bluish tinge when wet or freshly broken), weigh up to 4 tons
each. Archaeologists say there were originally 82 sarsen stones and 80
bluestones at Stonehenge, with an estimated total weight of 2,300 tons
(2,087 metric tons).
A Welsh team of researchers attempted to use
only Stone Age tools and methods (more or less) to recreate the
prehistoric journey made by the 162 stones. The project involved
attempting to drag a smaller bluestone across land on a large wooden
sled. (The first use of the wheel on an axle did not appear in Brittan
until about 900-800 B.C.) They also attempted to transport a small
bluestone over water by boat. Despite every method they tried, it
required a modern crane to get the stone on the sled or in the boat.
The sled proved impossible to move over rocky terrain—no matter how
stoutly constructed, it always broke apart—and the boats always sank.
Eventually, after failing to successfully move even one stone, the
entire project was scrapped. “Stonehenge
itself was a massive undertaking, either requiring the labor of
thousands over a period of many decades to move the stones, or the use
of an unknown technology,” said a University of Southampton researcher.
An unknown technology? The oldest written
history of Britain tells an interesting story. Geoffrey of Monmouth
(A.D. c.1100-1155) from Monmouth, Wales, was a Catholic cleric, bishop
of St. Asaph (1150), and one of the major figures in the development of
British historiography. He wrote several works in Latin, the language
of scholarly literature in Europe during the medieval period. His major
work was the Historia Regum Britanniae
(The History of the Kings of Britain), c.1136, the work best known to
modern readers. It relates the early history of Britain, from its first
settlement by Brutus of Troy, a descendant of Trojan hero Aeneas, to
the death of Cadwaladr in the 7th century, covering Julius Caesar's
invasions of Britain, the reigns of Kings Leir and Cymbeline, as well
as relating one of the earliest developed narratives of King Arthur.
In one of his histories, Geoffrey provides an
intriguing answer to the great mystery of how some 2,300 tons of
massive stones were moved from the west coast of Wales to the Salisbury
Plain in England. Based on an older work he had found, Geoffrey relates
that King Aurelianus (uncle of King Arthur) wanted to build a memorial
for the hundreds of Britons, including many nobles, treacherously slain
by the Saxons during a truce meeting on Salisbury Plain. (An incident
said to have taken place at a banquet near modern-day Wiltshire,
ostensibly arranged to seal a peace treaty, which may have been the
cession of Essex and Sussex in exchange for intermarriage between
Rowena, the daughter of Saxon chieftain Hengest, and the Brittonic King
Vortigern.) King Aurelianus demanded a memorial for the dead Britons
which would last forever, but his builders could think of no way of
doing it. An advisor to the king, known as Merlin (Welsh, Myrddin; Latin, Merlinus), suggested a solution—go to Wales and bring the magnificent stone circle monument at Waun Mawn back to England.
Geoffrey relates that King Aurelianus' men,
numbering some 15,000, proved unable to move the immense stones until
Merlin interceded by using “magic”
to assist them. The magician was also called upon when it was time to
put together the stones of what would become Stonehenge on the
Salisbury Plain. Aurelius ordered Merlin to erect around the Britons’
burial place the stones which he had brought from Wales. Merlin obeyed
the King’s orders and put the stones up in a circle round the
sepulcher, in exactly the same way as they had been arranged in Wales, “thus proving that Merlin’s artistry was worth more than any brute strength.” Interestingly, even thousands of years later, we have no means of improving upon this account.
“Probable impossibilities,” Aristotle wisely counseled, “are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.”
Geoffrey believed what we habitually forget—that ‘impossibilities’ can
actualize when the unimaginable is imagined and then made real with the
application of apposite knowledge through systematic effort. Centuries
later, in a conversation with Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke, the dean
of science fiction writers Robert Heinlein would capture this
transmutation process perfectly: “It’s part of the nature of man to start with imagination and build to a reality.”
Like any currency of value, the human
imagination is a coin with two inseparable sides. It is our faculty of
fancy that fills the disquieting gaps of the unknown with the elusive
certitudes of ‘myth’ and ‘magic’ when common sense and reason fail to
reveal causality. And that selfsame faculty is what leads us to rise
above accepted facts, above the limits of the possible as established
by logic, custom and convention, and reach for new summits of
previously unimagined truth. Which way the coin flips depends on one’s
degree of courage, determined by some incalculable combination of
nature, culture, and character.
•“One man's 'magic' is another man's knowledge. Supernatural is a null word.” —Robert Heinlein
•“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” —Arthur C. Clarke
•“The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” —Carl Sagan
•“We cannot fathom technology that is unknown to us, and we seldom consider things
that seem impossible to us.” —Christopher Dunn
•“When
you’re touched by something revealing magic, nothing’s ever quite the
same again. What really makes me sad is all those people who never have
the chance to know that touch. They’re too busy, or they just don’t
hold with magic, so they shut the door without really knowing it was
there to be opened in the first place.” ―Charles de Lintn
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'Letters from the Earth’ and AI (Artificial Intelligence)
One recent evening we had some friends over,
including several computer science experts, and the subject of
Artificial Intelligence came up. With all of its pros and cons, that
resulted in a very animated discussion. Afterward, Michael wrote
something about AI that may inspire reflection on the subject, which I
have included below. Thank you, Amber
• In Mark Twain’s 'Letters from the Earth,' God gathers the archangels and announces that He has made humans. Satan (who else?) asks, “What are they for?”
Perhaps you can hear the strangeness, the dissonance in this question,
which is the sort that marks the boundary between ideology and science.
Scientists have no trouble asking what the various parts of an organism
are for or what function they have in an ecosystem. But they tend not
to ask Satan’s question because it offers no hypotheses to be tested.
What are people for? Twain gives us God’s chilly answer: “They are an experiment in Morals and Conduct. Observe them, and be instructed.” So Satan goes to Earth and soon concludes that “the humans are all insane ... the earth is insane.”
You might say of Twain, as Walter Benjamin said of Charles Baudelaire, that “he must not be taken too seriously”—that speaking in the voice of a disillusioned archangel merely allowed Twain “to sustain a nonconformist position.” Yet 'Letters from the Earth'
was withheld from publication by Twain’s daughter until 1962, and it
tends to come burdened with editorial disclaimers blaming its cynicism
on the circumstances of his old age, as if the book were merely a late,
funereal fugue, unrelated to the rest of his work. In fact, the
disillusioned archangel is the Connecticut Yankee in extremis, a
rational being in an irrational world.
Twain's cynicism was neither a visage of old
age nor was it misplaced. Irrationality, perhaps insanity, is all
around us, we're immersed in it. By way of proof, consider the recent
meteoric rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI). A rational being would
observe that there could be some future problems with AI, and could
reasonably ask, “What is it for?”
This past summer, when ‘Oppenheimer’ was in
theaters, many denizens of Silicon Valley were reading books about the
making of the atomic bomb. The parallels between nuclear devices and
the superintelligence of AI were taken to be obvious: world-altering
potential, existential risk, theoretical research thrust into the
geopolitical spotlight. Still, if the Manhattan Project was a
cautionary tale, there was disagreement about what lesson to draw from
it. Was it a story of regulatory overreach, given that nuclear energy
was stifled before it could replace fossil fuels? Or was it a story of
regulatory dereliction, given that our government rushed us into the
age of thermonuclear weapons without giving extensive thought to
whether this would end human civilization? Did the analogy imply that
AI companies should speed up or slow down?
The “doomers”—those who are deeply concerned
about AI and want to slow down—and even the “accelerationists”—those
who avidly promote it and want to speed up—have genuine concerns. The
lead scientist at Anthropic, Sam Bowman, has been studying how they
work and explains: “There are two
interconnected, very big, very concerning unknowns. The first is that
we don’t really know what the systems are doing in any deep sense. If
we open up ChatGPT or any AI system and look inside, we just see
millions of lines of code flipping around a few hundred times a second,
and we have no idea of what any of it means. With only the tiniest of
exceptions, we just don’t understand what’s going on. We built it, we
trained it, but we don’t know what it’s doing. The other big unknown
that’s connected to this is we don’t know how to steer these things or
control them in any reliable way.”
AI, then, is essentially alien—an
super-intelligence system into which people have no insight. Humans are
largely predictable to other humans because we share the same human
experience, but this doesn’t extend to artificial intelligence, even
though humans created it. Mark Bailey, the chair of cyber intelligence
and data science at the NIU, explained: “If
trustworthiness has inherently predictable and normative elements, AI
fundamentally lacks the qualities that would make it worthy of trust.
Constructing AI systems that behave in ways that people expect is a
significant challenge. With their inner workings impenetrable, AI
systems are fundamentally unexplainable and unpredictable. If you
fundamentally don’t understand something as unpredictable as AI,
something that can do things you absolutely cannot foresee, how can you
trust it?”
Last August, there was a private screening of
the movie ‘Oppenheimer’ at The Neighborhood, a co-living space near
Alamo Square where the “doomers” and the “accelerationists” can hash
out their differences over complicated coffee drinks. Before the
screening, Michael Nielsen, a quantum-computing expert who once worked
at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was asked to give a talk. He asked, “What
moral choices are available to someone working on a technology they
believe may have very destructive consequences for the world?”
There was the path exemplified by Robert Wilson, who didn’t leave the
Manhattan Project and later regretted it. There were Klaus Fuchs and
Ted Hall, who shared nuclear secrets with the Soviets. And then,
Nielsen noted, there was Joseph Rotblat, “the one physicist who actually left the project after it became clear the Nazis were not going to make an atomic bomb,” and who was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Silicon Valley is largely a refuge of Robert
Wilsons, give or take the regret. In his talk, Nielsen told a story
about a house party where he’d met “a senior person at a well-known AI startup” whose doom quotient was fifty per cent. “If you truly believe that AI has a coin-toss probability of killing you and everyone you love,” Nielsen asked him, “then how can you continue to build it?” The person’s response was “In the meantime, I get to have really nice houses and cars.”
Not everyone says this part out loud, but many people—and not only in
Silicon Valley—have an inchoate sense that the luxuries they enjoy in
the present may come at great cost to future generations. The fact that
they make this trade could be a matter of simple greed, or subtle
denialism. Or it could be ambition—prudently refraining from building
something, after all, is no way to get into the history books. (J.
Robert Oppenheimer may be portrayed as a flawed, self-pitying
protagonist, or even as a war criminal, but no one is making a
Hollywood blockbuster called “Rotblat.”)
One of Sam Altman’s mentors described him as “driven by a hunger for power more than by money.”
Elon Musk, in an onstage interview, said that his erratic approach to
AI through the years—sometimes accelerating, sometimes slamming on the
brakes—was due to, “My uncertainty about which edge of the double-edged sword would be sharper.”
He still worries about the dangers—his doom quotient is apparently
twenty or thirty per cent—and yet in smaller settings he has said that,
as long as AI is going to be built, he might as well try to be the
first to build it.
Artificial intelligence is already making
people rich. Jensen Huang, the co-founder and CEO of chip company
Nvidia, which controls 80 percent of the data-center AI chip market,
has seen his net worth explode from a mere $4 billion five years ago to
a staggering $83.1 billion as of March on the back of bottomless demand
for his company’s product. ChatGPT maker OpenAI is reportedly valued at
$86 billion, with rivals Anthropic valued at $15 billion and Inflection
at $4 billion, as of their most recent funding rounds. While OpenAI CEO
Sam Altman says he owns no shares in the company, it’s possible, even
likely, that he and other AI founders and execs have joined the nine
figures club by now, at least on paper.
The editor of Asterisk, the doomer-curious magazine, notes in the first issue, in part, “The next century is going to be impossibly cool or unimaginably catastrophic.”
The best-case scenario, he said, would be that AI turns out to be like
the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator in Switzerland whose
risk of creating a world-swallowing black hole turned out to be vastly
overblown. Or it could be like nuclear weapons, a technology whose
existential risk of annihilating the human race is real but has been
contained, at least so far.
Just as in Satan’s question, “What are they for?,”
here is the sort of dilemma that marks the boundary between ideology
and science. Or between rationality and irrationality. As with all dark
prophecies, warnings about AI are compelling—and deeply unsettling—yet
possibly wrong. But are you willing to bet your life on it?
*
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The Concepts of Oneness
The belief that everything in the Universe is
part of the same fundamental whole exists throughout many cultures and
philosophical, religious, scientific and spiritual traditions, as
captured by the phrase I encountered so often among the Himalayan
masters, "All-That-Is." As quantum physicists express it, space, time,
solidity and separation are illusions, and our five senses perceive and
communicate to us only a tiny fraction of the true nature of reality.
Nobel winner Erwin Schrödinger once observed that quantum physics fully
reflects the concept that there is indeed a fundamental and very real
oneness that exists throughout the Universe.
•“Consciousness
cannot be accounted for in physical terms, for consciousness is
absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything
else. Quantum physics reveals a basic oneness of the Universe.
Multiplicity is only apparent; in truth, there is only one mind.” —Erwin Schrödinger
•“Quantum
physics provides a modern version of ancient spirituality. In a
Universe made out of energy, everything is entangled; everything is one.” —Bruce Lipton, Ph.D.
•“To
us, the only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that
recognizes both sides of reality—the quantitative and the qualitative,
the physical and the psychical—as compatible with each other, and can
embrace them simultaneously. It would be most satisfactory of all if
physis and psyche (i.e., matter and mind) could be seen as
complementary aspects of precisely the same reality.” —Wolfgang Pauli, Nobel Laureate
• Despite it seeming as though the world is full of divisions and
separations, many people throughout the course of human history have
understood that what appear to be individual things are all part of a
fundamental, underlying reality. Despite the relative prevalence of
this belief, there has been an absence of well-validated psychological
measures that capture the concept. While almost all forms of
spirituality certainly do contain it, the belief in oneness is
typically combined with other concepts that assess diverse aspects of
spirituality, such as meaning, intent, purpose, sacredness, or having a
relationship with God. But what happens when we secularize the belief
in oneness?
In a recent series of investigations, a team of psychologists decided
to find out. In their study, they found that only 20.3% of participants
had thought about the oneness of all things "often" or "many times",
while 25.9% of people "seldom" thought about the oneness of all things,
and 12.5% of people had "never" thought about it. Based on findings
from quantum physics, the researchers created a six-item "Belief in
Oneness Scale" consisting of the following items:
● Beyond surface appearances, everything is fundamentally one.
● Although many seemingly separate things exist, they all are part of the same whole.
● At the most basic level of reality, everything is one.
● The separation among individual things is an illusion; in reality everything is one.
● Everything is composed of the same basic substance,
whether one thinks of it as spirit, consciousness, quantum fields and
processes, or whatever.
● The same basic essence permeates everything that exists.
Their research revealed that people who
believe that everything is fundamentally one differ in crucial ways
from those who do not. In general, those who hold a belief in oneness
have a more inclusive identity that reflects their sense of connection
with other people, with animals, and with aspects of nature that are
all thought to be part of the same "one thing" or "All-That-Is."
This has some rather broad implications.
First, this finding is relevant to our current fractured political
landscape. It is very interesting that those who reported a greater
belief in oneness were also more likely to regard all other people very
much like members of their own group, and therefore to identify with
all of humanity. There is an abundance of terribly divisive identity
politics and political propaganda these days, with all too many people
believing that their own ideology is the only true one, and who
actually believe that anyone who disagrees with them is evil, immoral,
or somehow less than human.
It would be beneficial for people across the
entire political spectrum to recognize and hold in mind the concept of
oneness even as they are asserting their own personal values and
political beliefs. To only have "understanding" or "compassion" for
those who share their same ideology, and vilifying or even becoming
violent toward those who they perceive as having a false ideology, is
not only antithetical to cooperation and progress in the broadest
sense, it is also counter-productive to political accomplishments that
advance the greater good of everyone in this country, and indeed of all
humans on this planet.
Second, these findings have important
implications for education. Even if some adults may be hopeless when it
comes to changing their beliefs, most children are not. Other
beliefs—such as a belief that intelligence can learn and grow ("growth
mindset")—are very popular in education these days. However, I wonder
what the outcome would be if students were also explicitly educated to
understand that we are all part of the same fundamental humanity, by
actively showing students through group discussions and activities how
we all have our own thoughts, ideas and philosophies, and how
underneath the superficial differences in opinions and political
beliefs, we all have the same fundamental needs for connection,
purpose, and to matter in this vast Universe. Perhaps now, more than
ever in the course of human history, we would benefit from a true
recognition of oneness based upon philosophical, spiritual and
scientific models.
•"It
is true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most
fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two
different lines of thought meet. These lines may have their roots in
quite different parts of human culture, in different times or different
cultural environments or different religious traditions: hence, if they
actually meet, that is, if they are at least so much related to each
other that a real interaction can take place, then one may find that
new and interesting developments will follow." —Werner Heisenberg, Nobel Laureate
Thank you for visiting!
Best wishes, Amber
P.S.
- Only
about 6,000 snow leopards are now left in the wild, down from some
9,000 in the year 2000! The WWF has a wonderful program where you can
symbolically adopt a snow leopard. Donate and you'll help to save those still left, plus you'll get a snow
leopard adoption kit (a cute snow leopard plush toy, tote, certificate,
species info card, and a photo).
And the WWF is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, so your
donation is fully tax deductible. You can see the snow leopard adoption
program here, and there are programs to adopt many other endangered animals as well. Thank you!