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  • Occult Paris Revealed – Artists, Mystics & the Revival of the Arcane Tradition: An Interview with Tobias Churton

    Occult Paris Revealed – Artists, Mystics & the Revival of the Arcane Tradition: An Interview with Tobias Churton

    From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 11 No 1 (Feb 2017)

    Tobias Churton is Britain’s leading scholar in Western esotericism. A film-maker, composer and poet, he recently completed his latest book, Occult Paris: The Lost Magic of the Belle Époque, that examines how Paris, in the closing years of the 19th century, became the locus for the most intense revival of magical practices and doctrines since the Renaissance. The spiritual and occult revival during this important period in Paris deeply influenced many well-known cultural movements, such as Symbolism, the Decadents, modern music, and the “psychedelic 60s.” Its legacy remains with us today.

    JOANNA EDWARDS (JE): What makes you want to write books? This is your eighteenth work is it not?

    TOBIAS CHURTON (TC): I love books. I started my first book when I was eleven. It was an illustrated history of the world. I typed it, which was unusual in those days, certainly for a boy. It’s not bad. Good pictures. I certainly had the idea that we have much to learn from history, and that the past is real, for our reality is already past, and time is a continuum, not a series of fleeting “nows.” That injunction to “Be Here Now” always makes me laugh.

    Anyhow, I got from the ancient Sumerians to Rome, at which point I was distracted by schoolwork, or something more involving. I learned that all empires fall. The last words of it were: “Knowledge is the prize we strive to seek.” Rather prophetic. I was somewhat unusual, it transpired. I cared about such things.

    When I was twenty and had just finished my Oxford studies, I went to see the retired bishop of Dorchester who was on his last legs in an Oxfordshire country nursing home. I was expecting to be ordained as a priest at some point. He asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I said I wanted to bring important knowledge through from the past, particularly spiritual knowledge that had been forgotten: to be a lamp for the future, which is darkness to us, despite the myriads of journalist-prophets, forever prognosticating on the future. So that’s what I do. I bring the knowledge through. Why so many books? I am aware that the biblical book of Ecclesiastes warns that “of making many books there is no end,” and that “all is vanity.” Well, someone preserved his book, didn’t they? You have to “labour while it is yet day.” Or as the little working creatures in The Flintstones used to say: “Somebody’s gotta do it” – or, more often: “It’s a living!” Writing is a way of life. So once you have a life, all you need is the “way” and the “truth,” which appear from living sincerely according to your gifts, and sticking to it, whatever the passers-by say. St. Paul taught that a little piece of wood saved the world. That’s where our paper comes from.

    JE: What gave you the idea to write Occult Paris?

    TC: In the “closing overs” of writing Gnostic Mysteries of Sex I investigated again a few of the beliefs of the remarkable Frenchman, Joséphin Péladan, who died towards the end of World War One, after a long fall from fame. The more I thought about some of his ideas, the less eccentric they appeared to me, and the wiser he became in my mind, despite an awful, longstanding reputation as a showman, dandy and eccentric. He used to wear medieval costume and had hair like Jimi Hendrix! When one thinks about it, much medieval costume was very practical and gracious, and certainly more attractive than the “casual” pseudo-sportif garments whose opacities currently pock the skin of the Western world.

    Anyhow, I thought of a biography of Péladan, and then after much consideration, decided to take on the whole movement of which he was a part. I also wanted to write another book that was about the deep bond between Art and spirituality, and Péladan was preoccupied with that relationship, though he did not act alone. He was part of a quite extraordinary community of painters, magicians, spiritual writers, novelists, composers, poets and journalists. They comprise the essence of what came to be called the “Belle Époque” that lasted from the end of the Franco-Prussian War to World War One which wrecked almost everything. We’ve still never really “got over” that destruction – as I used to feel when I was taken to see the Anzac Parade through Melbourne when I was a boy in Australia.

    I wanted to show how the Symbolists in Art, the Occultists, the Decadent Movement, and two of my favourite composers worked together to change profoundly the spiritual and aesthetic landscape. I wanted to show how the whole thing actually operated, for the first time in one book. Obviously I’d like people to be inspired by the possibilities, which are still valid and real, and realistic too.

    JE: This is a very sumptuous, attractive work. Apart from its handsome appearance and high production values, who would find this book interesting?

    TC: Do you like Art? Do you want to know what it’s really about? Are you interested in Magic, and want to know more about what makes things and people magical? Do you like French culture at any point, and want to know an amazing story that has been obscured by superficial readings of its outflow? Are you interested in Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, Spiritualism, the regaining of ancient powers of mind and sensibility? Are you interested in the social progress that existed before world war erupted? Are you attracted by the high zones of the Beautiful, the True and the Good? Do you like a fascinating story that has never been told in quite this way before, that has lots of material in it you won’t find anywhere else; unpublished documents and insights aplenty? Do you want something meaty, and moving and, hopefully, inspiring and grand? Yes? Then you ought to find this book of interest. It shows the inner landscape of some of the finest creative minds of our species. That they nearly all happen to be French is perhaps an accident merely of geography! The messages are universal. When is an image a symbol?

    JE: What are we to understand by the word “occult”?

    TC: This word has had quite a history! There must be something about its shape and sound. It used to be a perfectly respectable word and interest in Edwardian times. The Sixties saw it begin to be sensationalised around Dennis Wheatley-inspired movies. It means “hidden,” in the sense of something “occulted” by something else. So it is close to “esoteric” (the inside); one has to go a bit deeper than the appearance of things. There are qualities and energies that are not apparent. Science has revealed a great many “invisible powers,” and the history of occultism is entwined around the origins and development of science. The aim of “occultism” is to restore lost powers.

    The philosophy of “Occult Paris” as I call the period, is a concerted attempt to correct the fallen image and powers of Man. The philosophy of Martinès de Pasqually and Louis-Claude de St Martin was important, as was Fabre d’Olivet. The latter believed that most history was just superficial: mere events without inner meaning. So the occult is in fact not about hiding, but revealing that which has been obscured or hidden. Spiritual powers in particular. In French it’s all so much easier, where the word “ésprit” means both “spirit” and “mind.” In the 20th century we tend to think of “mind” as being a phenomenon of brain, rather than the other way around. It’s a chicken and egg thing. In Hebrew, “spirit” means “breath,” in the sense of what is apparent when a being is alive: invisible life force; we can feel it, but we cannot see it. We’re talking about the essential life of things that are animated – and “animated” comes from the Latin “anima” which we translate as “soul.” All these “things” are intertwined; they are not objects, but they are perceptible.

    JE: Were there other occult movements going on in the world at the time?

    TC: The French movement has been called an “Occult Revival,” so while there were existing occult sodalities in England, America, Germany and elsewhere from the 1870s to World War One, much that had existed before had faded or disappeared, and the French movement was particularly vital, integrated and influential, and inspired a great deal of what has followed.

    We might recall that the founder of the British Golden Dawn went to Paris to “set up shop,” and Aleister Crowley’s occult career really gets going in Paris – a place to which he returned, and eventually chose as his home. The key period was the decade of the 1880s and it’s no accident that the Parisian Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix was founded in 1888, the same year as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, in London. The Golden Dawn came out largely from the experience of Anna Kingsford’s “Hermetic Society” and Anna Kingsford cut her “occult” teeth in Paris, with Lady Caithness before moving to London.

    The Theosophical Society was founded in New York, of course, in 1875, and was of interest to most of the key figures of Occult Paris at least for a time, though Gérard Encausse (“Papus”), Stanislav de Guaita and several other key figures deferred from the Theosophical emphasis on Indian spiritual philosophy. And, of course there was the whole world of esoteric Freemasonry, with which the movement was also deeply connected. Paris was the main heartbeat, without a doubt.

    Madame Blavatsky loved being in Paris with her friend, Lady Caithness, whose almost incredible salons in the avenue de Wagram were so potent an influence. It was there that Jules Doinel’s Gnostic Church was born, whose branches reach into the present time, despite its difficult, sometimes scandalous, beginnings. If you want to understand modern esotericism, you need to get a grip on Occult Paris; it was a fountain.

    JE: Why was Paris so central to the movement?

    TC: That is one of those difficult questions, since the phenomenon is established and it’s difficult to imagine it not having happened, so we have hindsight, which has its own logic. However, in the book I venture some accounts of what made Paris in this period an almost inevitable spark-point for a new Hermetic movement. It has a great deal to do with the history of France after the Revolution of the 1790s severed France from much of its former certainties. I deal with this political aspect in the book, and it’s fascinating, because we see similar things happening in other post-revolutionary societies.

    Paris after the Franco-Prussian War moved towards the modern era with a heavy and conscious awareness of the importance of the Arts – this was perhaps Paris’s particular virtue at the time. There were sexual liberties explored (mostly by foreigners) in Paris with a flavour unique to the city, a kind of aesthetic pornography. We still think of the word “erotic” as having a kind of “French” flavour. The Last Tango must be in Paris. The confluence of social liberties, bourgeois hegemony, modernisation, political uncertainty, the attraction of the place for artists, the lack of a stable religious life, the arrival of Polish émigrés, often with messianic beliefs, and the pre-existence of revolutionary spiritualisms (such as Éliphas Lévi’s Transcendental Magic), all combined with other movements of the time, and insights coming from hither and thither.

    When it comes down to it, it is hard to escape the conclusion that while the circumstances were propitious, it was the appearance of certain personalities at key points that made it all possible. The “Decadent” movement already through Baudelaire had given birth to the notion of a “Satanic” salvation path, of going into the depths, of voluntary renunciation of bourgeois certainties and comforts to purge the stain from the diamond truth. And there was much of the industrial materialist “modern” to react against. It was a poetic movement: a rediscovery of a counter-philosophy to encroaching materialism and destructive vulgarity.

    JE: Are there any women involved in the story?

    TC: I have mentioned Lady Caithness, whose idea of the “Fourth Revelation” and the spiritual revelation of women, and the female priesthood, was extremely prescient and powerful. She has been almost forgotten but really you cannot think of female spiritual equality in the modern world without paying her generous tribute. I hope I do this adequately. I have mentioned Helena Blavatsky, of course. It’s nice to see her in a more enriching context than we are used to. Anna Kingsford was the woman who most inspired Samuel Mathers. Indeed, it was probably her death that precipitated the Golden Dawn’s formation, with all its contemporary offshoots. She was a remarkable lady, and quite extreme; she apparently used magic in an effort to bring men who she felt were a danger to animals to a deserved end! Before Albert Schweitzer, she had the idea of “reverence for life” as an essential spiritual and cross-denominational precept. These women were revered and listened to by men eager for spiritual inspiration.

    However, the predominant idea of the period, and which Péladan in particular promoted, was the revolutionary idea of Androgyny – which we saw flower to a curious extent among the hippies in the 60s and 70s – an idea which had clear Gnostic antecedents. The primal creative power in Hermeticism is “bisexual,” and becomes divided only in manifestation. It was also another good idea “pour épater les bourgeoises.” There is no doubt that in 1964 the Beatles’ long hair had more revolutionary shock value than their music, great as it was.

    JE: Are Rosicrucians involved in the story?

    TC: Certainly. A very important strand. I was able to research the existence of a continuity of the Rosicrucian impulse, active in Toulouse, France, in the early 19th century, with roots in the Cagliostro period in the late 18th century. That was fascinating, and will come as a revelation to those interested in Rosicrucian origins and developments. Péladan had his brother’s initiation into the Toulouse Rose-Croix as a foundation for his extraordinary Order of the Catholic Rose-Croix, the Temple and the Graal. Péladan’s movement has tended to be dismissed as a purely aesthetic fantasy of his, but I show that it has roots in far older “Rosicrucian” traditions. We also see how it is Péladan’s outlook that has influenced the whole “Priory of Sion” legend. No Péladan; no Dan Brown, you might say! I also show who the “Martinists” were and where they came from, and why the strand is so pivotal.

    JE: Is it true that you have included composers Claude Debussy and Erik Satie in your story? Why?

    TC: It has been a longstanding disgrace that Debussy continues to be described as an “Impressionist.” He hated this idea in his lifetime, but that has done nothing to prevent this travesty being reprinted on a myriad record and CD covers! It’s nonsense. As one Symbolist writer said: “The ceiling of Impressionism is too low.” Debussy was influenced deeply by the Hermetic understanding of Nature, shared among key writers known as “Symbolists” who tried to get to divine knowledge reflected in Nature, but whose source transcended appearances. I show how Debussy’s attendance at Bailly’s shop for “Independent Art” in the rue de la Chaussée d’Antin was a critical part of his personal and musical development, as was his personal relationship with Erik Satie. I demonstrate the esoteric construction of many of Debussy’s most well known compositions, and show why Satie’s “Gnossiennes” is plainly of Gnostic inspiration. This will be a gem for musicologists with minds willing to be opened. It also helps give us the essential “Gnostic soundtrack,” and show that Gnosis is a truly creative impulse well beyond the borders of conscious esoteric interest. If you want to scale the heights, you must get into the depths, and drink deep.

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    JE: What lessons can the Occult Movement teach us about today and the future of humankind?

    TC: How to be sensitive to Nature in its fullest sense; how to become a more divinely-tuned individual; how to find a path of interior self-realisation; how to develop the spiritual faculty of imagination; how to overcome religious and denominational differences. The benefits are practically limitless for we are talking essentially about the recovery of the original image of Man, and what it means to be a true Artist, that is to say, a Magician, and that Art is of God and encompasses all things. And my book shows how it has already happened, to inspire our best endeavours with full knowledge.

    JE: Do you think we should have lessons on Esotericism in schools?

    TC: I do; and the sooner the better.

    JE: Do you think it likely?

    TC: Change is possible; that is the essence of magic.

    Joanna Edwards is Head Teacher of a Church of England Cathedral School in England. Tobias Churton’s Occult Paris: The Lost Magic of the Belle Époque is available from all good bookstores. 

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  • The Coming Techno Apocalypse

    The Coming Techno Apocalypse

    From New Dawn 162 (May-June 2017)

    Imagine, if you will, a war in the near future. A war not fought between East and West. Not fought between nations, nor creeds nor races. A war fought brother to brother and sister to sister, father to son and mother to daughter.

    Tesh (technologists) against NonTesh (non-technologists).

    The Tesh, a tribe or caste intoxicated and socially validated through their umbilical connection to technology and the Meta/Hive Mind. Glued to Google Glass, status permanently updated: the Tesh always offer the right opinion at the right time. Incapable of nonGroupThink, the Tesh occupy all positions of import in the professional, media, academic and information classes. Opinions counter to Tesh GroupThink are not only by definition incorrect, they are also invisible – filtered, de-platformed and deleted into a silent nonexistence.

    The NonTesh are homeless, stateless non-people. Unable to participate in comfortable society’s rituals and prefabricated dialogues, without access to currency and the staid social discourse that lubricates function in the mainstream. They attack from the margins: wild wastelands, hardware graveyards and mountain ranges of landfill – zones abandoned by the Tesh as beyond rehabilitation. The unknowing progeny of the much-maligned (but historically vindicated) Luddites, the NonTesh build primitive Drone traps, savagely attack convoys of technicians and inflict random violence at the edges of Tesh civilisation. They slaughter and destroy with no plan, no blueprint – a simple, intuitive anger and violence that Tesh mainframe-algorithms cannot comprehend and struggle to strategise against.

    This will be the Final War – man against machine and man against machine-man.

    Trapped by Techno-Blindness?

    The omniscient progress of technology brings with it many benefits – this is beyond serious doubt. But seldom if ever discussed is technology’s insidious and largely invisible detriments. They remain near-invisible for many reasons: commercial imperatives, an infantile inability to see past convenience and short-term rewards and a surfeit of attractive and entertaining distractions. Perhaps the most difficult to discern are those problems that might occur in the moral, predictive, philosophical or ideological realms: spheres apparently far less concrete than instant, addictive neurochemical rewards and the superficial and textural allure of consumer electronics.

    Modern-era human society also appears rusted to the concept of progress – the idea that all technological advances are intrinsically positive whether immediate gains outweigh severe long-term deficits… or not.

    The black silicon squid of hyper-technology sends its powerful tentacles into every domain of human activity, its vice-like grip stultifying thought and any hint of animalistic defensive counter-measures. Our species suffocates in the death-grasp, yet lacks even the primal survival instinct to respond effectively. Is humankind fatally trapped by techno-blindness?

    Big Data & Psychographic Profiling

    While essentially unknown to the general public, the astounding technologies of the London based firm Cambridge Analytica (CA) are credited by some as having a fundamental role in the 2016 election of US President Donald Trump and the ‘Leave’ campaign that led to the UK Brexit. CA trumpets proudly on its website and in its strategic communications that they “use data modelling and psychographic profiling to grow audiences, identify key influencers, and connect with people in ways that move them to action.”

    Birthed at the nexus of leading Cambridge University Psychometric scientists and the SCL Group (self-described as a ‘global election management agency’), Cambridge Analytica works big data to identify and manipulate the intentions of mass voter populations.

    According to CA Chief Executive, Alexander Nix, “Today in the United States we have somewhere close to four or five thousand data points on every individual. So we model the personality of every adult across the United States, some 230 million people.” Harvesting Facebook ‘likes’, smartphone data, purchase histories, subscriptions, church visits, online and other available aggregate information, CA builds profiles of every individual in the target audience (i.e. every potential voter in the US during election season 2016) and generates a ‘psychographic analysis’ in combination with the OCEAN (‘openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism’) personality trait or ‘lexical hypothesis’ model to predict and influence the electoral actions of individuals.

    As reported in the Swiss Das Magazin, with just ten Facebook ‘likes’ as input, CA could “appraise a person’s character better than an average coworker. With seventy, it could ‘know’ a subject better than a friend; with 150 likes, better than their parents. With 300 likes… (the) machine could predict a subject’s behaviour better than their partner. With even more likes it could exceed what a person thinks they know about themselves.”

    Deployed in a number of developing nations, the SCL Group has worked extensively with military and political contacts in activities that Slate magazine described as akin to a ‘coup’ scenario.

    According to their website, “Cambridge Analytica is building a future where every individual can have a truly personal relationship with their favourite brands and causes by showing organisations not just where people are, but what they really care about and what drives their behaviour.”

    Professor Jonathan Albright of Elon University describes CA’s algorithms as “a propaganda machine. It’s targeting people individually to recruit them to an idea. It’s a level of social engineering that I’ve never seen before. They’re capturing people and then keeping them on an emotional leash and never letting them go.”

    CA’s Nix gave an example from their brief tenure on GOP candidate Ted Cruz’s primary campaign. Cambridge Analytica’s big data analysis “identified that there was a small pocket of voters in Iowa who felt strongly that citizens should be required by law to show photo ID at polling stations. Leveraging our other data models, we were able to advise the campaign on how to approach this issue with specific individuals based on their unique profiles in order to use this relatively niche issue as a political pressure point to motivate them to go out and vote for Cruz. For people in the ‘Temperamental’ personality group, who tend to dislike commitment, messaging on the issue should take the line that showing your ID to vote is ‘as easy as buying a case of beer’. Whereas the right message for people in the ‘Stoic Traditionalist’ group, who have strongly held conventional views, is that showing your ID in order to vote is simply part of the privilege of living in a democracy.” According to some sources, CA is able to bombard target individuals with thousands of uniquely tailored and feedback evolving ‘dark ads’ (advertisements that aren’t seen by others).

    ‘Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine’

    In a piece titled ‘The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine’, journalists Berit Anderson and Brett Horvath assert that Cambridge Analytica, “has activated an invisible machine that preys on the personalities of individual voters to create large shifts in public opinion. Many of these technologies have been used individually to some effect before, but together they make up a nearly impenetrable voter manipulation machine that is quickly becoming the new deciding factor in elections around the world.”

    It would be easy to argue that primitive versions of these techniques have indeed been used in various ‘coloured revolutions’ and ‘regime change’ operations for decades at least (and more subtly in the general domestic activities of the mainstream media): perhaps the only salient difference being that now the ‘coup’ chickens have extraordinary ‘Artificial Intelligence’ technologies at their disposal which have now clearly come home to roost.

    Fraught and fragile as our democracies are, the inevitable march of ‘progress’ means we’re about to lose them permanently to The Machine.

    Predictive Policing

    Technology also threatens to advance and empower policing to the realm of monolithic totalitarianism. In an eerie echo of Phillip K. Dick’s ‘Minority Report’ short story, predictive policing software and models are now deployed to assess the assumed future crimes of identified ‘criminal classes’. In Chicago, a city wracked by disproportionate levels of gun homicide, gang violence and rampant police brutality, a report in Scout Magazine notes that, “Microsoft, the Chicago Police Department, and a partner called Third Eye have created a cloud-based solution that predicts what types of criminal activity are likely to take place where. Using historical data, the Chicago force can deploy officers to specific locations across the city based on how likely crime is to occur there. They can also predict crime trends based on the weather, specific times of day or a range of other factors. The LA Police Department has developed an algorithm called PredPol that does the same thing.”

    Unfortunately, these predictive models are often wrong.

    ‘Beware’, a software model developed by security firm Intrado, was tasked with identifying an individual’s “threat level based on their address, searches of the deep web, arrest records, vehicle registrations, criminal records, warrants, property records, ‘known associates’ and the content of their latest social media posts.”

    Adopted in Fresno, California in 2015, ‘Beware’ was soon abandoned in April 2016 after persistent concerns were raised about its accuracy and deleterious effect on privacy.

    Aside from the obvious, nightmarish and Kafka-esque scenarios that predictive policing might produce, it should also be noted that any Artificial Intelligence capability can only be as useful and accurate as the data it utilises. Error-prone, biased or prejudiced inputs will inevitably produce arrests or harassment for what equates essentially to ThoughtCrime or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time (or even being the wrong person at the wrong time).

    Predictive policing will always risk impugning guilt through data aggregation rather than actual criminal action.

    Star Chamber ‘Justice’

    In recent decades the explosion in electronic and online communications has been a boon for surveillance industries and the instruments of the corporate and political state tasked with gathering masses of information. Post the revelations of NSA whistleblowers like William Binney and Edward Snowden (and Wikileaks’ recent ‘Vault7’ cache of documents), it appears safe to assume that all electronic communications are vulnerable to surveillance at all times.

    It came to light through the Snowden revelations that police and other law enforcement departments have regular and essentially uncontrolled access to ‘products’ of the NSA/CIA and surveillance state. Though use of this ostensibly illegally obtained information is inadmissible in court proceedings, police routinely work around this impasse by creating ‘parallel construction’, a technique to mask the use of ‘unconventionally obtained’ data from defendants or the accused.

    According to an August 2013 Reuters report, “A secretive US Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funnelling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defence lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.”

    In the US, local police and the FBI routinely use a device called a ‘Stingray’ that mimics a cell/mobile phone tower and thus can capture metadata and phone traffic content from nearby phones. No warrant is required for their use but The Guardian in August 2016 reported on a “non-disclosure agreement that local police were forced to sign with the FBI before receiving permission to use Stingray – a document that mandated local prosecutors to abandon cases rather than risk information about Stingray becoming public.”

    Using what are legally ‘invisible’ technologies to gather incriminating evidence poses myriad problems for the accused: a frightening ‘Star Chamber’ scenario that is reportedly now commonplace. As Reuters confirms, “If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.”

    The continued militarisation of police has been of concern to many. Now airborne drones (Unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs) are also becoming part of the increasingly high-tech law enforcement arsenal. In the US, North Dakota was the first state to legalise armed police drones. The aircraft will be nominally limited to ‘less-than-lethal’ weaponry (i.e. sonic weapons, tear gas, tasers, rubber bullets and pepper spray) though ‘mission creep’ would appear to make it inevitable that law enforcement will soon patrol from the skies with lethal firepower, a scenario that was science-fiction a few years ago.

    Connecting all to the ‘Internet of Things’ – Including People

    Advancements in ‘smart’ technology (or as author and Silicon Valley critic Evgeny Morozov calls them: “Surveillance. Marketed. As. Revolutionary. Technology.”) and the approaching ‘Internet of Things’ threaten an ominous near-future where common everyday/domestic appliances/devices – cars, dishwashers, refrigerators, televisions, toilets, washing machines, thermostats, alarm systems and alike – are, for ‘convenience sake’, automatically and intrinsically connected to the cloud/internet.

    Speaking in 2012 to the In-Q-Tel (the CIA’s venture capital arm) CEO Summit, then CIA Director General David Petraeus remarked about the impending ‘Internet of Things’ saying, “Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters – all connected to the next-generation Internet using abundant, low cost, and high-power computing – the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.

    “In practice, these technologies could lead to rapid integration of data from closed societies and provide near-continuous, persistent monitoring of virtually anywhere we choose. ‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies, particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft. Taken together, these developments change our notions of secrecy and create innumerable challenges – as well as opportunities.”

    US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, similarly remarked in February 2016 that, “In the future, intelligence services might use the ‘Internet of Things’ for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.”

    The day is fast approaching where your fridge might spy on you.

    Imagine Cambridge Analytica’s 4-5,000 data points harvested for every individual, correlated with tens of thousands of domestic data observations, and it becomes possible to build electronic and informational profiles of individuals of staggering scale and darkly malevolent detail.

    Secret CIA Technology Exposed

    Wikileaks’ 7 March 2017 dump of thousands of secret CIA technology documents confirmed a landscape of ubiquitous surveillance and data harvesting. Among the myriad revelations allegedly leaked from the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia:

    “‘Weeping Angel’, developed by the CIA’s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones. After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a ‘Fake-Off’ mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on. In ‘Fake-Off’ mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server.” (www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-07/wikileaks-hold-press-conference-vault-7-release-8am-eastern)

    As Internet renegade Kim Dotcom noted, the “CIA turns Smart TVs, iPhones, gaming consoles and many other consumer gadgets into open microphones,” and further the “CIA turned every Microsoft Windows PC in the world into spyware.”

    Also described was the CIA capability to hack computer networks while cloaked as another entity or state actor. The CIA UMBRAGE group, according to Wikileaks, “collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation. With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the ‘fingerprints’ of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.” (https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/)

    Further from Wikileaks: “As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.”

    This last point casts an ominous shadow on the 18 June 2013 death of controversial defence and surveillance journalist Michael Hastings. Just hours before his demise in an inexplicable and fiery, high speed auto-crash, Hastings said, “The Feds are interviewing my ‘close friends and associates’” and, “I’m onto a big story and need to go off the radar for a bit.”

    From ‘Smart Dust’ to ‘Bots’ that roam Internet forums and newspaper sites generating automated comments, from Barbie dolls that collect and wirelessly transmit children’s conversations to marketers, and algorithms or artificial intelligences that finger potential criminals, generate credit ratings, parole recommendations and employment decisions: we are about to leave the epoch of human decision making and enter a brave new era of automated or ‘virtual intelligence’.

    Some, like renowned technologist, futurist and Google Director of Engineering Ray Kurzweil celebrate the coming ‘singularity’ – the point when computer intelligence equals or surpasses human intelligence and potentially the human mind melds with technology. Kurzweil predicts that by 2029 our brains will fuse with machines and the event will usher in a new ‘techno-utopia’ where according to his evangel, “We’re going to be able to meet the physical needs of all humans. We’re going to expand our minds and exemplify those artistic qualities that we value.”

    Another noted technologist, Elon Musk, struck a far more cautionary tone in October 2014: “With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.”

    Digital Control Machine Will Never Sleep

    It’s easy to drown in the multifarious, conceptual and jargonistic details – the techno-babble and giddy utopianism.

    But the simplest observation is also the best and most essential – in a few short years we will already be in a future where every interaction with any electronic device, technology or landscape will most likely be recorded, stored, analysed and actioned. Every phone conversation will be harvested for advertising data; every comment, search or online visit yielding the raw stuff of social engineering and opinion/vote massaging; every opinion big data grist for the ‘Shock Doctrine’ mill: a traitorous crop of domestic appliances will report on conversations, sleep, ablution and eating habits as online algorithms patrol like nano-ThoughtPolice – reporting social media infractions to employers and state bodies.

    Always on – always transmitting – always analysing and evolving: the Digital Control Machine will never sleep.

    It is, in the most basic form, a nightmare world of permanent, inescapable surveillance and panopticon monitoring: a Technological Prison that serves up constant entertainments and distractions with the small, dutiful price of mental conditioning and omniscient servitude. Permanently connected to ‘the Cloud’, a remotely controlled and infinite feedback system that modulates mood, thought, opinion and activity. Soon we will be digital puppets, addicted to ‘sticky’ devices and rewarded for our compliance by serotonin hits and endless ‘content’.

    In 1984 George Orwell imagined a brutal dystopia of regimented ‘Thought Police’ and perpetual war. Previously, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World described a future of bio-chemical thought/mood enhancement and control through the cheerfully prescribed and gladly ingested ‘soma’ of ritualised and inescapable entertainments and obligatory trivia and tribal custom.

    Our near-tomorrow will likely be a hybrid of the two – swift, final technological punishment for the troublesome ‘Michael Hastings’ types (those who have transgressed beyond rehabilitation) – and endless, comfortable distraction for those who submit meekly to the gilded techno-cage. A soft, warm and luxurious digital boot “stamping on a human face – forever.”

    Human society’s breathless race to embrace dehumanising and inherently totalitarian technologies must have an end point.

    It’s possible to form a cogent argument that recent political ‘shocks’ and developments (the election of Donald Trump, Brexit, the impending demise of the EU and UN) are in some sense the manifestation of a sublimated rejection of technology (and the government/economic/corporate systems empowered by technology) from a dazzled, bewildered but instinctively antagonistic herd-populace.

    Is it to be war between those Transhumans who accept and rejoice in their hybridisation into the matrix of omniscient ideological control technologies (an adjunct of the modern permanent state of entertainment/distraction and doctrinal/behavioural feedback), and those on the margins who knowingly or intuitively reject the encroachment of optic fibre, microwave blast and touch-screen texture into every last human domain of flesh, thought, sinew and soul?

    The Final War – the ragtag remnants of man-kind against man-machine.

    Tesh versus NonTesh.

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  • What Are UFOs? Terrestrial, Extraterrestrial & Metaterrestrial Theories…

    What Are UFOs? Terrestrial, Extraterrestrial & Metaterrestrial Theories…

    This article was published in New Dawn Special Issue 17 (Sept 2011)

    If there’s one thing we learn from studying UFOs, there is no simple answer to what it’s all about. Most of the public – and even many Ufologists – tend to lump together all UFO incidents into a single phenomenon. But the evidence indicates there is no single explanation for all the material categorised under “UFO experience.” 

    According to author and researcher John White, we are actually looking at a multilevelled phenomenon – terrestrial, extraterrestrial and metaterrestrial – and each is qualitatively different from the others. Each has its own unique forms of UFOs, and each form has to be distinguished from the others of that level. 

    John White has extensive experience in the fields of consciousness research and paranormal phenomena. He has personally investigated the UFO phenomenon. 

    John holds degrees from Dartmouth and Yale, and is the author of 15 books. He has lectured at educational institutions and spiritual centres throughout the United States and Canada, and before public and professional organisations.

    He is a contributor to a newly compiled collection of the knowledge and insight of the world’s leading experts on modern Ufology. Exposed, Uncovered, and Declassified: UFOs & Aliens reveals startling evidence of famous sightings and contact with aliens, and uncovers classified files from archives. 

    In the following interview with New Dawn magazine, John White defines ‘UFO’ and outlines three different levels of understanding this mysterious phenomenon that has both a physical and metaphysical dimension.

    NEW DAWN (ND): What is the definition of UFO?

    JOHN WHITE (JW): I use the one developed by the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, which is an international group of lay people and scientists who’ve been investigating the subject for decades. MUFON says UFOs are objects observed in the skies or on the surface of the Earth which defy conventional explanation after a thorough study and investigation by competent people.

    Now, lots of sightings have been shown to be due to misperception of more familiar things such as balloons, planets, meteors, satellites, stars, advertising aircraft, falling aerospace debris, and so forth. These are IFOs or identified flying objects. The sightings which are yet to be explained are what MUFON calls daylight discs – objects with unusual lights which are simultaneously tracked visually and on radar at fantastic speeds. Also, some sightings involve objects which leave physical evidence after landing. Still other sightings involve authenticated photographs. And of course there are cases involving visitations or close encounters by humanoids or entities.

    The UFO phenomenon is multilevelled and can’t be explained in a unified fashion. Little green men in spaceships with Martian license plates may be part of the puzzle, but that is only one piece of it. There is much more.

    ND: Such as?

    JW: In my judgment, the evidence of Ufology falls into three major categories, and so I say there are three “answers” to the UFO problem – three qualitatively different answers. Those answers – all genuine, all real – relate to what can be called different levels of reality or different aspects of our existence.

    To put it simply, the levels or aspects are: terrestrial, extraterrestrial and metaterrestrial. Metaterrestrial is a term coined by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the US astronomer-ufologist. He meant it to denote an unseen world beyond the familiar three-dimensional world we know. (He also coined the term “close encounters of the first, second and third kind.”) This three-part explanation for the UFO problem is the overview I hold. We don’t have time to go into the evidence in detail, so I’ll just sketch it in very broad strokes in order to give an outline of the overview I’ve come to hold of the UFO phenomenon.

    EXTRATERRESTRIAL 

    I’ll start with the most common idea of what UFOs are, namely, extraterrestrial. It’s most common simply because it’s been around longest and has gradually gained widespread acceptance.

    ND: The question is whether there’s any truth to it.

    JW: I think there is. In fact, judging from the Humanoid Catalog data base of more than 3,000 modern UFO sightings in which a wide variety of humanoids were present, I regard Earth as one of the major crossroads of local space. Some UFO experiences seem best understood exactly as the public does – namely, as constructed physical vehicles occupied by ETs. The case for the existence of ETs somewhere in the universe has been solidly established over the last five decades by astrobiology, quite apart from the data of Ufology. Astrobiologists are pushing SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, by using radio telescopes to listen for signals from space. And although the scientific community, by and large, does not accept Ufology as a colleague discipline, that rejection really is illogical and unscientific. But even that is changing as astronomy discovers planets revolving around other stars than the Sun – and the list of planets is now more than 1,200.

    ND: What is the evidence astrobiologists should consider?

    JW: There’s the world-famous case of Barney and Betty Hill, which was reported in a 1965 book entitled The Interrupted Journey. For me, the most persuasive aspect of the case is the Hill Star Map.

    ND: Tell our readers about it.

    JW: While driving on a deserted road near Exeter, New Hampshire in 1961, the Hills were reportedly abducted by small, thin, gray beings with large heads who took the couple aboard a UFO. Betty was shown a hologram-like map of space with the route indicated which the beings followed from their home star to Earth. She saw the route which the aliens followed and she saw it in full 3-D, as if she were looking out a porthole into space.

    In 1964, Betty and Barney underwent hypnotic therapy for symptoms which, they discovered, arose from their abduction experience. At the suggestion of their therapist, Boston psychiatrist Benjamin Simon, Betty drew a picture of the three-dimensional map she’d seen on board the craft in 1961. Her map was a flat reconstruction on paper which showed our Sun and other stars from the perspective of the aliens’ home star. When it was published in The Interrupted Journey, an Ohio school teacher named Marjorie Fish saw the picture and got the idea to use an astronomical catalogue of stars to help her build a model of space by stringing beads on a wooden framework. The beads represented stars up to 40 light-years away, accurately placed around the centre, representing Earth, in accordance with the astronomical catalogue data. It took Fish three years, working off and on, to finish her model. When she was done, she looked at it from every angle in an attempt to find the pattern of stars which matched Betty Hill’s map. But she couldn’t find a matching pattern. All her attempts at the time failed.

    Then, in 1969, a new catalogue with revised astronomical data made it possible for Fish to construct a more accurate model of nearby space. It took another three years, but when she was done, she found a pattern of beads which matched the pattern in the Hill Star Map almost perfectly. The home base of the aliens appeared to be the star Zeta Reticuli, in the constellation Reticulum, about 37 light-years from Earth. Astronomers and Ufologists debated the matter and it is now settled in favour of Fish rather than being just a random matching of stars.

    Now, here’s the reason this is persuasive. The Hill Star Map was drawn in 1964 yet it contained information unknown to anyone on Earth at the time. Fish had to wait until the revised astronomical catalogue was published in 1969, before human knowledge was sufficient for her to construct an accurate representation of local space. So how did Betty Hill get her knowledge of stars in space eight years before the catalogue? Logic tells us that the holographic map she claimed to see aboard a UFO was real and thus the information on which Betty Hill based her map strongly suggests that it was of extraterrestrial origin.

    TERRESTRIAL 

    ND: What about the second category of UFOs you mention – the terrestrial?

    JW: It would be nice if all UFO cases proved to be extraterrestrial in nature, but some are best understood as originating from Earth itself. In other words, these are terrestrial.

    Some UFO sightings have taken place at sea and on large bodies of water, and involve craft which observers say burst through the surface of the water and take off into the sky. The late American biologist Ivan Sanderson wrote about this in his book Invisible Residents, which gives the best description of this aspect of the UFO phenomenon. Sanderson felt these sightings might be due to the presence of an undersea civilisation native to Earth. He reasoned that since life began in the sea, when some organisms came ashore it slowed their development while sea-living organisms continued to evolve. Look at cetaceans, Sanderson said. Although porpoises, dolphins and whales are not technological, they are highly intelligent. We humans are able to weld metal under water and we can mix concrete which sets under water. So today there may be advanced forms of sea life more intelligent than humans and capable of UFO technology, living invisibly on Earth under the oceans and other large aquatic bodies. Of course, it may also be that ETs have established undersea bases.

    ND: What else is in the terrestrial category?

    JW: Some UFO experiences seem best understood as human contact with a lower form of animal life native to Earth’s atmosphere. The discovery of these strange aerial creatures is told in Trevor James Constable’s 1976 book The Cosmic Pulse of Life. He simply calls them “critters.” His text and photographs reveal a class of elemental fauna unknown to official science. These amoeba-like aeroforms are neither solid, liquid nor gas. The exist in the fourth state of matter – plasma – and are normally invisible for several reasons. First, their native habitat is high in the atmosphere far beyond human gaze but nevertheless well below the astronomers’ usual telescopic focus. Second, they are bioenergetically propelled and move at a very high speed – thousands of miles per hour. Last, their usual condition is in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, they have the capacity to change their density and thereby pass from one level of tangibility to another. Thus, they sometimes do appear in the visible portion of the spectrum where, if seen by humans, they are quickly labelled UFOs – which, of course, they are. But they are not mechanical spacecraft; they are living creatures. They grow anywhere from the size of a coin to at least half a mile in diameter. They give a solid radar return, even though invisible to the naked eye. When they’re visible, they pulsate with a reddish-orange glow. They can change their form, but generally are seen as discs or spheroids. Their diaphanous structure allows a limited view of the interior. When Ivan Sanderson saw Constable’s photos, he said they made him feel like he was looking through a fishbowl. Some critters have been seen close up on the ground in full physical density, according to Constable’s research.

    ND: Do you have other evidence for terrestrial UFOs?

    JW: Still another plausible terrestrial explanation for some UFO sightings is given in the term “earth lights.” It was coined by the English researcher Paul Devereux in his 1982 book Earth Lights and amplified in his 1989 book Earth Lights Revelations. The books present evidence to show that geophysical activity in crystalline rock structures, especially along fault lines, produces a piezoelectric effect. That subsurface pressure generates electromagnetic fields above the fault lines, and in those fields, hot electrified balls of gas are formed – ionized plasmas. Those ionized plasmas are luminous atmospheric phenomena, and that is what Devereux calls earth lights.

    Now, aerial luminosities have been noted throughout history around the world, but their origin has been attributed to supernatural causes and labelled as “will-o’-the-wisp,” ignis fatuus, ghost lights, and so forth. Dr. Michael Persinger, a psychologist at Laurentian University in Canada, and Gyslaine Lafrenière, a research scientist there, demonstrated in their 1977 book entitled Space-Time Transients and Unusual Events that such phenomena may have a terrestrial origin and be capable of inducing many effects in the minds of human observers, depending on their distance from the site, such as have been noted in UFO sightings and even abductions. Devereux and his colleagues’ research, independent of Persinger and Lafrenière’s, has enlarged upon the possibility that tectonically generated earth lights may account for some UFO sightings and mysterious ghostly figures.

    This line of research is collectively known as the tectonic strain theory. Geophysicists have investigated this phenomenon for a long time because of reports during earthquake activity that the shaking earth was accompanied by aerial lights. The lights weren’t called UFOs, of course – just strange luminosities which sometimes appeared in association with earthquakes. In the mid-1980s, the US Geological Survey, in its journal Earthquakes and Volcanoes, published the first photo of one ever. It was snapped by someone with enough presence of mind to shoot it during an earthquake here in the US. A vaguely defined ball of light about six feet wide is clearly visible in the air.

    So there you have several terrestrial-based phenomena which seem to me to explain some UFO sightings and, except for the possibility of undersea ET bases, they have absolutely nothing to do with craft from outer space. But the list of terrestrial-based explanations needs to be enlarged by one – and a very strange one, indeed. It takes us right up to the border of physical nature and passes over into the metaphysical, or more precisely, into the parapsychological. I’ll call it the psychokinetic explanation.

    ND: Psychokinetic? As in mind over matter?

    JW: Yes. The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung is known for his contribution to psychology of the concept he termed “the collective unconscious.” He hypothesised that we human beings have not only a personal unconscious, which Freud demonstrated, we also have a deeper layer of mind which is somehow shared by everyone, and this aspect of our minds includes memories of human experiences from the beginnings of our race. Ancient symbols reside in our minds, such as the Wise Old Man, the Hero and the Evil One, representing the collective experience of humanity in certain basic categories. In his book Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky, Jung proposed that UFOs are symbolic projections of deep human yearnings for wholeness and transformation in the collective psyche of humanity. Without denying their physical nature – because, of course, UFOs have been photographed and tracked on radar – Jung speculated that UFOs are either our own psychic projections perceived objectively in the sky or they are the appearance of real objects which afford humans an opportunity to project mythological symbols from deep in the collective psyche. The oldest symbol of wholeness or totality is the circle. So flying saucers, Jung said – those round shining objects in the sky – require a psychological interpretation as a symbol of the human yearning for certainty and completeness in an age of rapid change and uncertainty.

    Some UFOs may be the creation of our own minds. Sounds wild, doesn’t it? But there is some research supporting that. In the 1970s, Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler, a parapsychologist at City College of New York, conducted research with the well-known psychic Ingo Swann. In a completely darkened laboratory, she photographed Swann as he used mental intention and his psychokinetic power of mind over matter to envision light streaming from his outstretched arms. Guess what? The photos showed a visible glow around Swann’s hands. So if one person’s mental intention can produce a physical effect such as that, what might the collective intention and unconscious psychic ability which everyone seems to have in some degree produce?

    I don’t think that’s far-fetched. In fact, one psychic I know, Stella Lansing of Massachusetts, used to get photos of UFOs which no one else ever saw in the sky. They were beautiful 35 mm colour slides of well-formed, clearly visible, apparently metallic craft. The only problem with her photos was this: in at least one instance which I examined, the image of a UFO extended from one frame across the intervening section of film onto the succeeding frame! Now, as you know, that intervening section of film is not exposed to light from outside the camera. It’s mechanically impossible to do that. There’s absolutely no way those two frames could represent an actual object in space outside the camera. So the image had to have been generated directly inside the camera by Stella’s own psychokinetic power. This psychic phenomenon is called thoughtography, and psychiatrist Jules Eisenbud, who investigated the phenomenon in a man named Ted Serios, has established the case for such mind over matter photography.

    This interaction between mind and matter, between the physical brain and the metaphysical mind, and taking place at a distance, points toward the last major category of UFO phenomena which I see as yet another piece of the puzzle.

    METATERRESTRIAL 

    Metaterrestrial means something which originates outside the ordinary three-dimensional space-time framework in which we normally function. The word is synonymous with metaphysical, meaning “beyond the physical,” but it has a more scientific connotation to it, like hyperspace and quantum space do. Some people call that realm extradimensional, interdimensional, ultraterrestrial and supraphysical. Whatever word we use for it, this category of answer provides evidence that some UFO experiences are due to nonphysical but real entities which come not from other locations in our physical universe but from other sets of dimensions or other realms which interpenetrate our more familiar space-time.

    In short, and as Dr. Jacques Vallée first pointed out in his 1968 book Passport to Magonia, many UFO incidents appear to be contemporary versions of what was recorded long ago in mythology, religious scripture and spiritual traditions as encounters with angels, demons and the various inhabitants of other planes of existence. Through a process we don’t understand, these metaterrestrial beings materialise into our space-time from other levels or other realms of reality. Those levels or realms have a wide range of beings which are native to them, just as our own level of reality has creatures ranging from viruses to whales and from algae to redwoods.

    I think the best case to illustrate this is the famous miracle at Fatima, Portugal, which occurred in 1917. It’s popularly known in Roman Catholic tradition as “the day the Sun danced” and as “the day the Sun fell” because a brilliant Sun-like object came near the ground. Thousands of people witnessed it.

    Some Ufologists regard the Fatima events as a display of advanced technology in which ETs are manipulating human belief systems via holographic projections. I acknowledge that possibility. But there is another tradition – namely, Eastern religion – which offers detailed information about a class of celestial beings whose characteristics are remarkably similar to what was seen at Fatima.

    Moreover, some UFO contactees describe meetings with nonphysical entities who materialise into our space-time continuum from other sets of dimensions or higher planes of existence. Those nonphysical entities have been called names such as Space Brothers, extradimensionals and ultraterrestrials, and their existence is said to be on a scale enormously beyond the human, just as ours is beyond that of insects, which in turn are similarly beyond microbes. From the metaterrestrial level of reality, it is said, these higher forms of life influence and even guide human affairs.

    The most common name for them is deva, a Sanskrit word which means “shining one” or “radiant being.” It is the conceptual equivalent of what we moderns call an angel. More generally, it means a being of light. Devas are said to belong to another kingdom of life. They are a separately created, very high order of existence which has the role of supervising lower orders. Devas exist in a nonphysical but ontologically real form magnitudes of cosmological order beyond the human level. Considered abstractly in scientifically oriented terms, devas can be described as conscious, formative principles which guide and regulate life forms below them in the ladder of creation or the great chain of being, irrespective of space-time coordinates.

    Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism are especially rich in information about devas. Some signs which announce the presence of these normally unseen entities are the sudden appearance of rainbows and perfume, multicoloured flower blossoms falling from the air, sudden high winds, various celestial phenomena such as shooting stars and lights in the sky, and multicoloured clouds forming themselves into unusual shapes. That sounds a lot like the Fatima UFO to me.

    ND: Please sum up what you’ve told our readers.

    JW: The UFO phenomenon appears to be multifaceted and there is no neat, simple answer to what it’s all about. In my judgment, the public and even many Ufologists are indiscriminately lumping together UFO sightings and incidents into a single phenomenon. But the evidence indicates that no single explanation can cover all the experiences and events brought together under the label “UFO experience.” It is a multilevelled phenomenon. And each level – terrestrial, extraterrestrial and metaterrestrial – is qualitatively different from the others. Each has its own unique forms of UFOs, and each form has to be distinguished from the others of that level.

    Our understanding of the UFO phenomenon can be compared to our evolving understanding of the atom. In ancient Greece, the atom was regarded as the ultimate unit of matter. However, the rise of science demonstrated that the atom was not “rock-bottom reality.” Rather it was composed of protons, electrons and neutrons. Thus, a new level of reality emerged – the subatomic. Continuing scientific research discovered a host of new particles, such as neutrinos, quarks, mesons, bosons, and other exotic forms of matter below that of the atom. Most recently, science has discovered a still more basic or fundamental aspect of reality, the quantum level. Our present understanding regards it as the level from which all the particles and the four fundamental forces – gravity, electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces – arise.

    The UFO experience can be regarded in a somewhat similar manner. There is no single “unit” of the UFO experience. There are different phenomena, outwardly appearing to be the same thing, but actually qualitatively distinct from one another. And they can be classified not only in the horizontal dimension as discrete phenomena, they also can classified vertically as belonging to one or another level of reality.

    Only when we understand the UFO phenomenon as multilevelled and multifaceted will we move to a deeper understanding of this intriguing and mysterious topic, and begin to solve the puzzle called the UFO experience.

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  • Is Our Sun Conscious?

    Is Our Sun Conscious?

    This article was published in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 10 No 6 (Dec 2016)

    I have been studying our Sun for some years, focusing on the influence of erratic solar behaviour (erratic from a modern human perspective) on the course of human development and civilisation. One of my major conclusions is that the last ice age ended abruptly circa 9700 BCE due to a major solar outburst (or series of outbursts). Solar activity is intimately tied to climate changes on Earth, which in turn have major effects on life on our planet, including humanity.

    Following the solar agitation and disturbances that ended the last ice age and possibly continued for several millennia, during the last 8,000 years or so the Sun has been relatively stable, with periods of quiescence.1 For example, in historical times during the Maunder Minimum (circa 1645 to 1715) the Sun appeared to “shut down” or go dormant (as reflected in the rarity of sunspots), corresponding on Earth to the middle of the “Little Ice Age” (which in totality lasted from circa 1500 to circa 1860). At the end of the “Little Ice Age,” in 1859, the Sun “burped,” spewing out two coronal mass ejections (CMEs), accompanied by solar flares and other solar activity, that hit Earth. This become known as the Carrington Event (named after British astronomer Richard Carrington who observed a solar flare that preceded the main event). At the time unusual auroras were seen around the world due to the solar outburst, and the primitive mid-nineteenth century telegraph lines were overloaded by the incoming charged particles and accompanying geomagnetic storm.

    Overall, in 1859 the solar outburst caused little more than minor damage and a bit of an inconvenience for those who utilised the telegraph lines. If a Carrington-level event were to hit today, the story would be much different! A Carrington-level event could knock out modern electronics around the globe, bringing computer systems, electrical grids, the Internet, communications, satellites, and much more to a standstill.2

    In modern times, that is since about the middle of the twentieth century, the Sun has shown increasing signs of agitation, of variability, of erratic behaviour, of “mood swings,” the likes of which have not occurred since the solar outbursts that ended the last ice age. And the solar outbursts of circa 9700 BCE and the succeeding millennia were orders of magnitude greater than the 1859 Carrington Event. Prior to 9700 BCE sophisticated cultures – civilisation – had developed (witnessed dramatically by the archaeological remains found at Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey). This early cycle of civilisation was devastated by the solar outbursts of circa 9700 BCE and a solar-induced dark age (or SIDA for short, an acronym coined by my wife Catherine Ulissey) ensued for thousands of years until civilisation fully re-emerged in places such as Mesopotamia and Egypt during the period of circa 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE.

    If we were to witness a repeat of the events, the solar outbursts, that ended the last ice age, there is no doubt our modern technological civilisation would be utterly decimated. We would be thrown back to a “stone age” and worse. Why do I say “and worse”? Because today we have hundreds of nuclear power plants around the globe. If a Carrington-level event, much less a solar outburst at the level of that at the end of the last ice age, were to hit us today, power lines would be disabled, the cooling systems and other components of nuclear power plants would be compromised, and we would have Fukushima type situations or worse around the world releasing radioactivity into the environment, compounding all of the other problems brought on by the failure of modern electronic and electrical systems.3

    What are the chances of a Carrington-level event, much less a 9700 BCE-level event, occurring in the foreseeable future? I suspect very high! I do not want to be a scaremonger or doomsayer, but there is evidence to suggest that our Sun is going through a volatile period, with major ups and downs in activity.4 Some researchers suggest that although the Sun was very active in the last few decades, it has in recent years gone into a quiescence period. Some even claim we might be headed for another “ice age” (whether a mini or major ice age).5 I feel this is an invalid extrapolation of the limited data we have.

    Activated Sun

    It could be that the Sun is once again going through a period of extreme variability, manifesting as a pattern of highs and lows in solar activity. That is, we should not extrapolate from a few years (or even a couple of decades) of relatively low solar activity to the conclusion that we are imminently entering another ice age. Indeed, the Sun may suddenly become active again, or it might undergo a major solar outburst even in the midst of an overall period of relative inactivity. The 1859 Carrington Event occurred between a solar minimum and a solar maximum during a rather mediocre solar cycle; based on short-term methods of analyses, it is unlikely to have been predicted even with modern techniques (at the time, scientists were not even aware of the modern concept of major solar outbursts so no one was even attempting such predictions).

    Looking at the longer term pattern of solar activity over the last 12,000 years (reconstructed from such data as isotope concentrations in Greenland ice cores), my judgment is that our Sun is showing all of the same signs of extreme variability and disequilibria which occurred at the end of the last ice age.6 The implication is we may experience a major solar outburst in the very near future. Indeed, in July 2012 a significant solar outburst barely missed hitting Earth.7 If the eruption had occurred just a week or so earlier it would have been Earth-directed, and most likely destroyed or compromised much of our modern electronic and electrical technology and infrastructure. Even now, years later, we would still be attempting to rebuild the modern world. And the July 2012 event occurred during our current solar cycle,8 which has been unusually quiet overall, to the point that (as noted above) some people predict a partial solar shutdown and a “mini ice age” or even the beginning of a true ice age.

    With this introduction, I want to turn to the subject of the title of this article: Is Our Sun Conscious? I wonder, in all seriousness, if it was just luck or good fortune that the July 2012 solar event was a near miss from Earth’s perspective, or if there was possibly something else involved?

    A Conscious Sun?

    For the past several years my wife, Catherine (Katie) Ulissey, has been following observations of the Sun on a regular – usually daily – basis. Solar flares and accompanying coronal mass ejections (CMEs) can erupt from sunspots, so sunspots and their activity are a potential short-term indicator of an impending major solar outburst that, if Earth-directed, could cause massive devastation to our modern technological society, as might have happened if the July 2012 solar eruption had hit us.

    Katie often comments to me that otherwise very active sunspots strangely lessen the severity of their activity, producing smaller solar flares and so forth, or even appear to become temporarily dormant and shut down their activity, when they are Earth-facing. Then, as they move around to the side and back of the Sun (as viewed from Earth; the Sun rotates on its axis and of course Earth revolves around the Sun), these same sunspots begin firing again, increasing their activity dramatically. It is as if the Sun is aware of Earth’s presence and is attempting to avoid spewing a major solar outburst (whether a solar flare, CME, or some other type of solar eruption) directly at us.

    Katie is not the only observer to comment anecdotally on this apparent pattern;9 others have independently suggested, perhaps in jest, that our Sun is consciously attempting to protect us from being hit by a major solar outburst. In analogy, imagine a person who is about to sneeze, but is able to hold it long enough to turn away and avoid sneezing on someone else.

    This may seem like a very weak basis for suggesting our Sun has the property of consciousness, but there is additional evidence. The Sun is a fairly typical star, and it has been found stars exhibit anomalous behaviours that are not easily explained by the theories of standard physics.

    As physicist Gregory Matloff (New York City College of Technology) has discussed,10 stars do not appear to move in the ways that standard theories, such as formulations based on Newton’s theory of gravity, predict. Stars typically move around the centre of the galaxy in which they are located. Standard theory predicts that stars closest to the galactic centre should revolve more rapidly than those farther from the centre (just as Mercury travels more rapidly around the Sun than does Saturn, which is much farther from the Sun). However, this proves not to be the case. On the whole, stars farther from the galactic centre move more rapidly than stars closer to the galactic centre; it is as if all of the stars are mounted on a huge rotating wheel. Another problem with standard theory is that the masses of clusters of galaxies (as best as can be calculated based on our observations) are not great enough to hold the clusters together gravitationally. To address these issues, the concept of “Dark Matter” has been hypothesised. In simple terms, Dark Matter, which according to its advocates is said to compose the majority of matter in the universe, is essentially undetectable except for its gravitational effects on visible matter and radiation. Supposedly, Dark Matter can explain the anomalous movements of stars and the clustering of galaxies.

    Do Stars have a Will of Their Own?

    There is another explanation that could also account for the anomalous behaviour of stars, an explanation that does not need to invoke undetected Dark Matter: stars are conscious and move according to their own will or volition. In one of his articles, Gregory Matloff defines “a conscious entity as one capable of volition – it has enough self-awareness that it can decide to take (or not take) a selected action.” Thus “a conscious star can decide to alter its motion to participate in the great stellar dance as stars orbit the centres of their galaxies. Such a star need not have a human-level or god-like consciousness. A simple herding instinct is enough.”11 The existence of such consciousness in stars, which are following a herding instinct (similar to a school of fish swimming together or a flock of birds flying together), would adequately explain their otherwise anomalous motions. Is this a simpler explanation than invoking Dark Matter?

    Matloff has also discussed several potential mechanisms by which stars might be able to express their will and consciously change their trajectories. The best established mechanism is the use of jets of material emitted from the star. Young stars emit intense jets of material, often bipolar but not necessarily symmetrical. Asymmetric jets exuded by young stars could be used to preferentially change and adjust their trajectories. Mature stars, such as our Sun, emit a “solar wind” consisting of electrically-charged particles. Variations in the intensity, in various directions, of the solar wind could change the path of the star. One must remember that, as Matloff points out, changes in the trajectory of a star that may be “significant” to the star over its long lifetime of millions or billions of years (our Sun is estimated to be nearly five billion years old) may appear trivial or imperceptible to us. The use by our Sun of jets and variations in the solar wind to express will and volition could be related to the idea that our Sun may consciously attempt to avoid throwing solar eruptions toward Earth – and if this is the case, it is then also the case that the Sun could consciously decide at some point to hit Earth with a major solar outburst. Is this what happened at the end of the last ice age, circa 9700 bce? Or was the solar outburst at that time an “accident”?

    Matloff tentatively suggests two other mechanisms by which our Sun, or any conscious star, might theoretically change its trajectory: 1) Variations in the pressure of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, given off by the star; and 2) by psychokinesis. Electromagnetic radiation pressure seems like a plausible possibility, although little work has been done to model how great the variation would have to be to change a star’s trajectory. Possibly changes in electromagnetic radiation could be used volitionally by stars for other purposes, such as communication among themselves. Psychokinesis (also known as telekinesis or mind-over-matter) has, to my satisfaction, been demonstrated to exist among biological organisms such as humans.12 Whether psychokinesis could (or does) exist among other conscious entities, such as possibly stars, is currently unknown – although I am not aware of any theoretical reason why it should not.

    But how can the Sun and stars be conscious when they are not even biological organisms, at least not in the sense of carbon-based cellular creatures like ourselves? A common notion, which is not to say it is correct (all too often common notions and “common sense” are wrong), is that consciousness and volition (at least in nature) can only occur in carbon-based forms of biological organisms, and many people would limit the notion of consciousness to “advanced” biological organisms like vertebrates, mammals, or, according to some, only human beings. However, various researchers have argued that consciousness may arise at a quantum level and may not be limited to familiar biological organisms such as ourselves.

    For instance, the British physicist Sir Roger Penrose (University of Oxford) and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff (The University of Arizona Medical Center) have developed the theory of orchestrated objective reduction as an explanation for how consciousness arises. Essentially, an orchestrated coherent series of quantum reductions (wave function collapses) result in moments and sequences of consciousness and choice or decision-making.13 As it turns out, according to such analyses, the conditions conducive to the manifestation of consciousness may occur on and in stars. Indeed, at a more fundamental level, consciousness may be inherent to the manifestation of matter and exist throughout the universe – with most conscious beings taking forms other than “biological organisms,” yet we as carbon-based life forms may have a difficult time recognising consciousness in other forms of matter. The physicist Max Tegmark (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA) has suggested consciousness may be a “state of matter” (“perceptronium”)14 – perhaps this is a state of matter that our Sun, and stars more generally, possess.

    “Afterthoughts” of Our Sun

    Possibly related to the concept of a conscious Sun is research that found a correlation between patterns in solar activity and earthquakes on Earth.15 Furthermore, there may be a correlation between earthquakes and major atmospheric disturbances, such as cyclone activity, on our planet.16 If our Sun is conscious, does it consciously influence storm activity, weather patterns, and earthquake activity on our planet? Or are these types of phenomena linked to the Sun, yet “afterthoughts” from the Sun’s perspective? Is the Sun sometimes rather oblivious to its influence on Earth, just as we might be rather oblivious when we unknowingly destroy a colony of bacteria or step on an ant mound by mistake?

    When we look at traditional mythologies and ancient beliefs, many past cultures considered the Sun and stars to be conscious entities – and this can perhaps be seen as the basis of astrology. The gods were associated with stars (including objects in the sky that we now classify as planets), and the ancient Egyptians (to give but one example) hoped to be united with the Sun and stars upon death. Plato in Timaeus (circa 360 bce) wrote, “And when he [the Artificer] had compounded the whole, he portioned off souls equal in number to the stars and distributed a soul to each star…”17

    Building on such ideas, my wife Katie has speculated that perhaps when human beings die their hydrogen is released (hydrogen can potentially carry information, and many would argue that information is an essential element of consciousness) and at least some of the hydrogen escapes to space where it collects as clouds, collapses under gravitational attraction, is compressed, and ultimately gives rise to stars – stars which may retain some of the information, some of the consciousness aspects, of the former beings who gave up their hydrogen. In this way, perhaps we (and possibly all biological organisms) may be reborn as stars. Of course, this is a highly speculative hypothesis,18 but if we can demonstrate our Sun and other stars are conscious, it may lend support to the idea that ultimately (perhaps after a number of incarnations on Earth) we join our consciousnesses with those of the Sun and stars.

    At this point some would suggest I have crossed the boundary from “science” to “science fiction,” but I prefer in this case the label of “speculative science.” What might we conclude? Is our Sun conscious? While the consciousness of our Sun and the stars has yet to be definitively demonstrated, I do not think we should simply dismiss the idea. Indeed, a conscious Sun and stars may go a long way toward explaining various “anomalies” that standard paradigms cannot readily accommodate.

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    Footnotes

    1. S. K. Solanki, I. G. Usoskin, B. Kromer, M. Schüssler, and J. Beer, 2004, “Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years”, Nature vol. 431, 1084-1087; G. Usoskin, S. K. Solanki, and G. A. Kovaltsov, 2007, “Grand minima and maxima of solar activity: new observational constraints”, Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 471, 301-309.
    2. For more detailed discussion of the topics in this paragraph, see: Robert M. Schoch, Forgotten Civilization: The Role of Solar Outbursts in Our Past and Future, Inner Traditions, 2012.
    3. See Note 2.
    4. See Notes 1 and 2.
    5. Anonymous, 2015, “Diminishing solar activity may bring new Ice Age by 2030”, available at https://astronomynow.com/2015/07/17/diminishing-solar-activity-may-bring-new-ice-age-by-2030/, article dated 17July 2015, accessed 29 October 2016; Zoë Schlanger, 2015, “An atmospheric scientist explains why that ‘mini ice age’ is bogus”, available at www.newsweek.com/mini-ice-age-bogus-global-cooling-climate-change-354632, article dated 17 July 2015, accessed 29 October 2016; Michael J. I. Brown, 2015, “The ‘mini ice age’ hoopla is a giant failure of science communication”, available at http://phys.org/news/2015-07-mini-ice-age-hoopla-giant.html, article dated 24 July 2015, accessed 29 October 2016.
    6. See Notes 1 and 2.
    7. NASA, 2014, “Near Miss: The Solar Superstorm of July 2012”, available at https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm, article dated 23 July 2014, accessed 29 October 2016; Jason Samenow, 2014, “How a solar storm two years ago nearly caused a catastrophe on Earth”, available at www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/07/23/how-a-solar-storm-nearly-destroyed-life-as-we-know-it-two-years-ago/, article dated 23 July 2014, accessed 29 October 2016.
    8. Solar Cycle 24, which began in 2008; this is the twenty-fourth cycle of magnetic polarity changes and minima to maxima to minima in sunspots since astronomers began systematically recording and numbering such cycles, starting in 1755. The average solar cycle is about eleven years in duration.
    9. This apparent phenomenon is also noted in Ben Davidson, Observing the Frontier: Eyes Open, No Fear, 2015, Space Weather News, LLC, 68-71.
    10. Greg Matloff, 2012, “Stars That Wander, Are You Bright: Are Stars Conscious?”, available at www.baen.com/starsconscious, article dated 2012, accessed 29 October 2016; see also, Gregory L. Matloff, 2012, “Star Consciousness: An Alternative to Dark Matter”, available at www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=23203, posted 13 June 2012 by Paul Gilster, accessed 29 October 2016; Greg Matloff (introduced by Paul Gilster), 2015, “Greg Matloff: Conscious Stars Revisited”, available at www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=33995, dated 18 September 2015, accessed 29 October 2016.
    11. Matloff quotations from www.baen.com/starsconscious, accessed 29 October 2016; italics in the original.
    12. See discussion, articles, and references in: Robert M. Schoch and Logan Yonavjak, The Parapsychology Revolution: A Concise Anthology of Paranormal and Psychical Research, Tarcher/Penguin, 2008.
    13. See my discussion of their work in: Robert M. Schoch, 2014, “Life, Death, and Raymond: Exploring the Nature of Death and Consciousness”, Darklore, vol. 8, 189-212.
    14. Max Tegmark, 2015, “Consciousness as a State of Matter”, available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.1219 and https://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v3.pdf, accessed 29 October 2016 (original paper dated 6 January 2014, revised version of 18 March 2015 consulted).
    15. See, for instance, the following works and also references cited therein: John F. Simpson, 1967, “Solar activity as a triggering mechanism for earthquakes”, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol. 3, 417-425; A. Zátopek and L. Krivsky, 1974, “On the correlation between meteorological microseisms and solar activity”, Astronomical Institutes of Czechoslovakia, Bulletin, vol. 25, no. 5, 257-262; A. L. Morozova, M. I. Pudovkin, and T. V. Barliaeva, 2000, “Variations of the Cosmic Ray Fluxes as a Possible Earthquake Precursor”, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, vol. 25, 321–324; S. Odintsov, K. Boyarchuk, K. Georgieva, B. Kirov, and D. Atanasov, 2006, “Long-period trends in global seismic and geomagnetic activity and their relation to solar activity”, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, vol. 31, 88–93; Jean-Paul Poirier, Jean-Louis Le Mouël, and Vincent Courtillot, 2009, “Microseismicity, meteorology and the solar cycle”, Académie des Sciences, Comptes Rendus Geoscience, vol. 341, 977–981; Jeffrey J. Love and Jeremy N. Thomas, 2013, “Insignificant solar-terrestrial triggering of earthquakes”, Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 40, pp. 1165-1170; Mikhail Kovalyov and Selena Kovalyov, 2015, “On the relationship between cosmic rays, solar activity and powerful earthquakes”, available from https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.5728 and https://arxiv.org/pdf/1403.5728v2.pdf, accessed 29 October 2016 (original paper dated 23 March 2014, revised version of 10 February 2015 consulted); Ben Davidson, Kongpop U-yen, and Christopher Holloman, 2015, “Relationship between M8+ Earthquake Occurrences and the Solar Magnetic Fields”, New Concepts in Global Tectonics Journal, vol. 3, no. 3, 310-322. Interestingly, various seismic events on our Moon (moonquakes) are apparently correlated with, or triggered by, some phenomenon or phenomena outside of our Solar System; see Cliff Frohlich and Yosio Nakamura, 2006, “Possible extra-Solar-System cause for certain lunar seismic events”, Icarus, vol. 185, 21–28. If this is true, it suggests the possibility that in at least some cases phenomena on our Sun and earthquake activity on Earth (as well as moonquakes) may be correlated with each other because both the Sun and Earth (or Earth-Moon system) are responding to common phenomena outside of our Solar System, or perhaps the Sun is responding to something from outside the Solar System and then causing effects on Earth (and presumably on other planets and bodies in our Solar System as well). Such studies are still in their infancy.
    1. See discussion in: B. Davidson, Observing the Frontier [see Note 9].
    2. R. D. Archer-Hind, The Timaeus of Plato, edited with Introduction and Notes, London and New York: Macmillan and Co., 1888, 141 and 143.
    3. Discussed further in: Forgotten Civilization [see Note 2], 255-259.

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  • Manipulating the Mass Mind & Attention

    Manipulating the Mass Mind & Attention

    From New Dawn 159 (Nov-Dec 2016)

    In my 30 years as a self-improvement coach, the most important insight is that where you put your attention is where your energy goes. If you find that hard to believe, try this: Walk through a crowd. Put your attention on the people. Then walk through the same crowd again and put your attention on the gaps between the people. More of them will now make way. Try it. It never fails. Here’s another experiment: Stand at the corner of any city street and look upwards for a while. You will notice people around you also look upwards. They want to know what you are looking at, and for that brief period you determined the direction of their attention.

    If I tell a group of people to think of a red car, there is a great likelihood that all of them will do it. And if I tell them not to think of a red car… they will also think of a red car! They could have chosen to think of a blue mountain instead. From that you realise how easy it is to steer mass attention.

    Rarely will anyone form their own thought or choose different than what they are told. In fact, if you do not make decisions and intentions, someone else will do it for you. You know this from your own life: If your spouse asks you where you want to go for dinner and you don’t really have any specific preference, then they will decide where to go. The same applies on a mass-scale.

    Due to a general weakness of will and awareness, most people have their reality decided for them, with merely the illusion of choice given – such as being able to choose whether you will pay your taxes by credit card or bank wire.

    In school, children do not learn how to think but what to think. They do not learn how to steer attention but instead various things they are supposed to steer attention to.

    It is humbling to realise that most people on the planet do not practice focusing, guiding, re-directing, shifting, retrieving and un-sticking their own attention. Thus the life-experience of most of us is determined by external agendas as given by mass media, schools, our parents and countless other sources that have very little to do with our innermost heart’s truth.

    We are lucky that at least some of the direction we get from outside is benign. We are lucky if we have parents who say, “You are highly talented, intelligent and beautiful,” thus directing our attention in the right direction. Have you ever heard a newscaster tell you, “You are safe, talented, intelligent, beautiful, empowered and able”? Not hardly. You’ll hear you are the victim of horrible circumstances that you can do nothing about.

    Through directing attention, you become a mini-reality-creator. But the mass media is the grand sorcerer of reality manipulation as it directs the attention of millions. It’s not generally understood to what bizarre extent the news media actively participate in the creation of our reality. It is thought they only “report” what is “happening,” but that’s not the case.

    The following are different levels of mass-reality-creation by the news media, sorted by the degree of manipulation:

    Level 1: Filtering

    When I create a movie for my work, I usually choose an outdoor location. I make sure to set up the camera in nature so the scenery looks really good. By choosing what to point the camera at, I am excluding everything I don’t want viewers to see, anything that does not fit my agenda.

    I recently filmed breathtaking natural scenery… or at least that’s what it looked like in the final result. I excluded an adjacent parking place, trashcans, roaming dogs, public signs, ugly houses and anything else that disturbed the illusion of me being in paradise. Any filmmaker understands to which extent the filmmaker distorts reality.

    From the millions of events that happen every day, the reporter filters which ones to report. This is a normal process. I do it for my own website by presenting only information relevant to its overall topic. People do it on Facebook by presenting themselves in a certain way and excluding pictures that might put them in a bad light.

    News media, however, tend to apply several filters. The first one is the filter of negative bias. Why? Because at Earth’s current level of consciousness, fear, drama and hatred still capture more interest than peace, prosperity and harmony. Desperate to sell ad slots on their news program and their declining newspapers, most reports are filtered by how much upheaval and action they contain. In addition, televised news media follows the creed, “if there is no footage (video), it doesn’t matter.” When I was younger I worked for a well-known news station where I was told exactly that. I tried to get the editor to cover important angles of a story, but if there was no footage of it, it was as if it didn’t exist.

    If they were to portray life on a day on Earth accurately, as it is for most people most of the time, it might appear “boring.” So the camera zooms in on places of the most mayhem and tragedy. This extreme filtering gives the audience the false impression that the whole world is mostly in a state of chaos, coupled with the implication there is absolutely nothing you can personally do about it. The sensationalist journalist never adds words of advice on improving your life, moving to peaceful surroundings or words of encouragement. He only cares about the sheer terror of explosions, debris, blood and destruction. If any of your relatives talked like a news anchor, you’d consider them mentally unstable.

    A recent movie The Nightcrawler (starring Jake Gyllenhaal) exposes the juvenile and sadistic mindset of some sections of modern “journalism.” No doubt, the last decade has seen a rise in terrorist attacks all over the world. And while these are horrific, they are still actually just localised events, pinpointed at certain buildings with a limited amount of people. They are not nearly as bad as the nation-to-nation all-out-wars we’ve had in decades before that.

    I happened to be in the city of Munich on the day of a terrorist attack at the end of July 2016. The shooting of 9 people at the hands of a 19-year-old kid named Ali went around the world. And yet, I learned it from the news, not from being in Munich at the time. On that day I was riding my bike along the river and went for a swim. I received numerous text messages asking whether I’m still alive and sending blessings to me and my family. You see my point…. things are bad, but rarely as bad as the news says they are.

    On an odd note: The same journalist who happened to be at the Nice (France) terror attack only a week before, shooting live footage of it, also “coincidentally” happened to be pre-positioned at Munich on location and filming. His name is Richard Gutjahr and he is either magnetically attracted to such events for the sake of “terrortainment” or there is something more sinister going on.

    When, if I may ask, is the last time you saw windsurfers in the Palestinian Gaza Territory or a happy family having a barbecue in their Jerusalem garden in the news? These events happen every day, by the hundreds, but they do not automatically come to your mind when I say “Gaza!” or “Israel!” I have been to both Palestine and Israel on numerous visits, both privately and for business, and I’ve always had a great time. Yet when I tell people I am travelling there, they tell me “be careful! That’s dangerous!” They associate these places with the blood and gore the news showed them. They know virtually nothing about the realities of these places than what they have been shown.

    I mean no disrespect to the suffering of people in the Middle East or anywhere else for that matter. I am merely using these extreme examples to make the point of filtered-realities. They cause a lack of balance in our perception of the world as well as desensitising us toward violence.

    Ideally, news media would have to not only show a nice segment at the end of their show, but more positive and interesting segments throughout. Then we learn that the world is a balance of light and darkness. Where are the news reports of hope, inspiration, everyday-heroes and human accomplishment? They are far and few between. If a proper balance of dark and light were given, the audience would become more involved in the healing of darkness rather than apathetic to it.

    Level 2: Distortion

    The next level of reality-manipulation is deliberate distortion by the journalists themselves because they wish to see something in a certain manner or are partial to some political, religious or philosophical ideology.

    Of course, nobody is completely neutral and unbiased, nor is that expected. But one of the problems of our times is there is virtually no mass media outlet that is not widely known as being affiliated with some political, governmental, anti-governmental or philosophical “side” and a far shot from “neutral.” Latest statistics from my country (USA) show that the Top Ten most successful “news” outlets on the Internet are either “right-wing” or “left-wing” affiliated. The fact that we are able to determine whether an outlet is “left” or “right” is in itself problematic. It is disheartening how almost every story “top news outlets” carry is filtered through political bias. In other words, these are not “news” outlets and their employees are not “journalists,” they are unabashed propaganda outlets for one of the two political parties in the US.

    Another form of distortion occurs when a journalist makes something better or worse than it is. He knows the editor will only accept a story if its interesting enough so he adds a few details here and there, knowing nobody will likely ever examine them more closely. From writing my own blog to a fairly large audience, I am somewhat familiar with the problem, but have always resisted the urge to exaggerate reports. I’d rather have some of my reports be understated (“boring”) than to report things that did not happen. Needless to say, I am not only blaming the mass media, as they only reflect the desires of the populace, who favour entertainment and excitement over reason and truth. When that audience goes to the cinema, they rarely pay to see peace, love and harmony, they usually pay to see death and suffering.

    Another form of distortion is that most news stories are reported without wrapping them into a wider context. Most things that happen are part of a greater pattern, part of a history, part of a mindset. Yet, the way stories are reported is as separate pieces that have little or no relation to each other.

    When I report on my blog, I frequently like to put what I wrote into context and comparison with other things I wrote in order to give a congruent overall big-picture. This is not the case in conventional news media where people think that the presidential elections in the US, the hurricane that happened just before, the resignation of the CIA-boss and the resurgent Israel-Palestine conflict (all having happened within a few weeks a couple of years ago) have nothing whatsoever to do with each other and are separate bits of information. But they are interconnected, not only metaphysically but geopolitically. Because the news reports too much and journalists write too quickly, ignoring context and connections, they breed ignorance of the depth and meaning of things.

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    Level 3: Deliberate Fabrication

    This is the most intense form of reality-manipulation which hopefully does not occur too often. I recently spoke to someone who used to work for the British “Ministry of Defense.” He shared the following story: Some decades ago a group of reporters went to Northern Ireland to capture footage of the conflict. When they arrived everything was peaceful, so they went ahead and created some chaos, just so they could return home with footage. They bribed a local to make and throw molotov cocktails (amateur bombs) off rooftops into the streets, setting cars and trashcans ablaze. In this instance, the journalists literally created the news. They refused to go home saying “the streets of Belfast are peaceful at this time.” The guy who told me the story lamented that this scandal of sorts was never revealed or reported on to this day. It was covered up by the BBC to avoid embarrassment.

    For a mature human being it is important to at least be aware of how news media manipulates reality. Mere awareness immunises you. You can then read and watch the news without being dragged down to victim-mentality or desensitised apathy, and if you are interested in a story you can then read different news outlets to view the different viewpoints and versions of it and gain a birds-eye-view.

    It’s better not to rely on only one news outlet. In my view, most of these stories are just the world-mind processing garbage, like in some kind of bad dream. None of it needs to have anything to do with you, your reality and the reality of those around you. You experience only what you attract through the contents of your own consciousness and subsequent decisions. In some cases you will have a friend or relative who gets way too caught up in news media, exaggerating the importance of various events.

    Back in the 80s some believed AIDS would completely wipe out the entire planet by the year 2000. It didn’t happen. Then they thought “Swine-Flu” would “wipe out civilisation as we know it”: It didn’t happen. Then they thought 2012 would enlighten humanity to a golden era of peace and bliss. Didn’t happen. And they thought 9/11 would mark the beginning of World War III. Didn’t happen. I dare say that for most of us, life went on like it did the 10 years before and progressed or regressed in accordance with our personal level of consciousness.

    Those who take the news way too seriously very rarely do anything actively to help the situation. They’d prefer being worried and indignant to taking positive action. For them, daily preoccupation with the news is like an escape from their own lives which may lack movement or excitement. But when the time comes that their own lives pick up, their interest in daily news recedes. This means they have chosen to focus their precious attention to places that really matter in the development of their own spirit.

    Attention is the currency of the 21st century and I recommend you use yours wisely. Be conscious of what you give your eyes to see, your ears to hear, your mind to think and your heart to feel.

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