Yugas, the eschaton and singularities

The odd person or two who skimmed my last two blog entries may have gotten the mistaken impression that I'm suggesting some political course of action. Nothing could be further from the truth. I wuz jus shootin da sheet, blowin off steam, as it were. I have no interest in convincing anybody of anything, or trying to push, coax or cajole ponderous political bodies to move this way or that. Just making observations..

I'm busy in practical endeavors, in this yugal bardo. Actually, the Kali Yuga is not scheduled to end for another 300 years. Near the end, supposedly, lives get shorter and shorter, until at the very end, they are only seconds long, nano-seconds, then everything atomizes. There is a gap, and then a new golden age starts. This doesn't sync up with the Mayan calendar and the 2012 cult. But these are just maps, more or less accurate.

Ray Kurzweil in his book the Singularity has made modern maps, which chart the course of exponential technological development, a trend traced not only all through history, but throughout life on earth, and even throughout phenomenal development during the life of the "universe." There is no intrinsic demarcation between "organic" and "artificial" technology. It's all "natural." Space, atoms, molecules, life...all an unbroken continuity.

Moore's law, it's no secret. Those who think it will plateau lack imagination. One need only eat a mushroom to grok the implications. I get a giggle every time I hear projections of demographics over the next 50 or more years, when they are based on backward looking trends, and fail to take this radical acceleration into account. Where will people live, what will they eat, how much money will they have, in 50 years? People?

Loren Eiseley, in his beautiful book Immense Journey, looks at life as a continuous phenomena, over billions of years. Thou art that. We are those primordial cells that first learned to split and have sex. And all that followed and came before. Remember? We will. Archeology will advance into a science of mind. We will piece together the continuity of experience, of consciousness. The warp and weft of incarnation.

The weave of self and relationship, constantly rearranging..the pregnancy of history, the contractions of the eschaton..this is our context, Terrence McKenna's Hyperborea, which is itself a fractal reflection of its context. As above so below. All phenomenal elements holographically inter-reflect. God created man in Her image. So, weird and exciting times indeed. Like Henry Miller, I welcome the end of history. It's been a rough phase.

To loose track of these contextual issues is to misconstrue political, psychological and economic events, which could lead to bad business decisions. The poverty and suffering of history has been varied and horrible, but not necessarily more horrible than the always changing types of suffering that came for billions of years before history.

There is a Buddhist saying: Samsara (suffering) has no beginning, but it has an end. Nirvana (enlightenment, bliss) has a beginning, but it has no end. Historical forms of suffering have been novel, like sparks flying off the machine grinding out ever increasing standards of living. We are nearing the end of that grind, the flashpoint in which standards of living unimagined through all time, and even today, will wash over all sentience, across space and time.

Kryptonite and the Peacock

On June 6, 2005, my health suddenly crashed. One day I was superman, the next I was at death's door.

I was a health fanatic when I crashed. That same avidity for health optimization was turned to recovery modalities and understanding etiologies in complex systemic and syndrome type diagnoses.

I'm pretty comprehensive in research and experimentation. This has led not only through the forest of pharmaceuticals, herbals, and into the mountains of chi gung, but beyond, into the integrative dimensions of lifestyle and it's psycho-spiritual interface with organismic functionality.

Since I have a history of Buddhist aspirations, including a sincere Bodhisattva vow (the intention to alleviate all types of suffering, among other types of well-wishing), the result has been to drive me to develop business platforms for advancing health, and improving life in other ways.

The peacock in the title comes from a famous story for describing the types of Buddhism. In the story, there is a tree with poisonous fruit, and a village gets concerned about it. They have an argument what to do about it. (The poison is usually considered to be desire, or the cause of suffering.)

1. Someone suggests they cut the tree down. This is supposed to represent Teravadan Buddhism. The problem being that the tree can grow back.

2. Someone suggests they dig out the root. This is Mahayana Buddhism.

3. Someone says, "but the fruit can be used to make medicine." This is the alchemical, transformative Tantric, or Vajrayana Buddhism.

4. Meanwhile, a peacock lands in the tree, eats the fruit, and spreads it's feathers. It's fine. This represents Dzogchen. It transcends in an instant the duality of poison and health.

I'm pretty much stuck in level three, trying to use my experiences with ill health in a transformative way to improve health for myself and the world, between which I recognize a feedback loop.