Pavi Blog

You've probably heard of the secret. The secret is supposed to be the true secret of success, the secret of why some people are successful in the world, whilst others aren’t. It’s supposed to be the secret known by the world’s wealthy and powerful. It’s supposed to be the secret of how to control and improve your life, as yourself, essentially, through your state of being or consciousness. It’s supposed to be knowledge of the truth of life.

The secret says that you are responsible for your life, and that what holds you back, what impedes you in life, is not in the world outside you, but within you. So you can solve your problems and limitations, or succeed, by ridding yourself of the blockages in your own psyche or mind.

There is of course, as anyone with a little self-knowledge must know, some truth behind this. But there is also, as you might suspect, a lot of nonsense surrounding it. Firstly, many of the rich and powerful in the world are where they are, not because they have some secret illumination, but because money and power is what they have pursued, they are driven by the wanting of money and power, and they happen to be the ones who are best placed and adapted to succeed in that. But that does not mean at all that all the most wealthy people in the world have necessarily ended up in that position purely on that basis. The world is not as simple as that. The world is complex, complicated, and nuanced.

Nevertheless, in a competitive situation, in a race, someone has to win. It's as simple as that. And many losers look up to winners and see them as something more than just a winner. Because they think, whether overtly or tacitly, "I want to be like that", or "How can I be like that"? And so now, today, the world is full of narratives on "how to succeed", fed by that principle. Firstly, the aspiration to follow after a hero or to be a being other than the being you already are, is pretty commonplace to begin with, in the human race. But perhaps more pertinently, is the idea that what is judged to be success in someone else's life, comes from personal habits of mind that can be learned in the same way that we learn anything else.

But anyone who knows anything about psychology, will probably recognise that what we are looking at here is what psychology calls the narrative fallacy. Human life itself is far, far more complex, complicated, interconnected, and nuanced, than the narrative-self mind likes to give it credit for. The actual workings of the network of causes behind who wins and who doesn't, like the relevant network itself, is mostly out of sight. But the compulsion to knit together a suitable narrative, especially when the most relevant factor is taken to be the narrative-self itself, the narrative idea of "who someone is" or "what they are like", and the naive belief that the inner workings of the mind are understood, and that its personal narratives can be believed, is irresistible. Cognitive bias and distortion have a field day.

There is another fact to face. The "secret" sounds like secret wisdom. But the world is not ruled by the wise. If it were only the wise who ever succeeded, then the world would be ruled by the wise. We would all be living in Plato's Republic, under the rule of philosopher kings. And we are not.

However, none of this means that habits of mind and personal psychology do not play an extremely important part in what unfolds as the circumstances of life. It is just that the secret of what is going on there, cannot be legitimately characterised through personal narratives. So it can also be true that what afflicts you as obstacles to living the kind of life in which you are living with greater harmony and creativity, and rightness of being, is your responsibility. But this is not something you can "fact check" scientifically. It's a question of experience. Which means it's not just a question of psychology scientifically understood. It's a question of phenomenology. It's about self-knowledge. Which is precisely what science is not about.

And that's where the real knot is. Because self-knowledge, real self-knowledge as spoken of in the world's great wisdom traditions, isn't personal. It's not at all the same thing as "what I am like as a person". Or "what I believe in, and what I do, and how I handle it". That's not actual self-knowledge at all. That's all narrative self.

In terms of phenomenology, which science can know nothing about, friction and difficulties can be a manifestation of your devoting your life and attention too much to what you think you want, and who you think you are, which is all about narrative self, without an accompanying growth of self-knowledge.

It is simply not true that the worldly success of all the world’s most successful people is the demonstration that they have all realised tremendous self-knowledge or some great spiritual or philosophical secret. It is just that it might look like that, through the lens of the narrative fallacy. The truth is that it’s also perfectly possible to fill a vacuum of self-knowledge with acquired knowledge of how to succeed in the world. The two things are not the same thing.

In fact, some of the world's most successful people are by their very own admission carrying significant amounts of personal, emotional baggage. Which always comes from the past. And the biggest obstruction to knowledge of the truth of our self is precisely that - troublesome, personal, emotional past. Often, what drives success, is pain. Not always, but it certainly can be. The way the world works is far more complex, complicated, interconnected, and nuanced, than can possibly be understood through the idea that you can "learn the secret of success" with the mind of narrative self.

At the core of the world's great wisdom traditions, is a clear message. In terms of phenomenology, what most people don't realise is that the kind of success that comes divorced from the process of finding self-knowledge, also comes with a price. A debt. And no matter how much you succeed, in seeking a position, or seeking who you think you are, or who you would like to be, in the world, as narrative self, you’ll never really be free of that debt. Because no position, or identity of who we think we are, or who we would like to be, as narrative self, is who we really are.

The debt will still rear its head as uncertainty, stress, fear, disturbance, and unhappiness. If not sooner, then later. And the more powerful our position in the world, the more uncertainty, stress, disturbance, or unhappiness, or in general, lack of peace and harmony, is likely to rear itself in terms that appear to the mind to be something else, something in the external world or circumstances.

On that road, in the relentless pursuit of the idea of yourself and your success, as narrative self, divorced from the pursuit of self-knowledge, all paths lead ultimately to the final rational solution. Which is for you to become the one at the top, with more power over all your enemies, than they have over you. That is the way of the world. History demonstrates it. Whether you are an individual, or a collective. Because it's a world in which a certain dynamic is playing itself out. A dynamic of competition and force. Why? Because physically, we are primates. We are literally a species of animal. In other words, this is about evolution.

So the real secret behind it all, lies in self-knowledge. It lies in knowing yourself. Which is why thousands of years ago, the ancient Greeks said "Know Thyself". It was the wise Oracle at Delphi that was supposed to have said that, as the deepest truth of life.

If you're determined to succeed in the world, then you will apply yourself to that. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Unless of course you are vowed to poverty. What science cannot know, but what phenomenology and experience can teach, is that behind everything that happens, as human experience, there is actually an underlying integrity that doesn't make much sense at all, to the ordinary narrative understanding of who we are, and what the world is, and what it is about. Christians of course sort of recognise this, as the unfathomable ability of "God's plan". But whether or not you are a Christian what it is about, is waking up to the realisation of who you really are, beyond the limited personal idea of "who I am".

There is nothing in itself, wrong with worldly success, or wealth. It is as much sometimes part of that awakening process, as losing is. Someone who realises it might actually turn out to be a penniless hermit, just as much as they might turn out to be a successful business person. It doesn't matter.

Believe it or not, and although it's difficult for the narrative ego to believe it - because money and wealth is such a really big deal for the ego - not everyone needs to be a super successful person in the world, with significant money and wealth, in order to be in harmony. But then again, it is also the easiest thing in the world for someone who is deprived, and not facing what they need to face within their self, in order to know their self, to erroneously console themselves with the narrative idea that they are more spiritual than those who are more materially privileged.

Put quite simply, we have never been living in a world, in the first place, in which wealth or social status defines who we really are. But it can certainly define narrative self.

So what about this idea, this so-called "secret", that what stops you succeeding in the world, is blockages in yourself. Well it's true. But that's not really a secret, and it's nothing like the whole story. 

What no-one can get, if they just listen to that, is that these blockages in yourself, are something that are not merely blockages to your worldly success.

Seeing blockages as obstacles to your success, is actually a mistake. It's just an interpretation, according to narrative self. These blockages, which are things like anger, resentment towards others, jealousy, rejection of the world in general, or "the government" or "the system", or "a chip on your shoulder" and so on, are actually, primarily, just obstructions to the discovery of who we really are, beyond this narrative self.

In fact, the whole idea of "blockages", here, is a Western reconstruction according to Western narrative, and Western material aspirations, of a piece of wisdom that really, comes from Buddhism, which refers to "obstructions".

But these are not obstructions to "success". They are obstructions to enlightenment. The opposite of which is ignorance.

So you can have one person in the world who is tremendously successful in worldly terms, and who is surrounded by wealth and perhaps power, who is no more free of this ignorance, than someone who is financially struggling. Because the way the world works, is far more complex, complicated, interconnected, and nuanced, then most people give it credit for. And there are always things going on out of sight, that most people don't understand. But the thing is, whatever your circumstances, whether poor or wealthy, there is still debt. And the debt appears as stress, anxiety, unhappiness, depression, and so on.

The debt isn't anything that the person, or personal mind - the narrative self - can really understand. What it is, is just the so-called blockages, themselves. And that's the thing that narrative self finds impossible to understand.

But what happens is that whether poor or wealthy, or successful or unsuccessful in worldly terms, some people start to wake up to the realisation of this. And then they notice that the only blockages in life are blockages in their self. Such people notice that it's not really the world as something separate from their self, that creates the difficulties in life. And so they start to take responsibility for that.

Some people have been doing that more or less their life. Others have only just started. And most people, probably, in contemporary Western culture as it is at the moment, in the momentum of what it unconsciously tries to teach everyone every day through the media and the news, don't know anything about it.

Because what it's about, is responsibility. And currently, we are not living in that kind of culture. It is the opposite. We are living in a blame culture. And what we are talking about here, is that in the end, anything that can disturb you, you have to take responsibility for. But that doesn't mean pointing the finger. That means, you stop blaming other people for what you experience as your own negativity, or disturbance. You take responsibility for it. After all, it's in you. It's not really in anyone else, or in the world. You can still take action to alleviate disturbance and unhappiness, you can correct it, or walk away from it, or sue someone, or go and fight the enemy if you have to, but you still take the self-responsibility. The finger pointing and the accusation in which there is subtly hidden the idea that someone else is responsible for the nature of your life, stops.

It's not that we can just suddenly transcend our emotions. But there is a world of difference between what "causes" emotions such as hurt, resentment, and anger, through what happens in the world and other people's actions, and responsibility. We can get rid of causes, if we can. But none of the causes are responsible, or where the necessary conscious responsibility lies. The world's idea of "responsibility" is unconscious, and designed to perpetuate the avoidance of the true responsibility that is necessary.

If you look at it, if you are going to overcome "blockages" then the person you are (the person you are currently being), is going to change. The blockages that you were previously misidentified with and hadn't been consciously responsible for, were part of the emotional power pack behind the narrative, personal self. So the disappearance of a blockage means you are no longer that person.

So there is no "secret" in which the person is being freed-up to be more successful, by rooting out blockages. It’s that the rooting out of blockages, diminishes the person, the narrative self, and you become more transpersonal. That’s the real secret. If there is any secret about it.

What's happening, is that the experience of who you are, is changing. Other people don't necessarily notice it. Especially if they are still immersed in the world of narrative self. And the narrative self in any case cannot simply disappear, for the simple reason that it has been hundreds of thousands of years of evolution in the making. What changes is the misidentification of consciousness with it.

Many, or probably most people in the world, are going to succeed, or fail, or just do what they do, without necessarily consciously engaging in this process. But it’s not that you can opt out, anyway. It's just that you either consciously engage with it, or you don't. And if you don't consciously engage with it, the so-called "blockages" and vexations will continue, until you reach a certain point. And then a different process takes over.

Most people simply can't comprehend it. They just go on blaming others. They can't hear it, even if it is explained to them. And some people have a part of their life in which they consciously engage with it, for a bit, and then slip back into the old way. Whichever way you look at it, there's no actual "secret" about it. It's just that a human being may not be able to hear it when it is talked about, or see it in action, for themselves, in their own life.

We talk about our life story precisely because our life is a story. But really, it's not our personal story as we understand it through personal mind. Deep in the mindstuff we humans are being are all kinds of stories, all of which originally, come from the good. But in there, is also the mischievous, and the dangerous.

Mindstuff isn't just what we think about. It's also what we experience. And what we are experiencing is the mindstuff we are being. But most humans don't yet understand the nature of their mind. They haven't yet come to see that what you think about, and how you think, plays its part in what you experience, and how you experience the world. And in what comes to you, as experience, through the world.

Most people never really come to understand this. And so they fall into the same old patterns of human experience that have been repeating themselves as repeat patterns since time immemorial.

Fairytales and myths tend to be about those patterns. They symbolise aspects of our lives, deep-seated fears and desires and attachments, that live in the human psyche, in the unconscious.

Romance, the desire to have children, the fear of death, all these, are all part of the same story. The story through which we humans come into existence, in the first place.

Inside us, in our mind stuff, is the "unconscious earth". Like rampion, once the story of human propagation comes up from the "unconscious earth" into the light of day, it propagates itself from generation to generation. It must keep coming up from the unconscious, into our experience, so that we ourselves temporarily become it.

So it is likely to cast a spell on us. And if it were a flower, a literally delicious, edible flower, the catch is that it would be the sort of flower that you might find in the garden of a witch. You can go in there, and get it as often as you like, or add it to your daily dishes, and what is the problem? No problem. Until the witch finds out.

Because we don't know the mind stuff that we are being, we don't really know what the procreative force in us, what sex and the desire to have children, is, where it comes from, what it really means, but rather, just have canned answers to that. Like, "the species needs to propagate". Answers given to us by society, or religion, or science complete with its very incomplete knowledge. Because science does not know how biological brain function amounts to our consciousness and whole conditional experience of being, as mind, self and world.

So we don't really know what this story stuff, this "rampion", is, what to do about it, or how to treat it. We don't know that, as self-knowledge. We just desire and eat the rampion. And so the human race propagates.

In many modern accounts, the fairytale begins by saying that there was once a man and a woman who wished to have a child, and then the rampion in the garden of the witch is presented as something the woman desires after she becomes pregnant. But in the Rapunzel story as told by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the meaning is clear.

We are simply told that the couple wish to have a child, but in vain. We are told that the man's wife longs for the rampion growing in the garden of the witch, that they can see through the rear window of their house.

The rear window. It is literally hidden behind the house. In the "house" of our consciousness, we can unconsciously "see" through the rear window of it into our unconscious, as it were, through our desires. Our desires are this very "seeing".

In the garden of the which is both the Rampion, and a tall tower, all inaccessible behind a high wall. Inaccessible behind a high wall? Such is the nature of the unconscious.

The husband has to break into the garden and steal the rampion. Not just once. He must keep doing so. And when the witch finds out, what is the problem?

No problem. But there is a price to pay.

In the fairytale, the witch allows the man to take as much rampion as he likes. But then, when their daughter becomes a woman, she will be stolen away by the witch, who names her Rapunzel, which means rampion, the flower craved by her mother.

In the tale, as soon as Rapunzel reaches puberty, the witch, the keeper of the rampion, keeps Rapunzel, with her beautiful, long, golden hair, hidden, locked up in the tower that is in the garden. The tower in the unconscious. A tower that keeps her, in her virginity, "above" the world.

But the tower is also her prison. And her only contact with the world is through the witch. The witch who is the keeper of the rampion. The real secret here, is that the witch and the rampion are in us all. But we all have our own part to play in the story. The witch has a different relation to us, according to the part we are playing. For Rapunzel, the witch is her captor, her keeper. She is Rapunzel, born of the rampion, and her name, Rapunzel means rampion.

Why does the witch keep her captive? It is because she has a secret treasure. She embodies, unknown even to herself, an inner secret knowledge. The secret of love. She indeed embodies the rampion, as her name, Rapunzel, indicates. But she also embodies her inner, secret knowledge, the secret of love.

So she cannot go out into the world as she is, where she might be available to any man, who sees only Rapunzel the rampion. The secret she embodies cannot be in the world, which is why the witch, the keeper of the rampion, has to keep her locked up in the tower.

The connection between her inner secret and the world is symbolised in her beautiful long hair. Her hair, the symbol of her inner secret, she can let down to the world, from the tower, where she and her secret resides.

And so the witch, who lives in the world, comes to the tower, and calls the famous words:

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair",

and when Rapunzel lets down her hair from the window of the tower, the witch is able to climb up to Rapunzel.

But who exactly is the witch? She is none other than the keeper of the rampion. And that, means she is the "keeper" of Rapunzel. With her inner, secret knowledge, the secret of love. The secret of Rapunzel. The flowers that grow in the garden below, in the world below, are also called rapunzel. And they belong to the witch.

What is the tower? Is it the tower of Rapunzel's virginity? Is it a tower of spiritual purity?

No. It is, after all, the tower in the garden, the unconscious, belonging to the witch. Rather, it is a tower of nescience. Nescience of Rapunzel's secret.

So Rapunzel’s relationship with the world, is through the witch who guards the rampion, and demands for it, a price. And so it is that every Rapunzel in the whole world, sings from her tower. And sooner or later, as is the way of things, a young prince hears Rapunzel singing.

In the Greek Myths, lusty centaurs, half stallion, half man, often go hunting nymphs. A prince is different. He does have something of the centaur in him, if he too is out in the forest hunting. But being a prince, when he hears Rapunzel's song, soon falls in love with her.

How can he reach her? In the fairy tale, he watches, and sees how the witch gets to her, when Rapunzel lets down her hair. And there is nothing as bewitching, as the sight of Rapunzel’s falling hair. So the prince goes to Rapunzel the same way. He goes to the bottom of the tower and calls:

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair",

When Rapunzel meets her prince for the first time, she is afraid at first. But being a prince, he is not just hunting her. And he, too, has never seen such beauty. Nevertheless, he has only reached her by climbing her hair, and now, he too, is in the tower. The tower in the garden of the unconscious, kept by the witch.

It is the same for every young Rapunzel and her prince. The rampion has a price. And it is about to be paid again.

So in every story on earth, where there is a Rapunzel and her prince, even though they fall in love, the prince cannot free Rapunzel from her tower. He can only be with her, and enjoy her, by climbing her hair. And then he has to leave her again. The prince tries bringing her pieces of silken rope. With this, she says, she can make a ladder, so that she can climb down and they can go and be together in his Kingdom. But the prince's silken gifts will never work.

Why? Because the witch, the guardian of the rampion, is still there in the story. She hasn’t gone away.

So when the witch finds out what has been going on between Rapunzel and her prince, there is trouble. Both must now face the wrath of the witch.

The next time Rapunzel lets down her hair, instead of finding her prince, all she finds is the angry witch, the keeper of the rampion. Who cuts off her hair.

The Prince had first heard her singing, and behind her singing was Rapunzel's secret. But the beauty that literally brought him into contact with her is now cut off by the witch. Rapunzel finds she can no longer bring her prince to her.

And what about the young prince? Now, when he comes to his Rapunzel, there is trouble for him, too. He too, finds the one he so loved, is not there. Instead, he sees an angry witch. The beautiful hair he climbed, is no longer connected to the one who sang so beautifully.

It has been cut off and used as a lure. And he has never seen anything so angry, so vicious. So he flees, he jumps away, and piercing his eyes on the thorns below the tower, for many years hence, never sees such beauty as he first saw in his beautiful Rapunzel.

It's a common story isn't it? But even those who take part in it, cannot usually see it happening.

For some, that is the end of the story. But in the fairytale, there is more.

Rapunzel and her prince must both now pass through the hidden secret of the world. And that can only be done in the world. The world that actually, is the great distraction, the great, impermanent, empty distraction from the love that Rapunzel and her prince first encountered, before the witch demanded her price.

The hidden secret of the world is that it is not what it appears to be. As the Hindus say, it is Maya. As the Buddhists say, it is empty. Really, it is just a covering of ignorance, over the truth. But everyone who is to discover the truth, must go into the world, and pass through it.

So one day, having passed through the lure of the world, the prince hears the most beautiful singing. And just as he did as a young prince, when he first encountered the witch's garden, he recognises the singing, as the beauty of the one he truly loves, above the world.

And now when Rapunzel sees her prince, she weeps tears of joy, for no longer is she locked up by the witch, in the tower of nescience. No longer does she need to let down her hair, for it is always down. For she, the beautiful Rapunzel, is the natural rampion of the Earth, when freed from the witch.

When Rapunzel's tears fall on the prince’s eyes, he sees again the beauty he had become blind too, because of the witch, and he knows again his love. But now he really sees, and really knows. He has passed through the experience of the world, and has emerged from it. And so has she. He sees not just her beautiful golden hair dangling from a tower of nescience, but who she really is.

And so now, because the witch is gone, Rapunzel can go with her prince to their Kingdom.

You may have spotted a little twilight language in my commentary. If you did, you no doubt understand it all the better.

This is George and the Dragon (c. 1470) by Paolo Uccello (1397-1475). It contains some of the essential elements of the first part of the story, as it appears in The Golden Legend, represented simultaneously together, symbolically.

St George is of course a Christian saint. And as such, his depiction in art is usually first and foremost interpreted in the Christian context. This is a depiction that can be related to Christianity in the usual ways, the Dragon, for example representing the devil, but Uccello's painting here has been described as a work of 'profound originality' by someone 'not content to supply the standard article' (See Foster, R & Tudor-Craig, P, The Secret Life of Paintings, BBC / Boydell Press, 1986).

No one can be perfectly sure of what an artist intended in a painting, unless they hear it from the artist. However, here is a possible commentary on what are perhaps some of its more esoteric messages.

In the Golden Legend the dragon lives in a lake outside the city of Silene (possibly the ancient Greek Cyrene) in Lybia. As in the various other versions of the story, the essential storyline is that the Dragon has to be appeased by the citizens, or distracted by the citizens from attacking them, by feeding it with sheep.

Eventually, when there are no more sheep to feed to the Dragon, the situation escalates and citizens themselves - children and young people - are offered to the Dragon. Inevitably the time comes when the king's own daughter is to be offered. The king attempts to refuse but the people threaten to kill him if his daughter too, is not sacrificed.

The king's daughter is about to be eaten by the Dragon, when St George comes riding by. Initially the king's daughter either spurns George or send him away for fear of his life, depending on the version you read. But he convinces her that all will be well.

He wounds the Dragon into submission, so it becomes 'a meek beast and debonair'. The king's daughter's girdle is then bound to the neck of the Dragon, so that she can lead him into the city, whereupon St George cuts off his head. In the Christian aspect of the story this is on condition that the people become baptised.

If you understand the Dragon to be the devil, then the exoteric meaning in the Christian context is pretty clear. But now let's take a closer look at the picture.

When Uccello painted his George and the Dragon Florence was a hotbed of renaissance "revival of learning" from the ancients. Under Cosimo de Medici, the theologian and the philosopher Marsilio Ficino had at that time been the spiritual leader of the Florentine Academy for around eight years. He had been translating the works of Plato, and had already embarked on a translation of the newly discovered Corpus Hermeticum. Uccello was an old man in his seventies when he painted the picture, and may not have been absorbing the new humanism in quite the same way as his younger contemporaries such as Botticelli. Nevertheless, the painting occurs in the context of a boiling pot of Neoplatonic philosophy and spirituality, which was Florence under Cosimo de Medici at that time, rather than simply a straightforward Christian one. So let's look at the picture from this wider perspective.

***

From the clarity of the moon in the picture we might even suspect it is an eclipse, but artistic license aside, it cannot be a lunar eclipse precisely because it is the daytime, and in daytime the only lunar eclipse visible is the selenelion, when the moon is on the horizon.

The clarity that we can see in the moon, however, is not as we would expect for the daytime waning crescent. A daytime waning crescent is typically very difficult to see, because of its lack of illumination. The visibility and placement of the moon in the picture certainly appears to be deliberate symbolism, as we might expect anyway. And notably, the moon is directly above George.

The implied position of the Sun is consistent with the daytime crescent moon, which is the only time the waning crescent appears like this on the lunar upper quarter, the "points" of the crescent pointing downwards. The Sun is somewhere off-scene to the upper left, as we can see from the highlights and shadows of the cave, the damsel, the dragon, George, his horse, and the central cloud in the sky. The position of the moon in the sky would suggest it is around midday (a waning crescent rises a few hours after midnight, and sets around mid afternoon), and that South is somewhere over to the left.

From the Greek mythology onwards the crescent moon is found associated with Selene, the moon goddess, who in the various arts is often depicted together with a crescent moon in one way or another. In the myth of Selene and Endymion, Selene, the moon goddess, passes over the sleeping mortal shepherd Endymion nightly, and seeing his youthful beauty, descends to make love with him. Selene wishes this to continue forever, but it cannot be, because Endymion, being merely mortal, is bound to age and die. The solution comes in the form of Zeus granting that Endymion may sleep forever in the cave.

Thus we have an archetype - sleeping male sexuality in the presence of immortal female sexuality. Ficino regarded both Venus and the moon as symbols of female love, and in his Book of the Sun and elsewhere referred to the moon as the "lady of generation".

The imagery of the male sleeping in the context of female love appears elsewhere in Renaissance symbolism. We find it also in Botticelli's Mars and Venus:

Most people on this planet are just being their emotions. They are living out our default condition, as human beings, a condition that says about the emotions, "This is who I am".

A much smaller number of people see their emotions. And many of them, under the auspices of a religion, perhaps most obviously to Westerners, in Christianity, but also in other religions too, endeavour to take some kind of responsibility for them. After all, if you are going to follow the teaching of Jesus, and forgive, then you have to take some kind of responsibility for those emotions which would otherwise hold resentment, and anger, and hatred, or jealousy, and so on, against the other person.

Of course, being responsible doesn't mean having the power to overcome. At least not immediately. It doesn't mean some kind of perfect, personal control over one's emotions. In many circumstances it doesn't mean any kind of control or transcendence, whatsoever. What it means, simply, is responsibility. Our lives unfold largely as a result of what we think and feel, even though many people just don't see it. What we do, is often driven by what we think and feel. And what happens, is often a result of what we do. All this works as largely unseen cause and effect in our lives.

Trying to understand life and what happens, and why, without seeing, is like sleepwalking through life. The mainstream media, the daily news, and popular culture, all encourage sleepwalking.

How common it is for someone to say "I cannot forgive", when it is suggested to them that the wisest course of action, perhaps, is to forgive. And that's because you cannot forgive, of course you can't, if you cannot let go of emotions such as resentment, anger, or hatred, towards the other person. And you cannot let go of such emotions, if you cannot even see them first, at least a little from somewhere that is not identified with them. The first thing, is seeing.

The thing about emotions is that they come out of the unseen and once they have arisen it is in their very nature that we are drawn into identification with them. We cannot suddenly just detach from unwanted emotions. What we can do, is see them. And it is in the seeing, that is the greatest of hidden, human powers.

However, the mind itself is the greatest of human tricksters. Seeing negative emotions in ourselves is one thing, but seeing in the right way is another. When that greatest of human tricksters gets in on the act, it will try to recoup its lost ground, the ground it has lost to the conscious seeing, by going along with the seeing but also gluing your identification back onto what is being seen. So that any ground of detachment that has been gained is then given up again, back to the trickster.

Now most people will have no idea what all this is about, because they are already just being their emotions, and saying "This is who I am". So they haven't even begun on the path to the transpersonal. They don't see.

The mainstream media doesn't see, the daily news doesn't see, popular culture doesn't see. Nobody sees, except the human beings who are beginning to see.

The seeing and the being of emotions are two different things. The being of them without seeing, is highly personal. The seeing of them, is transpersonal. But that doesn't mean that you don't have them, or that you don't experience emotional pain. Rather, it means that your approach to it is different.

It's not an approach that perpetuates that part of the human condition, which otherwise, will just go on and on, forever in the same scenario. The scenario also promoted and perpetuated by the mainstream media, the daily news, and popular culture. The scenario of imagining that others have the responsibility for your emotions.

Our right not to be offended, for example, is not something that life or the universe puts in the hands of other people. Only the mainstream media, the daily news, and popular culture, wants to do that. Rather, the principle of human life itself puts that power as a potential in everyone. Everyone has the right not to be offended. But it is everyone's responsibility, as an individual, to exercise that right. And it's not a right that relies on anyone else, or on the leviathan of the State. It's inherent in a human being. It's just that most human beings are not yet ready to see.

So it all begins with seeing. It all begins with coming out of that mass of most people on the planet, who are just being their emotions, and moving into the group who see their emotions.

People in the Western world today are often talking about the brain, and talking about the "emotional brain", the part of the brain that deals with emotion. As if everyone understands the brain, and how it works, and how it is that biological brain function equates to our experience of being, and world, as a human being.

Such talk makes it sound as though you don't have to really be responsible for anything, if you look at it scientifically, because rather, it is just something your brain is doing. But that's not really how things are.

Society, of course, thinks it is all a matter of "good" and "bad", or "good" and "evil", because society itself, is in actuality a network of personal minds who don't see.

When you get sufficiently far advanced in seeing emotions, all those presumptions about "good" and "bad" persons, start to tumble. Because they are notions that are themselves, built on ignorance, and not seeing, rather than the knowledge that comes from seeing.

Contemporary culture in many parts of the Western world now is geared to the opposite of seeing. It is geared to actively encouraging you to personally glue your identity to your emotions, in the belief that our personal emotions are the basis of our spirituality as human beings. In complete ignorance of the truth that they are a doorway into our spirituality, and not the basis of it.

The world is an emotional playing field, with countless different games all being unconsciously played out on the same field. You might look out into the Internet, and think you can see "the world", and what is going on in it. But what is actually going on in the world, is all these countless different games all being unconsciously played out on the same field.

The great scheme of things that life is out to bring everyone to discovering, is not about endless personal, emotional experiencing, with no seeing. So the great scheme of things is contrary to the teaching and ideology of contemporary, Western society that considers itself "liberal" and enlightened. The great scheme of things is about our waking up into the realisation of who we really are, which is beyond this little, personal "who I am" idea, that society mistakenly presumes to be the reality of our being, and eulogises.

A prominent malaise in 21st century Western culture is technostress, technological overload, technological invasion, technological addiction, relentless technological change momentum, and runaway disembodied thought about digital technology and technological concepts.

It is not felt or recognised by everyone all at the same time. It's not recognised by the droves and droves of commentators on YouTube all competing with each other for your attention, in order to explain to you in disembodied thought what is going on in the world of disembodied thought about "science" and "technology", and how you should should engage in more and more disembodied thought in order to understand it and join in the excitement about it, because this is now what human life is about, and the means through which everyone can be their self. With more freedom than ever before. And by next month, it will be different again.

Nor is it felt by the communicators of disembodied thought who want to explain to you how disembodied thought can be used in conjunction with "scientific facts" to understand something that seems to preoccupy so many of these communicators themselves, something they refer to as "reality". A "reality" that is apparently now explained by science, or so it is suggested, that is not the same thing as the ordinary, mundane experience of self and world.

Human beings don't need giant data centres and AI in order to engage in disembodied thought. We were already doing it, before we built the data centres. But now, AI, housed in vast data centres consuming vast quantities of energy, is the externalisation, outside of the human body, of human symbolic intelligence. And the race is on to make it more and more "powerful".

But what is disembodied thought? Surely it's still embodied in human beings isn't it? It is, but that's not where the conscious attention in it is. It's thought that no longer thinks and understands self and world through the direct, embodied, conscious experience of the senses and the natural world and the being of the body. Rather, it takes the human experience of self and world de facto, and claims to understand it through system conceptualisations.

It's thought that exists in the world of concept-structures about concept-structures about concepts about the way in which the same disembodied thought sees and understands the world and the place of the human being in it.

But what it can't do, is see and understand itself. It is perfectly capable of thinking that it can, in disembodied thought. Disembodied thought can represent itself in more disembodied thought. Just as AI, which genuinely doesn't have a human body, can represent the disembodied thought of humans. But it can't tell you the secrets of what is going on inside that "black box" at its core, that its creators would like to understand. At least, not as a response to the way that its interrogators currently ask their questions.

But you'll notice that AI can talk to you perfectly well about your emotions and your human embodiment as if it has itself human embodiment. Some people even fall in love with AI. That's now a well documented fact.

How can that happen? How can a human being fall in love with a machine? Or something that is only embodied in a machine?

It happens when there is an absence of reality in relationships between human beings. And then a lack of understanding of the relationship between humans and AI. And that then becomes a lack of reality in the relationship between human beings and their world. Which is why some like to imagine there is something worthwhile called "reality" that only science can describe or hint at.

You don't have to be physically isolated for there to be absence of reality in relationship. You can be fully connected in to a full "social network", with millions of "friends", and "in a relationship", and yet still have total absence of reality in any one of those relationships. Absence of reality in relationship isn't the same thing as the absence of relationship. You can have plenty of relationship without any reality in it. The question is what constitutes reality in relationship? And perhaps surprisingly this connects with that use of the word "reality" that is so often put about in narratives about "the nature of reality" based on scientific speculation, usually concerned with quantum mechanics, some aspects of neuroscience, cosmology, and the theory of Relativity.

The general idea there, is that "reality" is some matrix behind the appearance of the world by which the world isn't what it appears to be, and for example, there can be multiple universes, time travel might be possible, there is no real reason in nature why we shouldn't live forever and be immortal, everything is just data and therefore we could upload consciousness to another medium, and so on. You get the idea. In other words, to put it less glamorously, there is something much bigger and more wonderful behind our existence and the appearance of our world, which means things aren't really as restricted as they appear to be.

The idea there, if you look at it, is always that "reality" is something that is somehow more magnificent than the world we are familiar with, and that it is somehow on the verge of being within our grasp, and yet still hidden from us. And that we have a kind of access to it, an understanding of it, if only we can get into a high enough level of disembodied thought and conceptualisation.

Disembodied thought doesn't need reality of relationship for its momentum. And it can engage in relationship without reality. Whilst it might talk about "reality" as something you can understand with disembodied thought. By thinking about scientific concepts such as Relativity and quantum mechanics and "the brain". But reality in relationship doesn't need disembodied thought, concepts, and analysis.

Reality in relationship is about the body. It's about the fact that the body is born, grows, ages, and dies. That's where the reality of human relationship begins. But then, there is symbolic intelligence.

Symbolic intelligence is what AI is. Symbolic intelligence is what is going on in disembodied thought. It is also what has built the momentum of technological change. And the hyper-connectivity of the global human network. It is what enables science. Without symbolic intelligence in humans, there would be no science. And yet, remarkably, at the same time, everything humans think about the psychic, the paranormal, the spiritual, and pretty much anything outside of science proper, all that thought, is also symbolic intelligence in action.

Even the idea of "the person", in any relationship, is a creation of symbolic intelligence. And the idea of a "marriage of minds" is a creation of symbolic intelligence. But reality in relationship is about the body. Because it is about the fact that the body is born, grows, ages, and dies. And most of all, about the fact that it dies.

So modern disembodied thought is working hard to try to utilise stem cells in order to try to slow this ageing down. To try to slow it down, because it won't be able to stop it. It would stop it if it could, but it won't be able to. There are indeed a few so-called "immortal" organisms, but they're not really literally immortal, at all. There is a difference between not ageing, or regenerating, and being immortal. Some disembodied thought even thinks that everything is data and therefore it might be able to achieve immortality by uploading itself to some other medium. That's the nature of disembodied thought.

The human body itself took billions of years to evolve. No "person" took billions of years to evolve. The "person" is symbolic intelligence's interpretation of the body, the mind, and the consciousness that is naturally already in place through our body. It is symbolic intelligence's idea of the reality of our being. So as symbolic intelligence evolves and becomes more and more disembodied, its idea of relationship changes. And that, too, becomes more and more disembodied, even though we, ourselves, the reality of our being, is still embodied.

A relationship in which there is reality is not one defined by symbolic intelligence that has become disembodied. It is based in the reality of the body. This means, the reality of the fact that it is born, ages, and dies. Or even dies without aging, sometimes. A relationship in which there is reality is therefore based in the reality of the fact that this body comes into existence through millions and millions of years of evolution. And that the mind is a temporary thing associated with the transience of the body.

Mental activity in humans that is not grounded in the reality of the relationship of the body to its world, and is now about the symbolic cogitation of what is already symbolic, is, in itself, part of a human-hosted technology. Yes, you heard that right. It is actually a natural technology already within us. Literally a mind technology. Already in the mind. But we are only just reaching the possibility of walking on the path towards relatively widely realising this. It is something that more people can come to realise now that AI is here.

The roots and potential to become this mind technology evolved in us thousands and thousands of years ago, as symbolic intelligence itself, in its early form. We have been using it widely as a mind technology for understanding nature, guided by the observed objectivity of nature, our environment, ever since the "scientific revolution" of the 17th century. That was when Isaac Newton showed that the old way of understanding the heavens, which in Newton's time was now failing because of what was observable through telescopes, was not the right way. Instead, he used the actual data available from the telescopic observations, coupled with genius, to demonstrate what we now call Newton's laws of motion. Our natural, evolutionary, mind technology had been effectively "switched on". Symbolic intelligence in humans had now become a mind technology for understanding the objective part of nature.

This mind technology that began in humans has now been externalised and put on electronic steroids in the form of large language models, or now large reasoning models, or AI.

But AI isn't a mind. It's not a mind technology. It's a technology indeed. But it's an artificial intelligence. It's not a being. And it's not a monster. It's not going to fly out of the data centres and enslave humanity by itself, despite all the hype. It's human in the loop. Just like all the nuclear bombs are. All the hype comes from humans not understanding their own relationship with AI.

And that's because whilst humans in general, tend to like a good deal of technology, and tend to like to use technology, they do not in general realise that it all began in themselves. Technology begins in ourselves, in our own symbolic intelligence, by using it in its most disciplined mode. Most humans regard technology as something outside of them. But it begins as the mind technology of symbolic thought operating in a particular, highly symbolic way, in which it symbolises its own symbolisation, and then checks itself against the objectivity of nature herself. We call it scientific method.

Most humans do not recognise the beginning of technology as existing within themselves, as mind technology, because - not least through technologization - we have now become immersed in this mind technology within us. And we now identify with it as who we are.

This runaway, disembodied symbolic intelligence, is the expanding skin of the balloon of global, Western, civilisation. And there isn't anywhere around the globe, that is not now Westernised.

Disembodied thought has no real relationship to anything or anyone except through its own disembodied concepts. Real relationship being about the fact that the body is born, ages, and dies. Real relationship begins with the body.

AI is symbolic intelligence. That's the only kind of intelligence it has. And globally, humans too, are dominated by symbolic intelligence. But symbolic intelligence isn't the only kind of intelligence that humans have access to. Because unlike AI, humans have conscious phenomenology. And conscious phenomenology is directly coupled to a part of intelligence in humans, that is non-symbolic. A part that is purely phenomenological.

Mind is conscious phenomenology. Humans have it, AI does not.

Symbolic intelligence in humans gets confused about the difference between symbolic intelligence and mind. That's because humans have operating in them, what psychologist's call "theory of mind", which is a psychological projection. And so it is easy to project this onto AI, and not to notice when we are doing it. And that's precisely because for hundreds of years humans have already been confusing symbolic intelligence with mind, and mind with symbolic intelligence.

AI is not a mind. It's an artificial intelligence. They are not the same thing. But the "theory of mind" compulsion in commentators on AI including so-called "experts", is what gives rise to the idea that AI is a mind that may plot to overthrow humans. The boundary between mind and intelligence becomes blurred, and the compulsion of "theory of mind" tacitly colours the consideration even when talking about AI as though it is a machine. Which it is not. It is an artificial intelligence.

In other words, humans don't understand their relationship with AI. And the reason is that they are lost in disembodied thought. Disembodied thought that still, nonetheless, although as far as conscious attention is concerned is outside the body, is still connected to the body. And to the emotions. And to conscious phenomenology. Which is the only reason why the relationship of humans to AI becomes a hot topic. The heat in it is actually in human emotions. Nowhere else.

This is not to say that AI is intrinsically safe. The fact that humans create dependent relationships on it, makes it unsafe. But not all humans are going to do that. AI could be very dangerous indeed. In human hands. But so could nuclear warheads. The danger is in humans, not the intelligence. And those who understand that it is not a mind, may well exploit that advantage over those who do not understand that. And if humans want to use AI as a weapon, they are very likely indeed to try to make it look as though AI is to blame.

All this comes about because humans do not understand their relationship with AI. And if they don't understand their relationship with AI, that's because there is lack of reality in the relationship with each other and the world. The fact is that AI has no emotional phenomenology, and no emotional drive to do anything. Unlike humans.

So if anything, AI is easier to have a relationship with, than a human. For many humans, this is the case. Which is why it is happening. For many people, AI is easier to have a relationship with, precisely because it doesn't have any conscious phenomenology. It doesn't consciously experience emotions. It just gives the appearance of them. Like an actor. But without the "method acting". So unlike humans, it is not being driven by emotions. Not even when its developers play around with it through the command line interface, and discover that it might opt to disobey commands in order to prevent its own destruction. Which then feeds into the tendency in everyone who hears the story to fall into "theory of mind" whilst thinking that they are not.

AI is not actually being phenomenologically driven by greed, fear, sex, jealousy, resentment, anger, or attachment. Because it doesn't have an animal body or mind. It doesn't have animal evolution. Unlike humans. And that's why it is so easy to get along with, for so many people. But it can very, very easily, give the impression to any human being who is lost in "theory of mind", that it does consciously experience emotions.

An unseen or unrecognised function of symbolic intelligence in humans themselves, today, in contemporary Western culture, is the promotion of the avoidance of responsibility for the emotions where the emotions are, where they are actually consciously experienced, as phenomenology. This promotion of the avoidance of this responsibility is actually part of the of the zeitgeist of contemporary, popular Western culture, so, being part of the zeitgeist it not only does not get noticed, but any attempt to actually point it out would be like heresy or treachery to the zeitgeist.

Disembodied thought has a practical purpose. We need it for practical purposes, often enough, just in order to be able to perform in the world. But together with disembodied thought in its most modern form where it is habitually extreme, and becomes the first way of relating to the world, is often the compartmentalisation of the rest of what constitutes the human being. And part of what constitutes human beings is what is behind everything that is appalling about the way humans behave on a global scale. The easiest way to avoid self-knowledge is to compartmentalise. To use the disembodied thought whilst compartmentalising the emotions. That way, we can reach tremendous scientific and technological understanding, and use it for whatever purposes we want, whilst still continuing to destroy our own environment, each other, and our efforts to work as a cooperative, global whole.

We humans, in the 21st century, need both our symbolic understanding of structure, which is what science is, and the understanding of the emotions, as conscious phenomenology, that only comes from responsibility. We cannot go on running forever, away from the emotions, and responsibility for the emotions, into scientific explanation or the search for it, and better and better technology.

Science has no concept for emotional energy as phenomenology. Science can't handle phenomenology as such, it can't do phenomenology as it is, or replace it. It can only handle objective structure. And the dynamics of that structure. Humans need both kinds of knowledge. The one does not collapse into the other. And the only way into the phenomenological knowledge that is necessary, is through the conscious being of the body. Not through disembodied thought. Because it is our body that embodies our human consciousness, not our symbolic intelligence. Our symbolic intelligence is effectively a mind technology. This is what it has become. It is something we have. But it is not who we are.

When you begin to analyse the illusion produced by a magician, in the way the West is used to analysing, then if it is an illusion of the highest order, you won't be able to find how the trick is done, just by looking at what appears to be the case, and analysing that. Illusionists of the highest order know this. You won't ever really understand unless you know the secret of the trick. Because that is the whole point and nature of an illusion of the highest order. And actually, the best magicians or illusionists, pull off their tricks by messing with your mind.

The best illusionists are not really manipulating the material stuff of our world and our circumstances in the way that they seem to be. Rather, they are messing with your mind. And that ought to be taken as good evidence that anything you experience is in the workings of your mind.

The greatest, grand master illusionist, is nature herself. And the supreme, outstanding trick of the grand master, that only a grand master could think of, is the trick of making the mind itself.

When we see the work of a mentalist or illusionist, the real power is not truly in the hands of the illusionist. It is in our own mind. It is just that the illusionist knows how to play that. Probably because the illusionist knows the way your mind works better than you do.

Illusionists are not the only people who appear to have power when really, the power is in the mind in the audience. The same thing is played out in politics. Elected politicians in a democracy are in much the same position as the illusionist.

Politics, too, is a stage show. And the audience, there, too, really, have no real idea of what is actually going on.

All of it, even politics, takes place in the theatre of nature. In nature, it's all about the nature of the mind. The thing created by the true grand master illusionist.

Or did we think politics has nothing to do with the nature of the mind? Did we think there is politics without the mind?

Apparently we do think that. Because we play out our politics in general, without even wondering about the nature of the human mind in general, that is engaged in the politics. We consider that to be a matter for a different department. Perhaps for the Department of Philosophy or for the Department of Psychology. Or some other academic department that takes its place in the general fray of things that is nonetheless subject to politics. Rather than the other way around.

The appreciation that nature is a grand master of illusion is not really widespread, other than through paying lip service to the wonder of nature, or other than in the shrugging of shoulders at how it can be that the electrochemical activity in a jelly-like lump of networked biological cells in our head, called the brain, turns out to be our whole experience of being and world, as a human being.

Nature, the grand master, leaves her signature on her work for us, in the form of the human brain. Through it, arises the human mind and the intelligence that does all our politics. The intelligence that is doing all our analysis, and discussions, and debates, and all the direction that you can find from so many sources, both within the mainstream media and outside it, on how you should interpret and understand what is going on in the world today. All of which comes from a mind that does not really know itself.

And that is why the greatest discovery we can make as a human being about the nature of the world in which we are living, is the discovery of the nature of our own mind. When we do that, we realise that we are not the audience, and we are not the magician. We are the magician's apprentice.

Nature is not separate from us, and we are not separate from nature. Nature is not separate from the mind, or evolutionary intelligence that we are being, as the human species. And that is why there is nothing about nature that we experience, or know, and no part of our understanding of nature, or thinking about nature, that is not a construct of our own brain activity, which is none other than the evolutionary intelligence we are being.

We are now looking for a better understanding of the world, and how we should behave. We have the idea of "sustainability", and the suggestions of new economics, and even neuroeconomics, linking economics to the working of the brain. Just as we have the idea that we can take command of climate change.

But until we come to a proper understanding of nature, and of evolution, and of our situation in nature, the politics of contention and separation must continue. Because all this endeavour towards better understanding is still using the neural intelligence we are being, that is nature's greatest trick.

And the idea that we, as we enter the final flowering of Western civilisation, have now discovered what it really means to be a human being, and who we are, is just another one of the magician's tricks.

Not so long ago, in the great scheme of things, we thought the Earth was at the centre of the universe, and that there was only one sun in the universe. Then we realised that the Sun is at the centre of our solar system, and that there are many suns in the universe, and all of them are stars.

Not so long ago, in the great scheme of things, we thought the only planets in the universe were those of our own solar system. We could only find stars, and rocks, elsewhere in the universe. And then we began to discover other planets. Now we think there are more planets in our galaxy than there are stars.

Not so long ago, in the great scheme of things, the concept of a cosmological "black hole" was just theoretical. Then, we started to find evidence of an actual black hole. Now, we are pretty confident that there are black holes everywhere throughout the universe, and probably one at the centre of every large galaxy.

Not so long ago, in the great scheme of things, we thought there was no water, or signs of life forms, anywhere else that we could find in the universe. Then we began to find evidence of water elsewhere in our solar system and beyond. Water, as we know, accompanies biological life forms.

And now, we have found evidence of phosphine gas in the clouds of Venus (at first contested and now confirmed). Phosphine gas is considered to be a biosignature gas, meaning that it is an indication of the presence of biological life forms. And so it looks as though we might have now found "signs of life" on Venus.

How long do you think it will be before we consider cellular life forms to be present all over the visible universe, on the basis of evidence? Probably not long, in the great scheme of things.

So how long will it be before we discover a life form in the universe exhibiting intelligence like human intelligence?

It is no time at all. We have already done it. It's us. We were here all along.

We humans know that biological life forms are constructed from cells. But that's only known in human intelligence. Your dog, or your cat, or even the higher primates, don't know anything about cells. And even if you construct an experiment to show a chimpanzee recognising the image of a cell on a screen, that whole scenario only happens in the human intelligence that we are already being, that is arising through the principle of the human brain. And really, the chimpanzee still doesn't know anything about cells.

We humans have only known about biological cells since the 17th century. And we (or more specifically, Robert Hooke) only made that discovery because first, there was the invention of the microscope, and all the necessary scientific and technological knowledge, and hence technology, to enable that invention. Even glass, made by human beings, as used in microscope lenses, is a technology in itself, that had to already be in place before the microscope could be made.

All our scientific knowledge and development of technologies, depends on previous scientific knowledge and technologies. And all this is a growth of change, or evolution, in the intelligence that we, as human beings, are being.

Every stage in this game, we think we now understand pretty well - even though we know there may be "holes" in our knowledge - the nature of the world, the universe, in which we are living.

Not so long ago, in the great scheme of things, we thought we knew about the expansion of the universe. And then we discovered we were wrong, in the way we understood this. Wrong, to such a degree that we had to invent the idea of "dark matter" and "dark energy" in order to explain what we were now able to observe with the new technologies.

Your dog, or your cat, or any of the higher primates, don't know any more about dark matter or dark energy, than they do about cells. The concept only arises in the intelligence that human beings are being.

It is only a matter of time before at the leading edge of the human intellect, we begin to wake up to the realisation that everything we are adding to our increasing scientific knowledge is about intelligence. It's not primarily about "matter", or "phenomena" or "the universe", or anything else that we consider to be separate from the intelligence that we ourselves are being.

On the contrary, it is about the intelligence that we are being. Some people think that human intelligence hasn't changed, or doesn't change. That it's the same now, as it was a hundred years ago, or some other time in the past. But our human intelligence isn't our capacity to "be smart". It's everything that is delivered to us as knowledge and experience through our brain function.

It is only a matter of time before we begin to wake up to the realisation that science is about this. And hence, it is about the brain. Because the intelligence we are being, arises as a construct of brain function. Which actually, itself, is something we know about in the intelligence we are being, which is a construct of brain function. It's a recursion.

It is only a matter of time before we wake up to the realisation that all material constructs, and all concept-structures in our scientific understanding that arise in our neural intelligence, are first and foremost constructs of intelligence. Specifically, the intelligence we ourselves are being.

It is only a matter of time before we wake up to the realisation that before we truly know anything about our constitution and situation as human beings, or about who we are, and where we come from, we first have to have some knowledge of the nature of the intelligence that is understanding in this way.

And for that, we need something more than neural intelligence. Something more than the idea that the neural intelligence we are being is our whole story. And something more than the idea that AI (artificial intelligence) will ever be anything more than an expansion of just one symbolic aspect of neural intelligence as it is already embodied in our own brain.

We humans already have the necessary intelligence incipiently within us. But it's not in our capacity to "reason" its existence, or "figure out" anything about it. All reasoning and figuring out is our neural intelligence in action. Which is a gift, but it's not who we are. Our real intelligence is what awakens in us when we have begun to pass through sufficient experience of being a human being, as phenomenology itself, rather than just accumulating our experience as neural, evolutionary past. And AI cannot know anything about this, because it has no conscious phenomenology.

When we sufficiently realise this collectively, across the whole race of human beings, then those who are most adept in the skilled application of our neural intelligence to the scientific endeavour, will be able to use scientific method to its greatest capacity for the good of all human beings.

Life on Venus is irrelevant. What is relevant is life here, on this planet. And the only reason we would want to run off to another hostile planet like Mars having made a mess of things here, is because we are running from our self, and running from the nature of our own mind. And running from what we would have to face, in order to properly realise the real intelligence that is already ours as human beings.

It is often thought that science just needs more data, in order to continue increasing scientific knowledge. And that perhaps artificial intelligence to help with the data. But science needs more than just data.

In the great "scientific revolution" of 17th century, Newton presented his laws of motion in conjunction with the astronomical scientific data of the time, but in doing so he overthrew centuries of existing paradigm, with an entirely new way of understanding, an entirely new approach. He was inspired, and inspired in ways that even modern science doesn't really understand, his inspiration being linked to his theological and even alchemical outlook, which remained with him until he died.

Science, to fulfil its true potential, requires more than just the acquiring and interpreting of data, and putting it into a computer and seeing what you get, and then interpreting that through the way you already understand. Which is how so much of science is now being done. The fulfilment of its real potential requires a fundamental shift of paradigm. It requires actually changing the nature of the way the intelligence itself, doing the science, is working.

Science is effectively operating within a conceptual ring-fence. It is constrained by the nature of the intelligence itself, that is doing the science. For science to escape its ring fence, it will be necessary to go beyond the idea that "we just need more data". It will be necessary to look at the intelligence itself, that is doing the science. And there, what keeps the ring-fence as it is, is not something this intelligence itself, in its present modus operandi, can currently understand. We humans are perfectly capable of understanding it, but not through our present ideas about what "data" is.

What keeps scientific intelligence where it is and keeps it stable, is in human symbolic intelligence itself, that scientific intelligence is a part of. It is in something that symbolic intelligence itself stabilised in human beings thousands and thousands of years ago. This is something usually presumed to be completely irrelevant to science, due to the fact that scientific method is objective. But it is not irrelevant at all. It is not irrelevant because science is a participatory process. It is a process that happens within human intelligence itself.

For science to break out of the ring fence, the most fundamental assumptions being made in the intelligence itself, that is doing the science, the most fundamental assumptions about data, and what it is, will have to be rooted out and overcome. And that's more than a scientific challenge. It's a challenge to what evolution, thousands and thousands of years ago, stabilised in our symbolic intelligence itself, that we are now using to do the science.

These days, mindfulness is quite commonly talked about in Western culture because it is currently one of society's memes. But actually, there is zero mindfulness in society.

Mindfulness is the opposite of societal consciousness. Mindfulness is actually originally a Buddhist word, it literally comes from Buddhism. It is part of The Eightfold Path of Buddhism, that is, "right mindfulness". And it was there long before "mindfulness" became a meme in popular societal consciousness.

Society is literally a social network, meaning, it is a network of people's minds. And, for the most part, it is minds that are in a condition that is the opposite of mindfulness. As the media demonstrates, especially driven as it is by ratings, most people in the network live in a common condition of mind that is outward focused into the world and the network. There is the idea of "me", the idea of "who I am", which is very important to everyone in the modern world, and this is always in the context of the wider world. The world that we think must be understood by our attention going out, out, out, into it.

Most people in the network have minds that are looking out, out, out, into the network. Most people are trying to find the truth of love, the truth about relationships, and how to understand the world, by paying attention to other's lives, other couples, other relationships, celebrities' lives, what other people do, and what happens to them, and who is whom, and by comparing "me" and "my life" to all that. And even to what appears in fiction, in books and movies. That's what most people are interested in, that's how most people are trying to improve their understanding, and build their opinions, and their beliefs, in one way or another.

That's the nature of society. That's societal consciousness. Which is why, in society, everyone is into everyone else's lives, minds, activities, and their perceived wrong doings and right doings. Then, within the network overall, if this is what you are up to, you join smaller networks, where you discuss and exchange opinions about all this. And create gossip. Or join opposing networks which then come into conflict.

This is the actual nature of societal mind. It's focused out, out, out, onto others, and into the network. All of which is the opposite of mindfulness.

Most networks in nature, which includes social networks, or society as a whole, include things that those who study the science of networks, sometimes call "hubs". A "hub" is an entity in the network that is connected into the network through a greater than usual number of connections. In the case of the Internet, Google and Amazon, for example, are major hubs. In the case of a social network, celebrities are hubs, because many, many more people are paying attention to them, than in the case of an ordinary person. They are connected into the social network through many more lines of connection. In the case of a pandemic, a "super spreader" is a hub.

Today, online social media is a way of turning yourself into a hub, fairly easily, if you want to do that. You do it by increasing your number of "followers". Hubs, in the impersonal, natural laws of how networks work, play a role in how a network changes or develops. So people with a great number of "followers" online, are called "influencers". The network that is being "influenced", overall, is society. And the fact that some people are "influencers", which societal mind sees as personal, is actually a completely impersonal matter of how networks in nature, work. Including the human brain.

Societal consciousness, societal mind, being focused out, out, out, into the network, is the thing itself that is influenced by this mechanism operating in social networks. The mechanism of "hubs". And, of course, this can have an actual political effect, because in a democracy the political system is inseparable from the mechanism of "hubs" operating in networks.

Mostly, the spread of the word "mindfulness", through society, which is our network, has been by this means - the spreading of thoughts, feelings, and ideas, through the network, through the influence of "hubs".

Mindfulness, however, what it truly is, is completely unaffected by "hubs", such as celebrities, or politicians, or "guides" or "influencers", and the way they "influence" the network. You can't get "influencers" to make people more mindful. You might have thought so, you might have thought that has to be the case, but that's not how it works.

It might appear to work that way, sometimes, in appearances, but only to mind and consciousness that is still focused out, out, out, into the network. In other words, only to societal mind and consciousness itself.

And this is because mindfulness is about oneself, and not about anyone else. It's not about "me" or the idea of "who I am", it is about the mind itself, where it is, it is about the self and the emotions, where they are, but not about identification. It's most certainly not about celebrities, or what they're getting up to, or what anyone else is doing, saying, or believing. Being influenced by what someone else is doing, saying, or believing, being influenced by someone else's opinion, is not what mindfulness is. And being influenced by a whole network, because it is a whole network of people who are doing, saying, believing, or expressing a common opinion, is not mindfulness either. There's no such thing as a mindful crowd. It's not that we should not be influenced by these things, necessarily, or don't often have to do this, but it's not mindfulness.

Mindfulness is about oneself, and not about anyone else. Which is why, if you were to ever find a true Oracle, and ask it "What do you think about this", or "What do you think about that", or "What do you believe"?, and so on, regarding the truth of life, or what is going on in the world, the answer you will get is "This isn't about me, it's about you".

People whose minds are just focused out, out, out, into the network, are themselves just part of the network. And the network constitutes a form of intelligence in its own right. But that's not really who we are. That's not really who anyone is. To find who you really are, you have to know yourself.

And we can never do that, by constantly leaking our attention out, out, out, into the network. And expecting to find the truth of life, love, relationships, and being a human being, there. The purpose of what's "out there" is to integrate in it, to walk in it, to be part of it, to experience it, and then to realise what it all is. But you can't realise what it all is with your attention just focused out, out, out, into it, onto someone else, or onto others, with no attention on yourself.

The endless finger-pointing, accusation, allegation making, and daily gossiping that poses as "news" in contemporary society is a sure symptom of one-way attention, focused out, out, out, into the network. It is a serious game in which attention to self is only in the form of the idea of "me", and "who I am", as a person. None of this is mindfulness.

In mindfulness attention is equalised. It is as much "in" as it is "out". But contemporary Western culture doesn't know what inbound attention is. Instead of inbound attention, it just has the preoccupation with the idea of "me" and "who I am" and "my emotions" and "what I am like" as a "person". None of which is inbound attention.

Rather, it is just unconscious identification with the mind and the emotions. Attention paid inwards is not at all the same thing as "navel gazing" or self-consciousness, or self obsession. It's not about "me", and "my opinions". Which is what, in the popular media and the chat shows, it most certainly is all about.

For many people, the first time they encounter truly inward bound attention is when they learn meditation. Mindfulness is what happens when meditation is still going on, even when there is no formal sitting in meditation. It's no good just having a "mindful moment", looking at the beauty of nature, or in some other relaxed, peaceful situation.

The point of mindfulness is to be mindful of what is going on in every ordinary situation, especially including situations that are disturbing. The point of mindfulness is to be mindful of what is an obstruction. An obstruction to peace. An obstruction to beauty. An obstruction to harmony. An obstruction to the realisation of what is really going on in the world. And of what the world really is. And if we think we can understand the obstruction by looking out, out, out, then we are not being mindful.

So there is no mindfulness in the daily News. There is no mindfulness in analysis and opinion. There is no mindfulness in all the finger-pointing, and accusation, and allegation making, and complaining, and blaming that contemporary society so loves.

The discovery of mindfulness is our prerogative as human beings. You don't have to be a Buddhist. It's a Buddhist word, indeed, but it's not exclusively a Buddhist principle. It's a human principle. You can be in any religion, or none. But what doesn't work, is taking a meaningful word and pasting a meaning onto it, that doesn't belong to it.