CREATIONISM REVISITED (repost)

When Erich von Däniken published his controversial Chariots of the Gods? in the early 1970s, many dismissed him as a sensationalist crank. Von Däniken’s chief contention was that the Earth had been visited and colonized by extraterrestrial races who had long mastered interstellar travel. Unfortunately, von Däniken’s fondness for exclamation points and his literary inelegance detracted from his otherwise well-documented theses. He had poured a large part of his personal fortune, and many years of field research, into his obsession with mysterious and colossal artefacts that abound all over the planet - from the Pyramids of Giza and Central America to the gigantic geoglyphs of Nazca, and the megalithic monuments of Rapa Nui.

Von Däniken may have achieved instant international notoriety with his hard-hitting best-sellers, but he was certainly not the first to delve into this taboo area of paleoanthropological and exobiological conjecture.

Indeed, as early as 1953, Desmond Leslie had co-authored a book with George Adamski (right) who claimed to have had personal contact with space visitors. Their book, Flying Saucers Have Landed, was reissued as a paperback in 1970 and became a cult classic among ufologists, along with the writings of George Hunt Williamson (Secret Places of the Lion, Road in the Sky) who forged a potent link between ETs and esoteric lore. Another important early work on the subject was The Sky People by Brinsley Le Poer Trench (published by Neville Spearman in 1963).

Worldwide interest in UFO phenomena spread at lightspeed. The noted psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung commented on the archetypal significance of UFOs in his journals. Award-winning novelist Doris Lessing incorporated the ET question into her Canopus in Argos trilogy in the late 1970s, written from the perspective of a Sirian colonial agent. Along came Uri Geller, the Israeli spoon-bender, whose collaboration with Dr Andrija Puharich resulted in a series of astonishing books revealing the presence of interstellar entities proactively involved with earthly affairs.

Despite the best efforts of academic status quoists and business-as-usual lobbyists, the Little Green Men From Mars refused to leave the limelight. In 1994, respected Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack (left) published his findings in a level-headed book called Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens – investigations into some 200 cases of alien abduction. Mack was prepared to stake his professional reputation on his personal conclusion - the abductees were reporting true experiences; and there is a great deal more to mundane reality than meets the eye.

What evidence, if any, can we find that might ground these notions in the realm of common sense and reason? How about written records, engraved on clay tablets in cuneiform script, some 6,000 years old?

Zecharia Sitchin (right) spent more than three decades studying the Sumerian clay tablets and soaking up Mesopotamian lore. Sitchin has the unique advantage of being a multilinguist with a handful of dead languages at his command. His laborious Mesopotamian research was published in a series called The Earth Chronicles, beginning with The Twelfth Planet in 1976.

Sitchin’s interpretation of the Sumerian records boldly crosses the boundary between history and science fiction. The stories engraved in ancient clay spoke of Sky Gods who established a colony on Earth to prospect for precious metals, particularly gold. Described as “the ones that descended from heaven” (Anunnaki in Sumerian and Nefilim in Hebrew), these creator gods claimed to be sons and daughters of ANU, the King of Heaven. According to the Sumerian chronicles, the Sky Gods’ first terrestrial encampment was called E.RIDU – meaning “cultivated place away from home” – and the word subsequently went through various permutations as Aratha or Ereds in Aramaic, Eretz in Hebrew, Erde in German (Erda in Old High German), Jördh in Icelandic, Jord in Danish, Airtha in Gothic, Erthe in Middle English, and Earth in modern English.

The first wave of Anunnaki settlers were under the command of ANU’s firstborn, the Lord E.A (whose mother was of a serpent race that had earlier arrived on the planet and had now gone subterranean). Soon E.A, Lord of the Waters, became known as EN.KI – Lord of the Firm Lands – and he was an avid engineer and scientist who embarked on a thorough study of terrestrial flora and fauna. The earliest gold mines were located in AB.ZU (southeastern Africa) and as work progressed, more workers arrived to tunnel and dig. ANU then sent his second son, EN.LIL, Lord of the Winds and Regent of Heaven, to govern the growing Earth colony. After 40 Anunnaki Years (about 144,000 terrestrial years), the goldminers began to chafe at the harsh conditions on Earth and there was mutiny in the air. The incipient sibling rivalry between EN.KI and EN.LIL flared up in their differing perspectives on the problem of striking workers. EN.LIL wanted to punish the workers for insubordination, while EN.KI (who had been among them from the outset) was sympathetic to their plight and argued on their behalf.

Finally EN.KI proposed a scientific solution to this archetypal rift between labor and management: he would enlist the aid of his half-sister NIN.TI - a brilliant geneticist whose name means Lady of Life (or Lady of the Rib, because the word TI also denotes the rib) - and attempt to create a semi-intelligent slave race to perform all the menial tasks. After much trial and error, EN.KI and NIN.TI succeeded in manufacturing and cloning a modified primate which they dubbed the A.DAMA (“created from red clay”). It was smart enough to be taught the use simple tools, but not sufficiently intelligent to notice what a raw deal it was getting. The experiment succeeded to the extent that the Anunnaki workers were relieved from the arduous hazards of digging and tunneling. However, cloning these A.DAMA was a time-consuming procedure.

Consequently, EN.KI and NIN.TI decided to contribute their own genetic material and create a self-replicating new breed of A.DAMA in uterus, thereby facilitating sexual reproduction. This led to a dilution of the Anunnaki bloodlines over time, as many of the Earth-based Sky Gods became enamored of their pet slaves, which they affectionately called the LU.LU. The Book of Genesis (chapter 6, verses 1 and 2) coyly skims over this era of genetic confusion: “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.”


Sitchin gives a detailed account of the Great Deluge as recorded in the Sumerian epic called Enuma Elish (literally, “When the gods walked among us”). EN.LIL was worried about the rapidly reproducing Adamic-Anunnaki strain of human and wished to obliterate this genetic aberration before it got out of control.


When the I.GI.GI (“Watchers in the Sky”) stationed in the orbiting mother ship reported to Ground Command that a major wobble in the planetary axis was expected in a matter of months, EN.LIL summoned all ranking officers to an emergency council and made them swear an oath of silence about the impending catastrophe. The Anunnaki would prepare to evacuate Earth just before the axial wobble, leaving the A.DAMA and all genetic monstrosities to perish. There could be no extermination program more elegant and efficient – as well as convenient, that is, morally acceptable to Sky Gods who preferred to keep their hands clean and their conscience clear.

Now, EN.KI had also sworn complicity to EN.LIL’s plan to cleanse the planet of genetic mutations – but he was deeply attached to the semi-sapient creature he and NIN.TI had spawned in their laboratory. Indeed, EN.KI had been secretly enhancing the A.DAMA strain to produce a small number of A.DAPA – an adaptable new breed with enough brain capacity to learn astronomy, physics, and mathematics, thereby trainable as an elite priesthood to the Sky Gods. Perhaps the term “Adept” as it occurs in magical traditions etymologically derives from “Adapa.”

Among the A.DAPA, EN.KI had a particular favorite named Ziusudra whom he summoned to his abode near the source of the Nile. Ziusudra entered the Temple of EN.KI, only to find himself alone... except for a pre-recorded message from his Lord advising him to construct a seaworthy vessel according to a specific design, gather his extended family about him, along with a digitized and compressed genetic database covering a wide spectrum of terrestrial flora and fauna (encoded and recorded in what might today be described as blueray DVD discs, but which in Sumerian were called MEs.)

The Voice of The Lord commanded that when the sky was seen to glow, it would be Ziusudra’s cue to enter the craft and batten down the hatches securely. Accompanying Ziusudra and his family would be experienced navigators with instructions to steer the craft towards Mount Ararat, where they would drop anchor and wait for the turbulent seas to subside.

The same legend is found in Babylonian mythology - specifically in the Epic of Gilgamesh - though Ziusudra’s name appears therein as Utnapishtim, from whom Gilgamesh claimed direct descent. Many millennia down the line, Hebrew scribes transformed his name to Noah, in what is now known as the Old Testament.

As the Sky Gods lifted off from Earth en masse, the heavens glowed with the radiance of their spaceships. Ziusudra knew it was time to board the vessel, fully provisioned with supplies for several weeks, and await the tidal waves that would soon sweep all traces of civilization from the face of the Earth.


For forty days and forty nights, as the tale has passed down from generation to generation, there was no dry land in sight. Terrestrial flora and fauna were wiped out instantly, along with the Adamic populations – except, of course, for Ziusudra and crew, who eventually alighted from their vessel atop Al Judi peak in the vicinity of Ararat, and surveyed the horrific desolation around them.

Meanwhile, safe in their orbiting spacecraft high above the earth, the Sky Gods felt the pangs of remorse and profound sorrow at the sight of the wholesale devastation below. They had seen the terrified faces of the LU.LUs as the raging waters engulfed their homes, and heard the piercing screams of women and children as they drowned by the thousands, by the millions. They saw priests and priestesses stoically seated in prayer and meditation, calmly awaiting oblivion. But to whom were they praying; on what were they meditating? Their Makers were high and dry above them, documenting their demise for their own scientific archives, seemingly indifferent – or powerless to save them. Even so, devotion and faith registered on the serene faces of the supplicants as they clung to the disintegrating pillars of their temples, and then vanished abruptly into the murderous maw of the murky maelstrom. The disturbing memory of this cataclysm was forever etched in the minds of the observing Sky Gods.

Even EN.LIL, aloof in his divine splendor, was beginning to regret his decision to exterminate the hominid slave species. And so, when the Sky Gods returned to Earth after her magnetic field had been reinstated, and a measure of stability had been restored to the planet’s orbit, they were overjoyed and relieved to discover that a tiny remnant of humanity had actually survived. No questions were asked, although it was fairly obvious that an early warning had been leaked to Ziusudra. The sibling Lords EN.KI and EN.LIL agreed to cooperate in the task of rehabilitating earthly civilization and, in record time, cities populated by the illegitimate descendants of the Sky Gods sprang up seemingly overnight like mushrooms, and human civilizations once again began to proliferate across the continents.

The Great Deluge is a recurring theme in all mythologies. In the Malayan Peninsula, aboriginal tribes speak of how the land was repopulated after a massive flood which destroyed everyone except their divine ancestors. Similar accounts can be found in folkloric traditions from almost every indigenous culture around the globe. Paleoanthropologists speculate that this period of regeneration probably dates from around 10,800 BCE – coinciding with the end of the last glacial era, which reshaped land masses and radically altered climatic zones.


And what became of the Sky Gods – the Anunnaki or Nefilim who colonized the planet approximately 430,000 years ago? The Enuma Elish speaks of divine kings and queens whose reigns apparently endured over thousands of terrestrial years – and how their human progeny eventually were granted rulership of the lands, while the gods themselves retired into obscurity (lurking in the astral?), or perhaps they were repatriated to their home planet.

Nevertheless, the Sky Gods seem to have left us a genetic legacy of sibling rivalry, warlordism, and destructive technology – a lethal combination indeed. They also implanted religious belief systems designed to remotely control us through superstitious terror – exposing our ancestors to extreme degrees of shock and awe, while flaunting deadly weapons in perpetual cycles of warfare, using their slightly retarded progeny as cannon fodder.


Thus was the absurd notion of righteous war (call it a crusade or jihad) seeded in the human psyche – along with the insane belief that anyone dying in such a noble cause automatically attained martyrdom, and was thereby assured a place in heaven.

[Excerpt from an unpublished work titled THE (UNFINISHED) BOOK OF JOHN: Confessions of a former Christian fundamentalist by Antares, adapted from an original manuscript by John Chin. First posted 15 February 2009, reposted 21 November 2014, 17 March 2016 & 22 April 2024]

HOW TO SING LIKE A PLANET ~ by Mark Morford

Scientists say the Earth is humming. Not just noise, but a deep, astonishing music. Can you hear it?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

This is the kind of thing we forget.

This is the kind of thing that, given all our distractions, our celeb obsessions and happy drugs and bothersome trifles like family and bills and war and health care and sex and love and porn and breathing and death, tends to fly under the radar of your overspanked consciousness, only to be later rediscovered and brought forth and placed directly in front of your eyeballs, at least for a moment, so you can look, really look, and go, oh my God, I had no idea.

The Earth is humming. Singing. Churning out a tune without the aid of battery or string or wind-up mechanism and its song is ethereal and mystifying and very, very weird, a rather astonishing, newly discovered phenomenon that's not easily analyzed, but which, if you really let it sink into your consciousness, can change the way you look at everything.

Indeed, scientists now say the planet itself is generating a constant, deep thrum of noise. No mere cacophony, but actually a kind of music, huge, swirling loops of sound, a song so strange you can't really fathom it, so low it can't be heard by human ears, chthonic roars churning from the very water and wind and rock themselves, countless notes of varying vibration creating all sorts of curious tonal phrases that bounce around the mountains and spin over the oceans and penetrate the tectonic plates and gurgle in the magma and careen off the clouds and smack into trees and bounce off your ribcage and spin over the surface of the planet in strange circular loops, "like dozens of lazy hurricanes," as one writer put it.

It all makes for a very quiet, otherworldly symphony so odd and mysterious, scientists still can't figure out exactly what's causing it or why the hell it's happening. Sure, sensitive instruments are getting better at picking up what's been dubbed "Earth's hum," but no one's any closer to understanding what the hell it all might mean. Which, of course, is exactly as it should be.

Because then, well, then you get to crank up your imagination, your mystical intuition, your poetic sensibility — and if there's one thing we're lacking in the modern world, it's... well, you know.

Me, I like to think of the Earth as essentially a giant Tibetan singing bowl, flicked by the middle finger of God and set to a mesmerizing, low ring for about 10 billion years until the tone begins to fade and the vibration slows and eventually the sound completely disappears into nothingness and the birds are all, hey what the hell happened to the music? And God just shrugs and goes, well that was interesting.

Or maybe the planet is more like an enormous wine glass, half full of a heady potion made of horny unicorns and divine lubricant and perky sunshine, around the smooth, gleaming rim of which Dionysus himself circles his wet fingertip, generating a mellifluous tone that makes the wood nymphs dance and the satyrs orgasm and the gods hum along as they all watch 7 billion confused human ants scamper about with their lattes and their war and their perpetually adorable angst, oblivious.

But most of all, I believe the Earth actually (and obviously) resonates, quite literally, with the Hindu belief in the divine sound of OM (or, more accurately, AUM), that single, universal syllable that contains and encompasses all: birth and death, creation and destruction, being and nothingness, rock and roll, Christian and pagan, meat and vegetable, spit and swallow. You know?

But here's the best part: This massive wave of sound? The Earth's deep, mysterious OM, it's perpetual hum of song? Totally normal — that is, if by "normal" you mean "unfathomably powerful and speaking to a vast mystical timelessness we can't possibly comprehend."

Indeed, all the spheres do it, all the planets and all the quasars and stars and moons and whirlpool galaxies, all vibrating and humming like a chorus of wayward deities singing sea shanties in a black hole. It's nothing new, really: Mystics and poets and theorists have pondered the "music of the spheres" (or musica universalis) for eons; it is the stuff of cosmic philosophy, linking sacred geometry, mathematics, cosmology, harmonics, astrology and music into one big cosmological poetry slam.



Translation: You don't have to look very far to understand that human beings — hell, all animals, really — adore song and music and tone and rhythm, and then link this everyday source of life straight to the roar of the planet itself, and then back out to the cosmos.

In other words, you love loud punk? Metal? Jazz? Deep house? Saint-Saens with a glass of Pinot in the tub? Sure you do. That's because somewhere, somehow, deep in your very cells and bones and DNA, it links you back to source, to the Earth's own vibration, the pulse of the cosmos. Oh yes it does. To tap your foot and sway your body to that weird new Portishead tune is, in effect, to sway it to the roar of the universe. I mean, obviously.

At some point we'll probably figure it all out. Science will, with its typical charming, arrogant certainty, sift and measure and quantify this "mystical" Earthly hum, and tell us it merely comes from, say, ocean movements, or solar wind, or 10 billion trees all deciding to grow a quarter millimeter all at once. We will do as we always do: oversimplify, peer through a single lens of understanding, stick this dazzling phenomenon in a narrow category, and forget it.

How dangerously boring. I much prefer, in matters mystical and musical and deeply cosmic, to tell the logical mind to shut up and let the soul take over and say, wait wait wait, maybe most humans have this divine connection thing all wrong. Maybe God really isn't some scowling gay-hating deity raining down guilt and judgment and fear on all humankind after all.

Maybe she's actually, you know, a throb, a pulse, a song, deep, complex, eternal. And us, well, we're just bouncing and swaying along as best we can, trying to figure out the goddamn melody.

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle

[First posted 27 June 2008]

HOW TO SAVE THE EARTH IN 10 MINUTES (revisited)

From a talk by Antares at the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia, 18 October 1992

I HAVE TEN MINUTES so let's dispense with formality. Now why am I standing here talking to you today? Who on earth am I anyway? Well, I'll tell you: I'm an essential part of you. I breathe the air you breathe. I'm connected to every living cell on this small planet. I've got billions of names (scientific as well as unscientific ones) but the one I'm using right now is Antares.

I've been around the Sun more than five dozen times. But my genetic memories go all the way back to what scientists call the Big Bang. What do I do? That's a very good question. Well, I breathe and eat and shit and move about like everybody else. But mostly I just think and dream and feel. And I'm amazed and amused by this phenomenon called Life.

Once in a while I get terribly depressed. Then I get angry and scold a few people and I feel all right again. In short, I'm not a specialist. I can see the woods as well as the trees.

Trees! You were probably wondering when I'd get round to talking about our rainforests. In a minute I'll mention them. But first let me finish telling you why I'm standing up here talking to you today.

I lived in Kuala Lumpur for 22 years, in the Ampang area. When I first moved there in 1970 the street in front of my house was so quiet I could rollerskate on it. Now it's lined with 26-storey condos and jammed with cars. So I decided to move to the hills, to a place called Magick River. Everywhere you look all you see is beauty.

Occasionally I go back to KL and when I happen to catch the 11 o'clock news on TV - I can't believe all that stuff is happening in the same Universe. War, famine, hurricanes, plane crashes, stockmarket crashes, oil spills, earthquakes, floods, massacres... there's been a lot of speculation about the Millennium, about the End of the World, the End of History.

Don't worry, it means a new cycle is starting. It's really up to us to shape it. How do we do that? With our thoughts, with our deeds, with our willingness to help in the healing process. But ultimately our Vision has to be centered in the heart - not just in the head. We have to think beyond national boundaries. Earth is one world. Our vision must become whole, holistic, holy - which means we must experience being part of the Whole. We can't depend on slogans, no matter how clever they sound.

But before anything constructive can be done, we need to overcome our own fears. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of change, fear of routine, fear of loss, fear of death, fear of trusting our own inner authority.

Okay, time to talk about trees. A few miles up and down the road from where I live you can see logging trails winding deep into the hills. Magnificent jungle giants being cut down and taken out to be turned into chopsticks for the Japanese. Why don't they learn to eat with their fingers like civilized people?

Now these concessions are adjacent to areas designated as Permanent Forest Reserves. It's a water catchment area, for heaven's sake. No wonder all the once-crystalline rivers now turn into kopi susu tarik (Malaysian capuccino) everytime it rains heavily.


One afternoon many years ago I rode my motorbike up a dirt track and found myself in a deserted logging camp. There was a huge pile of logs lying lifelessly about. Something snapped in my head. I saw it all so clearly: a few businessmen and politicians getting obscenely rich by plundering our rainforests - heedless of the catastrophic consequences to everyone else.

Toothpick factories where shady 300-year-old trees once stood. Assembly-line houses, condos and shopping malls sprouting everywhere. Sterile wastelands they call industrial parks. Sheer ugliness obliterating anything natural, anything truly beautiful. Dishonesty and greed and hardnosed cynicism in every boardroom of every corporation big enough to make a dent in reality. All of this came to a sudden focus in one astounding revelation.

These Umnoputra and Umnoputri with their logging concessions... why on earth are they so anxious to destroy a major watershed? To make big bucks of course and for what? To buy a big house and a couple of Porsches and a SUV with a mobile phone or two and then on weekends they can roar through the jungle armed with shotguns so they can shoot down a few wild mangos. I swear this actually happened in front of my house.

And their kids with baseball caps on their heads and Nikes on their feet... why, they just wanna be all-American Malaysians. That's what they grew up absorbing in front of their TV sets. And the most incredible thing is... these people form the ruling class. Good heavens, the world is in the wrong hands!

I'm not just talking about this country. I mean the whole goddamn world is in the wrong hands. It's in the hands of individuals who stubbornly insist that MIGHT IS RIGHT. And why shouldn't they. They're VERY POWERFUL PEOPLE. Or so they've managed to make a lot of us believe. Now how did it happen? How did our planet fall into the wrong hands? I think I know how it happened but I have only ten minutes, so you'll have to fill in a lot of blanks. I can only give you the barest outline of the story, so please pay close attention.



ONCE UPON A TIME (or perhaps an Eternity) the only One who owned anything at all was that entity some of us call God or Wakan Tanka or Great Spirit. Only problem was, there was NOTHING to own since the Supreme Being existed solely in Its Own Imagination. Never underestimate the power of the Imagination.

Anyway at some unimaginable point the Wholly One became aware of Itself. That's when the Big Bang is supposed to have occurred. I say "supposed" because there wasn't any BANG as such. It was more like the Entire Universe waking up and realizing... Hey! I AM!

And so it began to breathe: out, in, out, in, out... expansion and contraction... centrifugal and centripetal force... now where these two Forces overlapped MATTER condensed out of SPIRIT. Are you still with me? Good. Let's fast forward...

Now in one of these pockets of Matter our solar system exists. Counting from the Sun, the third planet is this "bluegreen pearl" we call Earth. Don't ask me for details. There's a Mystery yet to be solved. Let's say that at some point in Earth's early evolution the planet had to be quarantined from the rest of the Universe. Which meant NO DIRECT ACCESS TO THE HIERARCHY OF EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY EMANATING FROM THE SUPREME BEING.

Instead we were saddled with a few penghulus: local representatives known as Kings and Queens. Originally all Royalty was appointed by Divine Decree ("You over there with the spectacles; you'll be the Class Monitor.") The tribe would then anoint the chosen candidate for rulership (and from this comes the word charisma, from the Greek chrisma meaning "sacred oil.") So the word REAL as in REALITY or REALM means ROYAL - APPOINTED BY GOD.

Real Estate should read ROYAL ESTATE: property managed by the earthly representatives of the Supreme Being. No one is allowed to buy or sell or muck around with it without the authorization of a Rightful Monarch.



Sound idea but who's a Rightful Monarch? It's been a hell of a long time since the "Sons of God" came over and mixed their genes with the local primates. These days it gets harder and harder to tell just who was Born for Glory and who's still a Baboon (don't you be fooled by their bow-ties and silk shirts).

I just wanted to let you have the Big Picture. So we can talk about Management Policies on this planet: who has the authority to define the sort of activity that goes on here? Kings and Queens and their Legal Representatives, right? But what do we do when, for example, we find ourselves stuck with a syphilitic braindead ruler whose legal reps are more inclined towards ILLEGAL DEALS? How can we check and balance things?

Well, we could leave it to the Law of Karma, to Divine Justice... in other words, we could leave it to Nature. After all, no matter what we do to this planet she can't die. Sure, she could turn really mean and ugly and unfit for human habitation - but that doesn't mean the planet's dead. That only means WE are dead. Unless we mutate into ninja cockroaches or intelligent poison bogs.

Hey, don't worry, be happy - the Earth will go on spinning quite merrily round the Sun for another 15 million years or so... until the Sun decides to go on vacation or transforms into Something Altogether Different. (Is my ten minutes up?) See... the Earth is quite safe, she's absolutely fine, no worries. However, we do need to consider what's going to become of the human race.



I think the only way we can determine how we - collectively, as a species - would like this priceless piece of prime property called Earth to look is to make sure she's in the right hands. Any volunteers for the job? Come on, don't be bashful. Just hold up your hand, like this...

Congratulations, you've got the job! One of the first things you'll have to do when you take over the day-to-day management of Spaceship Earth is to make sure that people like Chief Ministers and their family members aren't permitted anywhere near a forest with their chainsaws and bulldozers. No one must be allowed to tamper with the ecosystem who doesn't have an inborn sensitivity to its secret life.

There's no such thing as a "thing." It's all energy transforming itself infinitely in a sacred dance we're intimately part of. So how can we describe a field of paddy, fruit-bearing trees, chickens, bamboo groves, fish, mineral-rich mountains, ducks, sheep, wild berries, clear streams, sugarcane, all forms of life support spun out of sunlight, as "commodities and resources"? It's as crass as calling your beloved a meatball.

What's in a name? Well, call someone "enemy" and you can kill him. Call him "friend" and you can love. If we knew the trees in our area each by name, would we turn them into furniture without at least a prayer of thanks?

Times are changing fast. We are the caretakers of Earth. Let's not muck around simply because we don't expect a surprise visit from the Supreme Being, the one and only original owner of everything. Even if you don't believe in stuff like this, do it for yourself, do it for your grandchildren.

And speaking of wrong hands and right hands, what's wrong today can become right tomorrow and vice versa. So we absolutely need to have Cosmic Accounting and Accountability on all levels, public and private.

Secrecy is evil. Why hide the skeletons in your closet? Everybody's got one or two. Open the doors, let in some fresh air and some truth.

Cosmic Accounting requires an appreciation of the largest possible context in which we are conducting our daily affairs. We have to look up from our notebooks and feel the breeze from time to time. Cosmic Accountability demands something called Freedom of Information - or at least an independent press. (I know our irascible friend Dr M once boasted that Malaysia has the freest press in the world. Good sense of humor, Doc. I know how you detest folks like me. You call us "anti-development" and "anti-progress" - even "anti-government" and "anti-national." You got it wrong, Doc. We're only anti your shallow, hollow, densely materialistic and spiritually retarded perspective on reality!)

Seriously though, folks like me - and all green souls gathered here to celebrate our greenery - are just Nature's way of jamming on the brakes. So we won't hurtle over the cliffs of relentless development like a herd of swine possessed by demons of ruthless ambition and greed. There's a time for Action and a time for Quiet Contemplation. But Contemplation must take precedence. Otherwise our actions will lead us all to a hell of our own making.

Finally - and this is the most vital thought I want to share with you - remember the Environment begins with your own physical being. Your body is the first definition of Environment. Then it extends to your home, your bioregion, your planet, your solar system, and so on. Take care of it and be aware.


Be aware of your own Infinite Potential. You may be only ONE individual. But then so is GOD. Don't forget we all came from the Big Bang. And I hope we're all heading for the BIG BANK where we shall claim our divine genetic inheritance which has been accruing interest since 20 Billion BCE or so.

Then we'll ALL be fabulously rich, rich beyond our wildest fantasies... and we won't have to go round chopping down lovely old trees to sell as toothpicks and chopsticks.

Thank you.

Antares © 1992, 2014, 2024

[First posted 11 September 2008, reposted 18 December 2014 & 22 April 2017]

THE LIE WE LIVE ~ a short film by Spencer Cathcart

Published on 27 Jan 2015

Exposing the truth about our corrupt world and what humanity has become.

This is a short documentary film I made and wrote questioning our freedom, the education system, corporations, money, the American capitalist system, the US government, world collapse, the environment, climate change, genetically modified food, and our treatment of animals.

My name is Spencer Cathcart and if you want to contact me email freshtastical@gmail.com