Photographic Serendipity ~ Perfect Timing! (reprise)

[courtesy of Olivia de Haulleville. First posted 3 september 2012]

CONDITION CRITICAL BUT NOT SIRIUS ~ Cosmic Fact and Fiction by ANTARES

I can't believe this cosmic joke
I tried to break the news, 
It broke... (from ‘Mary Malone of Moscow' by Dr Strangely Strange)


If I didn't find it all so hideously funny, I'd die of exasperation and grief. What am I talking about? That four letter word, LIFE? Correct.

I'll tell you another joke. A funny thing happened to me on the way to Eternity. I got caught up in Time.

Entangled in History. Of course, in retrospect, I could honestly declare I did it deliberately, in full consciousness, of my own volition. Well, it sounded like an amusing digression at the time. The whole universe was abuzz with gossip about this bright bluegreen watery world called Gaia, Tellus, or Earth: third planet from Sol, a small star orbiting Sirius in the remote reaches of Galaxy 13, locally called the Milky Way. The food and sex were unutterably addictive - that's what all the guidebooks said.

Having been on assignment here for nearly 260,000 spins around the Sun, or 10 Galactic Years, I can confirm that. Now, 10 Galactic Years doesn't sound that long. But bear in mind it took only 5 Cosmic Days to get Earth's ecosystem tooled up and ready to receive the Zoo Program. And only in the last 11 minutes of the 6th Cosmic Day was the part simian creature called Homo saps released from the undersea labs and distributed over the land masses. Don't ask me how many Earth Years one Cosmic Day represents, I'm running low on zeroes.

Before I carry on (as I'm wont to do), let me explain a few important developments that have made this true life account possible. My dear friend Drunvalo Melchizedek recently arrived from the 13th Dimension with some really Mind Blowing Info (if you have access to the internet, key in "Drunvalo Melchizedek" for a summary of the exciting news from Headquarters). He revealed that our planet was digitized and frequency enhanced back in 1972, and that the experiment worked beyond everyone's wildest expectations. And so, in 1987, it was possible to announce the Harmonic Convergence, and the beginning of a new era of glasnost and perestroika (da, da, Gorby is part of the mission, even if he won't publicly admit it). After which it was no holds barred on previously classified information. You mean you didn't know there was an embargo on any intelligence that might cause the inhabitants of Earth to question the status quo?

Indeed there was, but the lid has been lifted at last. Who laid on this embargo, you might ask?

Your wicked stepfather did. Hold it a second, you say. You don't have a wicked stepfather, your mum and dad are alive and well and still happily married and living in Setapak. Listen, we're speaking metaphorically here. I personally know a few stepfathers who happen to be real sweeties. So let's not get too literal. That doesn't help when we're discussing really BIG issues.

Your real father, if the truth be known, was an Angel. More than that: he was an Archangel, one of the Elohim (that's Hebrew for "Sons of God"). These days we'd call him a Sirian (not Assyrian, mind you, but remember there are interesting clues to be found therein). A real wizard with gene splicing, your Father contributed his DNA to a long and tedious experiment involving a particularly receptive female specimen of modified primate, with whom he felt a passionate bond beyond the bounds of scientific duty. This superseded earlier humanoid breeding experiments conducted by the ruling council of Elohim, collectively called Yahweh. The results of these earlier attempts didn't survive very long because they lacked a sense of humor, which only comes from compassion.

Anyway, it gets rather technical, and I shall leave the sordid details to other storytellers. Suffice to say, it was a tricky and unauthorized experiment in hybridization that led to your Father's vilification for simply granting humanity the precious gift of Fire – Intellect, and its dangerous by products, Language, Reason, Self Awareness, Poetry, Humor, Free Will. Your mythologies have recorded this momentous event as the Promethean Revolt, the Eating of the Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, the Expulsion from the Garden, and the Departure of the Gods. If you were brought up on christian dogma, you may recall that the blame was put entirely on the Serpent and the overly adventurous feminine spirit of Eve, the Temptress, Mother of Evolution.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the ring, we have Darwin's Evolutionists. Having split open the atom and found virtually nothing inside apart from some Strange and Fascinating Qualities, a few Quirks and Quarks, but no bearded patriarch icon, no uncanny likeness of Ayatollah Khomeini, John Paul II, or Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh aka Osho or even Sun Myung Moon... they had to assume that all previous theories were based entirely on superstition - and therefore classifiable as Mystical Hogwash fit only for the backyard bonfire. Our unknown Father was renamed Hap Hazard, or Pure Chance, or Mr Random Factor.

It was very convenient to have a dad named Random Factor: his mad brother Max managed to make a killing in the cosmetics industry - making up for (or covering up) the fact that humanity was just an illegitimate Child of Fortune after all, a regular Ugly Duckling.

So what became of our real Father? What kind of Daddy was he? Nobody knows for sure, because he has yet to complete his memoirs and get them published. However, speculation is rife that the Elohim are by and large a quiet, contemplative breed - quite unaccustomed to the gooey melodrama of a hydrocarbon protein existence. It's possible that our Father might have regarded the experience of being immersed in a flesh and blood scenario as somewhat odious, and would thus have been inclined to remain aloof from it all, content to take a peek into the nursery from time to time. And if the situation warranted, he might occasionally expend some energy rearranging the furniture, so as to prevent the infant humanity from banging its head on sharp objects (like flaming tektites).

In any case the child didn’t seem too badly off in the day-to-day care of the hired help, those hardy hide-bound hench-humanoids from the planet Nibiru. Which, alas, led to the first instance of child molestation – but we won’t venture into this psychic quagmire just yet. A remarkably racy race, us humans.

You see, the idea of sexual reproduction was perfectly fine for zoomorphs – but for a highly intelligent and geometrically precise species to be so intimately involved in the messy viviparous process was altogether a different kettle of fish.

Eons ago, the Elohim weren’t at all an individualized race. They were a group intelligence emanating from the pineal gland of the Great One like rays of pure focused will. They knew no gender and lived only in Light – and therefore were unfamiliar with tactile sensations, sensuality, sexuality – and all their attendant pains and pleasures. Their encounter and entanglement with Earth’s carnal karma was for the most part a bewildering but immensely educational process, which is still unfolding just beyond the threshold of our perception. Little wonder, then, that over the eons, watching our microbic human cosmodrama unfold has become a favorite pastime of the Elohim, who have indeed grown pretty protective of their dense-bodied runt, the human being, formerly called the Adama (“clay-formed entity”).

Where does the wicked stepfather come in? Ah... this is how official history begins. With a systematic fudging of the books, a laborious tampering with the records, conducted by grim-souled clerics working under the orders of a new CEO – some whizkid flown in from Rigel Kent, Orion, who seemed to have an instinctive grasp of primate politics.

Some say there was protracted debate in the High Council of the Intergalactic Confederation as to the wisdom of allowing such an unpredictable turn of events to manifest. Others aver that the whole episode was unforeseen and unpreventable: an invasion from Deep Space, no less. Ships suddenly appearing over the horizon of Business-as-Usual, flying the Jolly Roger. Will we ever get a full account? Whoever organized the cover-up did a damn good job. Crystal data banks deactivated, cellular memory files erased, deleted, or grossly distorted. Collective amnesia. Total News Blackout in the War Zone. Direct all enquiries to the Information Retrieval Department. Fill in forms XYZ/123/Q/ABC. In triplicate, please.

This is the Martian Inquisition. Identification papers will be issued to all new arrivals. Gene encodement procedures to be strictly observed. Put it down in black and white. Now, let’s ignore the Grey areas. Reticulate and gridify all internodes. Seal the portals. Sign and deliver on command. By Order.

With the altering of our DNA circuitry, it was relatively easy for the new “owners” of Planet Earth to claim exclusive sovereignty and exercise parochial jurisdiction over the proliferating tribes of humans.

And so the Dark Lords – to employ an archaic term – declared themselves our legal Guardians and Trustees to our Further Evolution. They set up monolithic Institutions, established Priesthoods, introduced the Guild System, spurred the invention of Barbed Wire. Crime was identified and duly Punished. Judgement was passed and Decrees proclaimed. Statutes and statuary lined the public walkways.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t entirely a “bad’” thing, this sinister twist in the plot. It gave us the dynamic flux of Duality.  We became obsessed with concepts of Good and Evil, entered into the not-so-merry-go-round of vicious and virtuous circles. And, of course, it was invariably THEM that were Evil. WE were always the Goody-Two-Shoes.

Perhaps it’s time to stop calling our stepfather “wicked.” The fact that he has never learned to trust his children is his problem.

Perhaps the horror of history was our collective crucifixion on the cross of Materialism. The dense and claustrophobic spacetime continuum in which our immediate past has been lived is now at the point of revealing itself as a mandala of kaleidoscopic meaning and metamorphic beauty.

Our stepfather wasn’t really all that wicked. He was merely terrified of losing control.

Now, you may be wondering, where is the humor in all this?

Sit back for a moment and contemplate your perspective of reality. What are you doing “for a living”? Are you succeeding at your chic “lifestyle”? How often do you feel confused, helpless, caught in a permanent double-bind? Are you perpetually looking back over your shoulders, fearful that any moment you may be struck down by disaster, disease and/or death? Is that why you succumbed and bought “life insurance” last year? Is the Inland Revenue Department or your bank manager sending you messages in red ink? Are you worried about your performance at work, at play, and in bed? Have the trees in your garden been felled for a new access road?

Surely, surely these are matters of grave consequence. Why waste precious time time tuning into weird stations when you can keep that dial set at 99.3 FM? Time (reverb FX) Highway (reverb FX) Radio (digital delay)!

Hey, the laugh is on you. Everything is perfectly okay. Stay tuned, folks. We’ll be right back after this commercial break, with an exclusive interview, transmitted live from Andromeda, with....

The Man Who Sired Humanity! (Cool funky theme music.)


© Antares, 1996-2004-2020-2022-2023-2024

[Originally published in Journal One, May 1996. First posted 11 March 2020, reposted 4 November 2020, 15 May 2022, 14 May 2023 & 14 September 2024]

DEPROGRAM YOURSELF (IT'S EASY!)

GOD moves in mysterious ways, the sneaky bastard.

Did I push any buttons? Did someone gasp and call me “extremely rude” or even “blasphemous”? If you responded with a spontaneous guffaw, congratulations, you’re CLEAR! You’re not required to read this - except for the laughs.

Are some of you frowning? What’s bothering you? The word “bastard” or the word “sneaky” or the word “mysterious” or the much-abused three-letter word “God”? Or are you feeling indifferent? Because you worship some concept that goes by the name of Wakan Tanka or Hunab K’u or Ahuramazda or Allah or Avalokiteshvara or Arumugam or Subramanian or Brahma or Vishnu or Shiva or Krishna or Ishwara or Paramapurusha or Sugmad or Sangyang Licin or Sangyang Widi or Pater Omnipotens Aeternae Deus or Tua Pek Kong or Zeus or Caesar or Kaiser or Führer or Pharaoh or Jesus Christ or Buddha or Sai Baba or Babaji or Baal or Marduk or Yahweh or Waheguru or Ptah or Enki or Tiki or Miki or Moto or Quetzalcoatl or Kukulcan or Tlaloc or Tezcatzlipoca or Odin or Votan or Dow Jones or Amex or Forex or GNP or Wang or Wong?

Wong moves in mysterious ways, the sneaky bastard.

Not quite the same somehow. But let’s take a good look at a few of these potentially troublesome words, beginning with bastard (bas’-tard) n. a child born out of wedlock; an impure, coarse brown refuse product of sugar-refining, used to color beer... (Old French bastard, from fils de bast, son of a pack-saddle). Well, forget about the brown sugar. It’s the “child born out of wedlock” definition that warrants our attention. Jeez, what a fuddy-duddy word “bastard” is! The truth is: anyone with parents feisty and free-spirited and passionate enough to enjoy a bit of societally unsanctioned coitus ought to be called “lucky.”


The way I see it, we are ALL immaculately conceived, regardless of who our parents happen to be - even if Dad came in the form of a dove or a black panther or pollen from outer space. Some women just happen to be kinky - but if the union is genetically sound, it will bear fruit.

Who on earth knows if God’s own parents (Mr & Mrs Prime Cause) were properly wed. Probably not. Which makes Him or Her or It the Bastard of Bastards. So we might as well delete the word “bastard” from the dictionary. No one’s going to miss it - except perhaps as a convenient swear word with no specific meaning.

How about sneaky? To creep around in a suspicious fashion, not wanting to be caught, preferring a degree of privacy? Well, if you had a thing about impregnating virgins, wouldn’t YOU be a master of sneakiness? The cat considers the mouse sneaky. But the mouse is only being careful: survival mechanism. In a safe, friendly environment nobody has to be sneaky.

As for mysterious: the word presents a problem only for obstinately logical types who mistrust anything empirically unprovable, anything in any way “mystical” (and therefore purely “subjective” and statistically unquantifiable under strict laboratory conditions). The rest of us find the mysterious rather alluring: a mystery seeks to be solved, especially if it arises from the mists of antiquity straight out of the realm of myth.

Now for the word God. Humans tend to fall into three broad categories: monotheists who insist on addressing the Supreme Being by just one name; pantheists (who prefer several names for the One and Only Holy Being; and atheists who don’t believe in taking anything on blind faith. Whichever category you think you feel most comfortable in, remember it’s all just names. When it comes down to essentials, the Absolute Tao - the virtually incomprehensible amazing and amusing miraculousness and magnificence of It All - is beyond names.

Calling God a “sneaky bastard” is really a term of endearment, indicating an affectionate intimacy, certainly not FEAR. Who wants to be feared? Only a horrible monster, to be sure. And God couldn’t possibly be as horrid as some folks make Him or Her or It out to be.


My daughters and I could never agree on the naming of our dogs. A black bitch I named Latipa they insisted on calling Smokey. The dog had no problem with any of this: she responded to whatever name we chose to call her, especially if food was involved. Even when “Latipa” evolved into “Tiparipati”, she still wagged her tail ecstatically when she heard any of her names. The point of the opening exercise was to demonstrate how easily we get entangled in semantic snares laid by our linguistic structures. I’m no antisemanticist, mind you, but I’m acutely aware of the limitations to clear perception caused by living exclusively in a reality defined and generated by language. How can one can escape from a mental prison constructed of word bricks? Recently I was re-reading Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig and found an illuminating passage (among many) which deserves attention:

Eskimos see sixteen different forms of ice which are as different to them as trees and shrubs are different to us. Hindus, on the other hand, use the same term for both ice and snow. Creek and Natchez Indians do not distinguish yellow from green. Similarly, Choctaw, Tunica, the Keresian Pueblo Indians and many other people make no terminological distinction between blue and green. The Hopis have no word for time.

Pirsig goes on to quote Edward Sapir:

The fact of the matter is that the 'real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group... Forms and significances which seem obvious to an outsider will be denied outright by those who carry out the patterns; outlines and implications that are perfectly clear to these may be absent to the eye of the onlooker.

Many seekers have tried STILLNESS and SILENCE as therapy, embarking on voluntary programs of non-action and non-verbalization for days or weeks or even twenty or thirty years. I must admit that I have never managed to shut my mouth up for more than 24 hours (due to laryngitis), and as for shutting up the mind - 24 minutes is something to brag about (and after the first 10 minutes, I may have dozed off). Yet I don’t doubt that Stillness and Silence are a powerful way to cut through the crud and crap of our sociocultural conditioning and achieve true seeing, feeling, and knowing.



If ever you have the opportunity - and the determination - to carry out such a program, you will be rewarded with the gift of direct perception: beyond words, beyond personal egoic constraints, and beyond preconceptions. Watch it, though: seeing the halo around your head, people might just laugh at you in their usual vulgar manner. And in that elevated state it would not be an appropriate response to say "Fuck you!”

No, you’d simply have to expand your heart chakra (the glowing dynamic energy field in the middle of your chest that pulses with unconditional love just like ET or popular pin-ups of Jesus) and cherish your detractors to death, resurrection, and ascension.

Take heart. There are MODERN ways to deprogram yourself. But most of these come with a price tag - especially in this “new age” of marketing when even the most arcane teachings of the ancient mystery schools have been streamlined, simplified, updated and cleverly packaged into painless seminars and workshops that run from a single weekend to over a week. Count on paying anything from $100 to $5,000 - but bear in mind that the costlier programs don’t necessarily “work better” than the more affordable ones; they just have slicker brochures and a more professionally organized planetary network.

I’m not about to endorse any specific deprogramming approach (“belief management technologies” is what a few of these systems call themselves) - though I would encourage you to go for it if you find yourself in urgent need of "ontological refocusing" and some quick positive reinforcement - and if you’re one of those who normally wouldn’t think twice about a $150 hair restyling exercise or an impulsive visit to an Italian boutique. For sure you’ll come out feeling as good as if you’d just bought yourself a $2,000 Zegna suit (I wouldn’t know, I’ve only ever worn a second-hand pair of fancy Italian shoes and driven a fourth-hand Alfa Romeo - but even those tiny indulgences perked me up considerably.)

Those who are too cheap to consider spending wads of cash on any sort of therapy - not even getting your car fitted with genuine eelskin upholstery or treating yourself to ten sessions in a samadhi tank - good stuff, you’re just like me! So you’ll just have to trust your native intuition and follow your nose (or gnose) wherever it leads you. I did. And I can promise you one thing - the universe always looks after one of its own, regardless of your bank balance or reputation. Don’t expect me to compress 50 years of private research into a 2500-word blogpost. I only want to drop enough hints to get you going - or at least confirm that you’re doing perfectly fine just the way you are. But did I hear someone ask:

What’s the purpose of “deprogramming” yourself?


Boy, do we really have to go all the way back to basics? Well, why not? It’s a pretty good place to start. When was the last time you sat back and said to yourself: “There MUST be more to life than the mind-numbing, soul-dehydrating daily routine I’m caught up in!”? Not too long ago, right? THIS IS A POSITIVE SIGN THAT YOU’VE BECOME A PASSIVE CONSUMER OF REALITY. Which means: you believe that there’s someone “out there” who’s running the whole show and who decides everyone else’s “destiny.”

Don’t feel too bad about it. Most of us probably feel this way most of the time. It’s really just a bad case of overprogramming you’ve got. We inherit two sets of “hardwired” beliefs from our parents - who got theirs from their parents and so on - and some of these beliefs work in our favor, and some used to but don’t anymore. Dig around your so-called subconscious and you’ll uncover a whole lot of rotting furniture and other junk that would make a beautiful bonfire in the backyard of your being. You don’t want all that “karmic baggage” impeding your further evolution. It’s a good idea to travel light if you want to reach insights you’ve never had before.

Approximately 95% of this “junk programming” serves as Inhibitions. Society doesn’t want you behaving too differently from your neighbors. In the Industrial Age it has been very convenient to keep entire populations happily and mindlessly conforming to statistical “norms.” It makes marketing all kinds of energy-depleting stuff a lot easier. If you’re someone who believes that everything is simply hunky-dory the way it is, it’s perfectly okay. On another level, you’re absolutely right. But be sure you’ve taken the cellophane wrapping off your Reality Sandwich before you sink your teeth into it.

Sooner or later everybody gets the urge to deprogram himself or herself. It’s inevitable. You can’t stop water from flowing just by throwing a heap of rubbish in the drains. Eventually a major downpour will occur, causing a huge flood that will blast away the debris and sweep it all out to the ocean (the “ultimate solution” as Frank Zappa called it). In a single glorious moment, your vital force will break through the layers of encrusted ego programming - and you’ll be absolutely perfectly okay, the way we were all intended to be. Meanwhile, I suggest you attempt this simple visualization:


Picture yourself in front of your computer. On the monitor screen is a series of icons....

(a) a stern-faced, white-bearded patriarch, looking like some kind of judge

(b) a voluptuous Venus emerging from the sea, stark naked

(c) a ferocious-looking martial-type in full military regalia

(d) a Dick Cheney clone in a dark suit sporting a red tie and a cold-blooded grimace

(e) a cherubic woolly-haired old lady with a merry twinkle in her eyes

(f) a grinning juju-man, black as the night sky, togged up like a Zulu chief

(g) a serene old sage blissed out in lotus posture

(h) a thick book full of incomprehensible utterances and sonorous exhortations

(i) a chubby child of three, smiling as in a cereal ad

(j) an extremely compassionate, white-robed, maternal figure smiling benignly upon you

(k) a brilliant ball of neon blue light, pulsating with vitality and intelligence

(l) a gruesome giant reptile, velociraptor or tyrannosaurus rex, ready to snap your head off

(m) a life-sized bust of Marx - Karl or Groucho

(n) a wild-haired scientist pointing at a flipchart covered with algebraic workings

(o) a dazzling, energetic/synergetic, everchanging, kaleidoscopic, mandala pattern that represents perfect geometric integrity

(p) a glossy poster of Elvis Presley, Bob Marley, Jim Morrison, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, James Dean, or the artist formerly known as Prince

(q) a monumental tree that seems to tower endlessly into the heavens

(r) a gargoyle-like stone statue weighing 850 tons

(s) a fairytale treasure chest overflowing with precious stones

(t) an archaic torture device with a pathetically bony and very nearly expired person nailed to it

(u) a flotilla of disc-shaped lifeforms radiating an other-worldly light

(v) a sleek seladang or cape buffalo, muscular torso glistening with sweat

(w) diamond-like galaxies orbiting one another eternally

(x) your grandparents in a formal portrait

(y) your favorite photo of yourself

(z) a bold question mark

NOW...Select your image of God. Move the mouse around till you find an icon you favor and click.


REALITY WILL IMMEDIATELY CONFORM TO WHICHEVER CONCEPT OF DIVINITY YOU CHOOSE!

If you later decide to alter your concept of God, you must first exit the current paradigm before repeating the procedure. You are free to change icons as often as you wish. Whichever icon you pick will prove completely valid.

If you clicked on the Question Mark, it means you’re always seeking new inputs and keeping your mind open, which is lovely.

If you clicked on your own image, that’s excellent too. But please remember at all times and places that there might be a couple billion other individuals on this planet who did exactly the same. So don’t get too bloody bigheaded.

This piece was written in 1996. It was published in JOURNAL ONE, and uploaded on this blog on 7 March 2007 at a time when I probably had no more than 50 readers a day. I reposted on 18 October 2013 & again on 9 October 2015 & 17 September 2019 with an enhanced layout because (i) it's still topical and relates to a recent piece I posted by Bob Wilson; (ii) I feel more humans have experienced a profound shift in perceptions since The Matrix was released in 1999 and (iii) I'm tired of saying the same old things about the same old stupid, irritating politicians, priests and panjandrums who stubbornly refuse to wise up, lighten up or resign and are just waiting to be unceremoniously booted out as soon as possible. Last repost 16 March 2022.

It's exactly what the title says ~ an amazing music video!

Director - Adam Buxton
Song - Adam Buxton
Song produced by Stuart Earl
Animation that's extremely ace - The Layzell Brothers
Video produced by Phil Tidy & Seamus Murphy-Mitchell
Beautiful Ladywoman - Sif Ágústsdóttir

First broadcast on BUG, Programme 8, 27th August 2012, Sky Atlantic, Burning Bright Productions.

From Adam Buxton's Bug, shown exclusively on Sky Atlantic HD. To watch HD version on Sky Go, go here!

[Brought to my delighted attention by Hugo Farrant. First posted 15 September 2012]

MAY ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE (repost)

I rarely have meaningful dreams supercharged with symbolism – or perhaps I occasionally do but just don’t remember. So when I read about people achieving their dreams, the idea doesn’t actually carry that much excitement or veracity for me.

What dreams? Like the one I had earlier today where I found myself in a room full of accumulated memories discussing with Rafique Rashid how to dispose of his brother Rehman’s earthly possessions? Or the one I had a couple of days ago where I was just sitting in a coffeeshop, paying for my tea and I counted out 80 cents in coins – which made me realize when I woke up shortly afterwards that I had traveled back in time to the late 1980s when a cup of tea or coffee cost less than a dollar.

The Frank Zappa dream that came to me a couple of weeks ago was interesting. I was hosted to dinner by Mr and Mrs Zappa and all through the meal I kept thinking that Frank somehow didn’t look the way he’s supposed to look. He had boring hair, wore a middle-class suit, and his nose wasn’t quite right. This wasn’t by any means the first Zappa dream I’ve had. After my first and only close encounter with Mr Zappa at the Fillmore East in New York in the summer of 1968 - where I also exchanged small talk with saxophonist Ian Underwood (husband of percussionist Ruth Underwood) and shook hands with Jimmy Carl Black (the Indian of the group) – I had a series of vivid dreams involving Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

In the first Zappa dream I was a kid back in my hometown Batu Pahat sitting on the  front steps when I heard a squadron of aircraft overhead. I looked up and realized they weren’t actually airplanes but Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention flying in arrowhead formation. As they got closer I felt a compulsion to join them the way some kids suddenly decide to run away and join a circus. Then there was the dream where I was walking around a gypsy caravan and had to step over thick electrical cables coiled like black snakes all over the floor... then I realized I was on a movie set and noticed Frank behind a glass window in the control room tweaking some knobs.

Well, okay. The Zappa dreams do contain a whole load of symbolism if you care to delve into them, just like the vivid dream I had about a grizzly bear a few years ago. But the only dream I would like to see fulfilled is the lucid waking dream I have held close to my heart since the age of 19.

What is that dream? It’s not easy to articulate, but certainly worth an attempt if only to see how it sounds when verbalized...

I dreamt I had accomplished the greatest feat possible for any living creature on earth – to remember its own mysterious origins and to free itself from the illusion of limitation and separation! In my dream this spontaneous awakening to and realization of the absolute sacredness and miraculousness of life rippled out in all directions and dimensions, from the subatomic to the supergalactic and beyond, creating a domino effect of illumination and jubilant celebration.

Source reconnecting with Source, as the accumulated experience and memories of every expression of consciousness, encompassing the unconscious, in infinite feedback loops of awareness. All of it flowing through Me and all other aspects of my boundless cosmic Self, eternally and effortlessly, in ecstatic multidimensional mandalas of timeless beauty and self-regenerating, self-reintegrating truth.

The word “ecstasy” became a living reality and I perfectly understood what mystics, dervishes and yogis have spoken about for generations when they describe transcendent states of consciousness – using terms like samadhi, satori, beatitude, baraka, bliss. Remember, this was long before ecstasy became nothing more than a designer drug for techno-trancing urban kids. Let me tell you: once you have experienced pure cognitive ecstasy, sustained over days, even weeks, you will never settle for humdrum human notions of “success.”

Well, it’s true that at various times of my life I have entertained, albeit briefly, aspirations towards enormous worldly success – after all, would any young person spurn fame and fortune if they were within reach? And so at the age of 24 I embarked on setting up a company with two childhood friends. It was to start off as a creative consultancy catering to the advertising and public relations industry and after a few years, when we had sufficient capital, we would diversify into production of books, music, films, perhaps even launch an airline... nothing was impossible for a creative powerhouse named I.N.R.I. (for Igni Natura Renovatur Integra, an alchemical code signifying that the fire of passion completely renews or revitalizes the natural world).

This venture lasted all of three years and the main reason I eventually gave up was because I couldn’t get Telekom Malaysia to provide me with a phone line – despite residing in a diplomatic enclave in Kuala Lumpur. I even wrote a long, impassioned letter to the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications (no reply ever came, of course). But after I capitulated and accepted temporary corporate employment, the phone finally arrived.

Anyway, it was simply impractical for me to remain in a permanent state of carefree euphoria – not when I was already a father to two beautiful princesses whose mother, fortunately, earned a regular income as a dedicated schoolteacher. So I learned how to be immersed and involved in the world, but in a detached manner, lest I became trapped in its deceptive glamor.

My inner and outer lives were not always in alignment. Even though I was enjoying an active public life as a stage actor, musician and party animal, I went through patches of intense existential angst verging on despair. My Achilles’ heel was a tendency to succumb to an overwhelming sense of futility arising from a distressing mismatch between my dream of heaven on earth and what was apparently going on in the outside world. It was hard to find someone with whom I could discuss my self-doubts and the nagging sense that there might be something fundamentally wrong with me. So I took to recording these states of mind as poems and doodles (which I eventually compiled into a collection titled Moth Balls, published in a limited edition in November 1994 and now accessible online).

From time to time I would have a peak experience – whether spontaneously or with the help of psilocybin mushrooms (growing wild on grassy fields where cows grazed). Very rarely a kind friend would send me some good acid on a blotter via airmail. At these times my preferred default state of divine madness would be reinstated and my vision of paradise would snap back into crystal clear focus.

Nearly half a century has elapsed since my first glimpse of our true potential as sentient self-reinventing creatures on this bounteous planet. I used to feel a little isolated – the only other humans, a mere handful, who shared my vision were either living on the other side of the earth or long dead. But their thoughts recorded in words reassured me I wasn’t completely mad.

When the internet came along I discovered a growing network of human beings who share my dream of heaven on earth – and each one is a fractal of the whole, with unique experiences of universal truths, each one a significant piece of a colossal and magnificent cosmic jigsaw puzzle.

What we had in common was simply this: we had achieved vertical alignment with our own limitless potential, our Oversouls (I think Paramatman is the technical term for this in Sanskrit). I realized that the problem was how to persuade more humans to make a conscious 90-degree shift from being trapped in the horizontal plane where predator-prey games of eat-or-be-eaten prevail. On the horizontal plane, people subscribe to spurious notions of profit-and-loss, win-lose, and Us-versus-Them. Because resources are finite and limited on this plane, aggressive competition becomes the norm, each fighting for more food, more space, more influence, more power over others. The result can only be hell on earth!

Any individual who achieves that all-important 90-degree shift to the vertical also gains access to Source Energy – call it the morphogenetic field, the planetary mind or cosmic consciousness – and no longer buys into the illusions of limitation, separation or scarcity. Once liberated from scarcity conditioning (fang and claw, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth programming) cooperation becomes spontaneous and this allows for the power of dynamic synergy to take effect, and we suddenly become clear and coherent fields, attuned to all other fields and interacting in effortless harmony. The overall effect is that we no longer feel burdened by gravity as it only takes a bit of levity to neutralize the sense of heaviness. And once we can laugh at ourselves and everyone else, everything transmutes from being merely laughable to being genuinely lovable.

The world as we know it also transforms into something altogether different. We no longer need to be convinced that laws and lawyers, courthouses and judges, and law enforcement agencies are utterly unnecessary - the moment we become self-governing and accept full responsibility for our own thoughts, words and deeds.

Our ancestors found themselves entangled in webs of deceit and falsehood which made them turn to external authority for instructions as to what to do or don’t – whether that authority presented itself as an invisible all-knowing, all-powerful deity; an all-too-visible priesthood; an occasionally visible monarchy, or the monarch’s appointed agents (that’s right the income tax department)!

Photo by Lesly Leon Lee

Generations before us have lived and died ignorant, disconnected from their own divinity and innate nobility. Their souls often get trapped in the astral and many of them attempt to seek redemption and some misguided notion of salvation through their living descendants – namely us. Once we become aware of this, what we can do is to become enlightened ourselves; and in liberating ourselves from our own benighted condition, we also liberate our bloodlines from the curse of abysmal unknowing.

How is this possible? We are bearers of genetic codes and, as anyone who works with codes knows, once an error is rectified in the present, the correction sets the entire program aright in the illusory past as well as the illusory future.

So that’s my dream, folks. I just wish to see all wrongs set right, all cages and prisons dismantled, all locks and keys discarded, all doors and windows left open to the gentle breezes of conscious, eternally rejuvenating, growth-facilitating, ecstatic change. In a community of fully conscious humans, criminal or destructive behavior will be swiftly outgrown and become obsolete - because no one will suffer lack or the indifference of others. With the illusion of scarcity dispersed, a new age of abundance for all will dawn.

10 November 2017

[Reposted 18 November 2018, 14 December 2021, 26 August 2024 & 7 April 2025]