To The Children's Children

TO THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN

Recommendations to the Descendants

    Thornton Wilder's "By the Skin of Our Teeth" chronicles a family of man that survived the extinction of mankind multiple times thru the course of history. They survived by the skin of their teeth. Today's generation  faces another horrific challenge to human existence. The Earth is essentially a closed ecosystem. Our experiments in building closed ecosystems have failed to achieve long term human habitability.  The only successful bio-system we currently know of is spaceship earth. We members of the rat-race have overpopulated and gnawed the insulation to the point that it threatens the life support systems. The ozone layer insulating us from deadly U.V. radiations is breaking down. The icecaps are melting at a pace that threatens the inundations of the seacoasts. Water tables that provide the irrigation for major food producing areas are dropping at alarming rates. Heating from the hydrocarbons we've pumped into the atmosphere by the undisciplined use of fossil fuels have guaranteed that the world will see a period of increased desertification with wild fires burning the remaining mitigating forests. The spectors of mass migrations, starvation, and disease loom over humanity. We baby-boomers are to soon leave the world in a mess. The future looks grim.

Yet, I have a great deal of faith in future generations. The future has looked pretty grim before. In 1962 I was a young teenager living very near what was most likely the number 2 priority target for Soviet missiles, the Cheyenne Mt. complex of NORAD responsible for all of the air defense communication of the U.S. and Canada. During that infamous two week period of October my mother stated that she expected nuclear war to break out at any minute. It looked as if we would all be reduced to radioactive ash. By the skin of our teeth, we survived. I have faith that we, as a species, will continue to survive and thrive. Thus, I want to pass this message on to future generations: have hope; all is not and never will be lost.

My parents generation faced the demon represented by the Nazi's and won. The threat of domination by an insane dictator passed but left the A-bomb. My generation faced the demon of all out nuclear war and won. Though it is perhaps probable that nuclear arms will be used again,  likelihood of all-out, life extincting nuclear war is no longer with us. Yes, it is almost inevitable that our lack of foresight and collective greed are going to result in ecological disaster. It's the problem we you of the future. Have hope for you will have a future.

There is so many predictions of disaster out there that it's time to look at the positive alternatives. Science and technology are often unfairly blamed for the state to which we've our influence on the eco-sphere evolve. Personally, I think most of the responsibility lies with corporate entities which by their very nature (the quarterly stockholder's report) seldom look very far into the future for the consequences of their actions. Be that as it may, I am convinced that some of the greatest positive hopes for the future lie in science and technology.


This does not mean that we must necessarily abandon all of the positive benefits that technology has brought us. New ways to generate clean energy are being investigated.

As suggested in Kim Stanley Robinson's Forty Days of Rain series science offers many possible methods of mitigating the affects of global warming.

 Most of all, your generation has the opportunity to begin to look at what Bucky Fuller called "spaceship earth" in a new and integrated way where mankind is not the master of the planet but a passenger and custodian.

The recent movie Tomorrowland (at this date Disney's first real S.F. movie) gives a parable of two wolves:

An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life...
"A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.
"It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves
 One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.
The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather,
"Which wolf will win?"
The old chief simply replied,
"The one you feed."

quoted from http://www.sapphyr.net/natam/two-wolves.htm.

On Approaching Death

On Approaching Death

A letter to a relative

I must say that I disagree with your "atheism" regarding the afterlife. While I admit I'm a bit agnostic myself, I lean strongly towards the idea that something of the person survives death. Eliminating the trite argument that a negative can never be proved I think there is quite a bit of evidence for this. Which ever of the family goes first, I plan to meet up with them beyond the veil. So, you're not going to get away from being pestered by the rest of us by the easy out of dying.

I'm going to disregard the argument passed down verbally from first century cultists claiming that their leader came back from the other side. If (saint) Thomas who knew the principals first hand can demand to be shown, I figure I'm entitled to a little scepticism. Nonetheless, I think the preponderance of evidence is on the side of there being an afterlife.

I have three main points that incline me to this viewpoint. First is the simple recognition of the Law of Conservation of Everything. A recent Smithsonian magazine reported that biologists believe they will soon be able to use the DNA from stuffed specimens of the carrier pigeon to bring it back from extinction. I once had a great conversation with my graduate philosophy teacher where we pondered the idea that eventually science may progress to the point where we can resurrect the dead. Matter, energy, and most importantly, information can't be created or destroyed. Everything we can observe about the universe leads me to the conclusion that it's frugal.

Secondly, there is some really interesting research on the near death experience that indicates there's more to life than, well, life. There are several websites on NDE and the one I found recently that appears to attempt a very unbiased scientific approach is Horizon Research. They report a really interesting case recently where a woman with a tumor on the brain stem was refrigerated and "killed" so that she had no measurable signs of life - 100% flatline - which allowed surgeons to operate. The risky surgery was successful and she was revived whereupon she related details of the procedure she observed while dead that it's extremely unlikely she could have known or guessed at.

Lastly, I have had some rather unusual personal encounters with the afterlife. These are of the nature of past life memories. Take these with a grain of salt (I certainly do). I can't definitively say that they are actual "memories". I can only say that they have the same quality as consensus reality "memories". They "feel" the same.

In the first case I had woken from a sound and dreamless sleep concerned about what to do for the upcoming birthday of a good friend. With no money, I couldn't get her a present.For some reason I immediately started dictating a story for her as I "remembered" it (she was interested in all forms of psychic phenomena). What I remembered was the occurrence of two parallel past lives in 13th century Germany. In one I was a village herbalist. In another, I was a baron of the same area and officiate of the Roman church. Very briefly: the baron was desirous of the herbalist and when she spurned him he used his influence to have her burned at the stake. Later, the baron was riding a horse across a wooden bridge when the horse threw him, he hit the railing and broke his neck. The most interesting part of this vision/imagining/memory is that it didn't end there. I, as the baron, was ushered by a figure like Dante's Beatrice through a judgement kind of scenario where he was shown the herbalist burning in hell. Looking on the herbalist in the pit from the point of the baron, I became the herbalist suffering in the flames. This continued until I realized that I was there because I had denied the Christ under the baron's torture and thought myself worthy of this punishment. When I realized I wasn't, I was released from hell immediately and the peculiar vision/imagining/memory ended. I went on to give this strange tale to my friend as my birthday present.

In the second case, about twenty years ago a friend had taken a seminar on past life regression and (as I'm a good subject for hypnosis - learned self-hypnoses quite a while ago), we decided to experiment. I went into a self-induced trance and my friend used the techniques she had learned to guide me back through time. I was the wife of a Roman charioteer. In my friend's apartment I suddenly started coughing extremely violently and snapped out of the trance. In the trance I had been suddenly enveloped in a cloud of gas that was burning my lungs and I couldn't breathe. I had, of course, heard of Pompeii where the Vesuvius eruption had buried everyone in ash. That didn't fit the experience. I found later that at Herculaneum, a small seaport nearby, a burning cloud of gas had smothered people in a manner similar to my "past life" experience.

Finally, I am with Saint Whitehead who is attributed with saying the universe preserves value. I don't need to always be the same person I am now. I certainly wasn't in the past. What is important to "me" is that my values survive. If love, intelligence, the appreciation of beauty, harmony, music, if these things survive then surely the best parts of this personhood have survived.

So, though I reserve the right to change my mind, I'm convinced that something of us survives beyond death. I hope to see you there.

Not any time soon, though.

The Seal of Solomon

There Are Many Mansions

 

  On a Spiritual Interpretation

 of the Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics

John 14:2: "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you."

A couple of days ago my father in law asked me to listen to a CBC podcast about (among other things) quantum gravity and the role of imagination in physics and give him my feedback. This appealed to my ego as he is no intellectual slouch. Appealing to my ego is a successful strategy in motivating me to write. Besides, I'd been thinking for some time of writing an article about the many worlds interpretation of QMech and it seems the time is ripe.

Werner Heisenberg's now famous Uncertainty Principle (which he mathematically  proved from accepted and verified physics equations) is that one cannot know with exact precision both the position and the momentum (directional velocity multiplied by the mass) of an object. This was the death knell for classical physics. The widely held opinion of the time, that all of physics was essentially known and that all that was left was mopping up was shown to be false. The billiard ball universe of the late 19th century where everything could be completely predicted from the initial state play came unglued.

Two interpretations of this uncertainty were available: 1) that observation interfered with the observed phenomena because of a limitation in the observation or 2) space-time itself had a certain kind of uncertainty built into it. To paraphrase the Copenhagen interpretation, space-time was itself as holy as Swiss cheese.

Surprisingly, though new to physics, this was not a new problem at all. It was a very physical version of Zeno's Paradox.: you can't get anywhere at all from where you are now. It begs the question still unanswered by today's physics: is reality discrete or is it continuous? The current answer appears to be that at the distances of the Planck wavelength space-time is discrete. Distance itself comes in little quantized packages. I'll come back to this point later but for the moment let us focus more on what the U.P. might mean for predictability.

Keeping in mind the Copenhagen interpretation of the U.P. we note that there are many possible ways a physical system may develop from a specific state and they are all dependent on probability. Since the mathematical description of how wavicles (wave/particle dualities) propagate is the Scroedinger equation which intrinsically incorporates probability rather than trying to determine exact outcomes, the outcomes themselves are probabilistic.

Suppose that the wave equations predict an equal likelihood of two possible outcomes then there is no a- priori reason why one outcome would be favored over the other. This leads to the ""Many Worlds" interpretation of  quantum mechanics. The idea is that there is a multiverse, a multiplicity of universes, in which every possibility is played out.

Scroedinger himself formulated his famous cat paradox from these elements. Suppose, he proposed, that a cat is put in a bell jar connected to a device set to dispense a lethal gas if a geiger counter counts enough radio active decay in a certain time period. Since the radio active decay of substances is governed by quantum effects that have probabilistic properties can we predict that the cat (after a certain time) whether will be alive or will it be dead?

It's a very famous problem. I'm convinced that we human's tend to look at it the wrong way. Instead of looking at it from the viewpoint of the rather heartless experimenter, let's look at it from the point of view of the cat. I.'ve met some strange cats in my time. I think our cat is just a little bit nuts. However, I have never met a suicidal cat. From the viewpoint of the cat, it's never in the universe where it is extinguished. The wave form of  it's consciousness ALWAYS COLLAPSES TO THE STATE WHERE IT LIVES.

In essence, the consciousness of the cat has made the choice as to which universe it's in. This puts a whole new slant on the idea of how our consciousness affects the universe around us. Maybe imagination is not just a mental creation tool, maybe it affects our physical reality.

"the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as a creator and governor of the realm of matter..." Sir James Jeans in The Mysterious Universe (1930)

Burning Questions

On the Existential Focus of the Tanach

   
    The talking bush told Moses "I AM THAT I AM". Here is the central epistemological tenant of the religions of the book. The divine is an existentialist. "I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam", says Popeye the sailor man. "Yah cant's define me cause I gets to do that." "I am a verb", said Bucky Fuller. I'd expand that to I am a vector (directional change of mental coordinates with respect to time). A tensor even.

    Are we to conclude that God (an nebulous term at best) is a burning bush? Any burning bush in general or a specific burning bush? Yes we are.

    I was recently reminded of an old joke:
DEFINITION OF A PHILOSOPHER: a blind person who is looking for a black cat in a dark room.
DEFINITION OF A THEOLOGIST: a person who claims to have found it.

    The problem with ordinary language in coming to terms with the divine is that it is self-referential. In this scriptural passage god (and I'm not going to capitalize the term anymore as I'm not referring to any specific subset of the conceptual universe) himself is self referential . The Tao that can be told is not the tao. What did god have to make the physical universe from? As THE apriori, he had himself. All substance is necessarily first spiritual or at least divine. As I state in my essay on the 1st Commandment, any attempt to reference the divine ("God") is only a hand wave in the general direction of, rather than a specific pointer to, the nebulous referent.

    So, is god actually giving Moses any information at all here? Yes. I think two very important principles that defined Judahic theology and inform Christian and Muslim theology are given here:
1) the universe is self referential and therefore fractal.
2) the creative free will of the divine is embedded in us and therefore the correct approach to purpose must necessarily be existential

    The meaning of principle 1) is that however we categorize our thought the closer we look at the borders of those categories, the less clear they become. There is no "us and them."
    The meaning of principle 2) is that we get to define meaning in our lives. To truly identify with the Creator ["A foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson]. we take part in the creative process. We get to choose! His Endlessness has made us junior partners. How wonderful!

There Are Many Mansions (2)

  On a Spiritual Interpretation

 of the Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics

John 14:2: "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you."

 In an earlier post I began discussion of the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics by describing the Scroedinger's cat gedanken experiment of Erwin Scroedinger. I suggested that better understanding  of this thought experiment could be achieved by visualizing the viewpoint of the cat. This suggested that differing viewpoints might result in different "world lines". By "world line" I mean here that reality actually splits into more than one version dependent upon the collapse probability waves - giving rise to multiple universes. 

What I'm proposing here, in the strongest sense, is that our reality is determined by our consciousness. That each of us live in a physical reality that is slightly different from anyone else. That our belief structures also structure that reality. 

Is there any evidence of this at all? As apocryphal as such evidence may be, subjective evidence is still worthy of consideration in my mind. Here is a small example of such evidence. I clearly remember an occasion in which my "new thought/age" minister told me that he had cast a horoscope for a certain area of the country. I thought this most unusual, not just because I give little credence to horoscopes but because I'd never heard of casting a horoscope for a place before. In a conversation with him several years later the subject came up again. He seamed surprised and puzzled as he claimed to have never done any such thing. So, two different people appear to have experienced two different realities. 

This might be chalked up to errors in memory but I'm not satisfied with that explanation. Times arrow is reversible for the laws of physics. It seems to me perfectly reasonable that the wave equations  for me and my minister collapsed into two differing realities. For me the wonder was that there was some bleed through between the two realities.

 Of course, allowing such flexibility in what we call "reality" also introduces all kinds of problem for the usual conceptions of causality. It introduces potentially massive communication problems if your reality is different than mine. I think most of us would grant that reality for any of us is colored by our emotional view. What I suggest here is that our reality is determined by all of our consciousness. That there are, indeed, many mansions in the many worlds which we inhabit and that we are in some part responsible for building them with our consciousness.

How does this work on a group basis? If each of us lives in an individual reality dependent on our own consciousness, how will we ever understand each other. I think the key is resonance. I like to use the term "consensus reality". Consensus reality is that generally accepted view of world shared by the larger group. It has no greater claim to universal validity than any individual view but it is that reality which resonates with the whole of the group.

How do these differing realities interact? I use the visualization of Venn diagrams. For example, in the case of the Scroedinger cat, visualize two intersecting circles, one for the experimenter and one for the cat. Where the circles intersect the realities are the same. There is a common truth between them. Where they do not intersect, the realities are not the same. Where they do intersect the quantum wave functions are in resonance. In the S-cat example the intersection in which the cat lives for the observer, her universe is in resonance with the cat's. The observer simultaneously exists in the world of all possible quantum states but the larger intersection is where the cat lives. The quantum waves are resonant and that intersection is the mutually preferred state.

This proposed view of a greater reality more inclusive than the consensus reality helps to explain such phenomena as those associated with differing observer reports. Most especially this helps explain differing observations of such rare phenomena those labeled psychic. It helps explain why they aren't repeatable as they are, by nature, much more readily influenced by individual consciousness than those in the larger consensus reality. It helps explain how it is that a certain well known magician and psychic debunker has never observed such phenomena despite an apparently earnest search to do so. Strangely, his disbelief in the existence of such is precisely that which precludes his observation of them.

The consensus reality in modern western society is the scientific viewpoint. By definition for something to be "scientific" it has to be repeatable. It has to have a commonality and mathematics gives it the largest possible commonality As having been derived from the logical framework of mathematics, the consensus reality that  has proven the most efficacious in building modern western society is the scientific viewpoint.By definition for something to be "scientific" it has to be repeatable. It works and it allows us to communicate from a common framework  Therefore, I conclude the the sane reality - that in which we may best communicate - is the scientific reality. But... it is not the only reality.

 In a future blog I hope to speak on the accepted  laws of logic which preclude a multi-world view from the scientific consensus reality. Specifically Aristotle's Law of the Excluded Middle which says of Truth that something must be true or false but never both simultaneously. In Non-Aristotlean Logic or, as used in A.E. van Vogt's classic S.F. novel, The World of Null-A. Notice that before the collapse of a Scroedinger probability wave to a specific state this is exactly the situation that is modeled. "Achintya bheda abheda" or inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference in everything as stated in some Hindu philosophies. I propose that conscious choice (on some level) is, itself, responsible for this collapse to a specific state.

One of the chief tenets of science is that a scientific premise is testable. This is a primary consideration for those who criticise the string theory model of the universe. No one has come up with a way to test it. It may actually be untestable. A similar problem occurs with Non-Aristotilean logic. Yet this does not mean it is untrestable in principle. 


"Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as a creator and governor of the realm of matter..."
 Sir James Jeans - The Mysterious Universe (1930)

Why I Am/Not a Christian: On the 2nd Commandment

 

Why I'm Am/Not a Christian 

Thoughts Moses' 2nd Commandment

Adapted From Correspondence

 I enjoyed our conversations and have always found your sermons to be thought provoking. In a TV show Vincent and I were recently watching one of the characters said to another with whom he was in some disagreement that nothing one says before the but matters so... but:

 I'm really not a traditional Christian anymore. I've been wracking my brain for several weeks to try and figure how to address this issue in a manner that suggests respect and fondness for the traditional church.  I find the doctrine professed in traditional christian churches no longer relevant to my spirituality. I've thought about this when I've attended churches in the past. For example, if I take communion I have to remind myself that the spirit behind what I'm doing is what's important, not the form. I have to remind myself when I profess the Apostle's Creed that I do believe it in metaphorical sense. 

I do not believe in a literal interpretation of the Apostles creed: I believe in a form of the trinity. My studies have led me to conclude that the process of creation goes thru three stages similar to the Hegelian dialectic :1 )thesis, 2)antithesis, 3)synthesis. This is a self-referential process which iterates as the system of human creative thought in the manner that medieval Hebraic mystics called the tetragrammaton. Indeed, YHVH, for the four Hebraic letters yod, he, vau, he, is the name used to refer to the Divine as process. It is not, and never was "Jehova"{1}. 

This poor translation brings me to another problem in Christianity: the poor translation assumed in traditional churches is terrible scholarship. Let me give just a quick example: the use of the name Jesus, and it's English  pronunciation "jee s us". At the very best a translator might use "Joshua" as the name of Yeshua of Nazareth was the same as that of the Biblical character who "fit the battle of Jericho". For me use of the word "Jesus" is very disrespectful of one of the greatest men of all time. If he actually did rise from the dead then we can safely say he is the greatest man of all time but I don't like repeating rumors unless I label them as such. If the disciple St. Thomas can be sainted after expressing doubt, and he was a spectator of New Testament events, I think I can be sceptical. Especially, as it's been shown, the scholarship has been sloppy.

But: "Make a joyful noise." At least 75% of the churches I attend make the attendance to the service an onerous task. Uncomfortable seating, up and down like a yo-yo, hymns which often fail to qualify to the standards I call music. Surprising since much of the greatest classical music ever written was for churches. With all the genuflecting & its equivalent I feel like I'm at a bizarre sporting event. Stand up, Sit down, - yeah God. Further, though the fellowship is joyful, I personally am a night person. Do I have to begin the Sabbath in a half groggy state having slept poorly the night before worried about dragging myself out of bed early? Where's the joy? 

But: . I not only don't need an intercessor, I'm convinced that having someone tell you what to believe, anyone, is a form of spiritual death. By grace and grace alone ...not by belonging to a church, not by good works,  not by following someone's advice. The corollary here is that grace is available simply for the asking and all that requires is a little humility.

"Remember the Sabbath & keep it holy". I often find that I need to re-interpret scripture for myself (a form of the living word) and I've been thinking about what this dictum means lately.

 The Episcopal Sanctuary in San Francisco provided me shelter and assistance when I first came to S.F. over 20 years ago in a search to implement a computer meditation program I was developing. I found the pageantry of  services at Grace Cathedral to be beautiful and the sermons of Alan ? to be interesting. Another Episcopal church in S.F. provided weekly grocery handouts to those of us in the highly financially challenged income brackets and had interesting services that incorporated dance reminiscent of the Sufi dervishes.

 I've been interested in different forms of worship for some time. "Seek and ye shall find". I've attended Buddhist ceremonies, Hindu Ceremonies and many varied ceremonies of Christian sects. Everywhere I found sincere seekers. Everywhere I found glimpses of the Truth. I concluded that the phrase the "Living Word" is not a metaphor. That the Divine did not create the universe as a fait accompli but as a work in progress in which we are all participants. I'm a follower of Tielhard de Chardin (The Phenomenon of Man) for an unchanging Divine is a dead divine.

 It seems that the traditional church may be in trouble with drops in attendance (at least here in the U.S.). For myself, I find sharing my faith with others does strengthen it but I have difficulty finding groups where doctrine doesn't interfere with substance. And, I want my spirituality to walk hand-in-hand with rationality.

Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy? I think I'd rather remember every day as holy. 

No Other Gods: On Moses' First Commandment

Idolatry:

On Moses' First Commandment

My pastor recently sent an email sermonette on the first "commandment" of the New Testament. It motivated me to set down a few musings I have had on the first commandment of the Old Testament:

"You shall have no other gods before me."

Traditional wisdom has it that this means "our God is a jealous god". Naturally, I have a somewhat different slant on it's significance. I think it means "don't put God in box"

For me, the original sin is to limit the nature of His Endlessness (G. I. Gurdjieff's terminology). I agree with the teachings of Joseph Campbell: The ineffable exceeds the boundaries of being effed. How  often I look at traditional conceptions of the Divine and think how small that conception of the godhood seems. God has no boundaries.

"Worship mammon?", says God. "Nothing wrong with money but I'm a lot bigger than that. Power? Very useful stuff, power, but not the Be All and End All. Oh, yeah I did say don't eat pork - it was a guideline to keep you from getting trichinosis not an unbreakable rule. The only unbreakable rule is that every rule can be broken."

Don't put God in a box. Don't try to limit the nature of the limitless. How many religious "crusades", "jihads", have been started in the name of some conceptual entity that fails to be even noticeable in the face of the immensity of His Endlessness. It is said that no one can see the face of God lest they go mad. Well, yeah. I've been privileged from my training in mathematics to see a small glimpse of the meaning of infinity (which explains why some think me mad as a hatter). It's overwhelming. Take a little time to watch a meteor display in the wee hours of a mountain night, realising that each of those points of lights we call stars are suns like our own, and you'll get a hint of what I mean.

Don't put God in a box. You can't make the box big enough. "You shall have no other gods before me." If you worship the box (which is in the nature of the way our minds work), you've made a god that doesn't match the real thing.

"What about the old saw: can God make something so big even He can't move it? Doesn't an unbounded Divine result in the creation of paradox?", you ask. Yes, it does. And I think that's a very good thing. It allows for free will. Without ambiguity there isn't any real choice.

So, since it is the nature of our thought to put things in categories, in the nature of our very thought to "put God in a box",  it might be a good idea to make the box as big as we can possibly imagine. In fact, I'm going to start a meditation practice: "How has my conception of God grown today?" How have I managed to conceive of a bigger box. That way my "god" has grown every day and my "god" is a Living God:

"You shall have no other gods before me."  The tao that can be told is not the Tao. The god that can be told is not the God.

Build a bigger box.

Introduction

What is A Rational Mystic?

My personal experience tells me that there are many approaches to the Divine. Let me be as clear as I can here, I'm not necessarily talking about a bearded patriarch sitting in the Seat of Judgement. Nor am I talking about a supernatural engineer who built a clockwork universe and set it into motion. I prefer that my "god" remain a nebulous concept for reasons I have discussed in my blog on the 1st commandment in the Bible.

I'd like to envision divinity as incorporating all of what is deemed good, beautiful, wise, beneficent. To me eastern concepts of "god" from Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, magical concepts from the Amerinds, & other so called primitives, concepts of form from the Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians - all can be subsumed into a greater vision of what Deity means.

As a computer scientist & mathematician my search for the divine has long incorporated rationality. To me the intellect must surely be one of the tools by which the divine can be approached and in my life it has surely been a key to understanding. A godlike being which eschewed reason would not be worthy of my reverence.

Yet there is a point at which reason itself breaks down. In the early part of the 20th century Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead attempted the most rigorous formulation of the laws of reasoning in the mathematical realm of the natural numbers. The result was the seminal work Principia Mathematica. Mathematician Kurt Goedel then proceeded to prove that this rigorous system was either incomplete or inconsistent. Either true theorems about the the natural numbers could not be proved via the Whitehead & Russell formulation or there were theorems within that formulation which were false. The most rigorous attempt at reasoning ever done was either perpetually unfinished or it contradicted itself. You can never "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Logic itself breaks down.

I find this to be wonderously wonderful. It means that some sort of "faith" is needed for the apprehension of the divine. Yet where does this faith come from?

Enter the mystical part of the "Rational Mystic". Most religions, though having lost their skill at the necessary techniques in modern times, stress some sort of experiential connection with the divine. The vision & its corollaries are essential to what is often called "the mystery". The divine is experiential. This is why I use the word "apprehension" and not comprehension. Now it is not my intent here to describe the techniques necessary to obtaining such a direct experience. These techniques are varied and have been described many times elsewhere. The most readily available starting point is meditation. These experiences are not "scientific" in that they are subjective and not repeatable. Suffice it to say that I've sought them and have had a number of  them. I have experienced the divine in my life.

These experiences could easily be self-delusional so I try to maintain a strong sense of skepticism about them. I use my reason, my rationality to weight the import and meaning of these mystical experiences. Thus, I am a rational mystic.