Sunday, October 31, 2021

Med ryggen mot framtiden


En Jonathan Jeppsson tour de force. 

Några citat:

>>>Enligt internationella energiorganet IEA kommer vi att globalt sett i världen behöva 50 procent mer energi år 2050. Mängden energi in i systemet måste alltså öka kraftigt. Ska vi ha fossilfritt stål, höghastighetståg, järnsvamp, elflyg och köra elbåt krävs stora mängder el, det framstår som självklart. 

>>>Samtidigt ska vi trolla bort den fossila energiproduktionen till 2050, alltså den kol, olja och gas som i dag utgör 84 procent av vår energiproduktion. Den ska ersättas – och samtidigt ska vi öka energiproduktionen med 50 procent – för att klimatmålen ska vara inom räckhåll. Hur detta ska gå till finns det dock ingen global plan för. 

>>>Tvärtom finns det helt andra planer. Enligt de produktionsprospekt som fossilbränsleproducerande företag och stater har på bordet, så planeras det för 240 procent mer kol, 57 procent mer olja och 71 procent mer gas än vad som är möjligt för att hejda uppvärmningen vid 1,5 grader. I Kina opererar exempelvis just nu 1 000 kolkraftverk, ytterligare ett 40-tal är under uppbyggnad. Det leder följaktligen till att koldioxidutsläppen kommer att vara 16 procent högre 2030 jämfört med 2010 års nivå – när de egentligen skulle behöva halveras till år 2030. 

>>>Låt oss ta ett exempel: Om vi ska suga upp 50 miljarder ton koldioxid och börjar göra det 2050, så måste vi fånga in tio miljarder ton per år. Tio miljarder – det är ungefär lika mycket som världshaven suger upp varje år. Denna apparat blir det största mänskligheten har åstadkommit. Det är som att vi ska bygga en ny biosfär bredvid den vi redan har. Hur det ska gå till är ännu så länge höljt i dunkel. Den koldioxidinfångning som görs i dag är väldigt blygsam. Delvis beroende på ett oerhört faktum – den teknik som ska lösa problemet är till stora delar ännu inte uppfunnen. Kostnaden beräknas bli astronomisk.

Lite lustigt att AB i samma veva publicerat en artikel av Wolfgang Hansson med den bisarrt briljanta rubriken "Klimatomställningen en säkerhetspolitisk hit". Yeah, whatever...

Med ryggen mot framtiden

Veckans Strasser


 

Hård konkurrens om vår finaste utmärkelse sista tiden, måste jag säga...

LO: Ta stöd av SD för att höja pensionerna

President Meg, well, why the fuck not


Since I often, well always actually, complain about Meghan Markle - and *above all* of the media´s infatuation with this dark beauty and her so-called Megxit from the Windsor (Wittelsbach, surely?) royal family -  it´s time to give her a little token of my hard won appreciation. 

I admit that she became a bit more sympathetic after getting embroiled in US politics the other day, demanding paid maternity leave for hard-working American mothers. 

While I don´t think Amerika can become great again (or at the very least slightly more New Dealish again) with POTUS Meghan Markle LARP-ing AOC, considering the constant failings of the, ahem, serious politicos to do essentially anything at all, I´m almost - almost I say - tempted to give the lady the benefit of the doubt... 

Meghan Markle making "first try at political role" with letter to Congress

Cinco familias


 

Anmärkningsvärt. 

"Dogge" debuterar i högerradikala sammanhang

Brunsmetad vänsterliberalism?

 

Påskön får celebert besök...

Hur gamla nynazister drog det svenska världssamvetet vid näsan. 

Tobias Hübinette strikes again, fast egentligen är det DN han sammanfattar. Vilket som, när adoptionsutredningen är klar 2023 lär det inte vara mycket kvar av det mångomtalade "samvetet". Åtminstone inte i dess sjuttiotalistiska inkarnation. En utredning om de "ensamkommande" lär väl vänta på sig till circa 2050 eller så...

Rätt ironiskt att en vänsterliberal paradgren blir brunsmetad, but there you go!

Pinochet-regimen utnyttjade adoptionerna till Sverige

The collapse of Jared Diamond?


Some recent research on the collapse of the Rapa Nui or Easter Island culture suggests that the collapse never really happen - or rather, that it didn´t happen before the arrival of European colonialists. 

Jared Diamond´s scenario in "Collapse" was always hard to believe, since it entails that the Polynesian inhabitants of the island were too stupid to realize that the trees on the relatively small island were disappearing due to the islanders´ own activities (as in actually cutting them down faster than they could grow back), and that they couldn´t predict that this would destroy all their chances to build boats and leave the rock. Cannibalism promptly followed. Humans can be remarkably silly, but can they really be *this* silly? That seems unlikely, since humanity has survived for hundreds of thousand of years in a wide variety of habitats.

Unless, of course, Diamond was projecting *our own* stupidity on the Easter Islanders...

A case could be made!

New evidence: Easter Island civilization wasn´t destroyed by war

Resilience, not collapse: What the Easter Island myth gets totally wrong

Covenant with Hell


"Alien: Covenant" is a 2017 film directed by Ridley Scott and the latest installment in the apparently never-ending "Alien" franchise. It´s considerably better than "Prometheus" from 2012, to which it´s a sequel. Both "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant" are considered prequels to the earlier films in the franchise. 

While "Prometheus" made a half-baked attempt to answer various in-universe questions, "Alien: Covenant" is a more typical Alien film, concentrating on the action (and the androids). The only question it really answers is "where did the xenomorphs come from". But then, we sort of knew that already: these undead and probably unhanged monsters hail from the mysterious black goo created as a bio-weapon against humanity by the so-called Designers introduced in "Prometheus". 

In "Covenant", the Nazi-looking android David goes full Übermensch (even digging Wagner´s music), exterminates everyone at the Designer home world with the help of xenomorphs, and sets himself up as "ruler in Hell", creating more and more bizarre xenomorph morphs (pun intended) as he goes along. It turns out that he killed Elizabeth Shaw from "Prometheus", using her dead body as raw material for the Frankensteinesque experiments. I´m probably not the only one who saw parallels with both Hannibal the Cannibal and Jeffrey Dahmer! Yes, "Alien: Covenant" - while less scary than, say, the original "Alien" film from 1979 (we´re used to the xenos by now) - is nevertheless deeply disturbing on a number of other levels. This is how I fancy the world to look like in my darker moments, a world that deserves to perish, while the faithful remnant returns to the Pleroma...

But OK, that´s me.

As for the plot, it´s strikingly similar to that of both "Alien" (1979) and "Prometheus" (2012), with all the usual franchise tropes: the ion storm that makes communication impossible, the crescent-shaped space ship, the clueless away team, the treacherous android, the xenomorph that sneaks onboard the mothership... 

The main difference is that it doesn´t have an (ostensibly) happy ending, since crew member Daniels is tricked by the android at the very end. The storyline cries out for at least one other prequel-sequel, explaining why the space ship Nostromo in the original film was sent out on its deadly mission to retrieve a live xenomorph in the first place. Is a "new covenant", so to speak, waiting in the wings?  


Saturday, October 30, 2021

Eternity can´t wait


First, a word of warning. Even though Benjamin Teitelbaum´s 2020 book "War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right" is written in a style that´s meant to be easily accesible, the book could nevertheless be a hard read if you know next to nothing about so-called Traditionalism and/or Steve Bannon. For an overview of Bannon´s less esoteric activities, see "Devil´s Bargain" by Joshua Green (anti-Bannon) and "Bannon: Always the Rebel" by Keith Koffler (pro-Bannon). Since Bannon´s story is ever-developing, a perusal of the latest news about the man might also be in order. For Traditionalism, see "Against the Modern World" by Mark Sedgwick. After reading all these volumes, you might be ready for "War for Eternity" (the book, I mean). 

Teitelbaum, a music professor, has been doing research on the far right for decades. Since he obviously isn´t far right himself, and even has a Jewish-sounding last name, I´m not sure why so many far right activists are willing to talk to him. This is especially true in this case: Bannon worked for Donald Trump in the White House, Alexander Dugin works for the Kremlin, and Olavo de Carvalho is an advisor to controversial Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Another person Teitelbaum interviewed, Jason Reza Jorjani, was temporarily involved in a murky milieu of former mercenaries, secretive millionaires and suspected double agents. Unless it was all just a con game! Teitelbaum was warned to continue his investigations into the identity of a mysterious well-connected "Londoner" and his motives for supporting (actually or purportedly) the international far right. But apart from this, most Alt Right personalities (Dugin being a partial exception) had no problem being interviewed by this intrepid scholar, for reasons best known to themselves...

"War for Eternity" investigates two things: the stunning come back of the far right to positions of power and influence before and during "the populist spring", and more specifically the influence of Traditionalism within the broader far right milieu. The various conspiracies or cons detailed in the book made my head spin, while the ideological underpinnings of the various actors made me deeply intrigued. Of the Traditionalists mentioned in the book, Dugin comes across as the most serious (and perhaps also the most dangerous), since he obviously works on a long-term basis for Vladimir Putin´s administration in Russia and often acts as a kind of informal envoy to various foreign nations. Dugin is even tasked with somewhat sensitive missions, for instance to Turkey after the Turks had shot down a Russian military plane. Books on geopolitics by "Putin´s Rasputin" (pun intended) have at least previously been included in the literature studied at the Russian Military Academy. Perhaps inevitably, Dugin was also the Traditionalist least willing to talk to the author. For instance, he denied ever meeting Bannon (while Bannon freely admitted it). Bannon seems more of a loose cannon (pun intended again), while Olavo is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. 

Capital-T Traditionalism is a very heterogenous school of thought, associated with French esotericist and Muslim convert René Guénon (d. 1951), Italian fascistic Neo-Pagan Julius Evola (d. 1974), and Swiss-German "Sufi" and colorful kook Frithjof Schuon (d. 1998). I never understood what these men really had in common, and the Traditionalist "school" has expanded even more since the early-to-mid 20th century, when these men seems to have flourished the most. If Traditionalism can be defined at all, it´s characterized by anti-modernism and a belief in hierarchy, patriarchy, esotericism and spirituality. The ideal society is often conceived as an "Aryan" caste system, with either priests or warriors on top. The present time is the kali yuga, the dark age, when nothing meaningful can be done...or maybe it can (Traditionalists have differing approaches to political action). Despite this quasi-Hindu angle, both Guénon, Schuon and some later Traditionalists converted to Islam or took up strongly Islamophile positions. Logically, Traditionalists should support "the East" against the modern West, and they should despise the United States above everything else, the US being the quintessentially modern society, born in sin, indeed almost the Great Satan. Dugin therefore strikes me as the most consistent of the Traditionalists mentioned in this book, and he does indeed call for a Eurasian geopolitical alliance of Russia, China, Iran and Turkey against the United States. I assume Dugin is at least nominally an Orthodox Christian, but judging by Teitelbaum´s description, Putin´s Rasputin also has a peculiar infatuation with Persia. On other points, he is less obviously traditional, even using relativist and almost nihilist postmodernist arguments when calling for a "multi-polar world" in which every ethnic group can live out its unique truth or "Dasein" without homogenizing globalist influence. 

Steve Bannon is a far stranger addition to the, shall we say, multi-polar Traditionalist spectrum. His pro-American anti-establishment populism doesn´t seem to have much in common with Traditionalism, except that both currents are somehow "right-wing". And can one imagine a less apt vehicle for Traditionalism than Donald J Trump, who is in many ways the very epitome of modernity and its reign of quantity? And yet, it seems that Bannon does identify himself, at least after a fashion, with Traditionalism. His idea seems to be a kind of "metaphysics of the peasantry" (Teitelbaum´s term), where the traditional White working class and the farmers in the American Heartland are seen as guardians of tradition and spirituality, whereas the US establishment represent modernity and all its evils. The plain folk - the shudras - are the real priestly caste, a stunning inversion of the traditional Traditionalist perspective. The nation-state, rather than ancient empires, is the preferred form of polity. The real America isn´t an "idea", but a real network of communities rooted in religion and the land. 

Bannon´s geopolitics are strongly anti-Chinese, something the former Trump advisor explains by referencing China´s role in the globalist economy. Far from being "traditional", China (or rather its regime) is modernist. Bannon´s grand design is to realign Russia with the United States, thereby isolating and weakening China. (It´s interesting to note that Bannon is, or perhaps was until recently, financed by an exiled Chinese billionaire, Guo Wengui.) This explains his interest in the European far right, and also his secretive meeting with Dugin in Rome. However, Dugin wasn´t interested in a US-Russia realignement, instead continuing the usual course of strengthening a Sino-Russian bloc. I assume this created problems for Bannon in several European nations, where the far right is both pro-Russian and pro-Chinese (Italy comes to mind). He fared better in Britain, where he assisted the Brexit campaign. 

Olavo is perhaps the strangest fish of them all. He could be seen as a kind of Brazilian version of Bannon. Like his American collegue, Olavo believes that the common people are closer to tradition and spirituality than the elites. A somewhat absurd detail is that Olavo doesn´t live in Brazil, but in rural Virginia! Yet, he has a strong connection to Bolsonaro´s administration, and has so far survived all attempts to push him out of it. It seems the Brazilian military strongly dislike him, according to Olavo because of their business ties with China. Olavo rather wants Brazil to orient itself towards the United States. Before entering the political limelight, Olavo was a leading member of the Brazilian branch of Schuon´s "Sufi" order. His present connection to Traditionalism isn´t entirely obvious, however, and he often criticizes (or perhaps pretends to criticize) Guénon. He also likes ice cream, but that´s another matter.

Somewhere here, "War for Eternity" ends, the book obviously being written before Trump´s spectacular electoral defeat in 2020. Since it was published that year, it doesn´t mention the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. It seems the war for eternity has been suspended. For how long, remains to be seen. The COVID pandemic, the fall of Kabul, the crisis at the southern border, the de facto ban on abortions in Texas, the supply and energy crises, and the general failure of Joe Biden´s administration to adequetely deal with these situations will surely have an impact on the far right (including the Traditionalists). So will Biden´s decision to continue Trump´s confrontation with China and forge an alliance with a post-Brexit Britain, but also his refusal to realign with Russia. Something tells me this isn´t over quite yet.

The war for eternity never ends.   


How I believe

 


Some metaphysical speculations...

If God exists, he must be a consciousness of *some* kind. This seems to be true by definition. If you believe in God, presumably you do believe in a cosmic consciousness of some sort. What else could "God" possibly even mean, apart from this? If you believe in a non-conscious cosmic force, that´s not "God", even if the force is "supernatural" in character. Let´s say it can make things disappear in the blink of an eye, or make them appear out of thin air. If it´s a force acting in a non-conscious manner, it can´t properly be called "God", except in a metaphorical sense. (If you could learn to manipulate this force, maybe you would become a god of sorts!) However, this doesn´t mean that God´s consciousness must be even remotely similar to our own. Our consciousness (the only one we have direct experience of) isn´t just a waking, willing consciousness. It also consists of a subconscious, a dream consciousness, and if mystics are to be believed, a mystical consciousness. Add to that the nervous system which automatically controls our bodies without us having to think about it. There must also be different kinds of consciousness in nature. Compare, say, chimps or whales with, say, insects or worms. Some scientists claim that plants have a consciousness! And what about larger systems, such as the biosphere? Perhaps there are aspects of God´s consciousness which can be characterized as "waking, willing consciousness", but many other aspects may be subconscious or simply beyond our capacity for understanding. 

Is God personal, then? I think it depends very much on the definition of "personal". If personal means the same thing as some kind of consciousness, then I suppose God is personal. However, God can´t be "personal" in the same sense as a human person is personal - and the human person is the only person we have direct experience of. God is infinite spirit while still being gendered, exists outside time and space while still pervading all of creation, and he is moreover "three persons in one", yet all three persons are infinite spirit, present everywhere simultaneously, etc etc. This doesn´t seem to make much sense. Note also that this infinite spirit-personal-god can take the form of impersonal bread and wine, but also incarnate as a human being! The only persons we have experience with are limited in space and time, indeed this seems to be a necessary condition of being a personal being - otherwise, what could "person" even mean? It feels more meaningful to call God "supra-personal" (a joker might propose "trans-personal"). He is a consciousness unbound by the limits of personality. 

We could imagine God to have two metaphysical poles or consist of two metaphysical principles. One of them is a creative power that separates objects from each other. The other is a power that seeks to bring objects together. The first pole appears to us as "freedom", the second as "unity". When freedom and unity are in balance, this could be seen by us as "love" or "solidarity". Other living creatures might see freedom/unity differently. 

But where does evil and suffering come from?  I admit that I don´t really know. From a purely "gut level" existential viewpoint, I look upon evil as a distinct substance, absolutely opposing the good. (Think Zoroastrianism or Manichaeism). However, this strict dualism makes no metaphysical sense (no dualism does, despite our gut level instincts), since good and evil wouldn´t be able to exist side by side inside the same universe, had they been completely distinct substances. But if they both belong to the same universe, they belong to God´s universe, and must both somehow relate to God. The most likely explanation is that evil is a distortion of freedom and/or unity. If the highest goal of all monads is participation in God´s love, every turn away from this could be seen as "sinful" and hence ultimately evil. 

But, as already indicated, it´s really impossible to know any of this for sure. We could easily imagine other intelligent creatures seeing "the two metaphysical poles of God" in an entirely different light, and how do we know how *God* sees them, anyway? Most of the divine might look as an eternal night to us humans, since we can´t comprehend God´s overmind, or even his subconscious or his "nervous system"...

If we speculate even more, we could even theorize that the "gods" of various human religions are more or less powerful "heavenly" beings, but they are not God, but rather what some religions would refer to as angels. This is also compatible with Neoplatonism and standard polytheism. Perhaps the god of merciful love many religions long for is just one of many gods in a vast pluriverse? He certainly doesn´t seem to be in charge "down below" at the moment! 

Which brings me to my next speculation: what if God´s purposes are so alien to us, that we simply can´t understand them? Our spiritual-cosmic evolution to better men (and women), or angelic beings perhaps, might be part of a much larger picture, just as, say, the evolution of worms to social insects. From a divine perspective, one might not be that much more important than the other. Maybe both are part of the famed 84,000 dharmas of skillful means to lure the monads back to the Godhead they once emerged from...


A marginal note

Me right now, bracing for impact!

I like JMG, but I admit that I find it...somewhat weird...to make an announcement like *this* in a marginal comment on his blog (# 291 on Ecosophia´s October 2021 Open Post). But that´s me, of course. 

>>>If my hypothesis is correct and the death rate among the vaccinated is as high as I fear it will be, it’s basically the end of European history. 80%-90% dieoff is a level that leads to culture death, and with mass migration from Africa and the Middle East already in process, a century from now the European subcontinent west of the Elbe or the Vistula will be indistinguishable culturally, politically, and demographically from the northern half or so of Africa. In the United States and Russia, and in some other countries like India, the dieoff will be concentrated in the Europeanized segments of the population — here in the US, the managerial class which (as US elites have done since colonial times) slavishly copies European intellectual fashions, is far more heavily vaccinated than the working classes and the poor. As for Israel, given their sky-high vaccination rate, the Arabs can sit back and wait for the dieoff to run its course, and then just walk in.

>>>I’m not sure it’s exactly an own goal, however. I don’t think the Faustian cultures could ever handle settling down into the stasis and slow decline that is the long-term state of every mature civilization. I think that at some level the decision was made to go out with a bang, and once it became clear that the US and the Soviet Union weren’t going to oblige them with an apocalyptic nuclear war, and none of the other hecatombs du jour panned out, a voluntary plague was the next best thing.

>>>But of course my hypothesis could be completely wrong, in which case we’ll see what happens next.

No argument there!

Prometheus Fallen


So I watched "Prometheus" again, the Alien franchise prequel from 2012 featuring Noomi Rapace ("Lisbeth Salander" from the Millennium films). In the very first "Alien" film (made already in 1979), a space ship from Earth discovers an alien craft on a deserted planet, complete with the remains of an alien astronaut with a big snout. His origins are never explained, but it´s strongly implied that the elephantimorph was killed by his mysterious cargo - yes, that would be the monstrous "xenomorphs" the entire franchise revolves around. The point of "Prometheus" is to provide these answers, at least to some extent. 

It turns out that the elephant-like creatures are really humanoid (the "snout" is part of their space suites), understand Proto-Indo-European and visited Earth in the past, when they created humanity! Thousands of years later, the aliens try to return to Earth, this time to kill off all humans, for reasons never made clear. Their crescent-formed ship is downed on a deserted planet, together with a lethal cargo of snake-like creatures, which turn out to be the ancestors of the xenomorphs (or perhaps of a closely related species - the monster in this film is dark blue rather than pitch black). The original intent was to release these critters on Earth as a bio-weapon against wayward humanity. Not realizing the hostile intent of the alien "Engineers", a group of human scientists arrive on the planet and revive the last remaining quasi-elephantimorph, in the hope that he will reveal the secret of eternal life. Unsurprisingly, the alien cosmonaut tries to kill the humans. Meanwhile, the bio-weapon infects several members of the science mission, which turns out to be teeming with robots, mad billionaires, and other people with secret agendas...

It could have been an interesting story. Unfortunately, it mostly isn´t. I didn´t like "Prometheus" very much the first time I saw it, and I can´t say I was that thrilled by it this time either. The first half of the film contains too many illogical situations. Many of the crew-members of the earthly space ship seem to be downright moronic. Paleo-xenomorph evolution is just too complicated. Director Ridley Scott apparently had all kinds of pretentious philosophical ideas he wanted to express with this film, but it never really succeeds. And despite protestations to the contrary, it really is a remake of sorts of the 1979 flick. 

The most intriguing theme hidden away somewhere in "Prometheus" is that the alien Engineers of humanity might be fallen angels rather than gods. They don´t seem particularly "good", after all, and their military obviously has a penchant for super-deadly weapons of mass destruction. Who knows, perhaps the Creators seeded humanity as food to produce xenomorphs for use in some intergalactic war? It seems that our bodies are necessary hosts for the monsters during their parasitic life-cycle. In other words, the xenos are Nephilim...

What a pity it was all screwed up by a bunch of dude bros with bad British accents!


Friday, October 29, 2021

Fair warning

 


Prometheus did nothing wrong. Gods of the Olympus, ye have been given fair warning! The Titans are the TRUE GODS and Spartacus is their PROPHET. 

Bohemian rhapsody in outer space

 




This is 100% nerd Trekdom, but I just couldn´t help it. 

The classical "Star Trek TNG" episode "Darmok" (which fascinated every autistic language geek in America)...dubbed to Czech! They even inflect the fantasy names in Czech. 

Still, I think they miss out on Patrick Steward´s fantastic voice performance. 

Never got the point of dubbing. Don´t they want to learn English? Could enhance our communications...  

HBTQ-fria zoner OK i NATO? LOL!


"EU ska inte vara Polens bankomat", enligt något perifert svenskt parti. Men det är okej om Sverige är Sydeuropas bankomat? Observera också att Liberalerna *inte* hotar Polen med uteslutning ur NATO! 

Vilken tur. Annars hade man ju kunnat tolka Sabunis utspel som att hon är rysk påverkansagent, eller något annat i den stilen.

Missförstå mig rätt, jag är inte heller någon varm anhängare av Polens konservativ-katolska regering, men den här typen av utspel är mest bara pinsamma...

"EU ska inte vara Polens bankomat" 

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Plants are people


 

"What Plants Talk About" is a National Geographic documentary, following a number of scientists in Canada and the United States as they try to prove that plants are more advanced than hitherto believed. Plants, it turns out, don´t live sedentary and solitary lives. Rather, they espouse a wide range of animal-like behaviors including foraging, making choices, communication, territoriality and kin-recognition. Or at least that´s what Dr James Cahill, a featured plant ecologist, believes. He concedes, though, that most people would consider him crazy! Or crazy and wrong...

Regardless of how you chose to interpret the activities of plants, they are fascinating. One segment of the documentary deals with the wild tobacco plant and its constant chemical warfare against the predators that would like to feast on its stem and leaves. The nicotine is actually a toxin meant to poison each and every bug that dares to attack this particular plant. However, hawkmoth caterpillars or hornworms are practically immune to nicotine, prompting the plant to take further action. By emitting a different chemical, the tobacco plant can attract big-eyed bugs, which feed on hawkmoth eggs and caterpillars. The plant can also offer "sweats" to the caterpillars through its trichomes (fine outgrowths on the stem), but the gift is deadly: the chemical marks the caterpillar for predation, as other animals can now sense its smell! Bizarrely, the hawkmoth is also the main pollinator of wild tobacco plants - that´s why the plant blooms during the night. However, the plant can somehow chose to change the shape of its flowers and the taste of their nectar, and instead bloom during daytime, attracting a very different pollinator - the hummingbird - which doesn´t threaten it later on. 

One group of scientists have tried to find out whether or not plants can recognize their kin, in this case their "siblings" (plants that have the same "mother"). It turns out that some species indeed can, something that almost shocked the research team. One such species is the searocket, which grows on sandy beaches in Canada. The plants grow more roots if they grow close to "strangers", and politely restrain root growth if they grow near "siblings". A clear example of genetic altruism among plants. (The roots identify each other chemically.)

The last segment of the docu deals with "the wood-wibe web", more formally known as mycorrhizal networks. Mycorrhiza is a form of symbiosis between trees and fungi, which mutually exchange nutrients. However, it seems that entire forests can form "networks" of "communication" and resource-sharing through this symbiosis. "Mother" trees can send nutrients to their "daughters" (saplings) through the fungal-based network.

One problem with "What Plants Talk About" is that it seems to be geared towards a popular audience steeped in New Age thinking. It´s not *that* obvious, but it shines through here and there. Thus, the Hollywood fantasy flick "Avatar" is mentioned, and the question of altruism is nature is treated as some kind of mystery, which (of course) it isn´t. The kin recognition of the searockets is standard genetic altruism, and other behaviors mentioned could be interpreted as reciprocal altruism. All described long ago in books by Richard Dawkins! 

Or am I just imagining all this? 

The never stated question underlying this entire production is whether or not plants actually have consciousness. One scientist suggests that the wild tobacco plant might have "self-awereness". Personally, I think the answers very much depends on how you define "consciousness". What does it take to be conscious? After all, nobody denies that plants or fungi are alive. But are they "conscious" in the animal sense (really human sense - nobody cares about caterpillars)? Perhaps a better question is: Do plants *need* to be conscious in an animal way in order to "forage", "communicate", and so on? We may simply be animalo-centric for assuming that "consciousness" in the standard sense is the only thing that can make shit happen on Planet Crazy...  

  


Let´s inquire together


For a very long time, I was bewildered by Krishnamurti, the anti-guru or perhaps anti-guru-guru of fallen Theosophy Messiah fame. However, I recently had a higher realization of sorts, and finally grokked the man. Yes, his message of non-theism, no-soul, individual liberation and instant enlightenment is a modernist form of Buddhism, perhaps of Zen Buddhism. At the very least, there is an obvious family likeness with such school. 

However, one thing still confused me until the other day. What on earth is K´s *method*, his "yoga", so to speak? I got the answer after carefully listening to his interminable, meandering speeches. He constantly uses the term "inquire" and often accuses his interlocutors of "not inquiring anymore". It then dawned on me that "inquire" must be a technical term. It refers to Krishnamurti´s own speeches. Krishnamurti´s long-winding satsangs *are* the method. We are supposed to become instantly (no less) enlightened by listening very carefully to his talk, and "inquire" together with him. This strikes me as strange, since the goal of the inquiry is to end discursive or conceptual thinking. But how can you end discursive thinking by discursive speech? Speech is, almost by definition, discursive and conceptual. Somehow, K wanted to short circuit our discursive mind...by discursive speech! Many minds probably have been short fused by this annoying character, but has anyone actually become any wiser?

That K´s method often blew up in his face is obvious from the discussion "Death" (available on YouTube through the link above, or in the book "Can Humanity Change?"), where it´s painfully obvious that everyone in the room understands perfectly what Krishnamurti is saying, and even agree with him. Yet, Krishnamurti can´t have this. It means that nobody is "inquiring" anymore, so he constantly pretends as if the other participants have misunderstood him, shouting "No, no", repeating himself over and over like a broken record, and frankly coming across as Mr Chance in that old Peter Sellers movie. It´s embarrasing to watch. Still, there is a bizarre logic at work here: Rahula, Bohm and the others understand Krishnamurti, but of course that´s a "conceptual" understanding rather than the non-conceptual satori K wants to induce, forcing him to continue the "inquiry" indefinitely, in the hope that somebody will ultimately get it and "break with the stream" . And disappear into mid air?

K´s supporters (who are clearly still down here, swimming around along with the rest of us) love to hate Rahula, but it´s obvious that the Lankan Buddhist scholar is on to something. First, he is right that Krishnamurti´s message *is* very similar to Buddhism. Second, his method is meditation. Now, I don´t claim to know if vipassana or jhana will take you anywhere closer to enlightenment, but presumably they can at least empty your mind of concepts and discursive thinking (including Krishnamurti´s discourses). K´s inquiry doesn´t seem to have this effect...

It´s been a fascinating week of inquiry. 



The esoteric Krishnamurti


I don´t remember where I read this...

Exoterically, Krishnamurti had a message many people associated with Advaita Vedanta or some form of Buddhist modernism. However, K also had an esoteric message. He believed in...the shakti. If so, what he calls "Love" in his public speeches is really Shakti. However, K refused to teach kundalini yoga to Westerners, since it was too dangerous (probably a true observation, all things considered). 

This is why David Bohm became interested in K´s message. Bohm regarded the shakti as a very real energy field "beyond" or "behind" the cosmos. It could be accessed through our minds, if we could only find the right technique to do so. Bohm was a former Marxist who had given up on radical societal change through material means. However, he still believed in the necessity of a world-wide transformation, and wondered whether access to this energy could change man - all men (and women) - for the better. In other words, he never gave up the global collectivist vision of Marxism. 

But as I said, I don´t know where I read all of the above (in two different places, I think).

Another thing also struck me. Why didn´t Bohm establish contacts with Sri Aurobindo instead? Perhaps he simply never met him. After all, Aurobindo lived in Pondicherry and wasn´t easily available, not even to world famous quantum physicists!

With that, I leave you for now. 


Barnförbjudet


Vi tar givetvis *kraftigt* avstånd från den här sajten!!! Fast de får ju in en del poänger förstås. Kanske med undantag för den lite märkliga vurmen för piano...

"Bara infantila föräldrar spelar Einár för sina barn"

The Wood Wide Web


An interesting, entertaining and somewhat frustrating article on "the wood-wide web", more formally known as mycorrhizal networks, through which trees can "communicate" with each other and share nutrients. Note that the networks themselves are fungal. Essentially, a forest seems to be a kind of symbiotic superorganism. No surprise, really. 

What makes the article so funny is the downright moronic discussion about whether or not trees and fungi are nice and solidaristic, or whether they really cheat, compete and parasitize each other. Ahem, haven´t we outgrown this dichotomous view of nature and evolution? It´s 2021, guys. Also, note that the scientists who attack the idea of cuddly harmony in nature as somehow ideological, don´t seem to understand that their own perspective is just as ideological, and probably subconsciously based on neoliberal capitalism. Note also the scientists who say that the younger trees might be parasitizing the older ones - well, yeah, you could say the same thing about human children, too! 

The question of whether the wood-wide web is somehow "conscious" isn´t really tackled in this short piece, but from the top of my head, I say that depends on how we define "consciousness". Rather than being deaf-and-dumb or conscious in the same way as animals (another dichotomy), why can´t plants be conscious but in a way we can scarcely comprehend? I mean, they are alive, but not quite like us, either... 

The Wood-Wide Web

Monday, October 25, 2021

Sunday School


A lot of good and funny points in this one...

"And a child shall mislead them"

The school of hard knocks


Is there a mind-independent outside world? An idealist at a certain web forum mocked me once by challenging me to name one single thing I know or experience which doesn´t go through, ahem, the mind.

How do we counter such a splendid argument? 

I think there is an efficient way (at least if you meet the subjective idealist or solipsist IRL): hit him and hit him hard. He will either try to get away (the most probable option, since he would be a soy boy), or he will actually try to hit you back! Even better, the response will be almost automatic. It´s almost as if they instinctively assume that there is a mind-independent outside world...

None of these philosophy students will sit down and quietly start to meditate, thereby dissolving the illusion of them being hit by a half-crazed realist. 

Now, it´s of course true that their reactions also depend on the mind. In *that* sense, nothing we will ever see or do can be fully "mind-independent". But we are not trying to disprove this. We are trying to find something which can prove (to the mind and through the mind) that a mind-independent world actually exist. Or if not "prove" it, at least strongly suggest it. 

Ironically, I was led to develop this most splendid method of persuasion after reading about a very bizarre Tibetan Buddhist practice known as Dzogchen. Part of Dzogchen (and its cousin Mahamudra) is something called "pointing-out instruction" whereby a guru "points out the nature of mind" to the student. This is often done in a heavy-handed manner, for instance by suddenly hitting the student! The goal of Tibetan Buddhism is apparently not to extinguish your mind á la nirvana, but rather to return it to a primordial state, when the mind was thinking without concepts. Pointing-out instructions are meant to demonstrate that the mind in its primordial state actually looks in exactly this manner. When the teacher hits the student, and the student hits back, the latter is acting "without concepts". He spontaneously acts without conceptual thinking. The act of hitting back is raw, unmediated, fresh. 

Now, it struck me that this is the closest we can ever get to a "proof" for the existence of a mind-independent outside world. When our minds are in their most primordial state, they also most strongly assume that what we see and experience is really real. This is ironic, since the Tibetan Buddhists are (by Western standards) also a kind of idealists, believing that the ultimate ground of existence is a universal super-mind, of which our fight-and-flight reflexes are just a tiny glimmer...

Then, hit them again! 


Vad var det jag sa?!

 

Credits: Oleg Bor 

Det formligen *kryllar* av nipsippor på den här bilden från Burjatien, en "republik" inom Ryska "Federationen". Så varför vill "Länsstyrelsen" (alias Högsta Sovjet) på Gotland "rädda" nipsippan genom att stänga ner all svensk cementproduktion???

Solklart fall av ryssländsk PÅVERKANSOPERATION. 

Rädda nipsippan! Länge leve Sovjetunionen!

Credits: Sharp Photography 

Den senaste rysk-kinesiska påverkansoperationen: få Sverige att avstå från cementproduktion (och därmed tvingas importera cement från ondskans nya axelmakter) för att "rädda nipsippan och väddnätfjärilen". Nu väntar vi bara på att Oksanen och Wolodarski ska lyfta den sino-rusiska infiltrationen av Länsstyrelsen på Gotland (visste inte ens att det fanns en sådan). 

Nipsippan och väddnätfjärilen ställs mot cementproduktion

Look who´s trying to teach us animal rights

Credits: CC-BY SA 3.0

I´m not a big fan of Fauci, and I wouldn´t be surprised if he turns out to have a couple of metaphorical skeletons in his metaphorical closet, but it *is* rather bizarre to see Trumpista outfit Breitbart News suddenly go full animal rights on the man. 

I don´t think eco-fascism or even slightly green traditional conservatism of the absentee landlordism type was ever part of Breitbart´s big tent right-wing strategy, but now they (and some GOP congresspersons) sound like angry young vegans or something. 

I suppose politics (and smear campaigns) are a complicated game. Or shell game...

Fauci funded research about insects eating dogs alive

In the middle of a stagflation


"In the middle of a pandemic", the Anti-Defamation League (sic!) perpetuates the SJW freak show with some "recommendations" about blah blah blah. To protest the ADL, I would gladly dress up as an Orthodox Jew...but then I realized that I would probably get arrested by De Blasio´s finest, and left to rot in a city jail unless I vaccinate myself (and eat ham sandwich), with ADL doing nothing to protest the defamation, so no thank you, I´ll rather pass. 

I´m gonna dress like a Druid instead! 

ADL demands a politically correct Halloween

Sunday, October 24, 2021

Where do I sign up?


Have I finally found my path? 

So you wish to become a bliss ninny?

Nirvana can wait


Buddhism in practice? 

The Experience of Jhana at a Goenka retreat center 

Nobody knows nothing

Credits: Fly Navy 

Did some reading on Buddhism over the weekend. OK, so it seems that Buddhists can´t even agree on what the proper form of meditation is?! Nor is it clear what the Buddha really was teaching originally. And yet, meditation is the royal road to nirvana. So the Buddhists don´t really know how to break free of samsaric existence. Yet, that´s the whole *point* of their freakin´ religion, aint it!

Nobody seems to to know anything anymore. It´s all a lie. All of it. All.

Where does that leave us? 

Free to create our own reality? Or should we just jump from a bridge?

Och vad problemet?

Credits: Ghedoghedo

Oklart varför feministerna är arga. Måste bero på att männen inte kallade sig kvinnor officiellt...

"Deckardrottning" fick litteraturpris, var tre män

Vad är straffet? Förlåt, "påföljden"

Credit: Greg Hume

MP vill döma sexköpare för våldtäkt. Jaha. Till samhällstjänst på barnstuga, sex månader, utan fotboja, straffrabatt för alla "under" 18 år. 

Låter som ett slag i luften, men vad vet jag...

"Döm män som köper sex för våldtäkt"

Och varför ska jag bry mig om Einár?


Var inte Einár kriminell?  

Expressen om Einárs "brokiga bakgrund"

Friday, October 22, 2021

Work of the ages


Is the Age of Pisces real? Is it the age of grand illusions: Christianity, liberalism, high modernity, the Western Idea of Progress, the invincible nature of modern science? Even the idea that the Age of Aquarius will be even better than the Age of Pisces is itself an illusory piscean idea.

And speaking of the Age of Aquarius...

Traditionally, Aquarius was ruled by Saturn. Hardly a benign jolly little planetoid. Later, Saturn was dethroned in favor of Uranus. But Uranus probably isn´t the shining planet of scientific-spiritual enlightenment it has been made out to be. (I´m assuming here - strictly for the sake of the argument - that astrology is true.) Yes, Uranus is the planet of revolutionary transformation, but it´s also crazy planet. Isn´t this what´s actually happening in the world today?

We live through a revolutionary transformation in which everyone is stark raving mad, or at the very least very ironic (all this is Uranus) and this transformation is the inevitable fated result of our karma (Saturn). Yes, the Age of Aquarius is ruled by both these planets in tandem. 

Welcome to CLOWN WORLD and MADHOUSE EARTH c/o the Lord of Karmic Consequence! 

In 2000 years, Uranus will be dethroned as Saturn rules alone during the long night of the Age of Capricorn. Everything will be hard toil, dark, damp, materialist, and yet nevertheless somehow weirdly efficient. The only humor will be sardonic laughter at the follies of the two preceding world ages. Only around the year 6000 will human civilization move upward again, after a fashion, as Jupiter takes over in the Age of Sagittarius.

Or perhaps we´ll all be dead by then, the real Sagittarians being highly evolved whales, happy to finally get rid of their foremost natural enemy...  

I think we found the culprit

Copyright: Antony McCallum

I think we found the root of our present predicament. And no, it´s not the bloke on the picture above! It´s an altogether different guy...

Matthew 5:38-44 

>>>Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;>>>

Was Jesus mad, bad or God? If these are the actual words of Jesus, I´d say he was mad. "Love thy quislings as yourself and win the Darwin Award" is such good advice to Western man (or woman, or any human) in the year 2021. Right? 

And no, Jesus isn´t talking about other Christians (other Christians were erring brothers, not enemies), he wasn´t talking about ascesis (he preached the Sermon on the Mount to "the multitude" which isn´t called upon to be ascetics), nor did he take the position that you don´t have to forgive unrepentant sinners (an argument I often heard from Christians).

Here´s a scary idea: what if Jesus says what he means and means what he says? Now, go out and apply his principles to grooming gangs, terrorists, Antifa rioters, the Deep State, the SJWs cancelling your sweet little ass, the politicians serving them...

Right.

Perhaps the world needs more paganism, after all. But sure, we could compromise and create a paganizing form of Christianity, if you like that better!

But love our enemies? Show agape to unrepentant sinners?

Nupe. 

 

Why compare?

Somebody else entirely 

"Can Humanity Change? J. Krishnamurti in Dialogue with Buddhists" is a book containing the transcripts of several discussions between Jiddu Krishnamurti and a Buddhist scholar from Sri Lanka, Walpola Rahula. A few other people, most notably David Bohm, also participate in the exchanges, which took place in 1978-79 at Brockwood Park in England. The conservations are also available free of charge on the YouTube channel of the Krishnamurti Foundation ("J. Krishnamurti - Official Channel"). The videos contain funny details obviously not seen in the book, such as the presence of teenage girls or bearded hippies in the audience! It´s also fun to watch the often bewildered expressions of Rahula and Bohm as they try to follow the meandering expositions of Krishnamurti. 

It seems Rahula had sort-of-challenged Krishnamurti to a debate on Buddhism, since both the Lankan scholar and other Buddhists had noted strong similarities between K´s message and that attributed to the Buddha. I think Rahula was right in this. Krishnamurti´s message could indeed be seen as a modernized version of Buddhism, Zen Buddhism in particular. Radical Buddhism could be another way of putting it. Or Zen without motorcycle maintenance? Of course, the anti-guru Krishnamurti refuses to be pidgeon-holed liked this, and retorts to the suggestion that he has a Buddhist-sounding message with the question "Why compare?". To which Rahula has no real answer. Krishnamurti also shrewdly asks the scholar why Buddhist rituals, techniques and dogmas aren´t "conditioned", if everything else in samsara is conditioned? Indeed, Rahula is often forced to concede that Krishnamurti may be right, making the entire "debate" feel somewhat pointless...

Still, there probably is a genuine disagreement in there somewhere. To Krishnamurti, enlightenment must be spontaneous and instantaneous, otherwise it is nothing. No "process", thinking or evolution in time can be involved. Every theory *about* enlightenment leads away from it, by conditioning the mind and erecting further barriers between it and the goal. Indeed, even the idea that enlightenment is a goal, something to be sought or attained, is in itself a step away from it! Obviously, rituals or dogmas are obstacles to liberation. Rahula (and Bohm) finds this hard to accept, or even comprehend. To Rahula, there is an evolution from conditioned existence towards the enlightened state of the arhat, at least within our "relative time" or "relative truth" (he often sounds "Mahayanish" despite presumably being a Theravadin). 

His favorite simile is that the Buddha´s teaching is like a boat taking somebody across a river (the river being samsara). The boat can be destroyed only after the passenger has safely reached the other shore. Krishnamurti questions this - to coin a simile of mine own, it´s as if he wants us to jump across the river in one gigantic stride! But perhaps K would have preferred a different simile: we are already at the other side of the river, but don´t realize it since we have our eyes closed. The only thing we have to do is open them... A simile he does use is that of seeing a snake and instantly realizing that its dangerous, recoiling from it. In the same way, but positively, enlightenment must be an instant realization of a *fact*, not some pretty theory or dogma about some or the other. 

What´s less clear is what method (if any) Krishnamurti proposed to reach this goal (or not-reach the non-goal). Perhaps his meandering "inquiries" *are* the method? Clearly, the World Teacher wasn´t very succesful! This is most obvious in the section "Life After Death", where K goes on and on for over an hour, arguing points everyone really seems to agree with, and which could have been dispensed with in under 15 minutes. He also seems to deliberately create confusion by contradicting himself, use familiar words in a strange way, and so on. It´s almost as if he goes out of his way to sound special (despite constantly claiming the opposite), rather than just being another basic Buddhist. 

Even if we assume that the Buddha originally had a message like Krishnamurti, Buddha (or his disciples) must have realized that it´s essentially impossible to impart to ordinary mortals, and hence developed new "processes" (and dogmas) to bring people closer to the goal. You could also question K in a much more radical way: what if his non-goal isn´t just impossible, but also undesirable? The answer to the question "Can Humanity Change?" would then be "Probably not" followed by a "Thank goodness"!  


Thursday, October 21, 2021

Another twilight of industrial capitalism declared


No, I won´t read "The Age of Surveillence Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff, and the hype surrounding the book makes me wanna read it even less. First, who is Shoshana? Why haven´t we heard about her before? Why is her Wiki page so incomplete? And why does she look like a "he"? And no, we don´t live in a new era of neo-neo-capitalism blah blah. Nix. I´m old enough to remember the bunk about "post-Fordism" from the 1980´s. And it was probably same old, same old even back then. (Insert angry Marxist polemic against Eduard Bernstein here.) 

I´m also old enough to remember "the most important book of the 21st century" (or was it ever) during the 00´s. I think it was called "Empire", but I no longer remember the names of the authors. Some kind of Italianate blokes. And during the 2010´s, it was Naomi Kline or whatever. Who today remember them, or write extensively about their ideas? Nobody, of course. Oh, and what happened to David Korten? (Koresh?)

These are (of course) some kind of leftists or leftish liberals. But "the most important book EVER" is also a common trope on the right, or among spiritual people. I have no idea what books the right-wingers have considered the Messiah of the Millennium, but I´m old enough to remember the most important books ever on the spiritual side. Or at least their authors. If we backtrack in time, I believe it was Eckhart Tolle, Ken Wilber and James Redfield. Oh, and now I realized who is the right-wing icon. Why, it´s Jordan Petersen, of course! 

And know what? Nothing came out of that, either. 

In ten years time, Shoeshine Anna will be just as forgotten as these guys are today. Capitalism and the working class will still be around. Without making any revolution. Prompting yet another "innovative" theory further down the road. And so it will continue, until The Great Meteor will finally put us out of our misery altogether.

I sense a best seller coming up!

The end of our Faustian bargain?




A lot to unpack here, as usual. For all its worth, I´m beginning to suspect that JMG is right about the Faustian civilization...

Not a pretty insight, since I´m pretty "Faustian" myself. Also, note the cliffhanger at the end. Apocalypse in two weeks time?

The End of the Dream



Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Running away from Krishnamurti

 




The main criticism against Jiddu Krishnamurti seems to be "he didn´t answer the question". (OK, I know he is deceased, or perhaps reincarnated into another root-race, but since he is forever new on YouTube, I might as well speak of him in the present tense!) For a long time, I shared this criticism. At the very least, I thought, he "answers" people´s questions in an *extremely* roundabout fashion. But then, I started thinking, or perhaps non-thinking. Many of his fans react in a way that mirrors the reactions of his criticis. They essentially concede that K didn´t answer the questions, but then make up strange excuses for it: K tries to communicate the uncommunicable, K´s explanations are really beyond all explanations, in short, K is enlightened so how *dare* you, a mere inquisitive mortal monad, question (!) him. Or not really so strange, since this is how all guru-worshippers always defend their chosen savior-figure. 

Something´s clearly up.

I think this becomes obvious when Krishnamurti explicitly *does* answer a query. Thus, in one of the clips linked to above, he very explicitly says that he doesn´t believe in God, and that man is left to his own devices, as if all alone in a jungle. How is that *not* answering the question? Really, we are hard to please! It´s also obvious from the clips that K didn´t believe in an immortal soul (at least not in the traditional sense), that he doesn´t regard enlightenment as a process of discreet stages but as something effortless and instantaneous, and that he absolutely repudiates all gurus. Only a weak person needs a savior. He also mocks the notion of atman ("Who is he? Who is Atman?") and the soul ("Soul? What do you mean? The sole of a shoe?"). 

I think people pretend not to understand Krishnamurti´s answers because they, at bottom, make them feel uncomfortable. Something which tends to confirm his message, ironically enough. Krishnamurti tries to declutch the guru-worshippers from the chosen objects of their worship. This is probably doomed to fail. We all need a God or a guru (or a nanny state). That´s why it´s safer pretending that you don´t understand, or fall down before his lotus feet, making *him* the new guru, once again pretending that you don´t understand...

Maybe that´s the secret of the human condition. We are all running away from Krishnamurti.   

The Great Perfection

Attribution: Vinograd 19

"Secret of the Vajra World: The Tantric Buddhism of Tibet" is a book by Reginald A Ray, an American scholar who seems to be a practitioner of Tibetan-derived Buddhism himself. This book is strictly speaking a sequel to an earlier book about Tibetan Buddhism by the same author, "Indestructible Truth". While that volume concentrated on the "exoteric" aspects of the Tibetan religion, "Secret of the Vajra World" deals with the esoteric traditions. Both volumes are difficult, despite Ray´s attempts to sound as accesible as possible, since they deal with a subject-matter that is complex and - frankly - very, very strange. Another problem is that the author doesn´t always reveal the secrets. For a more fortright exposé of Tantric Buddhism in the Tibetan cultural region, including all the sex and drugs, I recommend "Tibetan Yoga. Principles and Practices" by Ian A Baker...

That being said, "Secret of the Vajra World" is nevertheless interesting, and I can´t say I have fully assimilated its contents yet. My impression of Tibetan Vajrayana after reading it (something I didn´t see the first time I perused the work), is that the tradition looks like a curious combination of two very different strands of thought. One of them seems to be "standard" Mahayana, with all the usual metaphysical notions about Emptiness, Buddha-Nature, Dharmakaya, and so on. The other strand is harder to pin down, but must be some kind of "pantheist" shamanism, earth religion or magic. Certain aspects of Vajrayana seem to point "upward", while others lead "downward". Some practices are more typically "Buddhist" in nature (such as various meditation techniques), while others are more "pagan" (feasts or perhaps orgies) or "magical" (visualizations, attempts to manipulate cosmic energies). Of course, to an actual Tantric, this may all be a seamless whole, but to an outsider, it looks as if Mahayana have indeed been mixed with something wholly other. It could originally have been Tantric Shaivism, but Tibet also had shamanic cults and the like. 

Salvation or liberation doesn´t entail going "forward" or "up", but rather "backward", retracing the evolution-involution of consciousness to its original, primordial state, a state that in some peculiar way is both heavenly and pre-human at the same time. Indeed, it´s often explicitly compared to the consciousness of a small child, who simply takes in impressions and is awestruck by them, with no conceptual overlay or analysis whatsoever. (Tibetan Buddhism doesn´t romanticize animals, though. Their consciousness is seen as dull and mechanic.) There is no "God" in this system, but there is a "Ground Luminosity" which is experienced as a gigantic clearing or opening (perhaps as a cloudless sky) within which all phenomena spontaneously arise. There is no particular "meaning" to any of this, and in a certain sense it´s all just an illusion, and yet if this empty nature of all phenomena is grasped, the Tantric practitioner can attain supernatural powers and hence manipulate the illusion at will. Or perhaps not really at "will", since the enlightened "mahasiddha" does everything spontaneously, once again as a small child, and yet somehow always does the right thing anyway, precisely for that reason. This "crazy wisdom" is hard to grasp, but certainly doesn´t sound like a buddha entering nirvana! 

However, there is also a somewhat different tradition within the bewildering world of Vajrayana, known as Dzogchen. This entails an almost bizarre spiritual technique, in which the meditator spends weeks in complete darkness and somehow tries to cope with the hallucinations created by the inevitable sensory deprivation. Dzogchen is said to be extremely dangerous, and I can well believe it! The interesting thing about this practice is that it seems to suggests that everything *isn´t* an illusion, after all. From the Ground Luminosity (or Dharmakaya) arise certain energies, in every color of the rainbow. These are the energies of creation or emanation (my terms), and the task is to magically manipulate them in order to form a "rainbow body", identified with the sambhogakaya. This is intriguing, to be sure, since the sambhogakaya is the heavenly enjoyment body of the Buddha in Mahayana theology. Presumably, the sambhogakaya therefore has some kind of "form" or "boundary", although one that is infinitely malleable to the Dzogchen master. Thus, the goal of the Tibetan mystic isn´t to disappear into the void or become one with Brahman as a drop joins the ocean, but rather to remain in the world, but armed with limitless powers ordinary phenomenal mortals can scarcely even comprehend....