The Road Runner’s “meep meep”

When one is born in the Year of the Dragon (refer Chinese horoscope), one is subconsciously inclined to reflect, where it matters, the true nature of dragons. This is manifest essentially in their flight.

They will “soar into the sky of solitude, and simultaneously sink into the sea of humanity, as they sing the song of significance about their true home, that ocean of consciousness which unites all existence and non-existence.” (Last paragraph in my second memoir ’The Dance of Destiny’ – refer Amazon Kindle).

A human ‘dragon’ may tend to be a lateral thinker, inclined to ask ‘Why is it so?’ while ‘observing all neutrally’ and ‘analysing, with a depth of understanding, matters historical, geo-political, and religio-societal.’ ‘With a spiritual insight drawn from the metaphysics of Hinduism, and some significant psychic experiences,’ he could narrate ‘his speculations on the nature of Destiny.’

While progressing to the maturation necessary for this narrative – through ‘wheels falling off’ his life-chances cart, and ‘falling into holes which were not there’ – he had to rely upon his off-beat sense of humour for emotional balance.

During those dark, dreary and lonely early years in the whitest land set in coloured seas amid worrisome foreign faiths, this dragon found pleasure, almost weekly, in an hour of exposure to cartoons on film in a particular theatre. Tom & Jerry and Bugs Bunny aside, it was the Road Runner who captivated him. This cheeky and cheerful fleet-footed ‘varmint’ somehow resonated with his own nature. “Meep meep” was a call remembered from time to time throughout his lifetime, and which brought him a quiet smile of pleasure.

He wondered occasionally about his identification with the Road Runner. Was it the frivolous freedom displayed (akin perhaps to that of a cosmic dragon)? Indeed, his father had repeatedly emphasised the importance of freedom, possibly in the context of surviving under the yoke of colonialism. What had remained in this dragon’s mind all through his life was this advice: it is the eagle which flies highest, but it flies alone. Was the Cosmos foretelling his ultimate future?

Lo and behold, more than 65 years later, there recently appeared on tv a 2-hour program of Disney cartoons, the last episode depicting his ‘alter-ego’ the Road Runner. What joy to a dragon grounded by age! ‘Meep meep’!

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Can death be denied?

While I have been an integrated immigrant citizen of a modern Western nation for a very long time, I continue to be surprised by the prevailing attitudes towards a natural phenomenon (and outcome) – death. Even our worst criminals cannot be put to death – by us or by other nations – unlike our political mentor, the USA. Yet, we will enter into wars in distant lands which involve killing (as well as maiming and societal destruction).

Within this nation, I have talked to enough people (through my extensive involvement in civil society) to realise that many Christians are afraid of death. The medical/surgical professions will also seemingly not permit a patient to die, without some attempted intervention, no matter how close to death, or how old, the patient is. So we hear or read.

One of my medicos explained that this approach arose from a misinterpretation of the Hippocratic Oath: ‘Save lives at all costs’ has tended to replace, in many instances, the most desirable ‘Do no harm.’

In the institutional residences for the aged, many (mostly women) are kept alive, reportedly with minimal contact with family. In one of these residences, which I visited sporadically, I saw a row of elderly women sitting in a row against a wall, just sitting, most with their heads down.

Then there is the repeat request by institutional representatives of the medical profession for parliamentary approval to over-ride Apprehended Health Care Directives (or other legal documents of similar intent). My wish not to be resuscitated is sought to be ignored by some medicos (and the odd hospital administrator) who wish to play God, while denying me my legal rights.

When my chances of living a meaningful life are significantly low, I do not wish my future to be decided by one who may not accept that death has a role in life. Institutional care is no substitute for independent living in a nation ruled by the ethos of individualism. As it is, about one third of the aged (the senior citizens) live alone in Australia.

As well, in this secular nation, we should not be controlled by the politics of any religion. Why deny death at all costs?

Deathly perspectives

According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death.
Death is number two! Does that sound right?
This means to the average person, if you go
to a funeral, you’re better off in the
casket than doing the eulogy.
Jerry Seinfeld

Anderl Heckmair spent his life as a mountaineer and led the first successful ascent of the North Face of the Eiger in 1938. He was told by a fortune teller in the thirties that he would die an unnatural death. ‘Oh no!’ he exclaimed. ‘That means I’ll die in bed.’

At my age, I’m often asked if I’m frightened of death and my reply is always, I can’t remember being frightened of birth.
Peter Ustinov

The annoying thing about being an atheist is
that you’ll never have the satifaction of
saying to believers, ‘I told you so.’
Mark Steel

Immortality: a fate worse than death.
Edgar Shoaff

Comment: I am told that death is inevitable, but it can be late in arriving.

Death should not be deadly

Cosmic cataclysms and the demise of civilisations need a break, right?

I am ready to meet my Maker.
Whether my Maker is prepared for the great
ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Winston Churchill

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice
to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
Somerset Maughan

It’s not that I’m afraid to die,
I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
Woody Allen

A friend of mine stopped smoking, drinking,overeating, and chasing women –all at the same time. It was a lovely funeral.
Unknown

Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped
Groucho Marx

The birth of human civilisation

“At the heart of the controversy are the mysteries surrounding the birth of civilisation. Did we, as the academic establishment insists, emerge from the Stone Age about 5,000 years ago and only then begin the slow and painful ascent to our present ‘lofty’ heights? Or was there, in remote antiquity, a fountainhead of civilisation that rose to levels of sophistication equal if not superior to our own, and yet which vanished so completely that hardly a trace of it remains?”

So asks Douglas Kenyon in ‘Pushing back the portals of civilisation’ in ‘Forbidden History’ (edited by Kenyon).

“Titillating fragments of anomalous evidence suggest a pervasive if not advanced seafaring or even airborne culture having once existed in ancient India – for example, the identical nature of the Indus Valley script to that found at Easter Island on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Initial reports suggest, it should be noted, that the script found recently on the Gulf of Cambay resembles the Indus Valley script. According to certain south Indian researchers, the indecipherable scripts are written in a proto-Tamil language, which would link the culture of distant Easter Island and its famous megalithic statues with ancient southern India, Kumari Kandam – an idea echoed in the lore of Easter Islanders about a lost continent to the West from which their people originated.”

“Southern India, a land whose cultural roots are said by some to stretch into an even more profound antiquity than do those of the north, suffered a similar fate. Speakers of a proto-Dravidian language, the forerunner of a family of languages spoken in the south – and some say of Sanscrit itself – entered from the northwest, the Western scholars insist. … invasion theories were necessitated by Western beliefs, at first about the Garden of Eden theory of origins and then, with the arrival of the Darwinians, beliefs about the widely held out-of-Africa theory.

But the Aryan invasion theory has been debunked. … satellite imagery now shows that the ancient Harappan civilisation of the Indus Valley, and Mohenjo-Daro, probably declined and disappeared due to climatic changes, the drying of the mythical Saraswati River, rather than to the descent of imaginary invaders. … If Sanscrit predates the world’s other languages, and if ancient civilisations existed where there are now seas, how can history be explained in modern Western terms?”

“… ancient India dates to the times out of which the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the ancient traditions of Tamil Nadu in the south grew. The Tamil Nadu was a land whose culture is said by some to predate that of the north, having once existed as part of Kumari Kandam and dating to a staggering 30,000 BCE. A deluge inundated Kumari Kandam, obscure texts of the Siddhanta tradition of Tamil Nadu reportedly say.”

These paragraphs are extracts from ‘The Enigma of India’s origins’ by David Lewis from ‘Forbidden History’ edited by Douglas Kenyon.

The antiquity of human civilisation, as suggested by these extracts, may now be credible. How developed, how proficient – technologically, astronomically, culturally – were the pre-Deluge civilisations?

Culture-heroes post-Deluge

“It is surely pertinent that almost all traditions which refer to culture-heroes (virtually every one of whom was active immediately after the Deluge) describe them as white, tall, bearded and invariably superior to the aboriginal peoples among whom they appeared – often suddenly – to impart laws, crafts and useful information.

One such culture-hero, Caboy by name, allegedly brought the ancestors of the Brazilian Karaya Indians out of a ‘subterranean world’ following the Great Flood. Elsewhere, another culture-hero, using a spade-like implement, dug Amerindian Deluge survivors out of a blocked-up cavern. The hill tribes known as the Pankhoos and Bungogees, who inherit the Chittagong area of Bangladesh, preserve a similar tradition. They recall how, after the recession of the Deluge waters, ‘… their ancestors came out of a cave in the earth, under the guidance of a chief named Tlandrokpah.’

The early post-diluvian activities of this culture-bearing white race are chronicled in numerous traditions distributed globally.”

“Statements like those of the Mandan Indians, who aver that shortly after the Deluge their forefathers were visited by a mysterious bearded white culture-hero who arrived in a huge wooden ship made with ‘metal tools,’ appear as valuable if fragmentary confirmation of prehistoric technological abilities.”

“Strangely enough, there is a large corpus of evidence, both circumstantial and factual, indicating that civilised communities existed on Earth before the shocking calamity.

Many of the previously-cited traditions refer unmistakably to various antediluvian structures (for example, houses, temple, towers, canals), land vehicles (carts, chariots), aquatic vessels (rafts, canoes and arks) and implements (ploughs, bows, arrows, spades).”

The above extracts are from ‘Cataclysm’ by Allan & Delair (refer also my earlier posts).

All this is suggestive – but not conclusive – that before the Great Deluge killed almost all life, somewhere between 11,500 and 13,000 years ago, most of the capabilities and skills allegedly triggered and enabled in humanity by a sudden burst of a massive cosmic radiation about 41,000 years ago (refer my earlier posts) had eventually resulted in high civilisations all over the globe.

Is there any purpose in denying the probability of such development, having regard to the so-called myths of ancient history? Are our predecessors to be denied the right to tell their stories through folklore?

Ancient agriculture – the missing links

“Our ancestors found themselves in a world full of natural wonders, facing the challenge that nature set before them, all having to do with basic survival. … … We know exactly how Stone Age people lived because many tribes around the world were still living in this manner during the past five hundred years, and they have been studied intensively and extensively.

We know that humanity was fairly homogeneous throughout the Stone Age. … … They lived very close to nature, hunting wild life and gathering wild plants, using stone tools and stone, wood, and bone weapons. They had learned the art of making and controlling fire, and they had very accurate and detailed knowledge about the habits of animals, the lay of the land, nature’s cycles, and how to distinguish between edible and poisonous plants. … …

Suddenly, a few tribes began to embrace a different way of life. Giving up their nomadic existence, they settled down and started raising certain crops and domesticating several animal species. The first steps towards civilisation are often described but never really examined at a deep level. What compelled them to change abruptly? …

The first issue is very basic and straightforward. Stone Age people did not eat grains, and grains are the basis of agriculture and the diet of civilisation. Their diet consisted of lean wild meats and fresh wild greens and fruits. … …

How did our ancestor make this leap? As they had little to no experience with wild grains, how did they know what to do to process them, or even that they were indeed edible? … Beyond that, by the time of the abrupt appearance of the Sumerian and Egyptian civilisations, grains had already been hybridized, which demands a high degree of knowledge about and experience with plants, as well as time. … …

How and why did humans who had known nothing but a nomadic existence and an egalitarian social structure, so quickly and so radically change? What compelled them to build cities and create highly stratified civilisations when they knew nothing about such organisations? … … the developmental phases are simply not there. … …

Where did they learn to hybridize bread wheat and turn it into flour and bake the flour into bread in such a short time? Ditto for viticulture. These are not simple or obvious products.”

These are extracts from ‘Ancient agriculture, in search of the missing links’ by Will Hart in ‘Forbidden History’ edited by J. Douglas Kenyon.

If extraterrestrials had not been responsible for the sudden jump to settlement and agriculture, one would need to speculate that, somehow, remnants of a hitherto unknown civilisation from the era preceding the horrendous cosmic cataclysm and the resulting Universal Flood, of between 11,500 to 13,000 years ago, had stepped up to guide the Stone Age people of the current civilisation from their post-Deluge primitive lives.

If significant events in the Cosmos are cyclical in their occurrence, has the trajectory of mankind followed a cyclical path already?

Was there an earlier civilisation?

“Could an ancient civilisation have arisen to heights similar to our own, yet have traveled a similar road? What would we understand of a world that might have employed fundamentally different – though no less effective – techniques to harness the forces of nature? Would we, or could we, comprehend a world capable of, for example, creating and transmitting energy by means other than a power grid, traveling great distances without internal combustion engines, or making highly complex calculations involving earth science and astronomy without electronic computers?

Do we have the grace to recognise and respect achievements other than our own, or must we take the easy way out and resort to crude stereotyping of our mysterious primitive ancestors, dismissing out of hand anything we don’t immediately understand? Indeed there are some … who would argue that the evidence of a great but forgotten fountainhead of civilisation is overwhelming and needs, at last, to be given its proper role.”

So wrote Douglas Kenyon in his ‘Introduction’ to ‘Forbidden History: Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention, and the Suppressed Origins of Civilisation.’

In the chapter ‘Exposing a scientific cover-up,’ Kenyon wrote:
“Among scores of … cases cited in Richard Thompson and Michael Cremo’s ‘Forbidden Archeology,’ … it is clear that these … examples are by no means uncommon. Suggesting nothing less than a ‘massive cover-up,’ Cremo and Thompson believe that when it comes to explaining the origins of the human race on Earth, academic science has cooked the books.”

“ In every area of research, from paleontology to anthropology and archaeology, that which is presented to the public as established and irrefutable fact is indeed nothing more, says Cremo ‘than a consensus arrived at by powerful groups of people.’ Is that consensus justified by the evidence? Cremo and Thompson say no.

Carefully citing all available documentation, the authors produce case after case of contradictory research that has been conducted in the last two centuries. The authors describe astonishing discoveries made, and then go on to discuss the controversies that ensued from those discoveries and the suppression of evidence that invariable followed.”

In his ‘Introduction,’ Kenyon also wrote “Recall the Church fathers of the Middle Ages and their refusal, because of what they considered to be Galileo’s incorrect conclusions, to look through his telescope for themselves. Galileo’s notion that the Sun, not Earth, was the center of the solar system was deemed heresy, no matter what the evidence might show to the contrary.”

Are we mushrooms?

“Since the nineteenth century, Western scholars have routinely dismissed the historical significance of the cultural traditions of ancient peoples … With a decidedly ethnocentric bias – the intellectual stepchild of Western colonialism – the experts reinterpreted Eastern history, casting whole systems of ancient philosophy and science, in the experts’ minds, into the historical dustbin.

This historical dustbin is the repository of all things conflicting with European models, such as biblical Christianity and scientific materialism. Here we find the very inception of the ‘knowledge filter,’ now well known to students of alternative archaeology, geology, and other disciplines involved with the search for lost origins.

India, with her treatment by the West and her acquiescence to that treatment, typifies the way in which Western intellectualism conquered the world. Call it the ‘West is best’ model: a strict adherence to European doctrines that deny traditions and attempt to offer decidedly more ancient theories regarding the origins of civilisation than those of the Western scholars. On top of this, add a scientific materialism that denies all non-material theories regarding the origins of man, life, and reality.”

These are extracts from ‘India 30,000 BCE’ by David Lewis in ‘Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention, and the Suppressed Origins of Civilisation’ edited by J. Douglas Kenyon.

My understanding of Destiny

“My present understanding of Destiny is that we are indeed
marionettes, the puppet master being a set of circumstances
set up by ourselves. That is, we have free will, exercised both
autonomously and reactively. By our actions and thoughts, we
set in train the Cosmic Law of Cause and Effect; that is, the Law
of Cosmic Justice (or Karma, as the Hindus term it).

We, in each life on Earth, carve out the banks and the rocky
Impediments through and over which will flow the river of our
personal destiny in the next life, even as we obey the imperatives
of Destiny in our current life. The latter would have been carved
out in previous existences. Just as there are scientific laws which
govern our physical lives, so there seem to be cosmic laws which
govern our existence from birth to death, and thereafter.

Thus, in each life, I will paddle on the river of my personal Destiny.
My trajectory will be within the walls of the canyon and over
those rocky impediments I had carved out during my past life. As
I paddle, relate to others, and respond to circumstances reflecting
both the Law of Chance and the cosmic unavoidables (exercising
what free will seems available), I will be carving out the framework
for my next life, paying off my cosmic debt, and improving myself
spiritually (if that is what I want).

Seems reasonable, does it not? Thus, I reached the conclusion, as
said by some guru, that karma, like shadows, follows one everywhere.
I also felt that chance must have an independent role in the
circumstances of my life.

So where is God in all this? All that is required from the one and
only Creator is to set up the mechanisms underpinning our lives
and relationships, let them evolve as appropriate, and allow us to
choose our own path and bed. In some circumstances, He/She
might choose to intervene in our lives.

But then, why not leave that work to the higher beings in the spirit
world? They certainly seem to have been active in my life. Indeed,
I can testify that I have received the odd message – and in a timely
manner!

In so doing, were my spirit guides acting on their own? Or, were
they only instruments of Destiny? If the latter, were they guiding
me to optimise the opportunities available in my path of Destiny
to improve my life-chances in both my current and future lives?

Or, were they acting at the behest of God, who had chosen to
intervene in my life?”
These paragraphs are extracts from my second memoir ‘The Dance

of Destiny’ (recommended by the US Review of Books and available

at Amazon Kindle).

I believe that my interpretation of Destiny leaves us free to make

our own beds and then lie on them. Free Will rules, right?