Cultural diffusion – from East to West?

Stephen Oppenheimer in ‘Eden in the East: The drowned continent of Southeast Asia’ writes that the Universal Flood drowned the huge continental shelf of Southeast Asia’; and that this had caused a population dispersal which fertilised the Neolithic cultures of China, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Eastern Mediterranean, thus creating the first civilisations.

Oppenheimer’s theory is that “ … the roots of the great flowering of civilisation in the fertile crescent of the Ancient Near East lay in the sinking shorelines of Southeast Asia. The Sumerians and Egyptians themselves wrote about the skilled wise men from the East, a fact often dismissed as the embellishment of a fertile imagination.”

Oppenheimer points out that the myths of the Sumerians, “with their religious connotations,” were “among the first written records in the third millennium BC;” and that “in the majority of cases the structure and content of the Mesopotamian myths show them to be derived from earlier Eastern sources;” and that “we may suppose that the direction of diffusion was East-to-West.” That claim must be equivalent to putting a cat into an aviary! If true, the dates of diffusion may be much earlier than 6,000 years ago.

He states as a ‘myth-type’ the parable of the ‘two warring brothers’ which had arisen in eastern Indonesia, and to have travelled with the Austronesian expansion along the north coast of New Guinea into the Southwest Pacific “at least 6,000 years ago.” As a most probable clash of cultures (eg. nomadism vs. agriculture), this parable (an example is that of Kulabob and Manup in eastern New Guinea) is reminiscent of Cain and Abel. Oppenheimer concludes “ … these myths antedate Genesis by several thousand years.”

Other “shared Eurasian myths” include the Flood; the “watery creation and separation of Heaven and Earth;” the tree motif in the two-brother parable “derived from the Tree of Life;” and the Garden of Eden as a “fertile lost Paradise.” “The family of immortality myths may be the oldest of all, recalling the importance of ritual burial which goes back well before the end of the Ice Age.”

Significantly, Oppenheimer also says “My personal view is that although there was much technology transfer over a prolonged period, the most important new lessons from the East were … how to use hierarchy, politics, magic and religion to control other peoples’ labour.” What a claim! But he does remind us of “the stratified hierarchies still surviving in Austronesian traditional societies from Madagascar through Bali to Samoa;” and the retention of honorific titles in countries such as Bali and Samoa.

In the event, did European colonialism fail in teaching some of its ‘natives’ how to govern themselves in a democratic manner? Perhaps class-riven Britain and social rank-driven Europe were not then appropriate role models!

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The push of a past life (1)

That cute 3-year old boy playing his violin on stage with Andre Rieu and his orchestra touched me. I was not the only one wiping away tears of joy – and amazement; while I watched the performance on my computer.

For those of us not conditioned by religion to deny the reality of the reincarnation process (for which there is much reliable evidence), this child demonstrated the push of a past life. I do not know whether his parents are musicians. He was most likely born into a family of musicians, as there is a logic (usually concealed) in significant events of human lives.

My intuition is that his past life memory would have led him to want to play the violin. This thought is buttressed by what we have seen on the Internet: lots of young children playing musical instruments at a high level of competence (normally beyond the competence of their age-cohorts and most adults).

 

Where resides my soul?

As a metaphysical Hindu (that is, one beyond rituals), I accept that the Cosmic Creator (not necessarily a physical entity), as both transcendent and immanent, may have a presence in all that is created. A fragmentary essence of this Creator could thus be within me. I have read that this presence is located in a walnut-sized space within my heart.

Is this presence my soul, the real me, that traveller through time, through repeated re-births? That cannot be. That is because each soul is said to be polished (improved morally or spiritually) through the reincarnation process, and then returned to be boundless Ocean of Consciousness (or Aether) from which it is said to have risen. A fragment or essence of the Creator will surely not need to be polished.

Rather, its role may be to remind me that, in times of travail, I need only look within me for succour and spiritual (and mental) peace. The lessons of Destiny – both personal and communal – do need to be accepted with equanimity.

My soul is clearly a unique insubstantial entity, the essential me, carrying the compound lessons acquired through a series of past lives. Does it remain a passive record keeper, uninvolved in the normal turbulence of life? Or, does it, in its own interest, influence me by allowing me intimations (on occasions) of my immediate past life?

I have become somewhat sensitised to this influence through: some instinctive responses to events; visions of a past life through auto-hypnosis; information offered by a psychic healer whose Spirit Healer can apparently read my past life traumas; and my ‘casual’ clairvoyant who saw me as I apparently appeared in my immediate past life. I await, with hope, further illumination.

Developing my ‘third-eye’ vision may enable me to become more intuitive about such matters. I doubt, however, whether the embodied I will ever know what the essential I (my soul) is doing.

What I would like to know is whether my soul resides in my body, or whether it surrounds me as an ethereal (or cloud) entity (like the Internet). When I die, will my soul gather my mind and its memories on its way, because they too exist in a ‘cloud’ around my brain?

Could I now explain how I recovered the memory which I had lost when I had a heart attack? Perhaps my memory exists at 2 levels; at a operational level, which can be damaged, and at a holistic ethereal level beyond bodily weakness.

Fascinating! Pity that I will be denied an answer. As my soul takes off to the Afterlife, it will not (I guess) be concerned by such Earth-based ruminations. The caravan must (and will) move on!

(Note: While I cannot prove the existence of a Cosmic Creator and the ways this all-pervasive, ever-existing essence may influence human existence, no sceptic can disprove such a belief. As for the reality of souls and the reincarnation process about which I have written, my experiences and reliable research findings over decades being real, cannot be denied.
Doctrinal religion does not offer needed illumination. Regrettably, some scholars cannot step out from their religion-imbued castles.)

Has science explained anything relevant to existence? (3)

I have not been able to accept the Big Bang Theory of cosmology. My problem?

• Can something come out of nothing? Is the mathematical concept of singularity, which denies us the right to ask if there was anything existing before the bang of creation, an explanation, or just a naming, or the door closed on thought?
• Where did the massive amount of energy needed for the claimed expansion come from?
• Did space exist before the Bang? It must have, in order to expand. But then, how could the ‘nothingness’ of space expand?
• Is the Hubble Telescope capable of peering into infinite space?
• What if light weakens (in layman terms) with infinite distance?
• Then there are quaint terms such as ‘space-time’ and space being ‘bent’ by an unexplained gravity? Are these mathematical concepts with no relation to material reality?
• I have recently read that galaxies are not rushing anywhere.
• Are we, as some clever person said, vivisecting the nightingale to trace its song?
Recent reading brought out the following (from Geoff Haselhurst):

• “A Doppler effect is for motion of matter in space, not for the expansion of space itself.”
• “… assumes that light is a wave, yet in other areas of physics light is claimed to be a ‘photon particle’ …”
• “The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) is sensibly explained as due to radiation from cold matter in interstellar space.”
• In 1957, a “theory accounted for the growing evidence that the … composition (of elements) varies from star to star, something that would not be possible if the elements were produced by the Big Bang.”
• “Superclusters and Voids are older than the Big Bang Universe.”
• “The Universe is ordered, thus infinite.” (That is, there is no evidence of entropy.)
• “Inflation is an ad hoc solution to a theory that contradicts observation.”
• “Distant galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field are not ‘primitive’ and move as if surrounded by matter.”
• “The Big Bang satisfies the religious Creation Myth.”
• “Matter is formed from waves in space … space being infinite and eternal …”
I have reached the tentative conclusion that there has to be a Creator of all that exists (including generations of evolved ‘stuff’), because of the observed (and intuited) incredibly complexity, the close inter-relationships (or connections), and their beauty. But I could be wrong.

Back to the drawing board? How then how take into account the ephemeral realm of existence as well?

RELIGION and I (Part 1)

As a primary school boy, I was sent to the Pilleyar (Ganesha) temple at examination times, although I topped my class by a large margin every term, except once.  I also accompanied my parents at other times.  We were ardent in our faith.  My father, having overcome a serious illness at about 33, died suddenly at 47, when I was 18.  Within 3 years I then lost the family’s savings through a spectacular academic failure.  So much for faith and fervent prayer.

My future was thereby destroyed, as clearly forewarned after my father’s demise by a perambulating yogi, but unheeded by us.  I doubt that my mother and I were competent to absorb such a warning.  In any event, surely what had to happen had to work itself out.  Late in life I realised that what the yogi had done was to turn my mother’s vision towards Australia, which was in a direction not normally taken by students from British Malaya seeking an overseas qualification.  My folly (or was it my destiny?) led to my mother and my sisters being impoverished.  So much for temple rituals and the priesthood.  I gave away God, Hinduism and all religio-cultural rituals.

Then learning and logic took over!  Studying the belief systems of the simpler societies at my university, and dipping into some anthropology, sociology, psychology, and the major religions, I realised that there has been, and is, an innate need in many, if not most, of us to understand what we humans are, and our place in the Cosmos.

I realised further that:  the complexity and beauty, as well as the observable but inadequately explicable aspects of the experienced world;  the exceedingly complex patterns of inter-linked cause and effect, action and reaction, and the inter-dependencies of the physical, chemical and electromagnetic forces affecting us;  the uniformity, the invariability, the predictive capacity of the laws of nature;  the ecological balance between mobile and fixed forms of life;  the intuitive yearning by sensitive souls for communion with sublime or higher forces not clearly understood;  and the inferred influence of the spirit world, all of which affect our lives, could not have occurred purely by chance.  Instead, they might, I felt, reflect the mind and soul of a Creator.  How else could all that have occurred?  By chance?  Is that another name for an inexplicable cause, akin to the gods of simpler people?

I did conclude, logically, that there had to be a Creator of all that exists.  I then noted, with great interest, that an academic and confirmed atheist had reached the same conclusion after a lifetime of non-belief in a Creator, for exactly the same reasons.  There has to be a Creator, he now accepts, thereby upsetting most severely his former fellow-believers in that causal mechanism named Chance.  Like me, he doesn’t claim to know; only that a creator god makes (unverifiable) sense.

 

(This is an extract from my book ‘Musings at Death’s Door: an ancient bicultural Asian-Australian ponders about Australian society.’)

 

 

Seeking to explain the Universe

I have great difficulty with the Big Bang Theory. I question the following: something arising from nothing; the origin of the vast energy necessary for the claimed initial expansion; whether light maintains its intensity through infinite space; how far does the Hubble Telescope see in infinite space; what is the role of ‘dark matter’ in this claimed expansion; is it not premature to claim that the Big Bang cosmogony is proven?

In the meantime, fellow-bloggers may be interested in the following extracts from ‘On the Cosmos’ in my book ‘Musings at death’s door.’

“Following a genuinely educational curriculum set by the British for Malaya, I read about the prevailing ‘Stationary State’ theory relating to the structure of the Cosmos.  So, modern cosmologists were agreeing with an ancient Hindu perspective of durability in the heavens.  Then, however, came the ‘Big Bang’ theory.  This presumably was needed to explain what the Hubble Telescope had shown; that all sighted cosmic objects were seemingly moving away from one another.

Then came the ‘Big Crunch’ concept, seemingly in recognition that unending expansion did not make sense even in an infinity of space.  I, however, wonder if a glimpse of Hindu cosmic speculations might also have been influential.

Then came the ‘Mini-Bang’ extension, presumably to explain the lack of accumulating empty spaces. That is, if everyone is moving out of a sports stadium through gates open 360 degrees, wouldn’t the stadium become empty eventually?  The idea of a ‘Mini-Crunch’ had logically to follow.  All that was to fit the Hubble Telescope’s observations within a durable Cosmos; and a hint that invisible matter (or energy) might be filling the spaces resulting from the expansion of visible galaxies.

We were now back to an enduring Cosmos, but with significant changes in structures.  It is durability but without stability – an interesting concept.  Did not some unknown Hindus postulate that the universe renews itself periodically?  There are two strands in this belief.  The first strand says that at the end of a ‘day of Brahma,’ Earth (and other worlds) are temporarily dissolved (another view is of a temporary suspension).  A ‘day’ is equal to 4.32 billion human years.  At the end of another 4.32 billion years, representing a ‘night’ of Brahma, regeneration commences.  Dissolved, suspended, crunched?

Brahma is the Creator God.  The other strand of this belief says that at the end of Brahma’s life, equal to 311.04 trillion years, the whole Cosmos is dissolved.  After a great cosmic rest period equivalent to the duration of Brahma’s life, yet another creative cycle will commence, with another Brahma creating another Cosmos.  What a quaint vista this is.  What kind of mind conceived it?

It all sounds so simple.  When and how did these concepts originate?  Why?  What was the trigger?  These speculations promise long-term durability, but with vast changes in structures occurring in a sequenced path.  What I was taught as a boy – that the universe is without a beginning or an end – seems to be quite correct.  Continuity is assured, but with gaps in the creative and regenerative process.  For some reason, the firefly’s winks of light come to mind.”

 

Welcoming Death

I am looking forward, with great anticipation, to meeting Death; hopefully, soon. I have achieved mental and spiritual peace after a long and turbulent life – during which I have learned a great deal (so I believe) about the human condition and human society; and have achieved a smidgen of understanding about the place of mankind in the Universe.

I am satisfied that the material realm within which we live, frolic and suffer (but obviously not simultaneously) is only the crust of that environment which is relevant for human existence – much like the mantle covering Earth below which lies its engine room.

My substantial exposure to the spiritual (and thereby ephemeral) domain has resulted in my awareness of 3 realities – the physical, the mental, and the ethereal. I now know that the mental can exist beyond the material after death, having been initially derived substantially from the brain (with a probable input from soul memory). I also know that the spirit realm co-exists with our material realm, but is probably located in another (non-cosmic) domain.

I find it interesting that the speculative cosmologists of science (I instance David Bohm) and the ancient metaphysical Hindus who conceived their complex cosmology seem to be on the same page in their efforts to explain reality at multiple levels. Naturally, one needs to go beyond that most reliable scientific method to deal with the ephemeral.

I do wonder whether the material is only a projection of the ephemeral; or that the ephemeral is an abstraction from the material. I prefer the former perspective, with seeming support from Plato and Hindu cosmology.

Anyway, I do need to move to what I refer as the After-life, in order to continue my learning (as promised by a clairvoyant with verifiable communication with the spirit realm). All my life, I have had this urge to know – and to understand. With understanding there may be opportunities to acquire some wisdom.

Repeated sojourns in the After-life should ultimately result in a clear understanding of what all inter-linked cosmic existence is about.

Reality may be non-material

I prefer the material realm of the universe we occupy to be a projection of an ethereal realm. The latter is a hitherto effectively unknown and inexplicable dimension of existence. Why? Because reality seems to me to be more ethereal than material. The latter also cannot explain the former, whereas the latter can seemingly be derived from the former.

When Heraclitus (a Greek philosopher of yore) quoted a typically unrecognised Hindu thinker of centuries before him, saying “All is fire,” he was referring to the firmament which surrounds us. All my life, I have been enchanted by the apparently infinite number of balls of fire which we see as stars.

Recently, my mind’s-eye developed this scenario. The invisible smoke from these fires could represent the ephemeral realm of the Universe; and the ashes and other disgorgements from each sun which fall upon their respective planets (such as Earth) could represent the material from which life forms eventually oozed or erupted. Does this vision make possible sense?

Then, there is the material realm of which we are part; that is, we are matter. We are part of the 4% of the totality of matter estimated to exist in the Universe to be visible.

What of invisible matter? Two-thirds is said to be dark matter; one third is apparently dark energy. Was the latter transmuted from dark matter, or vice versa? However, since we cannot see either, could they actually exist? Of course they can, in the way bees and some animals apparently use certain alternative strands of the electromagnetic spectrum to go about their business.

As well, there was my first clairvoyant who could see, and describe accurately, the spirit of my uncle who had manifested himself to him. That is, invisible cosmic matter may become visible under appropriate conditions; and invisible energy may be identifiable through its impacts.

In the event, what is the point of all the fuss we make about the minuscule amount of visible matter, including our (human) material selves? Are we not a lot more than our material bodies? Should we not be investigating non-visible matter and energy, to understand the ephemeral aspects of humanity?

Ultimate reality seems to be beyond the visible, tangible, crudity, and crassness of much of Earthly human existence.

Continuity with pre-history

Progress in science (the god of the pathway to learning in the Western world in recent times) is generally triggered by the speculative thinkers in each of the academic disciplines. These are the lamp-lighters for those who want to know about our Universe (even a multi-verse Cosmos) and why it is all so; as well as our place in it , and what we seem to be (apart from stardust).

Since the capacity to speculate freely is unlimited, by time, space and even theology (in both religion and the prevailing explanatory paradigms of the various disciplines of knowledge-seeking), a range of possible doorways to knowledge can be theorised; these may lead to pathways of probable relevance.

However, is there a man-made constraint about accepting continuity through historical time? I instance the continuity of learning; and thereby to the apparent continuity of civilisational features through time – through now extinct civilisations.

In the light of the precise geometry of construction and the accuracy of the geodesic placements of the pyramids of the ancient Egyptians, it would be fatuous to believe that late-arrival Greeks discovered geometry. Earth’s positions against the constellations of the zodiac at a particular period of time, and the alignment of our planets in that period as evidenced, or linked in ancient mythology, may assist in dating the construction of the Pyramids and the Sphinx more accurately; as well as certain events mentioned in the Veda’s of Hinduism.

The history of mankind seems to go far beyond 3,000 BC, long before the cultural ancestors of Europeans (Greece) and their religious ancestors (the Israelites) could make any kind of impact.

Our current civilisation seems to date from about 13,000 BC, after the abatement of the Universal Deluge, with its almost total destruction of everything on Earth. That Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha should arrive in oar-less boats in Central and South America suggests the survival of pockets of an earlier (pre-Flood) civilisation of high achievements.

Let us not try to sound clever by muttering ‘Where’s the evidence?’ Modern day speculative cosmologists like Einstein do not seem to have been challenged about their lack of evidence.

So-called Caucasians in Central Asia in an early historical period; skeletons of tall (up to an estimated 12 feet) humans in North America; ‘African’ heads in Central America; ‘black’ people in China; clearly brown people in Taiwan (now in Polynesia); constructions such as Nan Madol and other massive stone buildings in various parts of the globe, components of which cannot be moved by modern equipment; mind-over-body, and other psychic phenomena, exhibited in diverse parts of the globe; ‘thumbnail’ and other psychic or spiritual healers; artefacts displaying high technology having been dug up from great depths; and so on! There is so much we cannot explain.

Are we then in a position to deny the probability of the existence of advanced civilisations on Earth in so-called pre-history? Nature, in conjunction with huge space-objects and powerful electromagnetic flows of cosmic rays and particles is able to bury or drown whole human civilisations now and then. Large segments of the continents, such as Fennoscandia, are now under water.

Just as reincarnation can enable the continuity of souls through time, via a succession of Earthly lives, so the memories contained in mythology and some artefacts of humanity may indicate the continuity of human civilisations over vast swathes of time.

Pre-history readable through the zodiac?

I have had real-life experiences to convince me that horoscope reading by experienced Indian astrologers, based on the minute of birth (and its geographic location) enable probabilistic conclusions about a broad view of an individual’s future. However, I am not persuaded that horoscope reading in Western nations like Australia, based on one of the 12 constellations of the zodiac, are reliable. Projected personalities do not match real-life personalities.

Paul LaViolette, a multi-disciplinary scientist and mythologist suggests that the sequence of cosmic ‘houses’ on the zodiac are not in their proper relationship positions.

Nevertheless, does the zodiac as we know it enable us to read pre-history? This is a crucial question. For instance, it appears that the Sphinx in Egypt had a lion’s head originally. Could it have been constructed in the zodiac Age of the Lion? If so, would we now have a date (within a span of 2,160 years for each Age) for its origin? It could be 8,000 BC to 10,000 BC.

I remember reading that a description of a cosmic event in Hinduism’s Vedas (whose oral origin is asserted as before time as we know it) had been dated at about 8,000 BC. Or, could the associated constellation of the zodiac (the ‘house’ against which the sun rises for 2,160 years each time) refer to the previous zodiac cycle 25,920 years before? Why not indeed! Do we know enough to reject this probability?

In the event, could we then focus on the culture or civilisation which produced the Sphinx? In the light of the very limited technology available in that period to mankind, as claimed by the protectors of the current explanatory paradigm,  could we contemplate the probability of extraterrestrial assistance? This may have come from a watery planet from the 3-star Sirius complex – because a moat apparently surrounded the Sphinx originally.

Or, were our then human ancestors so highly civilised and technologically advanced as to be able to cut, lift, shape, and place the huge and heavy stones (the megaliths) – which we are yet unable to handle.

Thus, we have an interesting choice: extraterrestrial involvement or highly civilised and technologically superior human ancestors. While neither seems credible, a choice has to be made.

As to whether the zodiac placed at the ecliptic enables human pre-history to be read depends on what the zodiac actually means, who conceived it, and why it seems to be embedded in a number of cultures of the past. Apart from the link with the precession of Earth, and the apparent usefulness of knowing when to expect the equinoxes and solstices (for agricultural or spiritual purposes?), what does the zodiac tell us? The next probable cosmic catastrophe?