Terrence McKenna - Cannabis Culture

This is a nice clip of the immortal Terrence McKenna talking about our accepted "coffee culture" and the underground "cannabis culture."

The Deep Joy of De-Normalizing

Neil Kramer's most recent post over at The Cleaver blog is a great read. Here's an excerpt on "normality":

You can see it in people’s faces. They settle for that which they know to be deficient and unfulfilling. The rationale is that some contact is better than no contact. This is particularly prevalent in intimate relationships. When humans are fundamentally disconnected from themselves and each other, they are vulnerable to the insidious gravitational pull of the mainstream cultural paradigm. They get all normal.

At the primary level, those who choose not to be the architect of their own consciousness, and therefore disclaim their own daily existence, are anchoring the density of the construct with every recycled meme that passes their lips and every electro-chemical notion that fires across their frontal lobe. They are hungry pacman ghosts roaming the sepulchral corridors of unreality, forever repeating the same corrosive patterns, unable to satiate themselves on any level. The virus of renunciation consumes its own host. The only way to offset the muted but incessant background pain derived from this way of living, is to embrace normality. To watch TV and resonate along with its frequency of ordinariness and indifference. To consume. To buy fake products, fake food, fake music. To wear cheap clothes and running shoes that are derived directly from the blood of economic slaves. This is a karmic declaration. And should the inner self spontaneously break through and find its voice amid this toxicity, then with the utmost urgency, the mind must be immersed in the low-resonance, high-density media swamp. When the mind sucks in vulgarity, regression and ignoble deeds, the psychological pain momentarily subsides as the spirit retreats far from the centre of our being.

For those who walk the path - normality is fake, it does not exist. For construct dwellers, the roots of normalcy do not emerge from any particular socio-economic class. It is spread equally across all demographic classifications of A, B, C1, C2, D and E social grades (this is the UK mapping). Normals, as we might call them, are in fact characterized largely by their negative aspect, by what they do not do. For example, normals create little or nothing. True innovation, spontaneity, risk taking and courage are barely perceptible in the course of their lives. They demonstrate the appalling trait of obviousness in most thoughts and deeds. They tend not to question the authoritative hierarchies that control their lives. They certainly prefer not to discuss matters of substance. Contemplations on the mysterious nature of existence within the astonishing elegance of the universe is unthinkable. They’re just not into any of that stuff. It’s not perceived as a worthwhile or rewarding activity, as it does not advantage them within the mainstream paradigm. What is to be had from being contemplative or philosophical? There is no commercial value and such things bring only existential unrest. So they avoid it. Disown it. Replace it. Fear it. Whatever. Watch television.

Read the Entire Deep Joy of De-Normalizing Article

Walking Zombie Nations - Psychology, Consciousness, and the Egoic Mind

I came across this interesting article today and a lot of its analysis of the ego resonated with me:

In this article, I’ll describe how I see myself, the world and the people who live in it. By doing so, the reader will be looking over my shoulder at the workings of the human psyche, or at least my interpretation of the psyche. What you will not find is the consensus view on this subject. For that, all you need do is pop open a standard psychology 101 text book and dive in. The reason I leave the beaten path is simple. The really interesting ideas are usually found way out on the fringe and deep in the weeds. That’s not to say you can’t find “truth” or accurate knowledge within the consensus, just that cutting edge ideas and concepts aren’t tolerated well among the establishment. In my opinion, the established leaders rarely go into areas that aren’t well traveled and seldom stray from their own fields of expertise. Ironically, in a discipline that devotes much ink to the discussion of the ego, the principal players’ egos prevent little more than incremental forward progress. When you’re sipping from government and corporate grants, you don’t often make waves.

Read the entire article here

It's Just a Ride

This is a nice video compilation of David Icke, Bill Hicks, George Carlin, Alex Jones, Leonard Horowitz and other spiritual/political thinkers.

Quantum Mechanics - The Measurement Problem

The quantum measurement problem ultimately shows the inseparability of the observer from the observed. There is no measurable, solid reality “out there” independent of the measurer. What is “out there” when we’re not looking is an infinite wavy cloud of criss-crossing possibilities. Then when we focus our attention on something, the wave function collapses into a defined particle in a definite location for us to observe.

“This rather simple experiment raises a central question about the role of the observer in quantum reality. This is known as the quantum measurement problem: We infer that the photon acts like a wave when we’re not looking, but we never actually see those waves. So what causes the photon to ‘collapse’ into a particle when we do decide to look at it? In classical physics, objects are regarded as objectively real and independent of the observer. In the quantum world, this is no longer the case.” -Dean Radin, “Entangled Minds” (218)

Physicist Fred Alan Wolf uses the term “popping the quiff” (QWF for Quantum Wave Function) to describe the role of the observer in creating reality. Before being consciously observed, quanta (the building blocks of all matter) exist only as a boundary-less wave of undifferentiated quantum energy. In this state there is no matter as such, no particles or “things” with attributes and definite locations - just an infinite expanse of energy, Zero-Point, The Field. However, when a conscious observer focuses attention, they “pop the quiff,” collapse the quantum wave function into a solid particle of experience with definable attributes and location.

These findings are so significant because they prove that the classical Newtonian model of physics (now being termed “the old physics”) is fundamentally flawed. The old physics described a mechanistic material universe “out there” existing regardless of whether or not there was a conscious being alive to perceive it. The new physics shows that matter doesn’t even exist without consciousness. Without a conscious observer to “pop the quiff,” there is no substance, no “materiality” to that which is – just an unlimited, undifferentiated field of energy.

“If you want to see fear in a quantum physicist’s eyes, just mention the words, ‘the measurement problem.’ The measurement problem is this: an atom only appears in a particular place if you measure it. In other words, an atom is spread out all over the place until a conscious observer decides to look at it. So the act of measurement or observation creates the entire universe.” -Jim Al-Khalili, Nuclear Physicist