Over the last few days there has been mention of “victory” in Ukraine and the press commentary on Putin’s alleged health remains as it was a year ago. {He is a loony with some weird neurological disorder.} The Crimea has a history of difficult conflict, with long periods of stalemate. The rhetoric of sending planes to Ukraine continues and now the talk is of ammunition levels. There is a shortage {which was inevitable} as there is of fresh vegetables in the UK. America does not realise that it is not universally popular around the globe. Certain elements of the UK press personalise the war as Putin’s war, which is perhaps a facile view. In Palestine the Israelis and the Palestinians exchange death and weapons as has been the case for a long time.
Some wounds of cleavage resist healing.
History in some ways repeats itself.
There is, for example, now a walled off ghetto in Palestine.
The West does not accept that it has become decadent, flabby and suffers from illusion. Whilst it may want the war in Ukraine to go away and hence for wheat and gas prices to drop, it does not, to my eye, show any sign of doing so. “Pasta price rockets. OMG.” The politicians may tell people what they want to hear, rattle a few sabres, reality differs, this cleavage is not going away any time soon.
I personally think that the USA has real problems with its self-assessment as “land of the free”, it being riddled with pecuniary apartheid, homelessness, medical poverty, firearms, and fentanyl. It does not occur to it to get its own house in order.
And now the poor in the UK are being encouraged by Baldrick Coffey, an erstwhile inorganic chemist, to eat turnips.
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It is easy to blame Putin so as to distract attention from domestic problems. Before Putin it was Al Qaeda, The Taliban, Hussein, various Ayatollahs, Kim Il Jong, Bashar Al-Assad, Ghaddafi, and North Africa as a whole. Seems to me the West “needs” to have someone to blame for all their woes.
In terms of geopolitics, the depopulation of Japan and South Korea, these technology powerhouses, represents an incoming long-term shift. What would we all do without Samsung, Japanese and Korean manufacturing industry? Would we have to rely on China?
Western society it seems is willing to countenance within its midst human wastage. That is human lives deemed no longer important to “society”. The notion is to set them apart and, in some ways, let them fester. There is a waste of human potential. I perhaps am an example of human wastage. In that I am surplus to requirements and whatever potential I once had has failed to materialise. I will not be alone in this. Unwilling to play the socio-economic politics of one upmanship, I am of no importance in such a context. There will be many others who think “I cannot be arsed with all this BS, I can’t be arsed with all this petty squabbling.”
No matter how you want to dress it, society is now decadent. If it spends vast sums of money on dressing up gaudily and in an overtly sexual way engaging vast displays of public Bacchanalia, it is practising escapism from the problems inherent in its midst. End of empire, end of times, was so often characterised by increased decadence. Opulence and time on hands, can easily lead to moral decay. Comfort brings errancy and the thin end of the wedge.
The news is rife with stories of corruption, pretty much everywhere you look. Pick a country, it is probably there. The Trump model of dissing democracy has propagated.
There are a lot of problems in the world and I do not believe they will ever be solved by pointing the finger of blame and stoking the bellicose rhetoric of division and war.
Of late the French air force have been more prevalent in our skies.
The world approaches a knife edge. And people like rent-a-gob Boris may be the ones to tip us over the edge.
If China helps Russia with ammunition supply… we are one step closer to the abyss.
In my opinion, it is necessary for each person, each country, to take a long hard look at itself and realise its own part in the crisis, we as a species, are in the act of materialising. The bellicose crisis in the East of Europe will be but an entrée at the upcoming banquet of climate disaster. People are using this “war” to distract attention from the impending more global ecological crisis.
“Look we still need fossil fuels so as to kill each other. You can’t run tanks on tidal or wind power…”
Greenwashing has become red-washing, with blood.
Escapism and failure to act in a timely manner precipitates crisis, it was ever thus…
These poems are written by Jay Ramsay and are from:
“I Ching The Shamanic Oracle of Change”
by Palmer, Ramsay and Xiaomin
In the mid-late nineties I attended an I Ching course given by Ramsay at Hawkwood House. I went to prep school in Stonehouse only a couple of miles from Stroud, where the course was held. So I got to visit old haunts too.
I was the only male on the course and possibly the youngest by a decade.
I was the only scientist and laser jock!!
Please comment on what to do with my patent application.
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24. Fu / Return (The Turning Point)
above K’UN THE RECEPTIVE, EARTH
below CHêN THE AROUSING, THUNDER
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Changing to
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36. Ming I / Darkening of the light
above K’UN THE RECEPTIVE, EARTH
below LI THE CLINGING, FIRE
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As usual the I Ching is open to interpretation. These poems by Jay are very him, very left sided. He took us to the pub in Slad nearby where Laurie Lee who wrote “Cider With Rosie” used to go.
I had been using the I Ching on and off for about five years at the time. It has played a part in many of my decisions even when I was an academic.
Taken together there is a no rush – dao -attitude. I have until the 9th of January to reply.
Sometimes the I Ching answers a question which was not explicitly asked and there is a part in Fu which relates to something else I have been considering. This is to pick up chanting again. It is good for my chest.
I have been waking in the middle of the night and doing raja yoga whilst lying under the duvet.I have not done this for a while.
Past experience has suggested that attempts to link back to the techno-sphere have not ended well.
In the previous post when the hexagram changed to Ming I, this line stood out.
“here a man of dark nature is in a position of authority and brings harm to the wise and able man.”
The thing about the I Ching is that it is a snapshot of now. In a few days time the snapshot may change. Ask too often and the I Ching tells you to piss off.
It was a bit spooky to get the hexagram assoicated with the winter solstice, due in ten days.
So I will ask again after the solstice and maybe write to the IPO while stuffed full of Brussels sprouts…
I would like to enlarge somewhat upon an earlier remark. I stated that the “seven Ashrams are ‘proving grounds’ for all the Masters confronted with the sixth Initiation of Decision.”
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This constitutes part of the problem facing the Masters Who are thus to move forward; it is particularly crucial for Those Who have chosen the first Path, the Path of Earth Service, and for all in preparation for the sixth initiation. This process of changing for a final, conditioning decision – in line, consciously realized, with divine Purpose and entailing responsiveness to Shamballa – is a major undertaking; it is related to the development of understanding the Will, and concerns the spirit or life aspect; it involves an increasing revelation of the purpose and the “fixed intention” of the planetary Logos but (even more than that) it has relation to extra-planetary sources and energies and to those cosmic conditions which are responsible for the Presence of Sanat Kumara upon the Earth. It is will which has brought Him here, and the unfoldment of the will nature of the Masters and still higher Initiates admits Them into His inner deliberations by means of the highest form of telepathic rapport or impression to be found upon our planet. This impression is, however, made possible by the development of the intuition, and has no relation to the mind nature.
This training in decision is given by forcing the Master to make basic decisions within His Ashram affecting world work and involving all within the Ashram.It is given by His admission to the conclave of the Masters, meeting every seven years. At that conclave They make decisions which concern all forms of life in all the kingdoms in the three worlds and their evolutionary progress; it is put to the test in group form when the entire Hierarchy meets at Its centennial conference and – at that time – decides what form of crisis, on what level of consciousness, and involving what group of lives, must be implemented and presented to humanity, though the other kingdoms of nature will be necessarily implicated. The reason for this is that the meeting of such a planned crisis will hasten certain realizations. Forget not that humanity grows through the presentation of moments of crisis. These moments of crisis, based on past karma, conditioned by the point in evolution already achieved, and on the presence in the three worlds of certain appropriate ray forces, are brought to the point of precipitation by united decision in the conclave of the Masters.
These decisions do not affect man’s free will, for the Hierarchy does nothing to condition man’s approach to the crisis and, occultly speaking, Their “attitude is deliberately turned to other things” during the period of man’s decision; thus the potency of Their thinking does not affect the human mind. Once the precipitation of the crisis is complete, and humanity has begun to take action of some kind, then the full attention of the Masters, working through Their Ashrams, is committed to the giving of full assistance to all those who are seeking to guide humanity along correct lines – a relative few among the countless millions of the ignorant.
While these centennial conclaves are being held at the close of the first twenty-five years of every century, the Lord of the World with the Members of His Council watch the process of decision in order to see how far the will of the Hierarchy conforms to that aspect of the divine will which should be expressed in the three worlds as the result of Their decision. They watch also Those particular Masters Who should in a short time be ready for the sixth initiation, in order to see how much of that divine will They register and what is the nature and quality of Their use of it. By recording that quality, the Council at Shamballa is able to determine with great accuracy which of the seven Paths a certain Initiate will choose. In this manner They become aware of how many senior disciples will be needed to take over the headship of an Ashram, with a consequent admittance of many disciples to the initiation next in order for them. At the same time, aspirants on the periphery of an Ashram are enabled to move forward into full ashramic participation.
All this should give you some idea of the synthesis which expresses itself through the three planetary centers: Shamballa, the Hierarchy and Humanity. These are responsible for the conditioning of the other planetary centers and the consequent demonstration of divine intention. The basic purpose of Sanat Kumara is to bring about right relations in every field of His manifested life. {our world, our planet} The encouraging factor is today that the activity of humanity itself is, for the first time, concerned with the entire subject of right human relations and how to bring it about. I would have you reflect on this, for it means that, again for the first time, humanity is consciously responding to the will and intention of Shamballa, even though without realizing the esoteric implications. This is of far greater importance than you can imagine, for it signifies a new relationship of a spiritual nature and deeply spiritual results.
The preparation of the Masters for this sixth initiation is exceedingly strenuous. They find it as difficult to achieve Their goal as does the average disciple as he looks ahead at the initiation which immediately confronts him. They have to master the technique of handling the most potent energy and influence in the world, that of the intelligence. They have to penetrate into the mystery of electricity and implement its expression in the creative process under the directive of Shamballa; They have to learn to work with electric fire in the same way as – much earlier – They worked with fire by friction as personalities, and with solar fire as disciples and lesser initiates. In this way, They become familiarized with what is meant by the words the “Central Spiritual Sun,” just as They were familiar with the appearance of the physical Sun when members of the human family, and with the “Heart of the Sun” as Members of the Hierarchy. Again you can see the same unfolding synthesis – a synthesis which originates in that focal point of attractive dynamic energy, known to us as the Sun and its planets.
Thus within His Ashram the Master learns “occultly to decide” and to condition the creative center for which He is responsible. He has to do this with the Ashram, surrounded by all those who are in training and who are the agents of His will. Through them He must act, and they thereby limit necessarily the vision to which He reacts, and step down the rate and quality of the energy of which He is the focal point. This energy constitutes the animating life of the Ashram as well as the force which the disciples and initiates must use in their work in the world, this of course in cooperation with the energy which each disciple within himself “occultly generates” and for which he – in his lesser degree – is responsible.
More anent this subject will be given when we study specifically the nine initiations wherein another synthesis, interlocking with the synthesis of the Will, will appear.
The Seven Paths confronting the Master
It will be apparent to you now that the Master confronts two crises:
The crisis of the will, as it demonstrates in unalterable decision.
The crisis of the new step which will probably “cast Him adrift upon the shore of some distant sphere wherein His will must be expressed in love.” These ambiguous words of the Old Commentary mean that His decision will (with one exception) take Him away from all that He has hitherto known.
The majority of the Masters then enter into realms wherein They are needed “to impart, strengthen and enlighten that which is already fused, already strong and already full of light, but which needs that which He brings in order to express the all-encompassing whole.”
I have to leave you with these words as food for reflection as there is little further that I may say upon this point. In any case and for all deciding groups of Masters, the work with the Hierarchy is over, except for the few Who choose Path I. Part of the mistake which the Buddha made was connected with this subject of decision. He loved humanity so much that He felt He could not and did not choose the Path which He was in reality ordained to follow; He chose instead the Path of Earth Service – which was not His Path at all. This He knows and will in due time pass on to His rightful Path. This little incident will demonstrate the complete freedom of choice which distinguishes the sixth initiation.
The seven Paths are, as you know from your study of Initiation, Human and Solar the following:
The Path of Earth Service.
The Path of Magnetic Work.
The Path of Training for Planetary Logoi.
The Path to Sirius.
The Ray Path.
The Path on which our Logos is found.
The Path of Absolute Sonship.
In that first book which I wrote for the world, I gave a simple definition of the exoteric significance of these Paths – so simple as to convey but little. I wrote then for the general public. I will now endeavor to convey some of the deeper meanings, writing as I do for advanced disciples and for initiates who – reading between the lines and understanding the symbolism involved – will comprehend according to their point in evolution.
As we approach the subject of the seven Paths, I would point out that the only basic point which can be presented to you is that of relationship. All these seven Paths lead to some objective which is thereby put in touch with our planetary life; these objectives – with the life and conditions they represent – present to the Master a vision of possibility. This vision is adequate to the task of drawing Him forth from the hierarchical Ashram, except in one case where vacancies in Shamballa need to be filled. The progressive experience of the greater Lives Who work in the Council Chamber of Sanat Kumara form no part of our studies. Many of these supreme Workers, as you have read in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, found Their way to our planet from our sister planet, Venus, thereby in Their turn establishing relationship. Remember also that all the seven rays are the subrays of the great cosmic Ray of Love-Wisdom, which is ever expressive of relationship, implemented under the Law of Attraction; it is this form of esoteric attraction which draws the Master forth from His Ashram, conditions His decision and eventually leads to His passing through the door which opens on to other spheres and planes of activity.
Let us now consider – very briefly and necessarily inadequately – these seven Paths, taking them one by one:
1. The Path of Earth Service
This is the only Path which the Lord of the World regards as within the field of His spiritual interference. He reserves the right to retain in the service of the Hierarchy, and consequently of Humanity and the subsidiary evolutions, Those Masters Whom He regards at any one time as essential to the work to be done. This He does by asking Them to record Their decision when taking the sixth initiation, but to postpone moving on to one or other of the Paths until He gives the word. This word He has lately given in the case of the Buddha, Who has expiated His most understandable mistake and will now move forward – in His own good time – on to the Path which will lead Him to His rightful field of expression. In due time also, though not for some time, the Christ will move forward “to the place which calls Him,” and the Master K.H. will assume the role of World Teacher. All these moves present their unique problems; they produce vacancies in the ranks of the Hierarchy which must be filled; they lead constantly to the inflow of new and powerful energies, for it must be recognized that these energies reach us along Paths leading to our planet as well as away from it. The invocative note of our united evolution at stated times and cycles sounds out and reaches Those Who are waiting for spiritual opportunity and service. They then follow the Path to our planet. From other spheres and planes They emerge along the lines of Their destiny and intention; we then call Them Avatars or Great Enlighteners or Planetary Saviors or Spiritual Regents; They act at the request of Sanat Kumara, given on higher cosmic levels.
It is nevertheless a statement of fact that in due time even Those Who choose the Path of Earth Service and remain in hierarchical work are eventually given the right to follow Their decision and pass to extra-planetary service. The Hierarchy, as we have seen, gives the needed training for that wider service, and the theme of what I might call the educational process to which the Masters submit is the unfoldment of the consciousness of the relationships which lie beyond the aura of our planet; this is, in reality, a higher and most abstruse branch of the Science of Impression, which disciples upon their lower level have to master. This aspect of impression is, however, concerned with the formless worlds, whereas all the impressions to which the disciple has to learn to react emanate from and within the cosmic physical plane, of which all our seven planes are an integral part; our highest spiritual world is a part of the substantial world. The Masters, therefore, are working at a conscious receptivity or sensitivity to the cosmic astral plane, the source of the spirit or energy of love. There is a fundamental connection between the Hierarchy (the source of expression of love on Earth) and the cosmic astral plane, and it is towards this objective that the Masters work Who choose the Path of Earth Service. The major ray of our solar system is that of love-wisdom, and there is no better field on which to master the preliminary stages of that divine unfoldment and receive the needed development and education than on the Earth.
On the Earth, the Masters have overcome glamor and illusion, and for Them no astral plane exists. Now ahead of Them, and owing to Their freedom from these “bewilderments,” will come the opportunity to enter into the Heart of God, the center of pure love, and from that center to tread the way of love. All these seven Paths lead either to the cosmic astral plane or to the cosmic mental plane, according to the decision made at the sixth initiation. Upon the cosmic astral plane there is no glamor, but instead a great vortex of energy – the energy of pure love – under the domination of the Law of Attraction. It might be stated that:
Path 1. The Path of Earth Service leads to the cosmic astral plane.
Path 2. The Path of Magnetic Work leads to the cosmic astral plane.
Path 3. The Path for Training for Planetary Logoi leads to the higher levels of the cosmic mental plane.
Path 4. The Path to Sirius leads to the cosmic astral plane.
Path 5. The Ray Path leads to the cosmic mental plane.
Path 6. The Path the Logos Himself is on leads to the cosmic buddhic plane.
Path 7. The Path of Absolute Sonship leads to the cosmic mental plane.
Three Paths, therefore, lead to the realm of loving attractive energy; one Path leads to its higher correspondence, the cosmic level of pure reason; three lead to the realm of divine Mind. Four of the Paths relate the advancing Master to the Heart of the Great Life Who functions through this solar system, and three to His Mind nature. All of them lead the initiate eventually to the Central Spiritual Sun. All Who work in Shamballa find Their way to this supreme center by the three most arduous ways, whilst the remainder reach the same goal via the way of love.
The unfoldment of the will has much to do with Their decision. It must not be thought that Those Masters Who are on the first, third and fifth rays, for instance, follow the Path numerically the same; such is not the case; nor that Those Who are predominantly on the second line of energy find the cosmic astral plane Their goal. Such again is not the case. Their response and decision is based on a realization of cosmic need – a need of which you can know nothing, any more than it is possible for you to comprehend the nature of cosmic evil.
As to the detail of the work of Those Who choose – until released – to stay on Earth and work in or with the Hierarchy, is there more that I can tell you? You know much anent this subject for I have given much – far more than has ever been given before. I have not dealt with the work of the Hierarchy in relation to evolutions other than the human, for two reasons:
Your unfoldment is still such that you do not and cannot yet include or register the consciousness or nature of the subhuman kingdoms.
The work done by the Hierarchy in those kingdoms is largely carried forward via humanity and modern scientific development.
There are many Masters Who do not work with the human kingdom at all, but are fully occupied with carrying out the divine Will in other kingdoms. With this work we have, at present, no concern. When any one takes the sixth initiation and makes his decision to follow the Path of Earth Service (either temporarily at the request of Sanat Kumara, or until the end – of the world cycle), he will find himself faced with a secondary decision as to which of the four kingdoms will profitably provide the field of his sacrifice and service. We will now consider:
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Excerpted from
The Rays and the Initiations – Part Two – Section One – The Aspirant and the Mysteries of Initiation
There are certain fundamental truths which lie behind all revealed religions. They are essential to the spiritual growth and the progressive realizations of divinity by man. All else found under the term “doctrine” and allied phrases are but expansions of these fundamentals, explanatory in nature, expressive of human interpretations, and formulations of evolutionary recognitions. These are mainly additions and are in the nature of adornment, speculation and prediction; they are constantly subject to change, to rejection or development as man’s intellect and spiritual perception unfolds; they are not basic or unalterable. It is the unalterable truths which must be discovered and recognized as the new world religion takes form on Earth and conditions human thought and consciousness in the coming New Age.
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The Basic Truths to Date
These basic truths never change because they are related to the nature of Deity Itself and have become apparent to mankind through revelation, as evolution has proceeded and man has developed the needed perceptive faculties and the required persistence of search, plus the unfolding of the inner light of the soul. These truths, inherent in the divine nature, reveal the soul of God. They are:
The Law of Compassion. This is the truth of right relationship, of loving understanding, of actively expressed Love. It is the foundation of brotherhood and the expression of the inner unity.
The Fact of God. This is the truth that Being is God Immanent and God Transcendent; it involves the recognition of the great Whole and the related part; it is the knowledge of divinity, ascertained through right relationship and identity of origin. It is the revelation of the life of God, pervading all that is (God Immanent), and of that same life, providing that still greater cosmic relation (God Transcendent) which is the final guarantee of all progress and of progressive revelation. ‘Having pervaded this whole universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain’ is the challenge of Deity and the eternal hope of humanity. This is the answer of Life Itself to the demands of humanity, to the enquiries of science and to the whole world problem. God is here, present among us and in all forms of expression; He includes, pervades and remains beyond. He is greater than all appearance. He reveals Himself progressively and cyclically as man gets ready for further knowledge.
The Continuity of Revelation. Ever down the ages and at each human crisis, always in the hours of necessity, at the founding of a new race, or in the awakening of a prepared humanity to a new and wider vision, the Heart of God – impelled by the law of compassion – sends forth a Teacher, a World Savior, an Illuminator, an Avatar. He gives the message which will heal, which will indicate the next step to be taken by the race, which will illumine a dark world problem and give to man an expression of a hitherto unrealized aspect of divinity. Upon this fact of the continuity of revelation and upon the sequence of this progressive manifestation of the divine nature is based the doctrine of Avatars, of divine Messengers, divine Appearances, and inspired Prophets. To all these history unmistakably testifies.
The Inevitable Response of Humanity. I have expressed in these simple words the instinctive spiritual reaction of man and of the undying human spirit to the three above foundational truths. This divine spirit in humanity must ever, and most surely does, respond to the divine Appearance. The witness to this is sure and proved. There is that in mankind which is akin to God and which recognizes its own when it appears. Such is the unshakable reality in the human heart, and recognition is the inevitable reward and result of revelation.
Progress. The reaction of the individual man and of the masses of men to the continuity of revelation – historically proved – cannot be denied. It is the basic fact of religion. The types of that revelation may vary but each new revelation – given in response to human need and demand – has ever led humanity onward towards a steadily brightening goal and a greater glory. The revelation may come on varying levels of the human consciousness. It may be the revelation of new lands to conquer, terrestrial or mental. Some person pointed the way. It may be the recognition of new laws and facts in nature, scientifically grasped and used; it may be the response of intelligent man to increased knowledge, producing a new type of civilization. Some liberated spirit pointed the way. It may be the response of the human heart to the Heart of God, leading to the mystical beatitude, and to the recognition of spiritual Being. It may be the reaction of man to some new teaching, some further unfoldment, resulting in a new and enriched religious approach to the center of life. Some Messenger pointed the way. But always it has meant progress, a moving forward, a rejection of some existing limitation, a repudiating of the undesirable and the evil. Always it involves the recognition of the possible, the ideal and the divine.
Transcendence. This means the innate capacity to pass beyond so-called natural law. This surmounting of limitation is ever taking place and this process of transcendence will call forth increasing recognition. It marks the next major phase in the manifestation of divinity in man; it signifies domination over physical law and humanity’s imminent triumph over the forces which have for so long held him to earth. Of this transcendence the present mastery over the air is the symbol. Man is rapidly mastering the four elements. He cultivates the earth; he rides the waters; he controls the electrical fires of the planet, and he flies triumphant through the air. The question now emerges: What, my brothers, next? Another transcendence lies ahead. It is one of the things which the coming Avatar will reveal.
With the lesser leaders, whom the human spirit evokes to its assistance, I shall not deal. I seek to unfold somewhat the Doctrine of Divine Messengers, of Avatars. From whence come They? What is Their nature? Who are They and what is Their relation to humanity, to the Hierarchy and to still greater groups of Lives? These are questions which normally arise and need clear answering.
An Avatar is a Being Who – having first developed His Own nature, human and divine, and then transcended it – is capable of reflecting some cosmic Principle or divine quality and energy which will produce the desired effect upon humanity, evoking a reaction, producing a needed stimulation and, as it is esoterically called, ‘leading to the rending of a veil and the permeation of light.’ This energy may be generated within the human family and focused in a responsive Messenger; it may be generated within the planet itself and produce a planetary Avatar; it may be the expression of the life impulse and energy of the solar system, or of sources outside the solar system and therefore cosmic. But alwaysit is focused through a manifesting Entity, is called forth by a demand or massed appeal, and evokes response and consequent changes in the life activity, the culture and the civilization of mankind.
The response or reaction of humanity to the divine Messenger establishes in due time the recognition of something transcendent, something to be desired and striven for, something which indicates a vision which is first a possibility and later an achievement. This is the historically proven process and testifies eventually to a fact. This new fact, when added to the facts established by other and earlier Avatars, enriches the spiritual content of the human consciousness, enhances the spiritual life of the race, and stimulates man to move a step forward into the world of reality and out of the world of illusion. Each revelation brings him nearer to the world of causes.
At the present time the Avatars most easily recognized and known are the Buddha and the Christ, because Their messages are familiar to all and the fruits of Their lives and words have conditioned the thinking and the civilizations of both hemispheres; because They are divine-human Avatars and represent something which humanity can more easily understand; because They are of like nature to mankind, “flesh of our flesh and spirit of our spirit.” They therefore mean more to us than any other Divine Emergence. They are known, loved and followed by countless millions. I would ask you to ponder on the potency of the nucleus of force which They have set up. The establishing of a nucleus of energy, spiritually positive, is the constant task of an Avatar. He focuses or anchors a dynamic truth, a potent thought-form or a vortex of attractive energy in the three worlds of human living. Then, as the centuries pass, that truth and the effect of Their lives and words begin steadily to condition human thinking; the established thought-form acts increasingly as a transmitter of divine energy as it expresses a divine idea, and this in time produces a civilization, with its accompanying culture, religions, policies, governments and educational processes. Thus is history made. History is but the record of man’s cyclic reaction to some inflowing divine energy, to some Avatar or some inspired Leader.
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Excerpted from “The Externalization of the Hierarchy – Section III – Forces behind the Evolutionary Process”
Marketing advises us that many things are convenient and time saving. An example in case is on board satellite navigation systems as are parking cameras. I suspect that is very difficult to buy a new car these days without these fitted. There are pieces of software that help with diaries and contacts. For me there is wretched thing in which emails are stacked as conversations. I once gave over partial control of my outlook diary allowing secretaries and others to schedule meeting for me. Not fun. There are lot of things that seem convenient but which impinge a great deal into life. Outlook assistant pops things moving into the bottom right hand corner of my screen and it very distracting.
I have never used a satellite navigation system. Once when traveling with someone else in the car they used one on their iPhone to avoid a traffic jam. When we hired a car in Brussels central train station, the guy there tried to rent us a satellite navigation system as an extra. He did not understand when I did not take him up on his offer. As a consequence of not using satellite navigation, I rarely get lost. I tend to plan journeys and sometimes do a walk through of complicated parts of a journey on Google Maps Streetview. This way I remember routes and do not have to rely on technology. I have not handed my power over to a microprocessor. I also navigate loosely by sun and sometimes by intuition. I use my brain, my mind and my memory. I do not rely on shortcuts…
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I do not think that semiconductors in cars have had the same radiation hardness tests as those used in satellites and space telescopes. If there is a sudden burst of radiation many of the chips could be toast. We have one old car, a shed, it would probably still work whereas a top of the range 4X4 with computer controlled traction control might be useless. People might have to learn to read an archaic thing called a map.
Younger humans have an appendage called a smart ‘phone and in many cases their entire life is on that ‘phone; contacts, banking, apps to synchronise with their toothbrushes and look at their baby monitor video camera. There are even apps to aid going to sleep and dreaming. The telephone company here offered us an extra X gigabytes a month for a couple of Euros in an email. The online process to opt out of this generous offer was obscure and difficult.
The question is do you have power over the apparently “convenient” technology or does it have power over you?
The Unfettered Mind (不動智神妙録, Fudōchi Shinmyōroku) is a three-part treatise on Buddhist philosophy and martial arts written in the 17th century by Takuan Sōhō, a Japanese monk of the Rinzai sect. The title translates roughly to “The Mysterious Records of Immovable Wisdom“. The book is a series of three discourses addressed to samurai but applicable to everyone who desires an introduction to Zen philosophy, the book makes little use of Buddhist terminology and instead focuses on describing situations followed by an interpretation. Its contents make an effort to apply Zen Buddhism to martial arts.
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Takuan died in Edo in 1645. In the moments before his death, he wrote the kanji 夢 for (“dream”), and laid down his brush. He also left behind a will stating that a “tombstone must not be built” and that he should be buried without any ceremony in an unmarked grave. His disciples promptly erected gravestones at the temple of Tōkai-ji (東海寺) and also at the temple of Sukyō-ji (宗鏡寺) in Izushi. His grave at Tōkai-ji was proclaimed a National Historic Site in 1926.
It is fair to say that the knowledge and opinion on how to treat multiple myeloma are evolving. The regimen that the French government has provided for the wife is not yet available in England and Wales because NICE have not yet, perhaps, completed their bean counting cost benefit analysis. The situation is different in Scotland.
All the studies I have found so far in the literature are “old” and have used less effective treatments before high dose chemotherapy / autologous stem cell transplants. This one published in the New England Journal of Medicine {2003} has 200 people in each of the groupings, one for single stem cell transplant and one for tandem. That is not a large sample, so a 95% confidence interval does not fill me with confidence. This kind of epidemiology cannot take into consideration the very heterogenous nature of the disease. It is difficult to conclude specifically from the general, though there may be a temptation so to do. One cannot ask, “tell it to me straight Doc, how long have I got?”
The graphs for overall survival diverge significantly at ~ 48 months. Before that they are roughly colinear up to ~36 months.
The other graph here is for event free survival which means no relapse. From this limited data set the second transplant has a better impact on avoiding “events”.
I will be digging into this in more detail over the coming days.
Since I was stupid enough to agree to develop a course on decision making, I have been very interested in the act of deciding. Being real we have to ask, “would you prefer to die in France or the UK?” We know that it is impractical in the long term for me alone to maintain the garden at a standard that I/we would be happy with. Therefore, the decision to move has in effect been made. We also know that at some stage the disease will return, it is incurable. There are many unknowns and for the time being some unknowables.
This illness arrived during a global pandemic and is being treated as there is a war on mainland Europe. Energy and food security are insecure, and it looks like the economies are going into a very inflationary epoch.
I guess the best way to live with this incurable thing is to remain as present focussed as possible but there has to be some sense of what do we do, how might we best place ourselves moving forward.
We have one strong criterion for a new abode and that is relative proximity to a hospital specialising in myeloma treatment.
There is an upcoming decision, which may not be ours to make concerning a second high dose chemotherapy / stem cell transplant.
We know we could afford a smaller abode in France; the choice of area is much more limited in the UK unless of course there is a massive crash in the housing market.
In mathematics and computer science, the Entscheidungsproblem (pronounced [ɛntˈʃaɪ̯dʊŋspʁoˌbleːm], German for “decision problem”) is a challenge posed by David Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann in 1928. The problem asks for an algorithm that considers, as input, a statement and answers “Yes” or “No” according to whether the statement is universally valid, i.e., valid in every structure satisfying the axioms.
Completeness theorem
By the completeness theorem of first-order logic, a statement is universally valid if and only if it can be deduced from the axioms, so the Entscheidungsproblem can also be viewed as asking for an algorithm to decide whether a given statement is provable from the axioms using the rules of logic.
In 1936, Alonzo Church and Alan Turing published independent papers showing that a general solution to the Entscheidungsproblem is impossible, assuming that the intuitive notion of “effectively calculable” is captured by the functions computable by a Turing machine (or equivalently, by those expressible in the lambda calculus). This assumption is now known as the Church–Turing thesis.
History of the problem
The origin of the Entscheidungsproblem goes back to Gottfried Leibniz, who in the seventeenth century, after having constructed a successful mechanical calculating machine, dreamt of building a machine that could manipulate symbols in order to determine the truth values of mathematical statements. He realized that the first step would have to be a clean formal language, and much of his subsequent work was directed toward that goal. In 1928, David Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann posed the question in the form outlined above.
In continuation of his “program”, Hilbert posed three questions at an international conference in 1928, the third of which became known as “Hilbert’s Entscheidungsproblem“. In 1929, Moses Schönfinkel published one paper on special cases of the decision problem, that was prepared by Paul Bernays.
As late as 1930, Hilbert believed that there would be no such thing as an unsolvable problem.
Negative answer
Before the question could be answered, the notion of “algorithm” had to be formally defined. This was done by Alonzo Church in 1935 with the concept of “effective calculability” based on his λ-calculus, and by Alan Turing the next year with his concept of Turing machines. Turing immediately recognized that these are equivalent models of computation.
The negative answer to the Entscheidungsproblem was then given by Alonzo Church in 1935–36 (Church’s theorem) and independently shortly thereafter by Alan Turing in 1936 (Turing’s proof). Church proved that there is no computable function which decides, for two given λ-calculus expressions, whether they are equivalent or not. He relied heavily on earlier work by Stephen Kleene. Turing reduced the question of the existence of an ‘algorithm’ or ‘general method’ able to solve the Entscheidungsproblem to the question of the existence of a ‘general method’ which decides whether any given Turing machine halts or not (the halting problem). If ‘algorithm’ is understood as meaning a method that can be represented as a Turing machine, and with the answer to the latter question negative (in general), the question about the existence of an algorithm for the Entscheidungsproblem also must be negative (in general). In his 1936 paper, Turing says: “Corresponding to each computing machine ‘it’ we construct a formula ‘Un(it)’ and we show that, if there is a general method for determining whether ‘Un(it)’ is provable, then there is a general method for determining whether ‘it’ ever prints 0”.
The work of both Church and Turing was heavily influenced by Kurt Gödel’s earlier work on his incompleteness theorem, especially by the method of assigning numbers (a Gödel numbering) to logical formulas in order to reduce logic to arithmetic.
The Entscheidungsproblem is related to Hilbert’s tenth problem, which asks for an algorithm to decide whether Diophantine equations have a solution. The non-existence of such an algorithm, established by the work of Yuri Matiyasevich, Julia Robinson, Martin Davis, and Hilary Putnam, with the final piece of the proof in 1970, also implies a negative answer to the Entscheidungsproblem.
Some first-order theories are algorithmically decidable; examples of this include Presburger arithmetic, real closed fields, and static type systems of many programming languages. The general first-order theory of the natural numbers expressed in Peano’s axioms cannot be decided with an algorithm, however.
Traou an Dour 
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