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Sunday
07Feb2010

The Secret Land - Megaliths, Normans and the Polar Bear

DateSunday, February 7, 2010 at 11:45AM

At the end of last year a new book (called The Secret Land) came out by Paul Broadhurst which takes Cornwall as the centre of a drama of a secret and sacred history that reaches deep into the prehistory of the British Isles whilst revealing the Norman invasion as reasserting asecret tradition regarding the North Pole that feeds through into the history of the last 1000 years since the Norman invasion.

As with his previous works, Paul has discovered landscape features and built up a rich set of connections that relate these to the histories of Norman families. My brother, Robin, has provided a significant chunk at the end of the book which supports Paul's pattern of places and generates "hard facts" on the ground in terms of alignments, geometries, metrology, the astronomy of the circum polar sky and so on. This complementation between the two approaches is an excellent exemplar for how collaboration on "earth mysteries" or (whatever we like to call it) can take place.

I hope to use this space to record some of the mesaningful ideas that emerge in this book. One such is that Paul is proposing some sort of relationship between the Normans and their Scandinavian origins, and the Celts who occupy Brittanny, Cornwall and Wales. These lands were all megalithic lands as was the western seaboard of Europe though the taller northern folk and shorter celts are not generally  considered related not least because of later historic conflicts with the Vikings. Many of our preconceptions regarding the Normans and Vikings are the result of later conflicts and need to be eliminated if merely hearsay if any new insights into the continuity of older traditions are to be found. In this sense, history as recorded through a dark age can be a black hole for what went before and the rebuilding of older facts can only be found through finding patterns that still hold after those distortions.

The primary pattern Paul found is between places that form a coherent geometry related to the north pole. Leading Norman families settled in places within this pattern. In addition there are extensive landscape features in which nature itself appears to outline a Bear, a Hare, a Lion, a Wolf. Robin confirms later that there are elements of symmetry between placenames north and south of an east-west line that passes through Lundy Island (in the Bristol Channel) as the centre of the new pattern and Stonehenge - two places associated with the building of the latter and transport of bluestones within a 12:13:5 triangular geometry.

This connectivity between megalithic landscape geometry, later celtic saints, monastic institutions and normans is starting to tell a seriously large tale of continuity of traditions in the British Isles. The facts on the ground include metrology, alignments, family and saintly histories and myth and folklore. As such it is a major challenge to nay-sayers that prefer to stay on the dry land of the status quo.

There will be more on this soon...

 

AuthorRichard Heath | Comments Off |
Wednesday
06Jan2010

Is History Serious?

DateWednesday, January 6, 2010 at 04:41PM

History is a phenomenon that has largely replaced myth as a record of past, important events. Myth was an attempt to create an explanation of what led to the present state of affairs (i.e how the world came to be) or to portray an archetypal series of events within a memorised structure that was initially delivered through speech. The advent of writing not only allowed the older myths to be recorded and read independent of any story-teller, but it allowed actual events to be recorded and presented as a fact, a story that was "not made up" but actually happened.

History can therefore be viewed as a serious form of story-telling although this does not prevent its being fabulous, just like myth. In fact there are considerable pressures upon factual history that lead to its distortion. One is that "history is written by the victors" and another is that royal, priestly and heroic characters often style themselves in the fabulous trappings of the archetypes found in mythic traditions . Whatever the distortions, however, factual historical stories are treated with the seriousness of fact in that the history becomes idealogical and inflexible. This can reach crisis point where to disagree with official histories can be considered treasonous, a betrayal to the community, the culture or at least its leadership.

In recent centuries, democratic leaders have become convinced that they are making history and in recent decades they announce their work as an historic achievement - just as if they were the pen writing history. This begs the question of where they think such history comes from, and how they judge good history that they might "do". This concept of history has therefore, in the hands of rulers, become a concept of work - a work that they somehow understand like a story-teller might understand the structure of a story, at a given point within the narrative.

Written history has therefore taken on the mantle of a very serious form of story-telling in which the powerful are the story-tellers. This was legitimised as a norm through the ideas of religion when their heroes came to be seen as historical characters, perhaps non greater than Jesus the Son of God. Such a concept had been brewing, as writing created a written history, in a move that was to create this Historical Period, distinct from prehistory.

The kings of the ancient world were styled god kings and so Jesus as Son of God should be no surprise as a religious counterpoint to Roman power. But when a person becomes powerful or influential, then inevitably history becomes written about them and indeed, they appear to be writing the stuff of history with their deeds.  In a sense, with history, the story telling genie is out of its bottle and won't climb back in as it does with myth. History becomes a permanent fixture, not designed as a learning experience and indeed often written to become an over-bearing fixity in perspective.

Behind the god appointed lies the great mystery, God, usually a he god and completely absent unless indeed this god IS the spirit of written history. Monotheistic religions can and often do believe that God is creating His-story as some commentators have quipped. Within written history, writing has also been necessary for a change in human consciousness, not least in the empowerment of the individual sense of things - the power to be able to make stories and receive stories within an expanded culture that is, in fact, only made of stories. But the creation of writing was known by some priests to be a dangerous step since words, especially when written are fixed, they can not only lie, but also manipulate but more simply be misunderstood on their own, sometimes hundreds or thousands of years later. Whilst writing is capable of democratising thought and diversifying consciousness itself, there appears to be this price in terms of the suffering found in world history and its inability to deal with war and poverty - surely an embarrasment if God is making it. A Devil has to be made as an adversary, again projected beyond the human.

In the last 50 years, there has been an increasing manifestation towards alternative historys and futureology. Examples are conspiracy theories (9/11, JFK…), the Knights Templar (Renne le Chateau, Magdalene, Rex Deus) and new Millenial cults (2012, Cyber-mysticism, channelling). At the academic level, where history is being written, this democratisation of meaning is infuriating, whilst at the political level it is viewed as simply making the making of history more difficult since, undoubtedly, history is often made behind closed doors using means justified by the desired ends.

Of the examples cited, most of them concern the serious business of how history is made rather than how facts are recorded. If there is a cover up, there is simply a sufficient period of secrecy required before history often recovers the true and obvious distortions to reveal what was actually going on. Therefore, if history is to be viewed as a process of emergence that is not simply a series of accidents, then one has to turn to the influences at work upon the history makers. Are they members of secret societies with a concept of right history or are they simply under the sway of the cultural stories and beliefs? Or is it just corruption and stupidity? All are familiar stories.

For time to be a story of evolving consciousness then interventions such as writing and hence written history mark the arrival of new opportunities and contingent cultural norms. The god kings of the age of writing assume the mantle of god's representative on earth in the act of writing history. As such, within a story-cycle of development, the human world is still deepening its degree of manifestation with serious histories. To lighten matters would require a history less serious and an appreciation of alternative stories and myth. The modern idea of history is very often causing history because it becomes a political ideology.

History is the process of making it; initially in the creation of events (real or embellished) and then in the recording of the "facts" according to the predispositions of contemporary recorders. History continues to be re-interpreted, amplified or diminished thereafter and the model for this phenomenon is exactly the same as the way the human mind itself works. History may be factual but how we mix and alter fact remains, of necessity, fabulous. This is not to demean facts but it highlights that, as far as consciousness is concerned, the human mind uses facts in a mix with other types of modality such as structural ideas, connections between similars, concepts of value, categories of meaning, and so forth.

History is the past but the possible future will also require many imaginative stories to be made and this is the watershed between the mechanical workings of History and the creative workings of individuals and groups achieving things - that may or may not even be recorded. History is existential whilst story-making is what people can imagine as possible. To step out of history is to start making up your own stories.

AuthorRichard Heath | Comments Off |
Saturday
21Nov2009

Genes, Memes and Gods: The Three Replicators of Evolution

DateSaturday, November 21, 2009 at 02:29PM

First published in DUVersity newsletter No. 20, 2007 [editor Anthony Blake]

In this brief and stimulating essay, Richard Heath takes the extension of the idea of genes into memes a step further, by introducing a third and cosmic ‘replicator’. Memes are the replicating ‘units’ of mind or culture, and Richard regards them as barriers to progress unless they are brought under the influence of cosmic replication, the patterns of the greater present moment. His argument draws on Gurdjieff’s definition of the ‘law of three’ or triamazikamno: “The higher blends with the lower to actualise the middle, this being higher than the preceding lower and lower than the succeeding higher.”

The more science looks at the human body, especially from the point of view of molecular science, the more it is seen to be an enormously complex set of information, relationships and systems, largely working below the level of consciousness. We are aware of an end product of all this evolutionary development: the subjective experience made possible by it. We can hold the complex picture of Science in our heads, but these heads are themselves merely part of an overall construction.

So, do we need to understand what we are, or is it our function just to get on with what is made possible through it? The answer appears to be both, for the very reason that self-awareness, informed action and understanding are all parts of the apparent destiny of our selves. However, we cannot avail ourselves of the implicit sophistication of our bodies without realising their function. In one sense, our ordinary conscious state is the “lower” and our potential to manifest is “higher”. Working to realise our potentials then creates a new “middle”. Here, we follow Gurdjieff, who said of the ‘law of three’: “The higher blends with the lower to actualise the middle.”

The genes appear to hold a store of human potential, full of variety based upon the survival successes of all of human experience. Since these genes are expressed in individuals, the genetic can be equated with the basic, ground state of our lives. These lives would be entirely instinctive if it were not for the development of imitative learning through a developing brain system, whose capabilities gave evolutionary advantage.

These imitative structures, now called memes, became another replicating structure; since all that has been learned by imitation can then be passed on, either through re-enactment or, most efficiently, through the development of language centres in the brain. This neatly defines the arising of the human world with its societies, rules, beliefs and norms. In simple terms, the ordinary life of man was created as another “middle” from the “lower”, animal form of existence. The higher in this case seems hypothetical but must be the total environment of the Earth, the conditions of local environments over time (causing selection) and any influences from the planetary world.

The dynamism and synchronicity of climate, volcanism, water movement, gas exchange, is ultimately a cosmic factor. But the determinism of our thinking has given us the concept that these forces are arbitrary, unintelligent and wasteful, partly because we feel personally threatened by changes beyond our control. However, it is largely the size of our present moment that leads us to these feelings as it is entirely possible that what we see as hazardous is in fact held together by a larger present moment in which factors are being kept in balance.

Such a cosmic present moment would need its own replicating mechanism, which could transmit influences from one moment to a later one, without loss of information. This differs from an existential gene or meme, where the whole pattern is replicated within a new host, because the cosmic is hypernomic. This term was used by Bennett to designate the realm beyond life, literally ‘beyond rules’; life being the autonomic or self-ruling and material existence hyponomic or determined by the rules (see The Dramatic Universe Vol 1). In the hypernomic realm, patterns within the whole scheme are being transmitted between one time and space and another. Thus it is possible for patterns to disappear and reappear in environments that are the lower relative to the higher of the cosmically replicating mechanism.

In myth, the replicating structures are the Fates and by implication, the lives of the Gods. In astronomy, the equivalent is the lossless, repeating, but ever varying system of the planets. It is a numerically stable system, whose variations can cause a conjunction of factors to reappear in a similar form over days, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia and epochs.

The three fates were thought of as weavers; they were called:

Clotho (spinner of the thread of life)

Lachesis (Determiner of length)

Atropos (Cutter of Thread)

The Memetic Society

Modern society is largely ruled by the secondary replicator, the memes. As Susan Blackmore points out, a purely memetic society is highly unstable and may not last for very long. This is because the genes can easily be wiped out when the memes develop fantastic ideas about the world, which do not relate to the real world and even directly select against genetic survival. From a Gurdjieffian point of view, this has echoes of the organ kundabuffer and the “buffers” that prevent man from seeing the world as it is.

Kundabuffer was connected to the survival of the Moon, whose creation necessitated the arising of life to maintain it. This means the arising of genes are directly linked to the Moon. But then we know that the conceptual and linguistic brain is evolved by the genes, gaining better control and hence survivability within the animal to produce the modern human experience. We should therefore link the higher brain functions with the organ kundabuffer or at least its after effects, the buffers that prevent man from seeing reality as it is.

Image of Memes by Pat Linse, used by Susan Blackmore

The brain deals with imitation, using specialised brain functions evolved over time through selection events organised by the environmental challenges of the past. The need to survive finds the genes and the memes in a partnership, generating a human world of social relationship. But these human, social worlds are not descriptions of cosmic reality and in their essence they become fed with their own dream landscapes.
Gurdjieff’s prime question was “What is the sense and purpose of life on Earth?” The replicators cannot answer such a question because their purpose is to replicate their patterns! This is true of genes, memes and gods.

As a pattern of will, replication is not of the present moment but forms a linkage between two present moments. An act of will, on the other hand, relates to a single present moment, and goes beyond such patterns in Eternity. It speaks of the ability to be, now, combining Bennett’s determining conditions of time and eternity with hyparxis. In Bennett’s scheme, hyparxis is ableness-to-be and is associated with will, as eternity is with being and time with function.  Hyparxis determines the ‘strength’ of the present moment.

The Idea of Work

A prime motivation in the Work is to have all three centres working together, for only then “I Am”. The moving/instinctive centre has genetic, animal origins, whilst the hormonal feeling centre underlies the social life of humans. The intellectual centre of the memes is generally tied to the emotions through opinions, egoism and self-definition. The objective knowledge that Gurdjieff says can be developed in man is the relationship to reality that modern culture has little practical contact with, being itself obsessed with security, wealth, celebrity, entertainment, and so on.

The survival of objective systems of cosmic knowledge is heavily selected against in the world of memes. They cannot find “markets”, they are hard to transmit without turning into something useless, and they are perceived as a hobby, and avoidance of reality, and so on. It is necessary for new ideas to be combined with traditional esotericism for Work to take place, and for it to be relevant.

We propose that the genes, the memes and the gods are the three centres of real human evolution. Whilst forming in the “formatory apparatus” of our brains as a new meme, which is the “middle”, the “lower” is revealed as the memetic culture within this we live, a culture that possibly has not long to run. New ideas are a potential created by the three replicators that must be grasped now, in an original way. A “higher” will always be there in potential but the grasping of it must be a uniquely timely act, the “purpose of life” in this moment.

Whilst man is the “evolving tip” of life on Earth, the realising of the momentary potentials within the biosphere itself belongs to an “evolving tip” of humanity itself. It has to produce a necessary change of paradigm relative to which the existing order is a buffer maintaining our present views. Existing ideas are merely a buffer working against new ideas, a denying force for the cosmic affirmation of the emergent worldview.

The predilection against what were traditional forms of cosmic knowledge within our present society, is a natural development compatible with the needs of the lower two replicators. These needs are denying factors determining most of human behaviour and they would be perfect unto themselves were it not for the progressive nature of cosmic evolution.

Any system of ideas degenerates as it becomes a memetic system that can be imitated for the purpose of transmission. This is the progress of ideas or “influences” from a source beyond the vortex of ordinary life, namely cosmic reality. Their emergent quality means that they arise through life processes, and they are cosmic only in that they can be related back to a pattern that ‘guides’ them.

Working with the Replicators

Modern science has produced a simplifying concept called memes, integrated with the well developed scheme of the genes. However, it is only being developed and the scientific progress of such an idea will take further decades. However, the worldview of Gurdjieff and predicament of our memetic civilisation allows the memes to be integrated to psychological reality and systems of traditional knowledge to form a balanced view of life on Earth and see the necessary forms of action emerging from the present circumstances.

Ideas, it seems, are buffers except in their relationships to other ideas. It is a reasonable fact considering that all beings partake of denial in order to affirm their specific natures. Whilst tool use gave rise to survival of those with the brains to (a) make them and (b) learn from others how to use them, we have lost sight of ideas as tools, made of a certain substance, having a definite identity, and denying all that they are not.

The inability to see the “down side” or denying factor of systems of ideas has lead to fixation upon them as complete in themselves. This is of course “identification” which is one of the most powerful ways of presenting ideas, “I think that…” links idea with the false self who can then be imitated by another false sense of self.
The more it is considered, the more the memetic world appears to be the subject of Gurdjieff’s system. Through this we can discern the same primary cause of modern man’s incapacity to see reality as it really is.
The complexity of the human system is dealing with a relatively un-complex environment and therefore is another “higher” relative to it. Perhaps it is bored? Maybe it is turning in on itself, exactly because it is not able to manifest the role for which it is suited. The social world generates complexity but no cosmic role, and in a sense is a training facility yet also a prison.

The key technology, it would seem, is non-identified working with ideas in order to facilitate an ever invisible thread of emergence linked to the cosmic world. Thus it is that the tekkia (places of spiritual learning) must always be dismantled, as in the Sufi teaching stories, and all things have the limited relevance of their immediate use.

Whilst patterns go in and out of existence, effectively disappearing into the invisible world of determining conditions, the exact same effect is found in the human mentation, as ideas come and go and as the brain is capable of re-evoking any of a vast range of stored impressions under the right conditions. Thus, the inner and outer life of man correspond as processes, not surprisingly since the human is a response to both the cosmic and environmental.

The emerging theme here is intimacy hidden by fixity. Contrary to expectations, of course, it is the Objective that is intimate and the Subjective that so easily becomes a fixed obstruction to direct, human experience.
 

AuthorRichard Heath | Comments Off |
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