Here’s a decent electro track from TZU. They’re a hip hop group from Australia, but this track has got a decent synthy feel to it – vocoder, funky bass line. The video is great too – lots of old style computer graphics.

Found it while looking at ‘The 80s are back‘ exhibition pages from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. It covers anything 80s, including games, music and fashion. The exhibition runs from 13 December 2009 until late 2010.

“A maior vitória pertence àquele que vence sem desembainhar sua espada.” (Sun Tzu)

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu

Noticed this one thanks to dreamhampton’s twitters. The title, of course, caught my attention for the obvious reasons (the play on the classic, The Art of War credited to Sun Tzu).

This book is throwing a mirror up in my face and showing me some ish that I suspected. I was nibbling at the edges of an issue or ism that has been riding my ass into the ground for years. I underestimated the strength of this issue. This ain’t no monkey. More like a tribe of gorillas on my back.

In Pressfield’s prose you face the mess if you keep on reading. He doesn’t promise that the mess is going to go away. In fact, he guarantees its staying power. And this is liberating as it makes me comfortable in warrior mode finally knowing who it is I’m battling.

I suggest you take the time to read this UNLESS you are busy doing your Life’s Work as opposed to stomaching your job.

unedited,

Ann

right before
sleep i visit childhood
premonitions and wonder if
maybe i was on to something when
i thought skeletons would
come to hurt me if i was
not under
covers
when the lights went out

“Vencer al enemigo sin luchar, es la cima de la perfección” Sun Tzu

“La guerra no es simplemente un acto político, sino un verdadero instrumento político, una continuación de las relaciones políticas, una gestión de las mismas con otros medios.” Karl Von Clausewitz

Sun Tzu

A través del tiempo la guerra ha sido un tema que ha generado controversia y mucha polémica, sin embargo toda organización política que se conoce hasta la fecha ha sido participe de aunque sea una de ellas. Quizá podríamos decir que mientras seamos humanos tendremos diferencias, y mientras tengamos diferencias existirá de una u otra forma confrontaciones entre diferentes posturas y con éstas las guerras, o parafraseando a Savater “La sociedad tiene conflictos porque somos demasiado sociables” (política para Amador).

Pese a los evidentes inconvenientes que presentan las confrontaciones bélicas, tales como numerosas muertes, gastos colosales de dinero, enfermedades, contaminación entre muchas otros factores a tener en cuenta, la guerra ha sido y seguirá siendo el medio por el cual determinadas sociedades se imponen por encima de otras, tal es el caso de las grandes potencias económicas actuales, las cuales en su debido momento ejercieron el poder militar para posicionar se en los niveles más altos de la escala bélica. Así nuestra historia esta llena de grandes potencias militares: El ejercito Egeo Aqueo, El imperio Romano, El imperio de Napoleón Bonaparte, Las grandes Dinastías Chinas, El yugo español en América, y pare de contar. Lo anterior nos deja algo claro, la guerra ha sido un instrumento político a tener en cuenta por las diferentes sociedades, y de la cual se pueden sacar muchísimas estrategias y tácticas en cuanto a su ejecución, con la finalidad de usarlas para la victoria. Es por eso que entre tanto que se pueda hablar sobre el tema, y posturas que sean dignas de analizar destacan las famosas obras del General chino Sun Tzu que se componen principalmente de 13 ensayos titulados como El Arte de la Guerra, que junto al tratado De la Guerra del general prusiano Karl Von Clausewitz completan las obras por excelencia en cuanto a guerra se refiere.

Sun Tzu, general chino de hace aproximadamente 400 y 320 años a. C. destaca por el cuidadoso trato que da a los detalles, describiendo al Arte de la Guerra como un engaño donde triunfan los más hábiles, los mejores preparados y los que estén siempre alertas. Tzu considera conveniente valorar a la guerra en términos de: Doctrina, tiempo, terreno, mando y disciplina.

La doctrina implica el conjunto de valores morales que han de tener los combatientes en tiempos de guerra, en cuanto al tiempo se trata de considerar el momento en que se está y lo que se puede hacer justo en ese instante, el terreno nos refiere a pensar en el campo de batalla –en aquel entonces solo físico, hoy día incluso virtual-, el mando en el arte de la guerra es indispensable porque desde este punto se toman las decisiones sobre todo lo demás, se considera el liderazgo como el punto de apoyo en todo estado de guerra, por último la disciplina comprende la organización del ejercito, la cadena de suministro y en resumen todo a lo que hoy día llamamos logística.

Von Clausewitz

Por su parte Karl Von Clausewitz (Burg, Madgdeburgo, 1 de julio de 1780-Breslau, Silesia, 16 de noviembre de 1831), quien fue un general prusiano que se dedicó al estudio de los conflictos bélicos plasmó su notable erudición en materia de guerra, en un tratado de ocho volúmenes que tituló “De la guerra”, en el cual aborda de una manera sagaz y con una encendida pluma todo lo referente a planteamiento, motivación, tácticas, estrategia, que han de segu irse para la consecución de los fines que se persiguen.

Para Clausewitz la guerra no era más que un acto político, creía firmemente que este era el único y suficiente motivo para que esta sucediera. Según su forma de ver las cosas, la guerra nace por: a) el odio, la enemistad y la violencia primitiva, y b) el juego del azar y las probabilidades. “El primero de estos tres aspectos -escribió- interesa especialmente al pueblo; el segundo, al comandante en jefe y a su ejército, y el tercero, solamente al gobierno. Las pasiones que deben prender en la guerra tienen que existir ya en los pueblos afectados por ella; el alcance que lograrán el juego del talento y del valor en el dominio de las probabilidades del azar dependerá del carácter del comandante en jefe y del ejército; los objetivos políticos, sin embargo, incumbirán solamente al gobierno.”

En la teoría de Clausewitz, los elementos del odio, el cálculo y la inteligencia (dicho de otro modo, la pasión, el juego y la política) forman una “trinidad” inseparable. Así pues, Alemania se basó en Clausewitz para unificar la conducción militar y la política durante las dos guerras mundiales del siglo XX. Como se mencionó anteriormente toda sociedad humana tiende a la confrontación, este aspecto no se le escapó a Clausewitz, sino que más bien basó su teoría acerca de la guerra partiendo de esto, dejando bien claro que toda estrategia militar y conducción política tiene como fin aupar la hostilidad y la violencia innata de la sociedad en que se enmarca. De cie rto modo el desarrollo de toda guerra influye en las consideraciones anteriores, incluso si la guerra en su estado primigenio carece de esa base emocional.

Guerra Napoleonica

Clausewitz concebía la guerra como una empresa política de alto vuelo, sin desconocer la sangre y la brutalidad que implica. Por eso, consi deraba que todos los recursos de una nación deben ponerse al servicio de la guerra cuando se decide su ejecución. Y pensaba que la guerra, una vez iniciada, no debe detenerse hasta desarmar y abatir al enemig o. Su definición de la guerra es: “Constituye un acto de fuerza que se lleva a cabo para obligar al adversario a acatar nuestra voluntad”.

Tzu y Clausewitz tuvieron la oportunidad de participar en guerras, lucharlas, perder algunas y ganar otras, es por ello que gran parte de sus tesis se basan en hechos y descubrimientos empíricos, incluso Clausewitz comenta en cierta oportunidad que “el verdadero conocimiento acerca de la guerra solo se puede obtener participando en una de ellas”. Inevitablemente se observa cierta influencia de Sun Tzu en la obra de Clausewitz, como por ejemplo la connotación política que se le da, sin embargo Tzu consideró la guerra desde un punto de vista mucho más idealista, hasta el nivel de creer que era un acto fáci lmente predecible, para él si se manejaban bien los recursos, y se cumplían una serie de pasos el triunfo estaba asegurado, tesis que se pone en duda en la practica. Por otro lado Clausewitz atribuye a la guerra un carácter enigmático, impredecible y dependiente del azar. La filosofía de Clausewitz nos dice que la guerra como acto individual siempre estará llena de incertidumbre, o como el lo diría existe una “niebla” que oculta las características exactas de la situación.

En resumen Tzu representa al determinismo y Clausewitz al probabilismo, pero aun así ambas obras son dignas de ser estudiadas a fondo si se pretende entender el funcionamiento de una guerra, y sobretodo si se piensa llevar una acabo. Nunca está demás instruirse un poco en el tema, y más si lo hacemos de las manos de dos de los más grandes eruditos que la historia a visto en esta materia, al fin y al cabo gran parte de la filosofía de guerra actual se basan en ellas.

Enlaces a sus obras:

www.nacioncamba.net/PDFS/el_arte_de_la_guerra.pdf

www.bolivarsomostodos.org/pdf/De_la_Guerra_Clausewitz.pdf

Once, the great military strategist Sun Tzu said “The commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage and strictness.” It seems that the world today is losing its “commanders” very fast. For instance, at one time generals would run in and fight with their men. They would get to know every man in their military by the time the war was over. However, in recent times generals have met the men of the military. But only after any danger was gone and the battle was won. This, my friends is not the mark of a true leader or commander. Not only does this stand on the large scale of a military or nation, but right in our own homes. 23% of America’s children are raised without a father figure. Men were once commanders, but now the women are taking their place. Where have these commanders of the family gone? They flee for things that only show cowardice. This has been one of my many thoughts today. I ask of you, are you a commander? Do you lead? Do you perform well as the head of your household. It is the right thing to do, in any situation, to try and be a commander. So please, for the sake of any situation, be a commander.

Disclaimer: I am not sexist and in many cases I feel that women possibly outperform the men. Women possess a number of skills. Equally, so do men. But being a commander, is unisex.

Yep! It’s time for some City Pups to stop by and say Hey!

First is Meagan, the beautiful gold Shih-tzu! Here she is on the day her Momma first took her home…

And here she is today! She is six months old and was just spayed a couple of weeks ago. Her Mom says she is spoiled and precious as she can be, and she recently figured out how to jump up on the bed! They found her snuggling under the covers just this morning. Adorable!

Oh man, I love that cute silly girl! ^_^

And here is a more recent pup we’ve sent home. This little guy is Blitzen (the second Sheltie-named-Blitzen that we have known)! He came by today and he was still super tiny, although his owner tells us he has doubled in size! Hard to believe! Plus, he seems to have a fabulous temperament and was very friendly to all of the people and dogs in the store! Great pup!

I am so happy to see any of my puppies from the past come walking through the store! We are so proud of our pups and we want them to be healthy and happy forever. We hope that you all feel the same way about your beloved pets, so feel free to give them a big hug and a smooch whenever you feel like it.

See you soon!

~Sara

It’s about time this great lady went home! It’s a good thing, too, ’cause I was totally falling for this charming little Shih-tzu. Bizzy was a sweet little thing; playful when she needed to play, snuggly when we needed her to snuggle. She is not a complainer and she had such a good nature. I love little Bizzy!

Now she has a new home! Bizz’s gotta be having so much fun in her new place. She has a little girl to play with and everything! A puppy couldn’t ask for more! I can’t wait to hear how she’s doin’. I will miss Bizzy!

~Sara

SEGUIR LEYENDO…

Gautama the Buddha is the greatest master who has ever walked on the earth. Christ is a great master, so is Krishna, so is Mahavira, so is Mohammad, and many more, but Buddha still remains the greatest master. Not that his achievement of enlightenment is greater than anybody else’s – enlightenment is neither less nor more – he has attained to the same quality of consciousness as Mahavira, as Christ, as Zarathustra, as Lao Tzu. There is no question of any enlightened man being more enlightened than anybody else. But as far as his being a master is concerned Buddha is incomparable, because through him thousands of people have attained to enlightenment.

It has never happened with any other master. His line has been the most fruitful line, his family has been the most creative family upto now. He is like a big tree with so many branches – and each branch has been fruitful, each branch is loaded with many fruits. Mahavira remained a local phenomenon. Krishna fell into the hands of scholars and was lost. Christ was completely destroyed by the priests. Much could have happened, but it didn’t happen; Buddha has been tremendously fortunate in this. Not that the priests have not tried, not that the scholars have not tried; they have done all that they can do – but somehow Buddha’s teaching was devised in such a way that it could not be destroyed. It is still alive. Even after twenty-five centuries a few flowers come on his tree, it still blooms. Spring comes, and still it releases fragrance, it still bears fruit.

Saraha is also a fruit of the same tree. Saraha was born about two centuries after Buddha; he was in the direct line of a different branch. One branch moves from Mahakashyapa to Bodhidharma, and Zen is born – and it is still full of flowers, that branch. Another branch moves from Buddha to his son, Rahul Bhadra, and from Rahul Bhadra to Sri Kirti, and from Sri Kirti to Saraha, and from Saraha to Nagarjuna – that is the Tantra branch. It is still bearing fruit in tibet. Tantra converted Tibet, and Saraha is the founder of Tantra just as Bodhidharma is the founder of Zen. Bodhidharma conquered China, Korea, Japan; Saraha conquered Tibet.

These songs of Saraha are of great beauty. They are the very foundation of Tantra. You will first have to understand the Tantra attitude towards life, the Tantra vision of life. The most basic thing about Tantra is this – and very radical, revolutionary, rebellious – the basic vision is that the world is not divided into the lower and the higher, but that the world is one piece. The higher and the lower are holding hands. The higher includes the lower, and the lower includes the higher. The higher is hidden in the lower – so the lower has not to be denied, has not to be condemned, has not to be destroyed or killed. The lower has to be transformed. The lower has to be allowed to move upwards… and the lower becomes the higher. There is no unbridgable gap between the devil and God: the devil is carrying God deep down in his heart. Once that heart starts functioning, the devil becomes God.

That is the reason why the very root of the word devil means the same as divine. The word devil comes from divine; it is the divine not yet evolved, that’s all. Not that the devil is against the divine, not that the devil is trying to destroy the divine – in fact the devil is trying to find the divine. The devil is in the way towards the divine; it is not the enemy, it is the seed. The divine is the tree fully in bloom, and the devil is the seed – but the tree is hidden in the seed. And the seed is not against the tree. In fact the tree cannot exist if the seed is not there. And the tree is not against the seed – they are in deep friendship, they are together. Poison and nectar are two phases of the same energy, so are life and death – and so is everything: day and night, love and hate, sex and superconsciousness.

Tantra says: Never condemn anything – the attitude of condemnation is the stupid attitude. By condemning something you are denying yourself the possibility that would have become available to you if you had evolved the lower. Don’t condemn the mud, because the lotus is hidden in the mud; use the mud to produce the lotus. Of course the mud is not the lotus yet, but it can be. And the creative person, the religious person, will help the mud to release its lotus so that the lotus can be freed from the mud.

Saraha is the founder of the Tantra vision. It is of tremendous import – and particularly for the present moment in human history, because a new man is striving to be born, a new consciousness is knocking on the doors. And the future is going to be that of Tantra, because now, dual attitudes can no longer hold man’s mind. They have tried for centuries – and they have crippled man and they have made man guilty. And they have not made man free, they have made man a prisoner. And they have not made man happy either, they have made man very miserable. They have condemned everything: from food to sex they have condemned everything, from relationship to friendship they have condemned all. Love is condemned, body is condemned, mind is condemned. They have not left a single inch for you to stand on; they have taken away all and man is hanging, just hanging. This state of man cannot be tolerated anymore.

Tantra can give you a new perspective – hence I have chosen Saraha. Saraha is one of my most-loved persons, it is my old love affair. You many not even have heard the name of Saraha, but Saraha is one of the greatest benefactors of humanity. If I were to count on my fingers ten benefactors of humanity Saraha would be one of those ten. If I were to count five, then too I would not be able to drop Saraha.

Before we enter into these songs of Saraha, a few things about Saraha’s life. Saraha was born in Vidarbha – Vidarbha is part of Maharashra, very close to Poona. He was born when King Mahapala was the ruler. He was the son of a very learned brahmin who was in the court of King Mahapala; the father was in the court, so the young man was also in the court. He had four brothers; they were all great scholars, and he was the youngest and the most intelligent of them all. His fame was spreading all over the country by and by, and the king was almost enchanted by his superb intelligence. The four brothers were also very great scholars, but nothing compared with Saraha.

As they became mature, the four got married. The king was willing to give his own daughter to Saraha – but Saraha wanted to renounce all, Saraha wanted to become a sannyasin. The king was hurt; he tried to persuade Saraha – he was so beautiful and he was so intelligent and he was such a handsome young man. His fame was spreading all over the country and because of him Mahapala;s court was becoming famous. The king was very worried and he didn’t want the young man to become a sannyasin. He wanted to protect him, he wanted to give him all comfort possible; he was ready to do anything for him. But Saraha persisted and the permission had to be given: he became a sannyasin, he became a disciple of Sri Kirti.

Sri Kirti is in the direct line of Buddha – Gautam Buddha, then his son Rahul Bhadra, and then comes Sri Kirti. THere are just two masters between Saraha and Buddha; he is not very far away from Buddha. The tree must have been still very, very green; the vibe must have been still very, very alive. Buddha had just left; the climate must have been full of his fragrance.

The king was shocked, because Saraha was a brahmin. If he wanted to become a sannyasin he should have become a Hindu sannyasin, but he chose a Buddhist master. Saraha’s family was also very worried; in fact they all became enemies: this was not right. And then things became even worse – we will come to know about it.

Saraha’s original name was Rahul, the name given by his father. We will come to know how he became Saraha – that is a beautiful story. When he went to Sri Kirti, the first thing Sri Kirti told him was, “Forget all your Vedas and all your learning and all that nonsense.” It was difficult for Saraha, but he was ready to stake anything. Something in the presence of Sri Kirti had attracted him; Sri Kirti was a great magnet. He dropped all his learning, he became unlearned again.

This is one of the greatest renunciations. It is easy to renounce wealth, it is easy to renounce a great kingdom, but to renounce knowledge is the most difficult thing in the world. In the first place, how to renounce it? – it is there inside you. You can escape from your kingdom, you can go to the Himalayas, you can distribute your wealth – how can you renounce your knowledge? And then it is too painful to become ignorant again. It is the greatest austerity there is, to become ignorant again, to become again innocent like a child.

But Saraha was ready. Years passed, and by and by he erased all that he had known. He became a great meditator. Just the same as he had started to become very famous as a great scholar, now his fame started spreading as a great meditator. People started coming from far and away just to have a glimpse of this young man who had become so innocent, like a fresh leaf, or like dewdrops on the grass in the morning.

One day, while Saraha was meditating, suddenly he saw a vision – a vision that there was a woman in the marketplace who was going to be his real teacher. Sri Kirti had just put him on the way, but the real teaching was to come from a woman.

Now this too had to be understood: it is only Tantra that has never been male chauvinistic. In fact to go into Tantra you will need the cooperation of a wise woman; without a wise woman you will not be able to enter into the complex world of Tantra. He saw a vision: a woman there in the marketplace. So first, a woman; second, in a marketplace. Tantra thrives in the marketplace, in the thick of life. It is not an attitude of negation, it is utter positivity.

Saraha stood up. Sri Kirti asked him, “Where are you going?”

And he said, “You have shown me the path. You took my learning away. You have done half the work – you have cleared my slate. Now I am ready to do the other half.” With the blessings of Sri Kirti, who was laughing, he went away. He went to the marketplace – he was surprised, he really found the woman that he had seen in the vision. The woman was making an arrow; she was an arrowsmith woman.

The thing thing to be remembered about Tantra: it says the more cultured, the more civilised a person, the less is the possibility of his tantric transformation. The less civilised, the more primitive, the more alive a person is. The more you become civilised, the more you become plastic – you become artificial, you become too cultivated, you lose your roots in the earth. You are afraid of the muddy world. You start living away from the world, you start posing as though you are not of the world.

Tantra says: To find the real person you will have to go into the roots.

So Tantra says: Those who are still uncivilised, uneducated, uncultured, they are more alive, they have more vitality. And that’s the observation of the modern psychologists too. A negro is more vital than the American – that is the fear of the American. The American is very afraid of the negro. The fear is that the American has become very plastic, and the negro is still vital, still down-to- earth.

The conflict between the blacks and the whites in America is not really the conflict between black and white, it is the conflict between the plastic and the real. And the American, the white man, is very afraid: basically he is afraid that, if the negro is allowed, he will lose his woman, the white American will lose his woman. The negro is more vital, sexually more vital, more alive; his energy is still wild. And that is one of the greatest fears if civilised people: to lose their women. They know that if more vital persons are available, they will not be able to hold their women.

Tantra says: In the world of those who are still primitive, there is a possibility of starting to grow. You have grown in a wrong direction; they have not grown yet – they can still choose a right direction, they have more potential. And they don’t have anything to undo, they can proceed directly.

An arrowsmith woman is a low-caste woman, and for Saraha – a learned brahmin, a famous brahmin, who had belonged to the court of the king – going to an arrowsmith woman is symbolic. The learned has to go to the vital, the plastic has to go to the real. He saw this woman – a young woman, very alive, radiant with life – cutting an arrow-shaft, looking neither to the right nor to the left but wholly absorbed in making the arrow. He immediately felt something extraordinary in her presence, something that he had never come across. Even Sri Kirti, his master, paled before the presence of this woman. Something so fresh and something from the very source…

Sri Kirti was a great philosopher. Yes, he had told Saraha to drop all learning, but still he was a learned man. He had told Saraha to drop all Vedas and scriptures, but he had his own scriptures and his own Vedas. Even though he was anti-philosophical, his anti- philosophy was a sort of philosophy. Now here is a woman who is neither philosophical nor anti-philosophical, who simply does not know what philosophy is, who is simply blissfully unaware of the world of philosophy, of the world of thought. She is a woman of action and she is utterly absorbed in her action.

Saraha watched carefully: the arrow ready, the woman – closing one eye and opening the other – assumed the posture of aiming at an invisible target. Saraha came still closer… Now there was no target, she was simply posing. She had closed one eye, her other eye was open, and she was aiming at some unknown target – invisible, it was not there. Saraha started feeling some message. This posture was symbolic, he felt, but still it was very dim and dark. He could feel something there, but he could not figure it out, what it was.

So he asked the woman whether she was a professional arrowsmith, and the woman laughed loudly, a wild laugh, and said, “You stupid brahmin! You have left the Vedas, but now you are worshipping Buddha’s sayings, the Dhammapada. So what is the point? You have changed your books, you have changed your philosophy, but you remain all the time the same stupid man.” Saraha was shocked. Nobody had talked to him that way; only an uncultured woman can talk that way. And the way she laughed was so uncivilised, so primitive – but still, something was very much alive. And he was feeling pulled: she was a great magnet and he was nothing but a piece of iron.

Then she said, “You think you are Buddhist?” He must have been in the robe of the Buddhist monk, the yellow robe. She laughed again and she said, “Buddha’s meaning can only be known through actions, not through words and not through books. Is not enough enough for you? Are you not yet fed up with all this? Do not waste any more time in that futile search. Come and follow me!” And something happened, something like a communion. He had never felt like that before. In that moment the spiritual significance of what she was doing dawned upon Saraha. Neither looking to the left, nor looking to the right, he had seen her – just looking in the middle.

For the first time he understood what Buddha means by being in the middle: avoid the excess. First he was a philosopher, now he has become an anti-philosopher – from one extreme to the another. First he was worshipping one thing, now he is worshipping just the opposite – but the worship continues. You can move from the left to the right, from the right to the left, but that is not going to help. You will be like a pendulum moving from left to the right, from the right to the left.

And have you observed? – when the pendulum is going to thr right it is gaining momentum to go to the left; when it is going to the left it is again gaining momentum to go to the right. And the clock continues… and the world continues. To be in the middle means the pendelum just hangs there in the middle, neither to the right nor to the left. Then the clock stops, then the world stops. Then there is no more time… then the state of no-time…

He heard it said so many times by Sri Kirti; he had read about it, he had pondered, contemplated over it; he had argued with others about it, that to be in the middle is the right thing. For the first time he had seen it in action; the woman was not looking to the right and not looking to the left – she was just looking in the middle, focused in the middle.

The middle is the point from where the trancendence happens. Think about it, contemplate on it, watch it in life. A man is running after money, is mad, money-mad; money is the only god…

One woman was asking another, “Why have you left your boyfriend? What happened? I had been thinking that you were engaged and that you were going to be married – what happened?”

The woman replied, “Our religions are different and that’s why we have broken up.”

The questioner was puzzled because she knew that both were Catholics, so she asked, “What do you mean by saying that your religions are different?” “The woman said, “I worship money, and he is broke.” There are people whose only god is money. One day or other the god fails – it is bound to fail. Money cannot be the god. It was your illusion you were protecting. One day or other you come to the point where you can see that there is no god in it, that there is nothing in it, that you have been wasting your life. Then you turn against it, then you take an opposite attitude: you become against money. Then you leave money, you don’t touch money. You are continuously obsessed now; now you are against money, but the obsession remains. You have moved from the left to the right, but your centre of consciousness is still the money.

You can change from one desire to another. You were much too worldly… one day you can become other-worldly. You remain the same, the desease persists. Buddha says: To be worldly is to be worldly and to be other-worldly is also to be worldly; to be for money is to be mad after money, to be against money is to be mad after money; to seek power is foolish, to escape is also foolish.

Just to be in the middle is what wisdom is all about.

For the first time Saraha saw it actually there – he had not even seen it in Sri Kirti. It was really there. And the woman was true; she said, “You can only learn through action” – and she was so utterly absorbed that she was not even looking at Saraha who was standing there watching her. She was so utterly absorbed, she was so totally in the action – that is again a Buddhist message: To be total in action is to be free of action.

Karma is created because you are not totally in it. If you are totally in it, it leaves no trace. Do anything totally and it is finished, and you will not carry a psychological memory of it. Do anything incompletely and it hangs with you, it goes on – it is a hangover. And the mind wants to continue and do it and complete it. Mind has a great temptation to complete things. Complete anything and the mind is gone. If you continue doing things totally, one day you suddenly find there is no mind. Mind is the accumulated past of all incomplete actions.

You wanted to love a woman and you didn’t love; now the woman is dead. You wanted to go to your father and you wanted to be forgiven for all that you had been doing, for all that you had been doing in such a way that he was feeling hurt – now he is dead. Now the hangover will remain, now the ghost… Now you are helpless – what to do? Whom to go to? And how to ask forgiveness? You wanted to be kind to a friend but you could not be because you became closed. Now the friend is no more, and it hurts. You start feeling a guilt, you repent. Things go on like this.

Do any actions totally and you are free of it and you don’t look back. And the real man never looks back – because there is nothing to see. He has no hangovers. He simply goes ahead. His eyes are clear of the past, his visions are not clouded. In that clarity one comes to know what reality is.

You are so worried with all your incomplete actions – you are like a junkyard: one thing is incomplete here, another thing incomplete there, nothing is complete. Have you watched it? Have you ever completed anything? Or is everything just incomplete? And you go on pushing aside one thing and you start another thing and before it is complete you start another. You become more and more burdened. This is what karma is; karma means incomplete actions.

Be total… and you will be free.

The woman was totally absorbed. That’s why she was looking so luminous, she was looking so beautiful. She was an ordinary woman but the beauty was not of this earth. The beauty came because of total absorption. The beauty came because she was not an extremist. The beauty came because she was in the middle, balanced. Out of balance comes grace. For the first time Saraha encountered a woman who was not just physically beautiful, who was spiritually beautiful. Naturally, he was surrendered. The surrender happened.

Absorbed totally, absorbed in whatsoever she was doing… he understood for the first time: this is what meditation is. Not that you sit for a special period and you repeat a mantra, not that you go to the church or to the temple or to the mosque, but to be in life – to go on doing trivial things, but with such absorption that the profundity is revealed in every action. He understood what meditation is for the first time. He has been meditating, he has been strugglng hard, but for the first time meditation was there, alive. He could feel it. He could have touched it, it was almost tangible. And then he remembered that closing one eye, opening the other is a symbol, a Buddhist symbol.

Buddha says – psychologists will agree with him now; after two thousand and five hundred years psychology has come to that point where Buddha was so long before – Buddha says half the mind reasons and half the mind intuits. The mind is divided in two parts, in two hemispheres. The left-side hemisphere is the faculty of reason, logic, discursive thought, analysis, philosphy, theology… words and words and words and arguements and syllogisms and inferences. The left side mind is Aristotelian. The right-side mind is intuitive, poetic – inspiration, vision, a priori consciousness, a priori awareness. Not that you argue – you simply come to know. Not that you infer – you simply realise. That is the meaning of a priori awareness: it is simply there. The truth is known by the right-side mind. Truth is inferred by the left-side mind. Inference is just inference, it is not experience.

Suddenly he realises that the woman had closed one eye: she had closed on eye as symbolic of closing the eye of reason, logic. And she had opened the other eye symbolic of love, intuition, awareness. And then he remembered the posture.

Aiming at the unknown, the invisible, we are on the journey to know the unknown – to know that which cannot be known. That is real knowledge: to know that which cannot be known, to realise that which is unrealisable, to attain that which cannot be attained. This impossible passion is what makes man a religious seeker.

Yes, it is impossible. By impossible I don’t mean that it will not happen, by impossible I mean that it cannot happen unless you are utterly transformed. As you are it cannot happen. But there are different ways of being, and you can be totally a new man… then it happens. It is possible for a different kind of man. That’s why Jesus says: Until you are reborn, you will not know it. A new man will know it.

You come to me – you will not know it. I will have to kill you, I will have to be drastically dangerous to you; you will have to disappear. And the new man is born, a new consciousness comes in because there is something indestructible in you which cannot be destroyed; nobody can destroy it. Only the destructible will be destroyed and the indestructible will be there. When you attain to that indestructible element in your being, to that eternal awareness in your being, you are a new man, a new consciousness. Through that the impossible is possible, the unattainable is attained.

So he remembered the posture. Aiming at the unknown, the invisible, the unknownable, the one – that is the aim. How to be one with existence? The nondual is the aim – where subject and object are lost, where I and thou are lost.

There is a very famous book and a great book of Martin Buber, I and Thou. Martin Buber says the experience of prayer is an I-thou experience. He is right. The experience of prayer is an I-thou experience: God is the thou, you remain an I, and you have a dialogue, a communion with the thou. But Buddhism has no prayer in it, and Buddhism goes higher. Buddhism says: Even if there is an I- thou relationship, you remain divided, you remain seperate. You can shout at each other, but there will be no communion. The communion happens only when the I-thou division is no more, when subject and object disappear, where there is no I and no thou, no seeker and no sought… when there is unity, unison.

Realising this, seeing into this woman’s actions and recognising the truth… The woman called him Saraha. His name was Rahul; the woman called him Saraha. Saraha is a beautiful word. It means he who has shot the arrow: sara means arrow, ha(n) means have shot. Saraha means one who has shot the arrow. The moment he recognised the significance of the woman’s actions, those symbolic gestures, the moment he could read and decode what the woman was trying to give, what the woman was trying to show, the woman was tremendously happy. She danced and called him Saraha, and said, “Now from today you will be called Saraha: you have shot the arrow. Understanding the significance of my actions, you have penetrated…”

Saraha said to her, “You are not an ordinary arrowsmith woman. I am sorry to have even thought that you were an ordinary arrowsmith woman. Excuse me, I am tremendously sorry. You are a great master and I am reborn through you. Till yesterday I was nto a real brahmin; from today I am. You are my master and you are my mother and you have given me a new birth. I am no longer the same. So, right you are – you have dropped my old name and you have given me a new name.”

You ask me sometimes, “Why do you give new names?” To drop the old identity, to forget the past, not to be any more in any attachment with the past, a clean break is needed. You have to become discontinuous with the past. Rahul became Saraha.

The legend has it that the woman was nobody but a hidden buddha. The name of the buddha given in the scriptures is Sukhnatha – the buddha who had come to help the great potential man, Saraha. Buddha, a certain buddha of the name Sukhnatha, took the form of a woman. But why? Why the form of a woman? – because Tantra believes that just as a man has to be born out of a woman, so the new birth of a disciple is also going to be out of a woman. In fact all the masters are more mothers than fathers. They have the quality of the feminine. Buddha is feminine, so is Mahavira, so is Krishna. You can see the feminine grace, the feminine roundness, you can see the feminine beauty. You can look into their eyes and you will not find the male aggressiveness.

So it is very symbolic that a buddha took the form of a woman. Buddhas always take the form of a woman. They may be living in a male body, but they are feminine – because all that is born is born out of the feminine energy. Male energy can trigger it but cannot give birth.

A master has to keep you in his womb for months, for years, sometimes for lives. One never knows when you will be ready to be born. A master has to be a mother. A master has to be tremendously capable of feminine energy so that he can shower love on you; only then can he destroy. Unless you are certain about his love, you will not allow him to destroy you. How will you trust? only his love will make you able to trust. And through trust, by and by, he will cut limb by limb. And one day suddenly you will disappear. Slowly, slowly, slowly… and you are gone. Gate, gate, para gate – going, going, going, gone. Then the new is born.

The arrowsmith woman accepted him. In fact she was waiting… a master waits for the disciple. Old tradition says: Before a disciple chooses a master, the master has chosen the disciple. Exactly that’s what happened in this story. Sukhnatha was hiding in the form of a woman waiting for Saraha to come and be transformed through him.

And it seems more logical too that a master should choose first – because he is more aware, he knows. He can penetrate the very possibility of your being, the very potentiality. He can see your future, he can see that which can happen. When you choose a master you think you have chosen. You are wrong. How can you choose a master? You are so blind, how can you recognise a master? You are so unaware, how can you feel a master? If you start feeling him, that means he has already entered in your heart and has started playing with your energies – that’s why you start feeling him. Before a disciple ever chooses a master, the master has chosen him already.

She accepted. She was waiting for Saraha to come. They moved to a cremation ground and started living together. Why to a cremation ground? – because Buddha says unless you understand death you will not be able to understand life. Unless you die, you will not be reborn.

Many Tantra disciples have lived in the cremation ground since Saraha; he was the founder. He lived in a cremation ground… people would be brought, dead bodies would be brought and burned and he lived there, that was his home. And he lived with this arrowsmith woman, they lived together. There was great love between them – not the love of a woman and a man, but the love of a master and a disciple, which is certainly higher than any man-woman love can ever reach; which is more intimate, certainly more intimate – because a man woman love affair is just of two bodies. At the most sometimes it reaches the mind, otherwise it remains in the body. A disciple and a master – it is a soul love affair.

Saraha had found his soulmate. They were in tremendous love, great love, which rarely happens on the earth. She taught him Tantra. Only a woman can teach Tantra. Somebody asked me why I have chosen Kaveesha to be the group leader for Tantra – only a woman can be a Tantra group leader, it will be difficult for a man. Yes, sometimes a man can also be, but then he will have to become very, very feminine. A woman is already, she has already those qualities, those loving, affectionate qualites; she naturally has that care, that love, that feeling for the soft.

Saraha became a tantrika under the guidance of this arrowsmith woman. Now he was no longer meditating. One day he had left all the Vedas, the scriptures, knowledge; now he left even meditation. Now rumors started spreading all over the country: he no longer meditates. He sings, of course, and dances too, but no meditation any more. Now singing was his meditation, now dancing was his meditation, now celebration was his whole lifestyle.

Living in a cremation ground and celebrating! Living where only death happens and living joyously! This is the beauty of Tantra: it joins together the opposites, the contraries, the contradictories. If you go to the cremation ground you will feel sad; it will be difficult for you to be joyous. It will be very difficult for you to sing and dance where people are being burned, and where people are crying and weeping. And every day death and death… day and night, death. How will you rejoice? But if you cannot rejoice there, then all that you think is your joy is just a make-believe. If you can rejoice there, then joy has really happened to you. Now it is unconditional. Now it doesn’t make any difference whether death happens or life, whether somebody is born or somebody is dying.

Saraha started singing and dancing. He was no longer serious. Tantra is not – Tantra is a playfulness. Yes, it is sincere, but not serious; it is very joyous. Play entered his being. Tantra is play, because Tantra is a highly evolved form of love – love is play.

There are people who would not like even love to be a play. Mahatma Gandhi says: Make love only when you want to reproduce. Even love they change into work – reproduction. This is just ugly! Make love to your woman only when you want to reproduce – is she a factory? Reproduction – the very word is ugly. Love is fun! Make love to your woman when you are feeling happy, joyous, when you are at the top of the world. Share that energy. Love your man when you have that quality of dance and song and joy – not for reproduction! The word reproduction is obscene. Make love out of joy, out of abundant joy. Give when you have it!

Play entered into his being. A lover has always the spirit of play. The moment the spirit of play dies you become a husband or a wife; then you are no longer lovers, then you reproduce. And the moment you become a husband or a wife, something beautiful has gone dead. It is not more alive, the juice flows no more. Now it is just pretention, hypocricy.

Play entered his being, and through play true religion was born. His ecstacy was so infectious that people started coming to watch him dancing and singing. And when people would come and watch, they would start dancing, they would start singing with him. The cremation ground became a great celebration. Yes, bodies were being burned still, but more and more crowds started gathering around Saraha and the arrowsmith woman, and great joy was created on that cremation ground.

And it became so infectious that people who has never heard anything about ecstacy would come, dance and sing, and fall into ecstacy, go into samadhi. His very vibration, his very presence, became so potent that just if you were ready to participate with him, it would happen… contact high. Those who came around him – he was so drunk that his inner drunkenness started overflowing to other people. He was so stoned that others started becoming stoned and more stoned.

But then the inevitable.. the brahmins and priests and the scholars and the so-called righteous people started vilifying and slandering him – that I call the inevitable. Whenever there is a man like Saraha the scholars are going to be against him, the priests are going to be against him, and the so-called moral people, puritans, self-righteous people. They started spreading absolutely biased rumors about him.

They started saying to people, “He has fallen from grace – he is a pervert. He is no longer a brahmin; he has given up celibacy, he is no longer even a Buddhist monk. He indulges in shameful practices with a low-caste woman and runs around like a mad dog in all directions.” His ecstacy was just like a mad dog to them – it depends on how you interpret. He was dancing all over the cremation ground. He was mad – but he was not a mad dog, he was a mad god! It depends on how you look.

The king was also told these things – he was anxious to know exactly what was happening. He became worried… more and more people started coming to him. They knew him, they knew that the king was always deeply respectful towards Saraha, that he wanted to appoint him as his councilor in the court, but Saraha had renounced the world. The king had much respect for his learning, so they started coming to the king.

The king was worried. He had loved the young man and respected him too, and he was concerned. So he sent a few people to persuade Saraha and tell him, “Come back to your old ways. You are a brahmin, your father was a great scholar, you yourself was a great scholar – what are you doing? You have gone astray, come back home; I am still here. You come to the palace, be part of my family. This is not good.”

The people went and Saraha sang one hundred and sixty verses to those people who had come to convert him. Those one hundred and sixty verses… and those people started dancing and they never came back!

The king was even more worried. The king’s wife, the queen, was also always interested in the young man. She wanted the young man to marry her daughter, so she went there. And Saraha sang eighty verses to the queen… and she never came back.

Now the king was much puzzled: What is happening there? So the king himself went there – and Saraha sang forty verses and the king was converted! And he started singing in the cremation ground like a mad dog!

So there are three scriptures available in the name of Saraha. First, The People’s Song of Saraha – one hundred and sixty verses; second, The Queen’s Song of Saraha – eighty verses, and third, The Royal Song of Saraha – forty verses. One hundred and sixty verses for the people because their understanding was not great; eighty for the Queen – she was a little higher, her understanding was a little higher; forty for the king because he was really a man of intelligence, of awareness, of understanding.

Because the king was converted, the whole country by and by was converted. And it is said in the old scriptures that a time came when the whole country became empty. Empty… it is a Buddhist word. It means people became nobodies, they lost their ego trips.

People started enjoying the moment. The hustle and bustle, the competitive violence dissapeared from the country. It became a silent country. It became empty… as if nobody was there, the men as such disappeared from the country. A great divineness descended on the country. These forty verses were at the root of it, the very source of it.

Now we enter into the great pilgrimage.: The Royal Song of Saraha. It is also called the Song on Human Action – very paradoxical, because it has nothing to do with action. That’s why it is also called the Song on Human Action. It has something to do with the being, but when being transformed, action is transformed. When you are transformed, your behaviour is transformed – not vice versa. Not that first you change your action and then your being changes – no. Tantra says: First change your being and then your action changes automatically, of its own accord. First attain to a different kind of consciousness, and that will be followed by a different kind of action, character, behaviour.

Tantra believes in being, not in action and character. That is why it is also called the Song on Human Action – because once being is transformed, your actions are transformed. That is the only way to change your actions. Who has ever been able to change his actions directly? You can only pretend.

If you have anger in you and you want to change your action, what will you do? You will supress the anger and you will show a false face; you will have to wear a mask. If you have sexuality in you, what will you do to change it? You can take the vow of celibacy, and you can pretend, but deep down the volcano continues. You are sitting on a volcano which can erupt any moment. You will be constantly trembling, constantly afraid, in fear.

Have you not watched the so-called religious people? They are always afraid – afraid of hell – and always trying somehow to get into heaven. But they don’t know what heaven is: they have not tasted it at all. If you can change your consciousness, heaven comes in you, not that you go to heaven. Nobody has ever gone to heaven and nobody has never gone to hell. Let it be decided once and for all: heaven comes to you, hell comes to you – it depends on you.

Whatsoever you call, it comes. If your BEING changes, you suddenly become available to heaven – heaven descends on you. If your being does not change you are in a conflict,you are forcing something which is not there. You become false and false and more false, and you become two persons, you become schizophrenic, split… You show something, you are something else. You say something – you never do it, you do something else. And then you are continuously playing hide and seek with yourself. Anxiety, anguish, are natural in such a state – that’s what hell is.

- Osho.

Read this while in meditation – or deep contemplation – this is the essence of Tantra…

The Royal Song of Saraha.

I bow down to noble Manjusri,
I bow down to him who has Conquered the finite.

As calm water lashed by wind
Turns into waves and rollers,
So the king thinks of Saraha
In many ways, although one man.

To a fool who squints,
One lamp is as two,
Where seen and seer are not two,
As! the mind works
On the thingness of them both.

Though the house lamps
Have been lit,
The blind live on in the dark.
Though spontaneity
Is all-encompassing and close,
To the deluded it remains
Always far away.

Though there may be many rivers,
They are one in the sea.
Though there may be many lies,
One truth will conquer all.
When one sun appears,
The dark, however deep,
Will vanish.

As a cloud that rises from the sea
Absorbing rain, the earth embraces,
So, like the sky, the sea remains
Without increasing or decreasing.

So from spontaneity that’s unique,
Replete with the
Buddha’s perfections,
Are all sentient beings born,
And in it come to rest.
But it is neither concrete
Nor Abstract.

They walk other paths
And so forsake true bliss,
Seeking the delights
That stimulants produce.
The honey in their mouths,
And to them so near,
Will vanish if at once
They do not drink it.

Beasts do not understand the world
To be a sorry place.
Not so the wise
Who the heavenly nectar drink
While beasts hunger for the sensual.

To a fly that likes the smell
Of putrid meat,
The fragrance
Of sandalwood is foul.
Beings who discard nirvana
Covet coarse samsara’s realm.

An ox’s footprints filled with water
Will soon dry up;
So with a mind that’s firm
But full of qualities
Thar are not perfect,
These imperfections
Will in time dry up.

Like salt sea water that turns sweet
When drunk up by the clouds,
So a firm mind
That works for others,
Turns the poison of
Sense-objects into nectar.

If ineffable,
Never is one unsatisfied,
If unimaginable,
It must be bliss itself.
Though from a cloud
One fears the thunderclap,
The crops ripen
When from it pours the rain.

It is in the beginning,
In the middle,
And the end;
Yet end and beginning
Are nowhere else.
All those with minds
Deluded by interpretative thoughts
Are in two minds
And so discuss nothingness and
Compassion as two things.

Bees know that in flowers
Honey can be found.
That samsara and nirvana
Are not two
How will the deluded
Ever understand?

When the deluded in a mirror look
They see a face, not a reflection.
So the mind that has truth denied
Relies on that which is not true.

Though the fragrance of a flower
Cannot be touched,
‘Tis all pervasive
And at once perceptible.
So, by unpatterned being-in-itself
Recognise the round
Of mystic circles.

When in winter
Still water by the wind is stirred,
It takes as ice the shape and
Texture of a rock.
When the deluded are disturbed
By interpretative thoughts,
That which is as yet unpatterned
Turns very hard and solid.

Mind immaculate in its very being
Can never be polluted by
Samsara’s or nirvana’s impurities.
A precious jewel deep in mud
Will not shine, though it has luster.

Knowledge shines not in the dark,
But when the darkness is illuminated,
Suffering disappears at once.
Shoots grow from the seed
And leaves from the shoots.

He who thinks of the mind
In terms of one or many
Casts away the light and
Enters the world.
Into a raging fire
He walks with open eyes -
Who could be more
Deserving of compassion?

]]> http://vajrakrishna.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/the-universe-as-a-hologram/ Mon, 04 May 2009 03:29:17 +0000 vajrakrishna http://vajrakrishna.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/the-universe-as-a-hologram/

The Universe as a Hologram.
Source Link: Crystalinks

Does Objective Reality Exist, or is the Universe a Phantasm?

In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect’s name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn’t matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.

Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein’s long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect’s findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.

University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect’s findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film. When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears. The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose. Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole. The “whole in every part” nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts.

A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes. This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect’s discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.

To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following illustration:
Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium’s front and the other directed at its side. As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them. When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly not the case.

This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic particles in Aspect’s experiment. According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-light connection between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality.

Such particles are not separate “parts”, but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since everything in physical reality is comprised of these “eidolons”, the universe is itself a projection, a hologram.

In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess other rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected. The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky. Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.

In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish on the TV monitors, would also have to be viewed as projections of this deeper order. At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that given the proper tools it might even be possible to someday reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck out scenes from the long-forgotten past. What else the superhologram contains is an open-ended question. Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the superhologram is the matrix that has given birth to everything in our universe, at the very least it contains every subatomic particle that has been or will be — every configuration of matter and energy that is possible, from snowflakes to quasars, from blue whales to gamma rays. It must be seen as a sort of cosmic storehouse of “All That Is.”

Although Bohm concedes that we have no way of knowing what else might lie hidden in the superhologram, he does venture to say that we have no reason to assume it does not contain more. Or as he puts it, perhaps the superholographic level of reality is a “mere stage” beyond which lies “an infinity of further development”. Bohm is not the only researcher who has found evidence that the universe is a hologram. Working independently in the field of brain research, Standford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram has also become persuaded of the holographic nature of reality.

Pribram was drawn to the holographic model by the puzzle of how and where memories are stored in the brain. For decades numerous studies have shown that rather than being confined to a specific location, memories are dispersed throughout the brain.

In a series of landmark experiments in the 1920s, brain scientist Karl Lashley found that no matter what portion of a rat’s brain he removed he was unable to eradicate its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery. The only problem was that no one was able to come up with a mechanism that might explain this curious “whole in every part” nature of memory storage. Then in the 1960s Pribram encountered the concept of holography and realized he had found the explanation brain scientists had been looking for. Pribram believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of film containing a holographic image. In other words, Pribram believes the brain is itself a hologram. Pribram’s theory also explains how the human brain can store so many memories in so little space. It has been estimated that the human brain has the capacity to memorize something on the order of 10 billion bits of information during the average human lifetime (or roughly the same amount of information contained in five sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Similarly, it has been discovered that in addition to their other capabilities, holograms possess an astounding capacity for information storage–simply by changing the angle at which the two lasers strike a piece of photographic film, it is possible to record many different images on the same surface. It has been demonstrated that one cubic centimeter of film can hold as many as 10 billion bits of information. Our uncanny ability to quickly retrieve whatever information we need from the enormous store of our memories becomes more understandable if the brain functions according to holographic principles. If a friend asks you to tell him what comes to mind when he says the word “zebra”, you do not have to clumsily sort back through some gigantic and cerebral alphabetic file to arrive at an answer. Instead, associations like “striped”, “horselike”, and “animal native to Africa” all pop into your head instantly. Indeed, one of the most amazing things about the human thinking process is that every piece of information seems instantly cross- correlated with every other piece of information–another feature intrinsic to the hologram. Because every portion of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with every other portion, it is perhaps nature’s supreme example of a cross-correlated system.

The storage of memory is not the only neurophysiological puzzle that becomes more tractable in light of Pribram’s holographic model of the brain. Another is how the brain is able to translate the avalanche of frequencies it receives via the senses (light frequencies, sound frequencies, and so on) into the concrete world of our perceptions. Encoding and decoding frequencies is precisely what a hologram does best. Just as a hologram functions as a sort of lens, a translating device able to convert an apparently meaningless blur of frequencies into a coherent image, Pribram believes the brain also comprises a lens and uses holographic principles to mathematically convert the frequencies it receives through the senses into the inner world of our perceptions. An impressive body of evidence suggests that the brain uses holographic principles to perform its operations. Pribram’s theory, in fact, has gained increasing support among neurophysiologists.

Argentinian-Italian researcher Hugo Zucarelli recently extended the holographic model into the world of acoustic phenomena. Puzzled by the fact that humans can locate the source of sounds without moving their heads, even if they only possess hearing in one ear, Zucarelli discovered that holographic principles can explain this ability. Zucarelli has also developed the technology of holophonic sound, a recording technique able to reproduce acoustic situations with an almost uncanny realism.

Pribram’s belief that our brains mathematically construct “hard” reality by relying on input from a frequency domain has also received a good deal of experimental support. It has been found that each of our senses is sensitive to a much broader range of frequencies than was previously suspected. Researchers have discovered, for instance, that our visual systems are sensitive to sound frequencies, that our sense of smell is in part dependent on what are now called “osmic frequencies”, and that even the cells in our bodies are sensitive to a broad range of frequencies. Such findings suggest that it is only in the holographic domain of consciousness that such frequencies are sorted out and divided up into conventional perceptions. But the most mind-boggling aspect of Pribram’s holographic model of the brain is what happens when it is put together with Bohm’s theory. For if the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is “there” is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality?

Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion.

We are really “receivers” floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the superhologram. This striking new picture of reality, the synthesis of Bohm and Pribram’s views, has come to be called the holographic paradigm, and although many scientists have greeted it with skepticism, it has galvanized others. A small but growing group of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of reality science has arrived at thus far. More than that, some believe it may solve some mysteries that have never before been explainable by science and even establish the paranormal as a part of nature.

Numerous researchers, including Bohm and Pribram, have noted that many para-psychological phenomena become much more understandable in terms of the holographic paradigm. In a universe in which individual brains are actually indivisible portions of the greater hologram and everything is infinitely interconnected, telepathy may merely be the accessing of the holographic level. It is obviously much easier to understand how information can travel from the mind of individual ‘A’ to that of individual ‘B’ at a far distance point and helps to understand a number of unsolved puzzles in psychology. In particular, Grof feels the holographic paradigm offers a model for understanding many of the baffling phenomena experienced by individuals during altered states of consciousness.

In the 1950s, while conducting research into the beliefs of LSD as a psychotherapeutic tool, Grof had one female patient who suddenly became convinced she had assumed the identity of a female of a species of prehistoric reptile. During the course of her hallucination, she not only gave a richly detailed description of what it felt like to be encapsuled in such a form, but noted that the portion of the male of the species’s anatomy was a patch of colored scales on the side of its head. What was startling to Grof was that although the woman had no prior knowledge about such things, a conversation with a zoologist later confirmed that in certain species of reptiles colored areas on the head do indeed play an important role as triggers of sexual arousal. The woman’s experience was not unique. During the course of his research, Grof encountered examples of patients regressing and identifying with virtually every species on the evolutionary tree (research findings which helped influence the man-into-ape scene in the movie Altered States). Moreover, he found that such experiences frequently contained obscure zoological details which turned out to be accurate. Regressions into the animal kingdom were not the only puzzling psychological phenomena Grof encountered. He also had patients who appeared to tap into some sort of collective or racial unconscious. Individuals with little or no education suddenly gave detailed descriptions of Zoroastrian funerary practices and scenes from Hindu mythology. In other categories of experience, individuals gave persuasive accounts of out-of-body journeys, of precognitive glimpses of the future, of regressions into apparent past-life incarnations.

In later research, Grof found the same range of phenomena manifested in therapy sessions which did not involve the use of drugs. Because the common element in such experiences appeared to be the transcending of an individual’s consciousness beyond the usual boundaries of ego and/or limitations of space and time, Grof called such manifestations “transpersonal experiences”, and in the late ’60s he helped found a branch of psychology called “transpersonal psychology” devoted entirely to their study. Although Grof’s newly founded Association of Transpersonal Psychology garnered a rapidly growing group of like-minded professionals and has become a respected branch of psychology, for years neither Grof or any of his colleagues were able to offer a mechanism for explaining the bizarre psychological phenomena they were witnessing. But that has changed with the advent of the holographic paradigm. As Grof recently noted, if the mind is actually part of a continuum, a labyrinth that is connected not only to every other mind that exists or has existed, but to every atom, organism, and region in the vastness of space and time itself, the fact that it is able to occasionally make forays into the labyrinth and have transpersonal experiences no longer seems so strange.

The holographic paradigm also has implications for so-called hard sciences like biology. Keith Floyd, a psychologist at Virginia Intermont College, has pointed out that if the concreteness of reality is but a holographic illusion, it would no longer be true to say the brain produces consciousness. Rather, it is consciousness that creates the appearance of the brain — as well as the body and everything else around us we interpret as physical. Such a turnabout in the way we view biological structures has caused researchers to point out that medicine and our understanding of the healing process could also be transformed by the holographic paradigm. If the apparent physical structure of the body is but a holographic projection of consciousness, it becomes clear that each of us is much more responsible for our health than current medical wisdom allows. What we now view as miraculous remissions of disease may actually be due to changes in consciousness which in turn effect changes in the hologram of the body.

Similarly, controversial new healing techniques such as visualization may work so well because in the holographic domain of thought images are ultimately as real as “reality”. Even visions and experiences involving “non-ordinary” reality become explainable under the holographic paradigm. In his book “Gifts of Unknown Things,” biologist Lyall Watson discribes his encounter with an Indonesian shaman woman who, by performing a ritual dance, was able to make an entire grove of trees instantly vanish into thin air. Watson relates that as he and another astonished onlooker continued to watch the woman, she caused the trees to reappear, then “click” off again and on again several times in succession. Although current scientific understanding is incapable of explaining such events, experiences like this become more tenable if “hard” reality is only a holographic projection. Perhaps we agree on what is “there” or “not there” because what we call consensus reality is formulated and ratified at the level of the human unconscious at which all minds are infinitely interconnected.

If this is true, it is the most profound implication of the holographic paradigm of all, for it means that experiences such as Watson’s are not commonplace only because we have not programmed our minds with the beliefs that would make them so. In a holographic universe there are no limits to the extent to which we can alter the fabric of reality. What we perceive as reality is only a canvas waiting for us to draw upon it any picture we want. Anything is possible, from bending spoons with the power of the mind to the phantasmagoric events experienced by Castaneda during his encounters with the Yaqui brujo don Juan, for magic is our birthright, no more or less miraculous than our ability to compute the reality we want when we are in our dreams. Indeed, even our most fundamental notions about reality become suspect, for in a holographic universe, as Pribram has pointed out, even random events would have to be seen as based on holographic principles and therefore determined. Synchronicities or meaningful coincidences suddenly makes sense, and everything in reality would have to be seen as a metaphor, for even the most haphazard events would express some underlying symmetry. Whether Bohm and Pribram’s holographic paradigm becomes accepted in science or dies an ignoble death remains to be seen, but it is safe to say that it has already had an influence on the thinking of many scientists. And even if it is found that the holographic model does not provide the best explanation for the instantaneous communications that seem to be passing back and forth between subatomic particles, at the very least, as noted by Basil Hiley, a physicist at Birbeck College in London, Aspect’s findings “indicate that we must be prepared to consider radically new views of reality”.

Related Links on the Holographic Universe:

Psychedelic Adventure blogspot.

What I find as fundemental in a very transpersonal level is the principle of the Warrior Code. I think you may relate that I intuitively knew about the Warrior Code before I read it in any book, or heard about it from any person. It’s something so very intrinsic that I felt, though on a vague level at the time, during times of introspection. It’s similar to how it is said, “the virtues are what they are. No one will say that cowardice is a virue, or that hypocricy is a virtue.” It is very intrinsic. I say you may relate because several people are of the opinion that humans are born with a clean slate (or genetic predisposition) – and the rest of their growth boils down to instrumental conditioning. From personal experience, I find this far from true. I am reminded of a revealing moment in the film “K-Pax” where the psychologist asks the patient (who insists he is an extraterrestrial), “Hmm.. so, if there are no rules on your planet, then how do you know the difference between right and wrong?”

To which the “visitor” replies as if it’s the most obvious thing imaginable, “Everyone knows the difference between right and wrong.” But by god don’t we argue about it – if for no other reason but to convince ourselves otherwise when we make a wrong choice. I find this to be fundemental. We all know the difference – it’s making the choice that’s difficult, we sometimes turn into cowards when it comes to that.

“The 97th Aphorism in the Codes I was taught,” I said, “is in the form of a riddle: “What is invisible but more beautiful than diamonds?”
“And the answer?” inquired Labienus.
“That which is silent but deafens thunder.”
The men regarded one another. “And what is that?” asked Labienus.
“The same,” said I, “as that which depresses no scale but is weightier than gold.”
“And what is that?” asked Labienus.
“Honor,” I said.

- Vagabonds of Gor, Book 24, Page 305.

Which brings us back to the Warrior Code. I trust you are with me so far. The Warrior code works on the principle of a universal “knowing” of the difference between right and wrong – but more to the point, on the stregnth required to make the right choice. That, in essense, is all the code really is about. Courage to do the right thing. Courage to die for what you stand for, if it comes down to it. This is what defines a Warrior. There is an insightful truth I am reminded of: It takes far more courage to face an enemy within than it does to face a foe on the outside. The greater Warrior is the one who fights his inner demons. When you conquer what is within you, you naturally conquer what surrounds you.
A few years ago, I read Don Juan, the Yaqui Shaman, speak of a method of self-Mastery. To quote:

There are four steps to learning the Warrior Code:
1. Ruthlessness.
2. Cunning.
3. Patience.
4. Sweetness.

Ruthlessness should not be harshness. Cunning should not be cruelty.
Patience should not be negligence. Sweetness should not be foolishness.
These four steps have to be practiced and perfected until they are so
smooth they are unnoticable.

Ample introspection into those four steps (as well as the cautions) were incredibly revealing for me. Simply put, these four keys – or steps – exist as weapons against our self-delusions. For example, one must be ruthless with their sense of romanticism, because often it is mixed with a mass of half-lies. Romanticism on its own can be effective, but sometimes it can cause more harm than good. Often, when people make the wrong choices, they romanticise their reasons for the choice to fool themselves into feeling satisfied. This is where ruthlessness is necessary – alongside the other steps. So, in effect, one could say that the four steps of the warrior code exist to patiently wade through every lie we ever told ourselves when we made a wrong choice in our lives. And perhaps it was these lies that first created our “demons”.

Which inevitably leads me to mention a pivotal component in self-Mastery for a warrior, even a man. I brought this up once before, but not in connection to this fuller context. I first found this analogy in the Introduction to Thomas Cleary’s translation of the Art of War. I’ll quote:

According to an old story, a lord of ancient China once asked his physician, a member of a family of healers, which of them was the most skilled in the art.

The physician, whose reputation was such that his name became synonymous with medical science in China, replied, “My eldest brother sees the spirit of sickness and removes it before it takes shape, so
his name does not get out of the house.

“My elder brother cures sickness when it is still extremely minute, so his name does not get out of the neighborhood.

“As for me, I puncture veins, prescribe potions, and massage skin, so from time to time my name gets out and is heard among the lords.”

Among the tales of ancient China, none captures more beautifully than this the essence of The Art of War, the premiere classic of the science of strategy in conflict. A Ming dynasty critic writes of this little
tale of the physician: “What is essential for leaders, generals, and ministers in running countries and governing armies is no more than this.”

The healing arts and the martial arts may be a world apart in ordinary usage, but they are parallel in several senses: in recognizing, as the story says, that the less needed the better; in the sense that both
involve strategy in dealing with disharmony; and in the sense that in both knowledge of the problem is key to the solution.

As in the story of the ancient healers, in Sun Tzu’s philosophy the peak efficiency of knowledge and strategy is to make conflict altogether unnecessary: “To overcome others’ armies without fighting is
the best of skills.” And like the story of the healers, Sun Tzu explains there are all grades of martial arts: The superior militarist foils enemies’ plots; next best is to ruin their alliances; next after that is to attack their armed forces; worst is to besiege their cities.

Just as the eldest brother in the story was unknown because of his acumen and the middle brother was hardly known because of his alacrity, Sun Tzu also affirms that in ancient times those known as skilled
warriors won when victory was still easy, so the victories of skilled warriors were not known for cunning or rewarded for bravery.

This ideal strategy whereby one could win without fighting, accomplish the most by doing the least, bears the characteristic stamp of Taoism, the ancient tradition of knowledge that fostered both the healing arts and the martial arts in China. The Tao-te Ching, or The Way and Its Power, applies the same strategy to society that Sun Tzu attributes to warriors of ancient times:

Plan for what is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is small. The most difficult things in the world must be done while they are still easy, the greatest things in the world must be done while they are still small. For this reason sages never do what is great, and this is why they can achieve that greatness.

The warrior is the same. The most famous generals we know of are cited throughout history for the great battles they fought and won, with incredible skill. Yet the greatest generals are the ones who, with such refinement of their art, prevented the battle from ever taking place. And because of this, we will rarely hear of them.

But the real insight comes in applying this to the warrior’s inner battle. Self-Mastery and its refinement really begins to take meaning here. It is this principle that leads to the saying,

“While the sword is in its sheath it’s doing its work. When the sword is drawn, it has already failed.”

A little introspection begins to make it very clear that the very meaning of the word warrior is transient in any manner that it is used. After all, when we take these principles and apply it into a personal lifestyle, the nature of the warrior undoubtably follows. It is this very applicability that makes it work. So, to return to the point, the Mastery of war essentially lies in preventing it. Any other alternative is a lesser kind. This makes sense, yes?

There is an aspect of refinement and introspection here that leads, without doubt, to one end: into becoming a better man. And the exhuberant clarity of it begins to dawn, that the Warrior Code we all seem to have as our genetic makeup, is nothing more but the integrity of the Gods being reflected in our being.

Yet another week has gone by, and the madness that is the never ending festival season continues.

First off the block, Editor is super excited about the fact that Bondi’s favourite rockers Cog have announced a national tour, happening around the end of May/beginning of June. Melbournites can expect two nights of goodness at the Hi-Fi Bar (at this point in time, it’s 18+ only) in what has been a long break between gigs for the band, who, not counting the national Big Day Out tour, were last here in November.

Eddy Current Supression Ring, who you may have heard talking to the amazing Beck Lewis (aka New and Approved’s Executive Producer) a few weeks ago, have continued their successful run by taking home the prestigious Australian Music Prize. Following in the footsteps of previous winners, The Mess Hall, ECSR are looking to invest the fairly hefty prize-cheque into some studio space.

For a band who aren’t all too serious about what they do, they sure are attracting some serious interest – they were up against the likes of The Drones, Cut Copy, Beaches and The Presets.

Speaking of The Presets, for their upcoming May/June tour, Melbourne and Sydney have sold out on presales alone. However, the boys have announced another night – Wednesday May 20th. So if you want to catch them for the last time in 2009 (that is, if you didn’t catch them at least seven times in 2008) – here’s your chance!

A match made in heaven or just plain scary? 50 Cent and Fall Out Boy have joined forces to tour the US.

Something that will bring the Music department at SYN close to heaven is the news that The Flaming Lips are coming to Australia. With dates scheduled scandulously close to Splendour in the Grass, let’s just say that speculation for the headling slot is high. Rejoice!

It may be that one has to travel to Bendigo for this, but Groovin’ The Moo have added more names to the already star studded line up. Personal favourites of Editor, Mammal and Children Collide will join The Living End and The Grates for the annual festival.

Remember Matt & Kim? Former Music Director Jon King adored them so much, they secured the coveted Album of the Week slot mid last year, with little to no contention for that week in particular. They’re bringing the party to Melbourne during May, playing at the Evelyn Hotel.

God bless Brian Eno! The man curating the inaugural Luminous Festival, held May/June at the Sydney Opera House is bringing the likes of Battles, Reggie Watts and Ladytron back to Australia. Fingers and toes crossed for sideshows!

This week on SYN, N&A spends a little verbal time with TZU, Grafton Primary, Sia, Tiki Taane and V Festival drawcards Elbow.

The Hoist gets cosy with The Happy Endings, McKisko, Riding on Buses, Rook and Roger That.

1700 has a shiny week ahead, also playing host to Riding on Buses and Rook,  as well as Perfect Reason and And I Swear It’s The Last Time.

Don’t forget – The annual Moonee Valley Youth Festival is but two weeks away, held at Queens Park, Moonee Ponds on Sunday April 5th. SYN is a proud partner of the event, so if you can’t make it, stay tuned to 1700 and The Hoist over the period following the festival for interviews and the like.

Earth Hour is also just around the corner – this coming Saturday, actually. Earth Hour encourages everyone to conserve electrivity by turning your lights off for an hour that evening. SYN will most likely be on board for that – there aren’t may punters hanging around the offices on Saturday evening, so we are possibly continually doing our part.

Editor wishes you all a safe, fun filled week of gigs and associated madness – and if you’re going to the Epidemic Music Festival on Saturday, to drop by the SYN stall and say hi!

Dupa indelungi negocieri in privinta salariului meu cu cei de la WordPress, am luat decizia(inteleapta) de a o lua pe cont propriu. Totusi ne-am separat destinele printr-o calduroasa strangere de mana si ganduri pozitive.

Ei bine, nu o mai lungesc si anunt ca in curand (cateva zile), sper ca voi putea sa ma mut la noua mea “casa”, www.tzu.ro cu ajutorul bunului meu prieten si camarad de atatia ani (da, sunt lingusitor), Cristi, care momentan imi cara mobila singur ca eu nu stiu cum se cara mobila.

www.tzu.ro

‘GOOD TIMES’

2009 Playground Weekender Highlights
By Soul Of Sydney

http://www.soulofsydney.wordpress.com

e-mail: soulofsydney@gmail.com

Music Used:

Chic – Good Times
Richie Haven- Going Back To My Roots
The Source & Candy Staton- You Got The Love

Links:

Playground Weekender Clip @ youtube
Our House Classics 101 Channel @ youtube
Join the : ‘Felt The ♥ @ PLAYGROUND WEEKENDER 2009′ Facebook Group :

Also Can you please pass this on to anyone you notice in the videos or whoever you think might find this entertaining.

Cheers

Video Details:

Location: Del Rio, Riverside Resort, Wiseman’s Ferry

Event: Playground Weekender 2009

Artists: Primal Scream, The Streets, Cold War Kids, Crystal Castles, Blue King Brown, Salmonella Dub, Grafton Primary, Nic Fanculi, Ashley Beedle, Norman Jay, Whomadewho, TZU, Jose Gonzalez, Lyrics Born, Alice Russell, Crazy Penis, Edu K, Watussi, The Ray Mann Three, SPOD, Pomomofo, Peabody, The Dolly Rocker Movement, D.I.G (Directions in Groove), Ewan Pearson, Todd Terje, Tom Middleton, Jimpster, Paper Scissors, Mark De Clive-Lowe, Pomomofo, Russ Dewbury,Wow

Now is the time to acquaint yourself with Saul Alinsky’s tactics.  Just as modern warriors profit from reading Sun Tzu’s  “The Art of War”,  conservatives should study Alinsky’s 1971 book, “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.”

Phyllis Schlafly has a useful synopsis of the methods here:

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=318470857908277

Liberals have longed used a version of Alinsky’s plan, by making whatever they want “for the children”,  and more recently,  “for the environment.”    They have vast practice in acquiring power and using it by claiming to be advocates for a victim group.  Their appeal is based on emotion, not reason, because that’s a much easier sell, and the instant people apply logic to their mantras,  they collapse.

“Know your enemy”  is always sound advice.

Some things I’ve been up to since I last remembered to update…and with my memory, I bet I’ll forget about a bunch of things:

- Hung out with my friend Anni from Albury-Wodonga. I’ve known Anni longer than I’ve known most people, yet we’ve only actually seen each other in person twice. We (plus her boyfriend Dan) hung around Hyde Park a bit before they had to head back to the airport.

- Went to Drazen’s Slava which was…uncomfortable. I really dislike his parents and the people they know. Jasmina, Nikola and I left soon after, hung around Black Rose for a while before Nikola had to go to work, then Jasmina and I went to her place and watched Family Guy for a while.

- Hung around a park near my house in the early hours of the day a few times.

- Hung out with Morgan in Hyde Park & went to Big Day Out with Morgan, Mark and Nina (and some of their friends), which was a lot of fun, minus the intense heat. We saw bits and pieces of Tzu, The Grates, Lupe Fiasco, The Ting Tings and some band inside Lilyworld, but the bands we actually saw were Pendulum, Simian Mobile Disco, Hot Chip and The Prodigy. Pendulum and Hot Chip were both really good but Simian Mobile Disco and The Prodigy were fucking amazing!!! During The Prodigy someone broke a giant glow-stick in half and started pouring it all over everyone…for like a minute it was the most fun thing ever but then it started to burn our skin and we had to frantically look around for water to wash it off. I sustained many little injuries on the day…some of which I’m still recovering from, a week later! But it was a really good day and I don’t even mind that we missed Neil Young, because The Prodigy were so insanely good and perfect for how I was feeling.

- Saw The Prodigy at the Hordern Pavilion with Jasmina, Nikola and Nenad which was once again, totally fucking amazing. I could actually focus on the music this time which was great. They are just….so, so, so good! I got a sweet Prodigy bag! At the end, as the crowd was leaving one of the songs playing was that Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You song and everyone was singing along. It was pretty great! Also, The Prodigy ended with Out of Space and cut off the sound right at the end to leave just the crowd singing! Was awesome.

- Spent three consecutive days in The Ghetto. Day 1 was spent hanging around Liverpool with Jasmina and Nikola, then playing pool in Bonnyrigg (and being patriotic because it was the Bonnyrigg Serbian Club!), then after Nikola went to work, going to my place to eat, then back to Liverpool where we hung out with Nenad, Drazen and Milan (Nenad’s brother) in Memorial Avenue…then Drazen went home and we went up to Nenad’s to watch Resident Evil & How I Met Your Mother.  Day 2 was Nenad’s Slava which was mostly just a lot of hanging around Nenad’s room looking up hilarious, horrible ‘music’ video clips from Former Yugoslavia. So bad yet so fucking funny! And completely, completely inappropriate. Day 3 was Nenad’s 20^th birthday. We spent the night drinking at his place (well…I wasn’t drinking but I was so sober, I felt completely out of it!) which was a lot of fun until someone who shall not be named got too drunk and too loud and we got kicked out of the apartment by Nenad’s scary mother. But before that happened, lots of all-male nudity and bonding managed to happen… (More photos here.)