See, the truth is that

Art finds harmonic resonance in others.

Colors and shapes, reminders of memories,

Sounds that find sympathy

In hearts and minds,

Expanding consciousness,

Pricks the soul,

Brings transcendence.

NBS

BRG

12/19/21

Spirit, if there is a God,

Chi, the Buddha nature,

Allah, the great exhalation,

Tao, sans explanation,

Prana, taken down to India,

Brahman, the spirit of the worlds invisible form,

Some say the universe’s core,

The foundation of life and conscious awareness.

The mind reels in this realization

That what we feel, and even our thoughts,

Are the stuff that dreams are made of.

Cosmic vibrations emanate, listen to the music of the spheres,

And in the center is found Love.

It rather settles like a cloud,

It resides in many, each heart cursed,

Damaged, reacting from trauma,

The damage of the soul-shocking

Ignorance and hatred,

The bitterness, the frustration

That moves from one to another,

Spreads like a contagion.

 

Love resists it,

Courage opposes it,

Spiritual strength walls it off,

Teamwork overcomes it,

Death, sickness, plague, disease spreads from it.

 

NBS

BRG

11/16/21

Ecology is infinitely mixed.

Society is infinitely blended.

The Universe has no dividing line.

Biology is all one complex of

Cells, organisms, viruses, and bacteria,

A food web of life, continuously flowing together.

Human society flows together, nations,

Classes, ages, genders, religions,

All mixing in beautiful diversity,

Workers, families, and communities,

Not truly separated or divided

Across borders, natural boundaries,

Empires come and go like shifting sands.

Planets orbit around suns,

Moons, asteroids, comets,

Light bounces around galaxies,

Over time and distance,

One vast crucible

Ever-changing, whirling,

Expanding multi-dimensional machine.

NBS

MLH

11/9/21

Ah the Environment…

Bane to all real estate developers.

“You’re costing lots of jobs,”

They say,

But what they mean is ‘You’re costing me money!”

Same with oil drillers, mines of all kinds,

Plastics manufacturers,

People complaining about noise from diesel engines,

Air pollution causing childhood asthma,

‘There go those tree huggers again’.

Imagine that, caring about non-human lives

As if 8 billion wasn’t enough,

As if species extinction is acceptable collateral damage,

As if my becoming wealthy is not as important as

Rain forests producing oxygen so that

Organisms can breathe.

NBS

BRG

11-7-21

All religions start from a premise: There is a spiritual dimension to the world.

All religions touch on God, and the spiritual world. Modern science doesn’t recognize its existence. Spirit – what is it? Is it Dark Energy or dark matter? Prana as in India? Chi as in China? Consciousness?

Each religion formulates its own definitions and descriptions of the spiritual world. In India, Brahman is the “One without a second”, ergo it has no opposite.  The same can be said of the Tao in China. The first line of Lao-Tse’s Tao Te Ching says, ‘The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao’. That which has no opposites cannot be defined or described in words. Words are categorized in concepts that have opposites.  But the Tao or Brahman, the one without a second, since it is all-encompassing, has no opposite.

The same might be said of the idea of God.  If God is the creator of the Universe, then this idea becomes all-encompassing and beyond definition/description. One can say that Tao and God are omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Having said this, this is an aspect of the spiritual world. Allah, Brahman, Jehovah, Ahura-Mazda, The Great Spirit, Wakan-Tanka, Buddha nature, and many others around the world and down through time have represented this spiritual reality.

Many cultures have more sophisticated understandings of the spiritual world. This comes from a greater focus on this aspect of consciousness or Mind. In the Western world this is the Age of Reason, and indeed science and technology follow from reason. However, if reason is seen as the be all and end all, it becomes limited. Spirituality cannot be scientifically identified yet, and so many scientists allocate spirituality to the realm of fantasy. This takes a large part of human history and culture and renders it useless. Consider Lao-Tse’s admonition, “When the Tao is cherished, galloping horses fertilize the fields. When the Great Tao is lost, war horses breed in the suburbs.”

When the human spirit is thus diminished drug addiction, crime, human trafficking and all aspects of human society that indicate corruption grow. Thus, while some religions may bear the marks of corruption, and certainly some do exemplify greed, lust, and the rest of the seven deadly sins, to have no religion at all denies the spiritual strength that is necessary to resist corruption. Therefore, a religion that supports spirituality is needed that can incorporate modern science and reason without conflicting with reason. The world is ripe for such a religion, as there is a huge void without it.

This indicates that a prophet may come, and possibly a false prophet too to exploit this void. Perhaps the false prophet comes first, to exploit the human need. This is very dangerous to the world. Thus, a true prophet is needed, and soon. Expect it sooner or later.

CO2 is cumulative. Every year adds to the preceding total

• The history of CO2 buildup goes back to the beginning of industrialization, roughly the invention of the steam engine in 1769.

• While many countries have been industrializing for centuries, the G20 for example, more recent industrializing countries are much less mechanized now. 

• As a result, the industrialized nations have contributed most to CO2 buildup. They have benefitted most from industrialization, whereas less industrialized countries have contributed much less, and have benefitted less. 

• Thus, the less industrialized nations feel that they are treated unfairly by being asked to reduce CO2 emissions at this early stage of their growth and development.

• This is China’s argument for why they should not have to reduce CO2 emissions so much.

• This equity question would be valid in most circumstances, but in this climate crisis, it is technical fixes that are most needed, and everyone needs them as much as possible and as soon as possible. Otherwise, all countries will suffer.

• Reducing energy consumption, particularly of fossil fuels, is needed as broadly as possible.

• Energy conservation is still not embraced globally for the same reasons as above. What gives the modern era its appeal is the consumption of energy and material resources.

• That combined with rising populations makes for a global crisis that if ignored will lead to unprecedented disaster.

Logic. Decision trees. Computers

Mimic the workings of the mind.

Switching logic. Phone circuits.

Gate arrays.  EPROMs.

The inverse of the converse is the contrapositive.

There.  Doesn’t that just explain everything.

Nietzsche said it. “God is dead.,”

Marx wrote it.” The opiate of the masses.”

Reason.  So limited.

Without intuition, reason makes us all amputees.

NBS

MLH

10/17/21

Love is not a flashlight, to be turned on and off.

You cannot simply choose whom to love.

The magic, the chemistry transcend the voluntary.

Love is more like a swimming pool. You can dive in and feel the softness of the fluid,

Swim, hold your breath, but eventually you have to breathe..

Love is not a curtain to hide behind,

Nor is it a window to see through,

Or a door to walk through.

Love is a hot shower.

It is a trip to the Louvre.

It is dessert, and the appetizer,

And the main course.

Love is a set of springs in your heart,

To keep the blood circulating.

Love is a sea serpent,

Swimming in the anonymous depths.

NBS

MLH

10/17/2

In the 3^rd grade my parents sent me to the Polytechnic School in Pasadena. It had been a prep school for Caltech. I went there from 3^rd grade through tenth grade, leaving when my family moved to the redwoods in Northern California. In the seventh grade, at the age of 12, a new student came to school, Stuart. Stuart’s father was a geologist with a Ph.D. from Caltech. He would later go on to harness the geothermal energy of Northern California and is considered by some to be the father of geothermal energy. Union Oil would make him their VP of new energy sources.

At Polytechnic, in 8^th grade, one had to give a speech as part of a contest. Mine was about the Mexican-American War. Stuart’s was about the Santa Barbara oil spill. For which Union Oil was responsible. Stu was tall, athletic, articulate, and handsome. He won the contest, providing a forceful defense of Union Oil.

Both Stuart and I attended UC Berkeley after graduating high school. During that first quarter I had a profound spiritual experience, something called nirvikalpa in India, sort of the ultimate spiritual experience. I needed time away from academia and took the next 18 months off, traveling and working up and down the West Coast.

I finally decided to become a writer. I transferred from UC Berkeley down to UC Santa Barbara and entered the College of Creative Studies. I had written much poetry in the intervening months, a kind of surprise talent, mostly inspired by my spiritual experience.

However, the College of Creative Studies turned out to be unhelpful to me and so I transferred into the Environmental Studies program at UCSB. It was a very peaceful place, it allowed me to pursue many different academic disciplines as was my wish, and it allowed me to still focus on writing. Here I had rediscovered an academic path that truly interested me.

The head of the department was an old classmate of Stu’s father at CalTech. The genesis of the program was the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969. In fact, the Santa Barbara oil spill was one of the primary causes of the National Environmental Policy Act and led to the creation of the EPA. The very subject of my best friend’s Stu’s 8^th grade speech contest, turned on its head.

I had a vision about that time, at the age of 20. I ‘saw’ in the future a train that would be solar-powered and that would save energy. In 1980 I graduated having written a thesis on solar energy in California. For family reasons I moved back to the redwoods and spent the next ten years working on water quality issues.

In 1988 I ran for Congress in the Democratic primary to oppose drilling for oil off the Northern California coast. Two years later I began working for a solar company in Santa Rosa. That year I began working on electric cars.

Within two years we were the largest manufacturer of electric cars in the world. All that happened since, Tesla, the major car makers going electric, were subsequent to our efforts.

Having become VP of Marketing and Engineering, I moved on to commercializing advanced high efficiency electric motors. The company was founded by a South Korean genius, but who had real difficulties running the company.

One day we received a call from a Dr. Dearien from the US Department of Energy, looking for better motors. I soon traveled to Idaho to meet with him and his team. He was leading an effort called CyberTran, short for Cybernetic Transportation.

CyberTran is a concept in which many smaller rail vehicles, about 5 tons each instead of the usual 20-50 tons, operate on-demand and direct-to-destination by virtue of computer control. One of the main advantages is the drop in the cost of construction.  The other is a whole new network of computerized rail vehicles, more convenient, less expensive, smaller, quieter, and using less energy.

Within two years I had helped CyberTran raise funds from the government and build a test track in the San Francisco Bay area, on the island of Alameda. One day I suggested to John that we could run CyberTran on solar energy.  He didn’t think much of the idea. But when a director of the regional rail system, BART, asked the same question, John answered, ‘Neil’s looking into that.’

Within five years unfortunately, Dr. Dearien passed away from cancer. I took over the position of company President and we pressed forward, slowly, but without giving up. The next year we were nominated for the World Clean Energy Awards.

I went to New York City to attend the awards banquet. We didn’t win but I had the chance to meet the judges, one of whom was a German scientist named Ernst Von Weisacker, the author of a book called Factor Four, a book dealing with world energy consumption and included a section extolling the virtues of CyberTran.

Some months later I received an invitation to a conference on the environment, to be held in Santa Barbara and featuring Ernst Von Weisacker. The environment, Santa Barbara, and Von Weisacker was too stunning of a combination for me to pass up.

Now I must digress seemingly, to the subject of my spiritual experience, my nirvikalpa. The effects were extraordinary on me. My mental perception seemed to have expanded.  Poetry was coming to me spontaneously.

While in a metaphysical book store a month after it happened, a found a book called Kundalini Yoga by Gopi Krishna. This described his nirvikalpa and it was essentially the identical experience I had. I read voraciously as he explained the ancient Hindu theories of kundalini, its activation, it as a source of genius and prophecy, and on.

In it he mentioned a German scientist he described as the “scientist of the future”, one Dr. Carl von Weisacker. Apparently, this was someone he had become acquainted with in Zurich. Krishna believed that kundalini was the source of genius and inspiration that would save us all from catastrophe. Krishna also began to write poetry spontaneously, as I had done.

So there I am in New York City at the World Clean Energy Awards, coming to the realization that my vision of many years ago, the solar train, was CyberTran. Of course I went to the conference in Santa Barbara where I had a chance to speak with Ernst von Weisacker. I had to ask him, “Are you by any chance related to the Carl von Weisacker that Gopi Krishna wrote about?”  I asked him in a quiet moment.

“He was my father.”  The circle of irony was now complete. Energy, my best friend growing up, the head of my department in college, the Santa Barbara oil spill, my spiritual experience and vision – it was all connected!!! Connected by Ernst von Weisacker and Gopi Krishna, and ultimately by me, for I was the interconnection to all these pieces. They all intersected with my life. CyberTran and kundalini, and the environment, and energy.

Neil B Sinclair

MLH

10/12/21