Michael Prescott's Blog

Milestone reached!

Well, it happened. I’ve been watching the comments total for a while, and today we hit the magic number of 50,000.

Fifty. Thousand.

Woohoo! Let the celebrations begin!

Given the frequency of his appearances here, it’s appropriate that comment #50,000 was posted by Art. Here it is:

I made a "D" in political science 101 in college. That pretty much describes my interest in politics over my entire life. I was an Animal Science/Agriculture major in college and when I finally started taking courses in my major my GPA shot up and I actually made the Dean's list for a couple of quarters. I have family who are endlessly fascinated by politics and they shame me into voting but I do it for them, not for me. Me? I could care less. Politics to me is sort of like a pendulum and swings back and forth and is just something I have to put up with? I was born mid 20th century during the Eisenhower administration and since that time have lived and managed to survive under all flavors of politics. People tell me all kinds of stuff about how it's going to affect my life but so far? Not so much. It doesn't seem to be any worse now than it was when I was growing up, especially during the 1960s when people were getting shot and they made us duck under our desks to save us from Atom bombs? Heck I even remember the Cuban missile crisis and how freaked out people were about that? And Vietnam was even more bizarre. The Universe seems to have a never ending smorgasbord of separation for us to experience in this life and I don't expect it to ever be "peace and love" in this life? Like my mom used to say to me sometimes, "life ain't a bowl of cherries you know kiddo!"

I certainly never expected that this humble blog would draw this much commentary when I started it two decades ago. So, for all those, past and present, who contributed to this total: 

 

Politics etc.

I'm not interested in arguing the details. All I know is that several swing states stopped counting votes around midnight on Election Night, and when they resumed, Joe Biden enjoyed a remarkable surge of votes.

I also know that in some precincts, huge numbers of ballots were delivered in the middle of the night, during the vote-counting hiatus, that had no races filled out except the presidency – 100% for Joe Biden. This happened in Philadelphia and possibly other places.

Do I think the election was stolen? Yes, I do.

Biden left his house only (approximately) one out of every three days, attended "events" that consisted of a handful of media people listening to him read off a Teleprompter (very badly), and yet somehow managed to defeat an incumbent president with a huge base of support, a president who attracted more support and more votes, including minority support, than he did in 2016?

I don't buy it.

Perhaps this is just personal bias on my part. 

Nevertheless, I will never buy it. And that's that.

Readers are free to argue about it, if they wish. For the record, here is what I think:

The election was rigged. Moreover, it is likely that all future elections will be rigged. Your vote doesn't matter. The outcome has already been decided. This election was a sham, as it has been in Venezuela and other dictatorships. We have become an oligarchy of rule-by-billionaires. Yes, Trump is a billionaire (or at least he says he is) – but he is a rebel. The other billionaires, such as the software billionaires who are be running things at this point, have no populist instincts and are interested only in squashing the will of the people in order to enforce their own agenda at any cost. We have seen this in the attempts by Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to silence any criticism of the status quo.

The United States of America has entered a post-representative period in its history. In our case, Caesar was able to cross the Rubicon without anyone particularly noticing, thanks in large part to a willfully compliant national media, which certainly includes the highly overrated Fox News. From this point forward, elections will be entirely meaningless. The results will be determined in advance by the powers that be. Voting is no more than a ritualistic act intended to reassure the hoc polloi that their "voice" still counts. It does not.

I do not recommend voting in any future election whatsoever, except possibly local elections, which may (possibly)  not be rigged.

Basically, I would opt out of the political system at this point. This is what I intend to do. I'm no longer interested in politics, nor do I plan to engage in political controversies. I recognize that my opinion and my persuasive efforts are completely useless. We do not live in a country where the individual's opinion counts.

I'm not saying this merely because Trump lost. There were many negatives about the Trump presidency, not least his narcissistic and obsessive use of Twitter. But I think it should be obvious to any reasonable observer that Trump, whatever his (many) defects, was infinitely more popular than Biden, a dementia-addled candidate who was unable to hit the campaign trail two-thirds of the time.

Where we are now, I think, is in the Augustinian phase of Roman history. Augustus, as you may know, took over the leadership of Rome after the Republic collapsed. He permitted a fairly wide latitude in freedom of speech, and he continued the old forms of the Senate and consuls, but in fact he devised a new and quite practical method of leadership from the top down. He was a genius, which distinguishes him from the idiots who profess to know how to handle our political system going forward. The system authored by Augustus lasted for more than 400 years. I very much doubt that the system authored by Kamala Harris and AOC will last for even one-quarter of that time.

The $64,000 question is whether the 70 or 80 million people (who knows how many there really were?) who voted for Trump will accept this "new normal" or will eventually rebel. They are showing no signs of rebellion so far. I admit that this surprises me. I thought that under the circumstances, civil unrest would be much more widespread. I anticipated the kind of violence from the right that we have seen from the left (Antifa, Black Lives Matter) over the past eight months. Then again, I thought civil unrest would be ignited by the ridiculous demands to shut down businesses and wear masks in the face of a "pandemic" that is no more serious than the Asian flu or the Hong Kong flu. I was wrong about that; so apparently the American public, in general, is willing to conform to any level of authoritarian demands, no matter how unsupportable and absurd. And the same goes for our vaunted law enforcement officers, who have disgraced themselves by enforcing these ridiculous regulations, and who no longer deserve our support, even as Antifa and BLM target them for destruction. Let them be defunded and destroyed. 

To be completely honest, I now support Antifa. Their objective is to "burn down "America. I don't see a problem with this. I would rather see us die quickly than in a long, drawn-out, pointless death. There is dignity in national suicide. There is no dignity in the path we're on now. 

In any event, the worrisome complacency of Trump supporters may change as the new reality dawns on them that their votes are of no value. Right now, many of them continue to believe, naïvely, that they can still influence the outcome of elections by voting for the candidate they prefer. This faith will be tested and eventually broken in subsequent elections, probably starting with the two Georgia runoff elections for U.S. Senate. Then the question will be: How will the Trump supporters (i.e., the populist American right) react? Will they accept the road to serfdom, or will they rise up in blind, inchoate rebellion?

On this pivot point turns the future of our erstwhile "democracy." The alternatives seem to be a) willful acquiescence in a "soft" dictatorship of the tech elites or b) an effort at secession that may or may not succeed.

As far as the second option is concerned, I recommend the book American Secession by FH Buckley. This surprisingly levelheaded book presents a number of arguments for secession before ultimately (spoiler alert!) deciding against it. Buckley is a Canadian professor with a longtime interest in American history. His opinions are intelligent, well reasoned, and supported by copious historical evidence and contemporary data. Personally, I think he makes such a good case for secession that his last-minute conversion to a "unionist" standpoint is less than persuasive.

For me personally, I will say that I think some form of secession is the only hope left for preserving any form of freedom on the North American continent. But it is unlikely. We will simply march like lemmings into our 1984-style future. Or is it Brave New World?

I am, by the way, fully aware that by expressing such highly charged political opinions on this blog I will alienate people who don't share those opinions. However, I did not start this blog twenty years ago, when I was a mere lad of forty, in order to cultivate popularity. In fact, it never occurred to me that anybody would be interested in my nattering opinions. So whatever happens, happens.

I am a loudmouthed asshole, and I intend to continue being a loudmouth asshole, the matter what it costs me. Take it or leave it.

Record check

When mediums produce strongly evidential information under conditions designed to prevent cheating, three explanations are commonly given. The first is that the medium is actually in touch with the postmortem consciousness of the deceased "communicator," who continues to exist and function in an afterlife environment. The second is that the medium is using ESP (or psi) to read the minds of the sitters, or a more robust form of ESP, sometimes called super-ESP (or super-psi), to read the minds of distant strangers, clairvoyantly access hidden documents, etc. The third explanation is that the medium is accessing the Akashic Records.

What are these records? According to certain strains of mystical lore, probably originating with Madame Blavatsky's theosophy movement, the Akashic Records consist of the total life experience of every embodied being throughout all of history. The records, which might be visualized as books or computer files, can supposedly be accessed by people with sufficiently powerful psychic talents. The idea is that the medium, rather than getting in touch with a discarnate personality that still functions on another plane, is absorbing the information from these records and then presenting it as if it came from the deceased person directly.

If this interpretation is correct, then it could be argued that all the evidence that comes from mediums, no matter how accurate and convincing it may seem, really does nothing to advance the hypothesis that human beings survive death. All that survives, it could be said, is a complete record of their experiences, but the unique self-aware ego – the personal "I" – has been extinguished. This line of thinking is somewhat popular among people who embrace a spiritual dimension but are not too keen on personal survival.

What I want to question is whether there is necessarily any conflict between the idea of the Akashic Records and the idea of personal survival. This point has been brought up before, as I recall, by Matt Rouge in comments on this blog. But it's worth a post of its own.

First let me explain my view of the personal self. The easiest approach is via an analogy involving light and refraction.

Imagine a beam of pure white light that passes through a prism. The prism refracts the light into a variety of colors. Now, let's say the pure white light is the universal consciousness that is the ground of being, the sine qua non of all existence. Just as pure white light contains all other colors as potentials, universal consciousness contains all varieties of individuated consciousness and potential form. But that potential is not actualized without the prism. Only when consciousness passes through the prism is the rainbow of colors brought out. 

(Another possible analogy is a beam of laser light passing through a holographic plate and bringing out the three-dimensional image encoded in the plate. But I think the prism is simpler.) 

For purposes of my analogy, let's say there are countless prisms, each of which is different from any of the others. When the light of consciousness passes through any of them, it produces a unique pattern.  To reverse the motto on our currency,  e pluribus unum, it's a case of "out of one – many."

But what is this prism? It's the whole constellation or matrix of experiences, thoughts, feelings, memories, and other subjective content connected with any particular embodied existence. This is why every prism is different from all the rest. Each is built up out of a unique set of experiences and responses.

The prism, then, is just like one of the books or computer files in the Akashic Records. It is a complete record of all the experiences and attendant mental states that make up a particular life. And in this sense, I think the Akashic Records do exist. It is irrelevant whether we think of them existing in some library somewhere or floating around in space or whatever. Conventional concepts of space and location are probably inapplicable to higher planes of reality anyway. The bottom line is that the complete dossier on each one of us that mediums are said to access, according to the Akashic Records hypothesis, is probably very real.

Even so, it does not follow that postmortem survival is not real. In fact, I think the opposite conclusion is implied.

What, after all, is the self, the personal consciousness or personality or ego or "I"  that would survive death? It is the interaction of the pure light of consciousness with a specific prism. All that is required for the personality to exist and function is a)  a matrix of experiences that defines that particular personality and makes it unique from all others, and b) pure consciousness focused on this matrix.

As long as the matrix exists, the person with whom it is associated will also exist – at least if universal consciousness continues to interact with the matrix. And if universal consciousness is the ground of being, it must continue to interact with the matrix, because it interacts with everything. Anything outside of universal consciousness would be outside of existence altogether; it would not be a thing at all; it would not exist.

In short, it  is perfectly possible to combine the idea of the Akashic Records with the idea of personal survival. Moreover, it is  difficult, perhaps impossible, to separate the two. As long as the matrix of one's life experience exists, then it must be bathed in the pure light of consciousness that perfuses everything, and so the individual personality must continue.

Now, it could be argued that  the whole idea of a record of one's life – a matrix – surviving after death is mistaken. We might think that this matrix just crumbles away once physical life is over. In that case there would be no Akashic Records and no postmortem survival, and the only explanation for evidential mediumship, other than fraud, would be super-ESP.

I find this alternative unlikely. The destruction of the information matrix would seem to be possible only in the context of linear time, because only in linear time do you have beginnings and endings (creation and destruction). While the matrix is certainly built up over the course of a lifetime in linear time, there is little likelihood that the matrix as such exists only in linear time. It is far more plausible that it is stored in some extracerebral fashion, which would place it outside the physical plane and therefore, presumably, outside of time and space as we understand them.

If this is not true, then we are left with the difficult task of explaining many documented cases that strongly suggest extracerebral consciousness, such as near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, epiphanies of cosmic consciousness, past-life recall, and savant syndrome. 

To sum up, I think the likeliest scenario is one in which a nonphysical matrix of information, constructed over the course of a lifetime of experience, persists after physical death. Universal consciousness, which itself is egoless and impersonal, acquires the characteristics of ego and personality when it is refracted and individualized by this matrix. The intersection of the thoughts and memories that make up a unique mindset on the one hand and the vivifying power of pure consciousness on the other is what produces the individual self.