In the East, everything other than “Self” - seen from personal perspective as unexplainable - is called “That” although it still remains difficult to define the boundaries of individuality any more specifically than as a fragment of “That” moving through time/space until awareness ceases. Anything inferred beyond this is either imagination, speculation or belief, though there does appear  to be some kind of hierarchical order at work that pervades everything.

Sentience, construed as a state of subjectivity, emerges from oblivion. If there is a continuity beyond consciousness or unconsciousness, perhaps it’s just another tier of that same awareness, only partially revealed, making it difficult to articulate anything that remains unseen using language. Here is where Art and Myth in all its forms reflect its creators’ vision of the relationship between “Self” and “That”, illuminating philosophy.

Consciousness, can also be analogized to a super saturated solution created by dissolving large amounts of a substance such as sugar into water as it is heated in a test tube over a Bunsen burner. Add a substrate and at a calculable moment it will suddenly crystallize into a solid, a symbol of elevated state realized in an instantaneous moment when surrounded by chaos.

The significance of any experience, as with a chemical solution, depends on what is remembered from the unconscious as it awakens, revealing congregations of circumstances interacting with individual lives, each representing alternate realities of each other - a notion usually relegated to  literature and science fiction that portrays one step beyond the real yet close enough to it to perceive imaginative variations of what is separated by a translucent barrier.

The controversy over sentience is not about its existence, but to what degree it is containable by other organisms, given a series of conditions, proposing that if any manifested form can evolve some kind of awareness, then it should be treated as if it has the potential to be self-aware, given time and experience.

The Hat Of Duns Scotus is an invention attributed to John Duns Scotus, a noted christian theologian and philosopher during the middle ages as well as the single largest influence on christian thought for decades. He wrote the book Treaties On Grammar, Logic, Metaphysics, postulating “univocity of being“, “the formal distinction” and the idea of “haecceity.”

These three concepts were meant to clarify that “things” do in fact exist, that it is possible to examine different aspects of the same “thing” and identify unique qualities that illustrate individual distinctiveness. Sound logic for a period of history known as the dark ages. Although historians generally disagree when this period began, some argue that the burning of the Alexandrian Library in the Fourth Century AD is one of its landmarks.

The cap often made of paper and used for public humiliation, expressed dim wittiness or stupidity, marked with a capital D. Somewhere along the line, its metaphysical meaning was lost. Perhaps it is a tool to funnel the cosmic energy to make one smart, much as the capstone of the pyramid serves as the point of manifestation from the invisible dimension to the seen world.

Although the geometrical model for a four sided pyramid is well known, its true meaning has been revealed only to a few, suggesting an esoteric significance associated with its function. Some mystical orders performed testing rituals and initiations in special chambers energized by the forces entering through the capstone, the power fracturing and enveloping all four corners at the foundation, opening portals into alternate dimensions. Whether that is true, not or just a crock remains to seen or experienced as one approaches the cosmic stream.

Those who understand the nature of the cap have also used the idea to invent interesting and new ways to adorn and care for the head such as this product called the Head Bath Cap advertised on Techeblog. Here is a chapeau that gives your head and your hair a good cleaning: “just place it over your skull and let water run within the boundaries of the cap onto your head, keeping the scalp water logged helping your hair grow faster and fuller by penetrating the pores in your scalp submerged beneath the trapped water.” Another variation of “go soak your head.”

Then there is The Shat (see below), a unique cap advertised by William Shatner (the Shat). It comes in different colors to reflect mood, Andorean Green, Romulan Red and Klingon Yellow. Now you too “can wear your feelings on your head.” Perhaps Mr. Shatner will don the red one after he finally sees the new Star Trek film and realizes that if Captain Kirk had not been killed off in Star Trek VII-Generations, he could have been in the current film. Now, the Shat will become just another variation of the cap of Duns Scotus, which is not latin for Scotty.

The Chupacabra (Spanish for goat sucker) is an animal indigenous to Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Latin American communities that speak Spanish in the United States. The name comes from the animal’s reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of goats. Physical descriptions of the creature vary. Eyewitness sightings have been claimed for centuries near Ponce, Puerto Rico and have since been reported as far north as Maine and as far south as Chile. It is supposedly a heavy creature, the size of a small bear, with a row of spines reaching from the neck to the base of the tail.

The first photographs were taken in March 1995 in Puerto Rico by Madelyne Diaz don Diego who lost all of her 150 goats in an attack. Each animal she claimed had similar characteristic puncture wounds in the chest area and completely drained of blood.

In Coleman, Texas, a farmer named Reggie Lagow caught what he claimed was the Chupacabra in a trap he set up after the deaths of a number of his goats. The animal was described as resembling a mix of hairless dog, rat, and kangaroo. Lagow claims he delivered the animal to Texas Parks and Wildlife officials for identification, but reported in a September 17, 2006 phone interview with John Adolfi, founder of the Lost World Museum, that “the critter was caught on a Tuesday and accidentally thrown out in Thursday’s trash.”

A multi-verse could be either a hypothetical set of multiple potential universes - including our own - that together comprise all of reality, or a many versed poem such as Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

As a literary work published in 1847, it chronicles the life of an Acadian girl named Evangeline Bellefontaine and her search for her lost love, Gabriel Lajeunesse, set against the sweeping landscape of North America during the time of “Le Grand Derangement“, an unpleasant period in Canadian history, when the inhabitants of the maritime provinces including Prince Edward Island and parts of Maine were relocated by the British. Many migrated to Quebec while others went to Louisiana and became Cajuns whose descendants still speak French, even today.

One of Longfellow’s most enduring works, it was written in dactylic hexameter - also the technique used in the Greek and Latin classics, a poem with a rhythmic scheme that goes on and on verse after verse, hence the term multi-verse. Perhaps it would have been more interesting to read had it been penned in prose or taught in History class instead of Poetry 101. Longfellow was obviously influenced by his close friendship with Nathanial Hawthorne who had an ever so slight lean towards the puritanical and who etched such memorable works as The Scarlet Letter.

From a scientific point of view, a multi-verse is an unproven theory of theoretical physics. The different universes within the multi-verse are sometimes called parallel universes, often interchangeable with the term alternate realities. However anyone versed in geometry knows that since parallel lines never meet, it is not possible to travel from one parallel universe to the next leaving us with a summation of alternate realities as the only credible explanation for the theoretical basis for reality, although to quote the eminent Dr. McCoy, “Good God Spock, I’m a doctor, not a physicist.”

Any reasonable person would ask, what do alternate realities have to do with Canadian history? Spock would probably respond, “Obviously the history of Canada is an alternate reality of American history without the revolutionary war.” If that were true, then in another reality, Canada is the fifty-first state.

Read more about alternate realities and parallel universes at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse_(science)

Suppose it were possible to be “self” conscious and aware without ever seeing a reflection in a mirror or on a shiny surface. Then on a warm day, near a forest green, from a pond glistening as silver, gazing innocently from the spring undisturbed by cattle, sheep, birds, wild boars, beasts or even by branches dropping leaves from trees that arch over the water, yielding perhaps acorns, pine cones, a nut or two. Then, casting yourself down among the rich landscape, exhausted, on top the grassy verges to quench your thirst, you see such a beautiful sight in the water, irresistibly and immediately falling in love perhaps for the very first time, until realizing that this image is your own reflection.

An overly simplified description of the myth of Narcissus, which has numerous versions, all of which converge on self love, and although told about a boy, Narcissus could equally be thought as a girl.  “As she tried to embrace and kiss the beautiful girl who confronts her in the water, eventually recognizing herself, she lay gazing enraptured with the pool, hour after hour. How could she endure both to possess and yet not to possess? Grief was destroying her, yet she rejoiced in her torment: knowing at least that her other self would remain true to her, whatever happened.” So told Theiresias, the blind seer who spoke of Narcissus, “He saw his own shape and it was fatal, for he could only see through it.”

“Alas! Alas!” Narcissus cried, but Echo, a local nymph had already forgiven and grieved with him; then sympathetically echoing his last words, “Alas! Alas!” as he plunged a dagger into his breast, she said finally, “Ah, youth, beloved in vain, fare thee well!” as he expired. His blood soaked the earth, and there sprang up the white narcissus flower with its red corolla.

No doubt an interesting story with unanticipated twists and turns, possibly echoed in Hamlet, Shakespeare’s masterpiece of the Prince of Denmark, one filled with numerous connotations especially the prophecy of the seer, incapable of seeing his physical world because of blindness yet one who is also wise of sight, quite capable of viewing only what lay beyond the existence of the five senses.

Since it is not possible to see oneself other than as a reflection off some external surface whether an inanimate object, or the opinions and attitudes of others, the myth of Narcissus is poignant in its scope about what it says concerning self, the ego, and whatever attributes are chosen to embellish the character most pleasing to see, or taught from negative experience, to mock.

Judgments about “self” begin, absorbed from childhood, and initially from “the other,” before being formulated as part of an individual reflection,  once again returning attention to the effects of parents and family that are the initial basis for these impressions, later reinforced or balanced with other things comprising experience. Self confidence, traced with narcissism provides an empowering quality to ascribe value and “self”  worth, worthy of living for.

Pathological narcissism can be a reflection unseen by “self,” a blind spot that can be disguised by loathing as well as misguided love also characterizing its invisibility of presence and the absence of “self” esteem so visible by others, describing yet another echo of an echo, caught between the surfaces of the three dimensions reflecting each other as it moves through Time/Space, as much a topic for mythology as is Science.

Marie Anne Adeleide Lenormand was known as the greatest of France’s Cartomancers, considered a woman of renown whose influence spanned 40 years of European history including the French revolution. Descended from Nostradamus some say she was a mystic who went on her own quest that covered a journey to the Himalayas, the hidden caves of Mongolia that house the lost texts of the Alexandrian Library, the Egyptian temples and pyramids where secret initiations were performed, tested in the great chamber of Amen-Hotep where she learned Kabala, the mystical teachings of the Hebrews.

Leaders of all fields, peasants and aristocrats alike, allegedly came for advice from this gifted prognosticator including Marat, St-just, Empress Josephine, Czar Alexander and Robespierre. Her last entry recorded in her diary was about Marie Antoinette: “I saw her, while gazing at the cards in a trance after hearing that the French Queen had an affair with a peasant French boy, Pierre-Devual,” she wrote in beautifully scripted French, “La femme qui a cause mon homme ne est ici, je touche son sang. Ou est l’homme avec les yeux bleus, cheveux blonds, peau blanche? L’homme que je ne retrouve pas a cause d’un homme stupid, ou est l’homme que j’aime avec mon coeur? Quand la mort serra mon ami? Je ne sais pas.” She adds, “The sounds of the birds silenced as my crystal ball resonated and the air became thin and wispy, causing an array of candles to blow out, leaving smoke filling the air with the incandescent aroma of pomegranate, the mythic fruit of the underworld.”

A daughter of France born in Alençon on May 27th 1772 with the gift of foresight, she frequently found herself in prison throughout her life, on the run from disgruntled clients, but not for long once her reputation for card play spread rapidly in Europe as fear gripped her prophecies, although she claimed, “It is not what I see, but the way each person interprets what I see.”

Her diary was hidden in the odds and ends section of the Vatican archives, described as “ornately bound with gold leaf written in cryptic french.” Some interpretations claim she influenced the course of history of Western Europe much as the oracle of Delphi captured the attention of the ancient world. It is widely believed one of her readings to Napoleon Bonaparte encouraged what is known as The Louisiana Purchase, “Vente de la Louisiane,” in 1803.

Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand became so popular that a deck of cards was created and dedicated to her after her death in Paris on June 25th 1843, The Lenormand deck, still popular and widely used in Germany. Whether truth or tale about her life be told, she remains a fascinating if unfamiliar footnote in history, known only among some mystic circles.

Dharma is often thought of as one’s mission, a life task picked for the soul accomplishment of enriching existence in some way or another, usually revealed by an unknown source as personal destiny. The call is to rise to the charge - a status - or vocation, all of which seems at most times unattainable, and yet confidence seems to be bestowed by some mysterious authority, the beneficent gods of lore; or perhaps it’s all just a grandiose self-delusion despite never losing hope that great things are within grasp if personal sacrifice for the greater good is placed as the top priority, a noble thought.

The thirst for encouragement and validation is always present and unquenchable, a source of self confidence and conceit. And any person who expresses uncommon knowledge may be of some help by introducing external perspective, however that can often be mistaken for cosmic wisdom. History is filled with people placed on a pedestal because they had a charismatic way of articulating a message other people felt but couldn’t put to words or art. For them, a parallel path is an illusion. They recognize that lives intersect at several points, the crossroads for each lying in a non-linear universe, attracted by some unexplained circumstance.

Sometimes dharma is revealed at a peculiar time when least expected, a prognostication that displays unusual individual precision during a time when the search for a direction seems most acute, usually for lack of finding an answer from within. Uncertainty prolongs indecision, often leading to paralysis; yet any reasonable force of authority might vaguely point to the distant horizon and declare: “Go forth and follow your destiny,” and get away with it. The instinct is to resist, especially when attempting to master an unknown dharma that will have to be figured out and attained on one’s own, if not alone. After all, it’s not for the gods to make it happen, nor do they exist to be depended upon - that’s what it means to be a co-creator.

Once the solitary nature of ‘independent’ accomplishment is understood, panic sets in and the looming question “How am I supposed to make this happen in the first place?” becomes an obsessive thought as the strong desire to crawl under the bed becomes an overwhelming yearn. It is difficult to do something that you’re not really in the mood to do or have to explain why you really don’t want to be selfless in the first place.

It’s more compelling if dharma is chosen from a process of self-discovery, perhaps an idea that strikes while crossing the street during a thunder storm, avoiding getting hit by a car while distracted deep in thought about life’s plan. Then it happens as an inspiration akin to a lightening bolt that strikes, “Oh, now I get it!” Then the next thought seeps into consciousness: “But did that come from me or some unknown source?”

Tangents In Karma

“Doom and gloom has to be logical, carefully presented and designed to reach people who exist in a basic state of denial. It requires eloquence, a well articulated, diplomatic build up, objective assessment of the events, whether economic, cultural or personal, dispassionately without emotion or it is lost,  hence influencing judgment. Learned lessons as wisdom to an open eye…” [unidentified source]

Originally found in an old timeworn text, translated from its native French, words perhaps handed down from one generation to the next with a dubious claim that names Nostradamus as their source, while saying much in less than fifty words.

Thinking about the future distantly, so many unanticipated events have to occur for a future to evolve. Is it possible to envision all of them or even know which ones are most important to (a) specific outcome(s)?

Perhaps the place where creative ideas originate, also the source of invention tapped by some with capabilities thought impossible, becomes the “stuff” of future dreams. Trends suggested by individuals, often described in cryptic terms transformed into concepts that happen in some ironic way introducing new possibilities effecting the future and defying credible prognostication.

A reasonable conclusion to reach until one encounters “the genius” capable of composing music before anyone of comparable age can verbalize complete sentences for example. What comprises those indefinable talents, which are vague inspiration to some, while a tool for another acting as a conduit.

Doom and gloom usually draw more attention than “they lived happily ever after,” a common ending to most fairy tales, hoping that along the way something not currently known will introduce itself into the gloom that changes enough of the circumstances to create the happy ending most sought.

Some believe that the future projects itself onto the past by using signs that already exist in the present. What makes the future happen is unknown, even after it happens, a confluence of limitless possibilities that makes more sense when viewed retrospectively as taught lessons, hopefully to avoid making repetitive mistakes that are predictable.  Recognizing that any prophecy, mystically or religiously based, is made so that there is enough time to make the necessary changes to prevent it from happening.

Numerous mythologies have surrounded the tale of a strange extinct bird, the Ouzelum, a feathered Aves that flew backwards. No one knew the origin of this particular bird, a class of winged, bipedal endothermic vertebrates that laid eggs and was carnivorous by nature.

“Perhaps the reason it flew backwards was because it liked to know where it had been”, asked one of the young students.

“Assuming it had a brain large enough to think, and the ability to remember where it was going or coming from ,” added the Oracle with a wise steady voice.
“Even owls were thought to fly backwards during the middle ages, and they are pretty wise,” beamed an apprentice.

“On the other hand, moving on the wrong path is assured when not knowing where one begins, or is going, even if it leads in the right direction when left reflecting the sum total of events that occurs at the crossroad,” inflected the oracle with a glazed look in his eyes, as if absorbed in solving some great mystery reflected in the fountain of Daphne.

One scholar reported another legend passed down from one generation to the next about the Ouzelum, ” They were also able to fly in ever decreasing circles until it managed to disappear completely. ”

Does that mean it vanished into thin air?” asked the child listening with great awe and wonder.

“I believe it suggests the bird crash landed,” smiled the Oracle with a twinkle in his knowing eye.