The Tenured Buddha’s Mysterium Coniunctionis  

“In the beginning, there was a nothing 

that came from nowhere. 

This nothing exploded into everything  

for no reason at all – for no reason is ever needed. 

To ask for such reasons implies you don't understand 

how to formulate proper questions. 

This primal explosion cooled into a dualism,

equal amounts matter and anti-matter.

Matter and anti-matter annihilate each other. 

Somehow, even though equal amounts 

of matter and anti-matter came out of nowhere,

a minuscule fraction of excess leftover matter 

remains after all annihilation completed.

This asymmetry exists because the laws of nature 

treat matter differently than anti-matter but 

no one knows why since their makeup is precisely mirrored,

thus nothing is in one that would cause different treatment.

The mystery assumes something else must have been present

at a time when nothing else should have been there.

Two photons are created each time one particle of matter 

and one particle of anti-matter destroy each other.

Today, there are 1 billion photons 

for every one atom in the universe.

This means our universe consists of 

leftover stuff that's proportionally

only .000000002 of the total stuff 

that existed after the primal Big Bang,

the rest got annihilated.

This .000000002 of leftover matter shouldn't exist.

The Blessed Standard Model of accepted Physics says so. 

But we do exist.

This anomaly doesn't prove the Blessed Standard Model wrong, 

only mystically incomplete. Remember, 

the Blessed Standard Model is never wrong, 

only mystically incomplete.

And there's more mystical incompleteness in the Blessed Standard Model,

for everything we can see, feel, and interact with,

all the matter and energy in all stars, planets, everything including us,

all of it is only 4% of the total stuff that exists today.

28% of the rest is something else we've named Dark Matter.

68% of the rest is something else we've named Dark Energy.

We don't seem to interact with Dark Matter and Dark Energy

as far as we know, and we don’t really know,

but these Dark forces make up 96% 

of everything leftover after the Big Bang blasted forth,

More mysterious still, none of this Dark Matter and Dark Energy got produced

at the same time matter and anti-matter resulted from the Big Bang.

Dark matter and Dark Energy were produced before the Big Bang.

The great seers of science now know there was a non-time 

before the start of time at the Big Bang,

this was a non-time of inflation when 

a totally empty place-to-be with nothing around it was expanding very rapidly

due to the existence of scalar particles such as the Higgs boson.

How scalar particles existed before time, 

before the Big Bang produced particles,

how these particles existed in a totally empty place-to-be with nothing around it

is not to be questioned, for the Blessed Standard Model is never wrong,

only ever mystically incomplete.

And yet, it is clear now, the primal Big Bang was not so primal,

not so initial, not the earliest event of them all.

One might say it was primal in some ways, not all.

There's more to the mystical

and more to our blessed incompleteness

for all of this leftover stuff from the Big Bang 

is somehow expanding

and its expansion since the Big Bang

has been expanding at an ever increasing rate,

which means everything expands faster all the time,

and so this unexplained acceleration is speeding up,

more so every day, but we know not why or how.

The primal explosion for no reason is not winding down but getting stronger.

If far-off vision-quest projections are correct, 

this expansion will continue until 

all leftover stuff from the not-so primal Big Bang (and before) 

diffuses away to nothingness.

The expansion will someday 

pull all planets and stars apart,

then pull every atom apart,

then pull the quarks in the nucleus apart, 

then pull apart the sub-atomic particle soup 

until the dissipating zero-point energy disappears altogether

taking time-space with it.

Out of nothing.

Back to nothing. 

Once again for no reason.

For none is needed.

If you ask for a reason it only shows 

you don't know how to form valid questions.

And so – you are nothing, here for no reason.

You are part of the .000000002 of leftover stuff that shouldn't exist.

All the stuff you can now know in the universe 

is only 4% of what is here, but most of the total stuff

that ever existed got annihilated long ago,

just like the precursor matter in you should have been

if the laws of symmetry hadn’t been broken without reason.

Since you have no purpose here, no reason to exist,

it shouldn't bother you when all of this leftover stuff

races away from itself in a mad dash ever faster to pull itself apart,

thus returning to the nothingness from whence it came.

It should have no effect on how you see yourself now.

It’s none of your concern anyway

since you are an infinitesimal speck in time

that exists on a scale wholly insignificant 

to the grand or even minor cycles of existence.

You will be long gone 

before everything goes away after you,

just as everything before you

was so much more than you ever were

but that too is no longer what it was,

if indeed it still exists, but most of it doesn’t.

All in the end will be equal in nothingness,

just as everything was before, before nothing became something

spontaneously, without cause, without intent,

with only one direction - back to nothing, for no reason,

for none is needed and if you ask for one it only proves

you aren't asking the right questions.

This is The Great Myth of The Great Void that contains All. 

The is The Way to religion without religion.

This is the Tao of Scientism.”

   – The Tenured Buddha, Ph.D (pretty heavy dude)

"Scientism is the broad-based belief that the assumptions and methods of research of the physical and natural sciences are equally appropriate (or even essential) to all other disciplines, including philosophy, the humanities and the social sciences. It is based on the belief that natural science has authority over all other interpretations of life, and that the methods of natural science form the only proper elements in any philosophical (or other) inquiry."  (philosophybasics.com)

--------------------------

If the Tao of Scientism progresses another millennium, 

perhaps it will realize truths that ancient beliefs arrived at long ago. 

Scientists seem to be on the path, so let's hope so, 

except at the rate of increasing imbalance civilization is manifesting under Scientism, 

it doesn't look like humanity can wait that long for The Tenured Buddha, Ph.D to catch up. 

 

Defying Gravity – The Shining Nigredo 

What do I do 

when my whole world is turned upside-down, 

when a core value, a precious meaning that gave life vitality 

is swung in surprise impossibly opposite, 

when a cherished dream that for so long I believed had come true, 

abruptly reverses as not true, is left shattered in a single painful shift, 

shocking the psyche with a saddening jolt to the heart, 

an emotional body blow knocking balance itself off its axis, 

when grief and loss, spinning through chaos, are now the only wellspring 

life has to offer, my future lying desiccated and hollowed out, 

abandoned by lost passion and emptied of heartfelt drive, 

when potential itself no longer holds promise for my broken spirit?

What do I do

when a useless suicide is the wrong question

and a senseless life is the wrong answer,

when a melancholy pall hangs over the colorless sameness of passing days

and everywhere reminders of what was lost compound and re-injure me,

when enjoying the moment cannot exist as each moment expands

into remembering the past while reminding me what is not present,

when ageless time and searing memory

collide with tattered dreams and entrenched ideals,

all mixing with unholy circumstance

and thwarting my every attempt to let go and find a way through?

Everything tumbles to a catastrophic point of no return,

living the hell of no solution while holding firm

to the heaven of what is still valued, no matter if it’s gone.

And yet, despite it all, I awake once more to a darkening new day.

I arrive at a point of too much to bear, at a tumultuous point

of pathological sanity where I exist in both worlds while a convulsive state 

eggs me to accept a sublime surrender to my redemptive pain.

Standing firm in my duality fuses blood raw soul and transcending ego,

a trauma bond that announces itself like a carnival barker

declaring this gnarled mass as the path of transformation.

Facts twist mythical and I sense from a nowhere elsewhere 

a heralded noble calling beyond myself, a calling that shouts 

there’s nothing else to do when my world is turned upside-down

but to defy gravity, to assert impossible alchemy and defiant magic

for no other reason than to hold firm the suspicion

that for as long as I decide to stay here I have no other choice.

At the still point of the turning wheel of the defining dilemma

lies a shrinking void of paradox and into that void must go all of me,

the light of my triumphant suffering and the shadow of my delusional love.

Some may claim that defying gravity is inflation, is bare white-knuckling it.

But what’s their point? And what does it matter?

Do they not recognize the squirming white snakes peeling back my flesh?

Can they not see the spiraling, razor-sharp tesseract sanctifying my trauma?

It must be so for all in the know announce it as simply the way.

It is the devil in the details as the beatific vision unfolds.

It is the nature of the erect beast in the presence of the moist beauty.

It is the nature of what I must do now,

now that all is upside-down, now that all is different,

now that all that once mattered is gone.

It is the path ascendant, the way through, the unholy sacredness,

the culminating answer without a blessed solution.

It is the final terminal lucidity awaiting me

on the other side of the death-rattle of despair.

It is life fully engaged - in all of its profane glory.

It is the filth that falls from heaven

and nourishes the unconscious faithful.

It is the descending grace of depraved excuses

that tempts one again to unreasonable hope.

It is the masturbatory salvation act of a tortured soul

destined to feel the lustful karma of a callous world.

It is the unused eggs of the Virgin crying out for their fulfillment.

It is the nocturnal seed of the sleeping holy man spurting into the dirt.

It is the forceful bloody consummation

in the violent marriage between me and my soul.

It always was, always will be a soul most pure, most open and trusting, 

so connected to a place where foolish ideals are real as being as such.

But now its most intimate secrets will be fully known

in conscious exploitation.

Its divine body of truth will be eagerly possessed

in great groping excess.

Its tender attentions will be hugely used without mercy,

all in the name of climaxing upon wholeness.

And while the piercing act of full appreciation is being so enjoyed, 

one question repeatedly thrusts forward

as my overwhelmed soul yelps and sighs in pain and joy –

Whom does gravity serve?!

Whom does gravity serve?!

Whom does gravity serve?!

Kukeon at Eleusis  

For nearly two millennia, the foundations of Western civilization in Greece were baptized in and inspired by an entheogenic elixir called the Kukeon. And yet now hardly anyone knows about it.  

Aristotle once said initiates came to the temple at Eleusis, north of Athens, not to learn something but to experience something. From about 1500 BC until AD 392, when the annual festivities were abruptly outlawed by the Roman Emperor Theodosius, a die-hard Christian. Plato described it as the "blessed sight and vision" he witnessed "in a state of perfection" -- the climax of his initiation into "the holiest of Mysteries." 

The elixir was called the kukeon and each pilgrim earned the honorary title epoptes, which means something like "the one who has seen it all." Without doubt, they claimed death was not the end of our human journey. Marcus Aurelius rebuilt the temple in second century AD after the barbarian Kostovoks nearly destroyed it in AD 170. The rebuilt temple has forty-two columns that once supported a 52 x 52 square meter sanctuary.

What exactly happened to initiates upon drinking the Kukeon? Are there substances still on the Earth that provide the same experience as the one hallowed at Eleusis? The holiest of Mysteries is still available to those who know the way and are humble and grateful enough to approach the experience as the sacred portal it is.

The Global Prison Experiment 

How would you conduct an experiment on a global scale? Have similar experiments been conducted before and if so, what questions were asked by those experiments and what lessons were learned? 

Questions like --

What is the power of social situations to overwhelm individuals?

What happens when good people are put in an evil place?

Does the situation outside of you come to control your behavior or will the things inside of you, your attitudes, values, and morality allow you to rise above a negative environment? 

How will people react to an oppressive regime? 

Are decent people just as capable of committing acts against their conscience as those who have perpetrated the worst war crimes?

What happens to people who feel hopeless?

What happens to people who feel out of control? 

How long does it take for stressful situations to distort thinking?

How hard is it for victims of abuse to stand up for themselves?

How easily can people dissociate themselves from horrendous acts they see or they do?

Why will the many stand silently by as the few do horrendous things?

Is there a core in human nature that dictates that good people cannot do bad things and good people will dominate over bad situations?

How can evil situations win over good people?

Two experiments shed penetrating light on human nature and the state of the world today. Dr. Stanley Milgram in the '60's and the electric shock obedience experiment. Professor Philip Zimbardo in the 70's and the Stanford prison experiment. With those experiences considered, we return to the original question -- How would you conduct an experiment on a global scale?

And now we add a new question. Is it really just an experiment?

The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted."

 - Aldous Huxley

 

I DON'T NEED TO BELIEVE 

In 1959 the BBC program Face to Face interviewed Carl Jung at age 84, two years before he died.

Interviewer: “Do you believe in God?”

Jung: “Now? Difficult to answer.”  After a pause Jung continued with a grin, “I know. I don’t need to believe. I know.”

Later in the interview, the interviewer asked, “You said that death is psychologically just as important as birth, like it is an integral part of life but surely it can’t be like birth if it’s an end, can it?”

Jung: “Yes, if it’s an end – and there we are not quite certain about this end. Because you know there are these peculiar faculties of the psyche that it isn’t entirely confined to space and time. You can have dreams or visions of the future, you can see around corners and such things, only ignorance deny these facts. It is quite evident that they do exist and have existed always. Now these facts show that the psyche in part at least is not dependent upon these confinements. And then what? When the psyche is not under that obligation to live in time and space alone, and obviously it doesn’t, then to that extent the psyche is not subjected to those laws and that means a practical continuation of life, of a sort of psychic existence beyond time and space.”

Interviewer: “Do you yourself believe that death is probably the end?”

Jung: “Well, I can’t say. The word ‘belief’ is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. If I know a thing, I know it, then I don’t need to believe it. I don’t allow myself to believe a thing just for the sake of believing it. I can’t believe it! But when there are sufficient reasons for a certain hypothesis, I shall accept.”

Interviewer: “Well now, you’ve told us that we should regard death as being a goal and to stray away from it is to evade life and life’s purpose. What advice would you give to people in their later life to enable them to do this when most of them must in fact believe that death is the end of everything?”

Jung: “Well, you see I’ve treated many old people and it’s quite interesting to see what the unconscious is doing with the fact it is apparently threatened with the complete end. It disregards it. Life behaves as if it were going on and so I think it is better for old people to live on, to look forward to the next day as if he had to spend centuries, and then he lives properly. But when he is afraid, when he doesn’t look forward, he looks back, he petrifies, he gets stiff, he dies before his time. But when he’s living on, looking forward to the great adventure that’s ahead, then he lives. And that is what the unconscious is intending to do. Of course, it is obvious that we’re all going to die and this is the sad finale of everything – but nevertheless there is something in us that doesn’t believe it apparently, but this is a psychological fact. It doesn’t mean to me that it proves something. It is simply so.”

 Have You Been Called An Extremist?

"But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love ... Was not Amos an extremist for justice: 'Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.' ... And John Bunyan: 'I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.' And Abraham Lincoln: 'This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.' And Thomas Jefferson: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal....' So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men...were [all] crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail"