THE MEANING OF LIFE EXPLAINED
Metaphysics: The branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, spacetime and spiritual realities, meaning non-physical beings and other formless systems and forces.
From the Fertilized Egg to the Adult Organism
Once an egg cell, or ovum, is fertilized, referred to as a zygote, it divides and multiplies into roughly 150 to 200 generic stem cells forming a blastocyst that lasts for three to five days. Right after fertilization and a few divisions are the totipotent stem cells. Forming next are the pluripotent stem cells that give rise to all of the 200 different types of cells that make up the whole of the body (heart cells, white and red blood cells, liver, muscle, neurons, etc.). The adult human body consists of roughly 25 trillion cells (though the numbers vary all the way up to 100 trillion cells).
Here we’ll focus on the egg cell and from there, as the whole of the organism develops, that very cell extends itself through multiplicity and differentiation into an increasingly complex and independently capable adult organism, the membranous enclosed cell in itself. The whole of the organism, in this case a human, is indeed the original cell having evolved into a greater cell consisting of, as already stated, roughly 25 trillion of the initial multiplied and differentiated forms of the cell – with all having the same DNA within its nucleus. That initial cell has extended itself by becoming various, necessarily differentiated, or specialized, throughout the body though always working as a unit throughout the whole of the now greater cell, the fully developed organism.
Self-organization Processes
All consciousness is unitary whether or not individuals are alike in genetic makeup, in close proximity, or separated over space and time. Note: Consciousness, unity, love, transcends space and time and therefore seemingly unbridgeable separateness.
This unitary state from the very first speck of a life form, Alpha, to the ‘All That Is’, Omega, is necessary n for the continued living in and through the evolutionary process and progress throughout, and involving the whole of the [sentient] kingdom. Just as the cells in one’s own body depend on the healthy and cooperative interaction with all other cells throughout the whole of the body, and that body with all other bodies. When we are told that ‘other’ is brother, or what is commonly referred to as oneness, this is not just merely religious in context, it is a fact physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually. Human evolution, let alone continued physical existence, depends entirely on knowing this fact and extrapolating it further to include all other species including plant life, the whole of the planet and ultimately completion in Omega.
This seems like a lot to bear in mind during daily life. Thankfully, there is another function scientifically observable in, but hardly limited to, again, cellular differentiation processes and that is self-organization processes. There is no instruction manual, no training, no academic learning involved in any species, from inanimate to animate, physiological developmental processes. Only the need not to harm or interfere with (as in vak-seenes or transhumanizing) the genius of self organization; the genius of the natural development of all of physical/material life (as well the psychological and spiritual life) from the most minute of organisms up to the cosmic bodies and systems throughout the whole of the universe. It is the disconnected, self-absorbed intellectual function that generally interferes. This is not to ignore basic sustenance and caring for activities which are largely intuitive or obvious, or the need to intellectually think through a project or information.
Freedom
One thing that should be noted is that the more complex and capable an organism is, the more freedom it has – freedom to move around, to create, to interact thus unite with thus know more and more of Itself – there is no ‘other.’ An important aside: that is what love is, unity and accordingly knowing wholly, or holy. Two examples are, an eagle is freer than a snail, and a human has greater freedom than a bear. There are some spiritual teachings that claim that the evolutionary objective is increasingly greater freedom. That freer state is not only, nor primarily, applicable to the physical state of a being, in fact it is more applicable to the development of the spiritual state of the being. Therefore, an imprisoned individual could potentially develop, or evolve, more so than a person who is freer to do what they want.
Soaring – an oil painting by Leslie M. Taylor
The individual’s intellectual, creative, psychological and social development is at the very heart and mind of their physical, and concomitantly, spiritual development. Cyclically, that spiritual development strongly affects physiological development, thus form and situation, which in turn affects and determines spiritual development. Then, or rather as well, the increase in complexity and capability of the physiological, psychological and spiritual state of the individual, extending throughout the species, the genera and so on finding completion in Omega as already stated.
This could seem to involve the concept of reincarnation; going from a physical being to a spiritual being then back to physical, then spiritual repeatedly. Reincarnation of whom, of what? The first speck of life on up to the ‘All That Is’ throughout all of space and time infinitely and eternally? Or otherwise put, as in the Bible, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.”
Let us have always in our minds that the physical being and the spiritual being are one and the same, not separate. This is important when considering communications with non-physical beings such as deceased loved ones, higher spirits referred to as angels, God even. For it is one’s spirit that clearly communicates with any other spirit just as species most clearly communicate, and in other ways interact, with individuals of the same species.
Therefore, each individual within each species is a further extension and expansion of the original state, the very first cell (the Alpha). The same is true of the individuals within the whole of the species, and genera, whether or not the individuals within the species recognize this extended wholeness. They are to the species what the cell is to the individual organism. And, just as in cellular differentiation processes within a developing individual organism, all individuals within a species are differentiated cells of that species contributing to the complexity and capabilities, thus the evolution, of the whole. Those differences are essential, of course.
Behavioral and Mental Coherence (as in telepathy)
Where species’ unitary wholeness is particularly observable in the animal kingdom is the synchronized movements of flocks of birds, starlings in particular, and schools of fish. Here they mentally and physically experience their unitary state. As well, many in the animal kingdom are capable of experiencing this state just mentally among seemingly separated individuals over spacetime exhibiting what humans refer to as telepathy. Dr. Rupert Sheldrake has done extensive studies on this and published his findings in his book, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home. Many humans experience telepathy, mental coherence, on occasion.
Nights Of Wonder an oil painting by Leslie M. Taylor
Along the lines of the single fertilized ovum, among humans where this mental unity is particularly observable is with genetically identical twins which develop from one zygote that splits and forms two embryos. There are valid accounts and studies of twins separated at birth, raised very differently and quite apart from one another and not knowing the other existed until much later in life. And, what they and researchers discover, once the twins become familiar with each other, is that choices that were made by them when separated (sometimes over great distances and raised in very different environments) that are generally associated with environmental and social influences are the same choices, and beyond anything genetic coding could result in. I italicize the latter sentence because as I looked for examples to include here, all of them were conducted by scientists that go on to claim these similarities are due to DNA coding, to genetics.
I don’t buy that, unless mind (and their minds seem to function coherently) and behavior influence genes as in Lamarckism proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829): a theory of evolution based on the principle that physical changes in organisms during their lifetime; such as greater development of body parts through increased use, as in muscularity, could be transmitted to their offspring genetically. These are twins however, not offspring of one or the other. Or another theory, based on actual empirical evidence is, that which researchers find is that which they and their colleagues ardently look for in an effort to establish their causal, materialist views as fact and final. Also of importance to factor in here is repetition, as in the repetition of a particular research objective (how often the subject is researched), and the number of researchers doing the work and being convinced of the research findings and what they suggest. Such as the intent to prove the primacy of the physical brain and its necessity for consciousness to exist at all, or the dominance of genetics pre-programming affecting nearly every aspect of our lives.
The observer effect would certainly apply to the above circumstance; the fact that observing a situation or phenomenon necessarily changes it being that an observer becomes inherently part of the observed, a part of the whole of the observed system. And more so if observation or study of a thing, or system, is repeated enough and by a number of observers with a same or similar interest in a particular outcome. Observer effects are especially prominent in physics where observation and uncertainty – meaning uncertainty among a range of possibilities (referred to as the wave function) until observed. And that’s when the state becomes actualized into a specific spacetime position with quantifiable masses and dimensions (referred to as the collapse of the wave function) are fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics. At nano or micro scales (as in looking through an electron microscope) this observer effect would be more likely to occur and therefore better able to convince the researcher and the general public of the validity and reality of their exclusive findings and more so than observing things at everyday macro levels of observation accessible to all (not to suggest intentional deception though that happens aplenty too).
A Remarkable Case of Identical Twins
This is the most remarkable identical twins example and often cited: In 1940, a pair of identical twin brothers were separated at birth and put up for adoption. At three weeks, both pairs of their adoptive parents called their new sons ‘James’, or Jim for short. The two families lived 40 miles apart and had never met. The twins were unaware of one another until 1979, 39 years after they were born.
Jim Lewis had a brother, Larry, and a dog called Toy. As a student, Jim Lewis enjoyed mathematics and woodwork and a strong dislike for spelling. He eventually married a woman named Linda, however they divorced after a number of years together. Jim Lewis then married his second wife, Betty. They had a son they called James Alan. Jim Lewis was a chain smoker, suffered from migraines and drove a Chevrolet. He worked as a security guard.
Jim Springer also had a brother, Larry, and a dog called Toy. As a student, Jim Springer enjoyed mathematics and woodwork and also had a strong dislike for spelling. He eventually married a woman named Linda, however they divorced after a number of years together. Jim Springer then married his second wife, Betty. They had a son, called James Allan. Jim Springer was a chain smoker, suffered from migraines and drove a Chevrolet. Springer worked as a deputy sheriff.
The other fascinating facts in this case is that the adoptive parents and others, such as their wives, had much to do with the same circumstances, not just the identical twins between one another. A self-organizing system involving several others many of which are not known or identified. There are many examples of similar circumstances.
Genetics? Is there a gene for naming a dog Toy?
I experienced this within my own life and relations, and Dr. Eben Alexander describes a similar synchronistic system involving his adoptive and natural family.
Neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander (author of Proof of Heaven) experienced a remarkable near death experience while in coma and miraculous recovery from a rare and deadly bacterial meningitis that destroyed his entire cerebral cortex. He has since written three books on his experiences and follow up research and findings as to what his experiences suggest spiritually. It should be noted that as his adoptive father was a neurosurgeon and due to his father’s influence he too chose to become a neurosurgeon. Here are a few excerpts from his book:
“During my neurosurgical residency, I spent two years (1985 – 87) investigating cerebral vasospasm, a particularly deadly complication of subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) from aneurysms that maims and kills approximately one-third of the patients who survive the actual hemorrhage. Following residency, in 1987 I pursued a fellowship in vascular neurosurgery, intensely studying the surgical management of aneurysms, before securing a position at Harvard Medical School heading up vascular neurosurgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital.”
“I was adopted, and in the search for my birth parents, I later learned that this hereditary [subarachnoid hemorrhage – SAH] was a part of my biological family’s medical history. It was this hereditary condition that motivated my birth sister to reach out to the adoption agency (in search of her brother given up for adoption), a crucial step in our eventually reconnecting. Information revealed to me in February 2000 indicated that my maternal grandfather had suffered an aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage that left him badly impaired for a few months before he finally succumbed in 1966. My birth mother had two sisters, and in 1978, her youngest sister suffered an SAH and died within a day. Her other sister endured an SAH in 2004 at age 65, which seriously incapacitated her for about 3 years, although she has gone on to a miraculous recovery (to the point where she has won several local golf tournaments in recent years). (Let us recall his own brain disease and miraculous recovery as well as his medical specialty, SAH). I initially reacted with amazed shock at this seeming coincidence, but perhaps my career choice in the 1980s had some deeper (subconscious) connection with my personal biological predisposition two decades later.”
Or rather, transcendent, beyond spacetime, self organization processes at work.
I have similar, even more amazing circumstances involving my own ancestry. I’m very lucky to have had a relative who had already done the ancestral research and that my mother gave me all her old family photographs. I would encourage anyone to do a similar research of their own familial backgrounds. For specific information go to:
( R ) WHAT MIRACLES REVEAL: The nature of Life, who we are and why we are here.
Though the whole piece is quite informative and interesting you can scroll down to page (29) and (30) just below the painting Laurel and the subtitle “A list of the some of the familial synchronistic connections and what they reveal” up to to the Portrait of Adam and just read those two pages.
Laurel – an oil painting by Leslie M. Taylor
Portrait of Adam – an oil painting by Leslie M. Taylor
Here is a slightly different and well known example of seemingly remarkable historical coincidences recurring exactly one hundred years apart. These same or similar circumstances involving two different presidents, Abraham Lincoln (b. 1809 – d. 1865) and John F. Kennedy (b. 1917 – d. 1963) and surrounding individuals all demonstrate a connectedness that transcends, that exists beyond, spacetime.
Though some of the examples below seem exceedingly trite, none are given that we have but little information. If you find in your own family seemingly trite examples, they are not, keep looking and you’ll find many more synchronistic connections, some of which may astound.
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A Brief Look at Reincarnation.
All these processes from the biological and evolutionary development of organisms to synchronized behavior, synchronistic events, telepathy, precognition, reincarnation and so many more, demonstrate seemingly separate minds actually unified transcending space and time and physical constraints. In fact conceptual spacetime (beginnings, endings and other parameters such as the 3D state, or appearance of things) is the very source of disunity; seemingly separated organisms, things and events, entropy and death.
Therefore individuals living in the apparent, not actual, past and no longer alive and thus not accessible, is a misunderstanding. What is actual is that the differentiation processes, the extension and expansion of complexity and capabilities necessary for the evolution of the collective organism, the specie (the whole of life for that matter) includes, in the case of humans: gender, ethnicity, geography, governments, economies, social and cultural influences which are but seemingly separated over space and time – millenia, eons even. The very first, the one cell or egg, the Alpha, dividing, multiplying and differentiating, expanding and extending in complexity and capabilities is also the whole, or holy, the Omega in the present, then, here and now. In fact in all of life, that which is embodied in temporal, physical/material form is but the tiniest percentage. The rest, the real, is spiritual, non-physical and transcends spacetime thus linear causality and events, and 3-D dimensionality.
(Q) What is the goal of evolution?
(A) Omega, everywhere present and accessible.
Therefore reincarnation, the recall of a past life, or lives, is but a spiritual unification with a past, present, and future life, all present yet differentiated form of the one cell, the one Self. The recall is, as already stated, a mental coherence, a unity as in telepathic communication, from and with a particular, relationally similar life within and of the One Self.
Near Death Experiences
Many NDEs report telepathic, unitive mental communications with other spiritual beings; generally loved ones who had passed on before them. They report of merely thinking of another and finding themselves with them as in the case of Anita Moorjani (author Dying to Be Me) being with her brother on a plane on his way to the hospital to see her one last time before she died. One near death experiencer reports that when disembodied he was overlooking a city and he knew what every person in that city thought, felt, was doing and their entire life histories. Many claim they had conversations with none other than God, and sometimes during which they experienced a life review that included the totality of the effects of their actions as experienced by others. And that this life review occurred not in a linear, timely manner, but all at once and in a unitary state, or communion with God, the Alpha and the Omega, the infinite and eternal ‘All in All’ ever present everywhere always. This is certainly plausible and demonstrates that God is just as present with us all here and now though we are confined in a causal, temporal material environment and therefore not as aware of this Presence as when in a spiritual, disembodied state. However, what this does suggest is that prayer, or communion with God, while in this state could certainly be quite helpful.
Many return from their near death journeys with heightened paranormal abilities (as in telepathy and precognition) as though once having been released from the physical state and experiencing what they claim is their truer self in a truer, more real environment than the material world, that they retain at least some of these perfectly normal faculties of whole, unitive communication, thus knowing as one’s self, another or others (what true love is) upon return to physical life.
Synchronicity
Self-organization processes extend well beyond atomic and molecular aggregations in the development of organic matter and species. It also applies to the processes involved in synchronicities: the invisible, acausal self-organization connecting same or similar events or things. They are usually meaningful and thus noteworthy.
As example: I wrote the paragraphs above, beginning with the egg and stem cell processes up to and including the Remarkable Case of Identical Twins. Then, being as it was evening, turned my attention instead to the book I was reading, America Before by Graham Hancock, before going to bed. I began where I left off at the chapter titled “The Strange and Mysterious Genetic Heritage of Native Americans.” Within the first paragraph it states: “Zoom in at sufficiently high resolution to the DNA … certain distinct and identifiable patterns begin to emerge.” “Because we are all members of a single human family, these patterns can then be used to establish the degree of relatedness.” Synchronistically related events involving books is not at all uncommon.
Here’s a synchronicity involving a family member of mine in San Francisco, California in the late 1980’s:
A Remarkable Synchronicity where a famous author, Dashiell Hammett, plays a part.
My artistic ability was apparent as a small child. I did not study art, I just knew how to draw and paint. My father and grandfather also had this ability and this was known throughout the family. My very first paintings were as complex and as competently painted as the ones I create today, decades later.
This is one of my first paintings: Monterey Cypress or “Lone Tree” as the locals know it.
Lone Tree – an oil painting by Leslie M. Taylor
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Uncle Darrel, one of my father’s brothers, was quite ill and had not long to live. He and his wife traveled from their home in Portland, Oregon to San Francisco, California, where I lived at the time, for a visit with them and his children along with my siblings and my new boyfriend, Adam. My siblings and I hadn’t seen Uncle Darrel since we were children and therefore we did not know his children that now were, like us, adults. His visit to San Francisco was an opportunity for everyone to become acquainted.
We had a lovely lunch during which the topic of my artistic endeavors came up. Uncle Darrel, reflecting on his brother’s, father’s and my artistic talent, expressed an interest in seeing my work. So following the reunion meal, I invited him and his wife to my apartment.
I had a studio apartment on a street in downtown San Francisco called Dashiell Hammett Street named after the famous author. Adam lived in the building directly across the street from me which is how we met. Mr. Hammett lived in an apartment in the very same building where I lived when he wrote one of his famous novels, The Maltese Falcon. Upon our arrival and in the apartment lobby, Uncle Darrel got very still and quiet for a bit. He then spoke informing us that he too had lived in San Francisco when he was a young man, and in that very same building! He added that he had frequented the bar just down the street featured in Hammett’s novel. Prior to his and his wife’s departure he turned to Adam and sternly said “Now you take care of her” and I could see by the slightly startled expression on Adam’s face that this made an impression on him. We were married around two years later
By the way, during the age of McCarthyism, Hammett (1894 – 1961) was swept up during the Red Scare and imprisoned for refusing to name the sources of bail funds for persons considered to be enemies of the state or identified as communists. Later, in 1953, he was blacklisted after testifying to a Senate Committee and his writings were branded as “subversive.”
Here’s another example, a rather surprising series of synchronicities involving a book:
Miracles of Mind by Russell Targ PH.D. and Jane Katra Ph.D.
In a highly classified project, funded by the military and CIA, conducted first in California at a research lab at Stanford University (SRI) in the 1970s and later at an Army base in Maryland until 1995. The researchers, physicists Russel Targ and Hal Puthoff, recruited individuals who demonstrated abilities of extrasensory perception (ESP) with the intention of uncovering military and domestic intelligence secrets. By the time the program was shut down in 1995, psychics known as “remote viewers” (clairvoyance or seeing at a distance) had taken part in a variety of operations, from locating hostages kidnapped by terrorist groups to tracing the paths of fugitive criminals within the United States. What inspired the government’s financial backing of the project were claims that the Soviet Union was heavily involved in researching ESP and psychokinesis (the ability to move objects with the mind) and conducting remote viewing exercises for espionage purposes.
The subjects who volunteered for the study were many and some had never demonstrated or considered that they had psychic abilities. Like anything else, there were those who were quite talented and others not so much. Generally what they did during the study was to attempt to see what another was seeing at a remote location unknown to them or anyone else involved in the study. The remote viewer would attempt to see mentally from the lab what another was seeing at a distance; a children’s playground or a seaside harbor setting for example. They would then sketch whatever images came to mind.
What got to be really interesting was when remote viewers would sketch identifiable objects at the site, the target location, prior to the other individual going to or even knowing where he was to go and a day in advance. In other words, remote view precognitively!
The research team at SRI invited Uri Geller, an ex-Israeli paratrooper who had become internationally famous for his psychic powers, to Stanford for testing. Though Geller was best known publicly for his ability to bend metal cutlery with his mind by gently stroking the metal with his fingers, the CIA was much more interested in his other abilities: the ability to read other people’s minds. There is much online discrediting Geller that, for example, I’ve come to think of Wikipedia as useless due to this and other blatant information biases whereas in the past I used them frequently and contributed annually. However, with the Israeli and US intelligence extensively studying his abilities, and as well astronaut Edgar Mitchell, I tend to think Uri Geller was the real thing.
During the early 1980s spoon bending became quite the rage in the U.S. and parents would contact Mitchell complaining that their little boys were destroying the family silverware. Mitchell’s position was that innocent children, not knowing that they couldn’t do such a thing, did.
Metal Bending
Russell Targ tried metal bending himself and eventually succeeded. He keeps the bent aluminum rod, roughly 11″ long by 3/8″ in diameter, on his desk as a reminder. He states that no human, no matter how strong, could possibly bend the metal rod with their hands.
I had watched a talk of his online including this account where he shows the rod during the talk.
After I finished watching the video I drove to the Amazon owned and operated Whole Foods grocery store, which I no longer patronize, to meet with a friend. I parked my car in the Whole Food’s parking lot, got out and started walking along a cement path and grassy area toward the store’s entrance. And there, lying on the grass, was a silver colored metal rod of similar dimensions yet threaded at both ends. I thought to myself, “No way, it’s just a coincidence,” left it on the ground and caught up with my friend inside and sat down across from him at a booth. I later looked it up. It was an industrial aluminum and stainless steel alloy dowel.
My friend was looking at his computer and turned the screen toward me to show me something. On the screen was an image of a silver colored metal rod, again of similar dimensions (I can’t recall what the context was). I immediately jumped up, walked outside, picked up the rod and returned to the café and my friend and described to him the series of synchronicities.
It doesn’t stop there, synchronicities rarely do. Now, around five years later as I am reading the book by Russel Targ and Jane Katra titled Miracles of Mind, I personally experienced metal bending. Only for me, it was the metal part at the top of a paint brush I was using.
Brush Bending
These are my artworks and photos WordPress, please stop removing.
I am working on an oil painting; a very large and involved landscape that includes a Native American Indian. The photograph of the model I am (legitimately) using had him holding a spear which I thought I would paint as a paintbrush instead thinking it will look like a spear unless examined very closely. I decided on a monarch’s scepter, so to speak, instead and at the head I put a crystal. I collect rocks and have several beautiful crystals. Here below is a detail, of that part of the painting.
I paint very realistically, gently applying the paint in a thin layer. Rather than blend I overlay thin layers of wet paint on dry paint to get a 3D effect. I use soft, not coarse bristled brushes. As I was working on the painting, and just as I pulled the brush away from the canvas to get more paint on it, the top metal part of it bent, sort of drooped, over on its own. This made no sense to me. I absolutely could not push the metal part back upright nor further forward; it’s a strong metal piece. I could not bend the metal tops of the same or similar brushes I have. Had I applied the brush to the canvas with that much pressure, which I would never have reason to, it undoubtedly would have damaged, likely torn through, the canvas. Do notice, though hard to see here, that where the metal is bent there is no crease or damage to the metal, it’s bent as if made that way. Also note where the brush is bent and where the hand of the Indian is on his scepter!
This is my photograph – please leave wordpress!
Manitou
I was going to name the painting Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, but as I was finishing the work and began reading Graham Hancock’s latest book America Before, I changed the name to Manitou as a result of what he wrote in the very first chapter. Hancock is an explorer, researcher and author of 21 published books covering among other subjects, human antiquity and ancient megalithic structures throughout the world.
“This is what Hancock writes [pg. 8] that caused me to change the name of the painting to Manitou: “For those reared in the materialist-reductionist mind-set of Western science, the Native American notion of Manitou seems slippery and elusive. Though it may be materialized it cannot be reduced to matter. Nor can it be weighed, measured, or counted. It is an unquantifiable, formless but sentient force, “supernatural, omnipresent and omniscient. In one sense a spiritual entity in its own right, in another the mysterious, unseen power that animates all life and that which can manifest both in natural phenomena and in man-made objects and structures that have been made with the correct intent.”
My coming across just as I was wrapping up the painting and changing the title to Manitou is an example of synchronicity’s self organization processes at work.
From the very first paint stroke and throughout the whole of the painting the Indian has seemed alive to me. I’ve painted dozens of paintings and never before have I felt that or had such a strong and similar impression with any other painting I’ve done. There was one other instance that occurred years ago involving two paintings of mine, a pair, Morning Glory and Evening Star, and hung on the wall in the bedroom. My husband was out of town, I was alone and frightened by something. Upon going to bed that evening they had quite unexpectedly and distinctly conveyed to me, not to worry for they were looking out for me. I then fell peacefully asleep.
Manitou 36” X 48” oil on canvas by Leslie M. Taylor
or Land of the Free, Home of the Brave
Books and Movies Based on Actual Future Events
Physical Life as a Metaphor: All of physical life is but a metaphor, or symbolic, in the way a map of a city represents the city enabling the finding of one’s way around, to and from particular locations in the city, but is hardly anything like the city itself. This concept can be applied to books and movies as well.
Books
Novels that predicted the future, or what the authors were mentally envisioning as they wrote down their ideas, was a clairvoyance (though they had not realized this), an extended overview of all that is present which includes past and future events. Note: It is much like remote viewing over space and time and was on occasion predictive as described above, only here conveying mental imagery with the written word rather than sketching. Here are examples of predictive written works.
Futility or The Wreck of the Titan by Morgan Robertson
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Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan is a novel which was originally written and published in 1898 by Morgan Robertson. This novel is the story of an ocean liner, called the Titan, which sinks in the North Atlantic ocean after hitting an iceberg. There are many similarities between this novel and the facts in the sinking of the Titanic that occurred in 1912, fourteen years later.
The length of the Titan was 800 feet, the Titanic 882. The speed at which the Titan crashed into the iceberg was 25 knots. The Titanic’s was 22.5. The Titan held 2,500 passengers. The Titanic held 2,200 and both had a capacity of 3,000. The fictional and actual ships were British owned. Both were hit on their starboard bow around midnight. Both sank in the North Atlantic exactly 400 nautical miles from Newfoundland. Each had a severe lack of lifeboats, the Titan only 24, and Titanic just 20. There are 41.1 million square miles of Atlantic ocean to base a fictional sinking of a ship on and plenty of reasons a ship could sink besides hitting an iceberg.
1984 by George Orwell
WordPress is rather liberal with their random removal of photographs, of my own artwork no less.
George Orwell’s prophetic, nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. 1984 is still the great modern classic of a “negative utopia” – a startlingly original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is frighteningly convincing throughout and now, an actuality. George Orwell modeled the society in “1984” based on what he saw happening in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. It warns of the dangers of totalitarianism and the roles of truth, facts, and conversely, propaganda and narrative spin within society. Note the images in the pupil of the eye on the cover seemingly about the size and height of a 5G mega tower.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
When you turn on your flat screen TV or pop in your earbuds, you’re living out the dystopian vision of Bradbury’s 1953 book. In the novel, people bombard themselves with entertainment instead of talking to each other. Much easier to stare at an addictive cell phone screen rather than be present and engage in public life. Facebook is now promoting its “Metaverse” that features a user as a two dimensional cartoon of themselves, complete with subtle facial expressions, and as an alternative to collective worship, among other activities, in an actual church, cathedral, or any other physical location. Opportunist ministers are working with them to make Facebook’s “Metaverse” preferable to actually physically hugging, singing, praying and becoming spiritually inspired together as human beings. I have no doubt that technocrats with their AI technologies have no regard, if not outright disdain, for religion or spirituality and could manipulate thus generate those very same attitudes and feelings in their users.
Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
Written in the late ’60s and set in 2010, Stand on Zanzibar predicted a popular politician by the name of President Obomi, president of Beninia, random mass shootings, a European Union, and people connecting to an encyclopedia over the phone.
The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster
“Plato’s Cave” oil on Canvas by artist Lalita Hamill: https://lalitahamill.com/
Edward M. Forester (1879 – 1970) is best known for novels about love and duty, including A Room with a View (1908) and A Passage to India (1924). But he also wrote short stories, including The Machine Stops (1909).
In it, Forster describes how future humans adapt to technology – and how it eventually destroys them. The story is striking for predicting not just the internet, but how we rely on it. Remarkably, Forster was writing when TV and telephones were still in their infancy. Yet he was still able to predict the world we now inhabit. For example:
1) Protagonist Vashti communicates with thousands of people through a telescreen, but has no emotional intimacy with any of them. This could describe almost any social network.
2) Her home is completely automated. There’s the cold-bath button, the button that produces literature. When she’s ill, she consults a doctor remotely.
2) All entertainment comes via The Machine, from books and on-screen lectures to ‘music-tubes’.
3) People don’t meet face-to-face – everything happens through always-on video screens. When Vashti mutes hers, she’s inundated with computer notifications.
4) The Machine, like the internet, is a vast library. People turn to it first with any questions or concerns.
5) Religion and unscientific thought are redundant in the machine age. Yet later, people start to worship The Machine (a bit like our relationship to the iPhone).
MOVIES
V For Vendetta
V for Vendetta is quite surprising for all its predictions. Briefly, it is set in a dystopian future that takes place in 2020 – the movie was released in 2006. America is destroyed and the U.K. is now a dictatorship. V for Vendetta reflects a fractured world torn apart by politics and a planned pandemic – a prophetic similarity to 2020 up to the present.
In the movie, political reaction to a St. Mary’s virus pandemic (suggestive of the government’s disdain for religion) has decimated Europe and most likely the rest of the world, leading to a politically oppressive environment. The virus was biologically engineered as a weapon by a political party to gain totalitarian control and people are shown to line up en masse for vacs-in-nations. As well in the movie, the tyrannical British government has placed a strict curfew on the nation. In our real world presently, every country is misled by the pandemic’s propagandists as many nations’ political and corporate leaders are using the pandemic to strengthen their wealth and power. Especially with smart(?)phone verification of vak-sin-nations every 6 months.
Half of America is destroyed in the film. In the real world, half at least, have been vacs-sin-ated and some repeatedly so with boosters, and there are many serious adverse reactions and deaths as a result with more to come. Still, government leaders press on attempting to force their populations to be injected.
The protagonist in the movie takes his revenge on those who captured him, and many others, and with experimental drug injections turned him into a transhumanized person, by tracking them down and injecting them with deadly chemicals. He escaped his capture and is severely disfigured due to a fire in the lab where he was held prisoner.
The movie’s plot leads up to a great fireworks display and the destruction of the Houses of Parliament. What stood out to me was the symbol “V” that showed up in the sky during this extravagant destruction. That symbol was widely used in the US during world war II symbolizing victory over the Nazis on signs, matchbook covers, advertisements, in jewellry, and so on. Winston’s Churchill’s hand V for Victory sign is perhaps one the most iconic of the Second World War. The symbol took hold all over Europe and became a rallying emblem for those under occupation. Now it is considered a peace sign, maybe we should return to the former symbolism.
Winston Churchill was a pretty good artist. Unfortunately I cannot put an image of his work here, it would likely be removed. If you input ‘Winston Churchill paintings images’ they will come up.
Leslie Taylor’s studio.
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