CERN - Particles returning from the future to prevent their own discovery

Baguette Dropped From Bird's Beak Shuts Down The Large Hadron Collider (Really)

The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropping a piece of bread on a section of the accelerator has, according to the Register, shut down the whole operation.

The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.

This incident won't delay the reactivation of the facility later this month, but exposes yet another vulnerability of the what might be the most complex machine ever built. With freak accident after freak accident piling up over at CERN, the idea of time traveling particles returning from the future to prevent their own discovery is beginning to seem less and less far fetched.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html?_r=1

Projective Synthetic Geometry in Lady Frieda Harris' Tarot Paintings and in Aleister Crowley's Book of the Law

Projective Synthetic Geometry in Lady Frieda Harris' Tarot Paintings and in Aleister Crowley's Book of the Law

Claas Hoffmann

It was in 1904 when the english magician Aleister Crowley wrote the the Book of the Law. It was dictated by a praeter-human intelligence calling itself Aiwass. The book consists of three chapters written down in Cairo on 8th, 9th and 10th April at noon.

33 years later, Crowley met the artist painter Lady Frieda Harris. He had decided to create a new Tarot deck and asked Harris to paint the cards according his ideas, that is according his instructions. Harris agreed, became a member of the O.T.O. and they becan their work. A lot of the cards had to be painted several times. The drafts still are in private possession while the final originals can be found at the Warburg Institute London, a part of the University Library.

The Library Warburg was founded in 1903 by the jewish son of a banker, Aby Warburg in Hamburg. At the beginning of the Nazi regime in 1933, the complete collection (80,000 books) was sent to London where the Warburg Institute now was founded. There, I was able to study the original Tarot paintings. I also saw the unpublished drafts of earlier versions, in private ownership. Lady Frieda Harris painted far more versions than the published ones. All in all, she worked five years on them.

At the end of his life, Crowley wrote a book about this new Tarot, called The Book Thoth. About the card The Aeon Crowley wrote in the Book Thoth:
>This new Tarot may therefore be regarded as a series of illustrations to the Book of the Law; the doctrine of that Book is everywhere implicit.< (Book of Thoth, page 115)

If you cut out these cards and remove their frames, especially the trumps can be put together in a very harmonic fashion. Why so?

Crowley noted in the Book of Thoth that the harmony of the cards was proof of the correct application of symbols and colours of the holy cabballa, upon which this tarot was created. By making collages of these cards, I learned that the link between the peculiar cards was not only made through their colours or symbols but through their geometry. Which kind of geometry was used by Harris, which made these links possible?

http://user.cyberlink.ch/~koenig/dplanet/stephen/claas/olive_e.html

Dr. Steven Greer presents "Contact & Disclosure: The Final Sequence"

Dr. Greer recently briefed President Obama on the UFO cover up and the shadow governments agenda.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0oLJNfs_rM

McGovern: JFK Was Assassinated by the CIA, and Obama May Fear the Same

"Raymond McGovern is a 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials.

McGovern has been a tireless anti-Iraq-war activist and human rights advocate.

McGovern has previously said: “I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke”.

Yesterday, McGovern told reporter Brad Friedman that he believes that the CIA may have assassinated John F. Kennedy.

He further told Friedman that he thinks Obama may be going easy on the CIA for its role in torturing prisoners because he is afraid that if he goes too hard on the CIA, they might assassinate him also."

Alluding to the assassination of JFK, long-time high-level CIA analyst says Panetta and the President 'afraid of these guys because these guys have a whole lot to lose if justice takes its course'...

During my interview last night with 27-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern on the Mike Malloy Show (which I've been guest hosting all this week), the man who used to personally deliver the CIA's Presidential Daily Briefings to George Bush Sr., among other Presidents, offered an extraordinarily chilling thought --- particularly coming from someone with his background.

In a conversation at the end of the hour (audio and transcript below), as I was trying to pin him down for an opinion on whether or not he felt it was appropriate for CIA Director Leon Panetta to have reportedly attempted to block a lawful investigation into torture and other war crimes committed by the CIA, McGovern alluded to a book about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and noted he felt it likely that both Panetta and President Obama may have reason to fear certain elements of the CIA.

"Let me just leave you with this thought," he said, "and that is that I think Panetta, and to a degree President Obama, are afraid --- I never thought I'd hear myself saying this --- I think they're afraid of the CIA."...


McGovern went on to note "the stakes are very high here," in relation to Attorney General Eric Holder's recently announced investigation of the CIA now under the direction of Panetta. "His main advisers and his senior staff are liable for prosecution for war crimes. The War Crimes statute includes very severe penalties, including capital punishment for those who, if under their custody, detainees die. And we know that at least a hundred have, so this is big stakes here."

He then recommended James W. Douglass' new book, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.

"He makes a very very persuasive case that it was President Kennedy's, um, the animosity that built up between him and the CIA after the Bay of Pigs, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because he was reaching out to the Russians and so forth and so on. It's a very well-researched book and his conclusion is very alarming," the long-time CIA veteran noted in what turned out to be a chilling end to our interview in which he described "two CIAs".

One, he says, was created by President Truman to "give him the straight scoop without any fear or favor. And then its covert action arm, which really doesn't believe --- which doesn't belong in this agency." McGovern referred to that CIA "advisedly" as the President's "own personal gestapo" which acts without oversight by the Congressional committees once tasked to do so.

"And so if you're asking why Obama and Panetta are going very very kid-glove-ish with the CIA, I think part of the reason, or the explanation is they're afraid of these guys because these guys have a whole lot to lose if justice takes its course."

"So, it's pretty scary. Yes, it is," he concluded.

http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=7955

Conspiracy theory or hidden truth? The 9/11 enigmas...

Richard Gage, AIA has been a practicing San Francisco Bay Area architect for more than 20 years, and is a registered member of the American Institute of Architects. Most recently he worked on a $400M mixed-use facility in Las Vegas NV. But he is also the founder and CEO of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, now numbering over 800 A/E’s, calling for a new investigation into the destruction of all 3 WTC high-rises on 9/11. Gage has spoken at over 100 events, reaching 20 U.S. states and 8 countries. He has been invited to present in 14 cities Australia, New Zealand, and Japan before the end of this year. As the anniversary of the events approaches, Gage tells WAN why he thinks there are hidden depths to the destruction of the World Trade Centre...

http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.commentview&comment_id=158

Scientists Confirm the Effectiveness of The Big Lie - People Will Go To Extraordinary Lengths to Create False Justifications for Government Misdeeds

This is no suprise but, it's nice to see some science back it up.

Adolph Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf:

All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true in itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

Similarly, Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, wrote:

That is of course rather painful for those involved. One should not as a rule reveal one's secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

Science has now helped to explain why the big lie is effective.

Specifically, sociologists from four major research institutions investigated why so many Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it became obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

The researchers found, as described in an article in the journal Sociological Inquiry (and re-printed by Newsweek):

* Many Americans felt an urgent need to seek justification for a war already in progress

* Rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe.

* "For the most part people completely ignore contrary information."

* "The study demonstrates voters' ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information"

* People get deeply attached to their beliefs, and form emotional attachments that get wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality, irrespective of the facts of the matter.

* "We refer to this as 'inferred justification, because for these voters, the sheer fact that we were engaged in war led to a post-hoc search for a justification for that war.

* "People were basically making up justifications for the fact that we were at war"

* "They wanted to believe in the link [between 9/11 and Iraq] because it helped them make sense of a current reality. So voters' ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information, whether we think that is good or bad for democratic practice, does at least demonstrate an impressive form of creativity.

As the study notes, this tendency of many people to make up false stories to explain why we went to war and then to hold on to such false beliefs in the face of contrary evidence is "a serious challenge to democratic theory and practice". Until people learn to think more clearly and rationally, they are easily manipulated.

All a government has to do is tell a big enough lie, and many people will swallow it hook, line and sinker. Or the government can just do something big - like starting a war for no good reason (or giving trillions in bailouts to the wealthiest corporations instead of the "little people" who most need it?) - and many people will struggle mightily to themselves concoct false justifications for doing so.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/08/scientists-confirm-effectiveness-of-big.html

Music of the Mind

This is a good article to check out regarding music therapy. Also check out the work of Oliver Sachs who the movie Awakenings was based on in addition to the book This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel J. Levitin.

Trinity College professor, Dan Lloyd, has created a program that utilizes an MRI to scan brainwaves, enabling him to choose different frequencies of sound to correlate with different parts of the brain. Volunteers to test the program were asked to watch scenery, to play a driving video game or to just relax. During this time, the active parts of the brain were converted into different frequencies, thus creating a musical sound. These “normal” brainwaves were then compared to brainwaves from subjects with dementia and schizophrenia, who produced rhythms that were “unsteady” and with “cadences.” The discovery may help pinpoint brain injuries that don't typically appear on a normal brain scan. Besides lending innovation in the neuroscience field, the results were “bizarrely beautiful” and unique to each person.

You Can Listen Here -

http://x-journals.com/2009/brain-wave-music-may-help-emergency-responders-says-dhs/

The Great American Bubble Machine

Great Article that will actually be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone

It backs up many theories I've heard. Elite families with vast amounts of wealth have a very high level of influence over International Banking. Also that climate change has been used as a scare tactic / propaganda for the masses so elites can control another market and create another bubble to profit from. Whether they have the scientist paid for, or climate change is being mostly created by humans in my opinion the jury is out. If you understand who controls the network media and recognize they only tell one side of the story it would not be a big stretch to come to this sort of conclusion.

The Great American Bubble Machine
Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression



http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28816321/the_great_american_bubble_machine/print



Exerts from Article Below



In Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83, Matt Taibbi takes on "the Wall Street Bubble Mafia" — investment bank Goldman Sachs. The piece has generated controversy, with Goldman Sachs firing back that Taibbi's piece is "an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories" and a spokesman adding, "We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good." Taibbi shot back: "Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also has former players fronting major TV shows. They have the ear of the president if they want it." Here, now, are excerpts from Matt Taibbi's piece and video of Taibbi exploring the key issues.

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.
The basic scam in the Internet Age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. Companies that weren't much more than pot-fueled ideas scrawled on napkins by up-too-late bong-smokers were taken public via IPOs, hyped in the media and sold to the public for megamillions. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out 50-story windows and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.

It sounds obvious now, but what the average investor didn't know at the time was that the banks had changed the rules of the game, making the deals look better than they actually were. They did this by setting up what was, in reality, a two-tiered investment system — one for the insiders who knew the real numbers, and another for the lay investor who was invited to chase soaring prices the banks themselves knew were irrational. While Goldman's later pattern would be to capitalize on changes in the regulatory environment, its key innovation in the Internet years was to abandon its own industry's standards of quality control.

Goldman's role in the sweeping global disaster that was the housing bubble is not hard to trace. Here again, the basic trick was a decline in underwriting standards, although in this case the standards weren't in IPOs but in mortgages. By now almost everyone knows that for decades mortgage dealers insisted that home buyers be able to produce a down payment of 10 percent or more, show a steady income and good credit rating, and possess a real first and last name. Then, at the dawn of the new millennium, they suddenly threw all that shit out the window and started writing mortgages on the backs of napkins to cocktail waitresses and ex-cons carrying five bucks and a Snickers bar.

And what caused the huge spike in oil prices? Take a wild guess. Obviously Goldman had help — there were other players in the physical-commodities market — but the root cause had almost everything to do with the behavior of a few powerful actors determined to turn the once-solid market into a speculative casino. Goldman did it by persuading pension funds and other large institutional investors to invest in oil futures — agreeing to buy oil at a certain price on a fixed date. The push transformed oil from a physical commodity, rigidly subject to supply and demand, into something to bet on, like a stock. Between 2003 and 2008, the amount of speculative money in commodities grew from $13 billion to $317 billion, an increase of 2,300 percent. By 2008, a barrel of oil was traded 27 times, on average, before it was actually delivered and consumed.
The history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates. By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman.

But then, something happened. It's hard to say what it was exactly; it might have been the fact that Goldman's co-chairman in the early Nineties, Robert Rubin, followed Bill Clinton to the White House, where he directed the National Economic Council and eventually became Treasury secretary. While the American media fell in love with the story line of a pair of baby-boomer, Sixties-child, Fleetwood Mac yuppies nesting in the White House, it also nursed an undisguised crush on Rubin, who was hyped as without a doubt the smartest person ever to walk the face of the Earth, with Newton, Einstein, Mozart and Kant running far behind.

Rubin was the prototypical Goldman banker. He was probably born in a $4,000 suit, he had a face that seemed permanently frozen just short of an apology for being so much smarter than you, and he exuded a Spock-like, emotion-neutral exterior; the only human feeling you could imagine him experiencing was a nightmare about being forced to fly coach. It became almost a national cliché that whatever Rubin thought was best for the economy — a phenomenon that reached its apex in 1999, when Rubin appeared on the cover of Time with his Treasury deputy, Larry Summers, and Fed chief Alan Greenspan under the headline the committee to save the world. And "what Rubin thought," mostly, was that the American economy, and in particular the financial markets, were over-regulated and needed to be set free. During his tenure at Treasury, the Clinton White House made a series of moves that would have drastic consequences for the global economy — beginning with Rubin's complete and total failure to regulate his old firm during its first mad dash for obscene short-term profits.

See Matt Taibbi run down Goldman Sachs graduates with government positions.

After the oil bubble collapsed last fall, there was no new bubble to keep things humming — this time, the money seems to be really gone, like worldwide-depression gone. So the financial safari has moved elsewhere, and the big game in the hunt has become the only remaining pool of dumb, unguarded capital left to feed upon: taxpayer money. Here, in the biggest bailout in history, is where Goldman Sachs really started to flex its muscle.

It began in September of last year, when then-Treasury secretary Paulson made a momentous series of decisions. Although he had already engineered a rescue of Bear Stearns a few months before and helped bail out quasi-private lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers — one of Goldman's last real competitors — collapse without intervention. ("Goldman's superhero status was left intact," says market analyst Eric Salzman, "and an investment-banking competitor, Lehman, goes away.") The very next day, Paulson greenlighted a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman. Thanks to the rescue effort, the bank ended up getting paid in full for its bad bets: By contrast, retired auto workers awaiting the Chrysler bailout will be lucky to receive 50 cents for every dollar they are owed.

Immediately after the AIG bailout, Paulson announced his federal bailout for the financial industry, a $700 billion plan called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and put a heretofore unknown 35-year-old Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari in charge of administering the funds. In order to qualify for bailout monies, Goldman announced that it would convert from an investment bank to a bank-holding company, a move that allows it access not only to $10 billion in TARP funds, but to a whole galaxy of less conspicuous, publicly backed funding — most notably, lending from the discount window of the Federal Reserve. By the end of March, the Fed will have lent or guaranteed at least $8.7 trillion under a series of new bailout programs — and thanks to an obscure law allowing the Fed to block most congressional audits, both the amounts and the recipients of the monies remain almost entirely secret.

Converting to a bank-holding company has other benefits as well: Goldman's primary supervisor is now the New York Fed, whose chairman at the time of its announcement was Stephen Friedman, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs. Friedman was technically in violation of Federal Reserve policy by remaining on the board of Goldman even as he was supposedly regulating the bank; in order to rectify the problem, he applied for, and got, a conflict-of-interest waiver from the government. Friedman was also supposed to divest himself of his Goldman stock after Goldman became a bank-holding company, but thanks to the waiver, he was allowed to go out and buy 52,000 additional shares in his old bank, leaving him $3 million richer. Friedman stepped down in May, but the man now in charge of supervising Goldman — New York Fed president William Dudley — is yet another former Goldmanite.

The collective message of all of this — the AIG bailout, the swift approval for its bank-holding conversion, the TARP funds — is that when it comes to Goldman Sachs, there isn't a free market at all. The government might let other players on the market die, but it simply will not allow Goldman to fail under any circumstances. Its edge in the market has suddenly become an open declaration of supreme privilege. "In the past it was an implicit advantage," says Simon Johnson, an economics professor at MIT and former official at the International Monetary Fund, who compares the bailout to the crony capitalism he has seen in Third World countries. "Now it's more of an explicit advantage."
Fast-forward to today. It's early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs — its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign — sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.

Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm's co-head of finance.) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.



Full Article

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28816321/the_great_american_bubble_machine/print#

Zen Stories - Full Circle

A couple of my favorites


Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"


There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically.

"Maybe," the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed.

"Maybe," replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "Maybe," answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. "Maybe," said the farmer.
To appreciate wholeness entirely, you must appreciate absence and emptiness as well. A wheel is of no use without a hole for the axle to go through. A house without doors and windows has no purpose. A bag without an opening in it cannot hold anything. Music exists both because there are notes and because there are silences between the notes.




Stories that illustrate the foundation of Zen philosophy
>A says he is not afraid. B says he is not afraid and he is also not afraid of being afraid. The first statement comes from a mind that is tight and assertive—a mind that clings to fixed viewpoints. The second statement comes from a mind that is nimble and free-flowing—a mind that does not cling to fixed viewpoints. The first type of mind is an 180º mind, represented by a half circle. The second is a 360º mind, represented by a full circle.

The 360º mind does not have any preconceived notions—not even the preconceived notion that there should not be any preconceived notions. The 360º mind is open, flexible and uncontrived. It is without blocks and always change-ready.

WHITE BELT

When a novice starts learning martial arts, he wears a white belt, symbolic of innocence. After months of practice, the white belt gets dirty and turns brown, symbolic of the first degree of attainment. After more practice, the belt gets soiled and eventually turns black, symbolic of full attainment.

If the practitioner does not stop learning even after full attainment, the black belt starts getting frayed, turning almost white, symbolic of return to innocence. The frayed white belt represents technical competence of an experienced martial artist, combined with the innocence and receptivity of a beginner. It signifies going beyond technique and embracing no-technique—coming full circle.

PICASSO'S CHILD

Once Picasso said: "I used to draw like Raphael. But it has taken me a lifetime to draw like a child."

Picasso was a competent artist when he drew like Raphael. He became a great artist only when he awakened the child in him and started drawing without any pre-determined technique.

The same is true of every art. For example, the contribution of technique in the work of a competent musician is 100 per cent. But the contribution of technique in the work of a great musician is only 10 per cent or so—the remaining 90 per cent being contributed by the child in the musician. Only when you transcend technique, you become great in your field. You come full circle.

KABIR'S COMPLAINT

Kabir never accepted any gift from his disciples. But his son Kamal never refused anything that his disciples brought to him. This made Kabir unhappy.

One day, he reproached his son: "I do not accept any gift because gifts mean nothing to me. But it pains me to know that you grab all that your disciples bring to you."

Kamal said: "Father, if gifts mean nothing to you, why are you bothered whether I accept them or reject them?" Here, Kabir had an 180º mind, and Kamal a 360º one.

THE VIRTUOUS KING

When Boddhidharma visited China in the sixth century, he was invited to the King's court. The king was proud of his spirituality and the good deeds he had done for his people. He narrated what all he had done to promote religion and then asked Boddhidharma's opinion about the merit he earned.

Boddhidharma's reply was blunt: "No merit."

Obviously, being virtuous was not a great virtue in Boddhidharma's scheme of things. The king had an 180º mind. Boddhidharma had a 360º mind. You can't be spiritual as long as you wear the badge of spirituality. Taking off the badge is coming full circle.

NOTHING GREAT

Once there was a conference of religions to which all faiths sent their representatives. Every representative stated forcefully that his religion was great. When it was the turn of Zen's representative, he stated truthfully: "There is nothing great in Zen."

A member of the audience with a deep understanding of Zen got up and said: "Your saying that there is nothing great in Zen actually makes Zen sound as something great. So you should not have said there is nothing great in Zen."

The Zen representative had an 180º mind. The member of the audience had a 360º mind.

A GOB OF SPIT

For years, Henry Miller lived the life of a would-be writer. He was 45 when he wrote his first book Tropic of Cancer in 1934. Here is what he writes in the opening page:

"I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am (author's italic). Everything that was literature has fallen from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God. "This then? This is not a book. This is libel, slander, and defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants of God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty. what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off-key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse."

Henry Miller could not have written such a powerful book if he had not got over his romanticized visions of becoming a writer. He could write the book he did precisely because there were "no more books to be written."

With the transition from "I thought that I was an artist" to "I am", he had come full circle. As a result, he went beyond mere writing to "singing"—not to mention the funny things he did to God and the like in the process.

THE MUMBAI SCHOOL

Do you have free will? If you believe you do, then you have an 180º mind. The alternative seems to be the view that there is no free will.

A well-meaning, emerging school of thought in Mumbai, India, has been hammering into people's minds that free will is an illusion and without God's will you can't make the slightest move. This viewpoint is also indicative of an 180º mind.

Insisting that it is all God's will is as much a concept as insisting that you have free will. When something happens, it just happens. Sometimes it seems that you made it happen. Some other times it seems that it happened by itself or God (or the totality) made it happen. How you view the happening is more a question of perspective than of fact. Which means that the so-called your will and God's will are both labels. Taking off the labels is to come full circle.

THE MIRROR EFFECT

Certain things in the world appeal to you. Certain other things don't. You have your considered opinions about different issues. You may believe there is a benign power somewhere that cares for you. You may believe it's a chaotic world without any rhyme or reason.

How you perceive the world not only tells about the world, but it is also a reflection of how your mind works. Seeing your own mind in how the world appears to you is to come full circle.

ONE THING

When you strive for enlightenment, it's an 180º vision. When enlightenment happens, it's nothing like what you believed it to be. Then enlightenment and unenlightenment don't seem to be two things.

Saying that they are two things and saying that they are one thing also don't appear to be two things. With that realization, you come full circle. The core of this piece does not lie in what has been stated but in what has not been stated. When you see that, you'll come full circle.

With that hint, it is time for this piece to come full circle as well.