Destination Eschaton

Destination Eschaton - The Shamen

Oh nobley born, let the mind be not distracted
Though the road ahead is hard and long
And the journey seems without ending
Oh that which thou art, let they gaze be not deflected
Fix thy attention on the goal,
And light that shines so celestial

Onward ever ever on
Destination Eschaton
Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run
From alpha into omega

Onward ever ever on
Destination Eschaton
Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run
From alpha into omega

Pilgrim take heart,
There's a strange attraction, giving strong acceleration
See the light, enter the light, become the light and shine
Like the star you know you are

Be ready for the storm
As confusion ushes in a time of chaos
But up out of the turbulence,
A better order surely will emerge
Synergy and harmony and wisdom will come in time to rescue u
Onward ever ever on
Destination Eschaton
Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run
From alpha into omega

Onward ever ever on
Destination Eschaton
Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run
From alpha into omega

Pilgrim take heart,
There's a strange attraction, giving strong acceleration
See the light, enter the light, become the light and shine
Like the star you know you are

And on, across the Rubicon
So imminentised by Eschaton
Unto Ragnarock or Nemeton and beyond
In the name of Adam Kadmon you move on
Ego gone be as one
Transformation to solarisation
Towards the final confrontation
Eschaton is thy destination

Onward ever ever on, Onward ever ever on
Onward ever ever on
Destination Eschaton
Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run

Onward ever ever on
Destination Eschaton
Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run
From alpha into omega

Onward ever ever on
Destination Eschaton
Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run

Onward ever ever on
Destination Eschaton
Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run
From alpha into omega
From alpha into omega

Eros And The Eschaton "What Science Forgot"

: Consciousness is the generalized word that we use for this coordination of complex perception to create a world that draws from the past and builds a model of the future and then suspends the perceiving organism in this magical moment called the now where the past is coordinated for the purpose of navigating the future. McLuhan called it "driving with the rear-view mirror" and the only thing good about it is it's better than driving with no mirror at all.

Reality is accelerating towards an unimaginable Omega Point. We are the inheritors of immense momentum in our social systems, our philosophical and scientific and technological approaches to the world. Because we're driving the historical vehicle with a rear-view mirror it appears to us that we're headed straight into a brick wall at a thousand miles an hour. It appears that we are destroying the earth, polluting the atmosphere, wrecking the oceans, dehumanizing ourselves, robbing our children of a future, so forth and so on.

I believe what is in fact going on is that we are burning our bridges. One by one we're burning our bridges to the past. We cannot go back to the mushroom-dotted plains of Africa or the canopied rainforests of 5 million years ago. We can't even go back to the era of...200 years ago. We have burned our bridges. We are preparing for a kind of cultural forward escape.

Every model of the universe has a hard swallow...a place where the argument cannot hide the fact that there's something slightly fishy about it. The hard swallow built into science is this business about the big bang. Now let's give this a little attention here. This is the notion that the universe, for no reason, sprang from nothing in a single instant. Before we dissect this, notice that this is the limit test for credulity. Whether you believe this or not, notice that it is not possible to conceive of something more unlikely, or less likely to be believed. I defy anyone. It's just the limit case for unlikelihood: that the universe would spring from nothing in a single instant for no reason....It makes no sense. It is in fact no different than saying, "and then God said, 'Let there be light!'".

What the philosophers of science are saying is "give us one free miracle and we will roll from that point forward, from the birth of time to the crack of doom. Just one free miracle and then it will all unravel according to natural law and these bizarre equations which nobody can understand but which are so holy in this enterprise." Well I say then if science gets one free miracle then everybody gets one free miracle.

What We Still Don't Know: "Are We Real?"

There is a fundamental chasm in our understanding of ourselves, the universe, and everything. To solve this, Sir Martin takes us on a mind-boggling journey through multiple universes to post-biological life. On the way we learn of the disturbing possibility that we could be the product of someone elses experiment.

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible

It’s a quote by Albert Einstein, which is where we left off last time. Comprehensible translates to, for example, mathematically intelligible, regular or lawful. These are different ways to say that it is possible to arrive at descriptions of the world that allow us to understand it and make predictions. Einstein’s point was that there is no particular reason to expect the universe to be the way it is, i.e. following elegant mathematical laws. It could have just as well been a chaotic mess impossible to make sense out of.

It’s hard to tell whether it’s even meaningful to speak of the way the universe could have been without speaking of how the universe and its characteristics arise. Indeed, one of the deepest questions in physics is, why does the universe have the laws it has? (Second only to why is there something rather than nothing?)

But imagine for the moment that the universe was in fact a messy chaos. Well, one thing seems clear, that kind of universe would not contain life, because life is one of the most obvious examples of order and regularity (or if you like, life requires order and regularity to exist), and intelligent life is precisely the kind of life that requires most order.

The point is that our very existence screens off the possibility of a non-regular universe, it is impossible for us to observe anything different because we would not have existed under those circumstances. This point is known as the anthropic principle.

Does it answer the question? Not really; the anthropic principle has been labeled as unscientific and metaphysical by critics. You have to be careful to not take the point too far. In this case I’m just saying that life implies a selection effect to the universe it inhabits.

But again, that does not answer the question. However, if we additionally postulate that there isn’t one universe, but many, the situation makes some sense:

Alice: Why is the universe comprehensible?

Bob: The thing is, there isn’t just one, there are many, so it turns out that some of them are comprehensible, just like in a lottery someone must end up winning.

Alice: But what about the coincidence that we landed precisely on a comprehensible one?

Bob: That’s not a coincidence, our very existence implies that the universe we are in must be orderly. We couldn’t have landed in any other one.

Alice: So it’s a combination of those two things that answers the question, the anthropic principle is not enough..

Bob: Yes

Although in fact the question is still not answered because we had to postulate the existence of many universes, and we could in turn ask ourselves why that is the case. Oh well.