Too fast

Reasons for creating a new high speed railway link from London to Manchester and possibly beyond are strongly being urged by those who think it will help the national economy. This hugely expensive plan is being vigorously opposed by those who say it will damage the environment, and uproot communities along the way. I read today that Chinese engineers believe that it would be 'easy' to build such a line, and they can't understand why there might be any opposition to it at all. There is a kind of inevitability behind any suggested project which is promoted on the grounds that it may make for greater economic success. There is a less strident body putting forward the view that faster is not necessarily better, and that the quality of British life does not depend on the frenzied demand for 'growth'. Speed is a false god. It is laughable to imagine that a journey from north to south of the United Kingdom could be accomplished 20 minutes or so faster by spending immense sums of money on rapid technology. What does the average person do with 20 minutes of spare time in either London or Manchester? It would be far more profitable to teach people in business, politics, the arts, etc, how to expedite their business more efficiently. Time spent in meetings of all kinds would be reduced if those taking part just got to the point, and business was properly marshalled. We are being held to ransom by procrastinators, and verbose ego-trippers. A national course on effective spoken precis would save us millions in unnecessary waffle, eliminate the need for fast trasport to get people to time-wasting events, and allow us more freedom to enjoy the slow, peaceful pace of what's left of this glorious country.

dying

We all do it.  Rich and poor, young and old, famous and nonentities, believers and atheists. Sooner or later the call comes and we have to go. Now that religion and its associated belief in life beyond death are regarded as old fashioned relics, the general assumption is that life ends at physical death. There is a folksy hope that the bereaved will meet their deceased loved ones 'up there' and that they are somehow 'watching over us'. But that belief cannot be tested wsith the forensic rigour of experiments with material stuiff like bodies. We live at a time of general denial of spiritual things. There is flesh and blood, and brains, but nothing else. It makes no sense to suggest that anything else is real. But what do we really know about flesh and blood and brains? We understand only a fraction of what there is yet to learn about ourselves, or the physical universe. We can hardly ask a coherent question about the size of the cosmos. We know surprisingly little about the way the brain works, and how it relates to  the mind. There is no answer to the big question: 'Why is there something and not nothing?'  That being so, the collected experiences of those who report psychic events is at least as good evidence for truth as anything that physical scientists propose. We have become so accustomed to thinking that the material world is all that can be taken seriously that spiritual reality is widely dismissed. Psychic researchers and religious believers assert, all the same, that life continues after mortal death. 'Life expectancy' is far from the usual assumption about phsyical longevity. The evidence of things heard, seen and felt by thousands of sane, rational people tells of events which have no cause apart from, psychic agencies.For some reason traditional churches are unwilling to speak openly about this, but it moves the issue of 'assisted dying', for example, into a different arena. The general assumption that death is the ultimate tragedy is wrong. Death is far from tragedy: it is the supreme adventure..

Parallel

Among all the exciting thoughts now being pursued by scientists is one about a parallel universe. Research into matter/anti matter suggests that this world is a reflection of cosmic reality in which there is a  parallel system of life, or maybe more, which  impinge on the world as we know it. None of this is entirely new, as Plato (born 429BC) wrote about an equally real parallel world in which there were 'forms' or 'ideas' like goodness, beauty and equality which interpenetrate our world, and which could transform our materialistic values if we took them to heart. We may be moving towards the discovery of a source of spiritual energy which is what Jesus the Christ referred to as the Kingdom of God, and to which he invited us to pray, as to 'our Father in heaven.' Some people in the corporeal world are especially sensitive to this other world. The idea was also defined by William  James in his classic 'Varieties of Religious Experience' (1902. as something 'more'.  He wrote: 'The world of our present consciousness is only one of many worlds of consciousness that exist and that those worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also, and that  although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points and higher energies filter in.. I can of course put myself into the sectarian scientist's attitude and imagine that the world of sensations and scientifiuc laws may be all. But  whenever I do this I hear the inward monitor whisper the word 'bosh'. Humbug is humbug even though in bears the scientific name. Human experience invincibly urges me beyond the scientific bounds.'

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