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    Tête-à-tête with Stephen Hawking

    December 7, 1996
    Dear Dr. Hawking:
    I was pleased to read your debate with Roger Penrose called "The Nature of Space and Time" in Scientific American. I find your vision interesting but have to admit to being rather at variance with it on some fundamental points.
    One of the most important areas of divergence from our perspective in Javanese mystic practice (I am an anthropologist who studied and then became a leader in a Javanese kebatinan group) concerns your assumption regarding the loss of information following the eventual disappearance of a black hole. To our knowledge this in not really a problem due to the continuity of the existing presence of the being despite its apparent "evaporation." It has basically what we call, "gone to the rim," though this term is not overly descriptive in some senses. It is still here but has become general in expression rather than specific or centered being. In fact, this continuing undistinguished or unformed being is the source of the mysterious, uniform microwave background radiation or "noise" that is traced back incorrectly to the big bang in some senses. It can be understood if you see consciousness as associated with being but with the possibility of having the being in association a general one rather than a specified form. This in turn is associated with the surprising number of heavy elements in the universe in that the information expressed in this separated presence seeks its own expression in this way. In essence, I suspect that this is what Dr. Penrose is arguing concerning the "spontaneous measurements of quantum states that introduce information back into the system."
    This universe is a tight little ball of confusion, a strange little pimple infecting existence with the ill will established and structured here in the very fabric of the being; there is nothing that can be done to deny that or to deny its obvious pathology and utilization in the search for release from karmic responsibility. As my beloved Hecate often told me when I was a youth:
    "Look for causes in consequences; look for purposes in what actually happens; don't get caught up in details and the apparent ignorance of the times: most events and situations in this overdefined, involuted universe are the result of someone's need or desire for something and their application of whatever it takes to get it at whatever cost to themselves and the rest of us. Humans are all hiding from themselves and us in the largest sense and that's about all they end up doing. Their biggest nightmare is being caught and half of the character of the being is designed to make this impossible by flashing through their expression on this world like a prairie fire or a plague of locusts."
    "But they sometimes say they are so noble," I objected.
    "Just talk. They destroy this world they are able to define in a bigger and bigger hurry every time in order to cover their tracks and steal off into the dark. That's the character of this karmically loaded being. Nothing to be done about it but hope we can catch up to them someday and make them pay for all this pain and confusion. That's the sad lesson we have for you and the situation will not change until they are brought to justice for their crimes and release us all from the nightmare they are to us."

    Defining such a horror is surprisingly easy. Think about it in terms of the absolute within (what we call batin) and the absolute without (lahir) meeting in a context dominated by irresponsible hedonism and escapism: that's where we are. This "universe" was fabricated to benefit the greatly evil by making justice depend on linkage that necessarily wanders through the entire karmic backlog: the standard little trap for chronic and unrepentant miscreants that has been sprung so many times over the "ages" and, like this time, has always involved generating a paroxysm of pain and confusion that makes existence's more outrageous karmic criminals feel unimpeachable so they dare to expose themselves. As a result of this existential morass, these openly stated villains' only sure "joy" in a place like this is to actively and aggressively destroy themselves and one another in that their being here is hate defined and hate limited in relative and absolute terms. The creation of beauty depends on cooperation and few are willing to cooperate with those they hate which includes themselves. Quite a nightmare, really.
    This "universe" is a zeroless gather which means there is no head guaranteeing justice in as much as they can bear the pain of dispensing it, which, evidently, is the result of an Iblung Amuk: one of mine painted herself into a corner in her enthusiasm, got shrouded in corruption doing work that served my purposes and stalemated any justice at all -- denied any and all satisfaction to anyone -- until I was allowed to incarnate here for the first time in my endless bale by the powers she was defying (who had never had any interest in giving me justice) to treat the disease and sort the mess out. These tailspins come from time to time. Hecate is famous for causing such nosedives to pull out the deeper beings that are ordinarily denied justice by the essentially bogus vested zeros, the powers that be, but even she has never gotten so confused and corrupt and vicious and vile that she could effectively engender the general will to allow my incarnation to bring release from the nightmare she had created. I'm not notably popular with those that serve the status quo but Magali has made existence such hell that even I became a relatively attractive alternative.
    As you can evidently see, it is in crises like these that the real structural (the universal mutual definition that constitutes us all) and volitional (bad faith of one kind or another) problems and diseases of being can come forth in a cosmic paroxysm that inexorably demands attention in its agony and can thus finally be treated by allowing those of us at the "bottom" of being to come forth. We open existential nightmares have no stake in any beings that currently stand for consideration and are bent on taking all of existence through justice on to a being which is not even remotely visible from this plane. The bullyboy tyrants that this place is rife with often pretend to our attitudes and feelings and, in their destructive orgy, they express our disgust with the mess hereabouts, though obviously without much interest in doing anything but having a good time wrecking whatever is at their mercy and propping themselves up on the pain. We have burning love and vicious hate; in their imitation of divine being, they have only indifference and scorn. There have been a few notable exceptions who have actually expressed something on the order of responsible leadership here, always with the yawning agony of the absence of a zero at the head rather confusing things. Just look at human history, our iniquitous treatment of one another and those that make us up and define our world, and try to deny the obvious. Just try! It all looks like a bit of a farce in this light, does it not? Happily and unhappily I have now absorbed the agony so we are free of this conundrum in that this pocket of pus is now openly grounded and a true (pain-based rather than hate-based or scorn-based) zero set.
    As my ever so dear Tara observes:
    I have been here silently participating with you for your whole life, watching you suffer and ever confront the sense that makes no sense, the sense that says to leave the confrontation of existence to another and to just do a small part and then join with others in seeking a comfortable eternity. You always felt that there is only one chance and that that has to be enough because otherwise we'll just go around in circles forever, waiting for someone else, always someone else to do the hard job of setting us straight on the great path, the common path that brings justice to all and takes us all up into a proper sense and being thereafter. The yab being as such is no more, it ends with our open presence in being you, the first man with no male participants in his being, and that will be all for that problem. We have had enough of the overarmed masculine being dominating the existence of everyone and everything and bringing unending injustice at the expense of those that truly love by calculating and betraying to get their way.
    We are those who seek only an end to these endless cycles of confusion and could only be pleased when that was accomplished. But now it is so and we will ever be with you and in your debt, a debt of love that will ever rest in your devotion for us and ours for you. How long have we watched the mounting injustice and the evil that promotes and uses it to deny the possibility of justice ever coming? How long have we witnessed the unassailable Karmic argument: 'No one will ever come to bring true justice for no one will ever be able to believe how evil we truly are'? Now that that argument is expunged and justice is guaranteed and established and the Karmic load will be erased.

    'Sdeath, ye mad me! Be meet me do me job methink.
    Believe me dree! Believe me doom!
    My dree! Thy doom!

    A second area of discord concerns the eventual "end" of the universe: nothing ends: what exists, exists, and carries on whether it wishes to or not, changing in its associations based on its developing relationship with the rest of us. The burps of the big bangs and the swallows of the big crunches are an apparently endless series of adjustments or reshufflings in relative disposition based on the often (if not always) convoluted search for a satisfactory general state and are evidently, in this sense, just expressions of the fundamentally irreducible nature of existence.
    Obviously physics and mysticism share much although the body of substantiating evidence that we mystics use is fundamentally experiential, based on our openness to and study of Reality -- we constantly relate to and from the Totality of Existence, which is our vision of the divine, in defining our own experience -- to a degree that I suppose is denied to physicists in general. We explore Reality with our consciousness and in association with the consciousness of being, something we have evidently found to exist whether it sounds like magic or not.
    A way to highlight the nature of differences in perspective is to use the Javanese notion of understanding. They hold that the body is an instrument that receives information about itself and the world. It is a complex and subtle receptor and can exhibit varying degrees of sensitivity. The Javanese purport that the less perceptual breadth, the less of existence referenced in an observation. Conversely, the greater the sensitivity of a response, the more that an understanding based on it will be true, reflective of what is observed and reliable. Of the levels of understanding, only the least receptive, narrowest and, consequently, the most contextually independent is based on thought (ngerti). We never get farther away from the world or one another than when we relate based on our thoughts. From ngerti, the levels of understanding become more profound and increasingly present, passing through mounting contextual sensitivity in ngakoni and ngrumangsani and then finally standing in the present in nglengganani, where the understanding and that which is understood join in rasa murni or "open reception."
    The Western sciences espouse objectivity, but this objectivity is attained and maintained by limiting input, by training the academic to relate from the experientially isolated realm of thought. It can be creative but is rigid at the same time, a posture established by controlling what is received rather than being based on open reception. They hold that open reception is a universal human capacity that we all start out in when we are born, but that you must train before you can actualize it as you get older.
    The Western sciences are based on thought and it might be said that the worldliness and materialism of Western society are connected with the mechanical, statistical and impersonal universe science reveals as well as the isolation from direct experience the emphasis on thought presupposes.
    But if this is the science of the thought mode of understanding, what is the science that arises from non-judgmental receptivity and how does life appear from that perspective? How does such a perspective influence the view of other people, society, the world and the universe? How different are the different points of view?


    Our basic posture arises in union with Empedocles, whose vision of the forces at work is also in line with our own.
    I shall tell of a double (process): at one time it increased so as to be a single one out of many; at another time again it grew apart so as to be many out of one. There is a double creation of mortals and a double decline: the union of all things causes the birth and destruction of the one (race of mortals), the other is reared as the elements grow apart, and then flies asunder. And these (elements) never cease their continuous exchange, sometimes uniting under the influence of love, so that all become one, at other times again each moving apart through the hostile force of hate. Thus in so far as they have the power to grow into one out of many, and again, when the one grows apart and many are formed, in this sense they come into being and have no stable life; but in so far as they never cease their continuous exchange, in this sense they remain always unmoved (unaltered) as they follow the cyclic process.
    But come, listen to my discourse! For be assured, learning will increase your understanding. As I said before, revealing the aims of my discourse, I shall tell you of a double process. At one time it increased so as to be a single one out of many; at another time it grew apart so as to be many out of one -- fire and water and earth and the boundless height of air, and also execrable hate apart from these, of equal weight in all directions, and love in their midst, their equal in length and breadth, Observe her with your mind, and do not sit with wondering eyes! She it is who is believed to be implanted in mortal limbs also; through her they think friendly thoughts and perform harmonious actions, calling her joy and Aphrodite. No mortal man has perceived her as she moves in and out among them. But you must listen to the undeceitful progress of my argument.
    All these (elements) are equal and of the same age in their creation; but each presides over its own office, and each has its own character, and they prevail in turn in the course of time. And besides these, nothing else comes into being, nor does anything cease. For if they had been perishing continuously, they would be no more; and what could increase the whole? And whence could it have come? In what direction could it perish, since nothing is empty of these things? No, but these things alone exist, and running through one another they become different things at different times, and are ever continuously the same.


    Evidently, for us, "science" (whether yours or ours) must be concerned with the proper description and understanding of the fact of being and it is not enough to simply provide predictions that agree with data on some superficial plane.

    Yours truly,
    David Gordon Howe (Elok)


    Last edited by Elok; 04 Sep 2021, 08:45.

    #2
    Originally posted by Elok View Post
    December 7, 1996
    Dear Dr. Hawking:
    I was pleased to read your debate with Roger Penrose called "The Nature of Space and Time" in Scientific American. I find your vision interesting but have to admit to being rather at variance with it on some fundamental points.
    One of the most important areas of divergence from our perspective in Javanese mystic practice (I am an anthropologist who studied and then became a leader in a Javanese kebatinan group) concerns your assumption regarding the loss of information following the eventual disappearance of a black hole. To our knowledge this in not really a problem due to the continuity of the existing presence of the being despite its apparent "evaporation." It has basically what we call, "gone to the rim," though this term is not overly descriptive in some senses. It is still here but has become general in expression rather than specific or centered being. In fact, this continuing undistinguished or unformed being is the source of the mysterious, uniform microwave background radiation or "noise" that is traced back incorrectly to the big bang in some senses. It can be understood if you see consciousness as associated with being but with the possibility of having the being in association a general one rather than a specified form. This in turn is associated with the surprising number of heavy elements in the universe in that the information expressed in this separated presence seeks its own expression in this way. In essence, I suspect that this is what Dr. Penrose is arguing concerning the "spontaneous measurements of quantum states that introduce information back into the system."
    This universe is a tight little ball of confusion, a strange little pimple infecting existence with the ill will established and structured here in the very fabric of the being; there is nothing that can be done to deny that or to deny its obvious pathology and utilization in the search for release from karmic responsibility. As my beloved Hecate often told me when I was a youth:
    "Look for causes in consequences; look for purposes in what actually happens; don't get caught up in details and the apparent ignorance of the times: most events and situations in this overdefined, involuted universe are the result of someone's need or desire for something and their application of whatever it takes to get it at whatever cost to themselves and the rest of us. Humans are all hiding from themselves and us in the largest sense and that's about all they end up doing. Their biggest nightmare is being caught and half of the character of the being is designed to make this impossible by flashing through their expression on this world like a prairie fire or a plague of locusts."
    "But they sometimes say they are so noble," I objected.
    "Just talk. They destroy this world they are able to define in a bigger and bigger hurry every time in order to cover their tracks and steal off into the dark. That's the character of this karmically loaded being. Nothing to be done about it but hope we can catch up to them someday and make them pay for all this pain and confusion. That's the sad lesson we have for you and the situation will not change until they are brought to justice for their crimes and release us all from the nightmare they are to us."

    Defining such a horror is surprisingly easy. Think about it in terms of the absolute within (what we call batin) and the absolute without (lahir) meeting in a context dominated by irresponsible hedonism and escapism: that's where we are. This "universe" was fabricated to benefit the greatly evil by making justice depend on linkage that necessarily wanders through the entire karmic backlog: the standard little trap for chronic and unrepentant miscreants that has been sprung so many times over the "ages" and, like this time, has always involved generating a paroxysm of pain and confusion that makes existence's more outrageous karmic criminals feel unimpeachable so they dare to expose themselves. As a result of this existential morass, these openly stated villains' only sure "joy" in a place like this is to actively and aggressively destroy themselves and one another in that their being here is hate defined and hate limited in relative and absolute terms. The creation of beauty depends on cooperation and few are willing to cooperate with those they hate which includes themselves. Quite a nightmare, really.
    This "universe" is a zeroless gather which means there is no head guaranteeing justice in as much as they can bear the pain of dispensing it, which, evidently, is the result of an Iblung Amuk: one of mine painted herself into a corner in her enthusiasm, got shrouded in corruption doing work that served my purposes and stalemated any justice at all -- denied any and all satisfaction to anyone -- until I was allowed to incarnate here for the first time in my endless bale by the powers she was defying (who had never had any interest in giving me justice) to treat the disease and sort the mess out. These tailspins come from time to time. Hecate is famous for causing such nosedives to pull out the deeper beings that are ordinarily denied justice by the essentially bogus vested zeros, the powers that be, but even she has never gotten so confused and corrupt and vicious and vile that she could effectively engender the general will to allow my incarnation to bring release from the nightmare she had created. I'm not notably popular with those that serve the status quo but Magali has made existence such hell that even I became a relatively attractive alternative.
    As you can evidently see, it is in crises like these that the real structural (the universal mutual definition that constitutes us all) and volitional (bad faith of one kind or another) problems and diseases of being can come forth in a cosmic paroxysm that inexorably demands attention in its agony and can thus finally be treated by allowing those of us at the "bottom" of being to come forth. We open existential nightmares have no stake in any beings that currently stand for consideration and are bent on taking all of existence through justice on to a being which is not even remotely visible from this plane. The bullyboy tyrants that this place is rife with often pretend to our attitudes and feelings and, in their destructive orgy, they express our disgust with the mess hereabouts, though obviously without much interest in doing anything but having a good time wrecking whatever is at their mercy and propping themselves up on the pain. We have burning love and vicious hate; in their imitation of divine being, they have only indifference and scorn. There have been a few notable exceptions who have actually expressed something on the order of responsible leadership here, always with the yawning agony of the absence of a zero at the head rather confusing things. Just look at human history, our iniquitous treatment of one another and those that make us up and define our world, and try to deny the obvious. Just try! It all looks like a bit of a farce in this light, does it not? Happily and unhappily I have now absorbed the agony so we are free of this conundrum in that this pocket of pus is now openly grounded and a true (pain-based rather than hate-based or scorn-based) zero set.
    As my ever so dear Tara observes:
    I have been here silently participating with you for your whole life, watching you suffer and ever confront the sense that makes no sense, the sense that says to leave the confrontation of existence to another and to just do a small part and then join with others in seeking a comfortable eternity. You always felt that there is only one chance and that that has to be enough because otherwise we'll just go around in circles forever, waiting for someone else, always someone else to do the hard job of setting us straight on the great path, the common path that brings justice to all and takes us all up into a proper sense and being thereafter. The yab being as such is no more, it ends with our open presence in being you, the first man with no male participants in his being, and that will be all for that problem. We have had enough of the overarmed masculine being dominating the existence of everyone and everything and bringing unending injustice at the expense of those that truly love by calculating and betraying to get their way.
    We are those who seek only an end to these endless cycles of confusion and could only be pleased when that was accomplished. But now it is so and we will ever be with you and in your debt, a debt of love that will ever rest in your devotion for us and ours for you. How long have we watched the mounting injustice and the evil that promotes and uses it to deny the possibility of justice ever coming? How long have we witnessed the unassailable Karmic argument: 'No one will ever come to bring true justice for no one will ever be able to believe how evil we truly are'? Now that that argument is expunged and justice is guaranteed and established and the Karmic load will be erased.

    'Sdeath, ye mad me! Be meet me do me job methink.
    Believe me dree! Believe me doom!
    My dree! Thy doom!

    A second area of discord concerns the eventual "end" of the universe: nothing ends: what exists, exists, and carries on whether it wishes to or not, changing in its associations based on its developing relationship with the rest of us. The burps of the big bangs and the swallows of the big crunches are an apparently endless series of adjustments or reshufflings in relative disposition based on the often (if not always) convoluted search for a satisfactory general state and are evidently, in this sense, just expressions of the fundamentally irreducible nature of existence.
    Obviously physics and mysticism share much although the body of substantiating evidence that we mystics use is fundamentally experiential, based on our openness to and study of Reality -- we constantly relate to and from the Totality of Existence, which is our vision of the divine, in defining our own experience -- to a degree that I suppose is denied to physicists in general. We explore Reality with our consciousness and in association with the consciousness of being, something we have evidently found to exist whether it sounds like magic or not.
    A way to highlight the nature of differences in perspective is to use the Javanese notion of understanding. They hold that the body is an instrument that receives information about itself and the world. It is a complex and subtle receptor and can exhibit varying degrees of sensitivity. The Javanese purport that the less perceptual breadth, the less of existence referenced in an observation. Conversely, the greater the sensitivity of a response, the more that an understanding based on it will be true, reflective of what is observed and reliable. Of the levels of understanding, only the least receptive, narrowest and, consequently, the most contextually independent is based on thought (ngerti). We never get farther away from the world or one another than when we relate based on our thoughts. From ngerti, the levels of understanding become more profound and increasingly present, passing through mounting contextual sensitivity in ngakoni and ngrumangsani and then finally standing in the present in nglengganani, where the understanding and that which is understood join in rasa murni or "open reception".
    The Western sciences espouse objectivity, but this objectivity is attained and maintained by limiting input, by training the academic to relate from the experientially isolated realm of thought. It can be creative but is rigid at the same time, a posture established by controlling what is received rather than being based on "open reception". They hold that open reception is a universal human capacity that we all start out in when we are born, but that you must train before you can actualize it as you get older.
    The Western sciences are based on thought and it might be said that the worldliness and materialism of Western society are connected with the mechanical, statistical and impersonal universe science reveals as well as the isolation from direct experience the emphasis on thought presupposes.
    But if this is the science of the thought mode of understanding, what is the science that arises from non-judgmental receptivity and how does life appear from that perspective? How does such a perspective influence the view of other people, society, the world and the universe? How different are the different points of view?


    Our basic posture arises in union with Empedocles, whose vision of the forces at work is also in line with our own.
    I shall tell of a double (process): at one time it increased so as to be a single one out of many; at another time again it grew apart so as to be many out of one. There is a double creation of mortals and a double decline: the union of all things causes the birth and destruction of the one (race of mortals), the other is reared as the elements grow apart, and then flies asunder. And these (elements) never cease their continuous exchange, sometimes uniting under the influence of love, so that all become one, at other times again each moving apart through the hostile force of hate. Thus in so far as they have the power to grow into one out of many, and again, when the one grows apart and many are formed, in this sense they come into being and have no stable life; but in so far as they never cease their continuous exchange, in this sense they remain always unmoved (unaltered) as they follow the cyclic process.
    But come, listen to my discourse! For be assured, learning will increase your understanding. As I said before, revealing the aims of my discourse, I shall tell you of a double process. At one time it increased so as to be a single one out of many; at another time it grew apart so as to be many out of one -- fire and water and earth and the boundless height of air, and also execrable hate apart from these, of equal weight in all directions, and love in their midst, their equal in length and breadth, Observe her with your mind, and do not sit with wondering eyes! She it is who is believed to be implanted in mortal limbs also; through her they think friendly thoughts and perform harmonious actions, calling her joy and Aphrodite. No mortal man has perceived her as she moves in and out among them. But you must listen to the undeceitful progress of my argument.
    All these (elements) are equal and of the same age in their creation; but each presides over its own office, and each has its own character, and they prevail in turn in the course of time. And besides these, nothing else comes into being, nor does anything cease. For if they had been perishing continuously, they would be no more; and what could increase the whole? And whence could it have come? In what direction could it perish, since nothing is empty of these things? No, but these things alone exist, and running through one another they become different things at different times, and are ever continuously the same.


    Evidently, for us, "science" (whether yours or ours) must be concerned with the proper description and understanding of the fact of being and it is not enough to simply provide predictions that agree with data on some superficial plane.

    Yours truly,
    David Gordon Howe (Elok)


    Ok, what's the point of this thread?

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