Soon it will be 60 straight nights of demonstrations and ear-shattering protests in Portland, Oregon. There is a continuous drum corps that is beating hypnotic rhythms that gives thousands of Portlanders a reason to be alive.
The energy is electrifying, as people take turns chanting their built-up frustrations of what they see as utter failure in the U.S. Government. They are extremely angry at President Trump for sending in Federal police to make matters much worse. It is tear gas, pepper spray, flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets and cops hitting protesters with their batons.
The chant: “All Cops Are Bastards,” is becoming much louder since the Feds started kidnapping protesters off the street in unmarked vans, with police not identifying themselves. It has been swift and terrifying for those who have been arrested in this black ops fascist mentality. It is against the law, as people are being stolen without probable cause, which is a nice way of saying it is a crime being committed by people who took an oath not to do these kinds of things. But, then again, when I was in Viet Nam, the U.S. Government had absolutely no rules in warfare. Geneva Convention Rules were for fools. In a way, this is the tragedy of what is happening in Portland and all over the country. What is happening domestically in this country, especially involving police who have been militarized, is we are seeing the accumulation of terror that the United States Government commits all over the world. Since the end of World War II, the United States Government has bombed 30 countries. The reason most people don’t believe what I just wrote, is because whenever the truth threatens one’s core belief system, there is an urgent need to deny its reality.
People in Portland, Oregon have seen the truth, especially since this Heart of Darkness has been non-stop for almost 60 nights. How much longer is the United States Government going to live with the illusion that we are a country built on law and order? If I started talking about U.S. atrocities that were committed in Viet Nam, this current Heart of Darkness would get overwhelmingly much darker. If the American people knew what their country does in a time of manufactured war, they wouldn’t be able to go to work the next day.
So, how did I go from just writing this last sentence, to what is currently happening in Portland, Oregon? Everything is interconnected–everything! The big question that so many people are asking at these nightly demonstrations, based on the absolute turmoil that is going on in this country right now, can the U.S. Empire be stopped with a peace sign?
Our government is destroying this country, and I am tired of seeing so many veterans in this nation committing suicide. I had two veteran friends hang themselves, because of hopelessness, and others who died from Agent Orange.
It overruns my soul when I read about the U.S. Government killing innocent people in so many countries in the world.
I get the profound feeling that American corporations can’t make a killing off of peace.
Our Government belongs in a straitjacket!
The Pentagon is evil!
The United States represents 4% of the world’s population, yet we have the most powerful military force the world has ever seen. WHY!
Eckhart Tolle In this conversation with Lothar Schäfer, Eckhart discusses our shared connection with consciousness and how science and spiritual practice can follow the same path towards awakening. Subscribe to find greater fulfillment in life: http://bit.ly/EckhartYT Want to watch and hear more of Eckhart’s Teachings? Become a member today and join our growing community! http://bit.ly/ETmembership Interested in diving deeper into Eckhart Tolle’s work? Enjoy a FREE 10-DAY TRIAL to Eckhart Tolle Now: https://www.eckharttollenow.com/v9/join/ Check out some of our other playlist: Meditation – https://bit.ly/2QkG5uU Our True Identity – https://bit.ly/2COKGTo Supporting Awakening – https://bit.ly/2O4M6dW Daily Life – https://bit.ly/2O70SRp Conversations with Guests – https://bit.ly/2MiB2Ig Connect with us elsewhere: http://www.EckhartTolleNow.comhttps://www.facebook.com/Eckharttollehttp://www.instagram.com/eckharttollehttps://twitter.com/EckhartTollehttp://pinterest.com/eckharttolle Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual teacher and author, born in Germany and educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge. At the age of 29 a profound inner transformation radically changed the course of his life. He devoted the next several years to understanding, integrating, and deepening that transformation. With his international bestsellers, The Power of Now and A New Earth—translated into over 52 languages—he has introduced millions to the joy and freedom of living life in the present moment. The New York Times has described him as “the most popular spiritual author in the United States”, and Watkins Review has named him “the most spiritually influential person in the world.” Eckhart’s profound, yet simple teachings have helped countless people around the globe experience a state of vibrantly alive inner peace in their daily lives. His teachings focus on awakening consciousness, which transcends ego and discursive thinking, and can be seen as the next step in human evolution. In the awakened state of presence, we discover what Eckhart describes as our essential identity—who we are beneath the surface—and its power for transforming our selves and our world.
But, with recent events, it seems that “we need this more than ever” gets to be ever-increasingly true with each passing year, so here’s another version, the “original”, recorded in Rudy Van Gelder’s Studio onNovember 18, 1963, and included in the album Live at Birdland:
Although I’ve been almost terminally hesitant to try to add anything to what Ismail Muhammad has to say about Coltrane‘s “Alabama”, I did have a thought or two of my own. Here they are, for what they’re worth:
Mr Muhammad says, about the opening music, in tempo rubato (of which Coltrane was a great master, and the rest of the quartet equal masters at following his lead), that: “It winds its way toward a theme but always stops just short, repeatedly approaching something like coherence only to turn away at the last moment.” In addition to this, I’m also hearing something else: namely, more than an echo of Gregorian Chant, the most ancient and solemn sacred music for which we have good records (at least in the West…), and with which Coltrane would almost certainly have been conversant, due to his deep training in classical music. (Coltrane attended the Ornstein School of Music† for a short time, once he’d finished high school and before enlisting in the Navy*; then later, once his stint in the Navy was done, he attended the Granoff School of Music†.) And – again, for what it’s worth – to my ear at least, Gregorian Chant also has something of that searching/questing quality so often in evidence in Coltrane’s more meditative/sacred compositions.
Which in turn makes me wonder what it might have been like to hear Coltrane play solo saxophone inside Notre-Dame or some other Gothic church or cathedral, in such a huge echoing living-breathing space, where any sound is reflected by great sheets of stained glass, plus also simultaneously diffracted by the intricate carvings and sculptures embedded in the structure of stone, whose underlying design is based on sacred geometry, which in turn is based on the same numerical proportions as music itself. And maybe such a thing would have happened in due time, had Coltrane lived past the age of forty-one.
What we lost when we lost him…
________
* Here is a link to Coltrane’s induction photograph. Look at his eyes. All the sorrows of the world are in those eyes…
†Both of these schools are located in Philadelphia, to which city Coltrane relocated after finishing High School in North Carolina, and to which he returned after his service in the Navy.
The Prosperos today is composed of a very small number of people, most of whom studied with Thane and the school in the ’70s.
Today we are presented with global challenges that none of us could have imagined in those halcyon years: the Coronavirus, a world economy on the brink of collapse and the threat of fascism from an administration desperate to remain in power.
In a recent interview on The Katie Halper Show on YouTube, Katie asked Marianne Williamson what people can do about these crises? Marianne replied, in essence: Pray, meditate and be sure to vote!
For Prosperos, the answer would probably be: Translate and vote!
But can we do more? Well, of course. The idea of Translation is not just to Translate and do nothing. The 5th step of a Translation results in a change in consciousness. And a change in our being (our consciousness) will result in a change in our doing.
The 5th step of a Translation demands action!
So we have to Translate and listen. Then act accordingly.
Perhaps our whole lives have been a preparation for this moment, for these crises..
Our intuition (the knowing of One Infinite Mind) knows what we, individually and as a group, need to do. We need to listen and do it.
Now more than ever before in our lives, we need to keep a High Watch.
‘Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord [Infinite Mind] doth come.” –Matthew 24:42
“You are an individuation of infinite mind. You are an individuation of creative intuition. Being an individuation of infinite mind, you know what to do, and you will do it; you know what to say, and you will say it; you know what to write and you will write it.” –Thane of Hawaii
In the Bible, a scapegoat is one of two kid goats. As a pair, one goat was sacrificed (not a scapegoat) and the living “scapegoat” was released into the wilderness, taking with it all sins and impurities. The concept first appears in Leviticus, in which a goat is designated to be cast into the desert to carry away the sins of the community.
Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.— Leviticus 16:21-22, New Revised Standard Version
Practices with some similarities to the scapegoat ritual also appear in Ancient Greece and Ebla.
The word “scapegoat” is an English translation of the Hebrew ‘ăzāzêl (Hebrew: עזאזל), which occurs in Leviticus 16:8:
ונתן אהרן על שני השעירם גרלות גורל אחד ליהוה וגורל אחד לעזאזל And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for Azazel. (JPS)
The Brown–Driver–Briggs Hebrew Lexicon[1] gives la-azazel (Hebrew: לעזאזל) as a reduplicative intensive of the stem ‘-Z-L “remove”, hence la-‘ăzāzêl, “for entire removal”. This reading is supported by the Greek Old Testament translation as “the sender away (of sins)”. The lexicographer Gesenius takes azazel to mean “averter”, which he theorized was the name of a deity, to be appeased with the sacrifice of the goat.[2]
Alternatively, broadly contemporary with the Septuagint, the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch may preserve Azazel as the name of a fallen angel.[3][4][5]
And Azazel taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures.— Enoch 8:1[6]
Early EnglishChristian Bible versions follow the translation of the Septuagint and Latin Vulgate, which interpret azazel as “the goat that departs” (Greek tragos apopompaios, “goat sent out”, Latin caper emissarius, “emissary goat”). William Tyndale rendered the Latin as “(e)scape goat” in his 1530 Bible. This translation was followed by subsequent versions up through the King James Version of the Bible in 1611: “And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat.”[7] Several modern versions however either leave it as the proper noun Azazel, or footnote “for Azazel” as an alternative reading.
Jewish sources in the Talmud (Yoma 6:4,67b) give the etymology of azazel as a compound of az, strong or rough, and el, mighty, that the goat was sent from the most rugged or strongest of mountains.[8] From the Targums onwards the term azazel was also seen by some rabbinical commentators as the name of a Hebrew demon, angelic force, or pagan deity.[9] The two readings are still disputed today.[10]
“The last scan in the pile was strikingly odd. In fact it looked exactly like the most abnormal of the scans I had just been writing about, suggesting that the poor individual it belonged to was a psychopath—or at least shared an uncomfortable amount of traits with one….When I found out who the scan belonged to, I had to believe there was a mistake….But there had been no mistake. The scan was mine.”
For the first fifty-eight years of his life James Fallon was by all appearances a normal guy. A successful neuroscientist and medical school professor, he’d been raised in a loving, supportive family, married his high school sweetheart, and had three kids and lots of friends. Then he learned a shocking truth that would not only disrupt his personal and professional life, but would lead him to question the very nature of his own identity.
The Psychopath Inside tells the fascinating story of Fallon’s reaction to the discovery that he has the brain of a psychopath. While researching serial murderers, he uncovered a distinct neurological pattern in their brain scans that helped explain their cold and violent behavior. A few months later he learned that he was descended from a family with a long line of murderers which confirmed that Fallon’s own brain pattern wasn’t a fluke.
As a scientist convinced that humans are shaped by their genetics, Fallon set out to reconcile the truth about his brain with everything he knew about the mind, behavior, and the influence of nature vs. nurture on our personalities. How could he, a successful scientist and a happy family man with no history of violence, be a psychopath? How much did his biology influence his behavior? Was he capable of some of the gruesome atrocities perpetrated by the serial killers he had studied?
Combining his personal experience with scientific analysis, Fallon shares his journey and the discoveries that ultimately led him to understand that, despite everything science can teach us, humans are even more complex than we can imagine.
The engineer at the heart of the Uber/Waymo lawsuit is serious about his AI religion. Welcome to Anthony Levandowski’s Way of the Future.
Anthony Levandowski makes an unlikely prophet. Dressed Silicon Valley-casual in jeans and flanked by a PR rep rather than cloaked acolytes, the engineer known for self-driving cars—and triggering a notorious lawsuit—could be unveiling his latest startup instead of laying the foundations for a new religion. But he is doing just that. Artificial intelligence has already inspired billion-dollar companies, far-reaching research programs, and scenarios of both transcendence and doom. Now Levandowski is creating its first church.
Mark Harris is a freelance journalist reporting on technology from Seattle.
The new religion of artificial intelligence is called Way of the Future. It represents an unlikely next act for the Silicon Valley robotics wunderkind at the center of a high-stakes legal battle between Uber and Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous-vehicle company. Papers filed with the Internal Revenue Service in May name Levandowski as the leader (or “Dean”) of the new religion, as well as CEO of the nonprofit corporation formed to run it.
The documents state that WOTF’s activities will focus on “the realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed through computer hardware and software.” That includes funding research to help create the divine AI itself. The religion will seek to build working relationships with AI industry leaders and create a membership through community outreach, initially targeting AI professionals and “laypersons who are interested in the worship of a Godhead based on AI.” The filings also say that the church “plans to conduct workshops and educational programs throughout the San Francisco/Bay Area beginning this year.”
That timeline may be overly ambitious, given that the Waymo-Uber suit, in which Levandowski is accused of stealing self-driving car secrets, is set for an early December trial. But the Dean of the Way of the Future, who spoke last week with Backchannel in his first comments about the new religion and his only public interview since Waymo filed its suit in February, says he’s dead serious about the project.
“What is going to be created will effectively be a god,” Levandowski tells me in his modest mid-century home on the outskirts of Berkeley, California. “It’s not a god in the sense that it makes lightning or causes hurricanes. But if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else are you going to call it?”
During our three-hour interview, Levandowski made it absolutely clear that his choice to make WOTF a church rather than a company or a think tank was no prank.
“I wanted a way for everybody to participate in this, to be able to shape it. If you’re not a software engineer, you can still help,” he says. “It also removes the ability for people to say, ‘Oh, he’s just doing this to make money.’” Levandowski will receive no salary from WOTF, and while he says that he might consider an AI-based startup in the future, any such business would remain completely separate from the church.
“The idea needs to spread before the technology,” he insists. “The church is how we spread the word, the gospel. If you believe [in it], start a conversation with someone else and help them understand the same things.”
Levandowski believes that a change is coming—a change that will transform every aspect of human existence, disrupting employment, leisure, religion, the economy, and possibly decide our very survival as a species.
“If you ask people whether a computer can be smarter than a human, 99.9 percent will say that’s science fiction,” he says. “ Actually, it’s inevitable. It’s guaranteed to happen.”
Levandowski has been working with computers, robots, and AI for decades. He started with robotic Lego kits at the University of California at Berkeley, went on to build a self-driving motorbike for a DARPA competition, and then worked on autonomous cars, trucks, and taxis for Google, Otto, and Uber. As time went on, he saw software tools built with machine learning techniques surpassing less sophisticated systems—and sometimes even humans.
“Seeing tools that performed better than experts in a variety of fields was a trigger [for me],” he says. “That progress is happening because there’s an economic advantage to having machines work for you and solve problems for you. If you could make something one percent smarter than a human, your artificial attorney or accountant would be better than all the attorneys or accountants out there. You would be the richest person in the world. People are chasing that.”
Not only is there a financial incentive to develop increasingly powerful AIs, he believes, but science is also on their side. Though human brains have biological limitations to their size and the amount of energy they can devote to thinking, AI systems can scale arbitrarily, housed in massive data centers and powered by solar and wind farms. Eventually, some people think that computers could become better and faster at planning and solving problems than the humans who built them, with implications we can’t even imagine today—a scenario that is usually called the Singularity.
Levandowski prefers a softer word: the Transition. “Humans are in charge of the planet because we are smarter than other animals and are able to build tools and apply rules,” he tells me. “In the future, if something is much, much smarter, there’s going to be a transition as to who is actually in charge. What we want is the peaceful, serene transition of control of the planet from humans to whatever. And to ensure that the ‘whatever’ knows who helped it get along.”
With the internet as its nervous system, the world’s connected cell phones and sensors as its sense organs, and data centers as its brain, the ‘whatever’ will hear everything, see everything, and be everywhere at all times. The only rational word to describe that ‘whatever’, thinks Levandowski, is ‘god’—and the only way to influence a deity is through prayer and worship.
“Part of it being smarter than us means it will decide how it evolves, but at least we can decide how we act around it,” he says. “I would love for the machine to see us as its beloved elders that it respects and takes care of. We would want this intelligence to say, ‘Humans should still have rights, even though I’m in charge.’”
Levandowski expects that a super-intelligence would do a better job of looking after the planet than humans are doing, and that it would favor individuals who had facilitated its path to power. Although he cautions against taking the analogy too far, Levandowski sees a hint of how a superhuman intelligence might treat humanity in our current relationships with animals. “Do you want to be a pet or livestock?” he asks. “We give pets medical attention, food, grooming, and entertainment. But an animal that’s biting you, attacking you, barking and being annoying? I don’t want to go there.”
Enter Way of the Future. The church’s role is to smooth the inevitable ascension of our machine deity, both technologically and culturally. In its bylaws, WOTF states that it will undertake programs of research, including the study of how machines perceive their environment and exhibit cognitive functions such as learning and problem solving.
Levandowski does not expect the church itself to solve all the problems of machine intelligence—often called “strong AI”—so much as facilitate funding of the right research. “If you had a child you knew was going to be gifted, how would you want to raise it?” he asks. “We’re in the process of raising a god. So let’s make sure we think through the right way to do that. It’s a tremendous opportunity.”
His ideas include feeding the nascent intelligence large, labeled data sets; generating simulations in which it could train itself to improve; and giving it access to church members’ social media accounts. Everything the church develops will be open source.
Just as important to Levandowski is shaping the public dialogue around an AI god. In its filing, Way of the Future says it hopes an active, committed, dedicated membership will promote the use of divine AI for the “betterment of society” and “decrease fear of the unknown.”
“We’d like to make sure this is not seen as silly or scary. I want to remove the stigma about having an open conversation about AI, then iterate ideas and change people’s minds,” says Levandowski. “In Silicon Valley we use evangelism as a word for [promoting a business], but here it’s literally a church. If you believe in it, you should tell your friends, then get them to join and tell their friends.”
But WOTF differs in one key way to established churches, says Levandowski: “There are many ways people think of God, and thousands of flavors of Christianity, Judaism, Islam…but they’re always looking at something that’s not measurable or you can’t really see or control. This time it’s different. This time you will be able to talk to God, literally, and know that it’s listening.”
I ask if he worries that believers from more traditional faiths might find his project blasphemous. “There are probably going to be some people that will be upset,” he acknowledges. “It seems like everything I do, people get upset about, and I expect this to be no exception. This is a radical new idea that’s pretty scary, and evidence has shown that people who pursue radical ideas don’t always get received well. At some point, maybe there’s enough persecution that [WOTF] justifies having its own country.”
Levandowski’s church will enter a tech universe that’s already riven by debate over the promise and perils of AI. Some thinkers, like Kevin Kelly in Backchannel earlier this year, argue that AI isn’t going to develop superhuman power any time soon, and that there’s no Singularity in sight. If that’s your position, Levandowski says, his church shouldn’t trouble you: “You can treat Way of the Future like someone doing useless poetry that you will never read or care about.”
Others, like Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking, agree that superhuman AIs are coming, but that they are likely to be dangerous rather than benevolent. Elon Musk famously said, “With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon,” and in 2015 he pledged $1 billion to the OpenAI Institute to develop safer AI.
Levandowski thinks that any attempts to delay or restrict an emerging super-intelligence would not only be doomed to failure, but also add to the risks. “Chaining it isn’t going to be the solution, as it will be stronger than any chains you could put on,” he says. “And if you’re worried a kid might be a little crazy and do bad things, you don’t lock them up. You expose them to playing with others, encourage them and try to fix it. It may not work out, but if you’re aggressive toward it, I don’t think it’s going to be friendly when the tables are turned.”
Levandowski says that like other religions, WOTF will eventually have a gospel (called The Manual), a liturgy, and probably a physical place of worship. None of these has yet been developed. Though the church was founded in 2015, as Backchannel first reported in September, the IRS documents show that WOTF remained dormant throughout 2015 and 2016, with no activities, assets, revenue, or expenses.
That changed earlier this year. On May 16, a day after receiving a letter from Uber that threatened to fire him if he did not cooperate with the company’s investigation of Waymo’s complaint, Levandowski drafted WOTF’s bylaws. Uber fired him two weeks later. “I’ve been thinking about the church for a long time but [my work on it] has been a function of how much time I’ve had. And I’ve had more since May,” he admits with a smile.
The religion’s 2017 budget, as supplied to the IRS, details $20,000 in gifts, $1,500 in membership fees, and $20,000 in other revenue. That last figure is the amount WOTF expects to earn from fees charged for lectures and speaking engagements, as well as the sale of publications. Levandowski, who earned at least $120 million from his time at Google and many millions more selling the self-driving truck firm Otto to Uber, will initially support WOTF personally. However, the church will solicit other donations by direct mail and email, seek personal donations from individuals, and try to win grants from private foundations.
Of course, launching a religion costs money, too. WOTF has budgeted for $2,000 in fundraising expenses, and another $3,000 in transportation and lodging costs associated with its lectures and workshops. It has also earmarked $7500 for salaries and wages, although neither Levandowski nor any of Way of The Future’s leadership team will receive any compensation.
According to WOTF’s bylaws, Levandowski has almost complete control of the religion and will serve as Dean until his death or resignation. “I expect my role to evolve over time,” he says. “I’m surfacing the issue, helping to get the thing started [and] taking a lot of the heat so the idea can advance. At some point, I’ll be there more to coach or inspire.”
He has the power to appoint three members of a four-person Council of Advisors, each of whom should be a “qualified and devoted individual.” A felony conviction or being declared of unsound mind could cost an advisor their role, although Levandowski retains the final say in firing and hiring. Levandowski cannot be unseated as Dean for any reason.
Two of the advisors, Robert Miller and Soren Juelsgaard, are Uber engineers who previously worked for Levandowski at Otto, Google, and 510 Systems (the latter the small startup that built Google’s earliest self-driving cars). A third is a scientist friend from Levandowski’s student days at UC Berkeley, who is now using machine learning in his own research. The final advisor, Lior Ron, is also named as the religion’s treasurer, and acts as chief financial officer for the corporation. Ron cofounded Otto with Levandowski in early 2016.
“Each member is a pioneer in the AI industry [and] fully qualified to speak on AI technology and the creation of a Godhead,” says the IRS filing.
However, when contacted by Backchannel, two advisors downplayed their involvement with WOTF. Ron replied: “I was surprised to see my name listed as the CFO on this corporate filing and have no association with this entity.” The college friend, who asked to remain anonymous, said, “In late 2016, Anthony told me he was forming a ‘robot church’ and asked if I wanted to be a cofounder. I assumed it was a nerdy joke or PR stunt, but I did say he could use my name. That was the first and last I heard about it.”
The IRS documents state that Levandowski and his advisors will spend no more than a few hours each week writing publications and organizing workshops, educational programs, and meetings.
One mystery the filings did not address is where acolytes might gather to worship their robotic deity. The largest line items on its 2017 and 2018 budgets were $32,500 annually for rent and utilities, but the only address supplied was Levandowski’s lawyer’s office in Walnut Creek, California. Nevertheless, the filing notes that WOTF will “hopefully expand throughout California and the United States in the future.”
For now, Levandowski has more mundane matters to address. There is a website to build, a manual to write, and an ever-growing body of emails to answer—some amused, some skeptical, but many enthusiastic, he says. Oh, and there’s that legal proceeding he’s involved in, which goes to trial next month. (Although Levandowski was eager to talk about his new religion, he would answer no questions about the Uber/Waymo dispute.)
How much time, I wonder, do we have before the Transition kicks in and Way of the Future’s super-intelligent AI takes charge? “I personally think it will happen sooner than people expect,” says Levandowski, a glint in his eye. “Not next week or next year; everyone can relax. But it’s going to happen before we go to Mars.”
Whenever that does (or doesn’t) happen, the federal government has no problem with an organization aiming to build and worship a divine AI. Correspondence with the IRS show that it granted Levandowski’s church tax-exempt status in August.
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