“Things in Life” by Dennis Brown… “It’s not every day we’re gonna be the same way. There must be a change somehow. There are bad times and good times too, so have a little faith in what you do…”

I did want to find out what would happen in the next installment of my dreams but I ended up not sleeping. I just got carried away with my work and other things, so lost track of time. It’s weird when my mind puts off sleep to instead focus its channels on pursuing knowledge. The last time I stayed up for over 24 hours was just over a week ago when I climbed into bed in the early hours of the morning and ended up staying awake the whole time with thoughts that wouldn’t go away. But it was strange, because I got up in the morning feeling like I had slept the whole night and proceeded to have a productive day. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not something I do often or something I recommend. It’s best to leave it to the (paid) professionals in the scientific field of sleep depravation.

As I’m typing this, I’m not even tired; a sign that I’m a workaholic. This fact alone makes me eligible to be a good code monkey (or code poet, whichever you deem as being more appropriate). My ability to finish reading books has also become disheveled as I’m still simultaneously trying to work my way through Bill Bryson’s “Mother Tongue” as well as Michael Moore’s “Stupid White Men.” I’ve still got a shelf of Orwell and a stack of neuro-related texts to go through as well as more reams of Java programming text. I sometimes wish it was possible to hook my brain up to some sort of drip that will trickle information directly into my grey cells. Such a device would make both a great invention and Christmas present.

Dan e-mailed me with another radical topic for discussion. This time, it revolves around the Meru Foundation, who launched a project aptly called the Meru Project. They have set out to demonstrate that “the relationship between physical theory and consciousness, expressed in explicit geometric metaphor, was understood and developed several thousand years ago.” To those who scratch their heads at the last sentence, read: Bible code.

The Meru Project is one of those bunnies that you’d pick up if you were in some sort of esoteric pet shop displaying an interest (and scepticism) in pedigrees such as UFOs, numerology, Tarot, psychics and secret lost knowledge. I’m interested in finding out about all these things (especially secret lost knowledge and secret lost maps that lead to secret lost treasure) but at the same time I’m highly sceptical of nearly all of them. Take UFO abductions/interventions for example. If there were such things as visitor aliens, where would they go to abduct specimens from this planet? It would make sense for them to go to some isolated part of the world where they could freely abduct humans for their experimentations. Is it then a coincidence that people in remote parts of the USA claim to have been abducted? Is it also a coincidence that some of these people are starstruck?

A lot of the occult, supernatural and extra-terrestrial literature flies over my head and the bits that don’t fly form knots in my mind as I try to flip through the logic. I’m open-minded when it comes to certain theories, but stand my foot down against certain things, like people who believe they have been abducted by aliens. I believe that if abductions do take place, the aliens would do what we do, which is to arrange a one-way appointment with our old friend Dr Scalpel. Heck, if we discovered a life form on a nearby planet, the first thing we would be doing is abducting a few for experimentation but I don’t see us going back to the scene of the crime to redeposit experimentees either. And I can tell you right now that if we were to encounter aliens, the last thing we would be trying to do is make peace with them. We’d be pointing firearms and incendiary devices in their direction, just waiting for them to twitch or make the first move. This alone gives any would-be aliens a very good reason to be hostile and they’d know our plans anyway if they could indeed read our thoughts.

Ok, enough about aliens. Back to biblical code. Check out the “Secrets of the Hebrew Letters” article and its appendix for a nice introduction to the topic of bible code. After Dan referenced the Meru Project, he gave me his latest idea on the topic.

“My latest idea is that Newton, while searching the bible for some universal code and being deeply frustrated that he couldn’t find one, was actually being influenced on a more direct subconscious level that he was unaware of and that his scientific findings may have been a direct result of this study. Would be a fairly big irony if true. Newton may have been a tad pissed off with the big G had he known! I’m thinking along the lines that biblical stories may have generated particular brain patterns that represented particular mathematical forms e.g. calculus. With these patterns already well established in the brain of an unsuspecting Lord N, they could rapidly emerge into his work as he attempted to understand a particular phenomenon requiring a mathematical tool or form to do so. I’ve heard similar findings of patterns in the Koran. The next big question would be - who provided these stories. Aliens/Angels or maybe something else?!”

It raises an interesting topic for discussion doesn’t it? What if the geometric shapes we find in the real world had an influence on language? I for one could appreciate this, having studied DNA (composed of the most fundamental language in existence) for 4 years. Another related topic I came across that warranted attention was trying to answer why we gesture when we speak. If you watch a blind person have a conversation, you’ll find that they will make the same gesticulations that any normal sighted person would. So despite having never seen a gesture, why do blind people do it? A study found that hand gestures are not governed by a model or an observer, but seems to be an integral part of the speaking process itself. This makes the hand an amazing tool for communication. It complements our language and at times when speech is not possible or inconvenient, it is replied on completely (Here’s an article summarising the role of the hand in the evolution of language). Have you ever stopped to watch two people having a conversation? Count the number of gesticulations. Would it be much of a surprise to know that you gesticulate as much as the next person without even realising it? I’ve always said motion creates emotion, but thinking more deeply into this, what if language causes movement? This again relates something physical (our hand gestures) with something non-physical (the words we speak) and is thus another example why we’re trying to break down this conscious and sub-conscious barrier in our understanding.

I rarely have discussions of this sort, mainly because people generally don’t like to talk about things that aren’t widely accepted (yet), but if you know me by now, you’ll know I question herd ways of thinking and acting. I know sometimes it may seem like I’m throwing all these abstract and weird concepts at you, dear reader, but I hope you’ll see it as me merely throwing information at you. I’m hardly trying to recruit anyone into a cult or religion so I don’t ask anyone to believe in these things (heck, I don’t even believe most of them). Instead I ask them to entertain the possibilities and to learn with me. It’s good to have a head start and to have a good insight into many topics. Remember there was a time when we didn’t have the proofs to the popular theories and formulae of today, but over time, some of these things were proven. Back in the day, many people considered Newton to be crazy with his ideas, but today we take his theories as the accepted truth. We’re going through a weird age in science where our appetite has been whet by theories coming in from a broad spectrum of disciplines and the things we laugh at today may very well be the things we take for granted tomorrow. Everyone is free to make their own decisions about religion and choose what to invest their faith in, but being open-minded never impaired anyone. Take it from me, a sceptic agnostic realist who is probably going to hell. ^_~