Editor’s prefatory note:

More than forty years ago, I found myself on a London train heading for a village near St. Albans. There, for the next three years, I would attend a bible college.

As I recall, the hour was very late, the train-car, all but deserted, but for one elderly man, quite inebriated and of slurred speech. He insisted, however, on offering avuncular companionship and seemed to adopt me as his son; but when he learned of my destination, displaying quick displeasure in the knowledge, like an Old Testament prophet, with severity, he proclaimed over and over, “Always be your own man, Wayne! - always be your own man!”

Now, having reached my own old age, I cannot help but wonder if he was an angel sent with a vital message. This would have been my last chance to right myself before further immersion in rigid religious cultism, of the sort I’d endured as a child; but I was too immature to appreciate his wisdom.

The potted aged fellow on the train, like a disheveled Emerson proclaiming his "Self-Reliance," had it right: "Always be your own man!" We need to order whatever he's drinking.

Editor's note: As Lincoln wryly commented on his most successful General, the sometimes-bibulous, but fighting, U.S. Grant, "I should order a barrel of his brand for all of my officers!"

I write this article for my own clarity of sober-thought. I value this commodity greatly, having so-called lived most of my life in a glassy-eyed state. But, I also write for the many who presently suffer affliction as I once did.

'The electron revolves around the nucleus like a tiny planet about a sun. These particles are like little billiard balls, very hard, and form the basis of matter. I learned that at school. Even kids know that.'

This idea is wrong, nearly 100 years out of date; there is no miniature clock-work solar system, but only fields of probability.

This incredibly straight road is Route 84, leading northward from Flasher, ND. I spent some hours walking here. I hadn't planned on being out so long, and a sunburn offered evidence of my misjudgment. I thought that this stretch of road, to the top of that far-distant hill, was not more than two miles or so. But you're looking at exactly 5.4 miles; 11 miles round trip. While walking, as I began to realize my logistical error, I thought about the phrase, "as long as a country mile"; and, for the first time, I understood its meaning. Out in the country, with few natural mile-markers to help one gauge distance, without customary reference points, it's not easy to judge distance; and a country mile can seem to be an altogether different displacement than its city cousin. It's easy to be deceived out there; but, then again, if we are not mindful, might we always be easily deceived?

"Matter is not made of matter." Hans-Peter Durr, physicist

Electrons, protons, and neutrons are not made of matter but vibrating energy strands.

Not only is the atom 99.9+% empty space, but its components, so-called hard matter, are not matter at all. The closer we look, the more we discover there's "nothing" there.

"Our everyday lives are technically an illusion. The objects and surfaces that we perceive as real are only the temporary intersection of our consciousness with the 'true' universe, made entirely of energy. 'Which raises the question of this wooden floor,' Baumann adds, tapping it with his heel. 'If we weren't here looking at it, would this floor still exist? Well, it would, but it exists only as a nebulous, ill-defined mass of wave forms. It's not until some type of measurement or observation occurs, and you have what's called "the collapse of the wave function," that the nebulous mass of waves solidify into concrete, particulate matter.'" Dale Short, on author T. Lee Baumann, God At The Speed Of Light

Be careful of what you accept as reality. Much of the world is not what it appears to be.

'If everything is more than 99% empty space, why doesn't my hand go through the wall? why don't I sink through my chair?'

outer-shell electrons, of separate atoms,
repelling each other, creating a force-field

"The electrons spin so fast around the nucleus, they create an impenetrable shell through which other particles cannot normally pass. Picture a person swinging a weight around herself on a piece of string; you can never get close enough to touch her, because the circling weight keeps you at bay. In a similar way, when two atoms meet, their electronic orbits stop them from passing through each other, and they behave as if they were solid balls." Peter Russell, physicist

Our five sense are often untrustworthy guides and witnesses. You say that you are touching a rock. The truth is, you are not touching the rock. You have never directly touched anything in this world!

What you "feel" as the hard surface of the rock is an electrostatic forcefield between the atoms of your hand and those of the rock. And you are not sitting in the chair that feels so solid, either. You have never touched a chair. There is a barrier, a space, of 10^-8 cm between yourself and the matter you think you are touching. What you are "touching" is an electron-based force-field.

Be careful of what you accept as reality. Much of the world is not what it appears to be.

The pompous rooster, in the twilight time of pre-dawn, exuberantly crows to all the world; shortly thereafter, with clockwork precision, it witnesses the Sun groggily climbing out of its eastern horizontal bedchamber. Insufferably proud at his achievement, the chanticleer is convinced that his crowing becomes proximate cause for the Sun’s rising. “It’s a simple matter of cause-and-effect,” he chuckles to himself. “Anyone can see that my crowing causes the Sun to rise. It happens every morning at my call, and has done so for thousands of years. What could be more convincing?”

“Cause and effect” is a principle many believe in. Aristotle 2500 years ago, dissecting the process, enshrined it all with several different forms: the efficient cause, the final cause, the formal cause, and the material cause.

For millennia, people accepted Aristotle's opinion as the last word on theories of causation. It all seemed very tidy, "laminated in plastic, blessed by the Bishop" – until the great Scottish philosopher David Hume blew it all up by impolitely informing us that it’s not possible to infer, or to argue backwards from, an effect to determine absolutely an initiating cause. The operative term here is “absolutely.” Our powers of discernment cannot detect the panoply of causes that might be in play in any given case. What human beings deem to be “cause and effect” devolves to a prejudicial assessment of the mind unwarrantedly conjoining elements that follow each other temporally, but without necessary connection. It’s just a bad habit and "fake news" of the mind. It makes connections of causation based on what it sees; the problem is, it doesn’t see very much. It’s just the cock crowing at dawn, believing its own propaganda that crowing-mayhem causes the Sun to rise.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake in his book “Science Set Free” lists ten major “infallible doctrines” of science that are wrong; things that people take as gospel and swear by, but are wrong. Part of the confusion stems from our heritage of the Newtonian “clockwork universe.” Newton’s seventeenth century “Three Laws Of Motion” constituted a tremendous advancement in science; at the time, Newton was considered to be an agent of God, having delivered final revelations, such that, no more could be learned in science.

Well, it was wonderful, and his insights did answer a lot of questions. The “Three Laws” did take us to the Moon and back. But Newton’s universe of strict “cause and effect” is now viewed as mere subset of a larger system. Newton’s principles, while working well on the “macro level,” have been dealt a severe blow by quantum mechanics. On the level of the infinitely small, the undergirding and foundation of “what is,” we discover, to our shock, that there is no strict “cause and effect”; there is no “put your nickel in and out comes the candybar every time.” (See the "double-slit" experiment.) The universe and reality, in their basic essence, don’t work that way, but only appear to do so, and this, only within a narrow context.

Instead of “cause and effect” as our guiding principle, we now must speak of “structured randomness” and “quantum fields of probability.” Even so, many fundamentalists, within religion and science, refusing to abandon outmoded Newtonian views, continue to drone on about “cause and effect” and “sowing and reaping” as if this were law. It’s not. There are no “laws” of the universe, as such; instead of “laws” we find evolving “habits” of nature. Dr. Sheldrake explains it to us.

• Dr. Richard Feynman, Nobel laureate, considered to be "the most brilliant teacher" of physics: "We do not yet know all the basic [principles of physics]: there is an expanding frontier of ignorance... one needs a considerable amount of preparatory training even to learn what the words [of physics] mean... Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation... Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again, or, more likely, to be corrected."

One of my heroes of history is the apostle Paul. I was a sedulous student of his writings for a great many years. While there is some Newtonian merit in Paul’s assertion regarding “cause and effect” and “sowing and reaping,” it ultimately fails. Reality is more complicated than that. We don't really know what causes what; sometimes X and Y produce Z, and sometimes they do not; sometimes concentration-camp overlords become "saints" while inmates become "sinners"; sometimes a backwoods boy with no formal education becomes a great statesman of the world, while his ivy-league counterpart, headed for the dustbin of history, mouths tiresome totalitarian sophistry. There's no way to predict. Paul was wrong, and I was wrong, about causation.

I am deceived.

Cause and Effect: 'keep the law and you'll be blessed'

'My priest/minister/rabbi said that the universe is built on cause-and-effect, and that morality works the same way. He says that if I keep the church/temple rules, I can expect to be blessed; if I disobey, there'll be a penalty from God. I guess this makes sense. Isn't cause-and-effect the way the universe really works?'

"Sowing and reaping" is a phrase the apostle Paul used in Galatians. It makes a lot of sense and good wisdom if you're a farmer. But if you try to expand this principle to include all the universe, you're going to fail.

Newton's Third Law of Motion forms the basis of the famous "cause and effect" dictum; however, it's the only point of physics that most preachers want to quote.

Newton's laws work well within a limited frame of reference - it took us to the Moon and back. But we now understand that Newton's famous "laws" were but subset rubric within a larger system.

Newton's "laws" work well for "large" objects but quickly break down - their usefulness in terms of predictability loses potency - both at the super-small atomic level and even for larger objects as they approach a meaningful fraction of the speed of light.

The domain of the very small, the quantum world, with its "fields of probability," is spoken of by physicists as "the end of causality"; "the end of determinism"; that is, the end of cause-and-effect. But demagogic religionists, intent upon harnessing you with fears of God's judgment and self-serving views of "law," tend not to talk about current physics. "Cause and effect" has been dead for a hundred years, but you won't learn of this advancement from the pulpit. 

Editor's note: see Dr. Sheldrake's discussion on how the universe's so-called "laws" are more like habits.

The deterministic "clockwork" universe of Newton has been rendered virtually obsolete. In the larger quantum world, certain inputs do not always yield predictable outputs. There is no universal cause-and-effect, only probabilities of likelihood -- mediated by elements once considered to be exclusive domain of the metaphysical and the spiritual: thought, consciousness, and intention! (see physicist Peter Russell)

Be careful what you accept as reality. Much of the world is not what it appears to be.

Editor's note: see further discussion in the article on "morality."

How often our senses deceive us! Might they always? Do we ever get it right? How would we know?

We live in a world fraught with illusion. Compounding this malady, the average person is deeply in debt to "the family prejudice" and is too frightened of new information to go searching for the Truth.

The double-slit experiment, "impossible … to explain in any classical [Newtonian] way, [embodies] the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery [of science]."

Dr. Richard Feynman
1965 Nobel laureate in physics

Editor's note: The granddaddy of all unexpected and shocking phenomena relates to the quantum world. Be prepared to have your views of reality shattered upon entering it. READ MORE

I have lost myself...

Enya

Stars And Midnight Blue

Memories we shared together
Moments no one else can know
I will keep them close to me, never let them go
Once you filled my hands with roses
Then you gave your heart to me, love was meant to be
Time goes by, the snow is drifting
Slowly in the sky, cold, cold night
You have lost yourself in dreaming
I have lost myself in you
Now we lie beneath the sky
Stars and midnight blue
Stars and midnight blue

Editor's last word:

"Fundamentalism, in all its manifestations, falls away as we understand, time after time, 'I am deceived.' Fundamentalism requires that truth is both objective and exhaustive, and yet we are constantly having to revise our opinion and to accept that reality is largely our own subjective evaluation… It's hard to overestimate the level of disappointment when we fully embrace how badly we were deceived by fundamentalism. Our first thought would be, a just God would never allow such abuse, and it's so hard to believe. Later on we realize, we did it to ourselves, and we recognize that nature exacts a heavy penalty when we surrender our sovereignty and abrogate our powers." Adrian Smith, J.D.

Adrian's correct. Nature exacts a heavy penalty when we surrender our sovereignty to "Dear Leader-ism," abrogating our powers of critical thinking and judgment.

This is the "heavy penalty": in the end, we repress not only knowledge but ourselves, our natural state... or, as Enya has it, we lose ourselves... that innate unafraid, childlike wonder, that innocent and trusting part of ourselves in love with life, meant to explore and thrill to each new-day's vista of unfolding reality.

Yes, we lose ourselves, our ability to love; the ultimate penalty... causing us to lose each other; the ultimate loss... one more "I am deceived"; the ultimate deception... but let us take heart to envision infinite tomorrows offering many sticks and ponds yet to enjoy.