Words of Power

Vectors of Reality - Full Series Available

Richard Power - Words of Power — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 03:48:15 GMT

In 2025, I gave a series of four talks, “Verities of Being.”

Likewise, in 2026, I gave a series of four talks, “Vectors of Reality.”

The “Vectors” series is, in a real way, a sequel to the “Verities” series.

In a meta sense, they can even be seen as single series of 8 talks.

All four talks of the “Vectors” series are now available via YouTube and Substack.

Full videos on YouTube. Full text, slides and video on Substack. Links provided below.

If you enjoy my work and want to support it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. All my work here is free, BUT paid subscribers really make a difference.

“Vectors of Reality” and “Verities of Being” are not political in nature, they are philosophical, mystical, shamanic offerings.

In August, I will release a major update on our political and geopolitical crises.

Here are links to the digital artifacts for “Vectors” and “Verities” -

“Vectors of Reality” YouTube Links (Full Videos)

“Vectors of Reality” Substack Links (Full Text, Slides and Video)

And just in case you missed them, here are the “Verities of Being” links -

“Verities of Being” YouTube Links (Full Videos)

“Verities of Being” Substack Links (Full Text, Slides and Video)

Vectors of Reality, Part 4: The Nature of Reality

Richard Power - Words of Power — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 10:26:54 GMT

[NOTE: This post includes the text and PowerPoint slides for “Vectors of Reality, Part 4: The Nature of Reality.” This is the final in a series of four talks on the mystical dimensions of life on Earth. At the end of this post, I have also embedded the full YouTube video of the talk itself. The text included here is not a transcript of the live talk as recorded on Zoom. Delivering the presentation, I read from this script, but also extemporize along the way. So there may be lines in the video that are not in the text version AND there are some lines in the text version that are not in the video. I have added in numerous hyperlinks to authors and sources cited, & hope you enjoy exploring them. - Richard Power]

I started off this series of 4 talks declaring that Reality is under attack, that REALITY ITSELF IS UNDER ATTACK! Science is under attack. Human rights are under attack. Women are under attack. Gaia, Mother Nature, is under attack. So it is. This series of talks is a defense of reality, a celebration of the real/Real. Together, we have explored ways to align with the real/Real, to ground in the real/Real, to take solace and refuge in the real/Real, and in turn to offer solace and refuge into and through the real/Real.

In this fourth and final talk, I bring all of this together, add yet another dimension to it, and at the end, offer an opportunity touch the Nature of Reality experientially..

Vectors of Reality is the sequel to Verities of Being, a series of talks I gave in 2025.

In both instances, the title of the series came to me on its own, and in turn, the titles of the individual talks came to me all at once. In both instances, I had no sense where it was going. Oh, I could intellectually follow the logic, but that’s not where I write or speak from. And then one by one, as I prepared for each talk, the flow would start, and the message would reveal itself. That’s how it was. All the way through.

It all started with two remarkable encounters with a coyote, one in June 2024, at 2 a.m., on Nob Hill, and a second in December 2024, same street, same time. There’s more to that story, but now, I just want to acknowledge the imprint of the wild.

So since, in a meta sense, this is the final in a series of eight talks, I will briefly touch on the content of the Verities talks.

In Verities, Part 1, “Shadow” -

The Shadow, the Darkness, is a lush, vibrant, fecund realm.

Yes, there are bad neighborhoods within the Shadow.

But there are also art colonies and witches’ covens thriving there. So much of our creativity arises from the Darkness, so much of our sexuality too, so much of what we experience as Beauty, so much of our aesthetics.

Mystery itself has its nest in Shadow.

I call this Shadow region, the Scintillant Deep.

In Verities, Part 2, “Siddhas,” I extolled eight in-born, plug and play, hard-wired siddhis, which constitute an integral aspect of our primal reality:

Touch
Laughter
Sleep
Conscience
Voice
Creativity
Sexuality
Free Will

Proof we are all siddhas.

In Part 3, “Shakta,” I enumerated some of the many names and forms of Shakti, the Deep Feminine, and not just goddesses of the Indian sub-continent, Devi, Durga, Parvati, and others, but also goddesses of the north, south, east and west of the world, including the dark goddesses Kali and Hecate, and what I distinguish as the dark green goddesses, for example, Yemoja, Pachamama and Gaia herself.

I also elucidated the numerous, powerful, mysterious ways that Shakti pours through all and everything, and is accessible everywhere and always:

Prana
Chi
Fohat
Tantra
Bhakti
Baraka
The Force

Proof we are all shaktas.

And in Verities, Part 4, just as intend to do in Part 4 of this series, at the close, I sought to bring it down and into the quintessence -

Spanda = The Divine Pulsation

LOL, quoting the King James again, “be still and know” but turning it upside and inside out, it’s not stillness, really, it’s more like a hummingbird wings

Jaideva Singh on What is Spanda? “The Supreme transcends all notions of space and time. Spanda, therefore, in the case of the Supreme is neither physical motion, nor psychological activity like pain and pleasure, nor pranic activity like hunger or thirst. It is the throb of the ecstasy of the Divine I-consciousness (vimarsa). The Divine I-consciousness is spiritual dynamism. It is the Divine creative pulsation.”

But there’s more, another dimension, or another angle on this …

‘Sound’ (nāda) is the name given to the pulse (spanda) of the supreme level of Speech (parā vāc), which animates the highest reality. The Netratantra refers to it as a form of sound that pervades the universe. - Wisdom Library

I also laid out the first three verses of the Spandakarika alongside the Three Fundamental Propositions of the Secret Doctrine and illustrated how they each illuminate and amplify the other’s message.

Throughout “Vectors of Reality,” we’ve been operating within the context of four prophecies, two of which have come to pass, and two more which we are leaning into.

Of the four, the two that have come to pass are the oldest and the most recent

In the 12^th Century, the great Hildegard of Bingen prophesized the planetary eco-emergency we find ourselves struggling to mitigate here in the 21^st Century.
In 2010, I published “Between Shadow and Night: The Singularity In Search of Itself” (which was later folded into “Wyrds of Power: New Language for A New Reality.” In “Between Shadow and Night,” I declared a Singularity was imminent. And in 2020, in “Secret Engine of the World,” I declared that it had arrived, not a AI singularity, which of course so many are preoccupied with, but a singularity in our own collective psyche, a singularity in the course of human evolution itself, and we are in the throes of the Singularity now. And we are praying hard that this Black Hole turns out to be Worm Hole and we come out the other side into a better version of ourselves.

The two prophecies we are still working on, leaning into, holding space for, are from the 1980s. And given to us by the legendary American sage Joe Miller, my Yoda.

In a late conversation on his living room couch, Joe said we just had to make it through the next 100 years, because by then enough children would be borne just knowing, some critical mass number, some 100^th Monkey type number, but maybe in the hundreds of millions, and their presence itself would finalize the great shift into the next iteration of civilization, a “New Age.” We’ve got maybe 55 years to go.
A few years later, speaking publicly at a Sufi ceremony, Joe said that in the future, the bright future, the women would lead. He said it would be women who lead us into that New Age. And it would be the women who governed.

So, yes, tonight, again, speaking live from inside the Singularity …

In Part 1, we explored where we stand in the Cosmos, SPACE in all its dimensions, from Spacetime and wormholes to the five sheaths of atmosphere that protect all life on Earth to physical space, psychological space, mystical space …

Akasha
The Space In Between
Emptiness
Boundaries
Individuation
Movement & Meditation

So, yes, Part 1 focused on Spacetime, and Part 2 focused on the Gaian Mysteries.

And, as in Creation itself, the one flows from the other.

The Gaian Mysteries flow from Spacetime.

· “What is the ultimate origin of water? … Hydrogen was created in the Big Bang and oxygen in the cores of stars more massive than the Sun … The origins of our oceans are in the stars.” – NASA, Ocean Worlds

The Gaian Mysteries, that in which we “live and move and have our being,” or more accurately, SHE in whom we “live and move and have our being.”

Part 2 included -

Gaian Politics & Gaian Poetics
Vriditas, “The Green Flame”
The True Nature of Darkness & The Moon’s True Identity
Anthropocentric Climate Disruption & the Sixth Great Extinction
A Green, Woke, Feminist Civilization

In Part 3, we explored -

What life and the world call forth from within us

What we resonate with in the world and in each other

That which exalts us

The True, The Good, The Beautiful

That which heals on a soul-level

That which nourishes us on a soul-level

The True, The Good, The Beautiful

These are the vital organs of Reality

The nectar of our humanity poured into the chalices of “I Am” and “We Are”

Our clarity of mind, our kindness, our sense of wonder, our sense of justice

The very taste of the exquisite

All of it

The nectar of our humanity

Including -

Dangerous Millennia
- Hypatia, Giordano Bruno and Noor Inayat Khan
Long Lives of Legend
- Jane Goodall and John Lews
The Holy Mundane
- You and I
The 36
- The Secret of the True Spiritual Hierarchy

In the weeks leading up to this final talk, I mentioned to a couple of friends that there would be a twist in this one, but that I didn’t want to say what that twist would be.

Well, here, we are. The twist is nigh.

So the Three Realms of Real … Throughout these talks, we’ve referred to lowercase “r” reality and uppercase “R” reality, OK, but what does this “M” stand for?

First, let’s spend a few moments on lowercase the “r” and the uppercase “R.”

Some years ago, I want to say sometime in the last 20 years, but maybe sometime in the last 30 years, the Dalai Lama said it was time to hear from some of those powerful lamas on life-long retreat in remote caves deep in the Himalayas.

I remember this one interview I heard.

They had cut his hair and clipped his nails. His eyes had to adjust to the light.

He was asked about the nature of reality.

He said, “I wish I could explain it to you, but I can’t. You think you are sitting there, and I am sitting here, and we are having a conversation. The reality of what is happening is so very different, it can’t be put into words.”

What that great nameless lama was declaring is indeed the same as what HPB was articulating in the first of the 3 Fundamental Propositions of the Secret Doctrine:

An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable Principle on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought — in the words of Mundukya, “unthinkable and unspeakable.”

That great nameless lama was speaking through the lowercase “r” reality, but from the uppercase “R” Reality. And of course in a very real way there is no “to” or “from”

They occupy the same space. Interpenetrating, interdependent, interwoven.

There is no lowercase “r” reality without the uppercase “R” Reality nor is there any reflection of the uppercase “R” without the lowercase “r” Reality.

This is the mystical truth of it all.

OK, what about that “M”?!?!

Well, it is an uppercase “M” so it’s closer to the uppercase “R” Reality than the lowercase “r” reality BUT it is a smaller font size than the uppercase “R” …

The 3 Realms of Real, lowercase “r” reality, uppercase “R” reality AND uppercase (but smaller font size) “M” for MYTH

Myth is a container. Myth is a container for the inexpressible, for the beyond words.

But it’s not a hermitically sealed container. It’s more like a wineskin or a bota bag. You can drink from Myth. Life-saving water. Soul-nourishing wine.

Myth carries. Myth pours forth.

Myth is an intermediary in the relationship between the lowercase “r” reality and the uppercase “R” Reality.

And yes, Myth can be polluted, poisoned, warped, highjacked to serve the ends of the pathologically ill. But that’s a different conversation. We’re talking about Myth in its natural, healthy functioning as one of the 3 Realms of the Real.

The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime) takes place during the Second Age of Middle-Earth, thousands of years before the events chronicled in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Galadriel was young. 5,000 years old going by the Tolkien timeline, or 2,000 years old going by Peter Jackson’s condensed timeline.

In this screenshot, she is seen with the Queen-Regent of Numenor.

The object she is holding her hand over is a Palantir.

The Palantiri were made by the Noldor, on Valar, in the First Age.

Perfectly spherical. Blemishless. Indestructible. Composed of a crystalline substance that captured and stored starlight. When dormant, black as the void. Deep Elvin magic.

Gazing into a Palantir you could see far away events; you could send your thoughts from one Palantir to another. It is said there were only eight made. They were not evil objects, of course, this was Elvin magic. But very dangerous. So powerful. And all inter-connected.

In the Third Age, one of the Palantir fell into the hands of Sauron, and with it, he corrupted both Saruman the White and Denethor, Steward of Gondor, bending their minds to his will.

Rings of Power and Lord of the Rings tell the story of a struggle against Anti-Nature, Ecocide and Genocide, a struggle that stretches over many thousands of years, a struggle in which seemingly total victory was undermined and overcome and had to be won again.

We who gathered here, in-person and on-line, understand such stories now, and those reading this or viewing the recording later, will likely understand such stories too.

This is the indomitable Moiraine, Aes Sedai, standing before one of the Portal Stones.

In the Amazon Prime series, “Wheel of Time” (2021-2025).

Based on Robert Jordan’s series of 14 books (1990-2013).

Central to the narrative of this mythos is The Pattern.

Think of it as an equivalent to “The Tao.”

The Wheel of Time is the engine of The Pattern. It has 7 spokes, each spoke is an era of evolution, and all beings move from one spoke to the next, incarnation after incarnation, evolving as this Eternal Return cycles through again and again.

Ah, the Second Fundamental Proposition of H.P.B.’s “Secret Doctrine” –

Two — The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically “the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing,” called “the manifesting stars,” and the “sparks of Eternity.” “The Eternity of the Pilgrim” is like a wink of the Eye of Self-Existence (Book of Dzyan). “The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb, flux, and reflux.”

The Aes Sedai is a matriarchal order of sorceresses. Think of it as something like the Bene Gesserit in the Dune mythos. The Aes Sedai was organized into 7 Ajahs.

Moiraine was of the Blue Ajah. Think of it as the Aes Sedai’s CIA.

The Blue Ajah had its own vast espionage network.

Moiraine was both a master spy and a spy master.

The Aes Sedai watched and guarded the evolution of humanity.

They protected the Pattern and the Wheel of Time.

The Portal Stones were entry points to an inter-dimensional transit system offering access to the “Mirror World,” the “Worlds That Might Have Been” (or what we would call the Multiverse). Instantly. These Portal Stones were established in the First Age.

By the Third Age (the period in which the storyline takes place), the occult knowledge of how to navigate them was all but lost. They were, therefore, very dangerous to use.

And, of course, there was a powerful supernatural being, a powerful, pathologically ill supernatural being who wants to break the Wheel and destroy the Pattern.

And, of course, this pathologically ill supernatural being had acolytes and allies, the Dark Friends, the Shadowspawn; principle among them were the Forsaken, thirteen fallen sorcerers and sorceresses from the Second Age.

They are referred to as “Those Chosen to Rule the World Forever.”

Sworn to the Evil One, the Forsaken had been granted access to what he called “True Power” (a perversion of the One Power). They are rewarded with power and immortality.

The Evil One and his Forsaken were defeated at the end of the Second Age and imprisoned behind seven seals. That was maybe 3,500 years before the events chronicled in the “Wheel of Time.” By the period of time the Amazon Prime series covers, those seven seals had started to weaken, and the Forsaken had begun to slip back into the world …

Wheel of Time tell the story of a struggle against Anti-Nature, Ecocide, Femincide, Genocide, a struggle that stretches over many thousands of years, a struggle in which seemingly total victory was undermined and overcome and had to be won again.

We here in this circle understand such stories now, and those down the road, who read this or view the recording, they too will likely understand such stories.

This is Lady Demerzel, an 18,000-year-old humanoid robot, the last of her kind, seemingly the majordomo (and sex slave) of “genetic dynasty” of triadic clone emperors, but she is “the real power behind the Imperial throne, guiding humanity on a millennial scale.” She is holding the Prime Radiant.

The Prime Radiant holds four-dimensional space inside a three-dimensional object. So yes, it can be more than one place at a time.

Created by mathematician and psychology professor Hari Seldon and his genius life-mate Yellin, the Prime Radiant stores all of Seldon’s “Psychohistory” (e.g., galactic mapping tools, processes, equations) along with a copy of Seldon’s consciousness itself. There are only two copies. One is in the possession of the brilliant young Gaal Dornick, destined to carry on the work of Hari Seldon. The other had been kept in Seldon’s Vault but was given to the Lady Demerzel by Seldon’s avatar, “so that she may use it to guarantee humanity’s survival”

“In the far future, most of the known galaxy is despotically ruled by a triumvirate of leaders collectively known as Empire …” That’s the opening of the Wikipedia plot synopsis for “Foundation.”

Acting on his research into Psychohistory (the science he himself established), Seldon launched two Foundations, at opposite ends of the galaxy “to shorten a predicted 30,000-year dark age and guide humanity into a new, stable empire.” (See “The Two Foundations Explained,” Marvelous Videos, 7/17/25)

“You shall have a Foundation,” Hari Selden declared, “that will serve as a beacon of hope for future generations.”

“The fall of Empire,” he said, “is a massive and complex thing, and it can be understood and—with guidance—can be lessened in its violence. But it cannot be stopped.”

“You take the pain and the what-ifs,” he said, “and you weave them into a narrative that propels you forward.”

“Math is never just numbers,” Gaal Dornan explained, “When words fail us, we use math to describe the inexpressible. The things that terrify us most. The vastness of space, the shape of time, the weight and worth of a human soul.”

Watch Quinn’s Ideas - Issac Asimov’s Foundation Explained In Five Minutes

NOTE: Based on Isaac Asimov’s epic “Foundation” trilogy of (1951-1953), the Apple+ adaptation of “Foundation” premiered in 2021.

A fourth season is scheduled early in 2027.

This is Lyra Belacqua.

Her story is told in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy: Northern Lights, known as Golden Compass in the U.S. (1995), Subtle Knife (1997), Amber Spyglass (2000), in New Line Cinema’s film version, Golden Compass (2007), in the BBC/HBO streaming series, His Dark Materials (2019, 2020, 2022).

His Dark Materials is set in a multi-world reality, with the action moving from one world to another, Lyra’s world is in which “all humans’ souls manifest as animal companions called daemons” (Wikipedia)

Lyra was a young girl living among the scholars at Oxford.

It was said she was an orphan. But she wasn’t. The identity of her parents was a secret.

There was another secret about this young girl. The witches’ prophecy.

“Witches hear the immortal whispers of those who pass between worlds. They speak of a child who is destined to bring the end of destiny. If told what she must do, she will fail. But she won’t walk alone. There is a boy whose fate is bound with hers. Together, they will change everything.”

The Witches called her “the Second Eve.”

(Of course, like H.P.B., the Witches understood the true meaning of the Garden of Eden. The exact opposite of what the Judeo-Christian-Islamic worldview teaches.)

Here, Lyra is holding an Alethiometer. From the Greek for “truth” and “measure.”

The Alethiometer had 36 symbols, 4 arrows, and 3 dials on the side.

Using the 3 dials to point the 3 shorter arrows to symbols, you somehow express your question, and then the 4th arrow, the longer one, will of its own volition, point to a symbol that somehow expresses the answer to your question.

The aptitude to engage with the Alethiometer was long lost in Lyra’s world.

But mysteriously, Lyra was adept at using it as an oracle. Naturally, effortlessly.

Will Parry, the boy from another world, who became her companion also had come into possession of a powerful occult artifact, the Subtle Knife. A double-edged blade. One edge slice through the veils between universes, allowing its possessor to traverse the multiverse. The other edge could cut through any material substance.

They were hunted. Of course.

In Lyra’s world, humanity languished under an authoritarian regime, theocratic, patriarchal, oligarchic, suppressing scientific research into magical, inter-dimensional phenomena of “Dust,” snatching children for insane Nazi-like experimentation, mutilating them, severing them from their daemons, separating them with lasers, as if sawing off the wings of angels.

We, in this circle, understand what stories such as Rings of Power, Wheel of Time, Foundation and His Dark Materials are opening our eyes to, preparing us for, empowering us for. And those who read this or watch this in the future, they will recognize the moment.

The Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff started, in essence, as a child soldier.

Taken as infant. Raised in the KGB’s “Red Room” project.

Brainwashed. Genetically altered. Sterilized. False memories implanted.

Trained in the martial arts, and in espionage, as a KGB spy and an assassin.

She defected to join SHEILD to work with the indomitable Nick Fury.

She said her ledger had too much red on it. Too much blood.

She said she had to clear her ledger.

Her feats of daring are threaded throughout the MCU films, Iron Man 2 (2010), Avengers (2012), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity Wars (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), Captain Marvel (2019), Black Widow (2021)

[spoiler alert]

The sacrifice of Natasha Romanoff was the ultimate step that was required in order for the Avengers to obtain the Soul Stone. When Red Skull informed Black Widow and Hawkeye that they must sacrifice something that they love, the two fought over which would be the one to die, each wanting themselves to be the one, resulting in Romanoff tricking Barton, then sacrificing herself. - Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki

In my thirties, I slept with the radio on, it helped me deal with my PTSD, this was in that last decade before my dark nights of the soul, yes, I say “dark nights” plural, I laugh whenever someone says “dark night of the soul” singular, as if there’s just one, lol … anyway, I slept with the radio on, tuned into either the all-classical station or the all-jazz station, I’ve written about this in “Dragon,” four different pieces of music woke me up in the middle of the night, so beautiful, so exquisite, so holy, I had to stay conscious until the announcer named the pieces after it played, even if I had lay awake through the rest of a set … these four unrelated pieces of music were foundational for me on my journey … this particular night, it was Parsifal, the prelude to Wagner’s Parsifal … I had done a deep dive into the Arthurian legend, which I touched on in “Secret Engine,” I had my own Parsifal/Perceval in my psyche, an amalgam of bits and pieces that resonated with me from the various versions, the French, the English, it was a very important story for me … I just had never heard Wagner’s Prelude … Well, for years after, as the darkness deepened all around me, I would drive my car, day and night, with the Prelude on repeat, weeping not from joy, not from sorrow, from something both transcendent and immanent at once, something like the joy within sorrow and the sorrow within joy. Co-mingled …

Parsifal was kept captive in his childhood, by his madwoman mother, she isolated him, deep in the forest, with no human contact, from an early age, uneducated, in rags, deprived, those who encountered him in the deep forest thought him a fool … then one day he heard horse hooves, and the clanging of metal, and he followed it and he came upon some of Arthur’s men, knights of the round table, and he thought they must be gods, and they had pity on him and brought him with them to Camelot, now there was a woman who just sat, in shadow, in one of the corner of Arthur’s great hall, weeping, in paroxysms of some inexplicable grief, ceaselessly, day and night, she had been cursed, not even Merlin could free her. But when Parsifal walked in that first time, and the woman laid eyes on that ragged holy fool, she started laughing, rolling laughter, and for real, with an inexplicable, irrational joy, for hours until she fell into a deep peace, the curse had been mysteriously broken and she had healed … Arthur’s knights trained him in their ways and he soon became one of Arthur’s most powerful champions, 150 knights went on the quest of the Holy Grail, but depending upon which version you come across, Parsifal was one of only three, or two, or indeed the only one to overcome the many dangers, the many hardships, the many supernatural trials and tribulations thrown at them and bring the Graal back to Camelot to redeem and renew their leader and the land

So, the tales of Natasha Romanov and Parsifal are tales of the Hero’s Journey.

I argue that it is enshrined in the Third Fundamental Proposition of the Secret Doctrine:

(c) The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul —a spark of the former—through the Cycle of Incarnation (or "Necessity") in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term. In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth principle,—or the OVER-SOUL, —has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence …

One way or another, each of us has our own Hero’s Journey to experience, one way or another, to the world it might even seem like a life of quiet desperation, but it is nevertheless the Hero’s Journey – that is, IF it leaves you open and connected and serving All and Everything, in some way, some real way, whether known or unknown to the world. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

And there are those who will try. It’s probably only their own cowardice speaking.

So …

Myth has carried our mysteries from the painted walls of prehistoric caves to the streaming platforms of the 21^st Century …

In every one of the four powerful mythoi touched on in this talk, there are two operating principles, two defining elements: the individual and the collective, the Hero’s Journey and the spirit of that folk song of the early 1800s - “Vive la compagnie“

Vive la, vive la, vive l’amour!

Vive l’amour, vive l’amour!

Vive la compagnie!

[NOTE: “Vive la compagnie” (meaning “long live the company”) is a traditional 17th-century French drinking and marching song. During WW II, it was widely adapted and sung by Allied troops—particularly French resistance fighters and American soldiers—as a morale-boosting campfire and marching tune – Google/Gemini]

In the upper right-hand corner of this slide –

The world’s oldest known example of cave art, dating back at least 67,800 years, has been discovered by researchers studying handprints in Indonesia. - Jennifer Jett, Hand stencil made almost 68,000 years ago is the oldest cave art ever found, NBC News 1/22/26

In the upper left-hand corner are chiromancer Marianne Raschig’s ink handprints of Albert Einstein. Taken in Berlin on April 9, 1930. Her analysis is included in her Hand und Persönlichkeit (1931). Raschig was perhaps the leading palm-reader in Germany between the two World Wars.

In the lower left-hand corner –

Cueva de las Manos, archaeological site comprising a stunning collection of cave art, perhaps best known for featuring more than 2,000 black, white, red, yellow, and purple stenciled handprints dating back more than 9,000 years. - Britannica

In the lower right-hand corner is the fingerprint card from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s arrest on June 11, 1964, published in the St. Augustine Record.

Everyone and everything, everywhere, is consequential, significant, profoundly so, in ways we cannot calculate or comprehend … Evolutionary power, conscious evolutionaty power is both individual and collective, neither can succeed in saving a world without the other, individual and collective is not an either/or it is more a both or neither

Lyra Belaqua did stand not alone against the Magisterium, although she would have, and I don’t just mean her beau with his dimension-splicing knife, I mean the Witches joined with them, the Gyptians joined with them, the Polar Bears of Svalbard joined with them … The hero’s journey serves the collective, the individual serves the collective, and inversely, the collective, in its healthiest state, protects and nurtures the individual. Power is individual AND collective, wheels within wheels, each provides the energy for the other …

Now you and I and all we love could be seen as confronted with an apocalyptic move to impose an oligarchic, patriarchal, ecocidal, femicidal dominion.

We could be seen as in a struggle of the same order and magnitude of those that Galadriel, Morraine, Gaal Dornack and Lyra Belacqua found themselves engaged in …

Of course, in lowercase “r” reality none of us have access to Palantiri or Portal Stones, none of us are in possession of a Prime Radiant or an Alethiometer or a Subtle Knife …

These mythical artifacts are symbols, objectifications, place holders of a sort, for mystical powers inherent in the nature of uppercase “R” Reality, therefore it is also true that here and there, now and then, at critical junctions, pivotal moments, instances of the direst need for the species itself, all of us, or some of us at least, do indeed have access to the interior of the Reality itself and can draw on the powers symbolized by Palantiri, the Portal Stones, the Prime Radiant, Alethiometer, the Subtle Knife … it is all within us …

Yes, Myth is a container, not a hermetically sealed container, more like a wine-skin or one of those Spanish bota bags and we drink from them for hydration of the five bodies and the nourishment of the soul … Myth has carried our mysteries from the painted walls of prehistoric caves to the streaming platforms of the 21^st century ..

All the Verities, the Shadow, the Siddhis, Sakti, Spanda, all of it, AND all the Vectors, the Gaian Mysteries, the True, the Good and the Beautiful, Spacetime itself, all of it, pour forth from the uppercase “R” Reality, AND all of it EMPTIES back into the uppercase “R” Reality, everyone, everything, everywhere, arise, are sustained and reabsorbed UTTERLY and completely WITHIN the uppercase “R” Reality, AND arguably, SOUND is the surest Verity of all and the most direct Vector of all, you could make a case for breath, a convincing case, BUT your grief or anger or confusion can sometimes be too dense, too tight, too heavy, to travel inward or expand outward on the breath, but SOUND, even and especially a simple single syllable, Ahhhhhh or Huuuuu, can free you, can nourish you, can get you back into a state within which you can breathe deeply, fully, directionally

Our natural exhalation is the HA, our natural inhalation is the SA.

This is the Hamsah Mantra. It is ajapa-japa - a mantra being recited automatically on the breath throughout day/night. Yes, sounded in “silence” on the breath, naturally.

HA, SA, HA, SA …

And the “m” in between is less a letter or syllable, and more just a curve in the breath, a seemingly silent micro-moment in between, the curve up, the curve down, not a pause, just a rolling curve …

This ajapa-japa mantra is being uttered by your very being 21,600 x per day/night to be exact-ish (See Jaideva Singh’s “Siva Sutras,” p. xl) When you feel/hear it in the breath, or when you intone it with a sigh or a whisper, exhale, inhale, you are tuning into the deepest, the truest …

Yes, IT is ALL that close … closer …

Here are two of the one hundred twelve practices that Devi wrote down as a gift to humanity from her and Siva -

54. In an easy position, gradually pervade an area between the armpits into great peace.
85. As waves come with water & flames with fire, so the universal waves with us.

- Jaideva Singh, Vijnanabhairava

VIDEO: Vectors of Reality, Part 4: The Nature of Truth (7/19/26)

Vectors of Reality, Part 3: The True, The Good & The Beautiful

Richard Power - Words of Power — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:38:34 GMT

[NOTE: This post includes the text and PowerPoint slides for “Vectors of Reality, Part 3: The True, The Good, The Beautiful.” This is the third in a series of four talks on the mystical dimensions of life on Earth. At the end of this post, I have also embedded the full YouTube video of the talk itself. The text included here is not a transcript of the live talk as recorded on Zoom. Delivering the presentation, I read from this script, but also extemporize along the way. So there are some lines in the video that are not in the text version AND there are some lines in the text version that are not in the video. Also, there are numerous hyperlinks to authors and sources cited. I hope you enjoy exploring them. - Richard Power]

Welcome to “Vectors of Reality, Part 3: The True, The Good, The Beautiful.”

Third in a series of four talks on the mystical dimensions of life on earth.

Talks offered IN DEFENCE OF REALITY and as a CELEBRATION of the real Real.

In Part 1, I talked about Spacetime, where we stand, and holding space where we stand, and what space is in our personal lives – physically, psychologically, mystically, everything from Akasha to Individuation.

In Part 2, I talked about the Gaian Mysteries, “that in which we live and move and have our being” the Divine Feminine Intelligence that IS this Planet

In Part 3, I will talk about “the True, the Good, the Beautiful,” what our circumstances draws forth from us, what rises from within us to meet the challenges of human incarnation at this critical juncture in human herstory.

Just as the Gaian Mysteries flow from Spacetime, the True, the Good and the Beautiful flow from the Gaian Mysteries.

Vectors of Reality is the sequel to Verities of Being

Verities of Being addressed the question, “What Are We?”

Vectors of Reality addresses the question, “What Is This?”

In Verities of Being, Part 3: “Shakta” I spoke of the Deep Feminine, the Dark Goddess, the Dark Green Goddess, Her many names, East, West, North and South, including Fohat, her womanmanifestations, how She moves through everything and everyone, animating all life in this world …

In Vectors of Reality, Part 3, we are exploring …

What life and the world call forth from within us

What we resonate with in the world and in each other

That which exalts us

The True, The Good, The Beautiful

That which heals on a soul-level

That which nourishes us on a soul-level

The True, The Good, The Beautiful

These are the vital organs of Reality

The nectar of our humanity poured into the chalices of “I Am” and “We Are”

Our clarity of mind, our kindness, our sense of wonder, our sense of justice

The very taste of the exquisite

All of it

The nectar of our humanity

And yes, once again, we are broadcasting live from inside the singularity …

As articulated in Part 1 and Part 2, we are operating within the context of four prophecies, two of which have come to pass, and two more which we are working on, leaning into and holding space for. The two that have come to pass are the oldest of the four and the most recent of the four. In the 12^th Century, the great Hildegard of Bingen prophesized the planetary eco-emergency we find ourselves struggling to mitigate today, and in 2010, I declared a Singularity was imminent, and by 2020, it had arrived, not the AI singularity, but a singularity in our own collective psyche, a singularity in the course of human evolution itself, and we are still in it ... The two prophecies we are working on, and leaning into, holding space for, are from the 1980s, and given to us by the legendary American sage Joe Miller, my Yoda, first he said we just had to make it through the next 100 years, because by then enough children would be borne just knowing, some critical mass number, some 100^th Monkey type number, but maybe in the hundreds of millions, and their presence itself would finalize the great shift into the next iteration of civilization, a “New Age,” then a few years later he said that in this bright future the women would lead, it would be women who lead us into that New Age, and women who governed there

There is no end

To what a living world

Will demand of you

- Octavia Butler

Do you know Octavia Butler?

Octavia Butler, Hugo Award winner, Nebula Award winner, NAACP Image Award winner, author of the dystopian Sci-Fi masterpiece Parable of the Sower

Octavia Butler, “Mother of Afro-Futurism” (shoutout to the great Janelle Monae, deeply inspired by Butler’s work) …

In the January 2024 issue of The Atlantic, Tiya Miles wrote -

We need [Octavia Butler’s] conception of “histofuturism” now more than ever.
Somehow she knew this time would come. The smoke-choked air from fire gone wild, the cresting rivers and rising seas, the sweltering heat and receding lakes, the melting away of civil society and political stability, the light-year leaps in artificial intelligence—Octavia Butler foresaw them all.
Butler was not a climate scientist, a political pundit, or a Silicon Valley technologist. The author of imaginative and often disturbing speculative fiction such as Parable of the Sower (1993), she was a Black woman descended from enslaved people in Louisiana, raised by a strictly religious mother in Los Angeles, educated at community and regional colleges, and besieged by feelings of professional marginalization for most of her too-short life. Out of these challenging circumstances … and through the noise of late-20th-century America, Butler heard a clear signal: The future would not be like the present; it would, instead, be a techno-juiced doppelgänger of the past.
- Tiya Miles - How Octavia Butler Told the Future, The Atlantic, 1/12/24

Here is just a taste of Octavia Butler’s medicine –

“Create no images of God. Accept the images that God has provided. They are everywhere, in everything. God is Change— Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm. From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing. The universe is God’s self-portrait.” - Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
“That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.”- Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
“In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.”
- Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents

Of course … We might not make. We might not emerge from this Singularity.

It is only natural to wonder about the BEFORE and AFTER us here on Earth.

Professor Tim Coulson, a leading zoologist at the University of Oxford, argues that if humans were to go extinct, octopuses have the physical and mental attributes necessary to become the next civilisation builders. This is not a fringe opinion. It comes from his book on the universal history of evolution, and the reasoning behind it is worth taking seriously.
Octopuses already possess advanced cognitive functions including problem solving, tool use, object manipulation, and the ability to communicate with each other through rapid colour changes across their skin. Their dexterity, curiosity, and intelligence could, given evolutionary time, enable them to construct complex tools and build an underwater civilisation.
What makes octopuses genuinely extraordinary is their nervous system. Two thirds of their neurons are not in their brain but distributed throughout their eight arms, each of which can taste, touch, and act semi-independently. They are not one intelligence controlling eight limbs. They are closer to nine semi-independent processors operating in coordination. No other animal on Earth works quite like this.
Coulson acknowledges it may take hundreds of thousands or even millions of years for such evolution to occur … - @astrophilesz, 5/23/26
Dinosaurs ruled this planet for roughly 165 million years. Humans have been around for about 300,000 … the Silurian Hypothesis, a real paper published by two actual scientists at NASA and the University of Edinburgh. It asks whether a technologically advanced civilisation could have existed on Earth before humans and left no detectable trace. Their conclusion was sobering. Given how completely geological processes recycle the crust over millions of years, we genuinely cannot rule it out. 165 million years is enough time for a civilisation to rise, peak, collapse, and be completely erased by geology. We would never know. - @astrophilesz, 5/23/26

There was a cigar store on the corner of 207^th and Broadway, it had a spinner rack of paperbacks, right at the front door, next to the newspapers and magazines, one of the tiers of that spinner rack held the “classics.” It was there I found Keats and Shelley, and Edgar Allen Poe. For less than a dollar each.

I was a pre-pubescent boy. And very much on my own.

But in that darkness of unknowing, Keats, Shelley and Poe led me to a glimpse of poetical knowing. “Truth is Beauty, & Beauty Truth,” Keats writes in Ode to A Grecian Urn, “That is All Ye Know, & All Ye Need to Know.”

Keats died of leukemia at the age of 25. He had written for maybe six years. He had sold maybe 200 books. He was living in Rome, at a villa on the Spanish Steps. It is now the Keats-Shelley Memorial Museum.

“His last request was to be placed under a tombstone bearing no name or date, only the words, ‘Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water. Severn and Brown erected the stone, which under a relief of a lyre with broken strings, includes the epitaph: This Grave / contains all that was Mortal, / of a / YOUNG ENGLISH POET, / Who, / on his Death Bed, / in the Bitterness of his Heart, / at the Malicious Power of his Enemies, / Desired / these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone / Here lies One / Whose Name was writ in Water …”- Wikipedia

These talks are in a way the culmination of a journey that began at that cigar store in “Little Dublin” (which is what my neighborhood was called by NYC politicians), that little cigar store with its spinner rack of its pocket-sized paperback “classics” and spy novels (oh yeah, that all too started there too).

[NOTE; Judy Chicago, “Grand Snake Arm 3,” 2008.Photo credit: Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco/© Judy Chicago / Donald Woodman / Artists Rights Society, New York]

It has somehow become impolite to talk about the truth on its own terms.

If you say something declarative about a truth.

Someone will reflexively say “Truth is relative.”

“You don’t believe in an ‘Absolute Truth’ do you?”

LOL. That’s a trap. Don’t allow the issue of Truth to be reduced to this false dichotomy of “relative truth” versus “absolute truth.”

Look outside. If it’s raining, it’s raining. Where you are, at that moment, it is raining. That’s reality. A truth is awareness, recognition, acknowledgment of a reality.

Yes, there are also the realms of belief and opinion, but truth and reality are independent of them.

What happens is that when someone (or some entity or some grouping), reaching for more power or greater profit, is confronted with “an inconvenient truth” they swiftly try to get that truth, that fact, relocated into the realms of belief and opinion. “Oh well, all truth is relative.” LOL

After a while, it’s bad for your career or your social status to simply state a fact, a truth, a reality, and so many start muttering about truth being “relative.”

Here are three insights concerning the nature of the Truth.

All from the 20^th Century and from three VERY diverse sources

The first is from Hemingway.

When I turned from my teens to my twenties, I turned poetry to prose. BUT … In school, I had only gone as far as the 3^rd Grade. I realized I didn’t know anything about how to write a sentence or construct a paragraph. And as much as I love Kerouac, commas and ellipses could only take me so far and that wasn’t far enough. So, I turned to Papa. To Hemingway.

Re-reading his greatest works taught me how to format sentences and craft paragraphs.

Hemingway also taught me one of the occult secrets of writing.

Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written. – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1964)

Truth has an energy. Truth is an energy. A powerful energy. Limitless too.

The second insight is from a book I bought at Samuel Weiser’s some years earlier. Still in my teens. A hardcover copy of “Samadhi” by Mouni Sadhu. LOL.

The book didn’t resonate with me. Too mental. BUT throughout the narrative, the author kept quoting fragments from some obscure text the title of which did not register with me. Those fragments spoke to me. Directly.

So, I copied them out by hand, there were forty of them, I left Mouni Sadhu’s book behind, and just started studying them. Indeed, I kept that piece of paper, folded up, with me, in my satchel, for years …

Soon after I got to San Francisco, in 1978, and met the legendary American sage Joe Miller, he handed me a tiny pamphlet, I opened it up, and yes, it was those forty verses. Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi had composed them. In 1928.

And the tiny pamphlet’s title? T-R-U-T-H R-E-V-E-A-L-E-D

Awareness is the nature of Reality.
Without awareness of Reality, can Reality exist? Because this awareness-reality, itself free from thought, exists as the source of all thoughts, it is called Heart. How to know it? To be as it is (thought-free) in the Heart, is to know it.
Awareness is All — the seer and seen, the real and apparent.
- Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, Ulladu Narpadu (Forty Verses of Reality)

The third insight is from a poem by the incomparable Maya Angelou. In June 1995, she was an honored speaker at the 50^th anniversary of the United Nations.

And she offered the world “A Brave and Startling Truth” -

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet …
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it …
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world …
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body …
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
- Maya Angelou reading her poem “A Brave and Startling Truth,” United Nations

Maya Angelou’s “Brave, Startling Truth” is particularly poignant within this context of this series of talks, because the Reality which is under attack, our shared reality, our common reality, is the one that took shape in the immediate aftermath of our victory in WWII, our victory over in the Nazis, the Fascists, the authoritarians ..

There is goodness in us. It is inborn. It is natural.

Cooperation, Community, Empathy, Compassion, Kindness … These don’t just exist in some percent of humans; Cooperation, Community, Empathy, Compassion, Kindness are evidenced in different ways throughout all of the natural world.

Goodness is pervasive.

Don’t get me wrong. To romanticize Nature as some kind of lovefest is as deluded as characterizing it as all and only “survival of the fittest.”

The real Real is so much more complicated than either of those fantasies.

BUT it is very true and very important to acknowledge that in Nature throughout Nature cooperation community empathy compassion kindness respect for diversity are all evident, at work, in the mix from the micro to the macro …

“Survival of the fittest” wasn’t even Darwin’s choice of words.

Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher from the 19th century, is best known for his adaptation of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to human societies, which is termed Social Darwinism … He introduced the phrase “survival of the fittest” to describe this concept, positing that those who dominate in society do so due to their evolutionary advantages … Spencer’s work emphasized … a laissez-faire approach to economics … Spencer’s theories also had profound implications, particularly in the context of imperialism and militarism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where they were often misinterpreted to justify aggressive expansion and dominance of one nation over another …- Richard D. Fitzgerald, 2023 (EBSCO)

British biologist and anthropologist, Thomas Huxley (Aldous’ grandpa), came to be known as “Darwin’s Bulldog,” but as you see carrying Huxley was Herbert Spencer’s water in promoting “the survival of the fittest,” not Darwin’s.

Darwin’s conclusion would be more accurately described as “survival of the most adaptable” but even that, although not wrong, is too simplistic.

At the time, Huxley was challenged by the brilliant anarchist prince Peter Kropotkin.

In his Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, Kropotkin wrote:

“The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that is has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history.”
“in the long run the practice of solidarity proves much more advantageous to the species than the development of individuals endowed with predatory inclinations”
“The species in which peace and mutual support are the rule, prosper, while the unsociable species decay.”

In his Anarchist Morality, Kropotkin wrote:

“The feeling of solidarity is the leading characteristic of all animals living in society. The eagle devours the sparrow, the wolf devours the marmot. But the eagles and the wolves respectively aid each other in hunting, the sparrow and the marmot unite among themselves against the beasts and birds of prey so effectually that only the very clumsy ones are caught. In all animal societies solidarity is a natural law of far greater importance than that struggle for existence, the virtue of which is sung by the ruling classes in every strain that may best serve to stultify us.”- Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist Morality

As I said, Cooperation, Community, Empathy, Compassion, Kindness are evidenced in different ways throughout all of the natural world.

A pod of dolphins saved a group of swimmers from a great white shark off the northern coast of New Zealand …. The incident happened when lifeguard Rob Howes took his 15-year-old daughter Niccy and two of her friends swimming … Mr Howes told the newspaper that the dolphins “started to herd us up, they pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us”. He explained that, when he had attempted to break away from the protective group, two of the bigger dolphins herded him back. He then saw what he described as a three-metre great white shark cruising toward them - but it appeared to be repelled by the ring of dolphins and swam away - Associated Press, “Dolphins save swimmers from shark attack,” Guardian, 11/23/04
A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday. The girl, missing for a week, had been taken by seven men who wanted to force her to marry one of them … She was beaten repeatedly … She had been guarded by the lions for about half a day, he said. “They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest” … Stuart Williams, a wildlife expert said the girl may have survived because she was crying from the trauma of her attack. – Associated Press, “Ethiopian girl reportedly guarded by lions,” NBC News, 6/21/05
19-year-old Kevin Hines decided to jump [from the Golden Gate Bridge] in September of 2006. Miraculously, he survived the 25-story plunge, but the impact of the water broke his back and shattered vertebrae, and the overwhelming pain rendered him unable to tread water. But before he started to sink, something brushed his legs. A sea lion was circling him, nudging him, and keeping him above water. Authorities were able to get to him and pull him out of the water, but he surely would have drown due to his injuries had he not been buoyed. - Anabel Conner, 15 Times Wild Animals Actually Saved Humans, Ranker, 10/4/21
Twelve-year-old Rheal Guindon of Ontario, Canada, was on a camping trip with his parents in when they decided to go out in the boat to go fishing. Rheal stayed on shore, but was horrified when he witnessed the boat tip over and his parents struggle in the water and drown. He walked toward the nearest town to get help, but when the sun set, he realized he would have to spend the night on the cold, damp ground. As he lay there crying, he felt a warm, furry body press up against him, which he thought was probably a dog. Delirious from his ordeal, he fell asleep. In the morning, he awoke to find three wild beavers huddled against him and across his body. They had saved him from freezing to death overnight when the temperatures dipped below zero. - Anabel Conner, 15 Times Wild Animals Actually Saved Humans, Ranker, 10/4/21

Goodness is pervasive.

The debate between the Russian anarchist philosopher and Aldous Huxley’s grandfather took place two centuries ago. But Kristin Ohlson’s “Sweet In Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World” (2022) elucidates the ways in which our understanding has advanced and offers perspective on what we need to be working on at the civilizational level.

I heard Canadian forest ecologist Suzanne Simard speak at the 2015 Urban Soil conference in Los Angeles. For the last thirty years, she’s been uncovering the hidden cooperation among trees and other living things in the forest. In the process of writing The Soil Will Save Us, I was thrilled to learn about the life-giving partnership between plants and soil microorganisms. Really, it was the greatest of revelations to find out that plants don’t just suck nutrients from the soil and leave it as barren of goodness as a Twinkie but are engaged in a constant give-and-take with the billions of tiny organisms there. At the conference, Simard talked about this kind of fertile partnership spread out across the forest landscape, powered by a vast underground skein of fungi. I almost levitated from my seat with excitement …
Even many scientists don’t grasp how pervasive cooperative interactions are in nature. “Today’s ecologists grew up with the paradigm of organisms primarily competing with each other,” biologist Richard Karban told me. “A lot of ecologists are surprised by how much cooperation exists among plants and other organisms. They’re not looking for it in their research.” Consequently, we seem to have developed a zero-sum-game view of nature, suggesting that whatever we take—we humans, or those ravens, cypresses, invasive garlic mustard, or any living thing—comes at the expense of other living things and the overall shared environment. As we humans keep growing in number, this view suggests, it must regrettably follow that the rest of the world will suffer …
We exist because of complex, vibrant, creative relationships with the rest of nature and are as much a part of it as the raccoon lounging in the tree near my front door or the grasses growing along the highway. How might our behaviour change if we understood the extent to which cooperation within and among species undergirds the natural world and makes it thrive? … Could we begin to see ourselves as partners and helpers, part of a greater fabric of giving, instead of exploiters and colonizers and wreckers?
It seems to me that the best and highest use of science these days is to figure out how nature works—as many of the brilliant scientists I interviewed in this book are doing—and then to help humans change our behaviour so that we can roll back the damage we’ve already done and avoid further damage. So that we encourage and bolster the world’s hunger to thrive …
- Kristin Ohlson, “Sweet In Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World,” Patagonia (2022)

A large print of Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” hung over my mattress in my flat on Prince Street, in lower Manhattan, in my early twenties, and then California with me, and moved with me from flat to flat, throughout my late twenties and all through my thirties … I had never explained it to myself, I just felt it, it nourished me, it protected, I didn’t think about how or why, I just felt it … Looking back on it now, so much meaning reveals itself, consider the painting against the historical backdrop, the HERSTORICAL backdrop more accurately, 16^th century, it is a pagan painting, it is Goddess worship, this is Venus after all the Goddess of Beauty, Love Goddess, flowing red hair, emerging from the sea, just as, in the beginning, Life itself emerged from the sea, “Birth of Venus” and “Primavera” stood in defiance of the Pathology that acted out with such cruelty and terror in the Inquisition, and that was tightening its grip at the time, Botticelli himself felt Savonarola’s chill breath on his neck and after “Birth of Venus” and “Primavera” his painting took on a very different, still exquisite, but much safer persona …

I have curated eight artistic renderings of Venus Aphrodite for you, four on each of these two slides, four by women, four by men, five of them flow from the central image, Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” these eight images sing of the Deep Feminine, the Divine Intelligence itself, in contradistinction to the false gods proffered up by patriarchy and oligarchy fueled as they have been by ignorance and pathology

One afternoon at the Monterrey Aquarium. Sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

As I roamed the halls, my eyes exploring the tanks through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, taking in the wonderousness of it all, the deep green of the slowly undulating kelp forest, the rainbow swarms of diverse fish species, the sharp-edged hardness of the multi-hued coral reef and then I saw something I can see clearly and feel as directly as I did in the moment, it was some sea creature, a sea of so dazzling, so scintillant, so blazing, I can’t even identify what it was – I don’t think it was a moon jelly, although they are exquisite, I don’t think it was a white coral, it might have been white plumed sea anemone, but I can’t be sure, I have searched but haven’t found a photo depicting the creature that I saw, or at least as it was revealed to me in that moment, the whiteness, the pure, utter whiteness, a supernatural whiteness, as I said, scintillant, dazzling … In that moment, I said to myself, in the silence of my own psyche, “this is proof-positive, irrefutable evidence, that there is indeed a divine intelligence behind all of creation, nothing less,” it’s none as if I had harbored any doubt ever, I hadn’t, but still, there it was.

Truth is a mountain. Massive, still, SILENT, unbreakable.

Goodness is a great river running through it all. Like the Amazon, the fastest. Like the Nile, the longest. Constant. Always flowing. Always in one direction.

But Beauty is of a different order; She is Herself a different dimension than that to which Truth and Goodness belong.

Beauty is mysterious. Truth is not. Truth wants you to know. Everything. Beauty is ineffable. Goodness is not. Goodness is reliable, uncomplicated, your best friend.

In that landscape of the human psyche, with its Truth-Mountain and its flowing River-of-the-Good, Beauty is more like an etheric nerve system, it occupies the same space as Truth and Goodness but is itself a whole other dimension all its own, it runs through everything everywhere (I don’t say everyone, because, well, ignorance and pathologies). This etheric nervous system that is beauty residues silently in everything everywhere, but now and then, here and there, like a chameleon shifting from one gorgeous color to another in a matter of seconds, this etheric system shifts modes and a portal opens, and we gasp and weep and tremble, uttering “Oh, look, this is so beautiful.”

The portal is like an etheric temple that coalesces seemingly out of the air itself, the portal temple beauty shimmers in and out of sight, sometimes immersed in the primordial darkness, which is after all Her own flesh, an etheric temple which shimmers in and out of consciousness, sometimes submerged in dreamtime, or is that her very nest, she is always dancing, always moving, on her own terms, following her own cryptic agenda …

Consider how four great beings I have randomly selected for you struggle to describe or define her –

The beauty of the world, which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. - Virginia Woolf
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. - Albert Einstein
Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time. - Albert Camus
Whenever I experience something beautiful, I am with Soul. That moment of inward breath, that pause and awareness of “how beautiful this is” is a prayer of appreciation, a moment of gratitude in which I behold beauty and am one with it. - Jean Shinoda Bolen

LOL. Can you see what She does to us?

I opened this series of talks by declaring that Reality itself is under attack

This is not to imply that this is something that has never happened before.

Indeed, for millennia (that’s plural), pathology and ignorance have struggled against Reality, seeking to blunt the arc of human evolution.

But there are moments, periods of time, eras, in which the battle could literally be won or lost, with finality, and this is such a moment, arguably the final battle.

This 21^st Century, the first of the 3^rd Millennium, offers both the direst of threats and the brightest of opportunities. Looking back over the dangerous millennia we have already survived, there is medicine to be gathered, potent medicine, mind-expanding, heart-expanding, soul-reiviving medicine, this potent medicine is our heritage, it delivers both inspiration and a warning

Hypatia (c. 370-415 AD).

Neoplatonist. Mathematician. Astronomer. Greek woman. In Egypt.

Taught at the School of Alexandria. Wrote books.

Influenced many of the great minds of her time. Shared Plotinus with them.

Opened their eyes to the Greek Mysteries and to the Goddesses.

Most other scholars had converted to Christianity to avoid persecution. She refused.

John of Nikiû depicted her as a pagan woman with “Satanic wiles” who “beguiled the people” and turn them against the church “through her enchantments.”

She was dragged from her chariot by a “Christian” mob.

Stripped naked. Flayed alive. Her corpse burnt. In a church. At the age of 45.

Hypatia has a table setting at Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party.

Embroidered on the back of the runner are four crying female faces from youth to old age that represent Hypatia in the Coptic style, suggesting that she stood for women of all ages. The image’s blurred appearance, and the depiction of four limbs being pulled in different directions represents the brutality of Hypatia’s death and the conflict created by her religious beliefs. Chicago uses a blood-red color in this panel, along with a rainbow of tones, which suggests the dichotomy of violence and beauty in Hypatia’s life. A rendering of Hypatia’s face, based on an actual Coptic weaving of a goddess, peers through the capital “H” in her illuminated letter. Her mouth is covered in a band, which represents her silencing as well as the “deliberate muting of other powerful women. - Judy Chicago, Hypatia Place Setting, The Dinner Party, Brooklyn Museum

A century or so after Botticelli painted his “Birth of Venus,” steeped as it was, and is, in the Deep Feminine, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, was burned at the stake for articulating a philosophical world-view just as steeped in the Deep Feminine.

“Divinity reveals herself in all things. Everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings, and from the smallest beings, according to their capacity. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being.”
“Animals and plants are living effects of Nature; this Nature … is none other than God in things … Whence all of God is in all things … Think thus, of the sun in the crocus, in the narcissus, in the heliotrope, in the rooster, in the lion… . To the extent that one communicates with Nature, so one ascends to Divinity through Nature.”
“Those wise men knew God to be in things, and Divinity to be latent in Nature, working and glowing differently in different subjects and succeeding through diverse physical forms, in certain arrangements, in making them participants in her, I say, in her being, in her life and intellect.”
– Giordano Bruno, “The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast” (1584)

Noor Inayat Khan. Daughter of the great Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan. Raised in her father’s Fazal Manzil (trans. “House of Blessings”) on the outskirts of Paris.

She studied child psychology at the Sorbonne.

She wrote children’s stories for Le Figaro.

In 1940, when the Nazis invaded France, the Khan family escaped to Britain.

Noor joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and became a wireless operator. But in 1943, she was recruited by Churchill’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). And the work of the SOE? Conducting espionage, sabotage. Aiding resistance movements.

Noor Inayat Khan became a covert operative. Churchill’s orders were unambiguous: “Set Europe ablaze.” Noor was sent into occupied territory as a radio operator to aid the French Resistance. Betrayed by an informant. Captured. Sent to Dachau. Tortured. Executed at the age of 30. Recognized as a Saint in Sufi circles.

She was a natural for espionage work being fluent in French and familiar with Paris. One of her SOE instructors called her “very feminine” and “interested in personalities, capable of strong attachments, kind-hearted, emotional and imaginative.” The instructor said: “The motive for her accepting the present task is, apparently, idealism. She . . . was longing to do something more active in the prosecution of the war, something that would make more call on her capabilities and, perhaps, demand more sacrifice” … She told her captors nothing and her last word was said to be “Liberté”. Khan was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre with Gold Star and the George Cross.
- Mark Bridge, Brave spy Noor Inayat Khan is first woman of Indian heritage to win plaque honour, Times, 8/28/2

Hypatia was stripped naked and killed by “Christians” who were not true Christians. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for articulating a philosophy grounded in the Primordial Goddess and a Cosmos composed of infinite worlds. Three centuries later, Noor Inayat Khan tortured and executed at Dachau for fighting Evil Incarnate.

Hypatia was killed in 415 AD.

Giordano Bruno was killed in 1600.

Noor Inayat Khan was killed in 1944.

Dangerous millennia. Plural. Not millennium. Singular. Millennia. Plural.

Throughout human history, thousands of years, ignorance and pathology have been struggling against Reality, against the True, against the Good, against the Beautiful.

But this period we found ourselves, this is extra, this is unique, I call it the Singularity, we may or may not survive in any recognizable form. This is extra. This is unique. The planetary climate emergency. 8 billion humans. Too many. Consuming Earth’s resources 73% faster than our planet’s ecosystems can regenerate them. Add in the mind-debilitating impacts of social media and AI. This is extra. This is unique in human history.

We are either going to shift into a new civilization, as I said in Part 2, a green, woke, feminist civilization, or we will find ourselves to be our own an extinction-level event.

So yes, some, Bruno and Noor Inayat Khan are called to become legend through the powerful example of their martyrdom, but others are called to become legend by living long profoundly impactful lives.

For example, Jane Goodall and John Lewis.

Both had long lives of meaningful work for our species and our world.

Both died recently. Lewis in 2020 at the age of 80, Goodall in 2025 at the age of 91.

LONG LIVES OF LEGEND!

Jane Goodall. Primatologist. Anthropologist. UN Messenger of Peace.

Throughout her life and remarkable career, Jane inspired generations of scientists, brought hope to countless people from all walks of life, and urged us all to remember that “every single one of us makes a difference every day – it is up to us as to the kind of difference we make”. - Jane Goodall Institute, Remembering Jane
“We can’t leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world’s people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources. - Jane Goodall, 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development
“I do believe there is a window of time when we can at least slow down climate change and loss of biodiversity. But only if we get together and take action now. And without hope we will fall into apathy and do nothing. Then we are doomed.” – Dr.Goodall’s 2025 Earth Day Message.

John Lewis was arrested 45 times, 40 times in the 1960s, as a leader of the non-violent civil rights movement in the southern United States, and 5 times as a member of the House of Representatives, including twice protesting apartheid in South Africa, and once protesting genocide in Darfur. He was beaten numerous times. By angry mobs. In 1961. During the Freedom Rides.” In 1965. On “Bloody Sunday.”

“If courage had a name, it would be his … For John Lewis, voting was sacramental. And he shed his blood for us to exercise this most fundamental of human rights. Forevermore, generations, starting with this one, will honor him by casting their ballots. A secular communion meant to strengthen our democracy. His roar as the conscience of the Congress will echo down through history. Few who ever lived have done more to inspire change.” - Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Remembers John Lewis, PBS, 7/22/20
“Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.” - John Lewis, Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America
“You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyone — any person or any force — dampen, dim or diminish your light … Release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won.” - John Lewis, Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America

LONG LIVES OF LEGEND!

Who replaces them? How could anyone pick up the slack left behind by their departure?

Such beings are like old growth forests.

You can plant trees; you can raise up a new forest.

But you can’t fast track an old growth forest.

You cannot synthesize the richness of that medicine.

So far we have honored three great beings who were martyred in defense of the True, the Good and the Beautiful, and two great beings who lived long lives of legend, but what about all of us, what about those who have not been woven into the official, public narrative of our species, who have not obtained fame or even recognition.

What is our role in all of this, this defense of Reality, the celebration of the real Real?

Wholly Mundane – Holy Mundane

Oxford Languages -
mundane
adjective
/mʌnˈdeɪn/
/mʌnˈdeɪn/
(often disapproving)
not interesting or exciting
synonym dull, ordinary
1. a mundane task/job
2. I lead a pretty mundane existence.
3. On a more mundane level, can we talk about the timetable for next week?

Sometime in the 1980s, I took a walk with Abdul Aziz Said, an esteemed Syrian-American Professor of International Relations at American University, diplomat, peacemaker, advisor to governments, AND a true for real Sufi. He was visiting Northern California. And he had spent an afternoon with his friend Joe Miller, who in turn arranged for me to take that walk. Having an in-depth conversation with someone like Abdul Aziz Said is like open heart surgery, and brain surgery, at once, but with etheric scalpels, etheric forceps, etheric retractors, making etheric incisions and etheric sutures, with a joyful peace as anesthetic. LOL. There is much I could say about that conversation, but here and now I’m only going to share this one profound moment. This was around the time I had asked Joe about the hell was going on in human evolution and whether there was any hope for us. So, I asked Abdul Aziz about it all too. And his answer has stayed alive all these years.

He said none of us really know how much of a difference we make.

He said we do not understand how much worse it would be without us, wherever we are, whatever we are doing, whoever we choose to be. He said we have no idea how bad it could be or would without us, without our beings, without us simply holding space, without the hope that we carry inside of us, without our goodness, our truth, our vision of beauty.

It could all be so much worse. It would all be so much worse without you.

Seriously. Just by being alive and holding up the True, the Good, the Beautiful, in your own way, in your own voice, in your own thoughts and feelings, in your own quietude, even in your own confusion or despair, you are contributing - in mysterious ways you cannot comprehend - to the redemption of our species and the rescue of our world.

Simply by being yourself, by naming the True, by serving the Good, by hallowing the Beautiful, by creating, by offering, by simply abiding, bearing witness, taking action in whatever ways come to you naturally.

Abdul Aziz Said died in January 2021at the age of 90. Another long life of legend!

There’s an old story about Octavia Butler that I often return to: A young man once asked the visionary science fiction novelist the answer to ending all the suffering in the world. “There isn’t one,” Butler replied. “So we’re doomed?” he asked, confused. “No,” said Butler. Then she delivered the words that would remake my understanding of the future: “There’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead, there are thousands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.” – Mary Retta, Welcome to Janelle Monáe’s Dreamworld, Wired, 4/26/22

“Failure to recognize the void nature of mind is the very source of samsara. This void nature, with its inherent compassion, is recognized when the mind, free of the influence of thoughts, awakens to the simple awareness of the present.”- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, The Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones

Death of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (Excerpted from “I, the Dragon”

One night, the phone rang just as I was giving Joe his goodnight hug. The ring felt urgent and heavily loaded. It was our beloved friend and fellow Lodge member, A.J. Dickinson, an ex-pat living in Kyoto. A.J. had traveled and studied closely with the highest of the Tibetan teachers, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. A.J. was an accomplished healer, and had done a lot of bodywork on Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and some of the other great ones. That night, he was calling to tell us that Dilgo Khyentse had just passed on from this life, over in the Himalayas. Dilgo Khyentse had been the senior lama of the Nyingmapa tradition, he was the builder of Shechen Monastery in Nepal, the guru of the Bhutanese royal family, the Dalai Lama’s Dzogchen instructor and his powerful teachings have been preserved in several exquisite books. It was a significant moment. I glanced at Joe, Joe glanced at Guin, Guin glanced at me, I glanced back at Joe. No one said anything. Dilgo Khyentse was profoundly important to all of us, the three of us in that room, and the magnificent friend at the other end of the phone call. We were and are all intricately bound together. It was the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning. Dilgo Khyentse’s death was like a signal. Both Joe and Guin would be dead in a year or so. The true government of the world was undergoing a changing of the guard.

Photographs of Dilgo Khyentse always stirred me, I kept one with me at all times. I had been fortunate to attend an empowerment he gave during his visit to California, years before. And for over a decade, I had made an in-depth study of his teachings. His power was great. I had felt the intensity of his insight into the nature of reality, on a constant basis; I had felt the blessedness of his presence on this plane. It was a palpable substance within the invisible world. But like a burning stick of exquisite incense it had reached its end. And that night, I felt him leave. A gaping hole in the interior structure of the world closed up behind him. And I felt the luminous web of life immediately begin to repair that tear in its membrane. Such a hole in the luminous web of life is repaired with the mystical tissue of those expanding hearts that are somehow bound up with the departed being and its karmas.

September 1991: Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche passes on Sept. 28, 1991.

August 1992: Joe Miller passes

Novermber 1992: Guin Miller passes

November 1992: Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche cremation

Although Joe didn’t talk about this much, he did on rare occasions, mention “the 36”:

“Who knows how many if any - there may be some seated in this room-who are among the Thirty-Six? It is stated that the world couldn’t run without the Thirty-Six. This is from the Jewish teachings. It is said that those thirty-six do not know what it is that they are here for, but that they are acting as channels to let it flow through them – what should be here to keep the world in balance. So who knows. There are similar things in the Sufi tradition. They are called certain names, they are not usually known. There are always so many in incarnation to keep the balance so that the Force will still be flowing through to humanity. Despite what they’re doing at this intimate level, the Ultimate is pressing through. You might say, how could somebody be such a one and not know it? Well, he could be deaf or dumb. He could be a dummy or a cripple or a politician. No, no, I doubt that....So you talk about a thousand in one chance, well, talk about the odds with all the billions of people living on the Earth. What are the odds that you’re one of those carrying a lucky number? Maybe you’ve already come to another level, but you’re being kept down at the point you are so THAT can flow through you. It’s better than a billion to one, yet there are these ones .... (Great Song, p. 221)

[NOTE: The great of the great among painters, like dancers, are not just painters, they are philosophers, they are alchemists, they reveal what cannot be revealed, they articulate that for which there are no words. Kahlo, Carrington, Varo and Fini offer irrefutable evidence of this. Here at close of our exploration of the True, the Good and the Beautiful, I offer you two powerful esoteric tomes compiled into paint strokes on canvass, Fini’s “Guardian of the Red Egg” and “Guardian of the Black Egg.”

Poet Karen Neuberg constructs a worthy poetical frame for these painting-portals:

“What else to do but what is expected - safeguard the red egg / I hold aloft between my palms. I feel its life pulsing inside the shell / Time to start the crack, break the seal …”
“The sun spills and warms. The black egg is restless to free its fire creature - dragon or phoenix. And then we’ll see what kind of future there will be.”
- Karen Neuberg, After Leonor Fini’s Egg Guardian Paintings, Ekphrastic Review, 9/7/24

The 36 (Ecerpt from “Words of Power”)

A lot of “New Age” malarkey and mumbo-jumbo has sprung up around this subject of “spiritual hierarchy,” and a lot what Joe would call “astral real estate” has been sold based on that malarkey and mumbo-jumbo. So let me demystify it with a jewel of insight I came across in the work of the great 20^th Century Sufi saint, Inayat Khan (remember, he was one of Sam’s teachers): “The whole secret of the hierarchy is in the expansion of the heart.” That’s it. Not in robes, not in titles, not in lineages, not in “transmission.” Indeed, in spite of robes, titles, lineages and “transmissions.” “The whole secret of the hierarchy is in the expansion of the heart.” The greater your capacity for love, the greater the container that your open heart offers the world around you, the deeper you move into the true hierarchy of the planet, and the deeper you move, the higher you ascend. That’s it, the whole secret – the boundlessness of your love, the fathomless depths of your compassion. Nothing more. And more often than not, it goes unseen, unspoken, unrecognized, unheralded. Simply the expansion of the heart; the more it expands the deeper you go, the higher you ascend. That’s the secret. Yes, envision, if you will, the expansion of the heart as the secret of the hierarchy, reaching outward from the “black hole” at the center of the Milky Way, in concentric circles, and then see “the 36” as just one of the circles.

Guardians (Excerpted from “I, the Dragon”

The path of love leads to a gateway high in the mountains. That portal is never left unattended. Wayfarers arrive there, famished and near death. The gatekeepers provide each weary pilgrim with a loaf of bread and a full wineskin. They also teach each one a song, then point the way to the inner valley. But the “Land of the Gods” isn’t what you dreamt it would be. It is simply a series of interlocking gateways high in the mountains. One by one, the wayfarers leave the road and tend to the gates. There are infinite trails leading into the mountains, there are infinite beings traversing them, there are infinite portals along the trails. But there are only a finite number of gatekeepers at any particular time. There are many opportunities. The rewards, however, are hard to understand—unless, of course, you have ever arrived famished and near death at one of the portals and were met there by a gatekeeper who taught you a song and showed you the way.

Richard Power - Vectors of Reality, Part 3: The True, The Good, The Beautiful

Vectors of Reality, Part 2: The Gaian Mysteries

Fri, 22 May 2026 20:54:02 GMT

[NOTE: This post includes the text and PowerPoint slides for “Vectors of Reality, Part 2: The Gaian Mysteries.” This is the second in a series of four talks on the mystical dimensions of life on Earth. At the end of this post, I have also embedded the full YouTube video of the talk itself. The text included here is not a transcript of the live talk as recorded on Zoom. Delivering the presentation, I read from this script, but also extemporize along the way. So there are some lines in the video that are not in the text version AND there are some lines in the text version that are not in the video. Also, there are numerous hyperlinks to authors and sources cited. I hope you enjoy exploring them. - Richard Power]

Science flows from the human mind’s intimate encounter with the real Real.

Human rights flow from the human heart’s intimate encounter with the real Real.

And in turn, science and human rights offer vectors of return to alignment with Reality.

Our planetary climate crisis is real. The rape of the Earth is real.

The science is real. Climate denialism is an attack on Reality.

Likewise, pandemics, and diseases – REAL. And the life-saving science of vaccines – REAL.

Misogyny, racism, human trafficking - REAL.

Human rights are what our very being itself demands of us and for us.

Attacks on human rights are attacks on Reality itself.

This series of talks is offered as a defense of Reality and a celebration of the real Real.

In Part 1, I spoke of Spacetime, the Yoga of the 3 Times, where we stand in the Cosmos, and how we hold space, physically, psychologically and mystically.

In Part 2, I will speak about the Gaian Mysteries, that in which we “live and move and have our being,” or more accurately, SHE in whom we “live and move and have our being.”

Tonight, Broadcasting Live …

In Part 1, I told “a tale of two prophecies,” tonight, broadcasting live, from inside the singularity, I will factor in two more – one from the 12^th Century and another circa 1980s.

Let’s briefly recap the first two.

In 2010, I declared that an imminent crisis point in human evolution was upon us, that we were well on the way to destroying the global eco-system on which civilization itself depends, and that we had already lost our collective moral compass and were on the brink of losing our collective mind. I dubbed this THE SINGULARITY and I added “in search of itself” because we had not yet slipped over the event horizon.

Then, in 2020, a decade later, I declared that the Singularity had indeed arrived.

Hence the phrase “tonight, broadcasting live, from inside the singularity.”

Just something I find myself saying.

The second prophecy I mentioned had come to me sometime in early 1980s, from my Yoda, the legendary American sage Joe Miller.

In a late-night conversation in his living room, I had challenged Joe on the very notion of further human evolution. It seemed to me that we were going nowhere fast.

Joe said, “We just have to make it through the next hundred years.”

Because by then, he said, children being born would just know, they would just come into incarnation knowing. And there would be enough of them by then to shift our civilization.

Well, we’re halfway through. The shift is already underway.

That’s why we are experiencing such vicious blowback.

We have already met the first of these children. It’s incremental. Building will be to critical mass. Like the “hundredth monkey,” but maybe the billionth monkey?

How many will it take to reach critical mass?

Vector Definition

American Heritage Definition:

1. Mathematics
a. A quantity, such as velocity, completely specified by a magnitude and a direction …
4. A force or influence
5. A course or direction, as of an airplane
tr.v. vec·tored, vec·tor·ing, vec·torso
To guide (e.g., a pilot or aircraft) by means of radio communication according to vectors

Plural: Vectors

Verities & Vectors

Vectors of Reality is the sequel to last year’s Verities of Being.

In “Verities Part 1: Shadow,” we explored the false equivalency of Darkness with Evil, Female with Passive or Receptive, and all the dysfunction and DISease that flow from these two misconfigurations.

In “Vectors Part 1: Spacetime,” we explored the nature of the Cosmos and what it takes to make a stand here on Earth.

In “Verities Part 2: Siddha,” I offered a new and very different frame for understanding our “Siddhis,” i.e., our powers.

In “Vectors Part 2: Gaian Mysteries,” we celebrate the miracle of sentient organic life on this sentient planet being.

Gaian Poetics

In “Cauldron Yoga, Gaian Poetics & the Way of the Ancient Future: Further Perspectives on the Nature of Primal Reality” (2015), which later would become Book 5 of “Wyrds of Power: New Language for A New Reality” (2017), I wrote -

At 2 a.m., I received an e-mail message from a dakini friend in Copenhagen.
Inside, there was a hyperlink to a You Tube post, “Whales swimming under the Northern Light.” Nothing else. There are no words to describe the mystical tableaux captured in that fifty-three second video. But, of course, describing what there are no words to describe is one of the essential elements of what I call “Gaian Poetics.”
In an instance of sublime synchronicity, my Danish dakini friend had opened a portal … And my words flowed into that portal with a pod of humpback whales, circling, feeding, immersed in the emerald luminosity of the Aurora Borealis.
Science has established that the whales, dolphins and porpoises (i.e., the Cetaceans) are sentient. We know they love, they play, and they sing.
Imagine for a moment what their world-dreams might feel like from inside?
What did that pod of whales experience as they fed under the Aurora Borealis? What did they feel? What do they know? …
Sentience is in some ways the mystery of mysteries.
Gaia dreams her world-dream. And within her world-dream, she dreams the whales dreaming their world-dreams, and the humans dreaming their world-dreams. Yes, our world-dreams are utterly dependent upon hers, they arise within hers, and they are re-absorbed into hers. Likewise, the world-dreams of the tree frogs, the world-dreams of the salmon, the world-dreams of the madrones, the world-dreams of the emeralds. Gaia herself is a sentient being and ALL life on the planet has its existence within her, all life here is composed of her, sustained by her, and reabsorbed into her.
This isn’t only a shamanic truth; this is a scientific truth.

Gaian Politics

[NOTE: This is 2013 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai in Kenya, in 2004. I have invoked her radiant presence in numerous talks and writings. For me, she embodies the mystical power of the Global South. Google her Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Read it yourself. Don’t just have AI pre-chew your food for you. She risks her life fighting deforestation. She impacted the collective psyche of the species by planting trees. ]

Gaia isn’t a goddess whose world this is. She isn’t a statue, She isn’t something we pray to, She isn’t some anthropomorphized “Divine Being” who has rulership over this planet, Gaia IS this planet. We are not Gaia’s children; we are Gaia’s very cells.

We’re not Gaia’s “stewards.” I know people mean well but whenever they start talking about being “stewards” of Nature, I get very uncomfortable. Because that’s how this predatory pathology took hold, imagining Gaia to be some resource to be managed.

You are not the “stewards” of anything, you are the cells of one vast planetary being.

The true Oneness is our life within Her, science and shamanism are seeing the same reality now. We are not Gaia’s children, we are not Her stewards, we are a part of her.

The planet, Gaia, is alive, sentient, a self-organizing intelligence, we all exist within that being, we are all cells of Her body, every creature, every plant, every stone, every river, the seas, the atmosphere itself …

Gaia is a divine intelligence, a self-organizing being of divine intelligence.

By Gaian Poetics, I mean aesthetics that is informed by and infused with the Gaian Mysteries. By Gaian Politics, I mean a philosophy of governance that informed by and infused with the Gaian Mysteries.

And yes, I am only half-joking when I suggest that Gaian Politics and Gaian Poetics, should supplant Aristotle’s “Politics and Poetics,” which have stood like twin pillars at the gateway to Western philosophy since the 4^th Century. LOL.

Gaian Mysteries (Oceanic)

[NOTE: This monumental sculpture, “Ocean Gaia” is the work of British sculptor-diver Jason deCaires Taylor. It weighs 40 tons. It’s over 18 feet wide. It’s embedded in a coral reef off the Japanese island of Tokuno. Its edges are perforated to welcome in sea creatures. Its contours simulate the sand-circles made by the white-spotten pufferfish. Taylor intends it to evoke “a deep, instinctive memory of being held within water – a quiet meditation on creation, fertility and the ocean as the original womb of life.” - Steve Weinman, DIVERNET, 1/21/25]

So, “Part 1” focused on Spacetime, “Part 2” focuses on the Gaian Mysteries.

And, in Creation itself, the one flows from the other, the Gaian Mysteries flow from Spacetime.

Consider these insights from NASA -

“What is the ultimate origin of water? A water molecule is made up of one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen was created in the Big Bang and oxygen in the cores of stars more massive than the Sun. Enormous amounts of water, in gaseous form, exist in the vast stellar nurseries of our galaxy. The Hubble Space Telescope peered into the Helix Nebula and found water molecules. Hydrogen and oxygen, formed by different processes, combine to make water molecules in the ejected atmosphere of this dying star. The origins of our oceans are in the stars.” – NASA, Ocean Worlds

Water covers 71% of Earth’s surface, 97% is ocean, salt water, only 3% is freshwater, and even Earth’s freshwater comes from her oceans.

The ocean water heats in the Sun and evaporates and as it turns into a rising vapor the salt falls away, then through condensation, that vapor forms clouds, and in turn, these clouds give the rain, snow and ice that fill our lakes, our rivers, our glaciers, our aquifers …

There are five oceans and maybe 50 seas (e.g., the Mediterranean, the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Caribbean, the Arabian Sea, the China Sea …)

The oceans produce 50% to 70% of Earth breathable air. Through photosynthesis.

You can live without water for 3-4 days.

Without air, you’re dead in 4-6 minutes.

AND, of course, the oceans are, in fact, Gaia’s largest carbon sink.

Gaian Mysteries

[NOTE: In “Six women artists of British Surrealism” (5/4/22), Philomena Epps wrote “Carrington was interested in esoteric feminism – notably alchemists, spiritual guides, and visionaries – and populated her work with figures and animals drawn from ancient pagan mythology. These ethereal, otherworldly characters are represented in The Pomps of the Subsoil (1947), where a tree of knowledge sprouts from one woman's head, and a green parakeet rests on another woman hooded in a mustard-colored cloak.”]

An incantation. Disguised as a prose poem.Composed of headlines and ledes.

It Once Rained on Earth Nonstop for A Million Years - @pubity, 11/9/25
Sperm Whales Use a Phonetic Alphabet With 150+ “Vowels.” - @acssanfrancisco, 5/1/26
A single mature tree can release up to 380 liters of water vapor daily, cooling the surrounding air as effectively as 5 to 10 air conditioners. This process is called evapotranspiration, and it costs absolutely nothing. - @thebrainypedia, 4/12/26thebrainypedia
Genomic researchers just traced all modern life back to a single complex cell that lived 4.2 billion years ago. - @outtstanding, 4/23/26
Experts estimate that nearly 60% of Amazon rainforest remains unexplored in detail, an expanse so vast and dense that even current technology fails to see clearly under its green canopy. - @astrophilesz, 4/26/26
Antarctica found to be hiding one of the largest volcanic systems on Earth.
One whale can store more carbon than thousands of trees. - @whalesnation, 4/21/26
Bees are officially declared the most important living species on the planet, essential to human life. - @astrophilesz, 4/27/26

Gaian Mysteries (Hildegaard)

Hildegaard of Bingen, philosopher, musical composer, artist, visionary, natural scientist, Benedictine abbess, etc. Indeed, she was, like Da Vinci or Bacon, a polymath. There is much to say about her. I have invoked her work in numerous writings and talks.

“Viriditas,” or “Veriditas,” is a word that Hildegaard made up herself, out of two Latin words, one for Truth (“Veritas”) and the other for Green (“Viridity”).

Here are some insights on Hildegard and Viriditas from the indefatigable Maria Popova, Editor of The Marginalian –

Seven centuries before Eunice Newton Foote discovered greenhouse gasses, and an epoch before we had any sense of climate change or our own hand in it, Hildegard prophecies:
Then the greening power of the virtues faded away, and all justice entered upon a period of decline. As a result, the greening power of life on Earth was reduced in every seed because the upper region of the air was altered in a way contrary to its first destiny. Summer now became subject to a contradictory chill while winter often experienced a paradoxical warmth. There occurred on Earth times of drought and dampness… As a result, many people asserted that the Last Day was near at hand …
In what may be the clearest, most succinct manifesto for climate action, [Hildegaard] writes: Our thinking affects our greening power… The soul is the green life-force of the flesh… When we humans work in accord with the strivings of our soul, all our deeds turn out well.
… the words holy and whole share a Latin root; if an ecological conscience is a way of seeing the world whole, it is a way of seeing its holiness, of seeing our own holiness - not above it; but nested within it.
Rachel Carson knew this when, picking up Hildegard’s torch eight centuries later to catalyze the modern environmental movement, she observed that “there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity,” that the task now before humanity is “to prove its maturity and its mastery — not of nature, but of itself.”
It was Hildegard who gave us the original model of poetic ecology. - Maria Popova, Don’t Waste Your Greening Life-Force: Hildegard’s Prophetic Enchanted Ecology, The Marginalian, 1/2/25

The Moon’s Real Identity

The Moon, the real Real Moon has been misrepresented in the realms of Woo and Woo Woo. Much of the symbolism of the Moon is stunted, limited, shallow … For example, the Moon as “receptive”? “Passive”? LOL …

As I mentioned in Part 1, Gaia, the Earth, has five layers of atmosphere, and although we only leave in the innermost 3 or 4 miles, the outermost layer envelopes the Moon.

There are 200 or so moons in this solar system, ours is the fifth largest.

We are the only planet in this system with just one moon.

Here are some glimpses into the Moon’s true identity, excerpted from an episode of History Channel’s “The Unexplained” -

MICHIO KAKU: The gravity of the Moon lifts the water up to give you high tide, and when the Moon passes, it drops, giving you low tide. Think of that: the entire planet Earth’s water being lifted several feet. And that tremendous cosmic energy comes from the gravitational pull of the Moon.
MICHIO KAKU: We now realize that the orbit of the Moon creates churning inside the Earth. The Moon churns the inside of the Earth by tidal forces, causing currents in the form of electricity, which creates the Earth’s magnetic field. We depend upon a magnetic shield to protect us against solar flares from the Sun … If it wasn’t for the presence of the Moon, you go outside, you get a sunburn within just a matter of a few minutes.
MAGGIE ADERON-POCOCK: Can we survive without the Moon? If the Moon suddenly disappeared, I think not. The result on Earth would be catastrophic and very, very rapid. The tides would stop working. The Earth would start slowing down. As the Earth slows down, it can start wobbling on its axis. If it wobbled very far, this would melt the polar ice caps, and sea levels would rise radically. Also, a place like Las Vegas could be freezing in winter and yet boiling in summer.
BRIAN KEATING: The Moon is sort of the Earth’s bodyguard because the Moon has protected us from asteroid impacts … all those craters, they could have been impacts on Earth - The Moon’s Profound Secrets (S2, E17), Unexplained, “The Moon’s Profound Secrets” (S2, E17), Unexplained, History Channel, 2/26/25

The True Nature of Darkness

So, yes, the Moon is miscast, misrepresented, undervalued in many metaphysical “teachings,” but for Darkness, it’s even worse, Darkness is slandered, and as I have mentioned falsely equated with evil.

We need Darkness in our lives.

We need hours of Darkness. In every 24 hour cycle.

Darkness nourishes us.

Consider this -

When the sun goes down, your body isn’t just resting — it’s rebuilding.
Sleep is when your brain performs its nightly maintenance: clearing toxins, repairing cells, consolidating memories, and resetting your nervous system.
But even a small source of artificial light — a nightlight, phone glow, or streetlamp leaking through your curtains — can disrupt that process in powerful ways …
Your brain’s pineal gland produces melatonin only in total darkness. Even dim light (as little as 5 lux — about the brightness of a phone notification) can cut melatonin levels by up to 50%.
Melatonin isn’t just a “sleep hormone” — it’s a potent antioxidant that protects neurons and regulates your immune and metabolic systems …
Light at night confuses your circadian clock, tricking your body into thinking it’s daytime. Over time, this increases risks for insulin resistance, anxiety, depression, and weight gain … - @backpaintipsfast

That vital information is from the realms of physiology, wellness, self-care …

But darkness is also a portal to deeper, fuller realization of the nature of being.

Consider these two practices from the Vijnana Bhairava –

62. In rain during a black night, enter that blackness as the form of forms.
63. When a moonless raining night is not present, close eyes and find blackness before you. Opening eyes, see blackness. So faults disappear forever.

Here is second of three Gaian Mysteries incantations. Disguised as a prose poem. Composed of headlines and ledes from actual news stories.

Gaian Mysteries

Our water is so old that, statistically speaking, every time you drink a glass of water you’re probably swallowing a water molecule that passed through a dinosaur - @astrophilesz, 5/2/26
Trees communicate through vast underground fungal networks, exchanging nutrients, chemical signals, and information that supports the health of the entire forest. Older “mother trees” recognize their kin and funnel carbon and minerals to young seedlings, increasing their chances of survival - @doctorlarawegener, 3/19/26
According to research, the most calming place in nature is near water. Seeing and hearing water can lower cortisol and create a deep sense of calm called the blue mind state - @mental.aspect, 5/4/26
Hugging a tree has been found to be extremely powerful, as the tree transfers an electric charge to your body, promoting healing – @mind.perspective, 4/22/26
Beavers form lifelong relationships and remain loyal to their partner forever - @pubity, 4/18/25
German has a word for the feeling of being completely alone in nature and feeling more whole than you do surrounded by people. Waldeinsamkeit. Forest solitude.
Not loneliness. The specific wholeness of existing in a natural space without needing to perform for anyone … The combination of genuine solitude and natural environment produces a state the nervous system almost never accesses in modern life. Complete release from social performance combined with full parasympathetic restoration. - @soulmindhub, 4/30/26
A biologist discovered that coral reefs communicate through sound. When they go silent the entire ecosystem around them collapses … Scientists are now restoring dying reefs by broadcasting their original sounds. Life returns. Following the signal home. - @spiri.tualsayings
The Earth’s surface is electrically charged with free electrons—natural antioxidants.
When you stand barefoot on soil, grass, or sand, those electrons transfer into your body through your skin … grounding reduces inflammation, normalises cortisol, shifts the nervous system from fight-or-flight into rest-and-repair, and accelerates wound healing - @sdcaw_spirituality, 4/19/26

Le Bout du Monde

To the extent that we are separated from nature, isolated, cut off from the true green and the true blue, to that extent, we are made much more susceptible to those attacks on reality that I have called out, when you lose touch with the true green and the true blue you lose touch with the real Real … and that’s not because most of us live in a metropolis, I do, and actually Gaia prefers us in cities, we are easier to manage that way, our footprint isn’t as destructive, we are less invasive, gathered in cities we are less disruptive to Her … it isn’t where we live that cuts us off, it’s our choices, what we resource, what we turn to, what we value, what we prioritize, what we pray to, what we hallow, what we fight for …

Consider this -

Human connection to nature has declined 60% in 200 years, study finds
Prof Miles Richardson says people risk ‘extinction of experience’ in the natural world … People’s connection to nature has declined by more than 60% since 1800, almost exactly mirroring the disappearance of nature words such as river, moss and blossom from books, according to a study …
The modelling predicts an ongoing “extinction of experience” with future generations continuing to lose an awareness of nature …
- Patrick Barkham, A Study Has Found That Human Connections To Nature Has Declined 60% In 200 Years, Guardian, 8/9/25

The Sixth Great Extinction

[NOTE: This is Judy Chicago’s powerful “Extinction” from “The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction,” (2018). I am grateful I got to stand in its presence at the De Young.]

In the final year of her long, heroic life, Jane Goodall, in an BBC interview -

“We’re in the midst of the sixth great extinction … The more we can do to restore nature and protect existing forests, the better … We still have a window of time to start slowing down climate change and loss of biodiversity,” Dr Goodall says. “But it’s a window that’s closing.” Destruction of forests, and other wild places, she points out, is intrinsically linked to the climate crisis … “If we don’t get together and impose tough regulations on what people are able to do to the environment - if we don’t rapidly move away from fossil fuel, if we don’t put a stop to industrial farming, that’s destroying the environment and killing the soil, having a devastating effect on biodiversity - the future ultimately is doomed.” - Victoria Gill, ‘The sixth great extinction is happening’, conservation expert warns, BBC, 11/16/24

Yes, 445 million years ago, intense glaciation caused sea levels to fall, wiping out 85% of all marine species; 372 million years ago, two anoxic events, in which seawater is deprived of oxygen, wiping out 70% of all species; 252 million years ago, volcanism and the rifting of supercontinent Pangea, wiping out 85% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrae species; 201 million years ago, intense volcanic eruptions causing and ocean acidification, 70-75% of all species; 65 million years ago, a massive asteroid crashing into the Yucatan, along with continuing volcanism, resulting in 76% of all species.

Welcome to the Sixth Great Extinction, and this time, in our ignorance, and yes, in our pathology, WE are the massive asteroid.

Recently, some scientists are saying there is no Sixth Great Extinction.

Well, of course. Lucrative, no doubt.

The Sixth Great Extinction is, like the Climate Emergency itself, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH.

Consider just a small sampling of recent headlines –

We are the last generation that will ever see fireflies - @weareonaroll
Scientists uncover alarming decline in insect populations – and the birds that feed on them - @hashem.alghaili
61% of all bird species on Earth are now in severe decline - up from 44% in 2016 - @outstanding
Freshwater fish populations have dropped 81%, marking one of Earth’s most overlooked wildlife crises - @hashem.alghaili
Around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history. - UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’ 5/6/19
Arctic seals are now officially endangered – their sea ice is melting four times faster than the global average - @outstanding
Species are disappearing 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than the natural background rate - @animalpulse2.0

Planet Emergency

Anthropocentric Climate Disruption and the Sixth Great Extinction loom ominously over everything, over all life, all purpose, all promise, everything.

Consider this -

Britain’s intelligence chiefs joined in warning food prices, migration and conflict could rise as key ecosystems fail. Ministers held the document back for months over fears it sounded too bleak …
The assessment says ecosystem collapse would raise pandemic risks, fuel organized crime and increase the chance of conflict between and within states as groups compete for food, water and land. It also warns that damage to major food-producing regions would drive up global prices and restrict supply to the U.K.
- UK flags biodiversity loss as national security threat, Courthouse News, 1/27/26

Gaian Mysteries

Here is the third Gaian Mysteries incantation. Disguised as a prose poem. Composed of headlines and ledes from actual news stories.

Scientists Discover Trees Emit Ultrasonic Signals That May Help Neighboring Trees Respond to Environmental Stress - @unwastetheplanet, 4/23/26
When you Sit in Front of the Ocean and Watch the Waves, Your Mind Begins to Match the Rhythm of the Water, and Your Thoughts Naturally Slow Down and Settle - @mystic_shinee, 4/3/26
Diamonds are common in space. But wood? Nearly impossible. Biology makes wood one of the rarest materials in the universe. - @astrophilesz, 5/26
Scientists call our shared mother-line ancestor “Mitochondrial Eve” She likely lived in Africa around 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, and her unbroken mother-to-child DNA line connects to everyone alive today. - @officialmbf, 4/30/26
The scent of a forest lowers stress hormones, reduces anxiety and boosts immunity - @scienceofessentials, 4/26
Scientists found that being near water improves well-being as much as the difference between doing chores and going out with friends. Blue space is any environment where water is the dominant feature like the ocean, a river, a lake, a canal, even a park fountain. - @goodneuroscience, 4/11/26
Ocean water and human blood plasma do share similar mineral compositions: primarily sodium, chloride, magnesium, calcium, and potassium, making the ocean feel inherently familiar to our bodies. Being in saltwater, absorbing sunlight, and grounding barefoot on the Earth all stimulate physiological responses that promote healing: reducing inflammation, balancing circadian rhythms, boosting mood, and improving immune function. - @jamesmoorewellness, 3/6/26
There are more trees on Earth than stars in our galaxy – about 3 trillion trees vs. 100-400 billion stars - @hashem.alghali, 5/12/26

21^st Century

[Snow Raven (www.snowraven.com) is an Indigenous singer and music producer from Arctic Siberia. Quannah Chasinghorse (@quannah.rose) is a high fashion model and indigenous activist from Arctic Alaska. Cultural icons. Embodying the mystical power of the Global North. Their creative expression, their voices, their presences embody what I mean by choosing to live in the 21^st Century.]

In “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants,” Potawatomi botanist and author, Robin Wall Kimmerer, writes -

“The land knows you, even when you are lost.”
“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”
“The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don’t yet know. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together.”
“If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy become.”
“For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it.”

21^st Century

You can choose to live in the 21^st Century.

By doing so, you are embracing Reality and offering it to everyone within your reach.

We need Reality (both lower-case and upper-case). And Reality (both cases) needs us.

2 + 2 = 4. That’s a fact. Reality.

2 + 2 = 4 protects us. And in turn, we protect 2 + 2 = 4.

(Shoutout the great George Orwell).

I wonder how all of this will sound in 10 more years, or 20 more years, or 50 more years?

What I call the Gaian Mysteries might strike you as obvious now. But it may not seem so obvious to those hearing or reading these words in the future (even near future).

It may all seem incredibly sad. And those hearing it or reading it may burst into tears.

Or it may all feel incredibly inspiring. And those hearing it or reading it might say ‘Oh, wow, this is from the time when the great shift truly began.’

We have no way of knowing. Not here and now, from inside the Singularity.

We can only keep broadcasting, only keep moving forward.

But within a Singularity is there any forward or backward? Or any up or down? Or even any sideways?

In such a dilemma the only compass is within you, and its arrows are your love, your conscience and that Voice of the Silence that is itself Truth North.

Take one step and then another. Forward is simply the direction you are moving.

China continues to lead the world in wind and solar, w/ twice as much capacity under construction as the rest of the world combined - Global Energy Monitor, 7/24
Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia & Democratic Republic of the Congo generate 100% renewable energy – Climate Council, 10/29/24
Europe Now Generates More Power from Wind & Solar Than From Fossil Fuels – Yale Environment 360, 1/22/26
Morocco’s Noor Ouarzazate Solar Complex: The World’s Largest Concentrated Solar Power Plant – PBS, 4/8/24

There is very little time left. But there still is time.

Pachamama

Whether the Medicine, the Wisdom, the Word comes from the North or the South or the East or the West, most important is that it flows from, through and into the Ascendancy of the Feminine. The Future is Female (Or else ...) Decommission the Patriarchy (Or else …)

I promised you a fourth prophecy. Like the second of the four prophecies, it’s from the 1980s. It has been published. It has been in print since 1992.

In the context of all that we are discussing in this series of talks, it takes on a new dimension of meaning, and shines forth with a new clarity.

But I am going to lead into it by going back maybe another two decades. Sometime in the mid-1960s. I was maybe 13 years old. I loved Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard, and Spinoza, I was unimpressed with Plato even then, but I was comfortable with the Pre-Platonic Greeks, especially Heraclitus, of course. And it wasn’t just the Western bookshelves I was working my way through. By then I had read Shankara, Aurobindo, and the Gospel of Ramakrishna. LOL. One afternoon, I was flipping through something, maybe the Encyclopedia Britannica, I don’t remember, what I do remember is turning a page and seeing an illustration consisting of rows and columns of images of the “Great Philosophers.” They were maybe 30 or more. Some painted portraits. Some sculpted busts. Some photographs. All men! That’s what struck me – all men. In the moment, less than two decades into this incarnation, that illustration just struck as wrong, ill, not healthy, weird.

There was just something OFF about it. Not one woman?!??

That moment stuck with me. At the back of my mind.

Now fast forward to that sometime in the late 1980s.

The legendary American sage Joe Miller was speaking to a large Sufi gathering, a Mevlevi sema, a sacred circle of whirling dervishes, in this sema, women were participating, something ‘heretical’ to the agents of patriarchy.

And Joe quoted a passage from Rumi’s Mathnawi rendered by our friend Coleman Bark:

The core of the feminine comes directly as
a ray of the sun. She’s not the earthy figure
you hear about in love songs. There’s more to her
mystery than that. You might say she’s not
from the manifested world at all,
but the creator of it.
Women in this country are going to come into their own. And in other writings given in the sacred teachings it is said that in this coming century, the women will be the ones. Of course, men are immortal, but women are a bit more than that. Women give life to men! Both emotionally and physically. It’s a new age, a new world we’re living in. The potentiality for the feminine side is tremendous … this is from the teachings of Rumi, and it is my honor to bring it to you. I presume that from one standpoint the boys might consider I’m rather foolish, but I’m not. I’m just showing them … their brothers who are sisters are the ones who will be carrying the banner in the next century. - Great Song: Life and Teachings of Joe Miller, Edited with an Introduction by Richard Power, Foreword by Coleman Barks, Maypop Books, 1993

This was prophecy, I felt it, I knew it, and wondered for the years after, “What will my role be?” I knew it wouldn’t be what it would have been in the 19^th or 20^th centuries, it would be something else, something different …

Green, Woke, Feminist Civilization

A few years ago, a friend of mine who leads a goddess circle in the Santa Cruz mountains invited me to speak at her annual Yule celebration, and in the course of that extemporaneous talk, I found myself declaring that any worthy future for our species must be predicated on a green, woke, feminist civilization. At that moment, something happened in that circle, a wave of Shakti poured through the room, many of those priestesses and witches, not all but many, broke into an uproarious YES, hooting and howling, and stomping … And I said to myself, “this is an important moment, I must make this very wording a centerpiece of my work.”

And yes, in some “polite company” people run away from these words and contort their messaging to avoid them.

But these three words belong to the collective heritage of our common humanity. They are not “political” in their origins, they are made of the same stuff as the Beatitudes. They might as well have poured forth directly from the Sermon on the Mount. They have been “politicized” by those seeking to mute their power and truth.

Let’s break them down one by one –

Dictionary definition of “Green” as in “Green Energy” or “Green Economy” -

energy that can be produced in a way that protects the natural environment, for example by using wind, water, or the sun - Cambridge Dictionary

The term “Woke” arose in the African American culture of the 1920s and 1930s.

Writing for The Conversation, Prof. Robert E. Hall elucidates -

The song given the most credit by historians for the use of the word woke was written and performed in 1938 by Huddie Leadbetter, known as Lead Belly. He advises his listeners to “stay woke” lest they run afoul of white authority … “It’s a hard world down there in Alabama,” Lead Belly said. “I made this little song about down there. … I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there — best stay woke, keep their eyes open.” - Ronald E. Hall, Back in the day, being woke meant being smart, 2/14/24

The chain of custody for the term “Woke” stretched from Leadbelly in 1938 to Erykah Badu, singer, songwriter, producer (certified midwife) in 2008 and 2012.

Writing in Vibe, Preezy Brown had the scoop -

“I can tell you what ‘woke’ means,” [Erykah Badu] said. “It just means being aware, being in alignment with nature, because if you’re in alignment with that, you’re aware of everything that’s going on …” According to Badu, she first used the term intentionally on the song “Master Teacher” from her 2008 album New Amerykah Part One (4th World War). “Even though you go through struggle and strife/ To keep a healthy life, I stay woke (I stay woke),” the songstress croons on the track, which served as a precursor to its surge in popularity after using the phrase in her 2012 tweet voicing support of Russian band Pussy Riot. “After that, woke took off,” Badu recalled. – Preezy Brown, Erykah Badu Breaks Down The Meaning Of “Woke” And What Some People Mean By It, Vibe, 3/29/23

Here’s the tweet –

ErykahBadoula (@fatbellybella): Truth requires no belief. Stay woke. Watch closely. #FreePussyRiot.

So … Just as Science flows from the human mind’s intimate encounter with the real Real, and Human Rights flows from the human heart’s intimate encounter with the real Real, Music, Dance, Art flow from the human soul’s encounter with the real Real.

Concerning the term “Feminist,” I cite Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Some people ask: Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that? Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general—but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Human Rights, Sustainability, the Rights of Mother Nature, the Ascendancy of the Deep Feminine, these are our spiritual imperatives, our existential imperatives … Whether you are atheist, agnostic, pagan, Buddhist, true Christian, whether you feel there is life beyond death or that this life in this body is all we have, either way, these are our imperatives.

Vijnana Bhairava

As I did in Part 1, and will do in each of the talks, I will close experientially with one or two of the 112 techniques that the Goddess Devi wrote down for us.

They are the notes she took in her dialogue with Siva.

Tonight, we explore the 15^th and 40^th techniques.

Last time, I talked about how the “main characteristic of Aksaha (space) is sound.”

Nada Brahma. Saut-e-Sarmad. The Divine Vibration itself.

A-U-M. Ahhhhhhhh … Huuuuuuuu …

Vishudda Chakra.

“In the beginning was the Word …”

15. Intone a sound, as a-u-m, slowly. As sound enters soundfulness, so do you.

Vijnana Bhairava

40. Consider the plenum to be your own body of bliss.

When you make your stand for Reality, the power of three trillion trees are with you, the power of 5 oceans and 50 seas are with you, the power of all the whales are with you, the power of all the honey bees is with you, and you will be reach hearts that are not closed and minds that are not irretrievably broken.

Richard Power - Vectors of Reality, Part 2: The Gaian Mysteries

Vectors of Reality, Part 1: Spacetime

Richard Power - Words of Power — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 22:25:30 GMT

[NOTE: This post includes the text and PowerPoint slides for “Vectors of Reality, Part I: Spacetime.” This is the first in a series of four talks on the mystical dimensions of life on Earth. At the end of this post, I have also embedded the full YouTube video of the talk itself. I will also post the same for Parts 2-4 here on my Substack feed. BTW, the text included here is not a transcript of the live talk as recorded on Zoom. Delivering the presentation, I read from this script, but also extemporized along the way. So there are some lines in the video that are not in the text version AND there are some lines in the text version that are not in the video. Also, there are numerous hyperlinks which I hope you enjoy exploring.]

Vectors of Reality

Reality is under attack. I am not going to go into the what, where or why, and certainly not into the who. This is not the venue for that. I’m just going to say – REALITY ITSELF IS UNDER ATTACK! Science is under attack. Human rights are under attack. Women are under attack. Gaia, Mother Nature, is under attack.

This series of talks is a defense of reality, a celebration of the real/Real.

In these four talks, I am going to offer ways to ground in the real/Real, to align with the real/Real, to take solace and refuge in the real/Real, and in turn to offer solace and refuge to and through the real/Real.

I am going to read you the headline and lede from a news stories; over the last few days, this story specifically should have led whatever newscast you watch or dominated whatever news feed you rely on. And I am certain it didn’t –

Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought
Scientists say finding is ‘very concerning’ as collapse would be catastrophic for Europe, Africa and the Americas
Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said: “This is an important and very concerning result. It shows that the ‘pessimistic’ models, which show a strong weakening of the Amoc by 2100, are, unfortunately, the realistic ones, in that they agree better with observational data.”
He added: “I now am increasingly worried that we may well pass that Amoc shutdown tipping point, where it becomes inevitable, in the middle of this century, which is quite close.” - Damian Carrington, The Guardian, 4/15/25

So 25 years ago, I would stand in front of gatherings of intelligence, security and law enforcement leaders from governments and corporations. Representatives from dozens of countries all over the world. There would be translation booths in the back of the room and attendees would be listening to my talk in their own languages through headphones. I would talk about economic espionage, terrorism, cyber war AND the planetary climate crisis. In Oslo. In Singapore. In Paris. In Sydney. Over 30 countries in 3 years at one point.

Afterward some hosts would typically ask why I was talking about climate change. LOL. And I would say “because it’s the gravest threat your populace faces” AND that “it will also warp and aggravate every other national security and economic threat on the spectrum.”

In the course of those briefings, I would show them the latest studies, the latest projections, and then tell them that any data that says this or that will happen in 100 years, just know it’s going to happen in 50 years, and any data that says this or that is going to happen in 50 years, just know it’s going to happen in 25 years.

Typically, someone would challenge those bold declarations, “On what do you basis your assertion?” What could I say? I would invariably answer, “I just know.”

Well, it does leave a bitter taste in my mouth, but I told you so.

Tonight, Broadcasting Live, From Inside The Singularity …

“Tonight, Broadcasting Live, From Inside The Singularity …”

This something I started saying to myself maybe seven or eight years ago now.

The story behind it is a tale of two prophecies.

Oxford Languages Definition: Singularity
4. a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole - Merriam-Webster

In 2010, THE Voice, the one that comes from a great depth BEYOND, that voice said, “It’s time to make your move.”

The Voice’s mystical exhortation led to several initiatives, including a series of talks, which rapidly became a book, “Between Shadow & Night: The Singularity in Search of Itself” (2010), the first in a series of five books, which would later be republished in a single volume under the title, “Wyrds of Power: New Language for A New Reality.” (20170

That’s a bit of a footnote …

Anyway, in “Between Shadow & Night: The Singularity In Search of Itself,” I wrote –

What I suggest to you is that the human race, in its journey of self-discovery, has created a singularity; the life we have made for ourselves is unsustainable, our genius for developing has eclipsed our capacity to reduce the mass of our ignorance, our population is growing beyond all nature’s built-in checks and balances, our demand for fresh water and our exploitation of soil have outstripped the capacity of these vital resources to renew themselves, our climate is deteriorating, our oceans are dying, our collective footprint has begun to crush the world on which we depend, we are no longer walking in this world, we are walking over this world, and crushing it beneath us. The political, economic and religious structures with which we frame our shared reality have caved in on themselves. With our genius and our ignorance, we have created an impossibility, and we are fueling it every moment of every day. There is no way out of this impossibility, because what could lead us out is leading deeper into it at every twist and turn. We cannot turn away, we cannot change course. We cannot stop sliding backward, and yet we cannot stop hurtling forward. Our problems have become our solutions; our solutions have become our problems. This impossibility is our crisis. It has a created a singularity. What will come from this singularity? If anything other than extinction (or near extinction) comes from this crisis, it will be because something unforeseen, something unprecedented, something miraculous, something utterly new emerges from this singularity, i.e., from within us, in the midst of our meltdown, after everything has gone on full-tilt. We are the singularity, and we are poised here in anticipation of what will emerge from the unthinkable, unimaginable collapse of our collective self. Therefore, we must learn to see in the dark.

And then in “Secret Engine of the World: Further Insights on Primal Reality, Gaian Politics, & the Arc of Human Evolution” (2021), I wrote –

Here and now, in 2017, 2018, 2019, the Singularity I spoke of in 2010 as “in an anticipation of itself,” that Singularity has arrived:

The Poles melting
The Alps crumbling
The city of Chennai has run out of water
The nation of Indonesia is moving its capital from Jakarta because of the rising seas
The first Climate Wars have been raging for years (e.g., Darfur and Syria).
Climate refugees are streaming across the southern border of the United States and rafting across the Mediterranean into southern Europe.
And what Naomi A. Klein aptly calls “Climate barbarism” is on the rise. Not in “third world countries” as you might imagine, but in some of the world’s oldest and most important democratic nations.

Well, I spoke of two prophecies, this other prophecy came decades earlier, from the legendary American sage Joe Miller.

But I kept it to myself until I understood it better, and then put it into “Secret Engine.”

Again, excerpting from ‘Secret Engine” -

Something terrible was going on in the world at that time, I can’t remember which terrible thing, it was before the Tiananmen Square Massacre, it was before the Rwandan Genocide, I can’t remember what it was, but it was something terrible, maybe it was a couple of horrific story lines developing simultaneously, anyway, I had been brooding over it all the way up from work. “Joe, evolution? Really, human evolution? There’s no evolution going on. What the fuck? How can this be? Nothing is happening here.”
Joe didn’t miss a beat. He just took a took a breath, and from a great depth, but very matter-of-factly he said, “We just have to make it through the next 100 years.”
Now, remember, this was in the 1980s. “We just have to make it through the next 100 years.”
I said, “What do you mean?”
He said, “A hundred years from now, more and more children are going to be coming into incarnation, and they’re just gonna know, they’re just gonna know.” They’re gonna know and feel. The kind of knowledge that is feeling. They’re just gonna know and feel what is. “And you’re going to be able to sit down and describe the practice of [Sri Ramana Maharshi to them and tell them to ask themselves who they are and they’re just going to know ...” Really know. Not intellectually. Not psychologically. Not emotionally. Deeper. “They’re just gonna know.”
The answer to “Who am I?” is not an intellectual answer, it is a mystical answer that cannot be put into words. There is no answer.
Now that was 40 years or so ago, so we are well into that 100 years, we’re almost to the halfway point, we have maybe 60 more to go.
But it’s all incremental. It is not going to happen all at once, it is already underway. You can already see it happening. In the children. You can already see it happening. In the youth. A kind of knowing. A knowing that is feeling. But not emotion. Deeper. Deeper. Knowingness. Emotional intelligence yes, but even beyond, into the Intuitive Knowing of What Is ...
This is incremental.
We are holding space. Our job is to survive and hold space. For the great transformation. For the arc of evolution. The arc of herstory. We are holding space. For something that is going on in human evolution. And it is already quickening.

Definition: Vector

American Heritage Definition:
1. Mathematics
a. A quantity, such as velocity, completely specified by a magnitude & a direction
4. A force or influence
5. A course or direction, as of an airplane
tr.v. vec·tored, vec·tor·ing, vec·torso
To guide (e.g., a pilot or aircraft) by means of radio communication according to vectors
Plural: Vectors

Verities & Vectors

This series of four talks, Vectors of Reality, is the sequel to last year’s Verities of Being.

Verities of Being explored the question, “What are we?”

Vectors of Reality addresses the question, “What is this?”

It is important, in this time of trial and tribulation, to have confidence in who and what we are, as human beings, and what this is, our shared reality, this life?

What is this?

AI has been unleashed, with little or no regulation.

Social media has proven itself to be addictive, cognitively damaging & downright dangerous as a delivery system for DISinformation.

Inhumanity is being glorified in high places. Collapse and chaos are being willfully cultivated. Climate meltdown is accelerating.

So it’s important not only to reaffirm what it means to be human, BUT also to reaffirm the baseline reality within which we live and move and have our being.

There are even some among us who suggest that this world, our life, is all just a simulation. If you keep scrolling, you’ll run across them. “It’s all a simulation.” Well, how convenient.

You don’t have to choose sides. You don’t have to ever really care or act.

These four talks will explore the nature of reality and will articulate a few of its most powerful and defining aspects. Hopefully, in the process, they will offer you some effective, efficient ways to stay grounded in both lower case “r” and upper case “R” REALITY.

For the sake of sanity, clarity, resilience in the midst of the madness swirling around us.

Definition: Spacetime
Oxford Languages Definition:
space-time
/ˌspāsˈtīm/
noun: spacetime
the concepts of time and three-dimensional space regarded as fused in a four-dimensional continuum.
“the curvature of space-time”

Spacetime

In our universe as known through the lens of General Theory of Relativity, wormholes, like black holes, are part of the structure of Spacetime.

Although, unlike, black holes, which have been discovered and are being studied (indeed there is a huge one at the center of our galaxy), wormholes (or to be exact Einstein-Rosen bridges) remain theoretical.

We need wormholes. For both space travel AND time travel.

Our creative imagination is certainly crying out for them.

In the TV series “Deep Space Nine” (1993-1999), Star Fleet’s Benjamin Sisko and Jadzia Dax discover a stable wormhole that cuts travel between the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants down from 70 years to mere a few minutes, and that’s just the beginning …

In the film “Contact” (1997), Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), a radio astronomer/astrophysicist, travels through a wormhole to visit the star Vega 25 light years away, using instructions sent by an alien civilization. These aliens wanted to a) show us that we were not alone in the universe, and b) urge us to overcome our conflicts so that we could be welcomed into the galactic community of peacefully evolving planets.

In the TV series, “Farscape” (1999-2003), U.S. astronaut John Crichton is swallowed up by a wormhole and finds himself at the far end of the Milky Way. He joins a band of escaped convicts (comprised of several alien species) on the lam, on a living spaceship, a “Leviathan.” Crichton, it is discovered, has the coveted secrets of making (and weaponizing) wormholes locked in his sub-conscious mind.

In the film “Interstellar” (2014), which is set in a dystopian future not too far on from where we currently are in our real-world ecological crisis, five-dimensional beings from alien civilization open-up a wormhole near Saturn so that humanity can travel to a solar system in another galaxy and re-boot our civilization on a habitable planet.

Yes, humanity’s mystical heritage offers a Rainbow Bridge, a Golden Gate Bridge and an Einstein-Rosen Bridge …

We need these bridges to remain open, and to be traveled upon …

After all, the Doomsday Clock is ticking.

Founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock … The Doomsday Clock is set every year by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists … The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to global catastrophe caused by man-made technologies.
A year ago, we warned that the world was perilously close to global disaster and that any delay in reversing course increased the probability of catastrophe. Rather than heed this warning, Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic. Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse of biotechnology, the potential threat of artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers. Far too many leaders have grown complacent and indifferent, in many cases adopting rhetoric and policies that accelerate rather than mitigate these existential risks. Because of this failure of leadership, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board today sets the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe. - “It is now 85 seconds to midnight, 2026 Doomsday Clock Statement,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1/27/26)

“The Great Silent Spaces Between Worlds”

We tend to romanticize space. It is understandable.

So something else that belongs here is this text of an “undated, handwritten” note from the great Carl Sagan who was, at the time, an undergraduate at the University of Chicago -

There is a wide yawning black infinity. In every direction the extension is endless, the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce. But most of all, there is very nearly nothing in the dark; except for little bits here and there, often associated with the light, this infinite receptacle is empty. This picture is strangely frightening. It should be familiar. It is our universe. Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are, as sand, as dust, or less than dust, in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing. Nothing! We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s Pensées and read, ‘I am the great silent spaces between worlds.‘ – Carl Sagan (circa early 1950s)

Space is Consciousness and Consciousness is Space. This is not poetry. This is not metaphorical. This is a mystical truth, an occult truth, but nonetheless a literal truth.

However, it is also true, plainly true, brutally true, scientifically true, as the young Sagan wrote, that “these stars, which seem so numerous, are, as sand, as dust, or less than dust, in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing.” The mystical realization that Consciousness is Space AND the “empathic terror” of the “great silent spaces between worlds” that Sagan evokes are BOTH REAL, BOTH are DIMENSIONS of Darkness.

Currently, humanity has only Gaia, this planet, with her five sheaths of atmosphere.

All that we know, all that we love, all that we create, all of it, everything that constitutes our existence, all of it, is wrapped in just the innermost of five sheaths, the Troposphere, and it stretches a mere 5-7 miles into the sky. Beyond that, exposed without a spacesuit, a human being would lose consciousness within 5 seconds and die within 90 seconds.

That’s how wondrous, how fragile, how dangerous all of this is ….

Spacetime (Carrington’s Magical World of the Mayas)

This painting by Leonora Carrington.

These 20^th Century women surrealists, better known as the muses, models, lovers, wives of the famous male surrealists, when in all instances their work was at least as compelling as that of those men. I have made it a priority to reference and highlight their lives and work in the course of these two and a half decades of talks and writings

This painting, “The Magical World of the Mayans” (1963-1964), is epic, a panorama, the medicine of an extinct civilization brought to life on canvass.

For me, it captures the vulnerability of all human civilization.

The Gaza Strip is 25 miles long, the island of Crete is 161 miles long east to west, the island nation of Madagascar is 1,000 long north to south, and yet all of us, everywhere, are existing within those 7 miles of atmosphere, really within half that, only 3.4 miles.

The rest of that 391,000 miles of atmosphere is just to establish, sustain and protect that 3 to 7 miles, that is how exquisitely vulnerable and dependent we are, beyond that is that “yawning black infinity” the young Carl Sagan wrote about

Within this bubble we explore inner space, multi-dimensional mystical space, terrain space, personal physical space, three-dimensional space and of course psychological space, which is sort of at the intersection of personal physical space w/ inner space.

We will delve into that narrow band of 3-7 miles of atmosphere in “Part II: Gaian Mysteries”

For this moment, I just want to emphasize that from inside a human civilization, all its rights and wrongs seem huge and heavy, its progress unstoppable when its rolling, and conversely, its decline inexorable once it gains momentum. And yet, from the depths of that “yawning black infinity” a civilization is less than a speck, less than infinitesimal.

Both perspectives are accurate.

Time (Joyce Carol Oates)

The strangeness of Time … in the sudden realization that something finite has passed and is irretrievable - Joyce Carol Oates, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang (1993)

Time (The Three Times In At-One-Ment)

The essence of the doctrine concerning the Three Times in at-one-ment will now be expounded. The yoga concerning past and future not being practiced, memory of the past remains latent. The future, not being welcomed, is completely severed by the mind from the present. The present, not being fixable, remains in the state of the Voidness. – Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, Oxford Press (1954) (Written down and “hidden away in a cache of precious things” by the Vajra Yogini, Yeshe Tsogyal)

Time (Linear Time & The Three Times)

Can you hold and be held by these two contradictory truths at once?

Can you live at that apex?

Fleeting linear time is a human experience to cherish. Don’t rob yourself of its poignancy.

But what about “Three Times” as a Oneness that Yeshe Tsogyal (Vajra Yogini) and Padma Sambhava (Vajra Guru) offers us?

“the yoga of past and future not being practiced, memory of the past remains latent, and the future not being recognized is completely severed by the mind from the present.”

It’s Dzogchen – “SEVERED”! Hear it? Feel it? Dzogchen. CUTTING THROUGH!

Can you hold and be held by these two contradictory truths at once?

Time is fleeting. Every moment brings us farther away from the beginning of a life and closer to the mystery of death. That is a fact. That is reality.

The human mind presents all three on a single straight line – the past moving into the present, the present moving into the future – that’s how we experience time in our natural state, our lower case “n” natural state, it’s how we experience time in our lower case “r” reality, but then the capital “R” Reality is that the Three Times all “exist” simultaneously in our capital “N” Natural State, Being-Consciousness-Bliss

Lower case “r” reality and upper case “R” Reality are to be held simultaneously.

They are distinct and separate and yet they are both integral.

Now we will drop down from the macrocosmic, i.e., spacetime itself, and the fragility of civilization, into the microcosmic, the personal, the individual,

Akasha

This is the Akasha Mudra.

Using both hands, hold the tips of the middle fingers to the tips of the thumbs.

I encourage you to indulge in this practice while I pay homage.

Akasha is a Sanskrit word that can be translated as “ether” and with the root word, kas, meaning “to be visible,” “sky,“ “atmosphere” or “open space” … the essence of everything that exists in the material world. It is one of the five elements … Akasha is still used in the literal sense of “sky,” but the more exact philosophical meaning is “ethereal fluid imagined as pervading the cosmos.” It is also sometimes referred to as the imperceptible force that the rest of the world is derived from. – Yogapedia Dictionary

Akasha. Yes, as in “the Akashic Records.”

“The ancients had a term in the mystical tradition called the Akashic Records, which was suggestive that nature didn’t lose its experience, that the information accumulated was available forever.” – Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14 astronaut 6th man to walk on the Moon experienced a samadhi on that journey, founder of Institute of Noetic Sciences)
The records can be visualized as a giant database containing the history of every soul. The records are a cosmic library; each soul has its own book, containing every lifetime they have ever lived. Our record evolves with us, recording our learning and shifts in our consciousness - Jocelyn Joy Thomas, 10 Truths Edgar Cayce Shared About the Akashic Records, 9/23/25

The Akashic Record?

Well, imagine the Library of Alexandria, the Vatican Library, the Kamar-Taj library (ala Doctor Strange), the Hogwarts Library, the Sakya Library founded in 1073, containing 84,000 manuscripts, hidden behind 60-meter-long, 10-meter-high wall, and only discovered in 2003, imagine them all together, yet still they would be like a single book stall at a flea market in Sonoma, because not only all knowledge all experience of all races and in all languages, on all continents, … and not just libraries, it also contains all the Louvres throughout the multiverse … and no, not just the humans … the knowledge and experience of the whales, the ravens, the snow leopards, the Komodo dragons … the wisdom of the trees … all of it, all of this … yes, it is accessible … to some by good fortune … and in theory, accessible to anyone … BUT it doesn’t have an address, you can look up the address and hours of the Louvre in Paris, on this plane, in this physical world … but the Akashic Records are open only when, where and to whom they are opened … you can’t just go in there and look something up … if someone tells you they can, well … it doesn’t work that way, in my experience … and your reading glasses won’t help you, it is much more like reading braille … more accessible to your fingertips than your eyes, inner or outer … it’s not cerebral, it has more to do with intuition and touch and breath …

Yes, yes, the Akashic Record, BUT that is only the sub-plot.

That Yogapedia Dictionary definition goes on to say – “The main characteristic that is attributed to akasha is shabda (sound)”

Yes. Sound. Unstruck Sound. Nada Brahma in India. Saut-e-Sarmad among the Sufis. The Divine Vibration itself. A-U-M. A-H. U-U. MMM. R-A-A. M-A-A.

And yes, Vishudda Chakra.

Ahhhhhhhh … Huuuuuuuu …

You can hear it in the dark of night. It is the Song of Silence. It is Grace itself.

Yes, you can hear it, and hearing it you bathe in it, AND you can bring it forth from your throat, from your heart, from your crown, and bringing it forth from you, you can heal and exalt yourself and others whether they are near or far.

The Coming and Going of Universes in the Space Between Two Thoughts
(Udyamo Bhairava)
The legendary American sage Joe Miller and I shared an in-depth study of the Siva Sutras over the years, both philosophically and experientially. It became his way of discussing certain technical information with me. In our exploration of the text, he emphasized three sutras in particular, the fifth, fifteenth and eighteenth from “Sambhava Upaya,” the first section of the Siva Sutras (Jaideva Singh’s version) … The fifth of the Siva Sutras says, “Udyamo Bhairava.” This formulation is the ultimate expression of Sambhava Yoga. “Udyamo” means “uprising,” and “Bhairava” stands for the sustaining (”Bha”) and withdrawing (”ravana”) of the universe. This experience is open to us anywhere at any time under any circumstances. But there is no effort involved, no exertion of any kind. Can you just find the space between two thoughts? Feel for it. Thoughts are always coming, and between each thought and the next, there is, for an instant, a gaping chasm. Wait for it, feel for it, and then simply dive into that that space. What happens? There is a flash, sudden and SAKTIFYING, and that flash is the uprising of divine creative consciousness. For that moment, you are experiencing the great field of YOU beyond the you of waking (Jagrat), dreaming (Svapna) and deep sleep (Sushupti): Sat (Being) Chit (Consciousness) Ananda (Bliss). After a few seconds, you will return from your dive into that chasm, but you will never be the same again. And the opportunity offers itself again and again with every new thought that crests like a wave in your mind. Can you dive into the space between two thoughts? It is free, and it is an open invitation. And each time, you will be closer to the truth of who and what you really are. [Excerpt from my “Wyrds of Power: New Language for A New Reality]

Emptiness

Consider the Prajna Paramita Sutra -

AVALOKITESHVARA HOLY BODHISATTVA MOVING IN DEEP PERFECT WISDOM SAW BELOW THE FIVE HEAPS, THESE HE SAW IN ESSENCE EMPTY. O SHARIPUTRA, FORM IS EMPTINESS AND EMPTINESS IS FORM, NOT SEPARATE FROM FORM IS EMPTINESS, NOT SEPARATE FROM EMPTINESS IS FORM. WHAT IS FORM THAT IS EMPTINESS, WHAT IS EMPTINESS THAT IS FORM. LIKE THIS ARE FEELINGS, THOUGHTS, IMPRESSIONS, CONSCIOUSNESSES. HEAR O SHARIPUTRA, ALL PHENOMENA ARE MARKED WITH EMPTINESS AND NOT CREATED , NOT DESTROYED, NOT IMPURE, NOT PURE, NOT DEFICIENT, NOT COMPLETE. O SHARIPUTRA THEREFORE IN THE EMPTINESS IS NO FORM AND NO FEELING, THOUGHT, IMPRESSION, CONSCIOUSNESS. NO EYE, EAR, NOSE, TONGUE, BODY, MIND. NO FORM, SOUND, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, OR THOUGHT. NO ELEMENT OF EYES AND SO FORTH TO NO MIND CONSCIOUSNESS ELEMENT. NO IGNORANCE, NO END OF IGNORANCE, AND SO FORTH TO NO OLD AGE AND NO DEATH. NO END OF OLD AGE OR OF DEATH, NO SORROW CAUSE OR END. NO PATH, NO KNOWING, NO ATTAINMENT, AND NO NON ATTAINMENT. (This translation was offered by Daniel Lomax, a disciple of the American Sufi Murshid Samuel Lewis)

Void is Plenum, Plenum is Void.

No Word to Describe the True Nature of This Space
There is an emptiness that is full; and a fullness that is empty. They occupy the same space. All feeling ripples thru that space; all thought glistens within it. You and I are gossamer strands of naming that coalesce, intertwine, and then disintegrate. History is a music that emerges from the silence, & then is reabsorbed. There is no word to describe the true nature of this space, but the closest to it would be “love.” [Excerpt from my “Wyrds of Power: New Language for A New Reality]

Boundaries

Space and boundaries are interwoven, inseparable … in both physical space and inner space … You cannot establish boundaries without space, and boundaries define space, this is true for physical space, psychological space, inner space - in human interaction, it is vital to have boundaries, healthy individuals sense and respect each other’s boundaries, when dealing with unhealthy people one has to establish boundaries, and reinforce boundaries, this is true in socializing and in family life, it is also true in the collective, for example, the sovereign nation of Ukraine has internationally recognized borders, its superpower neighbor has boundary issues … space and boundaries come into play in the exploration of the mystical, the magical, the occult, the shamanic … magicians draw a magic circle around themselves for protection, magical circles and medicines wheels orientate us in space, define space, hallow space, yes, contain space, dedicate space, concentrate energy within space, magical circles and medicine wheels are ways in which space and boundaries are used to articulate meaning, to establish order, to remember truth, to invite powerful energies into agency

The Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming is 1,000-1,500 years old. One of at least 150 medicine wheels found in Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming and the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. There’s a 5,500-year-old medicine wheel, the Majorville Cairn, in Alberta, the making of the medicine wheels stretches back into prehistory. (Source: wyohistory.com)

https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/medicine-wheel

Consider the words of Black Elk, Holy Man of the Oglala Lakota (1863-1950):

You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything and everything tries to be round. In the old days all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished. The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it. The east gave peace and light, the south gave warmth, the west gave rain and the north with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance. Everything the power of the world does is done in a circle. The sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing and always come back again to where they were. - Black Elk Speaks (1932)

Concerning magic circles –

In “History of Magic” (1860), French esotericist Eliphas Levi wrote

“The magic circle is the absolute circle of the magician’s will, which can be defined as the sphere of action and protection.”

In “Witchcraft for Tomorrow” (1978), English wiccan Doreen Valiente, wrote:

“The circle of the coven is between the worlds; and what takes place between the worlds is no concern of either world.”

In “The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess” (1979), the great Starhawk wrote:

“When we cast a circle, we create an energy form, a boundary that limits and contains the movements of subtle forces.”

Individuation is a vital, life-long process. A ceaseless triangulation.

The process of individuation can/will/does get painful and messy.

In analytical psychology, individuation is the process by which the individual self develops out of an undifferentiated unconscious – seen as a developmental psychic process during which innate elements of personality, the components of the immature psyche, and the experiences of the person’s life become, if the process is more or less successful, integrated over time into a well-functioning whole. Other psychoanalytic theorists describe it as the stage where an individual transcends group attachment and narcissistic self-absorption. – Wikipedia

Here are five insights I’ve mined for you from Jung’s Collected Works -

The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings … - Dr. Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 269
To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality in fact is. - Dr. Carl Jung, CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, p. 242
Our personality develops in the course of our life from germs that are hard or impossible to discern, and it is only our deeds that reveal who we are … - Dr. Carl Jung, CW 17: The Development of the Personality, p. 290
… individuation is an ineluctable psychological necessity; we can see from the ascendancy of the collective what very special attention must be paid to this delicate plant “individuality” if it is not to be completely smothered. - Dr. Carl Jung, CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, p. 241
Individuation is a heroic and often tragic task, the most difficult of all, it involves suffering, a passion of the ego: the ordinary empirical man we once were burdened with the fate of losing himself in a greater dimension and being robbed of his fancied freedom of will …- Dr. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 233

Meditation & Movement

I know it’s almost automatic at this point for yoga teacher training manuals to cite Patanjali as saying that the moving asanas are simply preparation for seated meditation.

But I say either he was wrong (oh such blasphemy) or his meaning has been misconstrued.

The asanas themselves are mediation. In depth. For real.

Asana, like Geometry, requires space.

And, if you enter into the asanas in the blessedness of space, the flow of asanas and each individual asana itself will offer you somatic insight, healing and revelation.

I can’t, I won’t discuss Meditation without discussing Movement.

There is no stillness in reality/Reality.

Butoh, Martial Arts, Yoga, Pilates, Ballet, Gurdjieff’s Sacred Dances, Tango, Steiner’s Eurythmy, ecstatic dance, or just walking left foot right brain right foot left brain left foot right brain right foot left brain … Movement is experienced in Physical Space.

And formal seated Meditation?

Well, it’s an opening up into an experience of Inner Space

You need space to move in any direction, to expand, you need space to unfold, just as every wildflower in every meadow in all the world blossoms into space, every eagle’s nest, every beehive, you need space to whirl, to leap, to run, space, space, space

What Devi Taught

At the end of each of these four talks, I will share two or three of the 112 techniques that Devi wrote down in the Vijnana Bhairava. It’s one of the great texts that stand along side the Siva Sutras as companion volumes. There are now numerous translations of the Vijnana Bhairava. I personally stick with the Jaideva Singh, technical and impeccable. This version that I am excerpted here is from Paul Reps, who included his very accessible rendering, under the title “Centering,” at the end of “Zen Flesh / Zen Bones,” which he co-authored with the great Nyogen Senzaki.

The 38^th Technique

38. Feel cosmos as translucent ever-living presence

The 23^rd Technique

23. Feel your substance, bones, flesh, blood, saturated with cosmic essence.

The 13^th Technique

13. Touching eyeballs as a feather, lightness between them opens into heart & there permeates the cosmos

In May, we will immerse in Gaia and Her Mysteries.

In June, we will celebrate the True, the Good and the Beautiful.

And in July, we will integrate all of this and discuss what I call the Three Realms of Real, invoking Myth, how to distinguish a healthy myth from an unhealthy myth, and the ways in which healthy Myth helps nourish and sustain reality/Reality.

FULL VIDEO: Richard Power - Vectors of Reality, Part 1: Spacetime (4/19/26)

[NOTE: I am offering all of this for free. If you want to support my work, you can subscribe to this Substack. It really helps. AND/OR buy my books on Amazon or wherever. It really helps. If you already have them, you could always buy them for some friend you feel who might resonate with my work. If you’re thinking they are expensive, well - they’re voluminous, IN FULL-COLOR and self-published. So …]

The Great Wheel Turns: No Kings 3/28/26 - America, The Beautiful

Richard Power - Words of Power — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 10:50:39 GMT

“If you hear the dogs, keep going, if you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there’s shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.” - Harriet Tubman

Twenty-nine images from San Francisco No Kings action, supplemented with nineteen screenshots & fifteen video clips from social media, highlighting actions across the country along with analysis of media coverage & political implications

WE, THE PEOPLE are alive and pushing back hard on Putin’s Puppet POTUS & the Authoritarian Cult that enables him. They are engaged in the destruction of America, WE, THE PEOPLE are engaged in its rescue & redemption.

Delivering them a crushing defeat at the polls in November is the challenge before us. They will try to disrupt the vote before & during the elections. They will deny & discredit the vote after the election. They will try not to swear-in a new Congress.

“In America, we don’t have kings. We are a nation built on the rule of law, on checks and balances, and on the fundamental principle that power belongs to the people.” - Leticia James, Attorney General, State of New York, 3/28/26

Verities of Being, Vectors of Reality

Richard Power - Words of Power — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 21:59:28 GMT

In 2025, I gave a series of four talks, “Verities of Being.”

One talk a month from June to September. Via the Theosophical Society of San Francisco.

The first three were on Zoom. The third was in-person.

In 2026, I will give a sequel series of four talks, “Vectors of Reality.”

One talk a month from April to July. Same venue.

And again, first three will be on Zoom, & the third in-person.

4/19/26 - Part 1: Spacetime
5/17/26 - Part 2: Gaian Mysteries
6/21/26 - Part 3: The True, The Good, The Beautiful
7/19/26 - Part 4: The Nature of Reality

Here is the Zoom registration link for this series of talks (it’s all free):

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/SAZz3cA-TpeYdUTvidColg

You will receive confirmation email, with further information.

After each talk concludes, it will be made available via YouTube and Substack.

Meanwhile …

Here are links to digital artifacts for the “Verities of Being” series, including full videos on YouTube & full text, slides & embedded video on Substack:

Shadow (6/15/25)

Siddha (7/20/25)

Shakta (8/17/25)

Spanda (9/21/25)

The Great Wheel Turns: No Kings 10/18/25 - San Francisco & From Sea to Shining Sea

Richard Power - Words of Power — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 10:14:06 GMT

I’ve been reposting all of the crowd videos of today’s NO KINGS rallies because at some point they’ll try to say it didn’t happen. -
Republicans are so fucking DESPERATE to change the subject right now because they know the #NoKings rallies today were historic and they really, really don’t want us talking about it. So tell, me — where did you march against the Trump regime and what was on your sign? -
The American people have made their voices heard today. Trump and the Republicans have never looked smaller. Their lies about these protests have completely discredited them and backfired. They miscalculated. Badly. -

Here is a collection of 45 artifacts, including photos and short videos from No Kings 10/18/25 in San Francisco, along with social media posts on No Kings 10/18/25 events “from sea to shining sea.” Lean in. Stand. Fear no evil. The tide is turning. - Richard Power

Verities of Being, Part IV: Spanda

Richard Power - Words of Power — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 06:14:52 GMT

“Spanda” is Part IV of a series of talks for the Theosophical Society of San Francisco, and the final in the series.

In this Substack post, I have included the full text and accompanying slides for Part IV. You will also find YouTube video of the talk itself at the end of this post.

As part of my plan for 2025, I just knew I had to do a series of four talks.

Sometime later, many weeks, the titles of the talks came to me all together.

Sometime later, many weeks, the title of the series arose.

I didn’t know much more than that. Of course, I knew the individual elements, and I knew how they could fit together thematically, but I didn’t have any feeling for the organic structure of this series of talks, although I knew with certainty there was an organic structure, it just hadn’t revealed itself to me yet.

Preparing the third talk, I could finally see the grand architecture of it, how it all flowed

This process involved in this series of talks was different and challenging.

Previously my books had evolved out of my talks, I would design a talk and then the finished product would flow into the structure of a book, but in this instance, I realize now, I have been pulling pieces out of some fully built edifice that was slowly emerging from the dark of psyche, and then organizing these pulled parts into talks.

Hard to explain, but very different.

And now, here we are. The fourth and final talk in the series.

When I choose the date for the fourth and final talk in this series, I choose it because it’s the day after my birthday and a powerful time, I wasn’t thinking about anything, I just felt that was the date. I chose it because it was the day after my birthday, selfishly, and that is a time that is very powerful for me personally.

I didn’t realize that this was the day of the September New Moon (along with a partial solar eclipse in Virgo), literally in these last couple of hours. I didn’t realize that the Autumnal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere would occur tomorrow. I didn’t realize that the Navratri would start tomorrow. Nine nights of Durga. That’s something very important to me. I just wasn’t thinking that way when I chose the date. I didn’t realize that the Rosh Hashanah would start tomorrow.

Yes indeed, the Great Wheel turns, and we turn with it

It is meaningful that we are all here together tonight.

This is a statue of the Goddess Sophia. I have returned to this image again and again throughout these four talks. Sophia, as in Theosophia, the Divine Wisdom. This statue towers over a main thoroughfare in Sofia, Bulgaria. I stood before it. It was a very powerful experience. I was in Sofia, at that time, to deliver a briefing on cyber war and cyber terror at a NATO Conference being held there.

Merriam-Webster Definition:

the quality or state of being true or real
something (such as a statement) that is true especially: a fundamental and inevitably true value
the quality or state of being truthful or honest

Plural: Verities

20,000 + words

21, 27, 20, 17 – 85 PowerPoint slides

10 Goddesses - Shakti, Nyx, Gaia, Pachamama, Sophia, Kali, Hecate, Yemoja, Isis, Astarte, plus Ardhanari

6 women mystics, occultists, saints - Lakshmincara, Mother Krishnabai, Mirabai, Lalla Devi, Vak Ambhrini, HP Blavatsky

14 writers, philosophers, performers - Lana Del Ray, Walt Whitman, Alice Coltrane, Toni Morrison, Audrey Lorde, Joan Didion, Clarissa Pinkole Estes, Anne Lamont, Sally Kempton, Margaret Atwood, Phillip Pullman, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Søren Kierkegaard

The work of 6 artists (5 of them women) - Hilma af Klint, Tamara de Lempicka, Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tanning, Frida Kahlo, and Anish Kapoor

20+ cultural artifacts - books, movies, TV series, Touching, Between Heaven & Earth, Red Book, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Siva Sutras, Vijnanabhairava, Spandakarika, Legends of the Mahasiddhas, Guru’s Grace, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power, His Dark Materials, Secret Doctrine, Handmaid’s Tale, Man in the High Castle, Wheel of Time, Baraka, Golden Compass, Andor, Rogue One, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Marvel Multiverse, Maleficent, a radio show, The Shadow, and a Tarot Card, #8 “Strength”

Meanings – Shadow

“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole.” - C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Meanings – Siddha

Siddhis = Powers
Siddha = A Powerful Being, A Being w/ Power

Siddha, not Siddhi, to emphasize you, us, this, incarnate being as a conduit, an embodiment.

Meanings – Shakta

Shakti = Divine Power, Cosmic Energy,
THE Goddess
Shakta = A Being Whose Practice Centers on the Divine Power

Again, Shakta, not Shakti, to emphasize you, us, this, incarnate being as a conduit, an embodiment.

Meanings – Spanda

Spanda = The Divine Pulsation

Lol quoting the King James again, “be still and know” but turning it upside and inside out, it’s not stillness, really, it’s more like a hummingbird wings

Jaideva Singh on What is Spanda? The Supreme transcends all notions of space and time. Spanda, therefore, in the case of the Supreme is neither physical motion, nor psychological activity like pain and pleasure, nor pranic activity like hunger or thirst. It is the throb of the ecstasy of the Divine I-consciousness (vimarsa). The Divine I-consciousness is spiritual dynamism. It is the Divine creative pulsation.

But there’s more, another dimension, or another angle on this …

‘Sound’ (nāda) is the name given to the pulse (spanda) of the supreme level of Speech (parā vāc), which animates the highest reality. The Netratantra refers to it as a form of sound that pervades the universe. - Wisdom Library

Siddha

Laughter
Sleep
Touch
Conscience
Voice
Creativity
Sexuality
Free Will

That’s my list of eight inborn, plug and play, hard-wired siddhis that we celebrated in Part 2; all eight are integral aspects of our primal reality. This was the focus of “Part 2: Siddha.”

Here, I will just briefly touch on three of the eight.

“Laughter is carbonated holiness.” - Anne Lamont
“The relationship between the individual and God, the God-relationship, is the conscience." - Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847)

Of course, we draw a distinction between two kinds of humor in our exploration of the Laughter siddhi, the Belly Laugh or the Full-Body Verge of Tears Laugh is what we’re naming as a siddhi here, not the mean-spirited laugh, and you can feel how different that laugh inside your own body, how small the mean-spirit laugh is, how twisted and unnatural. Likewise, we also draw a distinction between two kinds of conscience, Conscience with a capital “C” versus lower-case c conscience. But of course, for millennia, a lower-case “c” model of conscience predicated on patriarchal values has been superimposed over of this portal into our primal reality. In this era of the Great Shift, we are breaking through that rigid, skewed frame, to re-establish a mainline to the “celestial fire” of the Capital “C” Conscience.

The third of these unrecognized, taken for granted siddhis I touch on tonight is Sleep

Consider this provocative insight from Ramana -

Sleep is not ignorance, it is one’s pure state; wakefulness is not knowledge, it is ignorance. There is full awareness in sleep and total ignorance in waking. - Ramana Maharshi, Ramana’s Gospel]

From “Wyrds of Power” -

So, I want to leave you with that idea of what sleep is, of its multidimensional nature, and of its mystical nature, and the fact that no one taught you to do this ... This is something that's natural to you. It is something that puts you directly in touch with the divine reality. The human reality and the divine reality meet [merge really, are absorbed into each other] within the cycle of every 24 hours. They meet in deep sleep. On your way to deep sleep, you're going to get information from various sources … various virtual computers that have been working on various problems and various agendas some of which you haven't even seen with your conscious mind … This is direct. This is immediate. This is our life. This is not somebody else's. And don't ever let anybody tell “you can't meditate,” or “that's not the right way to mediate.” Don’t ever tell yourself … “I can't meditate” …

Shakta

In “Shakta,” the third talk in this series, I touched on a range of subjects:

Prana
Chi
Fohat
The Force
Tantra
Bhakti
Baraka

Consider this –

· I am the Queen, the gatherer-up of treasures … They know it not, yet I reside in the essence of the Universe … I rouse and order battle for the people, I created Earth and Heaven and reside as their Inner Controller. On the world's summit I bring forth sky the Father: my home is in the waters, in the ocean as Mother. Thence I pervade all existing creatures, as their Inner Supreme Self, and manifest them with my body. I created all worlds at my will, without any higher being, and permeate and dwell within them. The eternal and infinite consciousness is I, it is my greatness dwelling in everything.
- Devi Sukta, Rigveda 10.125.3 – 10.125.8

And the author of this particular Vedic text?

Vak Ambhrini, a woman sage, a Rishika.

And why have I included this image of the Aurora Borealis alongside HP.B.?

· “The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer.” – Phillip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

Well, I say, although seen and articulated from different vantage points, and different levels of consciousness, Blavatsky’s Fohat and Pullman’s Dust are one.

And both H.P.B. and Pullman end up invoking the Aurora Borealis.

In S.D., Vol. I, H.P.B. calls the North and South Poles, “the two ends of the Egg of Matter.” And she goes on to say –

· “The agitation of the Fohatic Forces at the two cold ends (North and South Poles) of the Earth which resulted in a multicoloured radiance at night, have in them several of the properties of Akâsa (Ether) colour and sound as well.” . . . . . . “Sound is the characteristic of Akâsa (Ether) : it generates air, the property of which is Touch; which (by friction) becomes productive of Colour and Light.”
– H.P.B., S.D. Vol. I

So, to be cryptic, poetical, and literal, all at once – at the Poles, above the Earth, but within our atmosphere, the veils slip, and we glimpse the naked beauty of Shakti.

In Part 3, I also touched on Bhakti and Tantra, in my view, the two most direct paths to an embodied enlightenment, not one without the other, both essential, embodiment and enlightenment, now some people are more comfortable with “enlifenment,” that works, but you can’t blanketly dismiss whole bodies of teaching that are built are some version of “enlightenment” or one of its synonyms. I myself, now, prefer to simply say “Shaktahood.”

In Part 3, I also touched on Baraka, Divine Grace, Divine Blessing, as another medium through which we access Shakti and through which Shakti accesses us.

Baraka has many delivery systems - satsang (presence), shaktipat, darshan (even in photos, e.g., Ramana’s glance or Sivananda’s signature), Baraka-infused artifacts, Baraka-drench spaces, this room, for example, it has been a place of satsang and a portal, for DECADES now, and down the hill at the Native Sons Building for many decades before that, a container, still blessed, still blessing, the furniture, the books, the artifacts, the archives, steeped and seeping, it’s not dormant, it’s a SILENT, ABIDING POWER, it’s palpable.

Spanda

“The first verse of this section describes Spanda-sakti represented by the unmesa (emergence) and nimesa (submergence) of the Sakti (primal energy) of Siva … the essential nature of Siva and also that of the empirical individual (sphurattasara-spandasaktimaya-svasvabhava).”
“Unmesa and Nimesa are only figuratively spoken of as occurring one after another. As a matter of fact, that occur simultaneously.”
“In activity, there is no depletion of Spandasakti, as there is of physical energy.”
“Unmesa and Nimesa are only figuratively spoken of as occurring one after another. As a matter of fact, that occur simultaneously.”
“In activity, there is no depletion of Spandasakti, as there is of physical energy.”
- Jaideva Singh, Spadakarikas

The 3 Fundamental Propositions of the S.D. fall into an exquisite alignment -

An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable Principle on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought—in the words of Mandukya, “ unthinkable and unspeakable.” “The Supreme transcends all notions of space and time. Spanda, therefore, in the case of the Supreme is neither physical motion, nor psychological activity like pain and pleasure, nor pranic activity like hunger or thirst. It is the throb of the ecstasy of the Divine I-consciousness (vimarsa). The Divine I-consciousness is spiritual dynamism. It is the Divine creative pulsation. It is the throb of Siva's sätantrya or absolute Freedom.”

Spanda

”The second verse says that the world is contained in the spanda principle, and comes out of it. The world being contained in spanda and coming out of it does not mean that the world is anything different from Siva as a walnut si different from the bag in which it is contained. Being contained in and coming out of, are only limitations of the human language. The world is Siva as reflections in a mirror are the mirror itself. The world consisting of the subject, object and means of knowledge cannot really conceal Siva, because without the light of Siva, they themselves cannot appear.” - Jaideva Singh, Spadakarikas
(b.) The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically “ the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing,” called “ the manifesting stars,” and the “ sparks of Eternity.” “ The Eternity of the Pilgrim ”† is like a wink of the Eye of Self-Existence (Book of Dzyan.) “ The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux.” This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. – Theosophy World

Spanda

3. The third verse maintains that even in the differing states viz., waking, dream, and deep sleep, the spanda principle remains the same, viz., as the invariable of Experient of all the states.
4. While states of experience like pleasure, pain, etc. differ, the Experient cannot change; for it is the Experient that connects the differing states as the experience of the identical Experient.
5. Reality is neither psychological subject nor the psycho- physical experience, nor si it mere void. Reality or Spanda si the underlying basis of the psychological subject, ti is the eternal Experient that can never be reduced to an object.
6. & 7. It is from the Spanda principle that the group of senses acquires its power of going forth towards the objects, maintaining them ni perception for a while and then withdrawing them towards the centre.
8. It is not the wil or desire of the empirical individual that moves the senses towards their objects. He derives this power from the spanda principle-the dynamism of Siva.
9. It is on account of anava, mayiya and karma mala that the empirical individual is unable to realize the spanda principle. - Jaideva Singh, Spadakarikas

(c) The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over- Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul—a spark of the former—through the Cycle of Incarnation (or “ Necessity ”) in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term.

In other words, as Joe used to say, “You’ve got to do it for yourself, no one can do it for you.”

Every one of us has to walk the path for ourselves.

So this is Kahlo’s “Love Embrace of the Universe”

She is holding poor old Diego. I don’t know if that’s a bullet hole or a bindi or both on his forehead. She is holding him, and she is being held by the one I call the Dark Green Goddess, call her Gaia, call her Pachamama, and this Dark Green Goddess is being held by an even vaster, greater Goddess, who , in turn, is being held by … who, in turn, is being held by … who, in turn, is being held by …

Do you get it? Can you feel it?

Siva-Sakti Spanda is the Universe

Gaia is Life on Earth

Do you see how these three images taken together epitomize what is articulated in the first section of the Spandakarika and Three Fundamental Propositions of the Secret Doctrine?

Verities of Being

Primal Reality. The Pathless Path. The Lineage of No-Lineage.

The emerging Global Wisdom Tradition. Gaian Politics. Gaian Poetics.

The Ascendancy of the Feminine.

Altruism and Sustainability as Spiritual (& Existential) Imperatives.

These are the themes my work has focused for over the last thirty years, by one counting from 1992 on, from another counting from 2001 on …

This, right here, right now, this moment, this year, this decade, and the decade, is a time of great trial and tribulation for my country, our country, and for our world.

Life-affirming. Celebratory. Empowering.

I hope that’s the experience you take away from this current series of talks.

This series of 4 talks offer new perspective, new framing, new language, a new vision

I have tried to show you how you are right here right now a Siddha a powerful being

I have tried to show you how you are right here right now a Shakta a being whose life is brimming with Shakti, with the Cosmic Energy of the Universe Herself

My intention is that this series of talks endure as an artifact of the Ancient Future, highlighting what it means to be truly human in the 21^st Century

What you are
What you are part of
How you have been provisioned for this journey
What you are capable of

VIDEO: Richard Power - Verities of Being, Part IV: Spanda (9/21/25)

Verities of Being, Part III: Shakta (8/17/25)

Richard Power - Words of Power — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 19:11:18 GMT

“Shakta” is Part III of a series of talks for the Theosophical Society of San Francisco.

In this Substack post, I have included the full text and accompanying slides for Part III. You will also find YouTube video of the talk itself at the end of this post.

To register for Part IV (9/21/25), via Zoom, use this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/.../register/ygrx3Z1ESHCR9muMtKrwDw

Oxford Languages
Shakti
1.the female principle of divine energy, especially when personified as the supreme deity.

I would say “OK, BUT, drop “principle” LOL and instead I would just say “Shakti is the Divine Female Energy, or the Cosmic Energy” then I would drop the “especially” and the “deity” and just say THE Supreme Goddess, so …

Shakti
1. the divine female energy, the supreme goddess

Meanwhile, Merriam Webster fails badly -

: the dynamic energy of a Hindu god personified as his female consort
broadly: cosmic energy as conceived in Hindu thought

Not “consort” - if any consort is in this, it would be the other way around

The “broad” definition is acceptable.

Although “conceived in Hindu thought” should really be “conceived in Hindu thought as experienced in Yoga (Asana, Flow, Tantra, Bhakti, Mantra)” or just “as experienced in Yoga (Asana, Flow, Tantra, Bhakti, Mantra)”

Merriam’Webster’s primary definition is dull-witted AND insidious

But it gets worse -

Dictionary.com & Collins American definition of Shakta or Sakta –

“a person who worships Shakti as the wife of Shiva”

Merriam Webster in a weird, pedestrian way is closer to the mark on “shakta” –

an adherent of Shaktism

“adherent” and “ism” don’t work for us, but still its closer

Also, the term “worship” is pretty square and pretty dualisitic

Here is some clarity from Sally Kempton -

… the true power of the feminine is the power of the Shakti. As an interior face, she exists equally in both women and men. Yet most of us are unaware of her, and therefore unaware of the creative potential of our lives. We begin to touch into Shakti when we tune into the energy inside our body. We go even deeper as we set ourselves to experience deeper forms of inner inspiration, and when we begin to listen to the guidance that can flow from the deepest core of ourselves …
The yogic teachings on Shakti are particularly relevant to this contemporary moment in human history … The word shakti literally means power. Shakti the innate power in reality, has five faces. It manifests as the power to be conscious, the power to feel ecstasy, the power of will, or desire, the power to know, and the power to act. All these powers come into play in the act of cosmic creativity, when divine intelligence spins a universe out of itself, much the way a human mind creates a dream or a fantasy on its own screen. The cosmic creation explodes in a Big Bang, and then evolves over millions of years as suns, planets, increasingly sophisticated life forms, and, of course, as human beings. All of reality, this tradition says, is Shakti’s dance. Shakti takes form as the biological processes of our body. She acts through our thoughts and the play of our emotions. She becomes every atom and dustmote in the physical world. We are, in our essence, made of Shakti. Her powers of consciousness, ecstasy, will, knowing, and acting are constantly at play both in ourselves and the world.
- Sally Kempton, “Shakti: Awakening the Powers of the Inner Goddesses,”
CIIS, 1/18/14

In talks and writings over the years, I have suggested that three most important symbols for our emerging global wisdom traditions are the Yin/Yang, the Triple Spirals of the Triune Goddess & the Shakti Yantra, and so here it is.

Now I am laughing to myself because I am now going to quote the Vedas.

There is a perverse pleasure in it I confess, just as in the first two of these talks, I briefly quoted the King James maybe three or four times.

The Vedas, after all, stand right there at the imposition of a false patriarchal narrative over the naked truth of our primal reality, the beginning, and for millennia now, this superimposed façade has warped the entrance way to the portal of what we really, essentially, primordially ARE, limiting our comprehension, our access, and our experience.

Nevertheless, OF COURSE, there is profound wisdom in the Vedas.

Consider this –

I am the Queen, the gatherer-up of treasures … They know it not, yet I reside in the essence of the Universe … I rouse and order battle for the people, I created Earth and Heaven and reside as their Inner Controller. On the world's summit I bring forth sky the Father: my home is in the waters, in the ocean as Mother. Thence I pervade all existing creatures, as their Inner Supreme Self, and manifest them with my body. I created all worlds at my will, without any higher being, and permeate and dwell within them. The eternal and infinite consciousness is I, it is my greatness dwelling in everything.
- Devi Sukta, Rigveda 10.125.3 – 10.125.8

Now, I have extracted this passage, I’ve scraped away language from around it, language, framing that I do not feel belongs in the 21^st Century, in this time of the Great Shift, which is driven by, among a handful of other things, the Ascendancy of the Feminine.

But there it is, in the Vedas –

I pervade all existing creatures, as their Inner Supreme Self, and manifest them with my body. I created all worlds at my will, without any higher being, and permeate and dwell within them.

Oh, and the author of the Devi Suktam, this Rig-Veda text that speaks to me, a text foundational to both Shaktism and Advaita Vendanta?

Vak Ambhrini, a woman sage, a Rishika.

There are three different versions of how the Siva Sutras came to us

In late 8^th Century or early 9^th Century Kashmir

Some say Siva taught it to Vasugupta in a dream

Others say it was one of the Mahasiddhas that taught it to Vasugupta in a dream

The third version, the version I embrace, is that Siva told Vasugupta to go to the Mahadeva mountain, and that there he would find a rock with the Siva Sutras inscribed on it

That rock is still there. But there is no evidence of anything ever being written on it. Which makes perfect sense to me.

There are such stones throughout the world.

In “Wyrds of Power,” I wrote -

One happy memory I have is the few times I went to my grandmother’s house in the country. There was a big stone outside. It sat under a big tree, by the side of the road. While the muggles were inside doing whatever it is that muggles do, I would go out and sit on this stone, under this tree, out by the road. And they would come out, and ask, “What are you doing?” And I would answer, “I am meditating.” I have no idea how I even knew that word in that time, at the age. But I meant it. Sometimes they would come out there, and find me crouched against the big stone, with my ear to its surface. They would ask, “What are you doing now? And I would answer, “I am listening to the sound of stone.

Anyway, the Siva Sutras is THE Source, all of Kashimir Shaivism flows from it …

The legendary American sage Joe Miller and I studied the Siva Sutras and the three other vital texts that flowed from it, Pratyabhijnahridayam, Vijnanabhairava & Spandakarika, in the Millers’ living room, late at night, it was a language we used to communicate with each other, Joe would come across a particular stanza, or some bit of commentary on a particular stanza, and in the light of that particular sutra or commentary, we would discuss internal states one of us, or both of us had experienced, or were moving toward.

This was and is my anchor in this life.

Despite life’s many vicissitudes, despite all heartbreak & loss, through all life’s triumphs, & all of life’s failures, my understanding of it, and my respect for it, have only deepened over the decades since my Yoda’s passing.

I don’t recommend reading it, the best translations, Jaideva Singh for example, are very dry and technical. It is as if the text only opens, only reveals itself, if the internal state you are reading about or is imminent or has already arrived.

Anyway, looking at the title now, I tell you with absolute certainty that “Siva-Sakti Sutras” would be a more accurate title, and indeed, “Sakti Sutras” would be as apt as “Siva Sutras,” and indeed, & that’s how it presents itself in my psyche.

The Ultimate Reality is Prakasa and Vimarsa at the cosmic level, the planetary level, the species level, and yes, the level of the Primal Reality of what we each individually are.

Ultimate Reality = Prakasa and Vimarsa occupying the same space. Likewise, our Primal Reality Prakasa and Vimarsa occupying the same space.

And all that Tattvas and everything else flows from this …

In “Shadow,” the first of these four talks, I spoke of what I call the Table of Erroneous Correspondences, including the egregious “Yang / Sky / Male / Active” and “Yin / Earth / Female / Passive or Receptive.” LOL. That’s a table that needs to be fixed, LOL, it needs to be updated with new information.

These two images offer a striking contrast. Worthy of note. On the left, Kali striding over Shiva, dancing on Shiva, walking on Shiva. And this is not an uncommon image.

Shiva is prakasa, Shiva is consciousness, Kali is vimarsa, energy, shakti, movement, action, power, so awareness and energy, consciousness and power.

Kali is on top. Shakti is the top and Shiva is the bottom.

I hope they the the definition the dictionary folks at Oxford and Mariam Webster pay and American Collins are paying attention: prakasa and vimarsa.

On the right, Ardhanari.

It's an ancient image, BTW, half Shiva, half Shakti, both male and female.

In “Secret Engine of the World,” I invoked Ardhanari. I held it up as particularly 21st century, because it acknowledges that our ideas, our experience, our viewpoints in terms of gender is shifting and that is much more complex than the wa it is presented in the patriarchal texts and, in fact, much more fluid for many among us.

And now I realize it also just as important cosmically because it’s another way of representing our primal reality at the cosmic level: Shakti and Shiva of Picassa and Vamarsa of consciousness and energy.

Yes, the Deep Feminine, Shakti, has many other names and faces.

Not only within the Indian tradition itself, of course - Devi, Durga, Parvati, and others, all emanations of various aspects of Sakti - but also in diverse cultures and traditions throughout the world.

Isis, for example, the great Egyptian goddess of creative power and deep magic. Even their symbolisms are similar.

I love this 2^nd century Isis with a serpent’s tail.

The serpent, particularly the coiled serpent, is an important symbol of Shakti.

And there are the Dark Goddesses East and West, North and South …

Here are Kali Yantra and Hecate’s Wheel, both emblematic of the Dark Goddess.

The 18^th century Bengali poet Ramprasad sang -

“All creation is the sport of my mad Mother Kali; By her maya the three worlds are bewitched. Mad is She and mad is her husband … None can describe her loveliness, her glories, gestures, moods; Shiva, with the agony of the poison in his throat, Chants her name again and again. The personal does She oppose to the Impersonal, Breaking one stone with another …”
- Ramprasad quoted in Elizabeth U. Harding’s “Kali: Black Goddess of Dakshineswar,” Motilal Banarsidass, 2004

Hecate! Ancient Greek goddess of Night, Goddess of the Moon, Goddess of Magic, Goddess of Crossroads, Goddess of Necromany!

And regarding Hecate’s Wheel -

“The Strophalos, or Hecate’s wheel is an ancient Greek symbol, and is an emblem of the initiatory lunar Goddess Hecate (Diana Lucifera), and her triple aspect. Only one ancient source remains to shed any light on the emblem’s meaning. The second century Alexandrian text known as the Chaldean oracle describes the emblem as a labyrinthine serpent (emblematic of rebirth) surrounding a spiral, symbolic of the Iynges- “whirlings” or emanations of divine thought. Today, it is generally used by practitioners of Hellenic Recon or Dianic Traditions of Wicca as an emblem of religious identification. Other emblems of Hecate include torches, dogs (generally female), keys, serpents, and of course, the crossroads.”
– Dictionary of Symbols

I have added a new category – the Dark Green Goddesses.

It’s an important distinction, otherwise this can all get too internal.

Delineating the Dark Green Goddesses ensures that when we are talking about the Divine Intelligence and the Deep Feminine, we are doing so from within the Temple of Nature, which is after all the only place to make our stand.

And again, She has many names, many faces, East, West, North and South …

Here are three …

On the left, Yemọja, one of the Orisha.

“Goddess of Creation, Water, Motherhood, Rivers, Lakes, Streams, Wells, Pregnant Women, Fishermen, Shipwreck Survivors and Moonlight.” – Wikipedia
“Yemonja, also spelled Yemoja or Yemaja, Yoruban deity celebrated as the giver of life and as the metaphysical mother of all orisha (deities) within the Yoruba spiritual pantheon. Yemonja’s name is derived from the Yoruba words Yeye or Iya (‘mother’), omo (‘child/children’), and eja (‘fish’) and thus literally means ‘Mother whose children are the fish’ ...” – Britannica.com

In the middle, Pachamama, She IS the Andes, the very Being of the Andes

On the right, Gaia Herself

There is one Goddess who pre-exists the Pantheon, pre-exists our species, pre-exists all but herself, because all else is her creation. She is the ONLY truly IMMANENT Divinity, she was the forging of oceans, the flow of lava, the bacteria in a dark crevice organizing itself into the first neural network, & now many billions of years later whoever you are, when you look in the mirror you are seeing only Her. She is the Divine Intelligence. She Is both the Temple & the Oracle within It. Her name was taken from the ancient Mythoi by a 20^th Century scientist. But only Her name, The rest of Her new narrative is composed of scientific fact, corroborated by shamanic vision. In the South of the Americas, She is known by another name, Pachamama. Gaia-Pachamama is the only Divinity which offers direct, irrefutable proof of Her own existence every moment of every day, in every place in all the world. – Richard Power, Gaia Talks, 2023

This composition came together randomly, but taking it in, as a whole, I realized that all three of these artworks emerged from the Scintillant Deep in the last half-century, the Yemoja in 1970, the Gaia in 2000 and the Pachamama in 2020.

The Great Shift is underway. The Great Shift to a Green, Woke, Feminist Civilization.

Oxford Languages defines Prana as “life force or vital energy.” I say the breath within breath, I say prana travels on the breath, I say the breath travels on the prana.

In yoga, prana is also one of five vayus (winds, breaths) – prana, apana, samana, udana, vyana. They’re all prana, of course. The vayus delineate the ways in which prana moves.

For example -

Upward Dog, Camel – Prana Vayu
Tree – Upana Vayu
Warrior II – Vyana Vayu
Malasana (Squat) - Samana Vayu
Downward Dog – Apana Vayu

Pranayama. The science of breath. Powerful practices

The glory of Ujjayi Breath – the engine of Ashtanga & Vinyana.

And then there is Ham Sah …

“The breath is exhaled with the sound sa, and inhaled with the sound ha. Therefore the empirical individual always repeats the mantra hamsah. Throughout the day and night, he repeats this mantra 21,600 times a day … The mantra hamsah is repeated by every jiva (living being) automatically in every round of expiration-inhalation. Normally, it is repeated 21,600 times a day. Since the outgoing and incoming breaths are repeated breaths repeat this naturally, automatically, without any effort on anyone’s part, it is known as ajapa-japa …” – Jaideva Singh, Siva Sutras

Ham the sound of exhalation, Sa the sound of inhalation

Ham Sah, So Ham, same …

The Swan is held up as the symbol of the Ham Sah.

(Actually, it’s the bar-headed goose, one of the world's highest-flying birds. It breeds in Central Asia, Tibet, Kazakhstan, and winters in South Asia, India …)

These three paintings are from series of twenty-four swan paintings that Hilda af Klint produced from 1914 to 1915. She was exploring light and dark, male and female …

Few people have heard of Hilma af Klint, let alone seen the hundreds of paintings and drawings that the 20th-century Swedish artist created. The art establishment ignored her and she barely sold a single work … As a clairvoyant and mystic, Af Klint believed that her abstracts were painted under the direction of higher spirits and that the world was not quite ready for her radical art, but she probably never foresaw such posthumous acclaim. She developed a vocabulary of triangles, squares, circles and spirals before Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich declared themselves the inventors of abstraction. While Kandinsky claimed to have created the first abstract painting in 1911, Af Klint had in fact beat him to it in 1906 … Af Klint studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, graduating with honours in 1887, only to break away from painting conventional portraits, landscapes and botanical studies … She found inspiration in mysticism and spiritualism of theosophy and anthroposophy. She attended spiritual gatherings with four female friends – in a group calling themselves “The Five” – exploring spiritual realms through meditation and seances. Believing that they could communicate with mystic beings, they transcribed their messages through automatic writing and drawing, experiments that predated the surrealists by decades. - Dalya Alberge, Hilma af Klint: Swedish mystic hailed as the true pioneer of abstract art, Guardian, 10/16/22

Merriam-Webster does well with the definition of Chi:

vital energy that is held to animate the body internally and is of central importance in some Eastern systems of medical treatment (such as acupuncture) and of exercise or self-defense (such as tai chi)

We could say Prana and Chi are the same, and it would be accurate.

But it is also accurate to say that are different.

I could have given just a look at Prana-Chi, rather than separate looks at Prana and Chi. I went this way, separate looks, because we principally access them in different ways. For example, Vinyasa and Pranayama versus Yin Yoga and Qi Gong.

Prana is harnessing wind power. Chi is like harnessing the power of the surf.

These two charts are from a marvelous resource, Between Heaven & Earth, A Guide to Chinese Medicine.

On the left, “Five Phase Yin-Yang Rhytms,” which shows “the stages of transformation that define all processes in nature.”

On the right, “The Rhythmic Circulation of Qi from Day to Night,” which shows how “Qi and Blood circulate con continuously in an orderly sequence from one Organ Network to the next throughout the day and night.”

In Yin Yoga, when we hold Saddle Pose for 5 minutes, we’re stimulating the Kidney Meridian in the sacrolumbar region, when we hold Wide-Kneed Child’s Pose for 5 minutes, as we pull the tissue of the inner thighs and groin, we’re working on the Liver Meridian, when we hold Dragonfly Pose for 5 minutes, were stimulating the Spleen Meridian as it flows up the inner thighs. These are just three examples, and each Yin pose works in more than one way, I just want to give you a brief glimpse into how it all flows.

The first book of Phillip Pullman’s brilliant His Dark Materials trilogy was originally entitled “Northern Lights.” And, indeed, the Aurora Borealis is integral to understanding the nature of the mystical “substance” (for lack of a more apt word) that Pullman calls “Dust.” I commend His Dark Materials to you, in all its iterations, in book form, in the 2007 film The Golden Compass, with Eva Green as Serafina Pekkala, Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter and Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra (like Harry Potter, one of the “Chosen Ones”), AND in the BBC streaming series, His Dark Materials, three seasons, twenty-four episodes (2019-2022).

“Witches have known of the other worlds for thousands of years. You can see them sometimes in the Northern Lights. They aren't part of this universe at all.” - Kaisa, Serafina Pekkala’s daemon to the gyptians on their boat, The Golden Compass
“The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer.” – Phillip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

Well, OK, what does this all have to do with Madame Blavatsky and the Secret Doctrine?

Fohat is something that I have wanted to unpack for you for quite a while now, and this talk on Shakti and Shakta offers the perfect framing.

Fohat is a term from the language BEFORE, before Sanskrit, before Tibetan, before …

In S.D., Vol. I, H.P.B. says it is “the key in Occultism which opens and unriddles the multiform symbols and respective allegories in the so-called mythology of every nation.”

When you read about Fohat in theosophical texts, you’ll read about Logos too. In my view, for our purposes, Fohat and Logos are equivalent to Shiva and Shakti and Prakasa and Vimarsa, i.e., Consciousness and Energy, at both the Macrocosmic and Microcosmic “levels.” (Again, “levels” like “substance,” I put in quotes and use for lack of a better word).

I urge not to indulge in any Adam’s Rib nonsense, just see Logos and Fohat as arising together out of the Nothingness, and thenceforth, occupying the same space, LOL, the legendary American sage Joe Miller might say “in connubial felicity,” i.e. Yab-Yum in coitus, as mentioned in the first talk in this series.

In S.D., Vol I, H.P.B. calls Fohat, “Cosmic Electricity.” She goes on to say “The ancients represented it by a serpent, for ‘Fohat hisses as he glides hither and thither’ (in zigzags).”

Furthermore, in her commentary on “The Voice of the Silence,” she refers to Kundalini as the “Fohatic power” foundational to everything in both the seen and unseen worlds.

Fohat, then, is the personified electric vital power, the transcendental binding Unity of all Cosmic Energies, on the unseen as on the mani- fested planes, the action of which resembles—on an immense scale— that of a living Force created by will, in those phenomena where the seemingly subjective acts on the seemingly objective and propels it to action. Fohat is not only the living Symbol and Container of that Force, but is looked upon by the Occultists as an Entity—the forces he acts upon being cosmic, human and terrestrial, and exercising their influence on all those planes respectively. On the earthly plane his influence is felt in the magnetic and active force generated by the strong desire of the magnetizer. On the Cosmic, it is present in the constructive power that carries out, in the formation of things—from the planetary system down to the glow-worm and simple daisy—the plan in the mind of nature, or in the Divine Thought, with regard to the development and growth of that special thing. – H.P.B., S.D. Vol. I
“Fohat is not only the living Symbol and Container of that Force, but is looked upon by the Occultists as an Entity – the forces he acts upon being cosmic, human and terrestrial, and exercising their influence on all those planes respectively . . . the primordial Electric Entity – for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an Entity – electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness.” – H.P.B., S.D., Vol. 1

But, uh, what does this have to do with the Aurora Borealis, i.e., the Northern and Souther Lights? Well, Blavatsky’s Fohat is Pullman’s Dust.

In S.D., Vol. I, H.P.B. calls the North and South Poles, “the two ends of the Egg of Matter.”

And she goes on to say –

“The agitation of the Fohatic Forces at the two cold ends (North and South Poles) of the Earth which resulted in a multicoloured radiance at night, have in them several of the properties of Akâsa (Ether) colour and sound as well.” . . . . . . “Sound is the characteristic of Akâsa (Ether) : it generates air, the property of which is Touch; which (by friction) becomes productive of Colour and Light.” . . .
– H.P.B., S.D. Vol. I

So, to be cryptic, poetical, and literal, all at once – at the Poles, above the Earth, but within our atmosphere, the veils slip, and we glimpse the naked beauty of Shakti.

I talk about the pathless path. I embrace the pathless path. I encourage the pathless path. And I am of the lineage of no lineage. That doesn't negate or push aside lineage or push aside the very well-worn paths, the institutionalized, the traditional paths.

I'm just saying I talk about the pathless path and the lineage of no lineage.

And I can't say you design your own path because that would be really foolish. But I can say that organically you live your life, and organically eyes open consuming, intellectually, somatically, experientially, karmically consuming. you organically develop your own path, your own way. Embracing those words of the Buddha, that Joe used to love quoting, “take what works for you and leave the rest.”

Lalla-Devi (aka Lalleshaw). Early 14^th Century. One of the great poet saints of Kashmir.

Compelled into an abusive at the age of twelve, she wandered away in her early twenties. She studied with a Shaivite guru, but with her mystical awakening accelerating, she soon left him in the dust.

She traveled alone. Barefoot. Living on alms only. If you google her image, you will find countless depictions of her as a beautiful, modestly dressed woman, but Lalla-Devi walked naked in the world. Travelers would tell of encountering her in the forest. She would sing her poems to them.

Lalla-Devi’s ecstatic insights drift across space-time to nourish even now.

The great Coleman Barks (a friend and the publisher of Great Song: Life & Teachings of Joe Miller) has exquisitely rendered some of them in his Naked Song -

With passionate practices
I held the reins secure on my mind
and made the breath one column
Then the new moon’s clear nectar descended into me, nothing pouring into Nothing

What Tantra is and isn’t is a very important subject.

For me, Tantra isn’t about some version of “Kundalini” coiled up at the base of your spine, etc. Tantra is about the life of the five senses and about Psyche-Soma and about the alchemical processes that advance our evolution (both as individuals and as a species).

In Wyrds of Power, I wrote -

Tantra is being buried alive in rich soil only to realize that you are the root of the world, and that the warm brown decay is your nourishment. Tantra is being swept away in the fierce current of a great river that has overflown in banks, swollen with torrents of tears. The term "Tantra" is a survivor of abuse. It has been cruelly exploited. Tantra has been sold into slavery and then auctioned back to itself. Countless times. But Tantra is invincible. Its experience of its own nature is the very essence of healing. Tantra is a path of self-immolation in the smokeless fire of radical transformation. Tantra is the pain in pleasure and the pleasure in pain. Tantra is the wind; if it does not thrill through something else it has no sense of itself, ceaseless movement is its calm abidance. Tantra is a sacred technology. And like the many technological breakthroughs in medicine and computing made in the course of space exploration, Tantra is a by-product of the Great Goddess's engineering genius, just one of the many dazzling technological breakthroughs made in the course of Her Self Creation. The perfection of Tantra is savored in utter loneliness just as deeply as in sublime communion. Yoga and Tantra are the wings of a great bird. The bird cannot soar with only one wing. Tantra revels in the deep mysteries of gender in all its dazzling permutations. From deep inside the nature of suffering, Tantra opens a portal beyond. Tantra is discovering that "you" are the dark blue flesh of space itself and that all of this red life is contained within "you."

The Path of Love. Simply put. Love. Ishq. Agape.

Mirabai (aka Meera). 16^th Century. One of the great Bhakti poet saints.

High-bone, Mirabai married a prince.

After he died in battle, her in-laws attempted to kill her.

But she danced off with Krishna. Her powerful songs celebrate that mystical union.

Sainted, Mirabai became a blazing beacon for a robust Bhakti movement, in all its health and vibrancy - democratic, diverse, inclusive, egalitarian, altruistic …

“The colors of the Dark One have penetrated Mira’s body; all the other colors washed out. Making love with the Dark One and eating little those are my pearls and my carnelians. Meditation beads and the forehead streak, these are my scarves and my rings. That's enough feminine wiles for me. My teacher taught me this. Approve me or disapprove me: I praise the Mountain Energy night and day. I take the path that ecstatic human beings have taken for centuries. I don't steal money, I don't hit anyone. What will you charge me with? I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders; and now you want me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious.“
– Mirabai (Rendered by Robert Bly)

Merriam Webster’s “Baraka” definition’s is OK, a bit mugglish, a bit pedestrian, but factual -

a blessing that is regarded in various Eastern religions as an indwelling spiritual force and divine gift inhering in saints, charismatic leaders, and natural objects

I would say not just “natural objects” but spaces as well, physical spaces, literally, spaces that have been impressed, imbued with the grace of a great saint or sage, e.g., the French caves in which Mary Magdalene dwelled after she fled North, or by the overflowing, ceaseless current of Gaia’s own grace, Gaia’s own baraka, e.g., Yosemite.

In the upper left-hand corner is a photo I took at Uluru, in Australia, one of the most powerful places on Earth, I could literally feel the Rainbow Serpents coiling there, nesting there, as we circumambulated the immense sandstone monolith.

In the lower right-hand corner is a photo I took at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, in Portugal. I had a profound experience there too, I was there at the beginning of the war in Kosovo, I had lit one of the tall white candles and tossed it in, I was praying for NATO and the Supreme Allied Commander, I felt a presence next to me, I turned my head and met the piercing gaze of a very old, leathered-skinned Albanian women, truly a powerful crone, we look into each other’s souls, and then she vanished.

I remember seeing this photo of Mother Krishnabai, Mataji, when I first arrived in San Francisco, over half a lifetime ago. I learned that Samuel Lewis, the American Sufi murshid (AND a member of San Franciso Lodge of the Theosophical Society), had said she was the highest person living on the planet at that time. I understood immediately, viscerally.

And this was when I came to learn about the 36. From the legendary American sage, Joe Miller, as I say, “my Yoda.” A Kabbalistic teaching. There are always 36 beings in incarnation, literally holding it all together for humanity, simply by their presence, simply by being. Some are radiating and conscious of their roles, others are simply radiating, unconscious of their roles. I have been tuned into all of that ever since.

I have written about all of that in “I, Dragon.”

I just mention it here as an example of how Baraka humanifests, or woomanifests.

Guru’s Grace is Mataji’s autobiography. The book itself, any and every copy of it, IS literally an object permeated with Baraka. Blessing. Grace. Magnetism.

Not a word is spoken in Ron Fricke’s 1992 documentary Baraka. No narrative, no voice over. Filmed in twenty-four countries, on six continents, over a 14-month period.

Find it on-line. Watch if you haven’t. Re-watch it if you have.

It explains something that cannot be explained.

In Shadow, the first of these four talks, I spoke of several important mythoi including Star Wars, in terms of what Light and Darkness really are, in relation to each other, and within our psyche-soma, both individual and collective.

I mentioned that in my creative imagination, I saw a theme weave a new Star Wars trilogy, following this most recent one (Force Awakens, Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker).

In that fourth Star Wars trilogy, which starts with Rey returning to the remote island where the Library of the Jedi had been (before Yoda burned down), and where Luke had lived in seclusion until Rey found her way to him in The Force Awakens.

And in this first movie of my imaginary fourth Star Wars trilogy, Rey finds a notebook he had hidden there, a notebook that delineates a new paradigm for living and working in, with and through the Force, a notebook in which he sorts it all out, what Light and Dark really are, what Evil really is, all of it, a new dispensation for a new age …

I bring it up again here and now, because it occurs to me that all three of these talks address the subject matter of that hidden notebook, in Shadow, the truth about Light, Darkness and Evil, in Siddha, a litany of siddhis, i.e., powers, that all of us have, in-born, hard-wired, integral to our primal reality itself, and in this third talk, Shakti, the diverse ways that the Deep Feminine Cosmic Energy reveals itself and flows through of all creation on this particular planet, e.g., Prana, Chi, Fohat, Dust, Kundalini, Ishq, & yes, The Force.

Luke’s notebook would have several sections, one for each planet on which he had explored what he knew as The Force, and the many ways it offered itself to different species, cultures, and civilizations throughout the galaxy.

And something else occurred to me, as I prepared this talk for you, another entry in Luke Skywalker’s secret notebook, which as I said, was hidden away by him so it would be found by Rey at the perfect moment, that moment it would be needed most.

This something else concerns the narrative beautifully told in the movie Rogue One (2016) and the streaming series Andor (two seasons, 2022 and 2025 on Disney). Chronologically, Andor comes before Rogue One, so if you haven’t watched them yet, watch Andor first.

In the context of what we have been exploring in these three talks, this Star Wars spin-off narrative has a vital message. The characters you will come to love on this story line are resistance fighters, democracy restorers, but they were NOT Jedi, and yet they offer themselves up, they risk everything, they struggle to overcome fear, doubt and hopelessness, they lean forward like Tagore’s “bird that feels the light and sings while dawn is still dark,” their names were not known, many of their heroic deeds would go unchronicled, they triumphed even in defeat and despair, they succeed in stealing the Death Star’s schematics and in transmitting those plans to Leia and the rebel forces.

They gave their lives to get it down. Down the road, the schematics would lead to the Republic’s decisive victory over the Empire. They were not trained in the Ways of the Force, they could not levitate, or read minds, or deflect laser fire with light sabers. They just had their courage and desperation. They even strode into certain death, chanting "I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me, I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me, I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me … "

And so it was, and so it is. The Force was within them and did move through them.

We are all Siddha, we are all Shakta, IF we allow ourselves to live this life, in, from and through the primal reality of who and what we truly are.

VIDEO: Richard Power - Verities of Being, Part III: Shakta (8/17/25)

Verities of Being, Part II: Siddha

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 06:21:00 GMT

“Siddha” is Part II of a series of talks for the Theosophical Society of San Francisco.

In this Substack post, I have included the full text and accompanying slides for Part I.

You will also find an embedded video of the talk itself at the end of this post.

To register for Part III (8/18/25) and Part IV (9/21/25), via Zoom, use this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/.../register/ygrx3Z1ESHCR9muMtKrwDw

Merriam-Webster Definition:

Verity

1. the quality or state of being true or real

2. something (such as a statement) that is true especially: a fundamental and inevitably true value

3. the quality or state of being truthful or honest

Plural: Verities

Primal Reality. The Pathless Path. The Lineage of No-Lineage.

The emerging Global Wisdom Tradition. Gaian Politics. Gaian Poetics.

The Ascendancy of the Feminine.

Altruism and Sustainability as Spiritual (& Existential) Imperatives.

These are the themes my work has focused for over the last thirty years.

This is a time of great trial and tribulation for my country and for our world.

Life-affirming. Celebratory. Empowering.

I hope that’s the experience you take away from this current series of talks.

Meanings

Collins American Dictionary – Siddhi

1. Yoga - miraculous power imparted by the late stages of intense meditation

2. Buddhism - Any occult power acquired through discipline

Siddhis = Powers

Siddha = A Powerful Being, A Being w/ Powers

Lists of Marvels

Here are two lists. A list of 9 siddhis from a Himalayan Academy Glossary. And a list of 19 siddhis from the first chapter of the Kakṣapuṭatantra. A few of the powers enumerated are rather sinister. Think Hydra or Magnito. LOL.

In this presentation, we are going to delve into eight siddhi which do not appear in either of these or any other such lists. They are taken for granted.

Primal Reality, Infinite Power

My list of siddhis randomly added up to eight.

According to Keith Dowman in his introduction to Legends of the Mahasiddhas: “The great powers, are enumerated differently in the various traditions, sometimes as seven, sometimes as eight.”

I had no idea. Coincidence? Haha.

3, 5 and 7 are holy, holy numbers. Magical numbers. Potent. Dynamic.

Of course, in a broader all the so-called natural or whole numbers, i.e., 1 through 10, are holy. All R-E-S-P-E-C-T to Pythagoras. But you know what I mean.

8 belongs with 3, 5 and 7, as not just generically holy, but EXTRA holy. LOL.

There are the Eight Limbs of Ashtanga in Yoga and the Eightfold Path of Lord Buddha. But they’re not what I’m feeling here.

I’m feeling the #8 in the Major Arcana of the Tarot, the “Strength” card.

That maiden holding up the jaws of a lion.

The first card I ever drew from a Tarot deck.

You’ll see the “Strength” card, the 8, also has a sideway 8 (a lemniscate) over the maiden’s head. The infinity symbol. Typically you’ll be told there are only two other cards in which the infinity symbol appears, the “Magician” card and the 2 of Pentacles.

BUT a closer look reveals a fourth appearance, in “The World” card, the last of the Major Arcana. You’ll see the lemniscate in the form of partially obscured banners, above the goddess’ head and below her feet.

BTW, this example of the Strength card is from the Waite Deck. You should know that although Arthur Edward Waits held the copyright and was listed as the author, Pamela Colman Smith was the artist who illustrated the entire deck, and she was not acknowledged for her formidable creative accomplishment.

Siddha

Before we move on to the eight siddhis that I want to draw your attention to, I feel I must invoke the presence of the Mahasiddhas.

There are four women among the 84 great ones whose lives are celebrated in Keith Dowman’s translation of “Legends of the Mahasiddhis.”

Of course, there were many more whose names the patriarchy conveniently disappeared.

But here and now it will suffice to simply tell the tale of one of these four.

Her name Lakshmincara a.k.a. “the Crazy Princess.”

I have told her story before. But it must be told again, here, in this context.

In the dakini realm of Oddiyana …”
One king decided to wed his sister to another king to forge an alliance.
The girl, Lakshmincara, was 7 years old.
“Lakshmincara was an extraordinary being. From birth she had been blessed with all the qualities of the elect … her family managed to postpone the marriage ceremony until she was sixteen …It felt as though the end of the world had come when the prince's escort arrived to take her away … she departed from [her home] ac¬ companied by a retinue of Buddhist friends and an enormous dowry and sumptuous gifts for her new family.”
As she was waiting outside the walls of her husband to be’s palace …
“… there was a great clamor of horns and baying dogs and horses' hooves, and then a royal hunting party came galloping past, obviously returning from the chase. At the head of the group rode a stem-faced man in gorgeous clothes soiled by the bloody carcass of a slain doe he had flung across his saddle … her hair stood on end and the blood drained from her face when she learned that the prince she had seen was her husband … She had all the chests and boxes and bales she had brought with her opened on the spot … she began to give away her entire dowry. Every¬ thing … she locked herself into the chamber her husband had provided … she tore the clothes from her body, smeared herself with oil and lamp black, unbound her hair and covered it with filth until she looked like a wild woman … She greeted [the royal physicians] with hysterical screams, hurling oil lamps and hairbrushes at their heads, and attacking them with her teeth and fingernails … To all appearances, Laksminkara was hopelessly insane … One night, when the guards at her door had gone off … Laksminkara crept out of her room … slipped down the back stairways of the labyrinthine palace … hid among the piles of trash and gar¬ bage and escaped through the back gates when the sweepers came to collect the refuse. She made her way to a cremation ground and, renouncing the world to become a yogini, she lived by scavenging food thrown out for the dogs … For seven years she lived in this manner, continually deepening her experience of the essential nirvana …”
“A sweeper of the king's latrines, an untouchable, served her faithfully during this time, and when she gained her realization, she gave him initiation. He quickly attained Buddhahood without anyone knowing of his achievement except his preceptress.
“… the father of her former fiancé, went out on a royal hunt… He got lost … fell asleep and woke late at night ...his attention was caught by something in the distance. It seemed to be a light … it was ema¬ nating from the mouth of a cave ... There a wondrous sight met his eyes. Seated upon a jeweled throne was Laksminkara, her body glowing with a golden radiance that suffused the cave with light. She was surrounded by a circle of adoring goddesses … he remained there all night watching the events in the magical cave.”
Next day, he … returned to his palace, telling no one what he had seen … BUT he “could not keep himself from returning to the cave … Finally, one night … he entered the cave and prostrated himself before the yogini … he begged so humbly for instruction …”
"You cannot be my disciple … Your guru is one of your very own latrine sweepers. He is one of my disciples who has attained siddhi. “I have many sweepers," said the king. "How shall I know him?" … "Put your trust in the man who feeds the poor after he has finished his work. Go to him at night for instruction” … it was not long before he dis¬ covered the identity of the sweeper-guru. He invited the man to the palace … He led the untouchable to his throne and seated him there … the king prostrated himself before his guru and requested instruction … thereafter, Laksminkara and the sweeper performed many miracles in the kingdom … before they both ascended into the Paradise of the Dakinis.”
- Keith Dowman. Legends of the Mahasiddhas

Just a bit more groundwork ...

In Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman declares, “I sing the body electric

He asks rhetorically, “And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?”

Whitman knew. In his own way, he knew.

Early in the Civil War, Whitman moved from Brooklyn to Washington, D.C, and served as a volunteer nurse in the Union’s military hospitals.

Although they never met formally, and remained strangers, Whitman often encountered Abraham Lincoln as POTUS rode through the streets of the Capitol. They would acknowledge each with a nod or bow.

On her “Born to Die” album, released in 2012, the great Lana Del Ray offered up a sorceress’ spell, a siren song woven around the first line of Whitman’s poem, “I sing the body electric, I sing the body electric, baby …”

And I just felt strongly to include the energies of Whitman and Lana in this presentation.

Human incarnation is a temple within which our primal reality dwells, let’s briefly highlight some elements of the temple’s architecture.

5 Bodies
Soma
Vagus Nerve

5 Bodies

I have written and spoken at length about the Five Bodies, I am not going to go into all of that here; except to say it’s important to get out of the trance of imagining yourself a mind and a heart in a body, or a soul in a body, or a heart, mind and soul in a body, this trance is samsara itself, it is ignorance.

You have five bodies. You can call them sheaths or veils.

You can say there are seven instead of five. Seven bodies as the version laid out in the Theosophical teachings. There isn’t really a difference. It’s just splitting hairs. They are not mutually exclusive. They do not contradict each other. The seven-body version is more granular.I default to the five-body version: Physical Body (Annamaya Kosha), Energetic Body (Pranamaya Kosha), Psychological Body (Manomaya Kosha), Intuitive Body (Vijnanamaya Kosha), Bliss Body (Anandamaya Kosha).

Note that I say “Psychological Body” – typically, you’ll read it translated as the “Mental Body” – for me that too limited, it misleading, it doesn’t contain enough information.

I could go on and on about the Five Bodies. It’s an important shift in perspective.

Look it up in the Table of Contents for “Wyrds of Power.”

Soma.

It’s a word that’s use in several different ways now … I am talking about Soma in the context of Somatics and particularly Somatic Psychotherapy.

In ancient Greek, “Soma” meant body, the physical body, today, understanding embodiment, understanding trauma, we understand Soma to mean the whole space, not just the physical body and energetic bodies, but how the psychological body (i.e. the emotional and the mental) are interwoven. In Somatic Psychotherapy, for example, we discover how trauma and grief, are held in the physical and energetic bodies.

Again, I could go on and on. But for here and now, I will say this - Just as after Einstein, it no longer made any sense to talk about “time and space,” knowing what we now know about real embodiment, it no longer makes any sense to simply talk about “psyche.” Just as it is much more accurate to say “spacetime,” it is much more accurate to say “psyche-soma.”

In the same way that knowing about the 5 Bodies allows for an important shift in your perspective, and therefore in your experience, so does factoring in Soma.

The Vagus Nerve

The Vagus Nerve is not the longest nerve in the body. That’s the Sciatic Nerve. The Vagus Nerve is the longest cranial nerve, i.e., the longest (and most complex) nerve that originates in the brain. “Vagus” is derived from the Latin word for “to wander.” So the Vagus Nerve “wanders” through the upper body, INNERVATING vital organs along the way, and ends in the abdomen. Heart, lungs, digestive tract, liver …

The Vagus Nerve is central to the parasympathetic nervous system, it’s primary nerve.

Studies show that stimulating the Vagus Nerve helps you deal with PTSD, because you’re activating the parasympathetic nervous system, and so you’re moving from “Fight or Flight” to “Rest and Digest.” It can help you reset your immune system and educe inflammation … As with the Five Bodies and Soma, I could go on and on.

But for here and now, belly breathing please, inhaling and exhaling, SLOWLY, FULLY, DEEPLY, to and from your belly, yes, and singing, whispering, breathing “Huuuuu” or “Ahhhhhh” into your heart center, and Yoga and/or Pilates and/or Tai Chi, oh yes, and simply Legs Up the Wall, for 10-20 minutes as often as it suggests itself to you …

Touch

Touch is the first of the eight inborn, plug and play, hard-wired siddhis we will be celebrating in this talk, it is as all eight are an integral aspect of our primal reality.

The skin is, after all, the largest organ in the human body. Even though, generally, it is not even seen as an organ. Not viewed the same way as the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the liver, the skin is largely ignored (except cosmetically). And yet, the power of touch, and the desperate need for it, span human life from birth to death.

I have referenced Ashley Montage’s TOUCHING: The Human Significance of the Skin in talks and writings over the years. It’s a very important book.

512 pages, first published in 1971, a few hundred thousand of copies sold.

“… as a sensory system,” Montague writes, “the skin is much the most important organ system of the body …”
“The loving touch, like music, often utters the things that cannot be spoken.”
“What the child requires if it is to prosper … is to be handled, carried, caressed, cuddled, cared for …”
“Tactile needs do not seem to change with aging – if anything, they seem to increase.”
“The raw sensation of touch as stimulus is vitally necessary for the physical survival of the organism.”

Touch

Reading from Wyrds of Power –

Montague invokes the great Helen Keller to make the point that you can be deaf and blind and still live an extraordinary life, but you can’t live at all without your skin. Furthermore, the way that Helen Keller broke through her isolation to create an extraordinary life for herself was through her skin and by the power of touch. And what was it that the Aboriginals drew in those caves in Australia tens of thousands of years ago? Human hands. Consider the 50,000-year-old Abo cave paintings in Mutawintji National Park (New South Wales). These hands have touched me. For 50,000 years they have been open, for 50,000 years they have been asking, 50,000 years they have been welcoming, for 50,000 years they have been reaching out to feel for the throbbing life of the universe. They are as immanent, and as relevant, and as full of technical information as the Siva Sutras or the Bhakti Sutras of Narada, or any text in any tradition, in any era. It has all been there since before the beginning really …
Yes, the power of touch is an aspect of the primal reality.

Laughter

Laughter is the second of the eight in-born, plug and play, hard-wired siddhis we are celebrating in this talk, it is, as all eight are, an integral aspect of our primal reality.

Where does Laughter come from? Seriously. Where does it come from?

The liberating power of laughter reverberates down through the centuries.

From Hotei (the Laughing Buddha) to Shakespeare’s brave, brilliant Fools, to the Mulla Nasrudin seated backwards on his donkey, riding through Konya, to the stand-up comedy of a Sarah Silverman and or a Wanda Sykes …

Laughter frees us from twisted human predicaments and warped predilections. Laughter is sometimes irrepressible. It doesn’t even need a reason. It just arises.

But where does it come from?

Writing on “The Divine Grace of Laughter” in Psychology Today, Nicole A. Tetreault Ph.D. elucidates:

Research shows that laughter ignites mental states similar to meditation where the gamma brain waves are oscillating and the entire brain is engaged, similar to being in flow … When we laugh with others, we connect more deeply and build more positive relationships. Science shows we like one another more when we laugh together. Laughing together activates mirror neurons in our brains causing us to see and reflect one another; in that instant, we laugh as one … Laughing also releases endorphins—feel-good hormones that help reduce pain. When we laugh, we get a nice shot of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that improves our mood and attention, and serotonin, which enhances our connection with others and stabilizes our mood. This influx of neurotransmitters can help us shift the mind out of fear and separateness and shape neural connections for greater love and connection.

Writing on “The Science of Why We Laugh” for Scientific American (6/26/19), Giovanni Sabato provides background on a vital distinction -

Wilson and Gervais applied the concept of group selection to two different types of human laughter. Spontaneous, emotional, impulsive and involuntary laughter is a genuine expression of amusement and joy and is a reaction to playing and joking around; it shows up in the smiles of a child or during roughhousing or tickling. This display of amusement is called Duchenne laughter, after scholar Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne … Conversely, non-Duchenne laughter is a studied and not very emotional imitation of spontaneous laughter. People employ it as a voluntary social strategy … Spontaneous laughter has its roots in the games of early primates … Controlled laughter may have evolved later, with the development of casual conversation, denigration, and derision in social interactions.

In a paper published at phys.org, “Study shows that apes are more optimistic after hearing laughter” (6/26/25). Indiana University offers insights into Laughter’s origin story -

Great apes, including bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, all produce vocalizations resembling human laughter during play. Previous research using acoustic analysis suggests that these vocalizations all share an evolutionary origin with human laughter. In other words, human laughter likely evolved from a sound made during play in a common ancestor of all the great apes …

So, what is Laughter?

Laughter is of the nature of the Primal Reality itself. An integral element.

Anne Lamont, writer, progressive, real Christian, says it best:

“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”

Yes, carbonated holiness.

Sleep

Sleep is the third of these eight in-born, plug and play, hard-wired siddhis we are celebrating in this talk, it is, as all eight are, an integral aspect of our primal reality.

Consider these provocative insights from Ramana -

Whether the estimable state of turiya, true jnana, is described either as ‘the excellent sleep totally devoid of waking’ or as ‘the unique and unceasing waking that has nothing to do with forgetful sleep’, you should know that both descriptions are entirely appropriate. - Ramana Maharshi, Guru Vachaka Kovai

Sleep is not ignorance, it is one’s pure state; wakefulness is not knowledge, it is ignorance. There is full awareness in sleep and total ignorance in waking. - Ramana Maharshi, Ramana’s Gospel

I have talked and written a lot about dreaming and deep sleep.

Here’s a bit more from Wyrds of Power -

We put our head on a pillow, if we're fortunate, and we close our eyes. And something happens. We enter a different state of consciousness, in which we dream, and dreaming sometimes seems like gobbly gook. Other times, you have dreams that have information. You have dreams that have information about events that haven't happened yet. If you write some strange dream down, you might surprise yourself that a dream that made no sense at all – a few months, a few years, maybe a couple of decades later -- turns out to be a precognitive dream of some kind. Where does that information come from? Where does that information come from? Where does the information in a precognitive dream come from? That question alone opens a whole can of worms. But we won't stop there. And other kinds of dreams are like koans. We work on them all our lives. They're mystical dreams, shamanic dreams, they have meaning to us, and such a dream may have multiple meanings through a course of life. You'll find there are different facets to them. And then, there are other kinds of dreams that are just working out our psychological problems. We have dreams where we work out our problems, or face things we're too afraid to look at in our waking mind, or too depressed to look at in our waking minds. Consciousness brings them out in the dream state, and we kind of unpack them, dismantle them, and put them back together again, and take a look at them in the process …
People would come to him pursuing the ultimate truth, because it was clear, from his atmosphere, that he had it. He tried to teach in silence, and he tried to draw a picture, and he tried to answer questions. One of the things he said that struck me was -- he asked, "How would you describe the state of deep sleep?" And the person in dialogue with him would typically describe as a numbness, a deadness, a complete unawareness, a blankness … And Ramana’s point was that the deep sleep state is closer to Samadhi, closer to what you want to call Samadhi, or Nirvana, or the enlightened state. It's Buddhahood. Yes, it's closer to that realization than either the waking state or the dreaming state or anything else. In fact, the farther you get away from the waking state, the closer you are to Samadhi, and that challenges some people's clichés about enlightenment, because you might think enlightenment is some sort of imaginative place …
So, I want to leave you with that idea of what sleep is, of its multidimensional nature, and of its mystical nature, and the fact that no one taught you to do this ... This is something that's natural to you. It is something that puts you directly in touch with the divine reality. The human reality and the divine reality meet [merge really, are absorbed into each other] within the cycle of every 24 hours. They meet in deep sleep. On your way to deep sleep, you're going to get information from various sources … various virtual computers that have been working on various problems and various agendas some of which you haven't even seen with your conscious mind … This is direct. This is immediate. This is our life. This is not somebody else's. And don't ever let anybody tell “you can't meditate,” or “that's not the right way to mediate.” Don’t ever tell yourself … “I can't meditate” …

Sleep

These two paintings are the work of Tamara de Lempicka. One of the most heralded artists of the Art Deco period. You might recognize Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti). It depicts Tamara “at the wheel of a Bugatti racing car, wearing a leather helmet and gloves and wrapped in a gray scarf … a personification of cold beauty, independence, wealth and inaccessibility” (Wikipedia).

In 1917, [Tamara’s husband] was accused of being a Tsarist agent and arrested by the Cheka. She offered herself to the Swedish consul and he secured her husband’s release.

They escaped to Paris, where they sold the family jewels to survive.

In 1928, they divorced. That same year, an Astro-Hungarian baron, an art collector, commissioned Tamara to do a portrait of his mistress, a Spanish dancer.

In the 1930s, she achieved renown in the art world. Her paintings hung side by side with the work of Georgia O’Keefe, Willem de Kooning and others,

Tamara and the Baron had married in 1934, a year after his wife’s death,

At the beginning of World War II, Tamara and the Baron fled to America.

Openly bisexual, her liaisons with both men and women were made for scandal at that time. Desire and seduction were powerful themes in her work. Even earlier, while still in the Paris of the 1920s, she had intimately aligned with lesbian and bisexual writers and artists, such as Vita Sackville-West and Colette …

Madonna is an admirer and collector of Lempicka's work.

The painter’s work appeared in music videos such as "Express Yourself" (1989) and "Vogue" (1990) and on the sets of Blond Ambition (1990) and other world tours.

Conscience

Conscience: An inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one's behavior - Oxford Languages

Conscience is the fourth of the eight in-born, plug and play, hard-wired siddhis that we are celebrating in this talk, it is, as all eight are, an integral aspect of our primal reality.

“The relationship between the individual and God, the God-relationship, is the conscience." - Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847)
Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called Conscience. - George Washington, "Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation"

Just as we drew a distinction between two kinds of humor in our exploration of the Laughter siddhi, here we need draw a distinction between two kinds of conscience, i.e., Conscience with a capital “C” versus lower-case c conscience.

In the context of what Kierkegaard called “the God-Relationship” and George Washington called “celestial fire,” we are of course talking about Capital “C” Conscience.

But meanwhile, for millennia, a lower-case “c” model of conscience predicated on patriarchal values has been superimposed over of this portal into our primal reality.

In this era of the Great Shift, we are breaking through that rigid, skewed frame, to re-establish a mainline to the “celestial fire” of the Capital “C” Conscience.

The great Margaret Atwood, the author of “The Handmaid’s Tale” explores this.

In “The Year of the Flood” (2009), a dystopian novel set in a post-apocalyptic world, Atwood wrote, “Hunger is a powerful reorganizer of the conscience.”

Indeed. Hunger opens your eyes. Hunger introduces you to DESPERATION. Everything is reordered. What is right, what is wrong, what is unthinkable. Everything. And yes, as we hurtle deeper and deeper into the Planetary Climate Emergency and the Sixth Great Extinction … Well …

In a charming essay, "Margaret Atwood: Voicing transition in the Conscience of Women,” Neha Dubey, Indian psychotherapist (AND Bollywood movie star), wrote:

“Women need to be in full control over their existence ‘to reshape and re-write it by re-writing culture’ … Perhaps this is the reason Atwood presents such an openly oppressive culture endorsing subtly the patriarchal mind-set, hoping that it might be refuted by both her protagonist and her readers … Through enigmatic female protagonists, Atwood has voiced the transition that has occurred in the women’s conscience over this past century, from wanting to fit into the stereotyped image of a good woman, to women who are becoming more aware of their inner self, and their own wants, and not afraid to express themselves, the new woman.”

Conscience with a capital “C” is feminist - green, woke and feminist.

And it is accessible to you directly, immediately … you know this, you feel this …

Otherwise, it is very unlikely you would be hearing my voice or reading my words.

You can see it all play out in Handmaid's Tale, as the characters come to grips with perverse societal mores superimposed over their own real, innate primal reality Conscience, the big C Conscience, the celestial fire Conscience, the God relationship Conscience. The big C Conscience is telling them what is right and wrong about the societal norms that they're are expected to accept in the patriarchal, oligarchic, misogynist, racist society they find themselves in. That's all of it.

And this might seem like a tangent, but it isn't.

That Conscience with a capital C is feminist, green and woke.

Green, woke and feminist. That is Conscience.

It is accessible to you directly immediately. You know this. You feel this.

We are struggling to come to grips, individually and collectively, with the Planetary Climate Emergency and the Sixth Great Extinction. We are struggling to facilitate, open up, accelerate the Ascendancy of the Feminine, to break down what's happened with the patriarchy over all these centuries. These two challenges, dealing with our relationship to Gaia and hastening the Ascendancy of the Feminine are of paramount importance. The impetus for both is coming from that Conscience with a capital C, from that celestial fire, from that great God relationship.

This capital C Conscience has been with us since the caves. Just like the power of Touch has been with us since the cave. Just as the power of Laughter has been with us from the caves. This capital C Conscience, the celestial fire, has been with us. It is civilization. This is civilization. These in-born, plug and play, hardwired Siddhis are civilization. Along the way, our genius contiually creates new challenges, new morality plays, for us to to come to grips with, learn from, and either survive or not.

Voice

Voice is the fifth of the eight in-born, plug and play, hard-wired siddhis that we are celebrating in this talk, it is, as all eight are, an integral aspect of our primal reality.

What is the recitation of mantra really? What is japa? A work-out for building mystical muscle? The process for polishing inner gemstones? A spell to remove obstacles or attract desirables? A vehicle for traveling from point x to point y on one’s spiritual journey? A worshipful offering to a God or Goddess projection? Without rejecting or demeaning any of these intended purposes let me offer another view, a different perspective, one which doesn’t supplant any of them, but can occupy the same space.

I say your voice doesn’t serve the mantra; the mantra serves your voice. I say just as your voice utters the sacred syllables; those sacred syllables are uttering your voice.

You may imagine your voice to be chalice from which the mantra is poured; I suggest to you that the mantra is a chalice into which your voice is poured.

And remember, I say, “your voice” IS literally an aspect of your very being, your primal reality itself.

There are two voice-based techniques in the Vijnana Bhairava -

15. Intone a sound, as a-u-m, slowly. As sound enters soundfulness, so do you.
66. Silently intone a word ending in AH. Then in the HH effortlessly, the spontaneity.

So, together, let’s do a version of that 15th technique.

This is how I intone A-U-M:

Relax yourself, shake yourself loose, sit comfortably, take a few breaths, gentle breaths, into the lungs and into the heart, inhale and exhale.

Place the index finger and the middle finger of either hand (your choice, no superstition) on your heart center, just the fingertips, lightly.

Inhale gently but deeply. On the exhale, sing “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”