Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Song of the Dragon (revisited)

Adapted from an essay by Antares, published in Journal One, October 1996,
and later included as a chapter in
 
Tanah Tujuh ~ Close Encounters with the Temuan Mythos...

TWO DAYS AFTER the monstrous calamity at Pos Dipang on 29 August 1996, when almost an entire Orang Asli village was demolished by a tidal wave of mud and dead trees, a dramatic black-and-white photograph appeared in the Sunday Star.

It showed the “dragon's trail of destruction” down one slope of the Kinjang Range - like a huge rip in the fabric of reality exposing the raw elemental underside of nature. An awesome sight, not exactly beautiful, but inspiring speechless awe, and reminding us of the two faces of cosmic forces - the malefic as well as the benign.

The Orang Asli village of Pos Dipang was wiped out by a gigantic mudslide on 29 August 1996
Those who survived the murderous mudslide later murmured that the naga (dragon) must have been very angry. But what exactly do the Orang Asli mean when they speak of the dragon's wrath?

“YOU ought to know,” said the editor of a monthly magazine to which I had been contributing, when I dropped in on their office soon after the Pos Dipang disaster, “you've lived with Orang Asli for quite a few years.”

I thought it over for a moment. “It isn't so easy to explain these ideas in rational terms,” I began. “One has to have a fundamental connection with the pre-industrial mythologizing mind; you need to intuit your way around these “dreamtime” spaces. I happen to be very sympathetic to mythic awareness myself - but nowadays you don't find too many people with the necessary experience or exposure to thinking-feeling through free association. Our modern education system trains minds to analyze rather than synthesize, to criticize rather than empathize. It would probably come across as ancient superstition or new age nonsense.”

“I still think you're the right person to make an attempt,” the editor said with persuasive earnesty. I had to grin. Was this just her way of nudging me away from my metaphysical musings and coming back down to earth? I told her I'd give the question of dragons some thought, and left it at that. (It didn't strike me at the time that, by some strange coincidence, the company that published the magazine was called Nagamedia - and the managing editor happened to be called Ty Fong, which sounds remarkably like Typhon, another name for the Great World Snake!)

Typhon, the largest monster in Greek mythology, was perhaps inspired by
a planetary cataclysm that destroyed entire civilizations

Spontaneous painting by Alex Grey
at the 2011 Rainbow Serpent Festival
in Australia
The problem is: most of us were raised in an intellectual environment defined by linear semantic conventions and encouraged by “career” demands to specialize further and further - until all our knowledge has become fragmentary and compartmentalized. To be able to see beyond the veil of the visible, one needs to temporarily renounce intellectual materialism and embrace the mystical-poetical-spiritual essence of gnostic re-cognition.

You won't come anywhere near an understanding of the invisible cosmic forces underlying geophysical upheavals simply by analyzing mud samples in the laboratory. Even if only as an exercise, you still need to look at phenomena through the metaphoric monitor-screen of myth - just as you can only experience the full effect of 3D movies by wearing 3D spectacles.

The more thought I gave it, the more complex the subject became. There were so many overlapping dimensions around the subject of dragons, serpents, snakes - and rainbows. Yes, rainbows somehow belong in this extended family of archetypal symbols. Take for instance this highly evocative quote:

The rainbow as a snake is a recurrent image among many ethnic groups and nations. The Pomo and Kato tribes of California consider it to be an aquatic, horned snake that provokes floods and earthquakes. The rainbow is also identified as a water snake among the people of South America. The natives of the Amazon believe it represents a bridge between the Earth and the temples of the royal kingdom of heaven. (Alberto Ruz Buenfil, Rainbow Nation Without Borders)


I was pleased to find a compact but erudite “dragon” entry in the Britannica's Micropaedia which opened with this intriguing comment:

The belief in these creatures [dragons] apparently arose without the slightest knowledge on the part of the ancients of the gigantic, prehistoric, dragon-like reptiles [dinosaurs]. In Greece the word drakon, from which the English word was derived, was used originally for any large serpent, and the dragon of mythology, whatever shape it later assumed, remained essentially a snake.


Dragons. No matter where you travel on the surface of this planet, you will encounter a dragon or serpent or rainbow myth in some form. In China and Japan the emperors were said to have descended from the Dragon gods who came from the sky.

Kukulcan, Mayan version of the
Plumed Serpent
In Central America the most revered deific figure is called Kukulcan by the Maya and Quetzalcoatl by the Aztecs; he is represented as a Plumed Serpent, and has been linked to the Peruvian legends of Viracocha. (Thoth, a major Egyptian god, is also associated with the Serpent - as was his father, the Sumerian progenitor god Enki.) It's worth noting that the national emblem of Mexico is an eagle with a snake in its claws.

In India the Nagas are described as a race of demigods who emerged from the bottom of the sea and brought civilization to the aboriginal tribes. Yogis depict the Life Force, kundalini, as a serpent uncoiling up the spine when aroused. At the crown, the serpent reveals itself as the seven-headed cobra, symbol of mastery over the illusory realms of matter.

The Celts and Picts of pre-Norman Britain called their kings Dragons - Pendragon (meaning the Great Dragon) being the symbol of the Supreme Ruler of the British Isles. Uther Pendragon and his famous son Arthur were the last known historical personages to bear this exalted rank. And to this very day in Britain there are numerous Pendragon Societies dedicated to the resurgence of the Pendragon lineage, which they hope to see regain the throne of “New Jerusalem” from the usurpers, the secular House of Windsor. This momentous event will be heralded by the reappearance of the bardic archdruid Merlin (note the combination of Dragon/serpent and Merlin/hawk: Earth and Sky!)

Vindicta Pendragon 

However, the dragon/serpent motif acquired a totally negative connotation when the Hebrews invaded Canaan and enforced exclusive worship of their fiercely patriarchal god Yahweh. From this violent overthrow of the goddess-worshiping cultures associated with the Earth-loving serpent, grew the image of the dragon as an emblem of Evil, of the torrid temptations of carnal Nature.

In Europe, owing to the Judeo-Christian prejudice against the Earth-Mother-Goddess-Serpent aboriginal archetype, the dragon has been portrayed as the enemy: Nemesis, agent of Satan, Lucifer's earthly form, the Worm of Hades. Statues and paintings abound that show the Archangel Michael, and later St. George, slaying the dragon of pagan beliefs.

Unfortunately the same arid, patriarchal bias infected Islamic ideology, forcing goddess-worshipers to go underground, so to speak, and seek initiation into the ancient mysteries through dervish dancing and the private study of sacred geometry (wherein the feminine principle could be secretly revered in the form of arches, domes and spheres).

The accumulated effects of belligerent parochialism over the past five thousand years has also resulted in certain built-in behavioral traits amongst explorers, researchers, and academicians - a tendency to be invasive, divisive, possessive, and exploitative - which might explain why the proliferation of scientific and technology-using societies seems to have always been at the expense of Mother Nature.

Obviously, there is no simple straightforward way to discuss what the Dragon means to the Orang Asli - and to every tribal culture indigenous to planet Earth. The amount of available information on this mythical creature is actually quite staggering when one begins to research the subject seriously. Here's a random sample of interesting data involving the dragon/snake/rainbow motif:

• The dragon signifies royalty in a great diversity of cultures around the planet. In China and pre-Norman Britain, it was the national emblem (appearing in Wales as the griffin); while in Japan it was believed that the Emperor was descended from a race of flying dragons. Taoists regarded the dragon as one of the most important deified forces of nature.

• In Babylonian mythology the dragon Tiamat symbolized the watery goddess of Primordial Chaos, later subjugated by Marduk, a masculine deity of Law & Order & Civilization. Zecharia Sitchin, author of the controversial Earth Chronicles, has a radical interpretation of this myth. According to Sitchin, the ancients called all the planets “gods” - and “Marduk” was an invading celestial body, wandering in space after being flung off its original orbit by some stellar explosion. Marduk's satellites smashed into Tiamat, which broke in half from the impact, leaving a trail of icy debris that now forms the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. The remaining portion of Tiamat was flung into a new orbit between Mars and Venus, where it became known as Ki or Ge or Gaia or Earth. Marduk, known to the Sumerians as Nibiru or the Planet of the Crossing, constitutes the twelfth planet in our solar system (including the Sun and Moon). Sitchin asserts that Nibiru is the home of the Sky Gods who created the human race. Those with access to arcane knowledge support this notion - but add that the Nibiruans couldn't have done it without a little help from the Sirians, their mentors!

• The feminine principle was revered by the Ophites whose sacred symbol was the Cosmic Snake coiled round the World Egg. This image also recurs in Egyptian and Greek mythology as the worm Ouroboros, the serpent swallowing its own tail - a powerful symbol of eternally regenerative cycles. Joseph Campbell, the pre-eminent mythical scholar, puts it succinctly in a famous televised conversation with journalist Bill Moyers: “The serpent sheds its skin to be born again, as the moon its shadow to be born again. They are equivalent symbols. Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That's an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. The serpent represents immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly throwing off death and being born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both the fascination and the terror of life.”

• Amazonian natives revere the Anaconda - guardian spirit of their sacred river. Like the Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia, they perceive the snake/dragon as a celestial as well as terrestrial phenomenon. On earth the Anaconda lives as a giant freshwater python that guards the physical flow of life-energy-water. In the fourth-dimensional or astral zones, the Anaconda is magnified in scale into mythic proportions: a wind-raising, fire-belching, earth-shaking Elemental Force that could destroy all animal and human life if angered beyond certain established limits.

• I once heard an Orang Asli mother tell her child to avert her eyes whenever there was a vivid rainbow in the sky. She believed it was created by the Orang Halus (elves) as part of their sacred rituals, and that the rainbow was actually the invisible people's processional pathway to the heavenly realms. This is an idea echoed by many Native American tribes, who view the rainbow as symbolic of a dimension where Spirit and Matter are harmoniously wed.

The Temuan have great reverence for all hills and mountains and the rivers and streams that water them. In their creation stories, the dragon or naga plays a key role in preparing the Earth for human habitation. Fire Nagas are “technical supervisors” of events like the Big Bang wherein suns and planets are created. Water Nagas work with Nagas of the Air to cool down and mould the newborn world.

Quetzalcoatl-Kukulcan
by Genzoman
There are tales of an Aeon of Celestial Fire, followed by the Aeon of Great Cold and an Aeon of Universal Flood. When the waters finally receded, the Temuan's earliest ancestors were found clinging to a gaharu or eaglewood tree resting atop Gunung Raja (the Royal Mountain). The landscape that evolved around Gunung Raja is therefore keramat - conforming to a heavenly blueprint and lovingly guarded by their ancestral spirits. Every rock and boulder, every tree and shrub, every spring and tributary is a familiar aspect of their dreamscape which is animated by spirits fine and coarse. The physical world, which is really a shadow of the higher realms, is where humanity dwells, till such time as we prove ourselves worthy of permanent residence on Pulau Buah (the Isle of Fruits) - in other words, Paradise. Guardian spirits like the ular and naga (snake and dragon) are also being tested. They too can evolve to the higher worlds (there are seven levels on Tanah Tujuh, the living cosmos that is planet Earth). If the Naga's dwelling place in the upper reaches of the river is desecrated, it will get very angry and leave in a great huff, thundering and thrashing its tail on its way to the sea where it becomes a naga laut (nautical dragon). That's why it is dangerous to infuriate the Nagas - and every high mountain has its own Naga.

The Orang Asli also believe that they were placed on Earth as Guardians of the Rainforest. “If Tuhan (God) sees that the Orang Asli are no longer serving their sacred purpose,” said Utat, “the whole world will be turned upside down and humanity will perish. Those of us who have been true to our duties will find ourselves naked on Pulau Buah (in other words, stripped of earthly flesh and restored to the spiritual realms).”

Nadi Pak Empok told me he dreamt of the Naga once, back in 1990. The Naga asked him to visit a particular spot along the river three times in three weeks - but Nadi was too afraid to obey. One evening, he happened to be passing near the spot on his way home, when he was startled by a roaring noise -”like a helicopter landing on top of you.” Nadi hid behind a rock and nervously looked around. Suddenly the river exploded into shiny golden scales as a gigantic Naga raised its mighty antlered head from the water. It seemed to hang in the air for an eternity before diving back into the river and disappearing. Nadi's legs went limp and he had to recuperate for an hour before he could get up and walk home with a troubled heart. The headman of his village in Pertak had allowed loggers into the area, and the Penunggu (guardian spirit) was issuing the Temuan a warning through Nadi.

Hermes Trismegistos, whom the Greeks revered as the patron deity of science, philosophy and the healing arts, is usually shown carrying a caduceus - a winged staff with two snakes entwined along its length. This Hermetic wand of magickal power was chosen by the followers of Hippocrates as their guild emblem. Even today, the medical profession is symbolized by the caduceus of Hermes (an incarnation of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom and general wizardry).

• In Bali the highest aspect of divinity is known as Tintya (inspired by the dancing form of Shiva-Natarajah). Tintya is often depicted in sacred paintings as an agile, elvish figure on a chakra (wheel of cosmic energy) - flanked by two dragons (one green, the other red) representing the ida and pingala - or the positive and negative poles of all energetic systems - and, by extension, the planet's electromagnetic field.

Now, this is truly significant. The green and the red, the positive and the negative, the yang and the yin, the male and the female, electricity and magnetism.... herein lies the most important clue to the grand mystery of the Dragon's Song.

Rainbow tube torus: shape of
the Earth's electromagnetic field
WHOLE SYSTEMS THINKER R. Buckminster Fuller was fond of teleologizing - which means, essentially, to derive elegant general principles from observing natural phenomena. When he declared that Unity was “plural at minimum two,” he had truly put his finger on the paradox of integrity as a complementary duality: radiation and gravity, outwardness and inwardness, convexity and concavity, electricity and magnetism, maleness and femaleness. However, Fuller was at pains to point out that complementary opposites were never intended to be in static 50-50 balance.

Indeed the laws of dynamic flux require that the Golden Mean be set at what is called the “phi ratio” - which has been approximated at 1.6180339 - a number that goes on forever. (The phi ratio is a sort of “golden mean proportion” or Fibonacci spiral formula that underlies all organic structures. It can be found in the relative bone-lengths of animal skeletons; in the design of plants; in the geometry of crystal formations; even entire constellations and galaxies.) This mysterious phi ratio determines that interactions between the “feminine” force of gravity and the “masculine” force of radiation are never “perfectly” symmetrical. Indeed the built-in asymmetry between bi-polar forces ensures that “true balance” is endlessly sought, so that yang and yin can intertransform, each into the other ad infinitum, ensuring thereby that the “status quo” never stays static for too long.

It would appear that Buckminster Fuller was restating in 20th century terminology what ancient wisdom was already fully cognizant of in mythic language. The serpent lays the egg that translates into the binary code of “1” and “0”: lingam and yoni, phallus and vulva. Line and curve, electricity and magnetism. Radiation (i.e. differentiation, dissipation, and disintegration) and Gravity (i.e. cohesion, compassion, and unconditional love). All phenomena in the waveform universe can be described by this classic Fullerism: Unity is plural at minimum two. (Fuller later revised this to “unity is plural at minimum sixfold” but let’s not get into multidimensionality at this juncture!)

How does this relate to geophysical upheavals, nightmarish distortions of the electromagnetic field that can annihilate whole cities in an instant? Flashfloods, earth tremors, tsunamis, landslides, volcanic eruptions, periodic shifts of tectonic plates, axial polarities, and visionary paradigms? Petulant dragons with whiplash tails? Waveform deformities, wormholes that can suck entire star systems into the antimatter universe? Where does myth end and science fantasy begin?

WHAT HAS BEEN dismissed as “fantasy” is in truth the Unseen beyond the Seen - electromagnetic quirks occurring above and below the range of human sensory perception. Do you regard the Earth as a living Goddess, the Abode of Beauty, a sacred sanctuary, a temple, a home? Or do you dismiss her as a dead hunk of rock, covered with psychedelic lichen and acrawl with contentious lice?

Do you have serious difficulty sensing the intimate intercorrelations between dragons, snakes, rainbows - and power spots, psychic centers, interdimensional portals, planetary chakras? In acupuncture, the physical body is perceived as a dense configuration of energy patternings emanating from subtle constellations of perfect principles. It is the meeting place of Spirit and Matter, a vibrant multidimensional field of vital possibilities.

Practitioners of acupuncture familiarize themselves with detailed mappings of the human bioenergetic hologram form - which can be manipulated in terms of flow with conductive needles inserted at particular internodes - just as the planet's etheric body can be adjusted geomantically with crystals, dolmens, monoliths, stone circles, obelisks, and pyramids. Geomancy - the study of geodetic flowlines, the movement of wind and water (fengshui) - entails a thorough knowledge of major and minor “dragons' paths” or leylines.


Ancient power spots like Machu Picchu, Silbury Hill, Stonehenge, Iona, Uluru, Sacsahuaman, Teotihuacan, Tiahuanacu, Giza, Avebury, Chichén Itzá, Mount Ararat, Gunung Agung, Mount Shasta, Mount Fuji, Mount Meru, Gunung Raja and other earth-sun-moon-star temples were invariably sited at strategic intersections of dragons' paths.

Men-an-tol (Martin Gray)
Among indigenous tribes, all shamanic rituals are actually “geomantic” in function: realignments of chakras on individual and collective levels, etheric manipulations of weather conditions through the devas of wind, water and geomagnetic harmony, healing through invocation of the Earth's compassionate gravitational field, the Mother Goddess Force. (Drunvalo Melchizedek - alchemist, hermeticist and founder of the Flower of Life “portable” mystery school - informs us that there are at least 83,000 sacred sites guarded by indigenous tribes, strategically located around the Earth.)

Why have we forgotten this invaluable heritage? How did industrial societies fall so far from a wholesome, organic relationship with natural forces, with the electromagnetic Dream Body of the Earth Goddess? Any civilization that was aware of the cosmic patterns of energy flow would certainly not be committing covert genocide against its aboriginal tribes, and overt ecocide against Mother Earth, on the horrendous scale we see all around us.

The answer lies in the written records of what we call history: in the last 5,000 years or so since the sudden advent and swift adoption of alphanumeric symbols, oral traditions have been supplanted by the scriptural text, the Book. Although written language has proven to be an efficient tool for mass communication (and mind control), it has also propelled us towards more precise but narrower modes of perception and thinking. What we gained in specificity, we lost in the ability to apprehend generalities. We ended up not seeing the forest for the trees, and then seeing only the “merchantable biomass.” Business-as-usual is no way to experience and reconnect with the cosmomythological context that forms an eternal background to our frenzied preoccupation with clock time.

Which explains why the Chief Minister of Perak wasted no time in denying that logging had anything to do with the Pos Dipang catastrophe. He reasoned that since there was no sign of recent clear-felling on the hillslopes (“They stopped logging ten years ago!”), the blame must fall on the rain. It's all the weather's fault, in other words. But are we looking to blame anyone? We're on this planet to learn certain codes of ethics and aesthetics. Not to consume ourselves in puerile games of economics, politics, and ideological oneupmanship.

But let's be honest about it. A 360-year-old hardwood has a root system that could easily reach a depth of 120 feet; add the intricate root intertwinings with neighboring trees, and you can assume a subterranean spread of half-an-acre. If you chainsaw a jungle giant off at the stump, the root system remains firm for at least three or four years, then it may start withering and rotting for another five or six years before a mighty downpour washes it all down, together with a massive portion of the hillslope. Multiply this effect by 3,000 trees - and you get the Pos Dipang scenario. Don't blame it on the rain... or the terrain! Blame it, if you must, on the scarcity conditioning and competitiveness (read FEAR & GREED) that has made us blind to the beauty, the divinity, and the truth of the Seen - as well as the Unseen realms.

Postscript: Two years after this essay was published, anthropologist Jeremy Narby published his seminal work, The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge, in which he interprets his own ayahuasca initiations with Asháninka shamans from the Peruvian Amazon. Narby's profound insight into the connection between serpents, dragons, rainbows and the helical structure of DNA molecules constitutes a significant breakthrough in building a bridge between mystical visions and scientific investigation. Through Jeremy Narby's conscientious research, the cosmological and ontological meaning of the serpent coiled around the world egg has finally been revealed as symbolizing the genesis of Life itself.

[First posted 26 January 2012, reposted 27 October 2016, 24 October 2021 & 24 January 2022]

Friday, February 14, 2025

Home of Rainbows ~ an excerpt from TANAH TUJUH

ABOUT AN HOUR’S HIKE from where I live there is a sacred waterfall whose virgin waters cascade some 300 feet in three tiers into a womblike cauldron. 

At midday with the Sun directly overhead, I once ventured into the seething cauldron. And there, trembling from the cold and from an overwhelming sense of awe, I found the Home of Rainbows. 

I beheld dozens of baby rainbows - hanging magically in the misty spray - dancing with the sunbeams. A sight such as this transforms one forever. I felt the presence of the goddess Gaia - not as hypothesis, but as a vivid reality.

And when I gazed at the sky beyond the shimmering column of water and the rocky lips of the cauldron, I was struck by a vision of the Vesica piscis: the fish-shaped form of the primeval vulva from which all life issues.

MEANWHILE, in another Dimensional Universe not so far from where the rest of humanity lives, nine Orang Asli of the Jahai tribe from Sungai Manok (about 200 km from Kota Bharu, Kelantan) suddenly found themselves on trial for homicide. On 26 April 1993 they had been embroiled in an ugly struggle over land, which left three Kelantanese Malays dead. They had allegedly been shot with poisoned blowpipe darts. According to some reports, the Malays had shown up in a van one day to inform the Jahai that their land had been sold and that they were to leave their village within 24 hours.

The Jahai called called a tribal council and decided to stand their ground. Violence erupted when the Malays arrived at the village brandishing parangs (machetes) and one of them kicked the batin (headman). A young Jahai who rushed to his chief's defence was slashed.

In court the Jahai were defended by seven of the country's leading lawyers, all of whom donated their services and paid their own expenses. For months, Colin Nicholas of the COAC (Center for Orang Asli Concerns) was kept busy commuting between Subang Jaya and Kota Bharu, helping the Jahai cope with the disruption to their lives and looking after their personal needs. The legal proceedings took on farcical proportions with the prosecution tying itself up in technical knots. So much so the case was eventually thrown out after three years of senseless to-and-froing, without a single essential question being raised.

For instance: how did land reserved for the Orang Asli get “sold” in the first place? Was the Orang Asli Affairs Department completely in the dark? Or were a few officers in the know? Why didn't the Jahai headman report to the authorities immediately? And how do we reconcile the Asli concept of tanah pesaka (ancestral land) with legalistic definitions of real estate and private property?


According to lawyer friends of mine, the Orang Asli have absolutely no land rights as such - and they mutter something about Section 134 of the Aboriginal Act of 1954, which classifies all Orang Asli as “tenants at will of the State.” They explain that the Orang Asli have been occupying areas “approved for gazetting” since the mid-60s - but not formally gazetted yet (even as we enter the new millenium). In the 1960s the official excuse for leaving matters unresolved was “the Communist threat.” In December 1989 the Malayan Communist Party surrendered and dissolved itself. Until the designated areas are constitutionally gazetted as Orang Asli reserves, the only protection the “First Peoples” have against fortune-hunters and land-grabbers is the Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli or JHEOA (which later became Jabatan Kemajuan Orang Asli or JAKOA - although the Orang Asli still call it JOA - “Jual Orang Asli,” they hasten to add,“Orang Asli for Sale.”).

The question is: who can protect the Orang Asli from their own Protectors? The JAKOA officials I've met are hard-core, card-carrying Mahathirites and compulsive enemies of the environment. They charge around in Pajeros and hobnob with prominent loggers and daredevil developers. Orang Asli Affairs are perceived as their personal fiefdom and, in recent years, JAKOA appears to have turned into an extension of JAKIM (the federal government's Islamic Enforcement and Missionary Agency).

Bidar Chik in 1999
I WAS TALKING to Bidar Chik, batin of Kampung Pertak, about the difference between “tenure” and “tenancy.” Of course, our terms of reference were far more concrete.

“Our people have been living in these parts since time began,” Bidar said, “We belong here, but we don't say the land belongs to us.”

“The land belongs to Tuhan,” interjected Bidar's brother-in-law Nadi from the doorway, where he had been quietly listening to our conversation. “All land is God's. We're only the Guardians of this area.”

Nadi Pak Empok had a certain dignity about him and a friendly twinkle in his eye. I was impressed by his sincerity of belief. Bidar took this as a cue to get his wife to serve up some Milo.

Nadi & Lumoh
I told Nadi I was in full agreement wih him. I, too, felt it was my sacred duty to safeguard the wild beauty of the forest and the pure joy of its rivers. Many years ago, when I first “discovered” the invigorating splendor of the Pertak foothills, I had felt a profound sense of homecoming. When in April 1992 I finally moved to the area, I found myself living in a “heavenly hologram” where magic and mystery ruled.

THE VERY FIRST NIGHT I took up residence as Ceremonial Guardian of Magick River the jungle came alive for me. I shall never forget the solemn grandeur of the trees and the invisible assembly of spirits that greeted me as I stood humbly before the timeless power of raw nature.

I heard no voices, no flesh-crawling siren calls. I saw no wraiths, no fairies; only the starry twinkling of festive fireflies. All I felt was a deep reverence for and spiritual kinship with the elven folk, and the elementals, and the animal devas I sensed all around me like a fragrant mist.

The Ceremonial Guardian's official residence in 1992

The next two years of my life were the most idyllic I can recall. And I'm sure the hundreds of people who day-tripped at Magick River or who stayed a week, or a month, or three (so many of whom have since become “family” to me) will happily attest to that. It was during those heady days that I met and befriended the Temuan from the village down the road. So when it came time to shift house, my first choice was Kampung Pertak.

Rasid washing dishes in the river
First I asked Rasid and Indah if they liked the idea. They seemed delighted and honored that I should be so keen to dwell among them. They said they would be happy to build me a hut as long as I paid them for their labor. But there was a snag. There was no one in the village with the authority to welcome me as a resident. Rasid explained that one would normally approach the batin for permission - but the previous one had died the year before and no one had taken over the job. “Perhaps you should get clearance from the District Officer,” he advised me.

The D.O. was fairly easygoing. When I explained my interest in setting up a sort of cultural exchange with the Orang Asli and indicated my desire to live close to them for a while, he shrugged and said he had no problem with that. But I ought to check with the Jabatan Orang Asli first. So I did. The JOA officer in charge of Ulu Selangor heard me out and then declared that he had no objection to my request. However, I would have to seek permission from the D.O.

“I just came from the D.O.'s office,” I said. “He told me he had no objections either.”

The long-suffering “Encik Lah” (not his real name) forced a sigh and stood up to conclude our interview. “Well, er... in that case... er... if you have already spoken with the D.O., then I think... er... it should be all right.” Then he added triumphantly, “But you will have to apply in writing.”

About three hours later I was back in his office with my official application in triplicate. My friend and musical collaborator, Rafique Rashid, had helped me draft and type the letter in impeccable Bahasa Birokrat (Bureaucratese).

“Encik Lah” took my letter and nonchalantly chucked it on his desk. I reminded him that one copy of the letter was for him to “chop” and return to me.

When I asked “Encik Lah” about the letter a few weeks later, all he could manage was: “Huh? What letter?” He rummaged in his files for several minutes before concluding that no such application ever existed. Since I appeared reluctant to leave the matter at that, he suddenly remembered that I was required to report to the Special Branch before moving in with the Orang Asli. I said: “Okay, so who do I talk to?” The police officer he mentioned was on long leave.

By now a firm decision had to be made. The rainy season was approaching and Rasid had asked if work could begin on my hut. His motorbike was undergoing a costly overhaul and he needed a cash advance. I waited another fortnight before making another attempt to speak to the police officer. Couldn't be reached. Tried “Encik Lah” again. Not in the office. Left message. No response. Gone to Shah Alam. A whole month passed without a word from either the Jabatan Orang Asli or the Special Branch. I knew the move was mine to make and nobody else's.

I told Rasid, Utat, Diap, Indah, and Minah that they could start gathering bertam leaves and weaving them for my roof. I had identified what I felt was an ideal spot for my new “official residence” as Ceremonial Guardian. After six months of delays caused by prolonged rains, damaged atap (roofing material), squandered funds and petty bickering among the workforce while I was away for a few weeks, the realization grew that I would have to personally be present at the site or the hut would never be completed.

Finally, after a burst of intense work by Rasid and Utat (the chief architect), my home sweet hut was ready for occupation. Standing nine feet above the ground (which effectively made it a two-story affair), “Jabba the High Hut” turned out to be the grandest looking private residence in the area - and I now had the rare distinction of living in the only thatch-roofed traditional Orang Asli structure in Pertak. Was I in danger of developing an “Aslier-than-thou” attitude?


ABOUT A MONTH after I had become a de facto member of the Orang Asli community in Pertak, Bidar Chik, the newly appointed batin, introduced himself to me at the wanton mee shop. After ascertaining that I was indeed the fellow who had just built a hut near Lubok Pusing (a popular swimming hole and picnic spot), Bidar dropped a bombshell: “Oh, by the way, Encik Lah wants to talk to you about your hut. I think he wants you to demolish it. You should go and see him tomorrow.”

I looked Bidar in the eye and said very diplomatically, “I definitely would have gone to see you first before building a hut in your village. But at the time you weren't the batin. In fact I was told there was no batin. That's why I went to see the D.O. instead. Now that I know who the batin is, I would be grateful for your belated permission to continue living in Pertak Village.” I pressed on: “If you as the batin do not approve of my staying on, I will respect your decision and move out. Your Encik Lah can't tell me what to do.”

Bidar looked mighty pleased to be addressed as batin. He quickly declared that he had no personal objections, but “Encik Lah” had instructed him to pass on this message.

“He has my postal address and my friend's phone number on the letter I left with him. And he's welcome to visit me at the hut anytime. Please tell him that.” Needless to say, “Encik Lah” never did get to meet “Jabba the High Hut.” Pity, really. It would have been appropriate to serve him a cup of teh susu (milky tea) - straight from the river - since he was the key facilitator of so many logging projects in Ulu Selangor’s Orang Asli reserves.

TO BIDAR I must have seemed more than just “a new kid on the block.” Indeed I must have been (and probably still am) a complete mystery to him. Every other “outsider” who bothered to drop in on the batin of Pertak Village was invariably there with yet another tempting business proposition. All I had to offer was a bit of goodwill, genuine interest, and some idle chatter.

I asked Bidar if he had any plans or problems that I might be able to help him implement or resolve. I really did want to be a good citizen of Pertak Village.

“We want to improve our living standard,” Bidar said matter-of-factly. “And for that we need material assistance in the form of tools, vehicles, hardware supplies. We've been waiting for electricity and a telephone line for nearly twenty years, but they keep saying the budget for that hasn't been approved.” Kampung Orang Asli Pertak is about 400 meters from the nearest power and phone lines.

In the 1950s an Asli township - in truth a concentration camp surrounded by barbed wire - was built on the edge of Kuala Kubu Bharu "to encourage them to integrate with their more urbanized compatriots." That was the official excuse. The real reason was to stop the Orang Asli from helping the remnants of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (led by Chin Peng) obtain food and other essentials. A few years later, after hundreds of trauma deaths, many Asli chose to return to the jungle, rebuilding their bamboo huts along the banks of clear mountain streams.

A special school was set up for the Asli - but after four decades, the number that can actually read and write is very small. I asked Bidar why this was so. “In the beginning the children are keen to learn. They put on their school uniforms and wait for the bus. But after a few months, or a few years at the most, they get fed up and drop out.”

I wondered if the teaching methods were custom-tailored to the needs of Orang Asli children. Perhaps they were unable to accept regimentation and external discipline, growing up free as birds as they do.

“So why did you stop going to school?” I asked Sembo, a bright and perky 13-year-old from Kampung Gerachi. She grimaced and gave me a graphic account of the difficulties she had encountered with the education system: “The other kids were fond of teasing those of us who were bused to school from distant villages. They would scribble in my exercise book when I wasn't looking and I used to get punished for that. Once the teacher tore a page off my book and stuffed it down my throat!”

It didn't take me very long to notice that a large number of Asli teenagers - some no older than Sembo - are forced by circumstances to stay home and look after younger siblings while both parents are out collecting bamboo or cutting grass with the bushcutter brigades. Asli literacy was hampered by a classic, vicious circle of poverty, exacerbated by inconveniences like not having any light to read by at night apart from kerosene pelita (wick lamps) that produced only a flickering glow. Very cozy, it's true, even romantic. But hardly conducive to reading and writing (unless one has pale green eyes).

None of the Asli homes I visited had any books. Perhaps a few crumpled pages from last week's newspapers, salvaged from the shopping. Was it really all that important for the Orang Asli to acquire literacy, I asked myself. Most people in the cities are literate - and yet the quality of their lives isn't significantly better. More comfortable, perhaps. My Asli hut with its springy bamboo floor and well-ventilated bamboo walls was to me the height of comfort - but definitely not designed for a middle-class lifestyle.

The big difference between my “lifestyle” and that of the Orang Asli was simply that my interest in books and my ability to read gave me almost limitless access to many different levels of the mind. Was that such a great asset, I often wondered, or our greatest liability? If I knew less, would I be happier? And if I spent less time in abstract thought, might I not find myself living more in the here and now?

This seemed to hold true for the Orang Asli. Even with only crackers and sweet black tea for dinner, they could enjoy a good hearty laugh among themselves. And when they struck paydirt - for example, after a bumper durian harvest or when someone caught a wild boar and roasted it on the spot with a sprinkling of salt - their life was closer to heaven than any urbanite could experience. Apparently, the secret ingredient in the Orang Asli recipe for good living was a childlike innocence that even the elderly retained. For the most part, anyhow.


WHENEVER LOGGERS muscle in on the Asli homeground, some of the Guardians' “guardians” make a fortune in unofficial commissions. All they have to do is appoint headmen they can remake in their own image. I watched with a heavy heart as this happened to Bidar Chik.

Ours was an ambiguous relationship, to say the least. He resented the fact that most of his anak buah (kinfolk under his “fatherly protection”) regarded him as bodoh (stupid) and came to me with little problems instead of him. (Perhaps they liked the way I served milky tea with my “post-Mowglian” metaphysics - but more likely they were fed up with the new batin's habit of threatening all and sundry with on-the-spot fines for their “transgressions,” mostly imaginary.)

Bidar certainly wasn't bodoh. Far from it. A bit demented, perhaps. But in view of the untimely death of his teenaged daughter (in a gruesome love triangle murder) the year before his appointment as batin; and the fact that his only son Bidin had grown into a sullen, uncommunicative, and friendless social misfit (people said Bidin was possessed by spirits) - it was difficult not to feel a measure of compassion for the man.


So it didn't surprise me to learn that Bidar no longer believed the land was sacred. He could see no real future for the Orang Asli and therefore became blind to his tribe's past. When he got involved in a scam to log the slopes of Bukit Kutu, I made an attempt to remind him that the future well-being of Kampung Pertak was in his hands. Bidar replied like a true pragmatist: “If I don't take this opportunity to make some money, others will. Why let the Malays and Chinese hog all the logs? Better the Orang Asli themselves get a share of the loot. After all, the way things are going, I believe the world is about to end. So why worry about a small patch of jungle?”

After a while I gave up trying to reason with Bidar. With his share of the logging profits he purchased a spanking new Honda motorbike, keeping the rest in the bank “against the day electricity is installed and we can buy all kinds of appliances.”

His younger brother Sem was very different. It was well known that the sibling rivalry between them had often led to fisticuffs, especially when both had had one drink too many. Sem had no qualms about putting his name to a police report we lodged against his brother's logging company. Nothing came out of it. The police interviewed Sem who said Bidar had breached tribal adat (customary law) by “cheating” his own people. On paper, it appeared that Bidar's sole proprietorship, “K.O.A. Enterprise,” was legitimate, and that his application for a logging permit was more or less in order.

Lawyers informed us that under existing Malaysian law, there was really no way we could win a case against the loggers. The crux of the problem, again, was that the area wasn't officially an Orang Asli reserve; and that even if it was, the headman had the right to “develop” it in any way he saw fit. The question of popular consensus did not arise. Participatory democracy had yet to arrive in these parts, and Kampung Pertak was a perfect microcosm of the entire country.

“Everybody thinks we're stupid,” Sem told me with a craggy grin. “We're not fools, maybe not so aggressive. That's the problem.”


It's true. I've yet to see an Asli parent inflict grievous corporal punishment on a child. Asli kids tend to be all over the place, laughing and joking with the adults, eavesdropping on serious council sessions. Do they stand a chance in the face of the competitiveness and ambition and rapacity that urban economies breed?

Sem said, with a trace of deep hurt in his voice, “Those who scorn and exploit us now will later be brought low. We believe that if the Orang Asli are wiped out, that's the end of the whole world. That's what our ancestors said.”

He could be right. The aboriginal peoples of the planet represent the roots of humanity - the point of deepest contact with the nourishing spirit of the Earth. The younger and more venturesome races - the ones that sailed forth to discover, trade with, and colonize distant lands - represent the branches and leaves. The planetary citizen is the flowering of the human family.

But will we bear the fruit of the Divine Child? The Earth-Star Child whose home is the entire Cosmos? Can the Tree of Life continue growing if its roots wither from neglect and forgetfulness? Must nature's amazing diversity give way to systematic homogenization in the name of Economic Growth? Surely the human imagination can come up with a workable, alternative scenario of “development” that integrates the best of both worlds? This is what spurred my decision to quit the big city and “live close to the land” for a while.


APART FROM finding myself in much more congenial surroundings, I've been through an unsettling spectrum of internal shifts. Initially I was prone to fly off the handle whenever I saw a styrofoam lunchbox or plastic bag in the jungle. I took on the role of eco-policeman, admonishing picnickers about the mess they were leaving and getting terribly worked up at the sight of graffiti. Soon I was an unpaid garbage collector, never venturing into the jungle without emerging with a bag full of litter.

After a while I realized that my getting pissed off with Malaysian “pig-knickers” and “the whole goddamned junk-consuming-junk-producing human race” wasn't really helping the environment at all. Truth is, the Orang Asli themselves are compulsive litterbugs. Their only excuse is that for hundreds of generations, the stuff they chucked on the ground was 100% organic. I regularly found myself sermonizing to them: “Things made by Tuhan (God or Nature) aren't filthy, you can throw them in the river. But things made by the Towkays (factory bosses) become rubbish, so be careful where you dispose of them.” Somewhat simplistic, I admit, but how else could I explain why I would conscientiously hold on to an empty plastic container till I found a garbage skip - while happily hurling rambutan skins and peanut shells into the river?

Another rude awakening: one day I mentioned to Utat the famous pig-hunter that I had spotted a pair of eagles nesting across the river. Utat's only response was, “Are you going to shoot them?”

“What?” I said, thinking I must have heard wrong. “In the first place I don't have a gun. And in the second place, why would anyone want to shoot an eagle?”

“They steal our chickens.”

Well, I don't know if Utat is partial to roast eagle. (When I asked if he would consider an eagle good eating, Utat shook his head: “Hardly any meat, and much too stringy.”) The Asli seem to feed on anything that moves and quite a few things that don't - like mildly putrid bamboo rat. Just as well, I suppose. I'd have monkeys breaking into my hut if the Asli hadn't hunted them all the way to Ulu Klang.

After Anoora and I were engaged, my family-to-be began offering me various delicacies they had trapped. I thought Diap's stewed python was delicious, though a little greasy; and afterwards it made me feel like coiling up and sleeping for a week. They kept the snake's semperu (gall bladder, hempedu in Malay) in a secret niche, waiting for it to dry before soaking it in drinking alcohol. Utat and Rasid assured me that I wouldn't be disappointed with the result. Alas, the precious morsel was spirited away by a household rodent before I could savor its promised delights. I also found the braised jawak (monitor lizard) fairly tasty, though a little too chewy for someone with limited dental equipment. Once I arrived too late to sample Indah's famous landak (porcupine) curry; and at my wedding feast, I pleaded over-excitement to explain why I only tasted a few atoms of the grilled pantim (leaf monkey).


IT HAS TAKEN ME an enormous conscious effort to mitigate my visceral dislike of industrial loggers and fast-buck “devilopers” - and the cynical power elite that fattens itself off their cannibalistic dark rites. So what if “Conquer, Penetrate, and Dominate” is their credo? So what if they are eco-rapists? They're only acting out a millennia-old scenario of anthropocentric self-interest, sanctioned by priesthoods created by the ancient colonizing “gods.” Their only real crime is that they have access to heavier-duty machinery than our grandfathers.

And since most concessions are granted for only three to six months, their eagerness to maximize profits leads to reckless, wholesale destruction of huge tracts of irreplaceable rainforest. (What I find even more disturbing, however, is that many, if not all, loggers are so used to offering “special incentives” to human officials to obtain their concessions and permits, they tend to do the same with the much-feared datuks or spirits of the trees.


In lieu of cash the loggers offer bribes of white chickens' or black goats' blood, which corrupts the elemental kingdom and results in many hapless humans being taken over by drunken and dispossessed datuks on the rampage. I doubt if any study has been done on the psychic after-effects of logging - but I personally am convinced that the physical carnage is invariably accompanied by years, even decades, of negative metaphysical fall-out manifesting as psychological and physiological diseases. The Revenge of the Jungle Spirits, as Utat would call it.)

Transmute that righteous rage into positive action, I kept telling myself for three months, even as I was being rudely awoken every morning (including Sundays) punctually at seven-thirty by the diabolical racket of revving bulldozer engines and the heart-stopping thump-kerumph-whump of logs being stacked up by the mechanical payloader. I confess that the compulsion to sabotage the loggers' machinery was almost too strong to resist. Friends who came to visit - and were greeted by the sight of freshly cut trees piled up like corpses in the loggers' yard near my hut - broke into tears or began to rant and rave. But anger doesn't resolve anything except itself. Indeed it can only divide the world further into Cowboys and Indians, Good Guys and Bad Guys, White Hats and Black Hats. And as far as I was concerned, that sort of dualistic stuff was Old Hat.

(Occasionally, while waiting for their lorries to be loaded with logs destined for the sawmills, a few drivers would wander up the footpath to my hut. I made a point of serving them tea, and most of them seemed at pains to convince me that they disliked helping to destroy the rainforest. “I've been driving log lorries for fifteen years and I have five kids to feed. Tell me, what else can I do?” One driver from Kerling was so keen to demonstrate goodwill he insisted on buying a copy of my book of poems in English - a language he couldn't read. “It's for my wife,” he explained. “She's a school-teacher and enjoys reading English books.”)

It dawned on me that most urbanites have been conditioned to fear nature in the raw. Orang Asli kids seem pretty spooked by the jungle after dusk, but for different reasons. Town-dwellers are fundamentally afraid of snakes, scorpions, mosquitoes, centipedes, and tigers (yes, Virginia, there a few still ranging the foothills of Ulu Selangor and Pahang). Forest-dwellers are more afraid of the bi'hiang - the unseen: hantu (ghosts, spirits, vampires), halus (elves), bunian (fairies), and the penunggu (guardian spirits) of certain power-spots, reputed to manifest as 60-foot tall specters when antagonized.

But their fears aren't paralyzing ones. Many of the older Asli still feel the periodic need to go on solo jungle walkabouts. Sometimes they return spouting gibberish and have to be ritually exorcized by the village dukun (medicine man). Most aboriginal peoples seem to be genetically predisposed to slipping in and out of Dreamtime (the Astral Plane or Fourth Dimension) - but that's probably because their reluctance to deal with written language frees them from the left-brain dominance the rest of us have to unlearn, if we want to fully comprehend the nature of our being.

Me? I'm afraid of fire ants. And the buzzillion other virulent varieties of biting bugs - some microscopic to the point of invisibility - that sometimes make me wish I was back in the permanent poison fog of the Klang Valley. But as I feel that chemical sprays are far more repugnant than insect bites, I've had to devise non-polluting ways of discouraging ants from building highways across my living space. Hot water and flaming newspapers seem to have done the trick. Nothing like a bit of fiery journalism to flush out the creepy-crawlies.

(My geomancer friend and star-sister Soluntra King once suggested I deal with the problem in a more enlightened manner, by reasoning with the devas of the “offending” insect or animal species. In other words, by striking a deal or coming to a special understanding with the gang leaders. Well, this approach appears to have worked with a few varieties of ants, especially the kerengga (weaver ants). The wasps rarely sting except when inadvertently sat upon. However, I've given up trying to be diplomatic with the ruffian rats of Taman Tikus (Rodent Park) who are my immediate neighbors!)

But there's another way of looking at it: perhaps Nature has produced these “irritants” in response to the irritation she must feel when humans burrow and blast and befoul the Earth with their unheeding busyness. Perhaps, as the sages of today would say, the external world is really a hologram projection of our inner states. Or, as the Dalai Lama says: “To live in a peaceful world, you need a peaceful mind.”


BEHIND MY HUT is a series of hills that bear the scars of human intrusion. In the 1900s businessmen logged the area (they used buffaloes to haul the logs in those days) and then proceeded to dynamite a 3-mile-long tunnel through the mountains, ostensibly to mine for tungsten (though I suspect they were after silver or gold). Huge landslips put paid to the mining operations, with tremendous loss of human life. Some say 300 died in the great tunnel collapse of 1907 - which the Temuan of course attribute to the wrath of the Penunggu of Bukit Suir, former residence of the langsuir or jungle sirens of Pertak.

In 1990, when Bidar Chik's father was batin of Kampung Pertak, loggers brought in bulldozers to finish off the surrounding hills. Today the terrain is one enormous scab - laterite baked to a crumbly black crust where only ferns and hardy scrub will grow. True, a scattering of young trees is starting to green out the view, but it could take another thirty years for these poor hills to regain the look of majestic jungle-clad mountains. And probably another three hundred before the magical vitality of the area is fully restored.

A most distressing sight is the proliferation of mud gullies - some nearly 60 feet deep - the result of rainwater rushing down old logging trails and washing tons of red earth into the rivers, which ultimately end up flooding the low-lying districts. So a few chaps get to be instant millionaires and Tan Sris (an honorific title equivalent to knighthood) - but who picks up the tab at the end of the ecocidal debauch? It's one thing to read about the deleterious effects of deforestation. Quite another to feel the desolation and ruin of a once-verdant ridge after humans have violated it.

Some evenings before dusk, I would climb the nearest scabby peak to bask in a panorama of ethereal beauty and serenity. The hill I usually stand upon and the ones adjacent are sad and wounded - but the faraway peaks still look pristine, at least from a distance. Ironic that such a vision of eternal promise can only be enjoyed from the vantage point of grim destruction - for if the brutal logging hadn't denuded the spot, I wouldn't be getting this 360-degree overview of heavenly perfection. Somehow I know that my being there, and feeling moved by the indestructible grandeur of it all, and sending the spirit of the place total love, must have a healing effect.

More and more I've become aware how painful and savage the history of this planet has been. It's reflected in our own lives. How many of us have escaped unscathed by the negative imprints of our parents - and their parents' parents in a sequence of trauma that can be traced all the way back to Adam? Expulsion from the Garden... The so-called Fall... Hurt and humiliation... Rejection...The Extermination Program... Revenge! We shall annihilate God's bloody Garden and replace it with one of our own making: 100% synthetic, air-conditioned, designer-landscaped at budget-boggling expense. And this time... NO SNAKES!


And no one can ever expel us from it - because we hold the title deeds. (Our lawyers have been working on it since Hammurabi established the Legal Code.) Show me your Secret Handshake, Boys. Long live the Plutocracy of Patriarchal Panjandrums!

The longer I live out here in the Wilderness, the more clearly I can see where my Shadow Self has been hiding. Fame and Fortune. Power and Prestige. Don't worry, we have everything under control. The land has been assessed, the property valuated, and soon it will be converted into Real Estate...

ONE SUNNY DAY beneath a clear blue sky, I sat on a rock, feet immersed in the fast-flowing, healing waters of my favorite river. (A rock of some distinction, I might add: a veritable Throne of Stone I had fondly named Le Fauteuil du Diable or Armchair of the Devil, after an obscure landmark in the south of France.) I was particularly receptive that afternoon, thanks to the lovely cup of black tea I had just imbibed. For the record, it was Boh tea - laced with the juice of freshly-picked sacred mushrooms (ritually used by shamans as a catalyst to enhanced awareness).

Soon I could feel my ego membrane dilate and my perceptual range ballooning out to include everything around me. I was now an integral part of the scene, a protean/protein extension of the Devil's Armchair. Indeed, I was the embodiment of the nature deity some call Pan. I became acutely aware of the ferns on the opposite bank of the river. It was like sitting in the center of a natural amphitheater. I nodded in acknowledgement of the ferns, and a gentle breeze rippled through them, making them wave courteously back in greeting.

We began to converse telepathically... and suddenly it wasn't just the ferns that were present. I found myself plugged into Nature's own Etheric Web and participating in a symposium conducted with multiple-channel, multi-dimensional, interactive hook-ups. The experience was sublimely insightful and uplifting, though very difficult to report in logical, linear terms. Let's say it is delightfully liberating not to be trapped in one's “skin-encapsulated ego” (as Alan Watts, my favorite rascal philosopher, once put it).


“Individuality” was the key issue. Neither ferns, nor rocks, nor fish, nor birds, nor worms, nor the wind and water dancing ceaselessly in rainbow spirals through cycles large and small, had any notion of being separate, discretely defined individuals. Only humans were blessed, or cursed, with this strange condition called Me-hood.

As such, we are perceived by Nature as an Ecosystemic Virus. But what exactly is a “virus”? A crystallized thought-form: a restructuring agent with the power to mutate and transmute and permute - in creative as well as destructive modes. Anabolic, catabolic... and now, with access to the 64 codons of the Genetic Code, we could wipe out eons of cellular memory with a mere toss of yarrow stalks, or the click of a mouse, or the flick of a balance sheet...

“No way!” the goddess Gaia spoke, her voice a gentle breeze on my goosebumpy skin. “I need you to plant the kiss of True Love on my lips, to wake me from my evolutionary slumber. You are the reflection of my spirit, the mirror of my beauty. I need you around to admire and adore me, and help me ascend to true Stardom.”

“Me?” I momentarily transformed myself into Robert De Niro (a pretty remarkable shapeshifter himself). “You talking to me?”

“Not you as a manufactured personality, silly. I mean YOU as a species. You, Human, are the completion of my neural circuitry, the quintessence of all kingdoms - mineral, vegetable, animal, angelic, and demonic. When wholly human, you are godlike.”

So what is God like?


IT DOESN’T REQUIRE very much. All we need to do is change our perspective, unify our polarities, shift our paradigms, reverse our priorities.

The untidy bits of plastic and styrofoam and rusty metal we can clear up and recycle in a jiffy. No problem.

Noxious gases and toxic wastes are a measure of the ethical and aesthetical inadequacies of those who produce them. Treatment is available for anyone who seeks it - and it's quite painless. Confidentiality assured. JUST TURN IN YOUR ARMAMENTS AT THE DOOR. No one will be punished.

And we'll introduce you to a bacterium that will devour all the pollutants and die of bliss. Or a new breed of super-yogis and wizards who can stuff industrial gunk in their corncobs and transmute it into multi-colored smoke-rings of divine incense (all the while cracking lewd leprechaun jokes).

Trees we may respectfully remove from the forests according to need (and our need will dramatically decrease when we discover that quality paper products can be obtained from swift-growing species of hemp and other fibrous weeds) - but we shall have to use heavy-duty tweezers, not bulldozers.

And the extraction of non-renewable resources will have to be supervised by independently funded ecoscientists - not the chief minister's sister-in-law (unless, of course, she happens to be a true-blue Greenie).

And the Orang Asli will let us introduce them to the joys of reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic - if we open our hearts to their spontaneous songs of freedom, and their genetic memory of Heaven on Earth... not in the Hereafter.

[Originally published in The SUN Megazine, 28 October 1994; expanded draft published in Men’s Review, April 1996. First posted 4 January 2016, reposted 21 October 2019 & 22 May 2022] 



Sunday, February 9, 2025

Bruce Lipton on The Power of Consciousness (reprise)



Bruce Lipton is a classic example of a scientist with keen mystical intuition. Takes somebody like Bruce to make genuinely significant breakthroughs that combine genetic research with fresh insights into how consciousness evolves.

I've previously published a Skype interview conducted by Lilou Mace - but what Bruce Lipton has to say is so powerful it can radically shift our paradigms within the 50 minutes it takes to hear him out - so it's certainly worthwhile sharing this one with you too.

Make sure you're completely relaxed and have 50 minutes to spare before viewing!

[First posted 10 February 2012]

Saturday, February 8, 2025

"Malaysians are cultural & spiritual babies." (reprise)


Gerald Lopez, who was most helpful to me when I first began to explore the mysteries of the Internet back in early 1998 - and who subsequently got me started as a compulsive disseminator of information - migrated to New Zealand in 1999 with his beautiful wife Mei Lin Wong. For a while Gerald struggled to establish himself as a photographer and eventually became vice-president of the professional photographers’ association, AIPA. In 2001 their son Joshua arrived. The photo above dates back to Joshua's third week on Planet Earth. About five years ago Gerald Lopez became an Ayurvedic healer and yoga instructor and subsequently opened his own Science of Life therapy center. We continue to keep in touch and only today I discovered a pithy comment Gerald had left on a blogpost dated 12 October 2008 - 51 Ideas for a Better Malaysia. I feel what Gerald has to say - from the perspective of a migrant who really loved his homeland but could no longer tolerate our culturally and spiritually retarded leadership - ought to be shared with more people, so I've taken the liberty of turning it into a blogpost in its own right. Hope you don't mind, Gerald! 😎

GERALD'S COMMENT (December 20, 2008 5:25:00 AM MYT):

Nice one Antares, in your usual crystal-clear style!

As a voluntary exile from the land fictitiously called Malaysia (I still chuckle when the ad voice-overs go malay-see-yer), I have a few points to add.

Becoming better possibly means making cultural and spiritual progress towards a happy and truly harmonious society.

Cultural progress occurs when there is a deep sense of where we come from - our roots - and a cultivated spirit of creativity.

Mahathir and his gang made sure that the people were firmly disconnected from their roots by denying our history.

Shame was poured on the hindu and shamanistic culture that fed the Malay psyche. I remember in my childhood going to weekly puppet shows in the villages, firmly based on the Ramayana legends. Now this is banned by the religious folks who think they can decide for other adults.

Shame was poured on the British colonial past, as street names were rabidly changed to impossibly long ones of obscure Malay personalities.

The Disneyland culture that we now see, bears little relation to our cultural roots.

Creativity is one of the least cultivated qualities in the Malaysian education system. This comes from the fear of being different, of being wrong. Asking questions is tantamount to challenging "authority."

This lack of confidence in our creativity, has led to a culture of imitation - imitation music, imitation art, imitation fashion. I remember the number of guitarists who could do perfect renditions of "Hotel California" solos - but where is our soul music?

This in turn leads to a society of consumers - not creators. And the 21st century economy is about creation - of ideas, of technology, of paradigm shifts. Are you in a position to be part of this?

Spiritual progress is a necessary part of sustainable evolution (i.e. becoming "better"). Paradoxically, material progress grounded in materialism is like building castles of sand - and this is where Malaysia has been heading over the last >40 years, under the "leadership" of materialistic goons.

Spiritual progress means ongoing and increasing awareness of the more subtle aspects of our existence. It is not about the motions of praying so many times a day.

As our consciousness becomes more subtle, we realise how interconnected we really are. We realise that causing division and discrimination is the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the foot. All these religious folks who call for racial division in order to "protect" the purity of their kind, are spiritual fakes and hypocrites.

For society to be sustainable and become better, it has to be founded on honesty and truth. Your "leaders" and "elders" have truly let the people down in this regard. Where they could have cultivated a culture of trust and fairness, they have led the way in cultivating distrust, fear and criminality.

Thus, you stand now as you did 50 years ago - cultural and spiritual babies, wondering how to become "better".

Whenever I read snippets of news, I still shake my head in wonder. Good luck to you.

Best wishes,
Gerald

Gerald's calling card:
Gerald Lopez
Science of Life
LLB, Dip.Ayurvedic Medicine
Ayurveda & Yoga consultation
Ayurvedic massage & therapies
Retreats & workshops

President - The New Zealand Ayurvedic Association
Chairman - Natural Health Council (NZ) Inc

[First posted 20 December 2008. Reposted 15 February 2020]