Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Prophesying NY and the Iran Israel Apocalypse

In July 2001 a friend I met in Jerusalem came to visit me to take the sacramental vigils with his partner, who is an Arab Israeli. We took the sacraments in a peninsula overlooking the islands of the gulf and later in the crater of a volcano.

After they left, I began to sing a radical song, The Song of the Biosphere, which somehow came out of our vigils together, turning the tables of Jihad from Holy religious War, which I abhor, to the rape of the planet and George Bush's refusal to act as a good steward, in terms of global warming and its impact on biodiversity. It is also produced as a YouTube video Jihad Song of the Biosphere.

You tell us tales of Hollywood,
of Star-wars and the common good
you told us global warming was a litany of lies
factory chimneys were the prize
you claim all living creatures are your intellectual property
you fail to ratify every treaty which doesn't give you more
have I heard this all before?
when it comes to the final struggle, jihad of the biosphere
there's only one true rogue nation, the great American shaitan
big brother, you are Uncle Sam.

At the same time it was the Gnostic awakening, in the midst of genocide, in the persona of an Icarus calling us to cross the Styx, but the words had instantaneously come true in manifest physical terms in the planes passing through the trembling towers, reflected also in the mentality of the act of violent martyrdom:



can we touch the sky?
can we fly so high
we'll pass right to the other side
and never fall in flames?
will we ever be the same again?

we'll become the living soul
the primal source the shining goal
the beginning and the end of life
the happiness and the pain
can we bear it all again?

The song was produced the same month and I posted an e-mail of the lyrics on 20th July 2001 where it still lies.

On 9-11, I sat watching live BBC coverage, when the two planes, one by one, flew into the trembling towers. Suddenly the words were becoming real, line by line, as the second 747 passed ‘right to the other side of the tower’, only to hideously ‘fall in flames’ piloted by Islamic martyrs believing they were becoming ‘living souls’ meeting the face of al-Llah. Individual lines began popping out of the TV set as the night wore on - the photographer’s “nothing will ever be the same again” as he looked up to see the plane hit directly above and Giuliani’s ”this will be more than we can bear”.


‘nothing will never be the same’ and ‘more than we can bear’


It was as if I had mythopoetically declared Holy War and it had come to pass through another agency, in a way I had never intended. The aftermath became an echo of other verses, the wreckage-filled smouldering canyons of downtown Manhattan, in words unknowingly addressed to Bin Laden:

if you take them away,
how can we find what we came for?
what can you say,
when it's all our future lives that you play for?
walking in the twilight,
down in the valley of shadows
when will you comprehend
the damage you have wrought ... in your indiscretion?
can we undo the death trance you have set in motion?

And the recovery process ...

will you discover
the fabric of love that ignites us?
can we embrace
the ocean of life that unites us?
all our lives long
this journey has been our destination
if we get this one wrong
will there be any chance for restoration?

Nevertheless the song was not a declaration of jihad, but rather the final struggle of biodiversity facing impending mass extinction which I had quite correctly drawn attention to in terms of the failure of the Bush administration to take a position of good guardianship of the biosphere in the name of capital gain, intellectual property rights, and the oil economy.

Having pronounced the jihad song of the biosphere and found it come to pass through another agency led to me singing the Song of Sakina, lamenting the repression of women under the Taleban and in Islam, as a penance for the whole concept of jihad as unholy violence and sharia applied to women. Again this was produced as the Sakina Lament YouTube video.

Sakina Lament

Oh al-Llah, did the prophet blaspheme you?
Why have they taken your name in oppression?
Are Ninety-nine names of a god of destruction
the merciful, compassionate All?

New York, New York, why did your sky fall?
Osama bin Laden is this inspiration
to bring a destruction, not on the guilty
but family, children and all?

Did you not understand that for life to abide
the love flower to blossom, the life tree to flourish
we all need healing, to feed all the hungry,
and not flaming genocide?

We know that the capital machine is corruption,
that the winners take all and the losers are trodden on.,
that this is not a true way of compassion,
not wholly civilized.

We know green pastures are crumbling to desert,
the waters of life and the tree are neglected,
that justice is blind in the power of the dollar,
as the towers of investment grow higher.

We know we can all become a great Satan,
embracing violence, instead of compassion,
when we think we are right, have God on our side
and set out to rule the whole world.

Do you
imagine that imposing Shariat
would make the world naturally compassionate?
Why can't you see that imposing on anyone
is contrary to divine law?

Why
behead the Jews of Medina
when all that they did was to argue and bicker?
How can you claim Jerusalem is Holy
when the daughters of Sarah are defiled?

When the
peace of Sakina spoke at Hudaybiyah
she uttered to heal - to make the world holy
she sang as Shekhinah - from the canvas of Sarah
so we could at last become whole.

Muhammad,
why did you then murder Sarah
on the first fateful day that you came into Mecca?
Why did you not heed the song of Sakina
the singers tongues cut from their mouths?

Oh Islam,
why crucify al Hallaj
just for declaring the truth - "ana al Haqq"?
Why can't you see there is no final prophet
in a living regenerating world?

Why did you make all your women wear burqah
just to
conceal the prophets many lovers?
Why is a woman
only half of the value
of man, possession or
beast?

Why can't you trust men to set eyes on women?
Why can't you allow all mothers and daughters
to make their own minds up quite freely
in the
unveiling the Quran prophesied?

Why was it
stated by al Bukhari
that the prophet Muhammad at one time lamented
that the world would never become complete
till the women of Daws wiggled free?

Why did you
curse al-Llah's triple daughters,
al-Uzza, Manat and and al-Lat first and foremost
from times long ago in the deserts of Sinai
the divine and wisdom, together forever?

Why did you
have to leave for Medina,
Why did Khadja expire from her hunger?
Why did you think that the angel Gabriel
would speak to you with
Satan's forked tongue?

Why did you put a death curse on freedom
why can't each person choose what they believe in?
Why threaten every believer with death
if they also love Mary, or Elizabeth?

Why do you not drink the
waters of Hagar
out of whose spring sprung the palm trees together,
why do you not feel the
pain of Aisha?
and the love of Fatimah?

When is the time come to light up the candles
of peace in Sakina of plenty together
so that all the world's paths can finally gather
whole in the gentleness of peace?

The time has now come for the flight of the dove
to bring back the olive, to unchain the grove,
to throw all the gates of mercy wide open
so that the world can be one.

The time has now come for us all to replenish
and cherish the Earth's generations forever
in the warmth of the heart that can never be broken
in the light of the love that is life.

My last evening’s sacramental vision gravitated towards the nuclear apocalypse of Iran and Israel. Isn’t it on everybody’s mind? But I’m worried that this is a case of fatal attraction, as a moth to the candle flame. The US doesn’t want another Iraq, so even GWB can’t yet bring himself to bomb Iran, but the Israeli’s consider they may have to, because Iran has sworn to wipe Israel (or the Zionist Satan) off the face of the map (Earth), so the US is potentially passing Israel a poisoned chalice through the dilemma of its own making in Iraq.

Even pragmatic Rafsanjani said in 2001:

'the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything.' On the other hand, if Israel responded with its own nuclear weapons, it 'will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.'

Now this is all tied up with the end-of-days. Iran’s current president Ahmadinejad made reference to the Mahdi in his first speech to the U.N., and both he and members of his group saw him bathed in a ‘green light of protection’:

"Oh mighty lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace."

As we also know he has denied the holocaust, said Europe or America should make a homeland for the Jews if they caused this 'crime', and said in so many words that Israel should be wiped off the map, claimed the Zionist state is a rotten tree, whose branches will fall, and declared that the countdown button to its destruction has been pressed.

The appearance of the Mahdi is intimately associated with the ‘second coming’. Jesus is supposed to reappear as a living man who becomes a Muslim convert at the Mahdi’s behest and leads the Christians to worship alongside the Mahdi in Mecca, thus giving Islam its final domination over the world in the end of days.

The Hebrew concept of the mashiach is also a human male whose illumination gives rise to an epoch of long-term future goodness. Jesus pushed the messianic persona into the apocalyptic dimension, of end-of-days conflict and has been turned into a Melkarth. We know Jesus will never return on a cloud in the living biophysical universe, so the Christian hope of a non-human messiah is doomed. However the Mahdi could emerge, because, in the Islamic tradition he is a human. Ahmadinejad considers himself the herald of this man. Moqtada Sadr called his own following the Mehdi Army. It’s only a matter of time before a charismatic ayatollah assumes the mantle.

It’s not just the nuclear issue in Iran that is at stake, but giving the world back its fecundity and fertility in relationship to paradise. Islam is the youngest and most adolescent of the paths of the book. It poses a significant risk of oppression and domination, not just to women, but to the world, because it has not evolved beyond the confines of its own sixth century tribal origins and clings to a monolithic idea of Quran, Sharia and Islamic state in diving the world between the domains of submission (Islam) and war, Dar al-Harb, in violation of the peace principle of Sakina or the Shekhinah - the feminine face of divinity - which Muhammad referred to in brokering the peace treaty of Hudaybiyah which was subsequently abrogated when he chose to march on Mecca.

American capitalist domination, aggression and nuclear trigger-happiness is also a very major threat to the planet, which is partly attributable to the Christian apocalyptic mentality and preparedness to invoke ultimate ascendance or a ‘rapture’ in one form or another, combined with an attitude of dominion over nature, common to the desert faiths. This end-game also needs to be tamed and healed, although it probably means the nemesis, or even demise, of Christianity as we know it.

In response to the prospect of this overall high noon, which we all want to avoid in favour of an apocalypse which is the unveiling of a bridal reunion, I have sung the Mahdi Refrain and produced it as a YouTube video Apocalypse Iran Israel. The lyrics use the words of Iran's Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad, Israel's Peres and my own response to this utopian apocalyptic dilemma, set to news footage of the corresponding international and news events.

The Mahdi Refrain

This said Ayatollah Rafsanjani
'the use of even one nuclear bomb
inside Israel will destroy everything.'
On the other hand, if Israel responded
with its own nuclear weapons,
it 'will only harm the Islamic world.
It is thus not at all irrational
to contemplate such an eventuality.'
This said president Amadinejad
"Oh mighty lord, I pray to you
to hasten the emergence of your last repository,
that perfect and pure human being,
the promised one that will fill this world with justice
the promised one that will fill the world with peace,"

My main mission is to "pave the path
for the glorious reappearance of Imam Mahdi,
may Allah hasten his reappearance."
On the last day I was speaking, one of our group told me
"When you said 'in the name of Allah,'
I saw a light coming and surrounding you
and protecting you to the end."
"he saw a green light come from around me,
and I was placed inside this aura,"
"I felt myself the atmosphere changing,
The UN were looking as if a hand was holding them,
and they had just opened their eyes
Halleleuyah Alhamdulillah!"
All praise belongs to al-Llah,

"The establishment of the Zionist regime
was a move by the world oppressor
against the Islamic world,"
"There is no doubt that the new wave [of attacks]
will wipe off this stigma from the face of the world."
As the imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."
"Anybody who recognizes Israel
will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury,"
"They have created a myth in the name of the Holocaust
and consider it to be above God,
above religion and the prophets."
“The near future will be in the hands of Islam”,
"The Zionist regime is a dying tree,
and soon its branches will be broken down."

"We believe that Iran is trying to buy time …
so it can develop a nuclear bomb,"
"Iran is a clear and present danger."
A nightmare for the international community
This is "tantamount to a crime against humanity".
"Iran presents a danger to everyone"
and it can also be wiped off the map."
"The combination of fanatical ideology,
a warped sense of reality and nuclear weapons
is a combination that no one can accept,"
"Ahmadinejad represents Satan, not God,"
"History knew how to denounce madmen
those who wave their sword and acted this way
ended their careers accordingly,"

If they have a little bit of a brain,
they would not commit such a mistake,"
Iran is a powerful country."
"If you committed this big crime,
then give a part of your own land in Europe,
the United States, Canada or Alaska to them,
so that the Jews can establish their country,"
"If your civilization consists of aggression,
making oppressed people homeless,
suffocating the voices of justice
we say that we hate your hollow civilization,"
“History has shown that when Muslims become powerful,
they do not use their power to the detriment of others,
but use it in the service of peace and tranquility”

Islam has four times as many young men of fighting age
as the aging populations of the decadent crumbling West
the Imam's return will coincide with an apocalyptic battle
between the forces of evil and righteousness.
If the infidel loses its nuclear advantage,
it could be worn down in a war of attrition
at the end of which surrender to Islam
would appear the least bad of options.
And that could be a signal for the Imam to appear.
"If Jesus were present in the world today,
who would be facing him and who would be following him?"
God willing, Jesus would return to the world
along with Islam's holy prophet, Imam Mahdi,
and wipe away every tinge of oppression,
pain and agony from the face of the world,"

They say the Mahdi will teach Jesus to pray in Mecca
They claim the Mahdi will take Jesus to the Ka’aba,
"I emphatically declare today's world, more than ever,
longs for just and righteous folk with love for all humanity;
and above all longs for the perfect human being
the real true savior who has been promised to all peoples
who will establish justice, peace and brotherhood
across the planet, far and wide"
"Oh, Almighty God, all men and women are your creatures
and you have ordained their guidance and salvation.
Bestow upon a humanity that thirsts for justice,
the perfect human being promised to all by you,
and make us among his followers
and among those who strive for his return and his cause."

"The arrogant superpowers and the Zionist regime
invested all their efforts but their pride has been trampled
"With God's help now, the countdown button
for the destruction of the Zionist regime
has been pushed by the hands of the children
of Lebanon and Palestine, ...
By God's will, we will witness
the destruction of this regime in the near future".
"This is a fake regime ... it won't be able to survive.
those who created it can take it away themselves.
They should not let things reach the point of explosion
If an explosion occurs across international boundaries
It will also burn all those who created [Israel]
over the past sixty years".

A statement repeated three times is never an accident
"They want to wipe out Israel ... Now when it comes to destruction,
Iran too can be destroyed
[but] I don't suggest to say an eye for an eye,"

"Israel would defend itself under any condition
but Iran is a danger to the world, not just to us."
"Under the UN Charter, all members have undertaken
to refrain from the threat or use of force
against the territorial integrity
or political independence of any state."
"We can prevent all of this threat,
without resorting to weapons of mass destruction
if there will be unity," But If the crucial moment comes
and they are incapable ...then they endanger their existence

If you want me to come and pray with you at the Ka’aba
Then first renounce the archaic tribal law of Sharia
Invite every one of us to come in the name of our own religion
And terminate the scorched Earth theology of submission.
There will never be harmony until we can live in freedom
From domination and violence, in the name of utopian vision.
Cease the atrocities of martyrdom and the slaughter of the innocents
And live your days in merciful and compassionate coexistence
The apocalypse is the unveiling of matrimonial reunion
in which men forsake their violence and learn to live with women.
Stop the the death fatwas, and stoning women for adultery
and trust them in their sovereignty and love them in their liberty
For this is the way the generations of Earth will survive in splendour
And bring to men the ecstasy that paradise hungers after.


Tags:
, , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Sexual Paradox and Patrarchal Dominion

From the introduction to Christine's and my comprehensive work:
Sexual Paradox: Complementarity, Reproductive Conflict and Human Emergence

Sex and Paradox: Founding Aspects of a Complementary Reality


For all the trappings of civilized society, and our attempts to restrain and civilize it, sex remains forever the chaotic vital force, eclipsing our hearts and capturing our minds, winging on the airwaves in the throbbing beat of rock and roll, ensnaring all, in love's enticements and torments, from our founding creation myths, to our greatest dramatic performances. Its mountains of spice span the great divide between divine comedy and stark tragedy. It is sine qua non our universal, mortal, yet fertile condition, celebrated in the seclusion of bedrooms and boudoirs, in the back seats of drive-ins, in thatched huts, behind bushes, in the wilds of nature, and even under the lurid neon of red-light districts.

Although the sexual quest is seemingly a simple act of fertilization in a reproductive dance shared by even the simplest organisms, its consequences for our lives and culture are profound and inescapable. The term 'falling in love' epitomizes the devastating way the psychic power of sexual love lays subterranean claim to our hearts and minds, to our very sense of being, and to our life directions, in the twists of fate our relationships entwine us into. Lubricious sex is the animal force of 'defilement' that religion and conventional morality seek to tame, sometimes through dire punishments, from stoning to infibulation. It is both the ultimate transgression and our liberating fulfillment. Just as sex divides us, so it unites us in our moments of 'splendour in the grass', being both the source of mortality and our vital quest to the ultimate mysteries of existence, with promise of endless regeneration.

This work is not just about sex (p 105), orgasm (p 135), or sacred love (p 395), but the ultimate cosmic paradox, which is itself a sexual paradox. Just as sexuality is at the foundation of our continued biological existence, so sexual paradox is at the foundation of our existential condition. This emphasis on sexuality at the very root of cosmology might seem a contradiction in terms. Sexual reproduction (p 111) is a recent development in the evolution of higher organisms (p 100), themselves ephemeral and fragile in a universe of annihilating energies, whose origin is far more ancient and mysterious (p 63). Yet it is not just biological reproductive sexuality we are describing here, but cosmic complementarity. The cosmic condition manifests, from its source, as an implicitly sexual paradox - between subjective experience and objective reality, wave and particle, chaos and order, each dependent on the other for their existence, in a way which makes the 'other' both the ultimate genesis and nemesis of each, in the dance out of which climax diversity (p 104) emerges.

A paradox is "a statement, doctrine or expression seemingly absurd or contrary to common notions or to what would naturally be believed, but in fact really true". Thus paradox may be counter-intuitive, but is yet a root truth which remains integral to our condition. By contrast with paradox, a contradiction is to specifically 'speak against'. The contradiction often implied by paradox is implicitly sexually co-antagonistic in that it arises from a logical division between two conditions, true and false, each of which denies the other. But paradox can come in more subtle forms than contradiction. For example the wave and particle aspects of the quantum are not contrary, so much as interdependent. A quantum can manifest only as a wave, or a particle, but not both at the same time. However any attempt to mount a description based on one aspect implicitly involves the other.

Division is itself implicitly or potentially sexual, as expressed in the occurrence of sexuality among all 'dividing' life forms, from bacteria (p 106) to higher animals (p 107). Such 'sexual' division is not necessarily into two dyadic classes alone, even with reproductive sexuality. It may include many classes (p 112). In Eden we see it in Eve's cleaving from an 'androgynous' Adam and their ensuing 'concupiscence'.

It may even be simply the primal distinction from the unified 'background' in which the undivided whole - the uncarved block (p 410), or tohu vohu (p 81), as primordial feminine (L. primus- 'first' -ordiri 'begin a web') is partitioned by masculine 'distinction', in the primaeval division (L. primus- 'first' -aevum 'age') of existence, or manifestation. The very act of distinction leads to an endless regress into a plethora of sub-division. By contrast, the undivided whole remains a totipotent matrix for new form, possessing attributes of chaotic entanglement in so far as it resists, or complements, the intrusion of discriminating order:

I am a tree whose leaves are trees
you are the endless colours of the night
you forever dissolve me, I slice through you
endlessly dividing your eddies of eddies (King).

The core idea of sexual paradox is an extension of complexity theory to deal with the paradox that arises when a division occurs into two domains of order that can neither resolve their outcomes fully by cooperation, nor by conflict. Complexity theory suggests they will achieve optimal complexity in a state of instability in strategic paradox between the two regimes. This is a different form of complexity theory from 'edge of chaos' ideas but is very well established in evolutionary game theory and is manifest both in the prisoners' dilemma game matrix (p 13) and the cusp catastrophe (p 14), when neither conflict nor cooperation can be resolved determinately - hence the paradox.

We have two key ways of diverting ourselves from the depths of sexual paradox. On the one hand we cling to an identification with a monadic cosmic 'self', or godhead - an all-encompassing singular identity, providing sanctuary from the uncertainty of the abyss, in a fatherly or motherly creator deity. At another extreme, we seek to dispel all such myths, in a purely physical description of ourselves, as biological machines in a material world, where selfishness and expedience are as real and enticing as any notions of ethics, or altruism. However, mind and body cannot be so easily separated. Our actual relationship with the universe, and with existential reality, is a paradox of complementarity, which is sexual in its very essence.

We can see manifestations of sexual paradox in all the ultimate complementarities. At the core is the dyad of subjectively conscious mind and an objectively physical organism, sometimes projected into dualities of body and soul, earth and heaven, nature and the divine. From the point of view of objective science, only our brain states are verifiable phenomena, and our subjective experience seems to be merely an internal model of reality constructed by our chemical brains. But our conscious experience is the only direct veridical 'data' we have access to. All our knowledge of the physical world comes via our subjective experience, so it appears to have an existential status complementary to the physical universe. This dilemma is also a key to our capacity to take responsibility for our actions, rather than passing them on to a creator deity or a selfish gene. It is this principle of autonomous choice on which law and personal accountability are founded. Despite the ephemeral nature of mind, the root complementation between subjective experience and objective reality implies that our consciousness is also, in some sense, a founding cosmic aspect.

The patriarchal paradigm perceives conscious mind (p 138) as 'indivisible'- above mere particulate matter, which it assigns to an inferior feminine world of mortal 'slime', typified by the menstrual taboo, Maya or illusion (p 386), Eve's earthly sin (p 298), and Wisdom of Proverbs (p 296) - diminished to mere real-world common sense by comparison with the higher realms - in a frank sex reversal between 'particulate' sperm and an 'engulfing' egg.

Fundamental to the quantum world of physics we have wave-particle complementarity, which is also the source of quantum uncertainty (p 64). In the dynamical world we have the complementation of order and chaos (p 81), whose mutual interaction has recently been discovered to be key to generating climax complexity (p 89). This is reflected again in thermodynamics, where the equilibrium condition we associate with the inexorable growth of entropy, or disorder, to a maximum does not have to occur in open thermodynamic systems, which exchange energy or material with their environment.

Only then do we come to the conventional evolutionary manifestations of biological sexuality and engendering, with which we are familiar, in our conventional notions of sex as reproduction, and its symmetry-breaking into masculine and feminine genders (p 111). With the advent of the symmetry-breaking into egg and sperm, we see again a shadow of wave and particle aspects in a huge enveloping ovum and it's lightning membranous wave of excitation, selecting one from a multiple, essentially particulate collection of DNA-bearing sperm.

Historical and Cultural Visions of Sexual Complementarity

One of the most well-known historical manifestations of this dyadic point of view comes from the Tantric cosmic origin (p 386). Unlike the monadic patriarchal notion of a beneficent Vishnu dreaming the universe as a lotus emerging from his navel, the Tantric origin begins in intimate conjugal embrace between two complementary manifestations, Shiva as eternal, subjective, cosmic consciousness, and Shakti, the dynamic feminine force, which motivates the universe, and all material phenomena, in time. Although in a Brahmanic patriarchal twist, she is sometimes depicted, like Eve out of the rib of Adam (p 297), as a mere projection of the male cosmic Self (p 393), Shakti's origins lie in the untamed powers of the black planter goddess Kali, creatrix and destructress of time, whose roots, are far more ancient, lying at the source of the pre-Vedic Indus valley civilizations, whose images also spawn Shiva in yogic posture, as Lord of the Animals, (p 391) a gatherer-hunter name he still bears at Pashupatinath, among the burning ghats of Katmandu.

The Tantric origin begins in a state of deep coital fusion - an annihilating ecstasy of cosmic union (p 391). Then, as the complements step back from this conjugal communion, subjective mind becomes distinct from and complementary to the objective phenomena of the physical universe. Mind becomes aware of itself, freeing Shiva from passive inertness, and Shakti dances the dance of maya or illusion, in which the unity embracing self and world becomes endlessly divided and multiplied into the full complexity of all natural manifestations and we each become fragmented into separate conscious selves. This is portrayed as a love dance, spawning and eventually destroying the worlds. Once again the patriarchal will to order attempts to assert dominance in the form of mind being finer than the gross nature of matter, but the message is clear - climax diversity and the magical complexity of the sentient universe arises from sexual paradox between two cosmic aspects acting in complementary relationship, to evoke the dance of life's abundance.

The Chinese philosophy of the Tao, or 'way' of nature (p 406) brings to the surface other aspects of this fundamental cosmic sexual paradox, perceiving all natural phenomena as arising from the mutual interaction of two cosmic principles, yin, a receptive dark, fecund, principle identified as feminine and yang a shining, active creative principle identified as masculine. Each also contains the germ of the 'other'. Again here however there is an ancient deference to the feminine as the mother, matrix of time, beyond being and non-being, source of all natural diversity in the uncarved block. The Tao teaches that the universe is a product of impersonal forces and that the role of humanity is to keep the balance in nature. It is in the sexual relationship and its consequences that we engage in a participatory process of taking responsibility for the future of life, having already assumed the capacity for annihilation. Taoistic thought invokes continual transformation and change and decries any attempt to hierarchically organize or analyze into ordered categories, as flawed in this cosmology of flowing interdependence (p 407). Pivotal to Taoist philosophy is the notion of chaos as a primal progenitor of natural form and diversity, manifest in vibration, in eddies, in streaming clouds, the gnarled shapes of trees and fungi and the forms of naturally eroded objects. It notes that chance, life and consciousness are three common manifestations of the Tao, identifying uncertainty, life and consciousness as a fundamental part of the creative process. Central here is the idea that in transformation nothing repeats itself, despite the immense totality of this transformation being itself an invariant. In the I Ching oracle (p 411), the yin-yang division is multiplied into 256 x 256 archetypal transformations, representing the diversity of existential conditions.

Such dyadic creation myths span many cultures, from Sumeria, to the 'Elohistic origin of Genesis 1, male and female in 'Our' likeness. In the Maori creation, (p1). We can see these ultimate complementarities in the source Judeo-Christian tradition in the creation out of chaos, or tohu vohu, 'without form or void' like the 'nothingness' of Io. We again have the idea of god in the plural as 'Elohim, with humanity female and male in their likeness, implying both a feminine and masculine presence, confirmed in the exhortations of Hochmah, or Wisdom, in the proverbs:

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.
I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.

This motif continues in the complementarity between the unity of the tree of life standing in the centre of Eden (p 297) and the binary division of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, whose two realities together would make us even 'as god' - forming a complementarity between coherent synthesis and analytical knowledge, whose supremacy in dominion has led inexorably to our Fall from paradise. A complementation as fundamental as the binary division between a pregnant, vaginal, encircling 0 and a discriminating, divisive, penile 1.

Complementarity in the Physical Universe

These ancient philosophies converge on a modern scientific description of the universe and nature which manifests aspects of both in a new cosmology which is itself falling more deeply into sexual paradox than ever before.

Quantum reality (p 63) is founded on wave-particle complementarity - the fact that all quanta display both wave and particle aspects in a way which results in a sexual paradox - that we cannot measure both these properties at the same time. This complementarity is central to the distinction between the quantum and classical world. Every quantum manifests either as a wave or as a particle at a given time but never both at once. We experience the colour of light, interference patterns, lasers and holograms from its wave properties, but depend likewise on its particle properties both to generate light and to perceive it or capture it on film or tape and to exist in a molecular world. Any description in terms of either wave or particle aspect comes with an implicit use of the complementary aspect in the process, so neither can be fully eliminated in the physical description.

The uncertainty intrinsic to all quantum phenomena (p 64) is a direct consequence of the indeterminacy of the particle within the extensive wave function which determines only probabilities. Wave-particle complementarity is succeeded by an almost endless procession of ensuing dyadic sexual complementarities. Space and time have complementary roles along with energy and momentum. All quanta are divided again into two complementary types. The integer-spin bosons (p 75), such as photons, constitute all forms of radiation and mediate the forces of nature such as gravity, electromagnetism and the nuclear forces. Complementing the, fermions, such as electrons and protons, with half-integer spin, can co-exist in one wave function only as opposed pairs and thus constitute incompressible matter. In some theories, such as supersymmetry, there is one boson for each type of fermion, although they appear quite different in the everyday world. We also have a binary division between the emitter and absorber of any exchanged particle and between the virtual and real particles (p 69)that mediate forces and radiation. We finally have a complementarity between the advanced and retarded solutions of special relativity travelling in forward and backward directions in time. Many other manifestations of sexual paradox and complementarity occur in quantum entanglement and cosmic symmetry-breaking, like a chain of entwined scarves pulled endlessly out of a magicians top hat. These probabilities are woven into deeper forms of sexual paradox involving real and virtual particles and the paradoxes of time and space associated with quantum entanglement (p 70) and the match-making handshaking between emitters and absorbers in the transactional interpretation (p 73).

In the realm of dynamics the complementation of chaos and order is also critical (p 81). Chaos is found to be essential to the genesis of new order and to contain within it complex fractal structures (p 83) rather than simple randomness. Virtually all complex systems in nature either occur at the edge of chaos (p 89), or as a result of transitions in and out between chaos and order. In thermodynamics, we have noted that in open systems which exchange energy or material with their environment, the equilibrium condition we associate with the growth of entropy, or disorder, to a maximum does not have to occur. The most outstanding example of this is the growth of complexity of the biosphere as an open thermodynamic system far from equilibrium, whose entropy is decreasing and comlexity increasing (except in periods of mass extinction as in the present human 'intervention') through the photosynthetic fixing of incident solar radiation to induce chemical reactions.

We now understand that the universe, and with it time and space, appear to have had a common 'origin' in the 'big bang' some twelve billion years ago (p 63). Many aspects of this origin display sexual paradox at work. In the inflationary model (p 75), the universe appears to have emerged from its own wave function as a quantum fluctuation. Trapped in an artificial low energy false vacuum, the universe expanded exponentially until a profound symmetry-breaking occurred, resulting in the twisted asymmetric laws of nature we experience today. Symmetry-breaking is a complex 'engendering' process which is implicitly sexual in that it gives rise to fundamental polarities like the north and south poles of a magnet. Once symmetry-breaking took place, gravity became attractive and the complex interactional process which gave rise to galaxies, stars and planets began. Throughout this process, overlapping motifs of wave-particle complementarity and interaction between chaotic processes and ordered periodicities have molded the shape of cosmic evolution to the planetary context in which we find life.

The establishment of life leads to a second type of interactive process, at 'the edge of chaos' in which selection and mutation give rise to endless transformations of new living form. Like the individual particles and wave amplitudes of the quantum realm, evolution is also a partly ordered process moulded by natural or sexual selection and partly an intermittent seemingly random idiosyncratic mutational process. Single mutations function like single particles in a way reflecting quantum uncertainty, while selection operates similarly to the superposition of many particles in a single wave, reinforcing many mutations along consistent avenues. Evolution is thus a phenomenon which is not fully classical and displays quantum paradoxes in action. This is reflected in the contrast between dynamical developments like the camera eye, which results from a continuous invagination and idiosyncratic molecular structures produced only by one or a few species.

Fidelity and Deceit in Sexual Evolution

Evolution also depends on sexuality very extensively to generate the genetic variety through the vast opportunities for structured mixing and selection resulting from genetic crossing over's almost unlimited capacity to generate new combinations of viable genome (p 108). Ultimately it is this aspect of sexuality which has made multicellular organisms possible. In this process reproductive sexuality became central to the evolution of higher organisms. While certain organisms can defer reproductive sexuality for a while, sexual genetic exchange of various types is ubiquitous to organisms, from simple bacteria to humans. We find, beginning with a viral form of pan-sexual promiscuity between bacteria (p 106), a new form of complementary sexuality emerged, making an almost endless variety of viable recombinations possible. This began firstly with identical sex cells called isogametes then becoming engendered into a large egg and multiple sperm competing to fertilize it (p 111), representing in molecular terms a subtle expression of the complementary between a single wave-manifesting membranous egg and multiple particulate packets of DNA.

All multi-celled animals depend on this engendered symmetry-broken complementation to be able to evolve the complexity we see across the metazoan realm, and in the development of higher plants as well, but it has come at a cost through a tortuous arms race (p 113). The sperm, and with it all males, have inherited a sneaky smaller investment in reproduction than the egg and with it the massive out-front 'honest' investments female animals and particularly mammals make, in gestation, lactation and child-rearing (p 116). Consequently virtually all males down to the human line have inherited a reproductive strategy of sewing wild oats by many partners, while females have been choosy about whose genes will impregnate their valuable and scarce eggs, thus retaining their own reproductive rights to covert betrayal in the amatory race of love. The extremes of sexual polarization occur in mammals, where the female has inherited the hugely significant investments of internal gestation of live young, lactation, and early child care, leaving the males more than in any other group, to seek sexual favours as their prime reproductive investment (p 27). Humans in many ways have carried this polarization to it utmost limit (p 188).

This leads us to a unique paradoxical game of fidelity and deceit, which is sometimes referred to as the 'prisoners' dilemma' (p 13), in which each participant is 'tempted' into mutual betrayal because the payoffs of deceit are great enough to make the win-win of mutual cooperation a mere consolation prize, leading to the nemesis of mutual defection. However, in the prisoners' dilemma game, fidelity and betrayal remain founding co-contributors to the complexity arising from the mutual paradox, leading to transgression of orthodox morality in a liberation, in which the outlawed aspects of affair and intrigue are as essential to our evolutionary survival as primal chaos tohu vohu is to the 'order' of creation. This makes a paradoxical tale for the morality of sexual commitment, for fidelity and deceit are forever two faces of the one sexual paradox. While fidelity is the 'desired condition', to maintain genetic selection, reproductive choice and hence covert 'deceit', remains essential, inescapable, and central to successful evolution (p 18), with men sewing wild oats and women covertly engaging strange affairs - all in a ground swell of public declarations of at least temporary monogamy (p 180). The prisoners' dilemma in its varied two and many person forms spans a variety of situations rearing their heads in the evolutionary process, the diversity of genetic and ecosystemic life, and in human society. Crowning this foray, we have biological sexuality as we know it, and the paradox of sexual selection, with its extensions into gender and its diverse and contradictory manifestations in human society and culture. Although the genetic process and with it the reproductive strategies of each sex in a given species are partially independent and even in conflict, neither sex can escape the double-bind of mortality in the immortal dance of reproduction.

In the Red Queen hypothesis (p 24), all sexual species are in an irresolvable arms race with their parasites, and each sex with the other, in a permanent state of prisoners' dilemma running while standing still to out adapt and hence survive one another. It is this which has generated the diversity of our immune systems and tissue recognition histocompatibility proteins. Sex has evolved to be not only a quintessential expression of the prisoners' dilemma in genetics, but permeating our very molecular architecture, our reproductive immortality and all our displays of culture, society and politics both revered and tabooed.

This dyadic sexual relation extends to other more complex forms of the prisoners' dilemma in ecosystemic relationships (p 15), to climax diversity and to all evolutionarily stable strategies of inescapable coexistence in survival in the biosphere. It also extends to many ways in which this delicate paradoxical relationship breaks down, in 'tragedy of the commons' (p 16), rape of the planet (p 432), the boom and bust (p 433)so characteristic of unmediated male reproductive investment, and many other forms of dominion and oppression.

All's Fair in Love and War

Despite male pretensions to charismatic 'sexual conquest' of the female, mesmerized by the turgid charms of an all too unpredictable member, and the hopefully not too premature heights of thrusting climax, a careful look at female orgasm leads to some very stark and dangerous conclusions - that despite some women having a tamer, or equivocal experience in our male-dominated culture, women's sexual energies are, to quote Mary Sherfey: "insatiable even in the face of the highest degree of sexual satiation". Energies that ride wild over the most hopeful pretensions to 'conquest' any male can assume. A woman's endowment of clitoral, G-spot, and uterine orgasms (p 135), amid a propensity for multiple, repeated, or continual climax, all in a context of beguiling sexual privacy (p 173) amid almost permanent sexual receptiveness, ever-so-inscrutably coloured by subtle hormonal shifts at ovulation towards sexual adventure, launch female eros into a sustained stratospheric territory, which no man alone can lay claim to, nor be sure of sustaining, in his 'own right'.

In our primate relatives, including bonobos (p 166) and chimps (p 163), female sexual incitement, particularly during estrus, (which ironically means 'gadfly') is at peak time of fertility, a play for the best male genes available, and to either side of the peak, a more general all-comers insurance that as many males as possible will be inveigled into the 'paternity net' and will thus be encouraged to support, rather than injure or kill, the ensuing offspring. No male can thus be sure he is not 'the father of the child' and will be drawn into protecting more offspring than his own and refraining from eliminating small competitors, as males are want to do, as harbingers of hunting and death as opposed to gathering, birth and life. On the side, out of sight of others, there are also covert matings with an undisclosed partner 'on safari'. A degree of 'infidelity' is also essential to optimize a female's mating with a male with complementary histocompatibility and thus superior disease resistance. Ape females also solicit sex when they are not ovulating, for socially 'manipulative' reasons, which run from such maternity insurance to heterosexual, or lesbian erotic 'love' - social bonding, easing competition, even at the sight of food.

In one short sentence - female sexual ecstasy serves to strategically reduce paternity certainty (p 181), just as male ejaculation serves to increase it, consistent with sexual paradox.

The advent of pair-bonding in humans has overlaid a more 'partnered' theme to this open sport, with the female's almost perpetual sexual receptiveness, enticingly curvaceous form, concealed ovulation, sexual privacy and hormonal 'incitement' during ovulation - otherwise known as 'female reproductive inscrutability' - only adding to the intrigue. Our most central and basic social mental faculties are consequently to do with detecting cheating and betrayal, with sex at the emotional centre of the cyclone. Biologists are frank that 'monogamy' as they use the term is not equatable with genetic or sexual fidelity, but social bonding, for increased reproductive gain and that females in monogamous species also do 'time on the side' with the best studs they can find, as genetic testing has confirmed human females do to a similar degree. Seventy percent of married women over 35 admit to marital infidelity in the US, confirming that this astute and inscrutable pattern continues. Hence all the archaic manifestations of male jealousy and violence, which even in socially monogamous prairie voles, with all their oxytocin and vasopressin bonding, still cause males to become aggressive and suspicious of other males the moment they have sexually 'bonded' with a female.

Given that small, exclusive female territories, amid female reproductive competition (p 31), rather than all-embracing sisterly love is the best indicator of mammalian and primate monogamy, rather than paternal parental resourcing as in birds, we have an interesting paradox. Female espousal of monogamy thus looks as much the 'two-faced' resourcing gambit, albeit for genuine reproductive investment, as is men claiming 'their' women as patrilineal 'property' in our human version of mate guarding, while also sewing wild oats far and wide. The only situations where we find what we might call loosely egalitarian female coalitions are in the decidedly bisexual bonobo, where females make love passionately together in hoka-hoka (p 166) and spend seven times as much time together as with males, and in baboons and monkeys a single matriline's kin altruistic affinities.

The clitoris is no dependable organ of biological fertility, like the penis, but a fickle discriminator of male attention - an intimate diviner of genuine indicators of fitness (p 181). The impetuous nature of female orgasm, inaccessible as an enclosed garden one minute, and an overflowing chalice the next, does not serve well the monotonous security of monogamous pair-bonding, but the intrigue, thrill and the novelty of the chase - the young buck, fine as an apple tree in the orchard, seduced by 'fatal attraction', amid our all too brief fallings in love.

Mortal Fear and Violent Oppression

Given this perilous heritage, it is no wonder the patriarchy fears female sexuality like primal chaos, and attempts to anathematize it, to cauterize it, to cut it out, by circumcision (p 371), subincision (p 260) and infibulation (p 372), or to bottle it up in chastity belts, or hide it, by sequestering and veiling (p 290), in burkas and chadors (p 363), in closed rooms with high windows, and every form of control and repression, from stoning (p 357), to drowning (p 280), to burning alive (p 380) and throwing acid in the face of the beloved, or in modern more 'sexually liberated' times at least to tame it into a milder subservient domesticity, exciting, but not too much so, along with some nubile pornographic appeal on the side.

All our creation myths and religious imperatives are disguised attempts by diverse peoples to mark out the boundaries of sexual transgression between women and men, rather than merely the innocent creation and ordering of the universe they pretend. The deities and players, from Yahweh condemning Eve's lubricity (p 298) and thus decreeing her husband 'shall rule over her'; through the incestuous enticement of the Sun by Venus (p 251), highlighting the intoxicating nature of female sexuality at the root of sexual antagonism among the Amazon's 'fierce people' (p 251); to the excoriating Dogon primal conflict of sexual energies between the one God and Mother Earth (p 228), resulting in female circumcision (p 371), are all projections of central male sexual and reproductive anxieties, and stratagems of male control over female sexuality.

A quick look at the few existing matrilocal, quasi-matrilineal societies such as the Canela (p 258) attests precisely to this theme. Here, women are expected to share their sexual favours as widely as possible, just as chimps and bonobos do, until they become pregnant and settle into the matriarchal network of motherhood and the familial ties of child rearing. Marriage is only a token in partnership to ensure paternal care of any infant a woman gives birth to. The role of the father is secondary to the mother's maternal uncles, and males are expected to show no jealousy over their 'wives' affairs. Men are expected to be 'forbearing' and women abide no conventions of emotional control.

This is a close parallel to the beena marriage of the Old Testament (p 277), which Jacob rejected in leaving Laban's fold with Rachel and Leah. Conflicts over such sexual motifs are reflected in Lilith's mythical refusal to lie under Adam, rising up to the wild heavens in her own ecstasy (p 299); the whoring ways of the Queen of Heaven (p 303); the fertility rites, on every high hill and under every green tree; and the strange woman of Proverbs, her lips dripping with honey comb, but her ways going right down to Sheol (p 299).

At the opposite extreme, the polygynous, patrilocal, patrilineal Dogon summarily chop the clitorises off their women folk (p 227) so they, won't be led to stray into surreptitious affairs by their all-to-precocious genitals, confine them all to menstrual huts in full view of the men's houses (p 226), so that the men folk in the village can readily observe just who is going to be ready to be fertilized by their reproductive 'owners' and when they can best achieve it, threatening them with cosmological calamity if they break the rule.

Similarly, throughout the central arenas of our cultural emergence (Lerner), from Sumeria and Egypt, through Babylon (p 284), Assyria (p 289), Greece (p 290), Rome, Israel, Vedantic India (p 374), Islamic Arabia (p 350) and Confucian China (p 294), a consistent theme of patriarchal dominion amid confinement of women and fear and repression of their sexual nature, the abduction and capture of women (p 283) and their exploitation as slave concubines (p 284), their assignment to marriages, nunneries and brothels, along with male rights of exclusive patriliny (p 285), primogeniture, and paterfamilias (p 294) often in the name of patriarchal religions, has led to a distorted, violent and unstable cultural paradigm.

These diverse sources confirm our worst fears: The sex wars are the foundation of our entire human social and cultural edifice. What do we do about this? Exert some such form of social control? This is exactly what the patriarchs have done to women, violently to the occlusion of feminine nature, and the detriment of human nature, and our future viability, resulting in multiple, repeated and continual warfare, genocide, apocalypse, mutually-assured nuclear (p 440), chemical and biological destruction, overpopulation (p 433), the rape of the Earth (p 432) and the entire diversity of life (p 436), climatic crisis (p 438), and boom and bust economies with no long-term stability of future (p 442), all in the spermatogenic (p 432), venture-risk, winner-take-all, competitive paradigm of the patriarchal imperative.

Unravelling the Gordian Knot

This condition of real or repressed sexual conflict is neither inevitable, nor is it a fatal flaw in the human species. The complexity of human culture appears to have emerged from the creative amatory race sexual selection induces in a state of sexual paradox. Some of our founding genetic and cultural archetypes in the Bushmen and Pygmy Forest Peoples, such as the !Kung (p 197), Sandawe (p 208), Biaka (p 214) and Mbuti (p 209) exist in a state much closer to sexual paradox and egalitarian cooperation between the sexes than most more highly evolved societies. Our gatherer-hunter origins are a manifestation of an interdependency, despite differing sexual strategies, that coincides with the deepest in female and male nature, in the resourcing of life's continuity in motherhood, and the death culling performed by the all-too-mortal male hunter-warrior.

Those anthropologists, sociologists and cultural feminists who assert the human psyche is a 'blank slate' (p 38) which has left behind its biological origins need to take into account these deleterious consequences of the patriarchal cultural adventure, when cultural prerogatives are imposed in denial, or even in affirmation, of our sexual sociobiology, particularly when applied to the role of mothering, so critical for human survival (p 32). Our genetic nature is not deterministic and remains adaptive to both individual emotional and intellectual responses and to social and cultural forces. However society and culture prosper and ultimately survive only in constructive relationship with our biological nature, not in spite of it, or imposed upon it. Rather than psychological pathology, fear of the power of female life-giving (p 266), testosterone poisoning (p 152), or the consequences of a fundamentally violent species (p 44), the rise of patriarchy appears to be a natural product of primate sociobiology, and the gatherer-hunter division of labour, driven into male dominance by inter-group conflict by male coalitions (p 43), the need for intra-group moral cohesiveness in response, the resulting social stress and uncertainty of resources (p 231), paternity uncertainty, and the rise of urban classes and property in development of large-scale agriculture (p 264).

Sexual complementarity cannot be unraveled overnight and may even be integral to the cosmic design. As we have noted, subjective mind and physical reality present as inextricable complements as do wave and particle. The relationship between our two sexes is as polarized as the primally-broken symmetry of the universe, let alone that between a single enveloping ovum, ripe with cytoplasmic fecundity, and the myriads of particulate sperm that compete to fertilize it, only to be capriciously chosen by the shock 'neurological' awakening of the egg's cortical reaction (p 114). Lack of an understanding of the depth of this relationship between the sexes is the root ignorance that has caused war and genocide and could bring our utopian pretensions in the genetic age crashing down, if we fail to recognize our ancient and immortal reproductive quest in sexuality and depend only on cultural fantasies and technological fixes.

IVF techniques (p 416), which already include direct injection of immature sperm nuclei incapable of fertilization into the egg (p 420), conserve deleterious mutations perpetuating and amplifying infertility in the human population. Sperm counts have been falling (p 421), partly as a result of the feminization of nature from industrial estrogen contamination (p 422), putting further pressure on this technology. Experiments are under way to see if a human embryo can be engineered from two sperm nuclei and an enucleate egg (p 422), or from two egg nuclei to satisfy the cultural desire of homosexuals of both sexes to have offspring who are children of both partners (p 424). These techniques could render sexual fertility obsolete. Massive over use of Caesarian delivery (p 416) also has the potential to make natural birth inviable by removing natural selection at a principal point of difficulty in human evolution. Contraceptive techniques, while essential to control a burgeoning population and provide sexual freedom of choice, particularly for women, have divorced our sexuality from the reproductive quest, cutting sexuality off from its biological motivation in fertility. Consequently extreme cultural imbalances are developing in the reproduction rate. While paternity testing and the sexing of unborn infants provides valuable information to and about parents, it is both exposing our innate sexual strategies, and potentially exacerbating existing trends to cull offspring of one sex or another for cultural or personal reasons.

At the same time there are pressures to engineer the germ line (p 427) to remove genes for deleterious conditions, or undesirable characteristics, with neither a clear idea of the evolutionary implications nor the ethical implications. Proposals are afoot to begin across the board IVF combined with genetic testing as an avenue of choice for all births to screen for and avoid a variety of genetic defects (p 418). In such a brave new world scenario we know neither how interactive this process may be not what grotesque directions runaway cultural and sentimental interference in our genetic identity could become. Both sickle cell and cystic fibrosis which many would love to eliminate confer disease resistance in heterozygous form against malaria and typhoid respectively two major world killers. The consequence of these changes for sexuality and our reproductive future are profound and can't be properly understood and debated while, despite our apparent sophistication, we remain naively in a state of cultural and personal denial about our sexual and sociobiological roots. We risk circumcising - lobotomizing, the very paradox of nature at the root of maleness and femaleness and life itself, and with it our evolutionary sustainability as a species.

Our two natures carry, hidden within their diversity, not only our sex wars, but the imprints of ancient genetic wars of attrition, including cytoplasmic incompatibility between isogametes, which first consumed the cytoplasm of one sex to form the sperm, causing the male to become the 'sneaky' low-investment sex and which carry with them all the tangled history of life between. A history of mutual genetic pot-shots that have molded our X and Y-chromosomes and sometimes attack one sex or another with infertility or death, in a mutual and perilously unstable arms race of sexually-antagonistic coevolution. A genetic struggle between male genes which would force the female to invest all her reproductive energy immediately in his offspring, which is expressed in the invasiveness of the placenta itself, and the female's resistance to this is also indelibly marked in our genome in genetic imprinting, in a precarious 'balance' between opposing male and female forces, which may also govern the development of our emotional and intellectual brains, and can cause pathological conditions, or fetal abnormalities, when either opposing influence is disrupted.

The gender polarization of internally fertilizing, gestating, lactating mammals, where the sexual relationship and parental investment is as one-sided as it can be has been taken to an even more radical extreme in the full-blown 'travail' and voluptuous pregnancy of the human female, her pendulous sequelae in lactation, and her unique dilemmas of maternal care amid ambivalence at such a huge investment in time, effort and resources in the face of fluctuating support. This is a matter women have solved, both in partnership with males, and in allo-parenting with older daughters, post-menopausal grandmothers, female friends and others, in cooperative familial and tribal networks. We thus cannot expect to reduce this tangled tale to a convenient androgynous erotic simplicity, devoid of reproductive meaning. The only viable answer is to accept and reflower the paradox of sexuality for what it is - the sweetest and most devastating prisoners' dilemma of immortality, fertilized between mortal sexual beings, where we will always, like the Red Queen, be running while standing almost still, treading water while putting the very best of our creative potential into a seemingly unwinnable race of culture, art, good music, and the music of love and lust. A race not 'against the opposite sex', but in every way 'with the complementary one'.

Males need to learn to accept the rewards that come from flying like a moth into the flame of female sexual desire, revering the tokens of menarche as sacred, and as good husbands, resting content if some four out of every five offspring sired by our 'ever so faithful' partner are our own progeny, accepting in love those that may not be, while sewing the wild oats we can, as the male sex has striven to do since time immemorial, just as serial monogamy has indeed become a form of 'moderate' polygyny in the US, due to differences in remarriarge and subsequent fertility rates between divorced, or separated men and women.

Until we bring our two natures together, life, and human society, even the biosphere, raped and exploited, will remain forever in the valley of the shadow of death, that great shadowy vagina that swallowed Maui when the fantail cried out, which all men fear, but which is also the source of life renewed. Our two orgasms, one 'a mere shot in the dark', and the other 'the perfect wave', contain an oracle - the unveiling, the key, the coda, the tattoo and taboo, the nemesis and genesis, the song of songs, the belonging and the longing, and the future destiny of our immortally entwined human sexes. The emergence of cultural complexity appears to be a result of human evolution in a condition of reproductive sexual paradox in which neither sex has had the upper hand, driven by sexual selection and displays of cultural prowess as genuine indicators of fitness. This selection involved both sexes in mutual mate choice but predominantly through the female reproductive choice common to many species despite attempts by males to preempt this through male competition and domination.

Ultimately we come back to the conscious mind and to the balance between the analytical thought often prized by men and 'feminine' intuition - between empathy and analysis and the paradoxes of how 'eureka' can emerge from the neurodynamic chaos of an unsolved problem. We are thus brought back to square one, coming now from the 'feminine' side of physical nature, looking at consciousness as an 'internal model of reality' made by the brain - potentially a mere illusion of matter, thus counterbalancing the mind-sky emphasis on primal cosmic mind of and the philosophy of the primacy of 'self' and 'soul' and again right into the abyss of cosmic sexual paradox. Here the problem lies, waiting for our apocalyptic unveiling to reveal all, no longer as through a glass darkly, but face to face - in the 'naked awareness' of sexual paradox itself. Thus we come to the present context and find ourselves as sentient conscious beings inhabiting a biological genetic organism, with a sappy biochemical brain, whose electrochemical excitations evoke the most puzzling unsolved mystery of modern science, that of subjective conscious experience and the enigma of free-will. Although materialistic views of science have endeavoured to finesse consciousness away as an epiphenomenon and free-will as an illusion, the development of consciousness research attests to the fact that subjective consciousness remains a founding phenomenon lying qualitatively outside the confines of objective description. Although mind states can be correlated with brain states they are qualitatively so different that we are brought full circle to the question "Is subjective consciousness a complementary manifestation to all objective phenomena, as fundamental as the cosmic origin itself?

Although human culture appears to have flowered through runaway aspects of sexual paradox in human evolutionary origins among gatherer-hunter clans, a male reaction has subsequently occurred from the earliest foundings of Jericho and Sumeria with the growth of militarized urban societies, through the great civilization of the East and West to the present day against sexual paradox, and its implicit paternity uncertainty. Patriarchal human cultures have endeavoured since to assert paradigms of order over these primal contradictions. A continuing trend throughout our cultural history has been for the climax diversity of sexual paradox to become undermined, or made degenerate, by patterns of male sexual domination, which lead to breakdown of the complexity and verdant instability, into ordered patterns of control, and often of repression, violence, and genocide which lead to planetary rape and exploitation and compromise the living genesis and emergence in complexity sexual paradox evokes. We shall thus explore, along with sexual paradox itself, all the many ways in which its breakdown leads to double jeopardy and how sexual paradox is a koan and oracle for our social transformation to a sustainable society.

Tags:
, , , , , , ,

The Trouble with al-Llah

Gabriel shows Muhammad the Jewelled Tree in Paradise on his Night Flight


Before making any decision that there is no God but al-Llah and Muhammad is his prophet, or that belief in God is beneficial to us, or that religion is essential, to save, or to win the world, we need to look a little more closely at the radical ways the prophets who founded Judaism, Christianity and Islam overthrew existing fixed beliefs about God, and how humans have related to God and the mystery of existence, over much longer time scales than the fourteen centuries since Muhammad, and the few millennia since Jesus and Moses. At the same time, we need to ask ourselves what we are doing to ourselves, and our possible relationship with God, if we fall into the trap of revealed beliefs held without question.

Unless we do, we may find that we have made god and religion into something truly diabolical that, no matter how much we treat it with devotion, and believe it to be true, ultimately manifests itself in violent oppressive ways, leading to conflict and destruction. Indeed it may be that unswerving belief in God is the greatest obstruction to knowing God, and that prescriptive religions take us further and further from the truth, and from the presence of God, for the very reason that, rather than freely resonating with the mystery of existence, they demand unflinching submission to an idea of God that has become a prison constructed by visionaries of another generation, which holds us apart from God as living beings, in a way we do not realize is a fatal trap.

‘Al-Llah’ is simply “God” in Arabic. Muslims believe that al-Llah is the same God of reality, that is worshiped by Christians and Jews alike, and is indeed the God of Abraham, who is referred to in the Pentateuch as El – again simply meaning “God” in an older Semitic tongue. El is referred to in various forms, anciently in Genesis as El Shaddai – “Lord of the Mountain”, reinterpreted as “God Almighty” and later as El Elyon, or God most high. Likewise we have Islamic invocation to “al-Llah the merciful, the compassionate”. However the name El also refers to a more ancient deity - the old father god of the Canaanites, who had as partners Athirat and Anath, before the tumultuous natural power of Ba’al took over the agricultural consciousness of Canaan.

Al-Llah is praised by Muslims as being the ultimate God of reality – a God acting in history, not limited by any iconic form, or name, just as YHVH, or Jehovah, the God of Moses is lauded as being the true god of reality, in contrast to the profane idols of the gods and goddesses of the nations. And just as YHVH was in Genesis said to also be the god of Adam and Eve in Eden, so is al-Llah said to be the God of Adam. Yet despite his abstract aloneness in Eden, Jehovah was originally paired with Asherah and Anath in the older Hebrew cultures at Geza and Elephantine, before the Goddess was later cursed as a pagan icon in Josiah’s reign and the Asherah was burned in the Vale of Kidron. Just so in Islam, al-Llah, was paired with al-Lat, as “God” and “Goddess”, along with al-Uzza and Manat, as the banat al-Lah or daughters of God, until Muhammad cast the ‘Satanic Verses’ against the banat, and the shrines of the Goddess, beloved to the Arabs of Mecca, were destroyed upon his victorious entry into Mecca.

Some of the worst features of Gods, or God, as portrayed by man, is the vindictive jealous personality, displaying love conditional on worship, and vengeance and retribution, particularly in the hell fire of the days of judgment, if people do not submit themselves in submission, as literal slaves to the jealous God. If God is really the one true God of existential reality, why should ‘he’ mind what way people express their devotion? Why not every which way, masculine and feminine, as lovers and partners, as much as slaves, as all embody the respect of sacredness? These features of personality, even of love and compassion, let alone anger, show us that the nature of God is as the nature of man, and in his jealousy as the male sex seeking sexual control over the female, and dominion over nature, not at all the cosmic creator of everything, from living tissues, to stars, planets, and the big bang.

Although Jews, Christians and Muslims believe their God is the one true God of reality, more real than the pagan deities of the stars, and of statues and idols, the idea that smashing an icon makes the God or Goddess unreal by comparison with the God of a revealed religion is a naive error of idolatrous hubris. Just because God doesn't have an idol doesn't mean he is the real God. Simply replacing one form of idol – a stone - with another material object – a revealed scripture to be obeyed and feared in spite of its manifest conflict with reality – is no divine revelation at all. Both are idolatrous and neither is more real. It is absolutely clear, both from the Gods and Goddesses of history, and those of iconic religions today, that iconic deities were regarded as receptacles of a spiritual reality as abstract as the claimed realities of Jehovah and al-Llah.

Street shrine Kathmandu


Religions, such as Hinduism, are perfectly capable of celebrating the godhead in all manner of iconic or idolatrous shrines, statues and personalities, of many gods and goddesses, and yet Upanishadic spiritual philosophy and meditation is in many ways the quintessence of spiritual attainment, and a path of discovery each person can follow and test for themselves meditatively and contemplatively, without having to be enslaved to any one point of view. Christian Catholicism is also manifestly idolatrous, despite claiming to worship the one true God. Because Hinduism has retained the diversity of its deities, it is still possible for women in India to gain empowerment and spiritual autonomy from the presence of the black Goddess Kali still present in their midst as a symbol of female empowerment not subject to the dictates of men. Jewish women are similarly reaching out to Shekhinah, Lilith and Asherah as spiritual symbols of a new autonomy. Buddha entered into the void of enlightenment denying any assumptions of the existence of God, implying that a fixed belief in God may be an impediment to enlightenment, rather than a spiritual necessity.

Given the common monotheistic belief in the one true God of reality, one would expect there to be a fundamental agreement between Muslims, Christians, and Jews, that they worship the one true god merely in different ways, and are therefore bosom partners in a democratic reality. However, here a dark shadow of male supremacy enters this celestial realm, because each religion has its own version of apocalyptic supremacy, in which the other paths are subservient and subordinate in a vision of ultimate utopian domination of one religion of “God” over another in the end of days, which could lead to a final nuclear confrontation and an Armageddon we all need to avoid for the future of life itself.

The Jews have long cast themselves as the chosen elect priests of the Lord and preach an apocalyptic Zionism today. Christians in turn have cursed the Jews for disowning Jesus, and consider his second-coming in Parousia, the ultimate end-of days, in the cosmic victory of their Lord and the Father God, and of Christianity as the predestined religion of the Earth. Muslims likewise preach that Muhammad is the final prophet of al-Llah, that Jews and Christians, although also followers of the path of the book, unlike the accursed idolaters, are subject religions to be taxed and subservient, and that in the end of days, all will be converted to the one true faith of Islam, poosibly in association with a return of Jesus and the Mahdi as 'perfect humans'.

Worse still, each of the three, while claiming to protect the rights of women, have actually suppressed them and made women subject to the will of men, just as men are subject to the will of God. Although many Muslim women claim the religion protects the rights of women and protects them from molestation by ravenous Muslim men, this is in reality far from the truth and a deception created by the belief itself. Women are regarded as men’s property, so sexually enticing that to protect family and husbandly honour, they must be covered, sometimes from head to toe, they must be chaperoned by a male relative, cannot move and work freely and they are only half the value of a man in law. Women are subject to dire punishment of stoning to death for adultery and honour killings remain rife in many Muslim countries. Female circumcision is practiced as a sunna or tradition in several Muslim cultures, in the light of the prophet’s purported comment favouring it in moderation because it made the husbands happy.

Each of the three religions, despite claiming God is merciful and compassionate, have committed violence and genocide in the very name of God. The Hebrews committed genocides at Ba'al Peor, Hazor and Jericho, although their actual scale is debated. Christians, in the shadow of Jesus’ crucifixion, have become obsessed with death in martyrdom, and then turned to bloody Crusade against more cultured Muslims, such as Saladin, and their own peoples, and committed Inquisition against their own people in the form of burning women and men alive and drowning them for perceived sins of witchcraft or Gnostic heresy.

Muhammad condemned the Arabs needlessly to jihad or holy war, because he had cursed the Goddess, beloved of the people of Mecca. He then committed a genocide of 700 Jewish men in Medina, for fear of a betrayal which had not actually occurred. This proved a waste of human lives and a disgrace to any pretense of being a spiritual master, because there was no final battle with the Quraysh, since Muhammad negotiated and then abrogated the peace Treaty of Hudaybiyah and then marched on Mecca by force of numbers. Ever since, Islam, while professing to be a religion of peace, has committed itself to a violent confrontation for supremacy, dividing the world between the domain of submission, as slaves in submission to God and the domain of war – Dar al-Harb.

All who would stand apart have been converted by the sword or killed as idolaters, or repressed, like the original Sufis and the Bahai’s today, because they challenge the notion that Muhammad is the final prophet, or claim that the individual can become one with God, as al-Hallaj was crucified for saying ‘Ana al-Haqq’. While Muhammad rightly decried the paganism of launching Jesus into the status of only begotten Son of God, so Muslims today commit the same pagan error, threatening anyone who would depict the Prophet with death, particularly if these depictions are critical or satirical. Ultimately this violence comes to its own reckoning, in the struggle between Sunni and Shia, just as the Christian violence has, between Catholic and Protestant.

In the end of days, Islam has become a religion purporting to be one of peace, but committing mindless terror and murder of the innocent, in violent martyrdoms and suicide bombings that are an affront to any God of reality, and certainly to al-Llah the merciful and compassionate. Because the peace of Sakina has been subjugated to the deception of takiya, the old evil of jihad continues to emerge as the Shaitan of Islam.

In the modern era of scientific discovery, ideas about God need to get up to speed with our discoveries of the natural world and transform themselves from the religion of end of days high noon confrontation and retribution to the religion of tolerance, of the immortality of the Tree of Life and the closing circle of ecosystemic coexistence. Archaic tribal and religious laws struck in the 6th century cannot fairly be applied in the 21st without committing grave oppression of the people.

We now know that the universe is literally full of billions of stars and galaxies amidst annihilating forces, the big bang and black holes. The idea that the one and only God of reality has such tunnel vision that he communicates only, or even principally on one planet’s end of days through a couple of final prophets revealed laws, or an only begotten Son he has sacrificed for the sins of man, shows no comprehension of the ways of the universe. The idea that the key defining events of human destiny in heaven and hell have been cast in stone centuries before we discovered the cosmological laws of nature, nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the genetic code, and are now having dangerous consequences of a mass extinction of the diversity of life through our own impact on nature, is fatally maladaptive.

If there is any truth at all to the existence of God, it is a truth that remains as real for each generation to experience, and to interpret from the very source in new ways, as it was for Jesus or Muhammad. We are the living sentient beings of this generation, who must bear witness to the ultimate nature of reality, and take full personal responsibility for the consequences, if we allow our religious beliefs to damage the planet, and compromise the future of life in paradise. We thus have to learn to come of age and grow up. We are no use to God as his slaves, who mindlessly follow the Sharia of past centuries. We need to learn to take cosmic responsibility for our actions, and to live in peace and mutual respect with the other living beings, who take their turn as each living generation, to act as stewards and guardians of the future of life on Earth. We thus need to move from religion to responsibility and from imposed law and revealed truth to personal experience and a spiritual democracy, in which no party tells another what they should believe.

If we go further back in human origins, we know that it is a fantasy that there was a first man Adam and a first woman Eve living with God in Eden. This is a cultural myth of our falling out with nature in a future shock, which is only coming to a completion this generation in the unveiling of our scientific and cultural knowledge of existence and the universe. In fact Homo sapiens came out of Africa as part of our evolutionary emergence, and the founding societies, far older than the 5,000 years of the fertile crescent and the paths of the book, possessed just such a degree of personal autonomy and personal responsibility, as scattered bands that only seasonally gathered into larger groups.

Peoples such as the Bushmen, who come closer to these origins, do have Gods surprisingly similar to the best aspects of Jehovah and al-Llah, as creator gods of life and misfortune, each with their consorts, but they do not play a coercive role on human actions, but are rather informative of the meaning and continuity of life. Moreover, although the men like to consider themselves elders defining culture, the women are not corralled, veiled or forced into submission, or sexual obedience by threat of torture and capital punishment and despite the threat of individual male violence affirm their own right and ability to make sexual choices in the ongoing flow of life and reproduction. Moreover practices such as trance dancing ensure that the members of society share an egalitarian experience of the spiritual realm, which they affirm from their own personal experience rather than the imposed will and doctrine of prescriptive belief.

We are, like all animals, a species of two sexes, and all the evidence is that humanity emerged and became super-intelligent, not because men controlled women, or because people were the slaves of God, but because women were able to make sexual choices, and neither sex had the upper hand, but had to put on their very best performance in good hunting, music, story-telling, craft and emotional affection to have an opportunity to procreate their genes with the opposite sex, amid the ecstasy and longing of sexual fruition and falling in love. No religion which assigns women to be half the worth of a man in law, or which denies women their heritage of sexual choice, can be a religion of the true God that generated nature.

In the evolutionary scheme, the religious impulse may have a significant genetic basis, promoting societies with strong internal cohesion, which limit internal conflict by enforcing moral codes, so as to become dominant over other competing societies. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all show strong tendencies in this direction. This needs to be held in check for human society, in the closing circle of the planet, for us to remain free from utopian oppression and survive and enrich the sustainable paradise of nature throughout our generations.

The idea that humanity is intrinsically sinful and needs a God to pass judgment on our sins in the day of the apocalyptic unveiling is manifestly in error. Humans also possess original virtue and are capable of great compassion, love, ethical selflessness, and moral rectitude, which compensates and complements individuals' natural tendency to compete for survival. This is part of our evolutionary endowment, and the idea that God is going to disrupt the natural life flow of this one little planet to bring about an end of days judgment, is merely a self-centered reflection of our own cultural future shock and our gravitation to a final cultural high noon of our own religious making.

Despite nature being partly a matter of tooth and claw, in which predation, injury, or disease can become a condition of traumatic pain and suffering, nature is also splendid and magical in its genesis, and life in human emergence has been both rewarding and enduring. Hell is not some punishment in an afterlife, but what we make this life into, when we are prepared to commit ourselves to violence and annihilation in the name of religion. Hungering for the afterlife is a delusion which takes us ever further from taking personal responsibility for the brief time we do have on Earth, which in the blessed flowering of the universe, we should be using compassionately, not violently, to make this paradise heaven on Earth, rather than a polluted limbo, heading down towards hell. The idea that heaven is full of black-eyed virgins, who are made pure each night for the sexual pleasure of men in the day, is a false sexually chauvinistic vision, that leads to an evil path of destruction and violence. It is also a travesty of the interdependence of sexuality in procreating life, as flawed as the Christian fantasy that there will be no sex in heaven.

To be able to discover the deepest mysteries of the spiritual realm, the nature of consciousness and the meaning of life, we each need to be free as living sentient beings to witness the nature of existential reality, and interpret all religious and spiritual ideas for ourselves, without casting any assumptions over the nature of living existence, or the inner spiritual depths of conscious experience, that will limit our ability to resonate with the mysterium tremendum. We thus seed to set aside any fixed belief in God, or we will never be able to know truly what our part in the cosmic process actually is, nor to enter the inner abyss of the mystery of existence.

Human societies have, throughout the ages, sought such direct communication with the mystery of existence through the shamanic vision quest, and later through contemplative insights, such as those of the Sufis, Christian mystics, Jewish Kabbalists, Indian sadhus, and Buddhist and Taoist sages. No religion which denies the right of the individual to worship or communion with the mystery as they see fit, which converts by the sword, or casts a death fatwah for apostasizing, or insulting God, or making sexual choices, can be a true religion of God.



Tags:
, , , , , ,