HUMPBACK WHALES, TONGA |
"Modern man believes that he is ‘alone’ in the universe, yet nothing could be further from the truth. The mind-set of ‘civilized’ western humanity takes for granted that our collective world-view, the human perspective on life on Earth, represents the pinnacle of awareness, the paragon of ‘intelligence’, that we are sine pari, “without equal” in the kingdoms of life, above and apart from mere ‘animals’ and other ‘lower’ life-forms
This unquestioned anthropocentric ‘meta-belief’, the central pillar supporting the dominant dMOE, or ‘distributed mental operating environment’ which facilitates our fundamentally Judaeo-Christian neo-Darwinian military-industrial-capitalist ‘way of life’, justifies ecocide, rationalizes genocide, glorifies predation, rewards greed, derides simplicity, denies indigenous and alternative modes of being, and is
conducting a full-spectrum jihad against life itself.
We have never been ‘alone.’ In the same way that we needn’t ‘go into space’ because we’re already there…how could we NOT be?...we’ve never been alone because our true ‘family’ is the universe, which as currently conceived may host not only a very broad spectrum of ‘beings’, ‘intelligences’ and forms of consciousness…of far greater diversity, improbability and unknowability than the sum of all science-fiction…but is ‘intelligent’ and ‘conscious’ in and of itself. Our nearest star, the sun, Sol, is a powerful stellar ‘being’ and ‘intelligence’; Mothership Earth, or Gaia, is herself an astronomically complex planetary ‘being’ and ‘intelligence’. The union of Father Sky and Mother Earth gives birth to life as we know her, a vast creative and experimental intelligence based on DNA, carbon compounds, and water who manifests herself as an endless expression of living art-information. Every being, every form of life is by nature ‘intelligent’ in its own way.
Humanity seems to be an anomaly on this planet: we are the only species among billions who have run amok and are actively destroying our home, as well as the only species who is embedded in collective hallucination, harbouring destructive delusions about our own alleged and superior ‘intelligence’ and other ‘chosen species’ fantasies." JEFF PHILLIPS, "WE ARE NOT
ALONE...YET: HOW WE ARE WAGING WAR
ON A TRUE 'EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE" “A healthy Ocean in which coastal
ecosystems and human communities thrive in a harmonious, respectful and mutually beneficial relationship.” Towards a Modern Personification of the Ocean
"Examples of the personification of the Ocean stretch back to our very beginnings and are a prominent feature of virtually all pre-monotheistic creation myths. In early Greek mythology for example Okeanos (one of the twelve Titans) is the Ocean. In many Polynesian cultures Tangaroa is the guardian of the Ocean and was born out of the union of Rangi (Sky father) and Papa (Earth mother). In the traditional Yoruba religion of west African cultures Yemoja is the Goddess of the living Ocean. As all life is believed to have begun in the Ocean, all life is held to have begun with Yemoja.
Our modern scientific understanding of the planet as a self-regulating, living system, and the Ocean as the birth-place of life validates much of this old wisdom. And yet, we continue to treat the Ocean as little more than a resource bank; forever withdrawing, our only deposits the toxic waste of our industrialised lifestyle. Perhaps it’s time we re-engaged with a worldview that supports a more life-enhancing context for our modern scientific knowledge.
Indigenous cultures throughout the world have always experienced themselves as a part of rather than apart from their surroundings. Likewise they do not arbitrarily separate life from environment. To do so would be both counter-intuitive and illogical: how can there be fish without an Ocean to swim in? Indeed, most indigenous wisdom traditions fully comprehend that without liquid water, there is no life (an
understanding with which modern science fully concurs).
In this context the personification of the living world serves several relational purposes; physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual. Put together these relational connections form the basis of an over-arching worldview that informs and gives meaning to ecological knowledge built up over time. This in turn leads to the development of customs and rituals, designed to manage and control human behaviour, in relation to their immediate environment and the world as a whole.
In 2017 the Whanganui River in Aotearoa/New Zealand was
officially recognised as a living being, with all the rights of legal
personhood. Soon after, Te Urewera, a former National Park was accorded the same status of legal personhood. But as the Maori elders of Whanganui point out: it is not just the legal ramifications that are important, but a new orientation in our relationship with the more than human world, one based not on rights, but responsibilities.
I believe it is time to recognise the Ocean as a living being with intrinsic value far beyond the benefits she provides humanity. A being that deserves our respect and gratitude, but also asserts the right to live unencumbered by the excesses of modern human behaviour. It is time for a modern personification of the Ocean."
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ON THE BRINK RADIO INTERVIEWS WITH GLENN EDNEY
Here is an excerpt from the prologue to The Ocean is Alive in which Glenn is describing a very powerful encounter with a humpback whale and her calf:
"As I float on the surface, fully immersed in her energetic field, I feel the strangest sensation, as if I’m being entered through every pore of my skin. I feel her presence within me, filling my senses with her being. There’s a moment when I contemplate resisting; a momentary fear of the unknown perhaps, but there’s no sense of danger. I close my eyes, open my arms, my whole being to her internal gaze. Everything outside this connection fades; I hardly feel the chill of the water against my bare skin. I’m aware of myself but can no longer distinguish a clear separation between us. I recognise my own thoughts, feelings and emotions but also experience her emotional being as my own...
I start to feel a sense of expansiveness, as if I’m stretching out through the water like a wave, but with the same feeling of extended consciousness and connection that comes when the mind reaches a deep level of stillness during meditation. There’s another quality to this sensation, some deeper meaning, but I can’t grasp what it is. I feel her probing me, looking for understanding and somehow I sense that I do understand what it is she’s trying to show me. I can’t touch it yet, it’s lying just out of reach, but I know it’s there. Maybe she feels this too because the intensity of her probing diminishes and takes on a lighter feel...
It feels like she’s giving me a guided tour of her inner being but I’m aware that I’m only skimming the surface. There’s so much more to see, if only I knew how. It doesn’t feel as if she’s hiding anything from me, just that I’m not capable of seeing it. But I also get the sense that she’s more than capable of blocking my access to her if she chooses. She has chosen to communicate with me in this way and it is very much on her terms."
KAITIAKI MOANA WADE DOAK
GREETINGS AND WELCOME once again from lovely and enchanted Tasmania...a beautiful Gondwana-remnant island about the size of Ireland...surrounded by just as much ocean as New Zealand but unfortunately when you get out of Hobart or a handful of other coastal communities, the sense of being a maritime province evaporates. Kiwis might mistakenly think of themselves as 'nuclear free' and that 'zero carbon' would be a good thing but at least almost everyone in New Zealand has some kind of connection with Mother Ocean. Not so in Tasmania. In New Zealand, the furthest you can get from the ocean is about 120 kms, and checking on my trusty geological map of Tasmania, it would be just about the same here. Regardless of the reasons for the lack of maritime identification here, one of my many unspoken goals is to inspire and create enhanced connection with Mother Ocean.
GEOLOGICAL MAP OF TASMANIA
With this long-overdue weekly email...indeed later today I am recording NEXT week's show in honour of critical thinking, ingesting fiction versus creating your own reality...I share another long-overdue interview with Glenn Edney, marine biologist, underwater photographer, skipper, activist, author, lover of whales and dolphins, a kaitiaki moana, or 'ocean guardian' AND a true 'Jacques Cousteau' of New Zealand.
In this show we talk about what has happened in New Zealand since I left in early March in the wake of the whole 'coronavirus'...the word charade comes to mind. Glenn describes his experience as being essentially a holiday from all the hustle and bustle of business as usual. I emphasized the gift of time that pretty much everyone would have had: whether or not they seized the moment and made use of this truly priceless gift would only be known to each person, but it has been a rare opportunity for many people actually to do or work on all those things they have wanted to do but could never get around to it. Hence the CV episode as a ROUND TUIT MOMENT :)
Glenn tells us about how he is an animist (to which I responded, 'I, too, am an animist.') and that he has a problem with the mainstream scientific community's classification of viruses as non-living things. I shared that to my knowledge, the belief is that viruses are kind of on the border of living and non-living, that they are essentially genetic information, RNA or DNA with 'command and control' capabilities once they have found their way into cellular nuclei. Glenn talks about the importance of viruses in coral reef communities, which is very interesting as we don't normally think of viruses in aquatic environments. Like bacteria, however, viruses are probably everywhere, and many if not most of them doing things other than creating disease...helping to keep us healthy or more likely, doing things that could not possibly understand.
TYPES OF VIRUSES
We then talk a bit about nitrogen...it's abundance, obscurity and essentialness for life...and it's renowned effects on divers...'the bends' and the 'rapture of the deep' or nitrogen narcosis. Glenn said that he actually witnessed a diver remove his breathing apparatus and offer it to a fish. I asked him if this happened to be Mr. Limpett, or if he had ever seen any sea-monsters while 'under the influence.' He said no, adding that he had however had facial numbness that prevented him from knowing if his regulator was in place...and that the psychological effects of nitrogen narcosis are actually appealing if not addictive for many divers. Research chemist and planetary catastrophism writer Frederic Jeuneman* speculated that humanity might be in a state of chronic low-level nitrogen narcosis due to its high concentration in the air we breathe, comprising well over 70%...about the same proportion as ocean to land surface of Mother Earth.
* Jeuneman also speculated that 'radio decay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster...'
WADE DOAK AND FRIEND
ONE OF WADE'S MANY FANTASTIC BOOKS
Wade Doak was to me the 'Jacques Cousteau' of New Zealand...an avid marine biologist, underwater photographer, lover of ohana moana (Hawai'ian for 'ocean family'), author, activist, educator and well-loved personality. Wade may not have been quite as high-profile as Cousteau, but his work and contributions equally if not even more significant in terms of our understanding who Mother Ocean is and who her children are.
Unlike Cousteau, Doak did not have a military or naval background, but they both probably let off their fair share of underwater explosives...Cousteau maybe to blow up some enemy subs and Doak to blast treasure-laden ship-wrecks to smithereens!
Wade and I first got in touch in the mid-90's. I had been corresponding with South African radio-astronomer Gerrit Verschuur, who had expressed interest in Dr. John Lilly's dolphin communication group, with whom I worked in 1980-81. He put me in touch with Wade, and we began a several year correspondence, writing letters before the days of email, about his Project Interlock based in Marathon Key, Florida and exchanging ideas on cetacean communication and 'intelligence.'
When I first arrived to New Zealand in February 2000, Wade is the only person I 'knew' and he and his wife Jan had me to come visit for a couple days. This was my initial introduction to the New Zealand bush. Wade and I stood there in the lush forest where his home is located at Ngunguru, New Zealand, as he told me that a lot of visitors have reactions of fear or uneasiness in this wild country, but that I seemed perfectly at ease. I was...I was in my element only on the opposite side of the world...and I wasn't particularly on guard for dangerous reptiles or predatory carnivores.
I did wonder about the yellow poison dispensers nailed to the sides of some of his trees. Wade then gave me my introduction to 1080. This was a comprehensive and legendary exposition which I have on video that I will be digitizing upon my return to New Zealand. I came out of it unsure as to whether or not he was in favour of it, but I had to assume that he must have been or else it wouldn't be on his trees. This was to kill the evil possums...and this was the year 2000.
1080 was always in the back of my mind as I came to know Aotearoa over the next few years but in 2009 it came fully onto my radar with the production of the Graf brothers' brilliant documentary 'Poisoning Paradise'. In response to this I created my Rachels-Carson-of-Today blog and went to the next level with 1080 and bio-cide awareness, activism and education, where I remain today, despite its derailment from the public radar in the wake of 'persisting social crises' not only in Aotearoa but the world at large.
I never got to ask Wade how much he knew about the Dow chemical facility at New Plymouth that manufactured dioxin and whose effulgent into the ocean may be responsible for genetic deterioration and impending demise of New Zealand's endemic and magical small dolphin called Maui's.
MAUI'S DOLPHINS: LESS THAN 50 EXIST
MAUI'S DOLPHINS AND THE MEGALOMANIA OF EXTINCTION:
Glenn shares some story about his relationship with Wade, which was life-long: Wade's adventures and books inspired the young Glenn to become an oceanic adventurer.
Wade authored many books and has an established reputation as a very good writer. He also did heaps of underwater photography, both still and video. When I visited them we sat down and watched some of his footage of schools of fish...he particularly liked listening to my music as he commented that it seemed to go well with his underwater footage.
When I started going On the Brink radio in 2012 I tried to contact Wade to get him to do an interview, but to no avail. Apparently, according to Glenn, he may have found association with someone like me to be detrimental to his mainstream conservative image. I asked Glenn if he and Wade ever talked about telepathic communication with cetaceans, and he said yes, they discussed this many times, and that Wade and Jan both had numerous experiences along these lines, but that Doak was a bit reluctant to talk about this kind of thing for fear of being type-cast or marginalized as a 'fringe dweller' or worse a 'hippy.' I found this to be sad and unfortunate, because we discussed telepathy quite a lot in our early correspondences, and acknowledgement of these forms of non-sensory information transfer is crucial to any genuine attempt to understand and communicate with...or be communicated with...the cetacean family as a whole.
In lieu of having done my own interview, here is one that Tim Lynch did with Wade in 2010. And below is a link to one he did with me in 2016.
INTERVIEW WITH WADE DOAK
INTERVIEW WITH JEFF PHILLIPS
ONE OF FRANK'S BOOKS
"Frank Robson developed an understanding of whale strandings that still shapes the management of these events. The theory of the ‘key whale’, whose difficulties and distress calls are thought to trigger a mass stranding, was conceived by him. He stressed the need to keep beached whales cool, and to maintain the social cohesion of the group when re-floating a stranded pod. His work was motivated and guided by his conviction that telepathic communication is possible between people and whales."
Glenn and I talk a bit about Frank Robson, another lesser-known New Zealander who was known for his telepathic connection not only with whales and dolphins, but with other life-forms as well.
ROGER GRACE AND FRIEND
Glenn then told me about Roger Grace, another legendary fellow marine biologist and underwater photographer. I still don't know how I've managed to go over 20 years of comprehensively getting to know all-things-Aotearoa and yet never heard of Roger Grace until Glenn mentioned him last week.
SEA TURTLE SKELETON (RG)
INTERESTING DOLPHIN PERSPECTIVE (RG)
All marine biologists, underwater photographers, lovers of ohana moana and those enraptured by the deep have different experiences, different perspectives, different foci of clarity and blind-spots, and may be on different pages...but we are all in the same book and have one thing in common: water as kinship.
This is a theme I have talked about many times and my understanding is on-going. Water IS the basis of life as we know her and maybe beyond that, which might seem a bit metaphysical to some, as Glenn likes to say, the Russian researcher V. I. Vernadsky (of whom Jose Arguelles was a big fan) said that 'life is animated water.' Good one eh? I like that.
Much food for thought. Water we now know...or at least are told by mainstream astro-biologists and space scientists that water is quite abundant in the solar system, being found on every planet and I believe almost every moon in the solar system except on Venus. We know that water is probably the most singularly unique substance from an electro-chemical perspective, its hydrogen bonds and bonding angle enabling its range of amazing properties. Any contiguous body of water functions as one huge macro-molecule and also as a liquid crystal.
Beings who live in water full-time, especially Mother Ocean, and who have evolved highly complex neuro-computational hard- and software...the whales and dolphins...would be in a great position to know about a very wide spectrum of processes and events happening not only on and within Mothers Ocean and Earth but within the realm of the heliocosm and beyond...multi-dimensional information that I constantly attune to and transceive...and try to share as much as possible.
ON-GOING BLOG POST RELATED TO THIS SHOW
POSTS OF MY OWN ON OHANA MOANA
RECENT OTB SHOWS OF INTEREST
ON BEING AN ASTRONOMER
THE ELECTROMAGNETIC UNIVERSE
THE ULTIMATE TECHNOLOGY
https://mailchi.mp/7fff457cf29e/on-the-brink-radio-320-the-ultimate-technology-artists-with-brains-being-a-responsive-and-actively-intelligent-noo-cybernetic-synergist
HAWAI'IAN CORALS BEFORE AND AFTER NAVAL ELECTROMAGNETIC WARFARE
ON THE BRINK RADIO INTERVIEWS WITH TERRY LILLEY
OTB #288 RETURN TO MOTHER OCEAN - KAITIAKI TERRY LILLEY
OTB #248 GEO-TERRORISM HAWAI'IAN-STYLE
OTB #237 TERRY LILLEY REMIXED: UNDERSTANDING 'OHANA-CIDE' https://mailchi.mp/aba281694254/on-the-brink-radio-237-terry-lilley-remixed-understanding-moana-cide-next-generation-undersea-warfare
OTB #199 TERRY LILLEY - UNDERSEA WARFARE DOWN UNDER
OTB #191 TERRY LILLEY - MARINE BIOLOGIST (4)
OTB #177 TERRY LILLEY ON NEW ZEALAND'S RIMPAC
OTB #170 TERRY LILLEY - MARINE BIOLOGIST (2)
OTB #163 TERRY LILLEY - MARINE BIOLOGIST (1)https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=5836301fa77e7b3fd56cacff8&id=8a846ce0f1
OTB #192 KAITIAKIS MOANA TRIALOGUE - TERRY LILLEY/STEWART SIMONSON/JEFF PHILLIPS https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=5836301fa77e7b3fd56cacff8&id=d999e37078
'YUNBENUN SEA-DREAMING' JEFF PHILLIPS
OTB #204 HONOURING KAITIAKIS MOANA: GUARDIANS OF MOTHER OCEAN
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