Singularity

Entering the Singularity


By John Taylor; 1 August, 2004


For those who did not look it up when I mentioned the word the other
day, a katzenjammer is extreme confusion caused by a hangover. Hangovers
are binge backwashes, the body's wake for brain cells smashed in a crash
from a high. Collectively our age is marked by katzenjammers of massive
proportions. At the same time, Science fiction writers are starting to
speculate that a time will come, it may already be upon us, when
scientific advances, each with its own katzenjammer, will come so fast
and furious that it will be beyond coping. This event, where the rules
change so fast the world becomes beyond comprehension, they call the
Singularity. This term describes the extreme twisting and compression of
space and time that happens on the event horizon of a black hole. In any
case, whether you call it a katzenjammer, the Singularity, or use the
conventional Baha'i phrases like "crisis" or the "birth pangs of a new
world order," the danger is the same.

Yesterday my father's buddy dropped by in his car at who knows how early
an hour to pick him up for a golf tournament. In order to rouse him, the
fellow started to lean on the horn. Since my father is almost completely
deaf, his friend would literally wake everybody in the neighborhood
before he accomplished what he hoped to do with that all-fired honking.
Yet it worked. The blasts woke me up and I stumbled over to Father
working in the kitchen, cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted that his
friend was honking away for him. This kind of stupid action is so stupid
it should be proverbial, "He's honking for a deaf guy."

Yet, thinking about what I have been thinking about lately, honking for
a deaf guy is telling. It is a perfect analogy for any breach of
spiritual law, especially violence and backbiting. Isaac Asimov's famous
saying, "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent," would be
improved if you could say, "Violence is an incompetent honking for a
deaf guy." I picture the transgression of spiritual laws, so-called
"victimless crimes," in this image: a small child is trying to sink a
leaf floating on a puddle. Small stones do not upend the leaf; so he
tries ever larger rocks until finally he swamps it in the waves. But the
effect of the waves goes far beyond the leaf, they set the whole body of
water into rocking agitation. For one good, intended effect a thousand
wrongs and disturbances are set in motion.

The parable of the puddle describes how it reverberates back upon
itself, this crisis, Singularity, katzenjammer, or whatever you want to
call it. If the outside world is rocked by rollicking undulations, what
difference does it make if I ignore the rules of justice and principles
of peace in my own life?

Yet faith is the kind of knowledge that can ignore the hugest waves and
set its own harmony in motion. The Writings call it a pure deed, this
kind of act. A pure deed has tremendous power. It somehow sets forth
powerful waves of harmony. The Writings assure us that pure deeds have
more than enough power to cancel out all the wrong kind of waves, the
negativity that swamps our world. Somehow purity reestablishes the
hidden harmony that is already in the world. Indeed, it is some
unremembered, pure deed that attracted the gift of faith in the first
place. Baha'u'llah is reported as saying,


"Be thankful to God for having enabled you to recognize His Cause.
Whoever has received this blessing must, prior to his acceptance, have
performed some deed which, though he himself was unaware of its
character, was ordained by God as a means whereby he has been guided to
find and embrace the Truth. As to those who have remained deprived of
such a blessing, their acts alone have hindered them from recognizing
the truth of this Revelation. We cherish the hope that you, who have
attained to this light, will exert your utmost to banish the darkness of
superstition and unbelief from the midst of the people. May your deeds
proclaim your faith and enable you to lead the erring into the paths of
eternal salvation." (Baha'u'llah, quoted in Shoghi Effendi, The
Dawn-Breakers, p. 586)


As my regular readers are aware, I have been reading Phillip K. Dick's
short science fiction stories. What attracted me to him, by the way, was
a terrible memory. Every few days the two kids and I go to the local
three for three for three (three videos for three days for three bucks)
video store where each of the three of us picks out a film for himself.
Repeatedly I found myself in the science fiction section and picking the
same few films, over and over, each time forgetting that I had already
seen it. And the inadvertent films that caught me in my loss of memory
loop always seemed to be based upon a story written by Dick. I took this
as more than mere stupidity, it was a sign. So I started reading Dick's
fiction.

The first in the collected stories is called "Beyond Lies the Wub." This
wierd tale so intrigued me that I changed it into a Gabby and Bea story
and told it to Silvie last night before bed. I was interested to see her
reaction since she has of late strengthened her longstanding resolve to
become a vegetarian. I will tell the Gabby and Bea story here when it
has matured.

Another story in Dick's short story collection is "Paycheck," recently
made into a film of that name starring Ben Afflick, as I recall. As
always, the book is better than the film. Dick obvious did a lot of
reading from the wisdom of the East since this is a perfect metaphor for
faith, for pure deeds setting great things in motion that Baha'u'llah
set for believers who wish to "render God victorious on earth."

In the story a hot shot technician stumbles upon a "time scoop," a
device to see the future and change it by grabbing out a few small
objects and taking them back to the present. He works at a huge
corporation for two years on the top secret project, working to perfect
this "time scoop." He is paid a large sum but must agree to have his
memory of the two years surgically cut out of his brain. The story
begins with him finding that he agreed in that forgotten period to
relinquish his huge payoff in exchange for a few trinkets in a manila
folder. The corporation is used to that, for workers who have access to
the future tend to think: "Why not bring back a winning lottery ticket,
or information that might lead to greater things than that?" When they
have that kind of knowledge they do not need the pay, a few baubles can
have unlimited value.

The plot has several more twists, but this suffices to show an amazing
similarity to the sacrifice of material good of faith's pure deed. Even
the loss of memory seems to be a necessary concomitant of the pure deed
that Baha'u'llah mentions above. The pure act that makes one worthy of
the gift of faith is done "though he himself may be unaware of its
character." Pure means untainted by worldly stains, so there may be a
sort of spiritual brain surgery that takes away conscious memory of the
event. Some say that you cannot be aware a pure act by its very nature,
and I think Plato was among them with his theory of knowledge as
remembrance of something that we always knew but forgot when we were
born into ethereality.

Jennings, the protagonist in the story, finds that one of the small
items in his envelope gets him out of every scrape he enters into. He is
arrested but a little wire in it allows him to escape. It all was
anticipated by his forgotten self. After a while he refers every problem
he encounters to one of these apparently useless objects. The slightest
token from a self that has seen the future has boundless value for him,
just as the tokens we call "holy," thoughts and insights born of
entering into communion with the Holy Spirit.


"Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought
this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of
all mankind." (Job 12:9-10, KJV)


Spirit, like time travel, breaks all former limits. At the end of
prayer, what do you have? Just some increased awareness, maybe a feeling
of upliftment. But wait, that paltry thing can harmonize you with the
spirit that moves the universe! The possibilities are endless, any
sacrifice afterwards is real. You renounce your "fee" for doing good
just for the sake of getting rid of it, not for any benefit, real or
imagined.

But the objects never tell him what he is seeking, Jennings intuits the
correct course of action on his own. He second guesses himself and does
very well. Self knowledge, the only real knowledge there is. Unlike the
other employees who leave the Company's employ, Jennings has a hidden
agenda. He redirect his steps back into the Company and tries to take it
over. This they do not expect. Like a pure deed, purity compounds and
reflects back into the world of Spirit. The bold strategy of reversal
awards victory to Jennings. His actions resemble a pure deed, for a pure
deed is self-referential, God for God abiding in a temporal being. Just
like much of Baha'u'llah's Writings is self-referential, a pure deed has
need of no authority beyond itself. In a word, a singularity.


John Taylor
helpmatejet@yahoo.com
 
Blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
 
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