Published August 17, 2011 | In the last several days I spoke with Gary P. Zank, Director of the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR) and Chairman of the Physics Department at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. CSPAR is a continuous intellectual contributor to NASA. He agreed with me that the outer edges of the Local Cloud (the one shown with a red center in the slide show on the Home Page) are likely to have the matter density sufficient to penetrate the Solar System’s protective barrier en masse and threaten Earth’s habitat. Note the red part of the cloud is red to show that it is hot. The heat is a reason why it is one three-hundredth the density of the dark colored parts of the cloud. What this means is the choice by me of seventy years for infiltration of the cloud into the Solar System is not an unreasonable prediction. Then scenario predicted by The Infinity Option -Be More Than You Are! is likely to come into play.
I also managed to locate, and speak to Lov K. Grover who is universally credited as among the world’s few leaders in quantum memory and computing. He put me in contact with Apoorva Patel, a quantum memory and computing physicist who is a leading thinker in the area of DNA transmission in quantum. For example Patel wrote “Quantum Algorithms and the Genetic Code.” I feel that the leading edge of scientific literature has justified this part of the story in The Infinity Option. Dr. Patel is a leading edge thinker. In his explanation of how DNA copies itself from cell to cell he makes a clear case that what otherwise would be explained as mere coincidences, is instead explained as numerous sychronies of characteristics of DNA that match requirements and conveniences for quantum law, as if quantum law developed DNA using quantum computing shortcuts to make it practical by reducing the odds of chance to a governable and “do-able” biological process. The Progeny Framework, the second book in the series, I am writing, which of course has not even been started except in conception, will use as a premise Dr. Patel’s work extensively. The Infinity Option just hinted around the edges of the idea.
Published August 2, 2011 | Scientific digs tells us Beryllium-10 deposits spiked thirty-three thousand years ago and sixty thousand years ago in the Antarctic. The meaning for this that scientists conjecture is at those times there may have been interstellar clouds that infiltrated the Solar System and radiated the Earth, responsible for havoc on its habitability for life.
As a science fiction writer I take notice that the digs were at the South Pole rather than the North, where the current preoccupation with the thinning of the ozone layer is. This makes the fiction writer in me conjecture that at least one of these times there was also a switch in Earth’s polarity resulting in the current polarity. That is why I have Dr. Moreau worried that the Earth’s polarity may shift again. But am I advancing fiction, or a scientific theory?
Published August 2, 2011 | To protect the flow of the story, my editor wanted me to put a sequence I had in the first chapter in an appendix. Its major characteristic is that it reads like an essay on Nichiren’s life and teaching.
The following is an excerpt of the article in the appendix that will help me make a couple of points that follow:
Nichiren was distrustful of powerful people for their potential abuses. Of government, he said:
“Buddhism primarily concerns itself with victory or defeat, while government is based on the principle of reward and punishment. For this reason, a Buddha is looked up to as the supreme leader of the world, while a king is called the one who rules at his will.”
He was equally distrustful of professional clergy, admonishing lay believers not to necessarily follow priests that assert their superior knowledge and authority concerning doctrine when Gosho contradicts it.
He wrote:
“…even though you chant and believe in Myoho-renge-kyo, if you think the Law is outside of yourself, you are embracing not the Mystic Law but some inferior teaching.”
In the The Infinity Option and the second volume to be published at a future time (The Progeny Framework) the question of whether when one practices one actually makes enlightened decisions or not is raised in a comparison involving a Muslim character, Omar Ebedi. He has compassion and sincerity in his heart as is demanded by his religion despite the image Al Qaida has tarnished it with.
Never does the story discuss what has happened in real life between the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood and the Soka Gakkai. But it is instructive as commentary on the framework required for coming generations of Gakkai.
When we chant we fuse with causation or the proposition that we have the power to be causative if we are determined enough. But the lesson Nichiren was teaching in the statement above did not mean that we possess some perfect illumination within us to tell us everything we need to know about choices we need to make about this or that, and right and wrong that chanting will automatically open up.
Rather our Soka Gakkai, our Value Creating Society is and needs to be a Value Protecting Society to prevent wrong-mindedness from eventuating even among those who chant, particularly those who lead. This is how we do it. Everybody is equal. Even the most senior leader is considered an equal and what he or she says and does is as much subject to peer review as anyone else’s behavior. There are no Ayatollahs.
Fortunately we can thank the trouble with the priesthood for the formulation of this model of our organization.
The priests, particularly the High Priest, received criticism for haughty and self-aggrandizing behavior by Daisaku Ikeda. The High Priest plotted to sever Ikeda from the Soka Gakkai and take over the organization in a contestation for influence over the lay organization. Ikeda won, but the lesson learned was, as Nichiren taught, do not rely on upper authority to do what is right. Judge for yourself and act accordingly.
That is the democratizing value of the Soka Gakkai by which anyone can draw a line distinguishing it from Islam even if they assert there is no difference between the exhortations of both religions to behave beyond the normal level of exertion to do good.
This may clear up a misunderstanding it is possible that people have about our Buddhist beliefs. We believe that in this lifetime if we chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo we can achieve something remarkable. We can change our own destiny or karma. We can become something we would otherwise not become, whether it is a professional designation or being a better parent or spouse, or just a happier individual capable of giving back to his environment in positive ways. We do not say we can become some all-seeing all-knowing right-minded abstraction called a Buddha. Rather we see a Buddha as someone who is always on a path of self development with a can-do attitude that so permeates one’s spirit as to be indomitable. Nevertheless fallible.
Published August 1, 2011 |
In The Infinity Option I describe a thought Deepak Chopra asks his audience to focus on as their first experience in meditation, “I am.” He says the incompleteness of the thought is what causes the mind to be tricked into focusing on itself. The book’s character, Shinjiro Miroku, a Soka Gakkai Buddhist asks his girlfriend, Jennifer Long, a Christian if Christianity justifies wrong by justifying its adherents being less than they can be.
Nichiren Daishonin teaches a chant, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which once understood, means to the practicer that he or she is cause itself or is at least capable of being such a powerful causative force that he can influence not only his own life dynamically, but the whole of society, and can determine the course of history. If cooperating with others to achieve a happier society, all the more power is put into force. It might be said the eventual meaning of the phrase for a practicer is “I am cause itself,” or “I am cause itself if I am determined enough.”
A practicer views a Christian’s world view as a lamantation, “If I am not ______ enough, I will be forgiven. Therefore I can give up on being _____.” When the blank word may be anything praiseworthy in accordance with Christian belief.
Published August 1, 2011 | For an article on the Local Fluff she calls the Local Interstellar cloud, or just our local cloud, the whispy, benign cloud now in contact with and entering the Solar System see http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2000/1/the-galactic-environment-of-the-sun/1 . Note that it is benign because of its characteristics. Its density is less than 0.001 atoms per cubic centimeter compared to the average cloud 0.3 atoms per cubic centimenter, or 300 times denser.
Dr. Priscilla Frish, its author, explains in American Scientist Magazine, January 2000, how all of this works. Dr. Frish is Senior Scientist, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. Note the article was written before Voyager discovered the vast cloud that The Infinity Option story involves us with. Nevertheless the article is informative about the mechanics by which cloud matter penetrates into the Solar System.
She says, “We do not know whether the interstellar cloud complex flowing past the sun is a homogeneous structure.” Discussing the possibility of encountering more typical formations among the cloud, she continues, “My colleague Gary Zank at the Univerity of Delaware and I have recently modeled the changes that might take place should the heliosphere encounter a dense interstellar cloud. If the density of the Local Interstellar Cloud increased to 10 particles per cubic centimeter, the heliopsphere would contract to a radius of about 15 AU and the heliopause would become unstable (oscillating in and out of existence)…[It] would dramatically alter the interplanetary environment of the earth. (By comparison, virtually all of the interstellar hydrogen is ionized before it gets to the earth’s orbit under current conditions.) A more severe scenario–say a cloud with a density of 1,000 atoms pere cubic centimeter–would alter heliosphere physics entirely and probably contract the heliosphere to within a few AU of the sun. Planets such as Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto (all of which are outside 9 AU) would be fully exposed to the flux of interstellar neutrals. Interstellar gas would overwhelm the solar wind at 1 AU.” AU are Astronomical Units. One AU is the average distance between Earth and the Sun.
Dr. Frish then calls our attention to the fact of earthbound evidence of previous interstellar cosmic ray influxes thirty-three thousand and sixty thousand years ago. Ice-core samples from the Antarctic show spikes in the concentration of beryllium-10. Scientists study it based on its 1.5 million year half-life and have determined a sudden increase in cosmic-rays would be best explained by intrusions of denser parts of the Local Interstellar Cloud.
The Infinity Option story involves the threat of such a dense cloud formation and Earth intersecting within seventy years.
