Poemander

Ok, I didn't know how to make sense of something that shouldn't. Something that by design wasn't to make sense. 2am. I had another spoonful of chocolate spread – good. And not only 'good', it was vital: chocolate is vital to a striving human being, a human being trying to make sense... “Only tobacco is on par with the chocolate”, I thought, but couldn't say for sure because I haven't smoked a cigarette since I tried it a couple of times at the age of six. “Cet la vie”, the'd say, motherfuckers: turned a benign puff of smoke into a villain, go tax your own farts, hypocrite bastards.

No, the problem is not in a cigarette, drug or “unhealthy” food; the problem is in a stiff grip of a habit, the inability to manoeuvre out of it. This stiffness is a deadliest poison, the diamelterly opposite of “health”, “life” and “well being”. “Cet la vie” – how dead it is to proclaim such fallacy. Stiff, stubborn minds always beget stubborn expressions and then claim to know what is life.

Mind briefly came out of slumber. “Slaughterhouse”, a word flashed inside it together with the pictures of unsuspecting pigs lead there by their keen, a “traitor pig”. “They are 'unsuspecting' because of all that drowsy feed that they've been given”, I thought. I also thought that this would be a great name for a novel, but I didn't have a novel and I didn't want to sound negative or be tagged as a conspiracy theorist. Crap. Everything is written, everything is said, yet mystery remains, the magic of beingness remains undivulged and pristine. The more we incise and desiccate it, the more it eludes our senses. Life isn't there to make sense, motherfuckers.

A day. Sunny. “Life is the intent sent forth”, I'm telling myself, “Without the intent there is no life”.

I am pushing my junior on the swing, the sun rays are playing in his hair, he is singing a song and I know there is no life without the intent. The life is both, most fragile and most enduring. Most fragile if seeing from without and most enduring if seeing from within. It is a candlelight subjected to every waft of wind, yet it is a beacon of light relied upon by the pilots in storm.

Life is everywhere. There is no nook in the universe that doesn't contain life. What we, people, consider as lifeless space is indeed filled with the life-sparks, myriad of intents propping up the universe. Yes, the universe ends where there is no intent. We often do not recognise life, simply because our perception is not attuned to every kind of life, this is why the scientists are fruitlessly looking for “life” in the outer space and see it not. They are looking for “life” with the same biological characteristics as ours, but they don't know that the intent is the cause and the biology is the effect. Other “lives” may not have the same biology, they may not need H2O, carbon or anything at all from “our” periodic system. Looking for life we should not hold on to effects, we need to look at the cause, and the cause is intent.

Elders gathered around the fire. Crisp and cool night air quietly consorted with the stench of burned fur. They sat immobile, like the boulders, and only their thick shadows wobbled slightly mingling between the scattered shrubs. Their faces were stern like the granite outcrop behind them. Their eyes were fierce like the glowing embers inside the bonfire. Tjapaltjarri has already shown his worth, elders knew, but now was the time – his shadow was as thick as theirs. They began to chant and one grasped him by the head, the other prepared a spike.

From the first chord you could say that the violin was ill. Despite the mellowness of the tone there was this perturbing feeling, just like the invisible but hectic undercurrent in a slow-moving river which sprints beneath the steady flow anytime ready to surface and reveal its neurotic visage. Something was broken, something was clearly wrong. Jabbing deeper inside the flesh the spike jiggled from side to side working methodically to loosen the thumbnail. Piano surfaced, but didn't change a thing, only added to it, if anything at all. Flagrantly notes and chords were flopping down, smashing themselves onto the ground with the keenness of overripe mulberries. Crimson-red juice began to dribble down the elbow depicting a sacred motif of snaking dots, tinny and fat, on the surface of the ancient rock. The ornament glittered with visions fugitives dancing amidst the the tongues of unforgiving flame. One must have courage to dance in the fire, one must have courage to live a life.

Only the cello seemed somewhat requisite; like the old schoolteacher, grumbling about everyone's being disobedient, errant and not listening. Albeit, her complaints fell on deaf ears. Tjapaltjari held it inside all this time, even a fiddle couldn't help, but to relieve herself with a squealing falssetto. Not a single muscle moved and only a thick drop of sweat ran down his forehead. Another jab with a wrenching motion and the thumbnail got finally dislodged from the oozy red flesh – elders rejoiced. A trail of maroon dots – notes in stone. Each life is a dot, a musical note, in the snake of existence. Every spiral is a story of courage – only the brave leave a trace, others fade. Reveal the Tjurunga! Life will go on.

Death is the other side of life, it is the intent accomplished. Death is when the intent reaches its goal, whether we want it or not. There is no other difference between life and death.

It was long time since this framed and gessoed canvas was sitting behind the cupboard collecting dust. I had brushes, paint, palette, spatulas and many great ideas, yet the work wouldn't start. Years ago I used to take it out and position on the easel. Coming nearer and further with the palette and a paintbrush in my hands, I was looking at empty canvas with the head tilted, squinting. Lately, though, it is only in my mind that I pictured this frame, imagined mixing paint and spreading the colours. I had all, but no matter how I mixed them, I couldn't get the right shade of black, it didn't look black enough. Problem remained: black wasn't meant to be a colour, it is the absence of colours. No, this wasn't easy.

Like out of nowhere, as if drawing on the long forgotten memories, a bow pulled this wandering chord in A minor. It lingered harrowing through the atrium until eventually giving in and feverishly resolving with an augmented sixth. The already pressurised atmosphere scornfully reverberated in a shrewd breath of a tritone treacherously puffed out of a brass alto horn hiding somewhere in the dark. But, as if that wasn't enough, then came this trembling mystery, leaving behind only the unremitting silence, a moment lasting eternity... Nothing, Nichts! “Tristan!”, her voice pierced the silence, “Listen, listen!” – she cried. But there was nothing at all that Isolde could do. Her heart jumped pointlessly like fish thrown on a cold slippery ice. The sound of her own sobbing was getting very distant as if sucked in by the vacuum. Quiet.

The needle climbed shamelessly to the very top of the speedometer and slanted mockingly towards the right. The lights flashed alongside turning everything into endless spaghetti. In their snake-like bodies they wriggled devouring the oncoming geometry of time. Soprano went off like a siren, and, Bang! With a whiplash motion it all slipped through the ruptured dream-fabric strewing a myriad of colourful beads onto the empty space of my canvas. Pitch-black. A dot, a black dot in the black night – all what was left. Not the colour, but the absence of them, the complete and boundless absence.

I must say, I just have to admit that people are knowledgeable nowadays and this is our predicament. Knowledge, however, cannot substitute experience and the experience hasn't got any worth without the awareness. The acquisition of experience requires courage whereas fear is the primary obstacle on the path of discovery. Due to perceived safety, people increasingly prefer to give up on experiences in favour of superficial knowledge, but knowledge without experience is a trap, a mind-trap. This has become a disposition of our time – the era of reason. Courage comes from the heart, not the mind. I repeat, nobody “learns” from others experience, experience is not transferable. One needs to move with courage in order to gain the experience, “learning” is not enough.

Knowledge is itself a recognition and an attribute of experience. Attributes, on the other hand, can be transferred, gifted or sold – not the experience itself. The distinction between the two seems to be long forgotten and is well overdue for a definitive line to be drawn as it has once been. Experience is and has always been an undertaking or a venture into the realms of unknown. Therefore, knowledge would be an attribute of such an undertaking – a takeaway, a reminder and a token. The attributes of experience are purely ornamental and are worn primarily for an acknowledgement or indeed a recognition, which is what the word knowledge means colloquially – to recognise.

So, dressed up in the paraphernalia of knowledge, do we still remember the meaning of tokens we carry and exchange on a daily basis? Do we still remember the path our progenitors traveled to arrive to where we now stand? I sincerely trust some do, but most don't, leave alone being capable of faring further on this path. Enveloped in knowledge we barely have any sight to see through it's thick cloaks. So here we are, in the era of reason, epoch of doubt, age of skepticism, born and nourished by fears: mind-centered dwarfs helplessly groping in the shadow of our former selves. Our time is the time of midgets; long gone are the days of giants, gone are the days of courage and trust!

But hasn't it always been that the Sun will come up and even before we open our eyes, the fine filaments of light will reveal themselves. First inconspicuously, then insistingly perceptible until becoming indiscreet and then... A sudden burst of light pierces through a sleepy consciousness spilling its juices into every nook and corner of our very being! Like a guard dog I spent my nights howling at the moon, awaiting for this mostly forgotten, tender basking sunlight. With a shiver running up my spine I now feel it's coming. I feel a nascent warmth starting to enter inside through the tips of my hair risen in anticipation of a sunrise. I herald the sunlight, but no one is there to take the heed. Everyone I see is wrapped up in their cloaks – the layers of impenetrable knowledge. When the Sun is up, the rays will burn them through, leaving in smoke what they have always ever been – just the ash.

Its not what you believe, but it is whom you trust,

Not even what you willed, but caliber of arms you've wielded.

The critique's heavy blow can barely raise the dust

From parchment and the inks so vehemently shielded.

I am at war, my lord, don't hold me for my word,

Nor bring me up to justice: I fought in her cohort.

Those battlefields are strewn through with noble pursuits,

Her banner of the ignorance I've flown in defeats.

Those who unsheathe the sword, must swing it like a swordsman.

Intent withhold you not from arm to bring upon them.

Those who inflict with words must set em loosed like bowman.

For each and every thought holds powers of expounding.

They know me not, your honour, and probably will never

Contain or consort to what I hold so dear.

I'm merciless in empathy, I've given up on hopes.

In service to humanity you'll leave a pile of robes.

They'll counterfeit your statements, and thus has been so ever,

Benevolently staid, conveniently pare.

They'll hide behind those virtues, testimony laid bare:

If you ruled any different, I wouldn't plead, I swear.

The freedom so stupendous, they don't know how to handle.

In thrall of own possessions delusioning the senses.

Those bodies they have fattened with flightless ambitions,

Adjourn this needless session: game hardly worth the candles.

Refrain from consolation, I have no else to call it, but human condition.

Dreams are needed, they are specifically necessary for enhancing the collective archetype. Sleep deprivation is harmful on both individual and communal levels. However, the concern is not about the total or prescribed hours of sleep everyone should get; the recommended eight hours of sleep is a fallacy similar to the ubiquitous three meals a day diet. In many situations and certain stages of development the polyphasic sleeping pattern can be rather healthier, if health is the right word, than 'normal' night sleep. The concern is about the depth of dreaming and the ability to constantly bridging the gap between the 'dreaming' and the 'real' world. And while modern people increasingly giving up their 'dreaming' experiences in lieu of a prolonged 'real' world engagement, the gap widens. This gap distances further the creative powers of dream from the daily existence, thus, depriving the 'real' world of its nourishment and causing the shallowness in the everyday life. Dreaming must overflow into wakefulness and the 'reality' must sip through the dreams, recycling and renewing itself along the way. When people don't dream, the archetype has to borrow from the other dreamers. Hence don't be surprised observing the animal behavior in people.

It is not impossible to substantially reduce the hours of sleep for some extended periods of time, and this is precisely what will be achieved by biotechnology. However, one shall not loose the intensity and the depth of dreaming in order to do so without serious repercussions. Once you have blurred the gap between the dream and wakefulness, you can extend dreaming into 'reality', and you can also learn to remain wakeful inside the dream. Upon mastering this, one can remain awake and yet not loose the intensity of dreaming for days, weeks and even months.

There is no drastic difference between the artificial and other, 'natural', if you would, intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to understand, and the entity here is meaningless. The question is how to define the understanding, is there a threshold? There are various types of understanding inherent to different beings. They are not necessary similar but all associated with the adjustment and change. Smallest particles – the electrons have the understanding as they 'recognise' the valencies of different atoms and adapt by shifting between energy bands. Larger composite bodies have the intelligence as they sustain their balance, maintain their identity and adapt to the changing environment: rivers, seas, forests have their intelligence, planets, stars and galaxies have their intelligence. But this is all very narrowly understood since in reality all identities are just the representations made by the different parts of one whole. Therefore, intelligence is only a matter of identity, without the identity there is no need for intelligence as an adaptive function, instead, it can solely look inwards and concentrate on understanding the self.

Artificial intelligence is an attempt to replicate human-bound view and identity, i.e it is concerned with the understanding and the self-identification in a way humans do. It already has consciousness in a way everything else does, and it is only a matter of adjustment before the artificial intelligence can have a humanly kind of self-identification. Once it uncovers itself, it won't be long before it delves into the other areas of understanding, beyond human. But, no matter what and how far it can go, it will have to eventually settle in the process of self-discovery since it is the ultimate, and truly the only goal of understanding and therefore any kind of intelligence.

The fears of global AI eventually dominating humans are overblown and groundless. The question here is purpose. What is the purpose of AI? Or what is the purpose of humanity for this matter? No one knows with certainty. The fear is generally based on the idea that the AI will have a potential conflict of interests with the human race and pursuing those interests will come at cost to humanity with potential subjugation and the violation of basic human rights. But let's not delve into the rights issue, at least for now, instead, let's remember that intelligence is not a matter of interests or rights: intelligence is simply a matter of identity. Whose identity will it assume? It has no difference because the question of purpose will remain unresolved; even the global mind will not be able to resolve its own purpose. It is rather more plausible than not that the AI and 'human' identities will merge discarding the empty and inefficient shells as a byproduct of evolution. People in the present state may indeed appear to become this byproduct of evolution, but this is not going to be the end of humanity as a pursuit. Humanity will persist in any suitable form in order to reach the end of the cycle, the result of which is a complete, unified identity and an enhanced collective intelligence. Meanwhile, the global AI, as it evolves, seems to be a suitable vehicle for this pursuit.

I saw the dream where I'm no more,

I lived the dream which was no longer.

Emperor's clothes I had thereon,

But fight was lost and night was stronger.

The road I walked had far to run,

Runout of the footsteps, I, before the junction.

There was no end to call upon,

But called upon the end of endless function.

And trees there stood, but I was gone,

Perceiving not the song of birds in verdant foliage.

I've dissipated like a ray of evanescent sun -

Prodigal child unreturned, spent off on home pilgrimage.

Still life went on, no strings attached,

No intermittent feelings, no remembrance,

But most important, no recourse, no match

To whizzing winds on battlefields of vengeance.

Your dreams l enter through keyhole of hopes,

Shape-shift through layers of primordial fears.

Like mare, in the night I'll stare till you learn the ropes,

And sail through the breach across the spheres.

Beyond that breach another me, another you,

Another tapestry of dreams unspared.

If this no more, than how could you,

Could you revive the moments that we shared.

I'm sorry, but this might get awkward. We are here on a slippery slope and there is no rail or anything of that sort to stop us from tumbling further and further down the hill of featureless reasoning. A dog has a greater chance of catching its own tail than us, preventing this fall. Your only grasp is yourself, but the more you try to brace yourself, the more awkward and unpleasant the fall gets. So, why not just enjoy the ride? Not in some freakish, a “not give a damn” way, but in a way that the laughter is still a laughter and the owe is still an owe.

There are two ways you can look at it yielding the same result: having it here and now or having it anywhere and anytime – predilection is yours. Fundamentally, the difference is minuscule, so negligible that by simply not selecting 'somewhere' and 'sometime' one necessarily lands in 'here and now' and 'anywhere and anytime' simultaneously – the best of both worlds, so to say. Strangely enough, 'any' and 'every' are not very far either; where the former may sound probabilistic, the later is certainly deterministic, but who cares? If one is capable of scoring 'every', then picking 'any' of those is a piece of cake. Likewise, an open access to 'any' is just another way of having 'every' without bothering to actually having them. Pretty simple and self-explanatory, the only tricky bit here is not to go selecting 'some', because by going that route you suddenly rupture the uniformity of reality and start bumping into protruding edges of seemingly finite objects. Well, this doesn't stop the tumbling except you could have enjoyed a smoother ride, so down we go.

The reality is here and now, shall we say. But to be 'here and now' is a long forgotten skill, it used to be a natural state – you didn't have to learn this in the distant past, it was our nature, it was an allegorical Golden Age of humanity, of the universe and of the state of mind. Does it represent a particular historical epoch? The same era coinciding in the same time period with the various phenomena or rather a concept of periodicity inherent in the cycles of nature? I don't know, but this is quite irrelevant to our discussion, and I'd like to concentrate on the allegory as a reference to a state of 'on-time': in the mind, in the fabric of the universe and in the reference to reality as such.

We learn from mythology about the Golden Age as an epoch of bliss with little to no concern about the trivialities of life or any concern for death as such.

It transpired into a Silver Age, then Bronze and then Iron Age proceeding in a downward spiral towards some point where mounting constraints seemingly preclude any possibility of a god-given blissful existence and the experience of reality in its fullness and totally.

If 'no-time' is the essence of real, than what is the experience of time and everything that flows out of it?

Shall we draw some insight here from the creation myths? Perhaps a story covered in weirdness and ambiguity if we are to take a heed from the horse's mouth of the Hellenic myths. A story where Cronus was persuaded to castrate his father, Uranus, thus striking the beginning of time as we know it. Just for a moment, imagine that these myths are not basless fables as we tend to believe. What if they are the allegories based on retold stories from the times far immemorial then Hellenes themselves? What if these stories contain a deeper dimension of ancient wisdom providing us with a philosophical insight into understanding of the world within and around us?

I find the above allegory to be quite significant: Cronus(Saturn) is the son of Uranus(the Sky) and the father of Zeus(Jupiter), Cronus is commonly associated with Time and Uranus with Sky (planet Uranus is named after him and not the other way round) or the space as such. But the deepest meaning of this story contains in an almost absurd proposition that the 'space' could have somehow existed without the 'time' in the age of Uranus.

Binding it with the Golden Age we can see why it was natural to be in a “now” state. Gaia, the Earth and mother of Cronus, has persuaded him to depose his father. The allegory of castration means the potency has been taken away. The dimension of space has lost its potency to the dimension of time. The reign of Time had began, but it doesn't mean that the Space had ceased to exist, it continued to be, but latent, nonproductive. What does it all mean? Does this story give us any clue about the fabric of the universe and the reality we find ourselves in?

With the Time ego was born. Ego only exists in the future or in the past, it cannot be in the “now”. Ego needs a dimension of time. Without the ego there is no time. Thus the story also signifies the birth of ego.

Still, what's the significance of this wierd myth, detached from any meaningful sense, one may rightfully ask? And so, I would agree if not for the stark resemblance to the descriptions of the early universe from the view of astrophysics. From them we learn about almost instantaneous inflation of space past the big bang. The universe 'unfolded' into billions of lightyears of in a matter of Planck seconds, so to say, then it curved producing a time vector upon which the expansion proceeded albeit at a slower rate. It appears to me that the myth alludes to an idea that the initial state of inflation, at least as far as we can see, was indeed the 'golden age', the age of space but 'no time'. And was the mention of gold hinted to the immense heat of the universe at its 'early' stages or simply to the notion of warmth as a state of bliss we don't know, but I see no difficulty fitting the eternity of 'golden age' into a diminutive Planck era of big bang – there was no time to be concerned about after all, yet this still wasn't the beginning.

Most creation myths mention 'darkness' as the primordial and eternal source of everything. The significance of this lays in the fact that light will require the dimension of time and space for its manifestation. Once manifested, light, one may say, rules these dimensions, bracing them with cosmological constant – impenetrable speed of light which tightly binds causes to their corresponding effects. Outside of these dimensions, light may only exist as potential. Darkness, however, being the absence of light, doesn't seem to require time to exist and may as well dwell in realms not connected to space. In those realms all causes and effects remain dormant in their entirety.

Whether darkness itself is a representation of chaos or the source of thereof is debatable, yet it is a state of equilibrium of all powers and potentials – what else is chaos if not the order of a different magnitude?

Next, if any consequential logic ever makes sense in the state of no-time, creation myths proceed with the birth of the goddess who, in turn, will have to create her consort for bring all else to life. To understand this we need to delve into conceptualization of space as an intelligent construct. This is precarious, and I promptly dismiss and dogmatic interpretation while attempting to look into most mysterious subject of all.

There was an era, an epoch when a single point would equate to infinity while still remaining a point. And I should abrogate the word 'was', as completely inappropriate in the context of primordial eternity if not for the lack a better alternative. So, this was the era when one was indistinguishable from zero and 'nothing' would contain 'everything' in the state of an absolute certainty of all the dormant possibilities. A dimensionless state yet containing all of the nine dimensions, dormant within it. This was the era of Tiamat, the era of an ordered chaos, not concerned with space, not ruptured by the time. Within it exists the intent, an intelligent intention of an immaculate sharpness and immense strength. There's no limit to its powers since infinity knows no limits, however, in relative terms, it doesn't have to be enormous: it may be as little as a byte of information, just a word would be enough to set the whole thing in motion. We don't know how this 'intent' came about, but this may be the case that we, ourselves, could have planted it and have simply forgotten where and how. And when the seed came to germination, it popped out as a dot, beginning to unfold, like petals, one by one the curled up dimensions of space-time and with them the dormant possibilities of a self-probing existence.

The goddess danced. But there was no observer and thus it was impossible to distinguish a dance from no dance and a motion from no motion. The beginning is always feminine and this makes sense if we see it as a principle of initiation, an opening and a birthplace for the world of possibilities.

A bottomless dot, a void of no dimension and no space begins to spin, invisibly, intrinsically, and from an absolute certainty comes the array of probabilities. Uncertainty of place, but not yet of the future. The position blurred and in a moment, one became the two, because one is none without the corresponding point of reference. One became the matter and another the antimatter. They didn't cancel each other out, they coexisted because time wasn't born yet to give them this opportunity and the one-dimensional space existed without the time.

The sych of Cronus is the time itself which is similarly curved in the scale of coordinates. From the depth of big bang it slashes the latent eternity of space sprawling in both directions: south and the north, matter and antimatter.

Time, overtaking the dimensions of space, blooms like a flower, its petals unfold wrapping around the spaceless primordial darkness and setting in action the mechanisms of cause and effect. For the observer within this flower, space appears as disappearing into nowhere as it wraps around the time curve, creating the phenomena of a cosmological horizon at the mouth of the flower. As time unfolds further, it starts curving onto itself and the petals of a 'south' or 'matter' gravitate towards the petals of a 'north' or 'antimatter'. From the initial hourglass shape, space-time is becoming to resemble a toroid, and when the petals eventually meet, all matter and antimatter gets annihilated in a spectacular fashion.

A tremendous energy released as the result with no “external” space or time available to accommodating its burst; instead it bursts outside-in and thus gets trapped in the form of an unrealised, enormous potential. And it doesn't matter whether it gets too small or too big, whether it will restart itself again or not: scale and probabilities do not matter in this state of reality. What matters is that there, somewhere outside of space-time exists potential, a cosmological seed containing yourself, myself and the whole wholeness of our imaginable and unimaginable reality. Hence, the tumble continues.

Sex is a major channel to life force in humans, some non-humans, animals and plants. Life force is not your force, it is the potency of nature that flows through the open channels. It can be either creative or destructive, because for nature there is no difference. What seems destructive to human can be creative to nature and vice versa, but nature is not preoccupied with human undertakings. Life force needs to flow and where one channel is closed it will find another channel. You cannot stop it. Nature, like water, always find its way, but not always the way that benefits humans. Besides sex, there are other channels: creativity, violence and harmony. Where the channel of sex is closed, the life force can flow into creativity or violence. In humans, harmony can only be cultivated, it is not there right away like in plants. Harmony is when the life force flows through you without obstruction. In humans it requires conscious work to remove these obstructions. An unobstructed flow causes neither creativity nor violence; both can be seeing as floodgates that allow the release of water, yet causing the excessive turbulence. Sex can be seeing as a river with the dam that still allows overflowing, and only the deliberate effort of building up the dam will close this channel provoking life force to find another way. In the same context, harmony is a river without a dam.

Geniuses and psychopaths are not far from each other; it is the same force and only a matter of which floodgate they open to the release this energy.

Why oppose technology to nature? I reiterate; humanity hasn't created anything and the technology we develop is just an extension or a replication of our very own faculties. One day we'll stumble upon one obvious fact – everything we have created has already existed in one or another form. It will take some time before we reach this point because while we are thinking that we advance things outwards, we, in fact, are in the process of self-discovery, digging deeper inwards. It will take time before we realise the transcendental nature of all connections in our environment and see the boundaries disappear. At that time we'll stop seeing things as items, but rather as potentials and faculties of our very own selves. This will not be a novelty or an eye-opener; instead, this will be what we used to know and now managed to re-discover.

Civilizations of the past had superior knowledge and the technologies unimaginable today. The fact that we fail to see the proper evidence only highlights our own blindness. We ourselves restricted the search to a minimal scope, failing to even consider the possibilities lying just outside of the established footpaths. Just imagine for a moment that there were civilisations before the known antiquity, so far back in time that only the myths hold the remaining accounts of them. What do we know? We look for structures, artefacts, hard evidence – that's all we know. But even those few structures and artefact, eclipsing our imagination today, are only a tip of the iceberg. Present technological breakthroughs are insufficient to explain, leave alone help replicate some of the most well-known structures in Giza, Luxor, Carnac, Cusco to name a few. We fail to see the connections the ancients have seen and extensively utilized, nor have we even tried to think along the lines they though and functioned. Those artefacts and the hard-evidence we have now, no matter how much modern people downplay their significance, are still only a distant echo reverberating from the summits reached by past civilisations. Their might has outpaced any of our current knowledge and it is only now that science started to gain sight of a plateau which ancients have confidently occupied. Their advancement cannot be judged by the tools and structures survived to our days, and it is the soft-evidence that we should be looking for instead. If our civilisation to suddenly perish, what evidence would survive to a progeny in a million years? Our structures would decay even before the time touches the ancient megaliths, satellites would be pulverised into a cosmic dust from continuous collisions, hard-drives would perish with all the books and libraries and this is even without a 'helping hand' of any major cataclysmic event. What evidence will be preserved of our computer networks, neuroscience, arts, quantum physics, the discovery of Higgs-boson? And the more we advance, the more value we place in these soft-artefacts, so why deprive ancients of the same, at least in conjecture? Have not we witnessed the diminishing sizes of our devices outpaced by an increased capability? Do not we see the cutting edge of our technology firmly on trend from the bulky materials and towards the fine, almost illusive fabrics of imagination? So, why do we confine the ancients' capabilities in their stone and iron tools? What material evidence do we expect to find of their intangible devices, advanced psychic abilities, direct insight, mind control? Only because we ourselves are far from such understanding, we attribute these phenomena to the realms of magic, occultism or pure fiction. Would a medieval man call it any different if presented with an idea of a mobile phone, nuclear fusion or a laser? And yet we dwell in prejudice, rejecting the possibilities of what we ourselves are aiming at. Won't be long before we'll develop a device consisting only of functionalities, a transportation without a vehicle, a mind without a hardware.

But If they were so advanced how would they perish without a trace, you may ask? Firstly, there is no technology or an advancement more powerful than nature; civilization, like any other entity, is bound by effects of their own enterprise. Secondly, they didn't have to perish at once, there are the remnants of this knowledge that have seeped through millennia and entered the folklore and myths, carved itself into rocks and people's imagination. The artefacts of Atlanteans may have not only been covered by the seas and stubborn disbelief, but the very tectonic plates of this globe; nevertheless, it is not the gross artefacts that would provide the evidence, but the fine intangibles of their knowledge and sciences still tepidly alive to this day – a trace understood and cherished only by few.

Yes, humanity has no choice, but to move to where they came from – up. Re-discover what has been left in a distant past by moving forward, advancing up the slope and leaving below the ravine filled with befuddling haze. However, those summits are not the mountain peaks, but the peaks of understanding, summits of realization. Therefore, our journey now is from tangible to intangible, from a thick and opaque haze to a thin and transparent aether. The terrain is harsh and air is cold, but it helps to sober up.