There can be no doubt that our arrival at this point in planet Earth's evolutionary history has been our destiny for many millions of years. There are many topographical features, such as Britain and Italy, which attest to this and which are at least this old. There can also be no doubt that my adoption of an antagonistic position regarding our recent ecological behaviour has been largely argumentative because I'm unable to deny that the ecological cost of arriving at this point in history has been unavoidable. It has been our destiny, and there are few things which will stand in the way of this.
Notwithstanding the irresistible nature of group behaviour, the destiny of an individual need not be confined to a pattern defined by the destinies of humanity, so I feel quite comfortable with my deviation from the norm. You may be lucky enough to perform a social function which conforms with group norms, but this will not be the case for each and every one of us. Organisms depend on being able to perform functions which are highly specialised, so there is a vast array of social structures and functions among the many people here on Earth. But I have no doubt that for each of you the fulfilment of your social role has been dreamed in a way not unlike the way my peculiar life has been put together, and has been the achievement of your own personal destiny.
We all have special abilities which make us qualified to perform the particular role we play in society, and in the case of my peculiar life I can count four unusual abilities which were required in order for me to fulfil my social function and destiny. I've already mentioned three of these: feeling comfortable with my solitude, having an inherent telepathic ability, and having a lifelong acquaintance with the dead, although I should also mention that my childhood was virtually normal, and that these factors didn't really kick in until I was in my twenties.
The fourth special ability in my case is probably not that unusual but it proved to be a crucial factor in the successful application of my other abilities, and that is the possession of a fairly rigorous logical and literary ability. I've been involved in some pretty chaotic scenes over the course of the last thirty or more years and particularly during the early 1980s when most of what I've been telling you unfolded in my life. I also found that the hysterical misinformation I became entangled in after my diagnosis was particularly unhelpful. But one of my greatest joys has been working with and solving some stubborn puzzles which I'm sure you will have gathered from reading through my story here.
There are probably other abilities I could mention but of particular interest to me here is not an ability at all, but the situational antecedents which a person with such abilities would fit into. These will be the pre-existing situational elements which the person will encounter at his or her time of birth, not unlike the fertile soil which a germinating seed will require, to draw a botanical analogy.
In my case one such antecedent element was the very small group of historical figures I mentioned earlier who were the senior stakeholders in my later development of the host model theory. Another was an early stage in the development of the emerging global crisis which is the inspiration for talk about the establishment of an extra-planetary human colony. But the most interesting antecedent elements would have to be the host model and the infinite regression of abstractions, which were undoubtedly pre-existing because they have always been a part of the very fabric of existence here on Earth.
This is most interesting to me because the host model and the infinite regression were also my destiny in life; they were both my origin and my destination, as if my life was a matter of joining two points which exist virtually simultaneously. Indeed, the mystical allure of the term "destiny" is that our destination in life has already been determined before we are even born, and that we live according to the intricate clockwork of an all-encompassing cosmic unity.
On a global scale the practical history of destiny requires institutions to be built on foundations which have been established by successive generations each of which reach for goals which are consistent with the functionality defined by their place within the host model. But on a personal level the practical achievement of destiny compels us to look deeply within our feelings where we may find the antecedent elements which most accord with the representational vision inspiring us. On a global scale this practical history will adopt the guise of planetary dreaming, but on a more personal level it will look like the unfolding of our place within the grand cosmic scheme of things.
This is not to say that destiny is not a lot like clockwork. I've been in some strange scenes in my life where I've been able to see vast intervals of time pass by me. And I've been able to wait at the edge of an interval such as this for lost time to catch up and make my progress more achievable, so I've seen how destiny and time are intricately intertwined, and I'm sure you will agree that this is not a particularly surprising observation.
There was an incident in the autumn of 1985 soon after I moved from Sydney to Armidale in the north of NSW. It was actually a dream which I had had, and which provided me with an interesting indication of how some of these things were assembled, and then sequenced in my perception. I was living in a small house on a quiet residential street in Armidale and in my earliest memory of the dream it was early in the morning and I was standing with my new neighbour between our two houses. I remember holding a teaspoon which I had been using at Wallaringah Mansions where I had been staying in Sydney. The kitchen was a long way from where my room was so the teaspoon was usually dirty and quite distinctive. The scene then changed and it was now in the darkness before dawn and I was on a country road at the edge of town.
I stood there by the roadside listening to the quiet of a country night when I heard almost quietly a man bellowing from a great distance just one word, "Climax!" I then saw a thousand sleepy people around me waking from their slumber as if they had been waiting for this very thing to happen. They seemed to have been dreaming there for some time before I arrived because they were so deeply affected by their sleepiness, but I was so startled by the scene that I woke up immediately. I found it such an interesting thing that I lay there thinking about it for an hour, and memorizing the bits of information so that I wouldn't forget them.
It occurred to me that the dream was about my arrival in Armidale which would explain the appearance of the dirty teaspoon and my neighbour in the driveway. It would also seem to support the view that my arrival had not gone unnoticed by the dreaming of this small city. But the thing which caught my attention in this dream was not the addition of a large extraneous accompaniment, but the possibility that dreamers could be spending lengthy intervals of time in a dream just waiting for a cue to propel them forward. I had no reason to believe that time was ever going to be clearly defined within a dream, but I believed that waiting was the essential subject in this case and that the symbolism was unmistakable.
I had already begun to think that the density of time was variable for sorcerers before I had this dream, so this episode was more a confirmation of this than any kind of startlingly new revelation. Throughout the early 1980s I had to conclude that for a solitary type like me time existed not so much in a state of invariable consistency but as one of the components of radiant energy which existed in a state of continuous flux. To illustrate with an analogy, shifting between adjacent packets of compressed time was like stepping from one rising or falling platform to another depending on their compression relative to each other. It was a weird thing I'm sure you will agree, but at the time it seemed to be a perfectly consistent formality.
Being socially isolated and a telepath meant that I could relate to creatures outside the human family, with animals which are not that much different from us, and importantly with much smaller creatures such as spiders and even ants. But being receptive to compressed and decompressed packets of time meant that I could relate to creatures on a vastly altered scale of existence such as the solar ancestor and the galaxy, but also with the microscopically small creatures I found when I looked deeply within myself. I received signals wrapped in compressed packets of time from much larger telepathic correspondents, and signals wrapped in decompressed packets from much smaller ones. And, in case you were wondering about the ants, the first step an interested party should take is to find something they like to eat and feed them!
Being socially isolated also meant that I was more receptive to all the really subtle things which crossed my mind, and which socially active people have a tendency to be too busy to notice. You could be thinking of something important but you'll say, "Oh, that's not the solar ancestor telling me something important. That's just my imagination playing tricks on me." The mind is a very subtle place and solitude happens to be well adapted to a careful inspection of it.
So, let me tell you a story which you will want to call an utter coincidence because you're not particularly receptive to such subtleties, but which I will call the subtle correspondence between personal and planetary dreaming. It happened not so long ago, and involves my acquisition of a second hand motorcycle.
There are very few things in my life which I have had to wait for. I have had very modest means for much of my life, so I've never been in a position to have big plans and intentions. I inherited enough to buy a small country home but I never thought much about my possible inheritance before my father died, so I never really had to wait for that. But from the age of about fourteen or fifteen I dreamed of owning a Harley Davidson. I've owned about a dozen bikes over the years but with such modest means I could never afford a Harley which is a fairly expensive brand, but owning a home meant that I could save my money more quickly. I didn't have to pay rent and with other potential savings I could make I found myself in a position to broaden my horizons. Even so, I knew from prior experience that saving money was a fairly lengthy endeavour whatever a person's means may be.
It all began several years ago at a time when I wasn't doing anything special with my savings. I had a pretty healthy bank balance at the time, but I would often catch myself dreaming of what I would do if I was super rich, and invariably I would say to myself, "Well, the first thing I'd do is get a nice motorcycle!" Well, on one of these occasions I said to myself, "Hey, I've got enough for a modest bike. Let's get one!" I gave it very little thought before I left the house, and by the end of the day I was in possession of a little Hyosung GV250 which is a very modest motorbike indeed.
It was only a matter of days after I had this little 250 in the garage at home that I started to think about getting something nicer. I looked at how much money I had left after the purchase, I searched online for the sort of bike I could presently afford, and I started to think about trimming my expenses so that my savings would accumulate faster. After a couple of months of this I was obsessed with saving money, and determined to fulfil my lifelong dream of owning a Harley. But saving isn't easy for anyone I'll bet, and late in the following summer I gave in to the temptation to compromise by buying a brand new Honda VT750S from a local dealer for the modest sum of just $9000 minus the trade-in value of the little Hyosung. I hadn't given up on my savings plan but I thought that a temporary respite from the rigors of saving was to be expected, and the 750 was a nice way to compromise.
About a year later things became suddenly more interesting. I got an interesting bit of advertising material in my letter box which said that the Harley Owners Group, a nationwide community of Harley enthusiasts, were planning a huge run which was to pass through the town I was living in. And when I say huge I mean a colossal number of Harleys; a couple of thousand riders were expected to take part in the ride which is a heck of lot of motorbikes indeed.
I rode my Honda to the street where they were to pass through town, and got a good spot early on the day of the parade, and before long I was joined by another Honda rider, a guy I had seen around before but to whom I had never been introduced. His bike was a bit bigger and louder than mine, and we got to chatting about bikes and the anticipated Harley Davidson parade. When eventually the procession rumbled into view, led by a police car with blue and red flashing lights, it took half an hour for them all to pass through town, and half the town of about two thousand turned out to see it go by.
But the next day was where it became interesting. The next day I rode to a neighbouring town to get some groceries of some sort, and just as I was leaving town on the way home the guy I was chatting with the day before overtook me, at high speed and very loudly. He was with another rider, so I sped up to keep up with them. I had no idea where they were going but I enjoyed a bit of high speed pursuit before I turned off to go to where my house was.
When I got home I saw my neighbour from across the road waiting outside my place for someone to meet him. He was a hardened Harley guy. He was too hardened to bother with the procession of the day before, and we got to chatting about bikes and other things when he mentioned that the bartender at the local hotel had a nice little Harley XL883C which he was trying to sell. I asked him how much he was asking for it and it happened to be right within the price range I was considering. I later met the bartender at the hotel in town where I paid him some money and my Honda which he wanted for his girlfriend. He already had another Harley for himself. The 883 was supposed to be hers but she refused to ride it because it was too loud, and that's the story of how I got my first Harley.
To make my point clear to you I should point out what it's like in a very small country town like mine. The streets are deserted most of the time, there are long intervals when there is no traffic on the street outside my house, and the intervals between incidents of pedestrian traffic are even longer. I live in a very quiet country town so the synchronicity of my bike story is significant to me. Add to this my predilection for solitude and I'm sure you will appreciate that what happened to me over the course of those two days was quite unique. The synchronicity of the events of this episode is too cute to be a coincidence in my view, and only reinforces my belief that there is no coincidence in a universe of spatial infinities only the constant dialogue between the different scales of existence. I believe that the events of this episode were in a sense dreamed by the characters who take part in it, and that our individual dreaming was coordinated by our involvement in the greater planetary dreaming.
