Thank you for answering, and thank you for not dismissing me as an eccentric crackpot.
My original point then becomes: How much of his mysticism is a mental tool–like “red touch yellow, kill a fellow, red touch black, venom lack”–for surviving and flourishing in an adverse environment?
Another point is implied by Brown’s teachings . . . namely, if more people communed with nature, then we could better see the damage that we are doing.
I consider myself to be very competent, observant, and resourceful in nature. I believe that a large part of this is my autism, as autistic people have extreme sensory issues with regards to light, textures, odors, and so forth . . . and I believe that this means that I tend to see and feel things that other people dismiss. I also have a near photographic memory (also a consequence of my autism), which is relevant to this discussion, as I’ve seen subtle changes in the environment over the past several decades.
With this point in mind, I believe that I have perceived the damage and changes in the ebb and flow of life in the natural environment from climate change, and if everyone could see these things with their own eyes, then maybe there would be less skepticism toward the global catastrophe that humanity is creating.
This is another reason why I’m uncomfortable dismissing Brown’s mysticism without a fair hearing.
The brain is an amazing instrument, it processes a lot of information in the background. This is why dogs can “sense” when someone is sick or not feeling good. They have subtle changes in their pattern of behavior the dog picks up on. The same applies to people, we get “feelings” or sense something is not right. As Whitefire alluded to, trust those feelings, they are trying to tell you something.
Of course, many in this new age have not learned to just keep their eyes open. One day, in the middle of rush hour standing at a bus stop coming from a subway and surrounded by hundreds of people, I watched a hawk capture and kill a pigeon. Just fifty feet away. As it started to feed on a rooftop, I looked around and no one else was looking at this event. No one else saw it, no one was looking, no one was really observing the world around them.
@Kevin_Levites You would have loved to meet some of the people I have met. While I was serving in the air force in BC, it was a search and rescue operation. And sometimes we had to call in the genuine trackers, who were tasked with tracking very lost people, sometimes for days. And they did not talk about super sleuth methods, just observing everything around them.
The circles’ concentricity (from what I see and interpret) can be explained simply.
In my example, I mentioned fleeing birds and fleeing grasshoppers.
The grasshoppers don’t fly as far or as high as the birds, so they make a smaller circle with the disturbing animal in the middle.
When birds fly, they fly farther and faster then the grasshoppers, so they make a bigger circle–around the point of disturbance–than the grasshoppers . . . so both circles have the disturbing animal at their center, so we have concentric circles.
The idea behind these concentric circles seems similar to certian things I recall from the 4th grade. Did you guys ever get a math test in multiplication, and the teacher always admonished you to “check your work” by using division to make sure you got the correct answer?
I see the different concentric circles as a way of verifying–by different observational methods–my conclusions about the passing animal.
So, if grasshoppers are disturbed in a way that suggests a stray dog . . . and the birds are disturbed in a way that suggests a stray dog . . . and rabbits are running away from this common epicenter in a way that suggests a stray dog . . . then I conclude–from the different concentric circles–that there is a stray dog at the common center . . . even if I don’t see it.
This is an over-simplification of a complicated subject, but this is why these circles are concentric.
I’ve actually participated in search-and-rescue operations, and it was one aspect of my job that I was good at.
In South Florida, there are many nursing homes and assisted-care living facilities for elderly people . . . as well as a huge number of drug rehab places and group homes for mentally-challenged people.
It was not uncommon for someone with Alzheimer’s disease to “elope” (a nice word for “escape”), and start wandering around in the woods ans swampland.
Such things are a true emergency, because many of these people are dependant upon specific medications that have to be given at certain times. Also, they can get dehydrated and die rather quickly in the Florida heat, when one considers advanced age and pre-existing medical problems on top of a 94° temperature with 90% humidity. It was not unusual for these people to drink water out of canals, so I often warned nursing staff and doctors that such people may get diarrheal illnesses after we brought them back . . . which–more often than not–resulted in a scolding or reprimand that I should “stay in my own lane.”
It was also not unusual for these people to get sexually assaulted by psycho homeless people.
So, I’ve had to help hunt down and recover such people . . . and I freely and often relied on Tom Brown Jr.'s ideas and teachings to do so.
Yair. Last time I got conned into reading woo was in 2002. I was in rehab and mentally unwell.
The books were : “The Heart Of The Soul; Emotional Awareness” by Gary Zukav. and “The Seat Of The Soul”, same bloke. I think he wrote a bunch of others in the same vein… These books were highly recommended by that intellectual giant, Oprah Winfrey. After her endorsement the books were naturally best sellers.
This “mysticism” definitely depends on which continent you’re on and the route evolution has taken all species on that continent.
I might be reading this wrong, but here in Oz at least, such a maxim as above might probably leave you dead.
We have yellow bellied and red bellied black snakes and both are venomous but shy. I have personally been in very close quarters with the red belly variety in several circumstances and having respect for them and remaining calm, avoided being bitten (as a result I crazily regard them as rather pleasant and remarkable creatures to my friends’ astonishment).
But here Downunder the truth is the beautiful red and black snake is venomous. I had several red belly black snakes on my rural property in Queensland and I made no attempt to drive them off because they are known to eat the larger, more aggressive (to humans) and even more toxic Eastern Brown Snake (second most toxic venom in the world). In the five years I lived there I never once saw a brown snake, though I did kill a taipan in the loungeroom.
I am inclined to think this sort of mysticism is the result of the acquired knowledge of native people forced to cohabit with wildlife (a skill urbanites have utterly lost) and translating such knowledge into ‘easy to remember’ expressions or folk tales to teach younger generations. Its well known such mundanely gathered information passed on in that format of “handed-down wisdom” can soon acquire the status of revered maxims.
The Aborigines would tell you “red touch black, crikey, better stand back, mate, that fella there he bite ya”.
I should have clarified, but I was only discussing American venomous snakes, and my points were only relevant to North America.
There are about 4 coral snake species in North America, and all follow this rule.
In Central America, South America, and parts of Mexico, there are about 80 other species of coral snakes that don’t follow this rule. Some are even entirely aquatic, and all are quite venomous . . . but nothing like the venomous snakes of Australia and Papua New Guinea.
There are parts of the Bible that are useful and parts of the bible that are complete bullshit. There is wisdom in the idea of not tossing the baby out with the bathwater. The fact that you may have used some of the ideas in tracking and you found that they worked is fine. But did they work for some supernatural idea that he spouted, or did they work for some basically good common sense idea that he attached a supernatural causation to.
Remember religion has, for thousands of years, usurped, that which is naturally human and either glorified it as coming from god, feelings of love or awe, or called is sinful, feelings of awe or love not approved of by the church… awe or love for the wrong god.
Attributing common sense to spirituality is something that spirituality and mysticism is good at doing.
I think you guys need to keep in mind that not all beings on the planet sense the world in the same way we do. They do not see the same colors. Smell the same smells. etc…
Mark 16:8 "they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; ”
I understand there is a small sect in Tennessee which handles deadly snakes. I say ‘small’ because members of the congregation keep dying from snake bite.
Here in Oz we have a few things which will kill you. EG here in South Australia, the brown snake and trapdoor spider. Have never seen a trapdoor spider in the wild ,and the last time I saw a brown snake was in 1956.
I understand the deadliest is the tiny blue ringed octopus. A shy creature, he likes hiding in tidal pools . His venom is deadly nerve toxin. You probably won’t die. You’ll just wish you had.
Box Jelly fish and salt water crocodiles are up north. We do have a few great white sharks in SA. These creatures don’t really like eating people. They simply mistake us for a large fish, and bite. You have a greater chance of dying crossing the road or in a plane crash .
I’ve managed to avoid sharks by not swimming in the sea since 1967. Can’t remember when I last read of a shark attack in a swimming pool .
The circles defined by the flying grasshoppers (in my example) are smaller than the circles caused by the flying birds . . . and if the birds and grasshoppers were alarmed by the same animal, then these circles will have a common center.
To put it another way, think of a crowd of randomly mixed people.
Now, a suicide bomber opens up his jacket and everyone sees the explosives and starts running away.
There will be an ever-widening circle around the maniac that’s devoid of people . . . however, there will be a smaller circle of elderly and handicapped people because they can’t run as fast, and then there will–at the same time–a larger circle of “normal” people whom may run very fast . . . so two circles. A smaller one of elderly people, and a larger one of younger people, and the terrorist will be at the center of both circles.
Sorry to disagree with you, but the Pacific blue ring octopus won’t just make you sick . . . it can likely kill you within 4 minutes of a bite.
It is the only animal known to science that actually envenomates with tetrodotoxin, which is the most toxic substance known to medical science that isn’t a specific protein or a radioactive isotope (botlulism toxin–for example–is much more toxic than tetrodotoxin, but botulism toxin is a specific protein).
There are some salamanders in the USA that have large amounts of tetrodotoxin in skin secretions, but envenomation is usually implied to mean that a weapon–such as a stinger, fang, or spine–is used to deliver the toxin . . . and the 4 subspecies of blue ring octopus are the only animals currently known to do this.
Tetrodotoxin works by blocking the movement of sodium ions in and out of a nerve cell, which renders the nerve cell incapable of transmitting a nerve impulse . . . so there is an ascending paralysis that causes suffocation when the diaphram can’t do it’s job.
That doesn’t tell me why they are smaller. What if I want to do it the other way around, with grasshoppers with big circles, and birds with small ones? What would be wrong with that?
Again, why a common center, why not different centers for different animals in different locations? Why circles in the first place, and not squares?
4 minutes? Not quite. Try 10 minutes, *but There is no antivenom for a bite from a blue ringed octopus.
Can’t remember ever having read about a person dying from the bite of a blue ringed octopus . A quick check showed there have been 3 recorded deaths from the blue ringed octopus in the last hundred years Two in Australia nd one in Singapore.
So yes, a person may die, but probably won’t. As I said, a person will wish he had died.
This is all interesting stuff Kevin.
The venomous land snakes of Australia and New Guinea, and we have a lot of them, are descended from sea snakes that for eons inhabited the vast shallow sea that is now the vast dry desert Outback. As I understand it, all sea snakes are venomous and Oz snakes have venoms that are rated amongst the most toxic in the world but their fangs are smaller than snakes of other countries, the venom they deliver is of smaller quantity and the bite of most is dry. Wet moist bites with bigger fangs and larger payloads are a feature of more deadly if less toxic varieties around the world.
Thankfully the Australian snakes are very shy and avoid people.
Tucking denim jean legs into thick socks worn with boots while bushwalking usually provides protection enough from most snake bites here.
Mysticism the experience of mystical union or direct communion with ultimate reality reported by mystics. 2 : the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth, or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience (such as intuition or insight)
Ultimate reality. Sitting here, typing is my current “ultimate reality” (and soon will include a cup of coffee). Just a sec…
The stories from survivors who were lost in the woods will often include “shadow people” - hallucinations and other “communing” with nature.
Nature sucks! Seriously. It consumes and kills. There are very little times of pleasure or thinking if you were left to survive in nature. Getting to “know” god through nature reinforces his psychotic personality expressed through the torture of life and death dramas on every level within “wildlife”.
This guy, IMO (I haven’t read him) - be wary. Sounds like he sells the natural experience and wonder and “intelligence” that we’ve (humanity) disconnected from. Thank fucking god we’ve “disconnected”!!!
You know what they call homeopathic cures that actually work? (Medicine.)
You know what the call spiritual shit and magical shit that acutally cures disease, moves mountais, transports people across the world, opens minds to new realities, and takes us to places no human being has never been before? (Science)
