Alice in Talibland

Alice in Talibland-1
By Anwaar Hussain

Alice fell straight down the rabbit hole. Suddenly she landed on a heap of sticks and dry leaves and the fall was over. She saw a Talib running in front of her through a long labyrinthine passage. It looked like some underground cave system. Alice started to follow the Talib. He appeared to be in a great hurry.

She almost lost sight of him but caught up with him near a bend. Fearful that she would lose him again, she caught his shirt tail to make him stop. At this the Talib came to an abrupt stop pushing her hand away.


“You cannot do that,” said the Talib, “You are a female!”


“But I am only 12 years old!” replied Alice. “That’s old enough,” retorted the Talib in a gruff voice. Alice blinked, failing to understand the Talib’s meaning.


“Now here is the deal,” the Talib said in a commanding voice. “You follow me while I attend to a few urgent chores and stay quiet. When I am done, I will answer any questions that you have. Agreed?”


“Agreed!” said Alice meekly and started following the Talib a respectful distance behind.


Presently they entered a hall where they found a group of Taliban holding a miserable looking old man in shackles. In a corner, a Talib was sharpening a butcher’s knife. The smell of blood was every where. From his looks, he appeared to be a poor farmer.


“What is his crime?” asked the Talib with Alice. He behaved like the group’s leader.



“He saw us beheading a man and said something blasphemous,” said one from the Taliban group.


“What did he say?”


“He said that if we were doing what we were doing in the name of God then we could not be worshiping the same God. He said that his God was merciful, loving and forgiving.”


“Ah! That’s blasphemous indeed. But why was the man being beheaded?”


“He was being beheaded for saying exactly the same thing when he saw us digging a dead man’s grave.”


“And why were you digging a dead man’s grave?”


“Because he had escaped beheading for saying the exact same blasphemous words when he saw us beheading yet another man for a similar blasphemy but died a natural death before we could reach him. We wanted to dig him out and behead his dead body to correct the lapse.”


“That seems reasonable,” said the Talib with Alice. “Off with his head then!” said he and motioned to Alice to continue with him.


Soon they approached a dark cave from which heart rending shrieks of a girl were coming. Trembling slightly, Alice peeked from behind the Talib and saw a strange spectacle. Three men were holding a girl face down while a Talib was flogging the girl mercilessly. With each lash, the girl would beg for mercy at an even higher pitch. That in turn would urge the flogger to whip her with ever greater fervor.


Seeing the Talib and Alice, the group at once stopped the activity. “What is her fault?” the Talib asked.


“She loved,” said one from the group.


“What? Loved? How evil. Continue the punishment,” said the Talib. “But who are the men holding her down? She cannot be touched by every one.” He asked.


“Oh, the ones holding her arms are her brothers and the one holding her feet is her father. We took care that every thing is done according to the word of God.”


“God is great. That is good then. Carry on.”


With that, the Talib led Alice out of the caves to a dark, unlit opening. A pale moon was visible in the sky. Under the eerie light, the Talib turned towards Alice and said, “Now you may ask your questions.”


Gathering her nerve, Alice asked her first question, “Is it possible to have a religion that makes me happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled?”


The Talib thought for a while and then replied, “Well! I am afraid your very first question is a loaded one. You see religion is all about morals. Happiness is just an idea. Balance and intellect are twin-evils born out of lack of faith. Some far gone devils call it reason and rationality too. When one has faith, it doesn’t matter whether he has balance or intellect or any thing else. I hope I have made myself clear.”


“Quite clear, I guess,” said Alice. “My next question then is why a religious belief is necessary in order for us to have acceptable morals? And if that indeed is the case then why not cut out the middlemen and go straight for the moral choice without the religion?”


The Talib looked stumped for a while. He blinked a few times as if trying to comprehend the real import of the question. Then he shook his head and simply said, “Told you that religion is all about morals. And you cannot cut out the middlemen because that is US. And WE are ordained by God to carry out his will. So we are told and so I am telling you. That was really a stupid question.”


“I am sorry!” said Alice. “Well let me ask you this then. Why when a single person is superstitious, we call him sick, delusional, schizophrenic etc. but when millions suffer from a mass delusion we call it their religion and are asked to respect their religious beliefs?”


“Because there is not only safety but sanity in numbers too, that’s why.” the Talib replied tersely. He seemed to be increasingly getting angry with the turn the questions were taking.


“What is God?” asked Alice abruptly.


The Talib looked at her with glazed eyes.


“God is all around us. HE is in every thing. HE is nature. That is why my religion is the closest to nature….the truest and the best religion.” the Talib intoned with zealous fervor.


“Ok. Have you ever heard of Carl Sagan?” asked Alice.


At this apparently disconnected question, the Talib looked at her with a bemused look on his face and said, “No, but from the sound of his name he seems to be some infidel heathen.”


“Oh, well! Carl Sagan once said, ‘. . . if by “God” one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying . . . it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.’ What do you say to that?”


“Be careful girl. You cannot ask questions about God or how He does things. You are only to believe, to have faith. You are getting dangerously close to being blasphemous.” The Talib warned without answering the question.


“Oh ok! I am sorry. I thought that was an innocent query. But then you have to answer another question that is far more important.” said Alice


“I want to know why it is perfectly possible to question who made a watch and how he made it but not who made this universe and how he made it?”


“Be careful girl!” the Talib growled in a menacing way.


Alice continued without stopping, “I want to know how to answer people blaming your’s as a violent religion when in the protests in the wake of Danish cartoons demonstrators were photographed in Britain bearing banners saying, ‘Behead those who say Islam is a violent religion’.


“Be careful girl!” the Talib hissed.


“I want to know what to make of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quotation in which he says, “The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next”, can you?”


“Be careful!” the Talib growled. But Alice had lost all control of her emotions. She went on recklessly.


“I have seen your killings and your beheadings of fellow human beings in the name of God and I say we could not be worshiping the same God. My God is merciful, loving and forgiving. Your’s is not.”


“May you rot in hell!” shouted the Talib with foam flying from his mouth and his eyes narrowed down to mere slits.


“Off with her head!” he ordered a group of approaching Taliban.

.creative certification..?

..deny the problems aren't amplified by lack of governmental response-ability & predict how much longer? How obvious is bail-out "socialistic begging rights pointing to who REALLY created it?" WEALTH-fair-game?
Socialized medicine is the only alternative (assurance) to costly victimizing reflexes...and banks represent trust stability? Questions ARE the best answers NOW..or tomorrow?
Have "They" known what 'They' (Might) be doing in the past?

Planet of the Apes

We......

......are the apes.

The truth is a bit of a shock

The truth is hard to swallow.

The Tether Experiment

Don't believe that UFO's exist?



Watch this NASA video.

Will Rogers

All I know is what I read in the papers

Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land

...a very sad piece of truth, once we know



...are we supposed to do nothing about it?

A Brief, er, Short History Of Time

Oh, damn! That title is already taken. OK, I cannot compete with Dr. Hawking, nor do I wish to. My approach is less knowledgeable, less scientific than his. Mine is primarily experiential.

First, if I'm to talk about time, a definition might be helpful.
From an online dictionary:

TIME:
1. A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.

2. An interval separating two points on this continuum; a duration: a long time since the last war; passed the time reading.

3. A number, as of years, days, or minutes, representing such an interval: ran the course in a time just under four minutes.

4. A similar number representing a specific point on this continuum, reckoned in hours and minutes: checked her watch and recorded the time, 6:17 a.m.

5. A system by which such intervals are measured or such numbers are reckoned: solar time.

Is that helpful?

I thought not.

When I was a kid, I used to lie awake at night speculating on what time was. Dad said that would drive me bonkers, no one understands time. He might have been right. I read H. G. Wells science fiction classic, The Time Machine. (As an aside, that opened a lifetime love of the science fiction genre) He called time a dimension


OK, definition time again.

DIMENSION:

1. A measure of spatial extent, especially width, height, or length.

2. Mathematics The least number of independent coordinates required to specify uniquely the points in a space.

3. The range of such a coordinate.

4. Physics A physical property, such as mass, length, time, or a combination thereof, regarded as a fundamental measure or as one of a set of fundamental measures of a physical quantity: Velocity has the dimensions of length divided by time.

I think the one from physics is most operative here. Now I am in deep waters. You probably know much more about physics than I do, so please just humour me, dear friend.

After reading The Time Machine, I started picturing time as a line, a number line. Could it possibly gain another dimension and curve on itself, with the intersecting points making present and future, or present and past into a single point? Does it maker any sense at all to reference time in terms of spatial dimension. Or is this a gross misuse of the venerable number line?

Somewhere along the line, I came to think of time as having three dimensions, past, present and future. This set the stage for what I experienced in an altered state of consciousness, which I will refer to as a Spiritual Experience (SE) for lack of a better term

Now, back to the mundane. Look at some object that has three spatial dimensions, say your dominant hand. It occurs to me that I don't know if you are right-handed or left-handed, so I'll picture both below. When you look at, you see those dimension, length, width and depth, but you do not - cannot! - see them as three separate properties, you see them as one organic whole, the length, width and depth each distinct and yet inseparable. Are you following me so far? Of course you are, we haven't gotten to the difficult part.

Now we get to the difficult part.

You most likely see your hand in only one dimension of time, the present. Now you need to use your imagination. Imagine looking at your hand and seeing it as it was when you were a foetus, a baby, a child, a teenager. Now, return to the present and, in your imagination, travel in the opposite direction, see your hand in ten years, then as an old person. If you have the nerve, see it as dead and decaying.

If you are following me now, we can move on to the really hard part.

Imagine seeing those three dimensions of time as an organic whole, each distinct and yet inseparable, past, present and future all existing together, so when you look at your hand, you are not seeing our usual three dimensional hand, but rather you are seeing a six dimensional hand.

Now imagine seeing the entire spacetime continuum in that way. That is my view of maya - when I am aware of maya at all - during a SE.

I am aware that this must sound science fiction, and I suppose it is. It is also something I have experienced and continue to experience occasionally.

And that is my explanation of the three dimensions of time, as best I can give it right now.

My Amazon parrot is screeching now, telling me it's time to feed her, preferably pizza, the 'Zons' favourite food.

Before I go, as I don't want to disappoint, here are parts of my three favourite time
songs, with links to the complete songs.

A Hazy Shade of Winter: (edited)
Simon and Garfunkel


Time, time, time, see whats become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hang on to your hopes, my friend
That's an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around, the grass is high
The fields are ripe, its the springtime of my life

But look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
Look around, leaves are brown
There's a patch of snow on the ground...

TIME IS ON MY SIDE: (edited)

The Rolling Stones (OMG! I remember buying this single - on vinyl, in the 1960s)
(Meade)

Time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it is

You're searching for good times
But just wait and see
You'll come running back (I won't have to worry no more)
You'll come running back (spend the rest of my life with you, baby)
You'll come running back to me

Yes time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Oh, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
I said, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Oh, time, time, time is on my side
Yeah, time, time, time is on my side

Time In A Bottle: (edited)
Jim Croce


If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that Id like to do
Is to save every day
Till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
Id save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
Ive looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go
Through time with

Reported comment

"There's a secret government,

inside the government...

and I don't control it."

...Bill Clinton...

Co-exist-ence

It doesn't matter to me

what you believe...

...as long as you give me the freedom

to believe what I want

oops!

They are here

Was Jesus an alien?

The Travis Walton experience is unequivocally
the best documented account of alien abduction yet recorded.
During his ordeal, Travis reported that he encountered
human beings aboard the alien craft.

Some people think they "know"....

....what if everything you "knew" was wrong?

I would rather say that "I don't know"....

....when you realize you "don't know" you begin to observe.

When you observe, you begin to see the truth.

I have seen the truth....

....they are here.


The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.
...Harry S. Truman...

(The Disclosure Project)

Ghost Rider

You can't live in fear


Johnny Blaze

The Spy

I'm a spy in the house of love

I know the dream, that you're dreamin' of

I know the word that you long to hear

I know your deepest, secret fear

(The Doors)

Check out ~Freelove

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Network

I'm as mad as hell,

and I'm not going to take this anymore!

War of the Gods

Religion must die.......so that reason may live.....Bill Maher-Religulous.

.....god is not religion.

.....i will not humanize god......i will not sexualize god......god is change.....god is a process......god is......not a giant old white guy with a long white beard sitting in the clouds.......god!

.....all religion is.....man made.

.....ignorance is the original sin.

.....our ignorance is the reason for.....faith.

.....all the major religions teach the golden rule......that works.

.....god made man in his image.....but then.....man made god in his image.

.....fear has perverted religion, turning the golden rule.....into the
war of the gods.

.....ignorance creates fear....fear creates intolerance....intolerance creates extremism....extremism creates hate....hate creates destruction.

.....intolerance is another word for.......extremism.

.....ignorance+fear+intolerance+extremism+hate=destruction.

.....faith is innocent....ignorance is not.

.....religion divides us, spirituality brings us together.

.....we cannot fault man for faith....we can however, hold man and religion, responsible for ignorance.

.....you must first define, "faith".

from the dictionary......faith 1: allegeance to duty or a person: LOYALTY 2: belief and trust in God 3: complete trust 4: a system of religious beliefs.

.....so the definition of "faith"...is what your trust is "in".....duty, a person, God, or a religion.

.....the word "trust" more deeply describes "the reliance on the truth of something"....or truth.

.....so you might say that faith boils down to what you "believe" is true......or "your belief."

.....and as i've said before.....

.....the "truth" has nothing to do......with what you "believe".

.....in other words......faith is not always founded on truth.

.....i have faith the sun will come up in the morning......i have no faith in war.

.....i'm not afraid of god....what reason could there be?

.....i don't believe in a god that needs to be worshiped.

.....i don't believe in a god that would doom me to burn in eternal pain.

......though god may be love, god is above all truth.......god is even the atheism of the atheists........mahatma gandhi.

World Police

This is what the rest of the world sees

when they look at U.S.

Our Culture in the Blimp of an Eye

Feelings weep like eye lids beam in the morning sun

Beauty passes all ugly memories of the past

Truth never held from the public

Given to all to devour

Problems arise, but controlled within a touch of a magical spell

Magic happens in places never before thought of

Feelings connected through each individual living or dead

Pain is controlled through re-verse psychology

Words describe feelings, pleasure and love in ways never understood

Love encompasses all

Divine beauty stretch all of our imaginations

Politics is a game played by usually the Kings

Queens stands by the Kings

President is like a King

First Lady is like a Queen

Soul is something we are

Body is something we rent out

Mind is something we posses

Heart beats one moment then stops the next

Computers connect the knowledge of our past

Cars drive us from point A to point B

Books open up the imaginations

Lyrics flow through the stations

Poetry opens up the racist

Death is something to look forward to

Living is something of a different stroke of keys

Guitar played in the background

Movies tell a story written down in words

Music touches our souls

Communities are divided in some parts of the world

Poverty is on the rise

Rich are on top of the Pyramid

Conspiracy Theories tell a different story

Who knows who is right or wrong

Laws should be followed

If you cannot use your own common sense

Logic is important in this day and age

Young pregnant beauties ignored

So they fall

Throw away the kids

And run away

Hoping to get with their life some day

Never to forget what they have done

Cops using their power to kill the innocent ones

They never question and get any answers

Don’t they know they work for us

The people

Hidden Secrets are deep in the gutter

Search and you will find the ultimate truth to all that that is.

A Little Bit of Wisdom

The right time to show your good character is when you are pestered by somebody weaker than you.

-Buddha

Monster

Sometimes I think

there's a monster inside of me.....

can you take it?

is your life given enough?

Bob Dobbs

The World Ends Tomorrow

And You May Die!



Become an Ordained Minister NOW...
Official Website of The Church of the SubGenius™

Excuse Me While I Wax Poetic

the problem with peace

elusive, enigmatic...Essential
impractical, imperfect...Imperative
inconceivable, inspiring...Indomitable
difficult, different...Dynamic
freaky, fearless...Fundamental
unattainable, unthinkable...Unstoppable
vain, valuable...Vital
painful
poetic...
Possible?

Rocks are hard

How will I know the truth from the lies

you ask yourself...

all I can tell you is that

rocks are hard.......water is wet.

Motivation

The floggings will continue

until morale improves

Happy-ness

There is no way to happiness.....

......happiness is the Way.

Discovery may be the Truth of what really Is

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

Above I have uploaded a view of the sky through the tree branches as I lay on the ground in a beautiful little park in Pistoia, Tuscany, two summers ago! An interesting perspective!

Watchmen

Who watches

the Watchmen?

The Elephant has Died

I can see it in your eyes

Unfocused and half closed

The wrinkle in your smile says

You wouldn't have supposed

That anyone could figure out

Just how wrong it went

You think that you're deceiving us

That we're all off your scent

Clearly in your ragged breath

And lackluster take on life

A sickened song of sorrow tells

A Tale of Wasted Life

Somber self-inflicted self sufficiency

Is slipping through the cracks

You're nodding off in public

And you're more than just relaxed

Taste the guilt, swallow the shame

As it drips into your throat

Before you smother soul to death

Be sure to write a note

To tell us how we all have failed

There's nothing we could do

To say I know you loved me but, well,

Fuck you.