'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

If you went back to the Stone Age there would be a guy sitting around the campfire, saying that unless we all did what he said, there would be hell to pay, maybe in a literal sense and maybe not. On occasion, there would be two guys around the campfire with different ideas and then there certainly would be hell to pay. The one thing I always wonder is how these guys got to be so sure of themselves in the first place.

There are those who are sure that the world was created in a week, those who are sure that there is no God, those who are sure that terrorism is the only option, those who are sure about almost anything you can mention, and I am not even sure that I exist at all. I am taking it on trust, trust that my senses aren’t telling me major porkies. I know that they are telling me minor ones, pretty much all the time, so why shouldn’t the whole thing be a dream?

My view is that all you can really do is look for clues, remembering that what you see can look very different when viewed from another angle. The clues are mainly to be found in certain emotional events in your life, or in nature. The emotion can be love or hate or any other genuinely moving trigger. In my experience, once you have succumbed to that emotion, then strange things can happen. Praying could well prove to be something much along the same lines in that they say the more emotion that goes into the prayer, the more likely it is to have effect.

Dreams and emotions are essentially illogical, mental occurrences, things that are deep-seated and stem from our subconscious, and this perhaps gives us a clue as to the nature of reality. Outwardly, things seem to follow a logical progression but from time to time, we are confronted by events, which seem to overcome these parameters. These moments of heightened experience can be put down to many things but they undeniably lead to a super reality, which steps out of the familiar pattern of things. To acknowledge that this state of mind exists at all, calls all our sureties into question, but at the same time indicates perhaps that there is indeed something out there.

Nature is the other indicator that I mentioned. I cannot look at what is all around us and truly believe that evolution in the scientific sense is solely responsible for the enormous detail featured in say, a butterfly’s wing. We all know how grudging nature can be in giving us anything that it doesn’t need to. Butterfliess need wings to fly; give them wings, they need a bright colour to distinguish one sex from another and perhaps by extension sex them up a bit; give them a bright colour, but give them the sublimely complex patterns that they have, why? You can’t seriously tell me that there is a need for it, and that in scientific, evolutionary terms is what nature is all about - need. But nature has gone far beyond need. It would be impossible for any one of us to dream up the wonderful designs to be found in every aspect of nature, but perhaps not impossible for all of us, and this brings me to a speculation.

What if there is a group mind of which we are all part. What if although we cannot read each other’s minds, they are in fact all part of a greater whole? It would be an explanation. Well, you might well say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.        

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