by Dr David, Editor / Publisher

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about the death of someone here in San Miguel, Turn and Walk Away: RIP Howard Bach. Actually, and this is much to my point, it was about my reaction to the death of someone here in San Miguel.

A Zen master was walking down a jungle path with one of his disciples. Some ways up ahead, a tiger crossed the path. The disciple breathlessly exclaimed, "It's a tiger." The master calmly replied, "It's a tiger, for you."

"Retrocausality" is the very scientific idea that consciousness brings the world into being, that awareness creates reality. Quantum physics attests that until someone sees a distant galaxy, that galaxy has not existed. And that once that galaxy has been seen, it has always existed.

Quantum also reveals that electrons exist in a "probability cloud," without particular position, around the nucleus of the atom, until the atom is observed. When observed, that wave function collapses, rendering the electrons distinct in time and space.

Our brain thinks objectively about the world. We see things concretely, like a dog see things in black and white. But things are not concrete any more than they are black and white. A cat is unaware of certain dimensions of existence, and so are we.

Physics has demonstrated that one particle of a related (entangled) pair, immediately knows when something is happening to its partner, even when they are separated by large distances, in a way that cannot be explained by any known mechanism. Physicists invoke retrocausality, the ability of the present to affect the past, to account for this "action at a distance," action faster than the speed of light. By this cutting-edge logic, an effect can create its own cause.

David Hume showed back in the 1700s that we can only understand something by taking it out of context, artificially limiting it, doing it violence. Our brains are not equipped to understand the world, let alone the universe. In much the same way, your dog cannot understand why you are going somewhere without him.

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
           - Richard Feynman

Still, we have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. So, the brain concocts some model of reality, and we all too easily take it for truth, often stubbornly sticking to it, even when the evidence of experience suggests that it should be revised.

Howard Bach
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In my recent article about Howard Bach's death, I described my last, enigmatic interaction with him. I go on to recount several encounters I had with individuals, friends of Howard's, after his passing. Trying to come to terms with the enigma of our last interaction, I asked each of them if Howard had lost his mind.

Dostoevsky, supporting his own and his dead brother's family, wrote feverishly, never revising anything. If you'll pardon the comparison, I spend a lot of time going over what I write, making second and third and even fourth drafts. To lower their inhibitions, when I solicit articles to publish in this magazine, I tell people that an article is a social media post that you've worked on before publishing it.

In an early draft of that article about Howard and me, I mentioned his friends, the individuals I encountered, by name. I sent one of these individuals a message alerting them, by way of asking permission, that I had used their name, and forwarding the relevant paragraph:

Me: "I mention and quote you in my piece:

'Still coming to terms with our last goodbye (or non-goodbye) I asked X if Howard was in his right mind at the end. Put off by the seeming impropriety of my query, X bristled a bit in his response, "Well, Howard was with it enough to say that he wanted to leave the hospital and die at home."'"

X messaged me back immediately, responding: "If you want to insult me in your post, go for it. I will unfriend you, block you, and we're done."

Me: "Please. I had no intention, no idea that it was insulting."

X: "OK. But stop texting me now. I am in the middle of ten emergencies."

These artistic types are high-strung. Not terribly artistic, I get irritable myself. Even though X has not asked me to, I forgive him/her. The only thing that really bothered me was X referring to my article as a "post." I think of my weekly writings more as a column, more as an article than a post.

My writing is therapy, an exploration of my self. I am looking in and back to come to terms with how my unfinished emotional business affects what I experience now, outward and forward. Making my unconscious conscious, paying it attention, writing it out, I become the author of my destiny rather than the victim of it. If, as the physicists tell us, awareness creates reality, then I am practicing retrocausality, changing reality, past, present and future, by becoming conscious of it. Seeing my past in a new light, changes where I stand now.

The social turbulence north of the border makes me aware of the thin veneer of civilization, the laws, rules and etiquette that keep society functioning. My interaction with X, a very cultured person, makes me aware that individually, also, our bestiality is never far below the surface.

It's a little lonely, but these days I am more in charge of my own narrative. Blaming others is disempowering. Blaming the past robs the present of its potential. X's irritability is a tiger for him, not me.

I resolved the enigma of my last interaction with Howard in much the same way, the many possibilities, the probability cloud of electrons collapsing into something distinct when I wrote about it.

After publishing, I got some very different feedback on the article in an email from Raé Miller - she won't mind me using her name (www.raemiller.com). She wrote:

This article has touched me deeply. Thank you! RIP Howard.
Raé

RIP, indeed.

by Raé Miller
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Dr David and his merry band believe that the new expanded Lokkal will change the world, city by city.