On Feb 6, 2004, at 3:25 PM, Tony Smith wrote:

A review of Satori, Kensho Novel #3 of 4,
by Dennis Schmidt (Berkeley 1981).
Unless otherwise noted, quotes are from the book.


On a web page at
http://sped2work.tripod.com/satori.html
the Wanderling says:
"... Satori is the spiritual goal of Zen Buddhism. (in Chinese: wu.)
Satori roughly translates into individual Enligthtenment,
or a flash of sudden awareness. ...
A brief experience of Enlightenment is sometimes called Kensho.
... In discribing the Enlightenment of the Buddha and the patriarchs,
however, it is customary to use the word Satori rather than Kensho,
the term Satori implying a deeper experience.
The feeling of Satori is that of infinite space. ...".

Ben Holmes has written at
http://www.bestjudo.com/brsatori3.shtml
a review of the book Satori ... quoting the back cover:
"Satori - The Earthmen are coming...
For a thousand years the men and women of Kensho
have been evolving a way of living, a civilization
that combines technology and spirit in a fashion that
the visionaries of old Earth could hardly imagine as
the two essential parts of a healthy whole,
rather than as deadly enemies out to destroy each other.
In another century Kensho would have become invulnerable
to the violence of Earth,
but the starship bristling with fearful weapons
... is orbiting the planet now.
Is there no alternative but to submit to the conquerors?
Must the New Humanity return to the sad old ways of Earth?
There is one possible way out - but if it fails,
the people of Kensho will pay the price of annihilation."


In the book Satori,
Earth is controlled by an EST-like cult of the Power.
On the starship from Earth that is threatening the humans of
the planet Kensho,
a Bishop of the Power is interrogating a human named Dunn:

==================================================================

"... [Bishop:] "The establishment of the Power saved the Earth from
destruction by the forces of regression." ...

---------------------------

[Dunn:] "Bullshit. The Power IS the force of regression."

---------------------------

[Bishop:] "The Power is all the knowledge mankind has gathered
in its lifetime, used wisely and carefully for betterment."

---------------------------

[Dunn:] ... "... The Power controls knowledge, keeps it under
lock and key. It's stopped the gathering of any new knowledge
and totally destroyed the scientific effort ...
It lives off the wisdom of the past, has a stranglehold on
the present, and by killing science, it kills the future."

---------------------------

[Bishop:] ... "... We have enough knowledge ... the Power
protects us from ourselves. It gives the people that part
of the knowledge they need to make their lives better."

---------------------------

[Dunn:]... "... What if further research would uncover
a new theory, one that might make vast areas of current
theory obsolete? ..."

---------------------------

[Bishop:] "Impossible ... Unthinkable. Such a thing cannot happen."

---------------------------

[Dunn:] ... "... Do you realize ... that if Sarfatti and Aspect
had blindly accepted Einstein's dictum that the speed of light
was the limiting velocity in the universe,
they never would have conceived or proven superluminal connectedness,
and we wouldn't even be here?

Tachyons never turned up, spinning black holes gave random
destinations with no way back,and sub-light velocities
simiply took too long.

Only the Sarfatti-Aspect effect gave us the key to the stars ...

the Power owns and controls science now. But it's a dead, useless
thing you own. ... Only freedom can revive it." ...

---------------------------

[Bishop:] ... "... what was ... this vaunted science you cherish
so much, based on? Human reason! ...
As if the conscious, rational mind was the major driving force
in human history! ...

... Even within science itself there was a protest against
the iron rule of reason.
Quantum theory punched the standard view of reality full of holes.
Men of foresight and wisdom like Heisenberg, Bohm, and Finkelstein
tried to make their comrades see the error of their ways.
But it was too late ... Ruin came down on all alike ...

... If the Power had not come along when it did ... the destruction
would have been complete. ...

The Power ... is the simple faith the people have in us that
provides the strength we need to control science and transform it
... into the gentle and beneficent Knowledge.

It is the faith mankind gives us that allows us to give them
peace and security and happiness in return. ...".

==================================================================

The humans of Kensho must compete against
the Earth-based spaceship that has not only
weapons that can incinerate a planet
but also
machines used by the Power for mind-control
that can gather all the data in a mind and
then record, correlate, and analyze all that data
and
then imprint on that mind new data consistent with the Power.

However,
the humans of Kensho have developed mental structures,
"groups of neurons attached to each other
in what seemed to be a closed feedback loop",
that allow them to live in symbiosis with Mind Brothers,
each of which is a 3-space/4-spacetime projection of
a "single creature... from another, higher dimension".

Kensho symbiotic humans see the Earth Power mind-machines
as "... Primitive ... the mere gathering of large quantities
of data hoping some pattern will automatically emerge
... a crude version of empiricism ... At first blush it
seems to make sense. But ... Collections of data are just that,
collections of data. Until they're put into some kind of
meaningful order, they're useless. So naive empiricism
was replaced by the techniques of developing a hypothesis
first, and then looking for the specific facts that prove
or disprove the conjecture ...".

With their mental symbiosis, Kensho humans could survive
where the Earth Power men and mind-machines could never
reach:
"The abyss, the void ... where solidity disappeared,
time halted, and ... the self splintered into ... fragments.
The world, the universe, simply evaporated like a wisp
of morning fog.".


Tony