Iraq has turned into a military and political quagmire and has become an incurable disorder in the eyes of the world. The struggle has assumed an ominous pattern, bouts of tension as the US threatens invasion. It is my belief that the US will take whatever steps are necessary and they will continue to move towards armed conflict. At best it will be turbulent, violent and de-stabilising.

War condemns everyone who fights, win or lose and it leaves behind all the wrong things, pain, dissatisfaction and revenge. How retarded we have become if we are unable to solve problems except by conflict. It allows men to go about their business of killing and being killed. Why should people be allowed to kill each other first? Is that how it must always be? It may allow a new Regime to be put in place but at what cost?

War of any nature, no matter how brief or however small has become the ultimate horror. It has become the truth of the all too familiar human condition. It is an expression of all the tensions and confusions and passions provoked by history and man himself. Man has little to be proud of. Is this all we can offer one another? Danger and evil is faced by so many. You don't have to see them or experience them to know that they are there. Perhaps we ourselves are the greatest tragedy of all. It is a desperate relentless battle for so many for survival. The world is a slaughter house. We've become detached from the commandments, detached from morality it's not easy to find goodness in this world. What we have in abundance is hate, discord and horror. I guess we have ethics of a sort, just as we have human souls of a sort.

Surely, there must be an easier way than war? Why does it have to cost so many innocent lives? I've come to understand that there are something's in which you can't help; men bring their destiny upon themselves. Everyone knows about the tyranny of the powerful, but there is something worse. It is worse when you cannot understand it. You feel too guilty to fight it and you cannot define it until it has taken what it wants from you. It is the tyranny of the suffering. William Blake wrote in his poem the 'Divine Image' that "Cruelty has a Human Heart, And Jealousy a Human Face, Terror, the Human Form Divine and Secrecy, the Human Dress." How truly he understood mankind.

There is no doubt in my mind that war will only lead to further tension and weapons proliferation throughout the Middle East which will lead to further conflict within the region.

Recent events show that the Russians are currently facing a dangerous situation in Chechya and anti-Russian sentiment grows. The facts are inescapable. The Russians will never win the war. The Chechens continue to fight with unbelievable bravado and they bring themselves close to destruction. They are taking risks as they never have before, because the goal is control over their own lives. They are willing to risk their lives for something that they believe will bring them freedom to breakaway from Russia. They are willing to sacrifice their lives for what they believe is their ultimate right, the right to govern themselves. They had the choice between the hard steel of guns and the cold reality of mediation. They are an intractable people. They will continue even if it means their own death , even if their own families have to die for it, their whole town, or their country. The only way to survive is not to care about survival. This is what the Russians face, not only on a daily basis, but maybe months and years into the future. There is nothing noble about it at all, it is merely ugly and pitiful. The past will continue to come together in one vortex after another. The will move further into a hatred, fuming and fulminating. Why are men, such perfect fools?

I have to tell you that today, Friday, has been a long, long day for me. I want to tell you my story but I don't have as much time as I would like so please bear with me. Those who wish me to remain silent and not tell you what it is I know and have seen are seeking me. Those who seek me are something more formidable and more deadly than can be imagined. Yes, you may ask, I have fear and I am filled with a deep, terrible dread as these predators prowl and I feel angry with myself for being afraid, even though the source of my fear is understandable.

But let me begin. I am sure most of you here know the story ... some of you may even know of me. I once was a journalist. Even if I say so myself, I was a good journalist. My Editor, at a Washington newspaper asked me to follow the man who had developed a cult following worldwide and who was purported to be a Mystic. Of course I had reservations. At first, like many of us here today, I didn't believe. I didn't think I would become so deeply involved in his life. But I did. It changed my life irrevocably. But to cut a long story short, most of you know what occurred during those years, of his following and how people, throughout the world would come and listen to him speak. Everything he said had meaning not only to myself but also to the hundreds of thousands who listened to him in person, via satellite tv or radio. He was, as I am sure you all know, no ordinary man. He changed the framework of theory.

I followed him for years, not as one of his followers, but as a journalist. I recorded what it was I saw and witnessed. I have neither the language nor the context to explain some of his miracles to you. Memory is fallible and generally unreliable. What happened may be the truth to me but to others it would have a different perspective, a different life circumstance and would seem a different experience. I still have difficulty figuring it out and difficulty believing that everything happened as I recall. In retrospect, he was desperately vulnerable. Suspicion and hatred was his stark reality. Those last months of his life were traumatic, he was betrayed by one of his own, but he accepted what was to happen and he went to his death asking God to forgive us.

You may ask yourself why did he die? Why was he put to death? I did not, like you, believe it would happen. But it did. Was it because they feared him not knowing what he was but because of whom he was? Did they fear him because he preached peace? Did they fear him because he fed the millions of hungry in Africa? Did they fear him because he railed against corruption and big business, wealth and greed? Did they fear him because he gained a following throughout the world? Did they fear him because he was becoming greater than Governments? Did the Israelis disown him because they saw him as a menace and because he called them `bigots'? Did his own Government disown him because he was a threat to the system? Did the Catholic Church disown him because they did not believe or want to believe in him?

Like you, I've always believed the myth that Government has our best interests at heart because I believed in the benign intentions of those who desire to serve the public. But now I've been confronted with the worst in humankind and have learned that cruelty is the way of this world. I wish I could convey my thoughts adequately to you but I find I tie my words into knots. I ask myself are those who washed their hands of his death, such as the Church, the UN, the President and other world leaders, touched by guilt and regret? What did his death achieve in the end? It would be so easy to hate, knowing what I do, witnessing what I did. I have a sense of heartbreak and impotence, terribly compounded.

He told once that if I allowed hate in, it would fester. I've accepted what occurred,in regard to his death, there is no hate and anger within myself. If anything, just sadness. I realise that time has to be spent, not saved. Do you know what I mean? Enjoy every moment as it comes, take every minute as being precious. We inhibit our bodies but our bodies aren't ourselves. We possess them like a house - but only for a time. This is what his death and resurrection taught me. We're only visitors really on this earth and perhaps we leave traces of ourselves in subtle ways.

I'm not even sure it matters who or what you have faith in, or how your faith is expressed. My faith has become my reassuring stability. Everything outside may change, I myself may change, but as long as I know there's something that goes on unchanged I have a sense of security. The Church has become all system and no God. People start believing such a way of life is absolute, immutable, fundamental, a precondition. When the reality of God is so different. It is the experience itself that is important. God can only be found by personal experience and once one has experienced His enlightenment you cannot take that awareness away. It remains a part of you forever. It goes beyond everything and anything. I cannot arrange my words into any coherent narrative to give you a glimpse of my experience. I cannot describe what is incomprehensible. I am drawn to the extremes of emotion and experience. All I know is that I am as much a part of Him as He is of me. The one thing I have discovered is the more one gets involved in transcendental things, the more one is forced back to the absolute, to earth.

Much more remains for me to understand. I have begun to see what lies within us but I suspect I have only glimpsed a small part of the truth. I have taken only the first steps along the road to discovery. I cannot yet see where this road will lead me but already I have learned much and still have much to learn. My journey will not be short, nor will it be without detours and stumbling. It is not a journey I intended to make but has become one that I cannot avoid. Now I preach his word and tell people all that I can. I am grateful for your unfailing interest. All of us here today are on the periphery of His teaching.

Yes, we're all governed by laws, God's law, our own or others. If we ignore them or break them then we have to watch out, we have to be true to ourselves. In the end it all boils down to that speech old Polonius gave "This above all to thine own self be true: thou canst not then be false to any other man".

To conclude, I tell myself that in the past He would have been crucified, today He has been murdered and in the future, what would happen to Him in the future? ...Would it be like today? ...

copyright SJW
14.1.03

I watch what is happening in the word and I ask myself why we live our live shut in by walls? Reality stands before us, yet we fails to see it, because what we see is the mirror image of our expectations and they blind us to the truth and keep us chained to the past. I am not sure if I could ever come to terms with man’s utter ruthlessness and apparent amorality. I look at the world and ask myself what is it we really want? What do we want to achieve? Questions I confront, but always in the front of my mind is the pain of the future. What brushes against my mind, what does my mind see from the distance of time?

So many things that are happening in the world today which are evil and wrong. The face of evil can wear many masks even of kindness and mercy and love when needed. Its deceptions are more twisted than can be imagined. The amount of misery being inflicted has now become a part life. The rage of America is born of unreasoning fear; a fear that was born in the past but is real, but it will never be complete and their aims can never be achieved because they exist in a world, which is fixed in the past. They have created what they live from their impressions of the past and they will continually create an evil that they will not be able to control. There is much destruction in the future, which cannot be amended because the past contains the shadow of darkness as it does today and in the future. It will become a never-ending circle to re- emerge, no matter whatever happens today. The most real things are not often what we think they are. Real things are an illusion, as Plato said ‘real life lies below the surface, or above the surface of all things, unseen apart from glimpses.’ Yes, people should know more not only of the past but the future. People must know what should never become reality yet how can one make them see? What have I become but a researcher of absurdities?

Regarding North Korea the situation becomes more irretrievable. They have an army of people analysing the situation and the possible consequences, economic and social, such action would cause. There is no real basis for such a decision as you have written. I do not believe it will bring any radical change in the situation. The question is, what are the possible repercussions of direct action? Have they any idea of what they are dealing with? Are the North Koreans actually capable of self defence that poses a threat to many or is it simply a ruse? It is only the start of a larger and increasing problem and it will not go away no matter what is done in an attempt to eradicate it. You cannot continually control it through pressure. You cannot continually bomb or starve those into submission. You can only deal with it by looking at the cause behind it. You cannot continually exterminate a cause, an ideal, a hope, a dream. Not unless you begin to eliminate those who are responsible and to do that you will have to eliminate hundreds, thousands if not millions of people. Are we prepared to wrest it from others and are we prepared to die to do so? Surely, in a free world, each country has a just and rightful claim to such weapons? What gives us the right to say "you cannot have a weapon" and are we so sure that we would not use such a weapon if our survival depended upon it and then rationalise its use?

Regarding the point you raised, North Korea sees it as an injustice and looks upon it as persecution and a systematic attempt to destroy North Korea. They operate from their own doctrines and such ideas engender an unjustified optimism which fails to foresee their own weaknesses. Their inflexible conviction of their own superiority prevents them from seeing the basic facts that they could lose any offensive. The loss of contact with reality can affect the very life and death of a nation and at times overshadows anything we can try to do or pre-empt. The North Koreans may have lost touch with reality and their arrogance can distort their view of the situation to an unreal one and could lead to many harmful decisions. What makes it fatal is their rigidity, their inability to change, to adapt to reality. Such rigidity keeps reality from moderating the excesses of feeling which can reign unstinted. Such blind over estimation of their own strength and their perception of others could lead them to collide with reality and the effect could be damaging and disastrous. The views I express are not necessarily my own views. You asked me to look at the situation from the viewpoint of the North Koreans and this I have attempted to do.

Yes, the pictures are private, bewildering to myself. I do not have it in me to be a believer. Nor can I be a true sceptic. I cannot say, in all truth, that I am certain the pictures present as an entity entirely independent of myself. Nor can I say that they don't exist that they are imaginings of my mind! It is not enough for me to ascribe their experience to some unusual manifestation of known phenomena. Science cannot explain them. A striking fact of their colloquy is the general expectation of catastrophe, a possibility that I fear. Throughout them there is a frequent message of apocalypse. I often ask myself whether my mind has learned to manipulate reality to its own secret ends?

I am not dismissing their phenomenon to escape their reality. Blind denial is as empty a response as blind acceptance, and operates on the same level of validity. The visions and pictures are real, quite real to me. But what are they, and what in their context does the word 'real' really mean? I am aware of their controversial nature. If anyone speaks of having 'visions' it is thought that such a person is suffering from psychosis or hallucinating. I ask myself is this what holds me back? Is it, my own fear of being labelled 'crazy'?

Adding everything together, what does it add up to? God knows! I'm trying to persuade myself that they carry little that is of importance. Is there anything I really know, anything I can be absolutely sure of? I cannot dispute that the pictures show bits of information, scraps of subjects, pieces of perspective's which have to be patched together. They seemingly have no meaning but over time begin to add context as an event appears. The pattern of the pictures are confused. I have no way of knowing what truly lies ahead; whereas I am held back by what I know. I attempt to reconstruct their intricate events. Often what is illegible or missing is guessed or imagined and I frighten myself.

I try and approach the dilemma of what is happening to me in a careful and forthright way. My writing no way proves that the recollection of my experiences is correct but I attempt to describe what I picture to the best of my ability. I am dragged to the edge of reality where "the concrete world has slipped through the meshes of the scientific net" and I attempt to deal with a shattering assault from the unknown.