Ben Lau

One of the biggest fallacies of modern man is to name "newness" as an unsurpassed quality in art, especially when we cannot tell an act of creation apart from one of invention. To clarify that distinction once and for all, let us say you create something with a life of its own. That is creation! With invention, the so-called life is a mere mechanical existence, running on a clockwork--tick, tick, tick... I hope this clarity of distinction has been achieved and the folks will not mix up the two from now on. But with our post-modernist multitude, anything goes... I have actually seen them pointing at a zombie accusing him of being alive! Let me make another daring assumption,-- that art is the food for the soul... There is, nevertheless, always the risk in making statements like that, as the post-modernists, fully materialistic like their precursors, the Existentialists or the Communists, would never fail to defy the statement's logic or "deconstruct" its semantics. Now may I implore those folks not to press me into proving or defining anything as though we are being sent out to test the validity of certain theories in Quantum Mechanics. Nothing the Alpha Seer claims to see warrants any proof, --or else he is merely another shabby logician who survives on the paltry necessities of the intellect. All one can say is this: if an Alpha Seer is to be truly worth his salt, he should be able to point out those visions that no scientists on earth may have a clue about and yet what is thus determined is still very much viable and valid--without proof! As food for our physical body, we do not require it to be new and full of glamorous or meaningful ideas, in such a way that the mind will never shake itself loose from the constant mumbling of egoistical paradigms that is taking gargantuan bites from our sensibility. We only need the food to be tasty and nourishing--to serve as a willing pleaser and health enhancer for the internal constitutions that we fondly call our own taste function and our digestive tracts. Likewise, our soul in its ingestion would inform us whether certain food is delicious, nourishing, or not-- Hence let me bring you some delicious food for the soul from the Himalayas today! Yes, the Himalayas, the loftiest of all mountains! The soul, -- If the health of all concerned is maintained in a state of harmony, can be viewed as the nativity of our being-- a collective resonance in the first cry of creation-- from the minutest to the most gigantic--a chorus of joy without reservation, a spiritual communication from the parts to the whole... . It can also be divined within the locus of the Yin and Yang-- the building blocks of all universes, thus the incessant celebrator and appraiser of supreme mathematical relationships! How grossly stupid then, is such an entity totally ignored, disregarded in favor of the ego, by the post- modernists? If the soul were a freeway, then the ego can be seen as the appendix-like driveway leading to a cul-de-sac dead end. Unfortunately, the ego has become the center-piece of our civilization now. Ask any "artist" or "poet" today. He would inform you that his ego is what he has lived and died for. Until you have fully examined his so-called art, so-called poetry or so-called music, you may not have fully comprehended the extent of involvement the modern man has with his ego. Ask a post-modernist what kind of art he is making. " Why? I, me, and myself, of course!" Comes the surprisingly predictable reply! * * * * Can you imagine the Himalayas? If you lack the right imagination, you would probably think of the place as wild, backward, desolate, and uncivilized! Little would you dream that it had provided a sacred fountain for humanity to drink from since time immemorial! Just as when you think of the Iraqis as terrorists today without the slightest inkling that your ancestors might have learned from their scholars at a certain point in history. Our lack of imagination is precisely what had plunged those modern day Mesopotamians into the abyss of terrorism. Can you then imagine that 300 years from now that the Americans may very well have become a weak nation, themselves facing the plundering of a super power? It is not impossible. Why? First off, if there is the rise and fall of civilizations in history, what makes our civilization so special as to be so positively fall-proof? The facts are, the American civilization, if the modern eras can be so called, was built on a deck of cards. The humble beginning from the East coast as colonies, the cowboy salons, Massacres of the natives, Civil Wars, windfalls, big guns genocides. More windfalls (or inheritance from the dying European powers,) more genocides in Asia... . Where was the aspiration for loftier conquests? Where was the love for the humanities? In this civilization, one cannot detect the resilience within an older and more mature civilization -- with its multilateral cultures and entrenched traditions. (Think of the Greeks, the Tang Dynasty or the Egyptians.) Comparatively,the American civilization is fragile, emotional, immature and unilateral. Now as you look at modern art and poetry more closely and make some serious comparisons, you may be better able to appreciate the masters of yore who once inhabited the Himalayas and come to the realization that they had greater poets than ours, by leaps and bounds. Even with a luxury of that soulful treasure, those Himalaya civilizations had failed to deliver themselves from the folly of stupid kings, as their dynastic glory eventually disintegrated like everything else in history. The Mongolians thought they had the world's strongest armies, but they were just barbarians. When they fell, nothing was left to inform us of their conquests. The same can be said of our blind, tasteless cultures today. Simply take a good look at ourselves: rushing through life like a dealer's hurrying hands shuffling a deck of cards-- as though everyday in our existence were a mindless race-- running breathless away from a field of nightmares! How different is such a capitalistic barbarian than the Mongolian who had once impaled Europe, lived by the sword, and who had galloped into his own tribes-men's final annihilation without a trace? Figure 1: 15 C Napalese Amorous Couples Figure 2: 14 C Tibetan Religious Painting The Alpha Seer