M. Alan Kazlev was voted by the members and visitors of Universe Spirit as our November Philosopher Artist of the month.
Biography of Alan Kazlev, in his own words:
I was born in East London, South Africa, on 13th February, 1958. East London was the town where (well, near which) the first live coelacanth was found, twenty years before. The coelacanth, a "living fossil" barely changed since the age of dinosaurs, and previously considered extinct (ironically, it is currently threatened by overfishing and climate change, what a tragedy that would be!). Considering that one of my life-long passions would be the study of the history of life on Earth, this was an amazing synchronicity
My parents, who disliked the Apartheidt regime, emigrated to Australia when I was 4. Since then I've lived in Sydney, Grafton, Sydney (again), Deniliquin (country NSW), and Melbourne. I went to La Trobe University, Melbourne where I did an Arts degree, majoring in Philosophy, learning about phenomenology from Moshe Kroy and Indian philosophy from Ian Kesecardi-Watson.
After Uni I moved to the formerly bohemian, but now increasingly gentrified and trendy suburb of St Kilda. I spent years (both at Uni & after) studying esoteric philosophies. I work best on my own, and I'd say that 99% of what I've learned has been self-taught, through my own reading and contemplation. For years I practiced meditation and worked on self-transformation. I would sometimes go to groups, but every group I went to felt constricting.
As a child I was interested in both science fiction and palaeontology and in nature and science in general, and have accumulated over the years a large shell and fossil collection.
From 1987 to 1990 I produced, with my friend Steven Guth, a magazine called Eco-Gnosis, providing a forum for ideas concerning a synthesis of spirituality, esoteric-occult knowledge, and planetary activism. It ran for eleven issues, but production was halted when I lost the use of the cheap photocopying facilities.
My other big project at the time was a book on esoteric-occult cosmology, an integrated map of all possible states of existence, which flowed naturally from my meditation and study of of esoteric philosophies. This naturally was too hard to do, especially because my ideas kept changing as I went along. So I uploaded the material I had written onto this web site. A metamorphosis from static print (or at least wordprocessed) media to dynamic Internet media. This has turned out a much bigger task then I thought, because the material has to be edited and converted to HTML, and various links chased up. If you want to read what's here so far, start at the "reality" index page.
At some point I am ashamed to say I decided to let my meditation go, because I wanted to experience a "normal" life. As a result my consciousness went right down. This was a real screw up. So i can assure you, if you are into meditation, that it is incomparably preferable to the so-called normal life (and what is normal anyway)
I will say however how thankful I am to my friend Dee, who in the two years we were together in a relationship, helped me to develop my emotional body E.Q., so I didnt look like such a slob, or an out-of-place hippy.
A discursis. Before I got on-line and became a citizen of cyberspace, I spent several years addicted to computer games. I spent at least 18 months addicted to Sid Meier's Civilization. Can you imagine, doing nothing but playing Civilization for 18 months? A bizarre experience.
For some time I tried writing science fiction (especially cyberpunk), this was no more successful completion-wise as any other projects. Currently I have yet to finish a novel, and it is most unlikely I will do so in the foreseeable future, as I have so many other things happening at the moment.
I have always had a bad speech impediment and completed the first stage of the McGuire program, which gives amazing results, much better and more natural than the smooth speech technique - and I can strongly recommend it to anyone at all who has a problem with stuttering and associated lack of self-esteem etc. And even though for a number of reasons of my own (I couldn't afford the hotel accomodation, little as it was; there wasn't much motivation for me since I don't work in an office job or anywhere like that where you have to talk to people; and I cannot function in any sort of real life group - good or bad!) I didn't follow it up, my speech now somewhat better than it was. However, since I very rarely socialise, and since most of my communications are on-line, it is no big deal now whether I stutter or not, so it is no longer the issue it once was.
I set up my first website in May 1998; this was the original Kheper site. Over the years this has grown greatly, and branched out into several other sites. I have always had an attraction for really grand projects, and each of the three sites I maintain and participate in are huge innovative endevours; one, Kheper, an encyclopaedic coverage of esoteric and alternative knowledge, one, Palaeos, a comprehensive overview of the history and evolution of life on Earth, truely the "greatest story ever told", and one, Orion's Arm, a revolutionary project in hard SF worldbuilding. Originally they were all part of the Kheper website, but as the size of each project increased, and also I could see that my own perspective is just one among many, I ended up going into partnership with like-minded friends, and arranging with them to have seperate servers, so each project is a distinct shared endevour. With Kheper I am currently working with Steven Guth, with Palaeos with Toby White, and with Orion's Arm the other folks of the Orion's Arm Worldbuilding Group. Most of my effort at the moment goes into maintaining and upgrading these three web sites, which seems to be a never-ending process. Hopefully things will eventually be organised.
Recently, I have been hired on a casual basis as scientific consultant for Edugraphics (for their new line of palaeontology posters). That's very cool I think :-)
To relax, I like to be with my cats, sit around and daydream, read sometimes, and occasionally get out and ride my bike along the foreshore.
I am currently working on a new Integral Paradigm and Theory of Everything that will provide a framework for explaining all possible states of conscious and existence, all phenomena, all things, and so on. This is a very hedgehogish activity; the last person who tried something like this was (and is) the American transpersonalist-integralist philosopher Ken Wilber (see his "AQAL" Integral philosophy), and with all due respect to Mr Wilber I don't thing he has done a very good job (here's why). Time will tell if my own alternative is any better.
Please visit http://www.kheper.net/essays/index.html to read many of Kazlev’s essays and those of others.