This piece appeared in Syntagma several weeks ago.

The New York Times has a rather gloomy piece on how bloggers are dropping dead like flies, apparently overcome by the strains of the 24/7 global internet culture.

Personally, I’ve not known a blogger who has slumped lifeless over a keyboard (touch wood). I imagine people pass away at inconvenient moments in many professions. Blogging and writing from home must have its share of dicky tickers like any other walk of life.

However, the NYT has chapter and verse :

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December. Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

From these few examples you would have to subtract the number of deaths and heart attacks in the general population to arrive at a guesstimate of internet publishing’s real rate of attrition.

No doubt there are serious stresses and strains working in the new online environment. However, a word of caution. Anyone who has worked for newspapers to tight daily deadlines will recognize the same pressures and symptoms. Journalists are not notorious for their alcohol consumption for nothing.

And try slaving in a factory, repetitively doing the same tasks thousands of times a day. Or surviving the water-cooler politics of office life. Worse, the back-breaking toil of farm work. There are no easy options in “the world of work”.

Methinks the problem lies, as ever, with meetings, travel, networking and other inconsequentials of the wired-up sector. Networking for the internetizen means Twittering and Tweeting incoherently to hundreds, maybe thousands, of “followers”, mostly without a shred of benefit to the bottom line. Email is another source of stress and should be stamped on ruthlessly, as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch wrote a day or two ago.

The Times has this quote from him, “‘I haven’t died yet,’ said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. ‘At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen. This is not sustainable,’ he said.”

Our advice : drop the Tweets, do the paid work efficiently — a three-hour morning should suffice — then get out of the house on a long Photowalk, or maybe to the golf course or coffee shop (preferably without a Hotspot), and forget about the Labours of Hercules. He was a mythical character and is not one to emulate.

If you are anything like me, you will occasionally, as if by serendipity, come across a book you intended to write yourself.

As Albert Einstein put it, “If I keep asking the question long enough, the answer will be given me”.

The book I “chanced” upon is The Secret History of the World by Jonathan Black, a nom de plume of Mark Booth, Chief Executive of Century publishers, a British imprint of Random House. The author has used his many connections within publishing to amass an impressive array of data on his topic.

The simplest way to explain his subject is to state that science has become a militant materialist philosophy that believes matter precedes mind. Some scientists have even called consciousness “a disease of matter,” as if it were an interloper in a senseless universe.

This view is the complete opposite of what a majority of the greatest minds throughout history have believed — or better, known.

The perennial philosophy, as it has been called — that mind gives rise to matter — is still believed by the larger part of the human race. The last Pope, John Paul II, was taught in his youth by a Rosicrucian master. Following a car accident which nearly killed him, he had a spiritual experience which mirrored exactly what the teacher had taught him. Such was its overwhelming power, the young mystical Pole signed up for a seminary that led all the way to his becoming Pope in Rome.

The Rosicrucians (followers of the Rosy Cross) teach the age-old knowledge of idealism — that all is mind — in a Christian context. It is said that there are 20 miles of books in the Vatican library dedicated to this and similar points of view.

Quantum mechanics comes very close to idealism without quite letting go of the materialist base of science. There is no doubt that Einstein was a thorough-going adherent too. Everything he wrote screams “perennial philosophy”.

The problem is, the early Church came down very hard on anyone who challenged its materialist worldview, and, as Jonathan Black writes, today’s scientism demonizes anyone who as much as suggests an alternative to rocky lumps floating about in a void. Richard Dawkin is a prime example of the modern scientific inquisition. On the face of it, an alliance between early Catholicism and modern science is bizarre, but it’s a fact.

Most early believers in the supremacy of mind formed secret societies based on the Mystery Schools of antiquity, where spilling the beans meant death. According to Black, many of these societies still exist, though often branded with the tag “occult”, a word that simply means “hidden”, as in occluded.

Despite the iron fist in an iron glove approach of the present-day intellectual establishment, the vision of man’s ancient understanding of the universe lives on and thrives. As well as Einstein, the British astronomer James Jeans stated that, “the universe is nothing but a gigantic thought”. Isaac Newton spent most of his life studying aspects of it, so did C. G. Jung, the great Swiss joint-founder of psychology as we know it.

Buddhism and Hinduism are based on it, as are most religions, even Christianity, whose earliest exponents were Gnostics, a term meaning “knowers”, as opposed to believers. They sought, and many found, direct experience of the secret knowledge that mind creates matter, and not the other way round.

Dr Rupert Sheldrake, a contemporary biologist, has conducted many scientific experiments showing the influence of mind over matter, or “extended mind” as he calls it. His recent The Sense Of Being Stared At is a treasure chest of empirical idealism. His other work on the psychic abilities of animals is ground-breaking science at its unprejudiced best.

Black’s book is eye-wateringly comprehensive across the field, but concentrates on the ancient timeline and secret society aspects of the topic.

Anyone who has ever doubted the primacy of matter over mind, should read it with an open mind. It is a richly rewarding classic of its kind.

This review first appeared in Syntagma.

I have announced my new book, Mediate Yourself - Stand Out From The Crowd, over in Syntagma and on Twitter — a sign of the times.

The title is targeted for pre-Christmas publication. The publisher is still not set in stone. Announcement soon.

The book’s title more or less explains what the book is about, but not why it has now taken primary place above two others I’ve been working on for a while.

Superdemocray - A New Art Of Corporate Governance was always a long-term project and is slowly falling into place.

Cosmosity - The Natural History of Nirvana was almost finished when an Indian author nicked the main title, and someone else “borrowed” the principal theme. Writing an online running commentary on a work-in-progress is not always a good idea. This book has been put on the shelf pending a complete rewrite.

However, Mediate Yourself has been quietly writing itself for some months and exists in multifarious pieces widely distributed on many sites and blogs. It would be impossible for any literary pickpocket to find them and piece them together into a coherent whole.

In fact, so much progress has been made beneath the radar that I’m able to announce it now without fear of exact plagiarism.

The domains, mediateyourself.com and .org were also available, which is always a good sign. The site will go up within shouting distance of publication.

The only decision still to make is whether the subtitle should be “stand out from the cloud”, instead of “crowd”. The first is more colourful and unexpected, while the second has more precision.