As readers are undoubtedly aware, the author of this blog, AW Lake, is also the author of the very successful book "Wuh Lax and the Cosmic Lantern." The leading character of the book, which is the first of a series of books featuring a large cast of characters, is Wuh Lax, who is a mythological character. I say mythological, but the irony of it is that Wuh is an archetypal hero with a very great presence. As my stories unfold, the devoted readers of the series will become aware that Wuh, the mythological individual, really does exist on an ethereal plane. This is why the books are aimed at the ethereally challenged. But, I should explained a bit about what is meant by the ethereally challenged?
Most of us are ethereally challenged. Wu-wu is a pre-Taoist state in which there is absolutely nothing. Out of the state of wu-wu comes the Tao. The Cosmic Lantern is a story about the new physics. The ethereally challenged include all those reading in the area of the new physics. Scientists are on the threshold of discovering that the cosmic concept of the big bang has to be re-written through revelation coming from both science and inspiration. In reality the concept of the big bang is as much a mythology of science as it is of religion. In the beginning, God did not create our universe. There is very good reason.
The state of wu, of complete nothingness, is a myth, Similarly while Christian creationism spells the mythology of God creating the universe, the Taoists spell out their mythology which results in Ying and Yang. Both are inspired by man's quest to unveil the mysteries of the universe. I say this knowing that my father was a Christian minister, a missionary, and a devout believer in a personal relationship with Christ. His reality was based on an inner transformation that he very successfully documented in a series of daily writings and readings. He insisted that one could come to know God through inner transformation arising from what one saw and read.
It was the ethereal departure of my father, that brought me to create Wuh and to explore those regions of our existence that are rarely explored because our mythologies about truth get in the way. My father was also a devout student of human nature and knew the secret of dancing with God. This is what wu is all about, dancing with the truth. Our fate is that we will never know the truth of what has happened or what is going to happen. That does not stop us from creating our mythology of what the truth is all about and then believing our mythology, and indeed experiencing it as our reality.
God exists, but God exists in the wu, and is the all pervading essense of being, fullness or emptiness depending on whether your glass is half full or half empty. Wu is all about attitude, about dancing with God, about dancing with the unknowable truth. From where do I get my knowledge?
For many years at Cambridge University in England, I studied the nature of invention and knowledge, how it arose and what happened with it. My studies were focused on knowledge creation as it applied to the science of economics, but that did not stop me from understanding the bigger picture. While a student at Cambridge in the early 1970s , some of my fellow students had a little red book that they carried around with them all the time. They constantly spoke to me about Mao and his words, how important they made them feel. They had purpose and direction. To them Chairman Mao spoke the truth and they were not going to listen to anything that I said concerning that truth. Instead my response was to give them a book about the Tao, which I said contained more truth than Mao's little red book. Gary Zukav in his book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, wrote that science and religion are only dances, and that those involved in these enterprises might claim to be seeking the truth but their reality is that they as dancers and love to dance.
I invented Wuh, but wu is a magician and a worker of miracles. My task was to let him perform those miracles in the minds of my readers. Aloha and Uweeeee!