Can You Please Pass the Salt

I am a pilgrim, willingly wandering into writing this piece, along with some other pilgrims who seek to create a postmodern narrative that destroys meaningless metafictions of wishful thinking and preconceived principles of realism.

I am curious where the muses will take me.

This is an opportunity to speak about the world that was, and the present world that is in an unprecedented state of change. In the past 15 years, populations have increased to the same population that took until the 1800's.

Globalization and technological advances have made it possible for the pilgrim to learn about the world, without venturing into the varying landscapes, foods, drinks, peoples and moral and political situations.

My ‘Holy journey’ is more spiritual than religious. Both types of pilgrimage hold the aspects of allegory, with physical aspects fraught with hurdles, unmet promises, harsh realities and moral and ethical irregularities. Both require exploration, openness and a best guess translation of novel ways of thinking, seeing and being.

My pilgrim soul is drawn to explore the world that exists in what might be considered the mystical realm, that seems to repeat itself over time, in a reverse exponential pattern. In 626, the Hajj and Umrah was written, describing how to perform a pilgrimage according to the letter and spirit of the law.

In 1326, Dante, the last great writer of the medieval period and the first of the Renaissance, wrote about the pilgrim who voyaged through the nine levels of Heaven and Hell.

By 1925, ‘Pilgrim's Progress’ described the pilgrimage of the giant hero Paul Bunyan from this world to that which is to come.

In 2025, my pilgrim soul stumbles upon the mystical manner in which certain Chinese terms suggest how growth and transformation occur.

I begin a mediation by standing in wu wei, non-movement. I am a bridge spanning between the banks over a river where the collective soul flows through time. I hear the universal consciousness sing that the purpose of life is to recreate happiness from the dream of what was, wished for, remembered or imagined.

The Chinese word 'zhi', describes the capacity, awareness or understanding, by which we come to know objects or acquire skills. I realize that any pilgrim must navigate the waters at the interface of matter and energy. Now that the digital revolution has melded with Artificial Intelligence, the pilgrim must remain humble. Siri, Alexa and other forms of AI are listening, and watching. The servant is becoming a great and powerful leader.

With big data collection and analysis, whims, fancies, destinations and purchases can be used to create algorithms intended not only to help, but to behaviourally program and manipulate thoughts for the purpose of marketing and who knows what else.

To accept change, this Pilgrim explores social media hoping to find it contains the essence of the word 'xin', that represents both the cognitive function of the mind and the affective states attributed to the heart.

‘Heart thinking’ recognizes the timeless, invisible world of spirits. The most simple, material element, that has a spirit, is the single-celled bacteria. Bacteria established the original mutualistic relationships that are important in personal and social homeostasis. Bacteria reside in the gut microbiome and within mitochondrial DNA, inherited through the female line. They control the gut-heart-mind connection.

Bacteria are influenced by food. Cuisine is enhanced by the use of salt. The secret ingredient of recipes can create a mysterious, vague yet all-pervading taste that transforms ambiguous flavours and marries them into harmony.

Pythagoras said salt is born of the purest of parents: the sun and the sea.

Salt, a precious commodity, was once used as money. Roman expansion and conquest of Italy was based on the trade of salt. Salt is used for physical and spiritual purification. Salt can form a healing broth and be used to cure flesh. It is used to clean dead energy and sin, ward off evil spirits and create a circle of protection.

Salts are part of the chemistry of the earth. Sal volatile, ammonia carbonate, made from the solar distillation of camel urine in desert sands, and hartshorn, is used in alchemy to create medical elixirs such as smelling salts, known as Melancholy water and eau de luce, that can arouse consciousness and cause a kind of resurrection. Salts were used to make the Philosopher’s Stone, that became the elixir of immortality and could transform base metals into gold.

The metal foundation of bones and the blood are transformed into salts when acids and bases meet. Salt solutions conduct sparks of electricity.

Salts transform cytochromes, that change light energy into neurological signals. The two eyes join to the third eye, the pine-cone shaped, salt-based, calcite microcrystalline Crystal palace organ known as the pineal gland or Niwan.

The pineal helps Seers and Shaman look into the unknown. The pineal is reported to be where various spirits meet.

The pineal creates a second harmonic generation. This is a non-linear process that doubles the frequency, increasing polarization between the original and new generation of photons of light, that interact with matter.

The pilgrim must be aware and cognisant that changes in how we see things, also increases polarities in politics, economics and social values.

Salts from acids form esters, that can create the odour of sanctity, a pleasant fragrance that proceeds from a person during life or after death.

Esters affect gut bacteria, causing serotonin to flood the brain-heart -gut axis. Serotonin changes to melatonin in the pineal gland. Melatonin causes a dream-like meta-awareness, separate from pain and trauma.

From the bridge, the pilgrim observes the slipstream of a wake, then is drawn into the vacuum left by a movement of all that happens. Here, non-ordinary states of consciousness, such as dreams and hallucinations, can cause clairvoyance, premonitions, precognitions and retrocognitions.

These are ancient forms of telepathy that use bits of the past, to see beyond time-space of the present, and into matter and the essence of matter of the future.

The pilgrim stumbles upon biblical references. Numbers 18:19 speaks of the binding, and enduring covenant of salt.

Leviticus 2:13 says salts must be used in sacrifices.

The Pilgrim respects that any translations are to be taken with a grain of salt, then politely asks, “ Can you please pass the salt?”