1:49. The knowledge which is gained from inference and the study of scriptures is knowledge of one kind. But the knowledge which is gained from samadhi is of a much higher order . It goes beyond inference and scriptures.- How to Know God -The yoga aphorisms of Patanjali.

Just when I was a the point of doubting my sanity I open the book and out pops Patanjali and a sutra that upon explanation says  “When ordinary knowledge attempts to deal with what is extraordinary, its impotence is immediately revealed”, and so at peace with my sanity it allowed my extraordinary perceptions to perceive and an ANZAC day in the garden weeding out the invaders casting some light on some big picture issues.

I enjoy the meditative process of weeding the exotic grasses from the native ones. It is a deeply immersive process to trace the runners of Cynodon dactyl (Common Couch) under the weeping blades of Microlaena stipoides (Weeping grass) and the spreading Oplismenus ameulus (Basket grass).

Over the past 35 years, I’ve been transitioning my garden from a Buffalo-Couch combo with a lone Kaffir Plum Tree (Harpephyllum caffrum) to a biodiverse backyard that is now a native plant-dominated home and foraging ground to the local wildlife: possums, flying foxes, frogs, blue-tongues, skinks, and an abundance of birds, along with the smaller bugs, butterflies, spiders and moths – the latter which are in abundance at the moment,  billowing out of the Basket grass with every step.

It was a fitting tribute to the day to be encouraging the Oplismenus, a word derived from the Ancient Greek oplites , meaning soldier, playing my role in the lawn battle moving the frontline so it could continue to advance. It got me thinking about Australia’s role in the dynamic global battlefield as country boundaries and alliances are being challenged, compromised and shifted.

Ever since Trump landed in White House the birds have been particularly vocal, urging caution with any interaction, to the point where fear, or is it paranoia, creeps in and paralyses action on my part. The birds have a way of knowing what’s going on which far surpasses anything I get from the daily newsfeed. 

The lowdown from the treetops is that the USA and China are doing a deal about their relationships with Australia. The USA divesting itself from its Aussie outlier alliance, ‘too far away’, China and south east Asia can ‘build their relationship’ down-under, the USA will focus closer to home. 

The swelling populations to the north of the great southern land need food, resources, energy. Australia with an untapped north can provide all of the above as well as room to accommodate a few extra million people. The deal, the world’s largest island in the northern hemisphere for the island continent in the south, seems like a reasonable trade-off when the two largest trading economies in the world talk about changing the global dynamics.

 And so the weeding continued, wondering if I’d find the time and the courage to share the thoughts. I put on my Bose Ultra Open Earbuds so I could listen to some Snatum Kaur, meditative music, Japa, repetition of a mantra, she has a beautiful voice, the chants are full of love, genuine belief in the divine, maybe that’s why what happened next happened.

The beauty of the Bose buds is that they wrap around the ear and so you can still hear what’s happening around you but the music is very clear. So I got quite a surprise when I heard the bird chatter become quite loud, excited, like they’d found a bunch of flowers in full nectar and they started exclaiming “Can you hear it? Music?” 

They could hear what I was was listening to. More birds rocked up, not just the lorikeets, the Kurrawongs, the Kookaburras, the Noisey miners, all twittering about the music, that it is was beautiful, they could hear it. They could hear it and I was aware they could. I kept listening so they could enjoy it and pondered about the implications. 

Firstly, super good for the scientific consortium that have been tracking and charting the Jubilee project. The birds response to the music was clear and undeniable. Another confirmation that the avian world has the capacity to not only understand but also interpret artistic endeavours. They had the vocabulary to describe the music and put qualitative measures on it. Evidence that birds possess aesthetic intelligence, what up until now was considered a sophisticated and deeply human trait.

Secondly, how come is hasn’t happened before? I’ve only used the BoseBuds a couple of times to listen to the radio, so maybe it was something in the songs? That special sauce that performers apply to open the connections between the crowds and consciousness. That singular frequency that triggers the primitive neural node that evolved long before words and language were the primary form of communication. 

The common human-bird ancestor was 300 million years ago, we share a backbone, a skull, limb structure and certain developmental genes, including one that shapes the development of brain structures and one that regulates cell growth, polarity and organ formation. Wouldn’t it be amazing if these archaic structures could be tapped and tracked, allowing for inter-species communication?