Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - revisiting Dark Karma

Episode Date: June 14, 2022

“G.S.” was one of the first friends I made when I moved to Bozeman, Montana many years ago. The story he told me about how bad karma brought him from Devon, England to the C.U.T. bomb shelters in Gardiner, Montana still haunts me.

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. You are listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called Dark Karma. I grew up in an up-and-be-a-class family in Devon, in England. My dad, he was chief examiner at a stock exchange in London at the time. He also was a head of department at the University of Exeter. He sort of pitched himself as being sort of the archetype of the Superman, I guess. You know, I could always picture him, you know, with his B&W, his sunglasses on, listening to Dire Straits.

He really did feel himself as being invincible. I never really got to see him much. He was always at the office. I mean, all he did was really work. I think that was partly because of the strain of marriage between my mum and him. They started to lead very separate lives. Basically, he started having an affair with one of his researchers called Mary. And my mum started becoming more and more obsessed with this particular group in Montana called CUT, Church Universal Triumphant. She was always staying up in her room and reading from her meditation book and her mantras and things of that nature.

I was pretty much coming into my own. I was 16 years old. It was the best of my times right now. You know, before that I was very shy. You know, I remember staying out and making out with a 19-year-old girl and walking home five miles because I missed the last bus. And I would just remember listening to Duran Duran. I think everybody was wrapped up in their own thing. There was no cohesiveness, you know, as a family unit. My mum, in actual fact, she always was very curious about all types of different religions. I mean, I used to go to church with her. We used to go to the Catholic church and then she

didn't really like that, the Catholicism, you know. Then we started going to the Church of England, and she didn't really like that either. But when she found CET, she stopped her search. That particular religion made sense to her at that particular time in her life. But then she needs to talk about it all the time. You know, it became very sort of much, very much encompassed in her whole life. She was never really available then. I mean, she stopped, she stopped, you know, cooking dinners. You have to fend for ourselves. She was always in her room.

I mean, what can you say? And I thought, well, I want to have some attention too. So maybe I should start paying more attention to this relation than she can pay more attention to me. It began as being, what are you doing, mum? You know, why are you in your room all the time? Oh, I'm reading, I'm meditating. I'm doing my mantras, you know, and then he goes, well, what is a mantra? How my mum explained

that relation to me at that day is that you know Church University of Triumphant their headquarters are in Montana and it's run by this woman called Elizabeth Clare prophet and I said well who is she and she says well she is God my mum told me that she was a prophet that God spoke through her directly. And I said, oh really? So yeah, I mean, God spoke through Jesus and Mohammed. I mean, that she spoke, he speaks through her too. Well, I found out that this group, they take the best parts of all sorts of different religions.

Christianity, you know, love thy neighbor. Buddhism, reincarnation. Islam, you know, a lot of different religions melded all the core beliefs of every different sort of religion melded into one. So it's a very streamlined different religion. Also, how I understood it at that time, or what was attractive about that relation,

is that they believe that we're all part of God in some way. We're sort of aspects of God, or we do God-like things. And I thought that was, I found that sort of very fascinating. You know, being an impressionable young lad at the time, you know, I really sort of started to believe this. The thing I found the most fascinating was when my mom told me about CUT and the concept of karma. There's no good and there's no bad karma. Karma is just bad karma.

That's how they would go ahead and explain karma. It's all the negative, negative sort of substance, I guess you'd call it, from, you know, from the past deeds, bad sort of actions, bad things that you did to other people either in this life and in other lives. Even if you're a little kid, you have bad karma

because everybody accumulates bad karma through not just this lifetime, but other past lives also. And how you get rid of this karma is mantras and prayers. Like my mum would be there in hours, you know, in days. I'd be stuck in her room just doing these mantras. I never, you know, through that time period, you know, I hardly ever saw my dad. And then it came very public. My dad admitted to my mum one evening that he was having an affair with his reception named Mary. And my mum pretty much threw him out of the house

and so he left. He got in contact with us a couple of days later and he took my brother, sister and I all out for a meal and explained that he was having this affair and ultimately that he was telling us that he still loved my mum, but my mum was very closed off from him now because she was so much into this cult. And I remember actually having quite a happy time with my father at that moment, even though I called him a bastard, that he was. But I think he was happy. I think he got what he wanted. He wasn't getting anything at home. He also told us about Mary's ex-boyfriend at the time, Clive.

He was being really obsessive over Mary and he kept calling Mary and writing to Mary. And so he was explaining all this to us and how embarrassing it was. A couple of days earlier, Clive actually showed up at his workplace and started shouting down on the corridors of the university at my father, saying,

motherfucker, you know, how can you take my woman? It's not your woman. A couple of days later, I saw my father for the last time. He was actually standing in the driveway. I was coming out of the house and I approached him and I was still sort of kind of pissed off at him, you know, about all this mess with him and this other woman. And he sort of gave me like a look which which I'll never forget and he said to me something very profound he said you know whatever happens guy you know I still love you right and I sort

of shook my head and then I went and then I went took the bus into into town and then that night, he was murdered by the ex-boyfriend, Clive. He broke into the house, poured petrol all over the bedroom and all over their bed where they were sleeping naked. And he lit the flame, you know, he lit the match. By the explosion, he actually, Clive, was propelled out of the house and he survived. Mary died pretty much instantly. My father, he was taken to hospital and died, I think, around about four or five hours later by a first-degree burns. You know, I think how my mum explained it, why my dad died or got murdered, was essentially because of his bad karma. You know, before my father was murdered, I thought there was just a sort of interesting concept that, you know, after when he died, it really struck me as being sort of one of the truths. Because I felt that if he didn't have that karma, he wouldn't have died. GS is one of the first people I met when I moved to Montana many years ago.

The story that he told me of how and why he came to be there remained with me long after we drifted apart. A few years ago, we reconnected, and he recounted the whole thing for me. As horrible as his father's murder was, it's really just the beginning of the story. After my father died, I think, we were all wondering, I think, you know, what to do next. I think my mum felt that, you know, this was some sort of destiny scenario where now that she's free of him, you know, not in a sense that, oh, thank God I'm free of him, but now, you know, we can go ahead and begin our lives,

you know, our lives, as it were. As I remember it, there was a conference in America, I think it was in San Francisco. My mum, in actual fact, went to this conference for CUT, Church Universal Triumphant. It was all kind of very vague at that point in my life. I just remember going to a conference, coming back and announcing that we're all moving to America.

She immediately pretty much put the house on the market. And Daniel came to help move this person, this guy called Daniel. And it was interesting because, you know, I had no, we hadn't really, us kids had no idea about who this guy was. He just sort of showed up on the doorstep one day. I didn't know if my mum was corresponding with this guy when my father was alive, or, you know, how this guy showed up in my life.

I remember the plane ride going to America. We were sort of halfway interviewed by this guy. We thought he was an immigration agent because he started asking us all these questions about our business and why are we going to America. I remember being coached by this guy called Daniel not to reveal that we were actually emigrating. And so we landed in Bozeman, Montana.

I had all these different types of emotions running through my mind when I first landed in America. You know, the first fact is that, what the hell am I doing here? And some resentment towards my mother because I'm already, I'm missing, already missing all my friends in England. But also the relief and the escape that because my father was murdered that I don't have to see or face people that I know in the street and deal with that shame. So no one knew me in Montana. I could sort of recreate myself.

I suddenly became really worried about what I knew and what I didn't know. I mean, I felt like I should, you know, read more. I mean, I started picking up books and just to escape, I think, so I didn't have to think about my dad. I remember, you know, going to the basement and reading a lot of James Bond books because that's all they had in the storage. And I remember my brother and I were, you know, sleeping in the basement of this house

and my sister was up there and my mum was and my mom was with this new guy called Daniel. And that's when we first started hearing about the bomb shelters. The church, you know, following all cults, you know, from anywhere else, you know, how I see it now, they always needed sort of a compound or a shelter, you know.

I mean, they used to call their compound Camelot, you know, and they had all these etherical names or ethereal names to their little segments of compounds and you know Elizabeth Clare Poppett wanted each member to get a bomb shelter. So each family within the or each member within the cult had their own particular space or heathen, I guess. I think it's primarily because she wanted more money for herself. I mean, she was very, one of her rules of the cult is to pay a tithe, I guess,

10% of your actual income to the church. So, you know, with the way of doing that, you would go ahead and purchase a bomb shelter to make your tithe. We went up there, my brother, sister and I, and we had shovels in our hands and building earth around this bomb shelter, this compound. They all looked very nice actually. I was quite surprised that these bomb shelters looked quite reasonable.

It was not a hole in the ground but it was actually a built complex. I mean they had concrete there, they had steps leading down. They had everything, everybody, everybody had their own sort of space and actually I went to see our space in, I remember going actually down into the, into the ground, down the steps and looking at our family lot. And I remember, you know, is this really going to happen? Is this really something that, you know, I'm going to be looking forward to being in this bomb shelter? I remember all these people being extremely friendly to me when I was shoveling away. Everybody was very polite, everybody felt that they had a goal in mind to build these bomb shelters and everybody was going to be saved.

I never met Elizabeth Clare Paulpett, can you believe it? You know, I met some of the upper level church members, you know, the way, the inner circle, so to speak. But I, you know, which I remember very vaguely, but I never, and also I met some cut kids, you know, they were being homeschooled, they were all super smart, but socially inept. I never met Elizabeth Clare. And that's actually still surprising me.

I think it surprises me to this day. And then it was announced that Elizabeth Clare Povitt had a vision that God spoke to her and then that the world was actually going to go ahead and end at this particular time on this particular day. And then we should all go ahead and grab our possessions and head up to the bomb shelter. I just remember getting shoved in the car, going up and being greeted by this man, you know, in a green scarf,

telling us to walk this way into our bomb shelter. I remember it being bloody cold down there. Everybody was leading a sort of a prayer session. Everybody seemed scared and what was interesting is that you know people were kind of happy about it also, is that, thank God we're in here rather than being outside. At least we're safe down here. I don't think anybody slept really that well. It was just cold and dark down there.

So in the morning, I opened my eyes and we're still here. You know, there was no end of the world. You know, everything was pretty much back, you know, normal. I mean, by that time, there was whispers that this was just a practice drill, so no one was surprised that we did see the next morning. I got up and, you know, sort of unzipped my sleeping bag, slept in my clothes all night because it was bloody cold down there. And, you know, we started, everybody started to sort of march out of the shelters.

There was these pretty huge lines I remember you know everybody was like coming out of this this this tunnel you know we had this tunnel this granite, we had this tunnel, this granite tunnel, this tube, this metal tube that went right down to the bomb shelter. And it was packed, everybody was moving with their sleeping bags and whatnot. I think some people felt relieved, a lot of people felt that it was a good experience being down there. I felt a little bit depressed in actual fact. I felt that I wish the world almost did end at that point because I sort of lost the meaning of life when my dad died. I think maybe I just wanted to be in that home. My mum was there and she kind of looked happy.

I was wondering why she was looking happy, and she said, well, what do you think of that, dear boy? And I have no idea. I mean, I don't know if I, you know... I don't know if that's all right. And I think I gave her a weird sign, you know. I gave her a weird sign, you know. I gave her a weird look. And everybody huddled through the tunnel

and came up and we saw the blue sky. And I remember everybody was just trying to locate their car and fumbling around with their keys. I mean, I think everybody had to wait five minutes so the car could actually go ahead and warm up. So everybody was sitting in their cars and waiting for the car to actually warm up so we could go ahead and drive it home. Thank you. © transcript Emily Beynon I've never been one for dangling endings for movies or TV shows that sort of leave you hanging that don't tie even any of the plot threads together.

And it seems like in physics and in cosmology and in astronomy, we have some nice plot threads running, and we've sort of figured out how they play out. And even if we're not around to witness it, it's kind of reassuring to know how it ends. Chris Impey is a professor of astronomy and the author of How It Ends, a book where every chapter is the last chapter. For us, the biosphere, the Earth, the Sun, the galaxy, and the universe. Some people remember that little poem by Robert Frost, some say the world will end in fire and some in ice. That dichotomy was the conventional wisdom for some decades,

that the universe, which is currently expanding, might re-collapse into a fiery death, a sort of mirror image of what happened in the Big Bang, or it might continue to expand forever, and that would be a cold death. The current information in cosmology points strongly to continuing expansion forever, so we've sort of ruled out the fiery ending. That's nice. Nobody wants to burn in hell, you know, designed by cosmologists,

and so we can take that off the table. And so I delve into the processes that occur in an infinitely expanding universe. Galaxies essentially just die. They run out of fuel, the stars wind down, the lights are going to go out, and that's mostly because there's less gas available for forming new stars. So this cycle of star birth and death, which of course has generated all the carbon atoms in our bodies and lots of other fun stuff, will eventually be broken. The other thing that's happening is that more of the stellar remnants are locking in their material, and those are dark objects. They're white dwarfs, brown dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes.

They don't shine. They don't emit energy by fusion. And so what's left is a lot of dark collapsed things and very few new stars. So every galaxy will gradually go dark. Eventually, there's a sting in the tail because gravity dissipates matter. And so within solar systems, the planets will gradually shrug off from their stars and be flung off into interstellar space. And within a galaxy, the stars themselves,

which are now normally held in nice circular orbits as the sun does around the center of the galaxy, those will gradually be flung off into intergalactic space, a place you don't really want to be. And so star systems themselves and galactic systems will be dissipating in two directions. Most of the stars will be flung into intergalactic space, and then about 10% of them will go into the big beast, the black hole that's at the center of every galaxy. Our black hole is about 3 million solar masses. It will grow over time as it devours 10% of the stars in the galaxy and become a real monster. So you'll end up with black holes and dissipated,

thinly dispersed stars in intergalactic space, all of which are dark because there's no new fuel to make new stars. So these are all processes that take place within an individual galaxy. Meanwhile, the universe itself is subject to the cosmic expansion, and what we think is that the universe is accelerating. This discovery from 1995 has now been confirmed with new data, and it seems to be correct. The cosmic expansion that Hubble discovered is now modulated by an acceleration term, so the expansion is ever faster with time. And we've seen nothing to suggest that's wrong.

And the logic of an accelerating expansion is not only that all the galaxies move away from our view forever, but potentially some worse scenarios because this ever accelerating expansion followed to a logical conclusion will rip apart space-time. What astronomers observe is the acceleration. What they infer as behind the acceleration is an entity called dark energy. Dark energy that sounds very science-fiction-y and almost new-age-y, and it's a vague term because really we don't know much about it. It's something that works opposite gravity

because it causes things to push apart rather than come together. And it seems to dominate the dynamics of the universe. So the universe is really governed now and forever by dark energy. So to understand how the universe behaves under the action of dark energy, you need a theory for the dark energy. And since physicists haven't given us such a theory, and they're going wild with speculation, we have different versions of dark energy, different theories of dark energy.

One of the theories certainly is that the dark energy grows in strength in a sort of exponential way so that it disrupts space-time on the large scales, pulling the universe apart, and that disruption propagates down to the smaller scales. And in that scenario, the universe ends in a catastrophic crescendo, where space-time on the larger scales is ripped apart. Then space-time on the scale of perhaps planets and stars is ripped apart, and so the planet we're on, for example, would just fly apart. And then within a very short time, maybe minutes or hours,

it depends on the calculation, which is uncertain, matter itself is ripped apart. So space-time disrupts at the level of individual atoms, which mean the atoms of the universe, all of them, all at once, will just dissipate in this sort of crescendo. The time for this to happen, again, uncertain because the theory is uncertain, but it's only a few billion years, which compared to some of those slow dissipation scenarios

I was talking about within a galaxy is quite short. Those other scenarios are maybe hundreds of billions or trillions of years. So if the big rip theory is right, and not just the average person but most astronomers probably hope that it isn't, then that catastrophic end will overtake all these other possible endings. you have been listening to ben Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called Dark Karma. This episode was produced by myself, Benjamin Walker, with help from Bill Bowen. And it featured Chris Impey and G.S. Radiotopia.

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