Fellow travellers, I am still appalled by the dominance of "rational" approaches to thinking that still pervade human "civilization" the world over.

Take this recent event in China: An elderly woman was shocked to find a snake with a claw in her house. She killed it, and the snake is now being examined by scientists.

No doubt they will come up with some "rational" explanation involving genetic mutation, or perhaps interbreeding with lizards. But these will be inadequate, and inaccurate.

The reason is clear: It's a message from Gaia. Obviously she is appalled that China has adopted capitalism. It used to be a country in which wealth was equally distributed, with all of its citizens joyously working for the greater good. It's now a rapacious society, completely out of balance. And this once calm, serene and spiritual country is plundering the earth and polluting the sky at an ever increasing rate.

Gaia was expressing her disappointment through the medium of Her creations. Much as Picasso painted Guernica to express his rage and despair at the rape of a Spanish town by fascists, Gaia sculpted this bizarre, hand-sporting serpent to rail at the way Western greed had infected the spiritual East.

But of course the message is lost on all but a few more spiritually aware beings such as myself.

Sad, isn't it, fellow travellers?