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Hillol Ray - A Poet of Neuroscience - Dr. Pompeyo Carlos Andrade Dr. Pompeyo Carlos Andrade is an Author and Professor of Neuroscience and Anthropology at Guayaquil, Ecuador

Over the years, Hillol Ray has been popularly regarded as the "Poet of Ecology". It means, he literally suffers mankind and its follies. He has taken upon himself to awake us and to warn us about the perils of the New Millennium. Consequently, he has painstakingly created some sort of mystical threshold with the change of millenniums, which might induce us to change for the good. And this is certainly possible. After all, the changes must be engendered first in our feverish minds. We cannot go over there with the same nonchalance of the ninetieth century, when people hurried to salute the end and the beginning which promised to be the season of rationality, industrial progress and all sort of wonders brought up by science and technology. We have had our share of wonders, indeed, but the twentieth century has brought us more of continuous "ennui", forced by the boredom of reality, engendered by the series of wars, atrocities, holocausts and, most recently, the "ethnic cleansing" with which we have said good-bye to rationality and the assurance of the possibility of the ideal man. Hillol Ray now tells us that our man for the next millennium has to come to grips with his tribal past, with his basic emotions and begin anew to build the old relationships of tribal and family love - and those of heroism and altruism. If we want to become real human, we must renew our old emotions of the past. If anything, the past century taught us that by rationalism, consumerism, individualism and the likes, we have become only addictive and corrupt. It is evident that addictions to power, to chemical stuffs, to greed and manipulation are bringing mankind to its self-destruction.

Hillol Ray, educated as an Environmental Engineer, has dedicated his entire life to solving problems of ecology; but now he wants to help resolve the problems of the mind. In this context, he continues venerable traditions of philosophers, anthropologists and present-day neuroscientists. His words remind us of Jean Pierre Changeux, when he warns us that after devastating the environment, man is about to devastate his own mind. Hillol's poems remind us also of the works of Professor Charles D. Laughlin of Canada who through his extensive and lifelong genial works offers some clues to understand the real systems of mind and foresees that future-day colonies in cyberspace will be constructed along the structures of ancient tribes. Man certainly lived in tribal life during millions of years. When man becomes an unattached individual, he becomes a lone predator and has to fill his emotional emptiness with addictions. Thus, in this regard, Hillol Ray is a wise man sincerely warning us of the hidden dangers of modern life.

In the old days, the wise man of the tribe was the person who put certain harmony and senses in common knowledge. He brought the cognitive systems to balance in his vision of goodness and tradition and, most often gave the necessary guidance to the eager and restless group. Wise men of the old tribes were replaced by priests, academicians, politicians and sometimes with a philosopher or two, but nowadays, the wise men have become obsolete. Nobody seems to have any use for them, while corrupt politicians and greedy mafias have taken over. Nowadays, wise men like Hillol Ray are mostly in need, precisely because the systems have become so complicated that it is hard to make sense of them. If anything, the human systems tend to become complicated, absurd and malignant ...that is why the poems of Hillol Ray are so interesting and beautiful. They have the beauty of harmonic systems coming to balance our mind with emotional words wrapped in beautiful verses. The aroma of his poems is based on this connection of emotions and rationality, the subjects on which real art is made.

I have come to enjoy Hillol Ray´s poems because of my assignment of translating his poems to the Spanish language, a difficult task indeed. But I have diligently learnt to love his work and so have students and the general public that have read or heard his beautiful poems in this part of the world. Perhaps, it is a very appropriate time to listen to his prophetic and didactic poems for the third millennium.

Recognized as "Earth Day" poet by U.S. President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Jr., and many other dignitaries and Earth Day Organizations from around the world, Hillol Ray (HR) is well known as the "Poet of Human Rights (HR)" - so synonymous with his name initials! A glance at his poems quickly reveals the true reflections of his innermost feelings and that's why I believe that his poems continue to attract the global attention. We still see the religious wars, intransigence, marginalization, and hegemonic power of imposing self-convenient rule. This is a time to claim for the rights of each and everyone, and Hillol has been striving vocally in the right direction through his poems. To name a few: "Earth Day", "Human Rights: A Cross-Cutting Issue", "Food For Thought", "The Turning Point (In memory of ashes from Hiroshima and Nagasaki)", "Dialogue: A Seed for Global Relations", "Tolerance - An Egalitarian Impulse", "Ethics - A Rare Commodity", "Leaning Tower of Pisa", "Agonized Trail of Tears (In memory of "cleansing" of Australian Aborigines)", "Chernobyl: A Continuing Catastrophe", and the list goes on and on ... To satisfy the passions of his writing and feel the "pulse" of the people and nature, he has traveled extensively to remote places, historical excavations, safaris, deserts, and cold places of Tibet and Iceland. As a matter of fact, he has composed many poems during his travel to such distant places!

Hillol Ray is an Environmental Engineer engaged in correcting the pollution problems in earth and mind. Both seem to be just one big unity. It is time to pay attention to Mother Earth, it is time to look into our minds and profess to honor the most marvelous miracle - mind itself. Hillol is also the "Poet of Neuroscience", and I dare to say that this must be a first. Old poets were considered to be Quasi-divine. It is about time that we hear the intuitive voice of the poets that create out of joy and suffering this vision that can carry us to the Promised Land. The singers of songs are needed, as well as the poets and the prophets are needed to help us attain the New Millennium. The message should come across and it should help us to create the communities of love - the big tribe of mankind.

In conclusion, I convey my best wishes to Hillol Ray, the Poet, and his outstanding contribution, an Anthology: "Poems for the Third Millennium".

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