Time is Now

Man is not fated to being merely human; the human condition is perennially evolving and transmogrifying into the true Godlikeness inherent in even the most errant of hominids. It is not by breaking with Nature and with our own natural inclinations that our true likeness to God is exposed; it is, rather, by acknowledging and fully participating in our own natural Godhood that we may continue to evolve into a fully matured, fully upright and unfallen species of divinely Human men and women.

Gone now are the days when religion shone its penetrative searchlight on scattered tribes of uncivilized hominids, seeking to humanize the fire-wielding, tool-making proto-humans of the late Cro-Magnon era. Time is now for religion to serve the needs of a species of Being now much more angel than ape; time is now for the divinization of human civilization, and the full deployment of the deific inventiveness so characteristic of the Human Spirit.

Time is now for religion to cease from disparaging Mankind’s humanity. True theology should no longer regard Humankind as perennially deficient and in a permanent state of spiritual shortage, but rather recognize that our plentifulness of naturally human traits are truly signs of our collective spiritual abundance. Religion has indeed initiated society into the Mysteries of God; but time is now for religion to evolve our society into a civilization capable of exposing its own true Godlikeness, a more fully evolved species thoroughly readied and enabled to manifest and reveal its own innate, natural-born Divinity.

The mystic transcendence of our mortal limitations into which our religions initiate us is no lonely flight away from the World, nor does it encourage the continued condemnation of the human condition. On the contrary: the transcendent viewpoint bestowed upon those gifted with the theophany of mystic ecstasy provides them the inspiration for a deeper participation in the life of the World-- the fostering of a more angelic human species, and the nurturing of the long promised Utopia, the Golden Age that yet awaits the full employment of our deific inventiveness for its future construction. True theology does not disparage the natural World, nor the inclinations to which authentic participation in the life of Nature dispose us. Genuine religious faith makes us better caretakers of the blessings we find everywhere disclosed in the natural World, and allows the Spirit its rightful freedom to partake of the God-given miracles that naturally exude from our healthy human bodies.

Humankind’s natural tendency towards mystic transcendence is not something to be cloistered away in hermitages and chapels. The evolving global civilization will be much better served by the public sacramentalizing of each and every aspect of our common humanity. Each and every object of the material world needs to be rightfully regarded as holy, sacred, sublime. The human body itself needs to be properly esteemed as the crown of God’s creativeness, the foremost instrument of the Spirit’s expression.

Time is now when we must meet ourselves face to face, and see ourselves as we truly are. Time is now for the end of one age and the beginning of another, new evolutionary age. Time is now for the reclaiming of our original nature, our divine heritage and birthright, our true and properly destined stance in the Cosmos. Time is now for God to put on a human face-- or rather, time is now that Man’s own countenance should shine with the creative Light of God.

Joy

There is only one religion in the world, and that is to be joyous -- to have joy in everything that you do.

The heavenly rewards of the joyous are right here and now before us, as are the pains and sufferings of the sorrowful. Joy is the only virtue in life; and being sorrowful is the only vice, the only sin. There can be no waiting for a better (or worse) life in any supposed future hereafter-- the bliss of heaven and the sting of hell are here and now, or else they do not exist at all. Have joy in life, and the joys of life will seek you out; but be sorrowful and you will find only suffering, no matter where you look. And if you cannot enjoy, then what is this life for? Surely not for struggle and turmoil. Only a voracious demon would have created such a world. And if you believe in a beneficent Creator, a good God, then surely it follows that you must also believe in a world blessed by the joy of His continuous and ubiquitous Presence. And if God is everywhere, and everywhere to be found -- then what is there to be so sorrowful over?

This sorrow, so common to the hearts and minds of the unenlightened, stems from an inability to see the world for what it is, an incapacity to find meaning in the apparent chaos of the created Universe, an outright failure to truly know themselves for who and what they really are. But the panacea for all this is simple-- so simple it is often easily overlooked or outright denied, so simple that it often defies all of our cultural, religious and personal beliefs. There are so many people, so many sorrowful people, who simply cannot enjoy even the most simple and common and downright ordinary things in life-- a beautiful sunset or sunrise, a magnificent work of art, intelligent conversation, loving and being in love. So they look elsewhere for God-- outside of the life of the world, outside of their own lives. They believe that joy is futile, even wasteful; and so they miss how immediately present the Divine Life is in their very own lives. They refuse to believe that life has any meaning at all; and so they refuse themselves the most apparent proof of life’s meaning, and the most obvious proof for the existence of God.

For God enjoys all things-- what else were all these things created for?-- and not simply for His own ineffable amusement. God deeply enjoys the play of sun, moon, and earth; the imaginative handiwork of our hands; the eloquent speech of our mouths; above all, the love of our hearts, minds, and bodies. But God cannot partake in the joy of even these most common aspects of life, unless we choose to allow ourselves the God-given right to enjoy them. It is through us, and through us alone, that God enjoys the joys of living, the delights of life, the true blessedness of His own Creation.

So look at life, look at the world as it is; look closely, and you will see God-- playing, loving, and delighting in the very midst of His own created Being. It takes but a single glimpse into the true nature of Reality -- and by Reality we mean both the spiritual fabric of the created material world, as well as the enduring Selfhood that remains forever untouched and aloof from our own personal psychologies and physiologies-- to dispel the illusions of the sorrowful man’s clouded and ignorant worldview. But a single glimpse … and our hearts and minds are forever free of pain and sorrow. But a single glimpse … and our entire being is permanently opened to a heavenly flood of blissful joy. But few know where to look; and it is very difficult to convince most men and women-- especially ‘religious’ men and women-- that the vision of God is already so near to their very own eyes.

God is Life itself; and to be truly religious is to enjoy life. To be truly religious is to deeply inhale the fragrance of life; to look upon even the most common events of our day to day living with an air of deep gratitude and reverence; to take in all the sights and sounds of the world, looking and listening acutely for the hidden pattern and harmony that is sure to present itself. God is the total material-spiritual Unity of Life. Divinity is not a static entity existing ‘somewhere out there;’ it is a dynamic phenomenon streaming and flowing through everything, everywhere, always. God is not hiding ‘somewhere,’ waiting for you to find Him. God is right here and now living Life to the full-- and enjoying every moment of it deeply. It is not that you have to ‘find God’ -- God is at all times and in all places actively seeking you out! But so long as you remain sorrowful, despondent, burdened with pains and sorrows, He cannot find you. You must open up the temple of your heart and mind, you have to open up the doors of your senses-- only then can the Spirit truly blow through you, and enliven you, and reveal your own Godhood to you. When the pain has disappeared, and you find yourself dancing -- then God has happened to you. When your tears have dried up, and you find yourself singing-- then God has entered you, and become you, and sings through you.

Have joy, and you will be deeply religious-- for joy is ultimate goal of all religion.

Nikos Kazantzakis - Saviors of God

I was introduced to the works of Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) many years ago. His words moved me like no other. Considered by many to be one of Greeks greatest prose writers and philosphers, Nikos Kazantzakis wrote a book called Saviors of God - Spiritual Exercises.

Thanks to Upwinger, there was a still a cached version of this book online. Long out of print and copyright expired I believe this book has now fallen into the public domain. Along with many other unique works in Future Hi's library, I've now added Saviors of God - Spiritual Exercises to the list.

Peter Eglington: Visionary Artist of Byron Bay

I feel remiss that I have not mentioned Peter until now. Peter Edington is a wonderul visionary artist who lives on the Golden Coast of Australia, and whose art has been an inspiration to me, as well as coloring many articles on Future Hi in years past. Peter was one fo those lucky few who was part of the psychedelic surfer culture of Australia during the 1970's. For me his art is beautiful, warm and uplifting.

"In the last few years Peter's art has been attracting the attention of many individuals worldwide. He is to be one of many visionary artists whose work is soon to appear in "Eyes of the Soul" -exploring inspiration in visionary art and artists. This book is to be authored by Philip Rubinov-Jacobson, who teaches the Old Masters techniques of oil and tempera painting in European seminars each summer. The foreword is by Ken Wilbur, America's foremost contemporary author integrating transpersonal psychology, theology and a number of other fields into an integral philosophy.

Peter has been in discussion with Allan Silberhartz, host of "Bridging Heaven and Earth", an international television format for awakening focusing on the oneness of all life without any specific spiritual or religious orientation. This Santa Barbara based show is broadcast to approx 100 cities across the United States and it is hoped that Peter's art will feature prominently when the crew eventually make it across the water.

Peter's works grace the walls of homes in locations as diverse as the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Hawaii, Macedonia, France, India and Sweden."

Many years of work have gone into the creation of these unique paintings. Years of love and joy - and pain also.

All glory to the Supreme Creator of our shared existence.

Peter's website and store

Peter's Surf Art website and store

Belief is an Omniverse Operator

Belief is an Omniverse Operator - it creates reality in life and death. In life, what you believe to be true is true. In death, what you believe to be true is true. It is the nature of the Bardo. Limiting beliefs are what keep you here, stuck in the cycle of life and death. Unlimiting your beliefs frees you into eternity, infinity, and beyond.

Belief can be your liberator, your way out, whether it be in this life or the one hereafter. The reason is simple - your consciousness, your soul is infinite. It is the source of all that it is, because it is the most fundamental part of existence. You are already, and have always been part of this infinite intelligence and eternal wisdom. You are already infinte and eternal. You have always been, and you will always be perfect joy.

You may not remember, because you don't believe it to be real, you don't trust your imagination. But your imagination is your true self, it is the very key to your reality. You are told to believe you are limited, that you are a sinner, or just human, a worker, common citizen, or consumer. You are way more than all of these things. You are infinite incarnate. Only by letting go and loving yourself can you allow this belief to become true. Believe it and it is yours to have.

Belief is your way to create something from nothing. Dreams, creativity, magick - imagination then will. You can create paradises beyond your wildest imaginings, because your imagination is your connection to the infinite.

"In the province of the mind, what the mind believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the mind there are no limits." - John C. Lilly

There are no limits, because you are beyond those limits. You are the godhead, the source of all that is.

You are co-creator of Infinite Omniverses. You can relax now, there is nothing to lose, except your limited sense of ego and self. You already are your higher self, all you have to do is let go and just be.

Moving Beyond Physical Immortality

When I was about 12, I read an astounding article by Robert Anton Wilson's called Next Step: Immortality in Future Magazine. I identified myself as an immortalist from that day on. This same magazine introduced me to all sorts of other new cutting edge ideas. Immortality appealed to me because all the wonders I read in Sci-fi and all the amazing futures I imagined myself living in would now come true, because I would live thousands of years to see them all. I would be alive when we first colonized the solar system. I would be alive when we set out for the stars and colonized other planets. I would be alive to become a space pioneer and experience alien cultures and super advanced extraterrestrial races. All of these visions then and still are much greater and fantastic than anything, save perhaps Star Wars, that I have ever seen depicted on film.

This desire has continued pretty much unchanged all the way through to the present. However, as I have gotten older, experienced more, seen the pressures the world now faces, and more deeply understood the implications of things like nanotechnology, this vision has been shaken. Even a year ago, I don't think I would have said that, but today, the foundations of my quest for immortality have come under greater scrutiny. Is my desire for immortality a genuine spiritual quest or based more around a fear of death? If so, do I really want to live in fear? Living in fear has got to be the worst way to live, since it precisely takes you away from living in your heart, your true center. From what I can see almost all immortalists are such because of their fear of death. They are immortalist more because of their fear of death, rather than their love of life. American culture in particular has a great fear of death, and it is one of the reasons so many American's are bamboozled into mind-numbing reality tunnels - from shop-until-you-drop consumerism to spiritually vacant dead-ends.

Fear can do weird things. I have seen many immortalists trade in many of their principles for the promise of longer life. If faced with their own death, I have seen them embody the worst of culture in a subconscious desire to blend in, not step out of line, or be noticed, especially now in a our climate of squashing dissent. For example, I haven't see any contemporary immortalist taking the moral high ground on any social cause that is sufficiently counter to the status quo, precisely because such an action could jeopardize their immortal quest. After all, look what happened to Martin Luther King, Jr. So the question becomes, at what point, if at all, would an immortalist be willing to die for a just cause over their own quest for physical immortality? Because lets face it, things could bad enough, that such a choice could soon face all of us.

And even putting the morality issue aside, things are changing so fast now, that for me at least; it’s becoming increasingly difficult to even identify what the "safest" path to future survival is. Can we say with any certainty what kind of world will be here in 20 years? For me it is almost impossible to imagine. We are at such a critical juncture that the slightest factors are now capable of reaping the most tumultuous change.

The truth that I have been avoiding, but is now staring me in the face, is that my personal ability to survive the next 20 is now almost completely out of my control.

I think the primary reason for this is that as the world has become more populated, explored, controlled and monitored, our ability to act freely within it has become increasingly constrained. For example, I would love to move to New Zealand, and get away from what I see is a rapidly disintegrating free country, and a rise in American despotism and retrograde conservatism. But if you, like me, have contemplated such an escape, it's much more daunting than it first appears, or should be! Unless you are already very wealthy, or happen to have a LOT of experience in one of their in-the-moment much needed skill shortages, your chance of immigrating there are almost zero. Pretty much goes for any other place you care to run to. Lets face it, the world is a lot smaller today, and countries have responded by making it much harder to move there. Frontiers are dead. That only leaves the space frontier.

However, in practical terms we are no closer to space colonization now than we were in the 1970's when Gerald K O'Neill trail blazed a compelling pathway towards its realization.

Nanotechnology for me has always held the key to liberating humanity from slavery. But nanotech is not here, and the mechanisms of elite control have become stronger. Our ability to travel and move freely has become harder, economic conditions more straining, resources more depleted, the environment more destabilized, and political welfare coming apart at the seams. Meanwhile the most powerful technologies are coming under greater control of the military. Sure, decentralized technologies are a powerful liberator, but they are not a sure thing. As powerful as they are, it still leaves those with the most physical power having the most tools of oppression at their disposal to wreck havoc anywhere they see fit. Cyberspace is great, but we still have meat bodies. So those who can control, maim or kill those meat bodies are the ones in charge. Again, it all comes back to our physical bodies, and any fear we have around death. As long as we fear death, those with the power to kill us, control us.

Sure, as they "tighten their grip, more star systems will slip through their fingers", but those "star systems" from what I can see represent a rapidly diminishing portion of the population. There was a time when I thought I could identify what specific characteristics that portion would have, and adapt myself accordingly, but the honest truth is I can't, and I'd be surprised if anyone did. Substantial wealth seems to be a prerequisite, but I'm not even sure about that anymore. Assuming it was and I did have sufficient wealth, what do I do then? Do I move to a small tropical island? What would I do to survive once I'm there? Is this even practical or desirable? Would I have to leave my family? And an even more important question, assuming I could do all these things and it was necessary, would it be worth it to survive in a world that was left? What specifically would that survival entail? What kind of world would life after such global chaos played itself out? Will it be a world I would even want to live in? Is survival in "hell" better than no physical survival at all? Well, if you are like most immortalists, the answer would still be yes, because death is the final oblivion... end of story. For quite a long time, I used to take this as the most logical belief. However, would I want to live within a hellish world that consists of some insane global fascist feudalist empire of insane, craven, infantile warlords, and ex-heads of state with their armies and weapons of death? Or how about a society which consists of a legion of nano-powered weapons of control? A society in which free thought has been eradicated via covert nanobots swimming through my brain and bloodstream? I don't know, imagine your own dystopia.

I know have echoed Bucky Fuller in the past, utopia or oblivion. Although such dystopias are probably self-negating, how do we know clearly when the final choice needs to be made between utopia and oblivion? At some point, quite likely, the only thing that could turn it away from oblivion is enough people at the right time, putting their fear of death aside, and taking a stand against the forces of evil. Is that time right now, next year, or already beyond us? I have no idea, which is why this dilemma is all the more pressing.

Interestingly, quite a few immortalists (ones I met on the Extropian List in the 1990's) having realized these grave possibilities, and fearing their possible extinction have adopted some crazy politics. Rather than side with what is the moral high ground they now position themselves with the side that has the best chance of winning, regardless of what happens to be the morally higher good. From their perspective, the best way to assure survival is make sure they are on the side of the guns, and not on the side having them pointed at you. Sensible enough, right? They have become true survival-of-the-fittest type individuals. Rather than become potential slaves to future feudal lords, they now work hard to make sure they are the feudal lords! When I realized this for the first time way back then, I was seriously depressed and disillusioned. I never gave up my immortal quest, but any illusions I had about immortalists all sharing the same heart-felt quest for a just utopia were shattered that day. Boy was I naive!

Now, lets shift gears.

Lets say, we do make it.. that we do survive the next 20 years as nanotechnology changes everything. Call it the Singularity, or the 2012 Eschaton, it doesn't matter. Well, assuming the Singularity does come and all of us here are alive when it does, what then? This to me is the biggest irony of all. We all might still die. When you think about it, what is the technological singularity anyway? As far as I can tell, and even under the most benign circumstances, it seems to me to portend an utter annihilation of all that we were. Some might say this is a good thing. Well, it would certainly seem to be a good thing in the evolutionary scheme of things. After all, we are talking about the final escape of intelligence past the extinction point out into the infinite cosmos. For life and intelligence, this would be the ultimate liberation - a time for celebration, and an overwhelming feeling of relief at finally having escaped any shackles towards utter freedom, joy, infinite intelligence and wisdom.

So why the irony? The irony, because it’s quite possible, even likely that you and I won't survive such a transition. The very nature of accelerating intelligence would be akin to the ultimate trip, your ego would be obliterated into a billion pieces. Except in this case, as all that was you is subsumed into the SI matrix, there wouldn't be any "you" left, save perhaps the "useful" parts for the SI's purpose. In other words, you die. From the perspective of "you", your dead, same as if you had physically died. So if you permanently die in this way, is this still physical immortality? What difference would there be between this death, and actual physical death? In both cases, "you" are gone. Now, this is where my thinking might be different than other psychonauts. During my NDE, I felt no sense of annihilation. "I" was still there, except this time, there was much, much more than "I". The feeling was I became merged with a much higher and more complete version of my "self". I still had memories of being me in this life, and I still could recall all the details of my life now. I still experienced my ego, but my ego had become totally transparent to this infinite all encompassing love of my more complete higher self. In other words, my ego was now more like my big toe compared to the rest of my more complete body. I can't even begin to tell you how liberating this was. This place that I now found myself was eternal. It was like the ultimate rest stop for the soul. It was a place of total rest, joy and contentment. It was the TOTAL absence of all suffering. And the most amazing part of the experience was that it was totally familiar. There was nothing alien about it all. It was as opposite of otherness as you could have, it was HOME. It was the place I have always known, and always would know. A place that has always existed and always will. It was total confirmation. I rejoiced! It was the most real and true experience I have ever had. To deny, reject, or doubt it would be the ultimate folly. If I were to doubt it, I might as well doubt that I am happy when I am happy. The experience just was. No matter what the ultimate nature of reality is, this experience was the deepest confirmation, the deepest, truest resonance with the very essence of my soul. I lost all fear of death, and it changed my life forever.

These investigations have taken me deeper into exploring techniques for Out of Body Travel, Astral Projection and so on. Based on my own experiences in these areas, as well as reading lots of other peoples, I now believe that there is no death. For many, reincarnation (i.e. rebirth) happens because they are not ready to believe there is something more. According to Robert Monroe, a pioneer in OBE work, people are not able to move beyond rebirth until their belief systems are completely cleared of all limiting beliefs. If we are, as many spiritual and psychonautic pioneers have said, co-creators of Universe, then the ultimate nature of reality is consciousness. Therefore, as conscious co-creators of universe, until we believe in a transcending reality beyond death, it will continue to occur for us in a repeating cycle of death and rebirth until we finally get it. This is exactly what Seth via Jane Roberts was always saying. Consciousness is the name, and infinity is the game. No matter what, we are all heading towards something beyond death, beyond the physical universe, beyond space and time.... not just eternity, but infinity.

So this brings me to my current beliefs. Although physical immortality could be lots of fun under the right circumstances, it is no longer the only game in town. I will continue to pursue my physical immortal quest for as long as I can, for a love of life, not a fear of death. It's win win situation!

Everything Old is New Again -- Man and the Anthropocosm

It is nothing human and personal that we are short of. What we lack is cosmic life, the sun in us and the moon in us.
-D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse

Man is not a ‘product' of the universe nor a 'scale model' of it; he is to be regarded as an embodiment, its 'essence' incarnated in physical form.
-John Anthony West, Serpent in the Sky

Starting with a single revelatory observation in Egypt in 1937, the preeminent Egyptologist, R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, over the course of some twenty years, was able to piece together the sacred science of the ancients and present it in rigorously documented fashion.

As John Anthony West retells it: "Schwaller’s work concerned mainly the New Kingdom temple of Luxor, which he called "the Temple of Man." In its measurements, geometry, harmonies, and proportions, he discovered the elements of a profound spiritual cosmology in which art, religion, philosophy, and science were fused into a single comprehensive doctrine—the sacred science of the ancient world.

"All those bizarre animal-headed gods were not figments of the primitive imagination or carry-overs from still more primitive animistic religions, as was commonly believed, but rather were embodiments of cosmic principles—the "Ideas" through which Universal Consciousness descended into the manifest universe. It is precisely the recognition of such principles that is lacking in our own technologically brilliant, but philosophically naive and spiritually empty secular science.

"Fertilization, gestation, birth, growth, maturity, senescence, death, rebirth, and resurrection are the principles of the organic world. Polarity, relationship, substantiality, potentiality, time-and-space, and process are among the principles of the cosmological world. These, given appropriate names and forms were the "gods" of Egypt. Each was associated with its own number symbolism, which in turn commanded the geometry of the temples erected to commemorate that "god" and to evoke in the eye and heart and intellect of the beholder communion with that principle or set of principles.

"Schwaller called the Egyptian sacred science the "Doctrine of the Anthropocosm" (or human-cosmos). We embody within us, as human beings, all the laws and principles that operate within the greater, divine cosmos that sustains and embraces us. And our intelligence, correctly deployed, gives us access to the knowledge of all there is. Acquisition of that knowledge holds the promise of eternal life, immortality, and entry into the Higher Consciousness responsible for our being here."

Perhaps the greatest difference between us and the pagans lies in our different relation to the cosmos. With us, all is personal. Landscape and the sky, these are to us the delicious background of our personal life, and no more. Even the universe of the scientist is little more than an extension of our personality, to us. To the pagan, landscape and personal background were on the whole indifferent. But the cosmos was a very real thing. A man lived with the cosmos, and knew it greater than himself.

Don't let us imagine we see the sun as the old civilisations saw it. All we see is a scientific little luminary, dwindled to a ball of blazing gas. In the centuries before Ezekiel and John, the sun was still a magnificent reality, men drew forth from him strength and splendour, and gave him back homage and lustre and thanks. But in us, the connection is broken, the responsive centres are dead. Our sun is a quite different thing from the cosmic sun of the ancients, so much more trivial. We may see what we call the sun, but we have lost Helios forever, and the great orb of the Egyptians still more. We have lost the cosmos, by coming out of responsive connection with it, and this is our chief tragedy. What is our petty little love of nature— Nature!!—compared to the ancient magnificent living with the cosmos, and being honoured by the cosmos!
-D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse

The Egyptian philosophy of the Anthropocosm found its way into two familiar sayings, the Hermetic 'As above, so below' and the Biblical 'God fashioned man in His image'. "But both these sayings," as West informs us in his masterful study of de Lubicz and his work, Serpent in the Sky, "while true, incline to misleading interpretations. The first lends itself to too sharp a distinction, while the second lends itself to too close a commingling. Man is not exactly a little universe to be regarded as distinct from a greater universe. On the other hand, the Biblical phrase lends itself to pictures of a muscular God with a long grey beard, which is not right either."

To the ancient consciousness, Matter, Materia, or Substantial things are God. A great rock is God. A pool of water is God. And why not? The longer we live the more we return to the oldest of all visions. A great rock is God. I can touch it. It is undeniable. It is God.

Then those things that move are doubly God. That is, we are doubly aware of their godhead: that which is, and that which moves: twice godly. Everything is a " thing ": and every " thing " acts and has effect: the universe is a great complex activity of things existing and moving and having effect. And all this is God.

Today, it is almost impossible for us to realise what the old Greeks meant by god, or theos. Everything was theos; but even so, not at the same moment. At the moment, whatever struck you was god. If it was a pool of water, the very watery pool might strike you: then that was god; or the blue gleam might suddenly occupy your consciousness: then that was god; or a faint vapour at evening rising might catch the imagination: then that was theos; or thirst might overcome you at the sight of the water: then the thirst itself was god; or you drank, and the delicious and indescribable slaking of thirst was the god; or you felt the sudden chill of the water as you touched it: and then another god came into being, "the cold": and this was not a quality, it was an existing entity, almost a creature, certainly a theos: the cold; or again, on the dry lips something suddenly alighted: it was " the moist", and again a god. Even to the early scientists or philosophers, "the cold", "the moist", "the hot", "the dry" were things in themselves, realities, gods, theoi. And they did things.

With the coming of Socrates and "the spirit", the cosmos died. For two thousand years man has been living in a dead or dying cosmos, hoping for a heaven hereafter. And all the religions have been religions of the dead body and the postponed reward: eschatological, to use a pet word of the scientists.
-D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse

As West concludes: "It is my own conviction that no human civilization worthy of that name is possible if it is not founded on an understanding that the human soul is immortal by nature or (as Hermes Trismegistus puts it in the Hermetica) "may strive to become so." The lunatic asylum we live in at present is the result of three centuries of materialistic science and a deluded rationalism supposedly (though not actually) based on that science. Through Schwaller's work in developing the Doctrine of the Anthropocosm, it becomes apparent that the ancient sacred science is indeed a science. It is not credulous superstition. It is not belief. It is not even faith (emotional experiential knowledge, as opposed to belief). It is a science.

"If we are to escape from the asylum (a.k.a. the Church of Progress), it can only come through the reestablishment of that sacred science on this earth. While we surely will not be building pyramids or Temples of Luxor again, or mummifying our pharaohs either, the principles upon which the Egyptian doctrine were founded are eternal. It is not impossible that, before it is too late, a way will be found to reestablish that Doctrine on earth in a context and form appropriate for our upcoming Age of Aquarius."

Who says the sun cannot speak to me! The sun has a great blazing consciousness, and I have a little blazing consciousness. When I can strip myself of the trash of personal feelings and ideas, and get down to my naked sun-self, then the sun and I can commune by the hour, the blazing interchange, and he gives me life, sun-life, and I send him a little new brightness from the world of the bright blood. ...

Now this may sound nonsense, but that is merely because we are fools. There is an eternal vital correspondence between our blood and the sun: there is an eternal vital correspondence between our nerves and the moon. If we get out of contact and harmony with the sun and moon, then both turn into great dragons of destruction against us. The sun is a great source of blood-vitality, it streams strength to us. But once we resist the sun, and say: It is a mere ball of gas!—then the very streaming vitality of sunshine turns into subtle disintegrative force in us, and undoes us. The same with the moon, the planets, the great stars. They are either our makers or our unmakers. There is no escape.

We and the cosmos are one. The cosmos is a vast living body, of which we are still parts. The sun is a great heart whose tremors run through our smallest veins. The moon is a great gleaming nerve-centre from which we quiver forever. ...

When I hear modern people complain of being lonely then I know what has happened. They have lost the cosmos.—It is nothing human and personal that we are short of. What we lack is cosmic life, the sun in us and the moon in us.
-D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse

Commenting on R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz’s masterwork, The Temple in Man, the translator, Robert Lawlor writes: “As a civilization, Egypt certainly holds up to us a model of this reintegrated expression of the various planes and parts of our individual natures and of the cosmic life of our universe, and thus may prove of greater value in the spiritual crisis now confronting us than the religions of transcendence adapted from various ancient Eastern cultures. Egypt was not of the lineage that advocates transcendence and denial of material existence; it taught, rather, transformation. The ancient name for Egypt was ‘Kemi’, meaning, ‘Black Earth,’ the field of vital transformation; the Arabs, Schwaller de Lubicz points out, called Egypt ‘Al-Kemi’. Thus we find in its very name that age-old, universal doctrine so often disguised in symbols and parables. This doctrine encompasses a vision so the principle of matter as a field of existence responsive to and capable of being transformed by spiritual influences brought about through the evolution of embodied and individualized consciousness. The West today could benefit from a philosophy of spiritual depth that does not suppress, diminish, or deny our intellectual and material nature, but rather fulfills our commitment to the meaningfulness of human life and this material expression of the universe.”

“This lost alchemy, the pursuit of which extends back to its flowering in ancient Egypt,” continues Lawlor, “can be seen as the hidden esoteric roots of both civilization and individuals throughout recorded time. It is this same alchemy which is at the core of the vision of the anthropocosm—of Man as being and containing within himself the entire universe. This vision which is introduced by Schwaller de Lubicz in these pages and expanded and brought to life in his major work, The Temple of Man, leaves us with a single, enduring message; the inevitable resurrection of the spiritual essence which has involved itself in matter in the form of organic creative energy.”

“This resurrection depends upon the transformation ofthe material universe—or to express the idea more as Egypt left it imprinted in the stones of Luxor: the birth of divine man (symbolized by the Pharaoh) depends upon the transformation of the universal mother (materia prima). This transformation was considered the sole cosmic goal. Every human birth participates in this alchemy, either in an awakened manner through the intentional perfecting and expression of one’s higher nature, or unawakened, through the tumult and suffering of karmic experience leading eventually to a spiritual self-awareness, the temple in man. The intensification and heightening of human consciousness was believed to cause biological and even cellular change in the physical body of the initiate. This divinization of the individual body, on the microcosmic level, comprised the goal and purpose of the evolution of human consciousness in general.”

Or, as Lawrence more succinctly summed it up, unifying the old and the new in a singular vision:

What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his "soul". Man wants his physical fulfilment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.
- from Apocalypse

Beyond The ‘Blank Nothingness’ Of Spiritual Attainment

I for one am deeply bothered by the all-too common misperception of the highest degree of spiritual attainment -- most often labeled 'satori' or 'samadhi' -- as an encounter with the ‘blank nothingness’ or ‘emptiness’ of an ineffable Wholly Other.

I wont deny that limit experiences do indeed absolve the aspirant’s consciousness of the bric-a-brac clutter of ordinary waking life. But it seems to me that much of what is referred to as states of high trance or mystic realization is more akin to a mountaineer mounting to the peak of his or her chosen capstone -- and then (oddly enough) closing his or her eyes to the breathtaking expanse above, around, and below.

Hence the ‘nothingness,’ the ‘blank emptiness.’ Somehow in all the strenuous endeavor of clambering to the tip of the pyramid, the aspirant’s cognition, before alert and impeccable and intuitive to a fault, has in some unforeseen way atrophied. (One simply can’t see the forest for the trees!)

Now, I don’t mean to denigrate the pure astonishment which must invariably accompany our trek to the precipice of the Eternal. Far from it. -- Crashing through to what lies outside and above the microcosmic envelope of one’s waking consciousness almost always results in a temporary obliteration of one’s habitual pattern identity. The world becomes suffused with a blinding radiance, a Light almost suffocating in its intensity, rendering one’s usual conception of selfhood null and void.

It is perfectly understandable that many find themselves easily lost in this seemingly boundless, somehow affectionate glow. One has spent long hours diligently skating the ice that customarily limits our world of fluid matter from pushing up into the world of windy Spirit. Etching ever more intricate fractal outlines into the seemingly impenetrable periphery, searching for a fault into the Unknowable, a rupture into the Ineffable.

And then at last the glassy veneer gives way, the ice splintering into a dizzy maze of incandescent explosions. Heaven itself has been breached -- the once impermeable permafrost of the Beyond collapsing into a sun-drenched shower of millions of dazzling fireflies.

Its almost enough to stop the heart, this instantaneous annihilation of our consensual waking reality. For after the bewildering tumult attending our burglary into the Treasure-House of Consciousness has been stilled, after the thunder of fracturing ice has subsided, we are confronted with an uncanny stillness, an awful silence unlike any ever endured in waking life. This absolute calm is such a profound antithesis to the clamorous crashing that attended our final break with consensual reality that it initially appears as a blank nothingness -- an emptiness wholly Other and uniquely in contrast to our three-dimensional substantiality.

And it is here, at this critical impasse, that most aspirants lose awareness of the phenomenon entirely. Swallowed up all in all by its inviting phosphorescence, most surrender to the complete lack of self-identity that it encourages -- and so lapse into utter unconsciousness, acquiescing their finger-hold on the spiritual mountain-top, succumbing once more to the illusions and fallacies of our waterlogged waking consciousness.

The real trick, I believe, the secret technique, is to not abandon self-identity to the winds -- but to identify oneself instead with the Light that fills and surrounds you within and without. Declare your presence anew as a Being of imaginal brilliance. Shed the thorny shell of nihilism and be embraced by the ethereal glow of ‘Omnisism’ instead. Above all, remain conscious enough to realize that this effervescent illumination you now find yourself adrift in is not far apart and distantly removed from the world of waking life -- but is rather its most fundamental and informative strata.

It is not an ‘empty nothingness’ we are confronted with at the peak of spiritual attainment. That is simply a common misperception arising from the sudden lack of personal selfhood, from having our little personal pattern identity temporarily restitched into the seamless network of the world’s causal Hyperreality.
Its dangerously easy to lose one's lucidity when that 'lack' is felt so overwhelmingly. It usually takes several attempts (and perhaps several years) before the aspirant can master his or her own astonishment to the point that he or she is capable of remaining fully conscious even though the former boundaries of his or her pattern identity have been dissolved. Its very easy to feel overwhelmed, and very difficult to ride the crest of the upward momentum to its ultimate resolution. But it can be done.

Its akin to a single drop of water falling back into the ocean -- what is really happening is that you have returned to your true element. The boundaries where personal selfhood formerly ended and the rest of the universe began are relinquished -- and a ghostly 'lack' is felt at that moment. And this misperceived ‘nothingness’ of self is the last illusion to shatter, the final Rubicon to cross, a vaporous mirage at last dissolved by becoming fully identified with the all-subsuming Light in all of its splendid omnipresence.

It is only then that the final barrier between Man and God will fall. Not by mere tasting of the sublime ‘blankness’ -- but by transcending the nothingness of the little personal self in favor of the vivid tapestry of the Collective Divine.

* * *

In the above I hope I have demonstrated that the ‘blank nothingness’ or ‘emptiness’ commonly held to be the peak experience of the Absolute is in all actuality only the last vestige of the vanishing personal self.

Therefore, in contrast to the entrenched nihilism so popular today in discussions of spiritual practices, I propose an ‘Omnisism’ which instead restores the proper all-inclusiveness to the fully conscious experience of the Divine.

Beyond The ‘Blank Nothingness’ Of Spiritual Attainment

I for one am deeply bothered by the all-too common misperception of the highest degree of spiritual attainment -- most often labeled 'satori' or 'samadhi' -- as an encounter with the ‘blank nothingness’ or ‘emptiness’ of an ineffable Wholly Other.

I wont deny that limit experiences do indeed absolve the aspirant’s consciousness of the bric-a-brac clutter of ordinary waking life. But it seems to me that much of what is referred to as states of high trance or mystic realization is more akin to a mountaineer mounting to the peak of his or her chosen capstone -- and then (oddly enough) closing his or her eyes to the breathtaking expanse above, around, and below.

Hence the ‘nothingness,’ the ‘blank emptiness.’ Somehow in all the strenuous endeavor of clambering to the tip of the pyramid, the aspirant’s cognition, before alert and impeccable and intuitive to a fault, has in some unforeseen way atrophied. (One simply can’t see the forest for the trees!)

Now, I don’t mean to denigrate the pure astonishment which must invariably accompany our trek to the precipice of the Eternal. Far from it. -- Crashing through to what lies outside and above the microcosmic envelope of one’s waking consciousness almost always results in a temporary obliteration of one’s habitual pattern identity. The world becomes suffused with a blinding radiance, a Light almost suffocating in its intensity, rendering one’s usual conception of selfhood null and void.

It is perfectly understandable that many find themselves easily lost in this seemingly boundless, somehow affectionate glow. One has spent long hours diligently skating the ice that customarily limits our world of fluid matter from pushing up into the world of windy Spirit. Etching ever more intricate fractal outlines into the seemingly impenetrable periphery, searching for a fault into the Unknowable, a rupture into the Ineffable.

And then at last the glassy veneer gives way, the ice splintering into a dizzy maze of incandescent explosions. Heaven itself has been breached -- the once impermeable permafrost of the Beyond collapsing into a sun-drenched shower of millions of dazzling fireflies.

Its almost enough to stop the heart, this instantaneous annihilation of our consensual waking reality. For after the bewildering tumult attending our burglary into the Treasure-House of Consciousness has been stilled, after the thunder of fracturing ice has subsided, we are confronted with an uncanny stillness, an awful silence unlike any ever endured in waking life. This absolute calm is such a profound antithesis to the clamorous crashing that attended our final break with consensual reality that it initially appears as a blank nothingness -- an emptiness wholly Other and uniquely in contrast to our three-dimensional substantiality.

And it is here, at this critical impasse, that most aspirants lose awareness of the phenomenon entirely. Swallowed up all in all by its inviting phosphorescence, most surrender to the complete lack of self-identity that it encourages -- and so lapse into utter unconsciousness, acquiescing their finger-hold on the spiritual mountain-top, succumbing once more to the illusions and fallacies of our waterlogged waking consciousness.

The real trick, I believe, the secret technique, is to not abandon self-identity to the winds -- but to identify oneself instead with the Light that fills and surrounds you within and without. Declare your presence anew as a Being of imaginal brilliance. Shed the thorny shell of nihilism and be embraced by the ethereal glow of ‘Omnisism’ instead. Above all, remain conscious enough to realize that this effervescent illumination you now find yourself adrift in is not far apart and distantly removed from the world of waking life -- but is rather its most fundamental and informative strata.

It is not an ‘empty nothingness’ we are confronted with at the peak of spiritual attainment. That is simply a common misperception arising from the sudden lack of personal selfhood, from having our little personal pattern identity temporarily restitched into the seamless network of the world’s causal Hyperreality.
Its dangerously easy to lose one's lucidity when that 'lack' is felt so overwhelmingly. It usually takes several attempts (and perhaps several years) before the aspirant can master his or her own astonishment to the point that he or she is capable of remaining fully conscious even though the former boundaries of his or her pattern identity have been dissolved. Its very easy to feel overwhelmed, and very difficult to ride the crest of the upward momentum to its ultimate resolution. But it can be done.

Its akin to a single drop of water falling back into the ocean -- what is really happening is that you have returned to your true element. The boundaries where personal selfhood formerly ended and the rest of the universe began are relinquished -- and a ghostly 'lack' is felt at that moment. And this misperceived ‘nothingness’ of self is the last illusion to shatter, the final Rubicon to cross, a vaporous mirage at last dissolved by becoming fully identified with the all-subsuming Light in all of its splendid omnipresence.

It is only then that the final barrier between Man and God will fall. Not by mere tasting of the sublime ‘blankness’ -- but by transcending the nothingness of the little personal self in favor of the vivid tapestry of the Collective Divine.

* * *

In the above I hope I have demonstrated that the ‘blank nothingness’ or ‘emptiness’ commonly held to be the peak experience of the Absolute is in all actuality only the last vestige of the vanishing personal self.

Therefore, in contrast to the entrenched nihilism so popular today in discussions of spiritual practices, I propose an ‘Omnisism’ which instead restores the proper all-inclusiveness to the fully conscious experience of the Divine.

A Prayer

I find that I want to pray, but not to the deadbeat God of my childhood; that reckless progenitor forever tossing down rules and promises but never apologies, and never explanations.

What use has Immortal perfection for offspring? Amusement? A balm to loneliness? The child of a sheep grows up to be a sheep. The child of a human being grows up to be a human being…

Life moves directionally through time. It must renew and replace itself. It bootstraps itself from lower order singularity to higher order singularity through multiplicity. It’s what this machine does. It evolves.

I cannot be made to worship a higher power whose engendering and birthing is but a pale mockery of our own; a god who cannot create something greater than itself, or who fears to, and must content itself with mud golems endlessly enacting a tragic farce scripted in the inexorable fall of matter.

To whom then am I to address my prayers? To the deaf Logos? Should I broadcast my dreams and my soul’s unrest wideband hoping to chance upon the frequency of some benevolent intelligence?

My great-great-grandmother was the last of her line taught to pray to her ancestors; the last born free before the change and not indoctrinated by the victor’s violent, fearful and self-hating memes. While I cannot bring myself to expect succor from the dead, I find that I do resonate with the impulse to call back to that life of which I am the natural fruit. Therefore, Grandmother, I address my prayer to you. Perhaps it will come as sudden thunder after four generations of silence. In truth I expect to be heard by no one but myself, but there may yet be some link of identity between you and I unbroken by time’s transforming illusion.

I am your daughter.

You were successful. You passed the torch of life into the future as your ancestors did before you. It is now incumbent upon me. I am the body of life. I see now the infinite gift that this is, and also the burden, so heavy it can only be born by my own children. I see the tunnel of life as it points away into the insentient past. I see all the travails of those who manifest on the event horizon separating Math and Story. I see the fire of language kindled and multiplying out of itself like a thing alive. I see the drumming breaking out in Africa, the rhythm, the rhythm, the rhythm patterning the blank template mind. More and more the thought matrix bound us; made us possible. We ask; What are we? Why continue in this absurdity? Why bear this life, it’s sweetness and savagery, the infinite indignity of it, the irony, the wild joys that take us and are taken from us? Why do we die for our children?

Yes, it is the Impulse to Life; that song which called us down from our ancestral trees and points us towards the stars. The desperate insensate drive to continue it. To be! To be! To be! It is this that brings human beings together in ecstasy amid death.

Oh Grandmother! I reached the age of understanding and I did not understand! I was raised amongst lost souls imprisoned by their own elevating symbols. I thought myself filthy and I was, weak and I was, powerless and I was.

I am your daughter and I have been made to feel ashamed of being a woman. I have been ashamed of my humanity. I was raised in a culture that perverted the worship of the spirit into a weapon of fear to extract tribute and impose control.

I am your daughter and I find myself made manifest in a time of crisis. Here the fetus has begun to soil the womb. Here we must catalyze the metamorphosis or be reabsorbed by the Mother to await a more perfect incarnation. We are great with our pregnancy; with our fullness and our fear. Our expectancy. Clearly it is a time that must give birth to heroes.

The eternal myths that the fractal pattern has enfolded everywhere within itself are of course as much prophesy as history. The time has come again for true avatars of the Impulse to Life to step forward and challenge the Great Sea, or rather to accept it’s awesome challenge with the courage and passion born of necessity.

We have all been told legends of past glory, past victories of the human spirit against overwhelming odds. We say to ourselves, “Had I been in that story, I would have done likewise. I would have left my family and my lovers and borne great hardship and done terrible battle!” I see now that I am in the same story and have always been so. I am living in the story that began with the Word and will end with the Silence, the only tale there is to tell. Here has been the endless pageantry of human enterprise. Here millions upon millions have chosen to give themselves into the service of that which they were collectively above that which they were individually; again and again sacrificing even experience itself in order to advance a flag or promote an ideology.

If ever within the divine play some struggle within the plot merited the dedication of the actor’s lives, surely it approaches the irrelevant when held up against the effort to transform the collective consciousness in time to insure the very continuation of the tale itself! Will we survive into our racial adulthood and carry our story on to hundreds of worlds for millions of years, or will we founder and die, unfit to survive? The events of the coming century will bear heavily upon this question.

I am your daughter and I have been denied my rights of passage. How can we mark the end of our cultural adolescence when we each remain unconfirmed as individuals, our allegiance to the human cause unsworn? How can we free ourselves from superstition if we cannot bring ourselves into accord with the truth about our existential predicament?

Here we are. That’s what it comes down to. Again and again here we are. Again and again we are ourselves; suffering, ephemeral, bound up in a universe that defies expectation and transcends metaphor. So be it. Our only tenable position is to say yes to it, whatever it is.

Very well, then. I’ll take it! It’s what there is. I accept those terms of existence that I cannot change. I give my retroactive consent and take up my adult status of my own free will. Bring it on! I find that I do not yet resonate with the desire to end the cycle of birth and death. Life is more than a bridge between nothingness and nothingness. It is the perfect figure that dances upon that perfect unmanifest ground. It is what is before me and I will seize it with both hands. I am a part and product of this life, no more stuck inside of it than it is stuck inside of me.

I am alive at the turn of the Millennium! What great spirit has ever walked the Earth who would not have traded places to be me? Staggering miracles are my daily fare. Here I am, on stage for the climax. (A climax, anyway) The luckiest of the luckiest of the lucky! It is unbecoming of me to complain about anything ever, really. I have only to try to be worthy of this greatest honor.

Grandmother, Impulse to Life, Logos, Creator, Inner Self, this is my prayer. Help me to free myself from the bondage of self-centered and inefficient thinking. Help me to transcend the useless fear that has shackled my spirit. Help me to conquer my ignorance, apathy and cowardice. Grant me the perspective, focus and dedication requisite to the task at hand. Inspire me. Wash me with love. Let me be undaunted by the overwhelming complexity of it all, and the seeming uslessness of individual action. Remind me that I am never alone. Remind me that the tale has it’s own inner artistry and probability is not what it appears to be. We shall surely succeed, for all that action is needful to make it so. Grant me faith.

Thank you, Grandmother, for sending life into the future. Everything that I have and will experience, richness beyond counting, beauty unimaginable, these gifts have passed through you to me. In gratitude, indeed in reverence, I wish to help insure that the flame does not gutter and die at this crux, but burns on. It is yet possible that all this may come to an aesthetic conclusion.

Perhaps one day a young woman will stand with her feet firmly rooted in the soil of another planet, and she will call back to me across time with a joyful and impassioned voice, crying “I am your daughter! I am Cheiftess of a free people! I have reached the age of understanding and I do understand! Thank you for my life!” I need no more reason than this to persist; the beauty that I experience and the beauty that my experience makes possible.

It is sufficient.

Glory be to our Mothers and Fathers as it was in the Beginning, is Now, and Ever shall be, worlds without end.

The Shaman, The Monk, The Fool, and the Transhuman

The Archetype of the Shaman

Many years ago, I became increasingly fascinated with the archetype of the Shaman, the fearless explorer, the intrepid adventurer, testing the limits of body and mind in the quest for glimpses of the highest peaks and deepest jungles of the psychic landscape. Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna and John Lilly became for me the heroes that set the standard for the essential and perennial human endeavor. I read of their experiences as those of an earlier age must have read of Lewis and Clark and Swen Hedin.

These men (all were men, odd that) became my heroes and my inspiration. I wanted to emulate them and in a small way I recapitulated some of their exploits, though never anything close to the experiences I read about so passionately. But I emulated them as best I could. The heroic nature of their adventures always inspired me, and does to this day. I wanted so much to be one of the fearless. One of those who could surf the big waves of the most extreme mental states, the Mavericks of the mind. To be one of those who could endure the most, soar to the highest heights and dive to the deepest depths. I always took more than those around me, more often, more combinations. I always wanted to be the alpha tripper.

I recall walking out of a Grateful Dead show one night (the Oakland Coliseum Earthquake benefit show 12/6/1989 to be precise) and walking behind a couple of veteran Deadheads who just blew me away. These guys were the real deal. When they walked by me I could see their eyes dilated like dinner plates. I could almost feel how far gone they were just being next to them. I could tell from their conversation that they were both veteran Deadheads, that this was what they did and who they were. I could tell from their demeanor, the way they moved, the look in their eyes and the expressions on their faces, that these guys were totally at home out in the billows where I was afraid to swim. They were Shamans, postmodern sadhus living on the fringes not just of society, but of reality.

I couldn’t get those guys out of my head for years. Whether they actually were who I thought they were doesn’t really matter, although chances are they weren’t. The thing was, to me they were archetypal, they represented a kind of ideal I had built for myself compared to which I was always lacking. My life was hopelessly mundane by comparison. I was struggling through school, recently married, working full time. I worried about spending too much money on concerts, I worried about getting home and to bed so I wouldn’t be too wiped out the next day, secretly hoping that the encore didn’t go on too long. I despaired at the prospect facing the reality of another work day, another school day, a cranky spouse, an irritating boss. All the burdens of householder consciousness lying like a blanket of fog between me and the Clear Light of the Void.

The Archetype of the Monk

At some point, I began to develop a different, I would say broader, perspective on the parable of surfing on the waves of the mind. The initial seed came from a very unlikely source. Having spent a truly inspirational night at the home of a friend, I was despairing the fading of the glow and my descent from the heavenly realms to the sub-ecstatic world. A long time acquaintance, then with a hundred dollar a day heroin habit that would soon reach several hundred a day and eventually claim his life, told me “you have to be able to deal with coming down.”

That line stuck with me. I came to understand this as a kind of quintessential heroic journey in and of itself. The art of the graceful fall from grace. The art of making a friend of despair, the openhearted resignation toward not being enough. The yoga of embracing loss, failure, not with hope or optimism, but with simple acceptance.

Presently, I realized that the essential skill of embracing planetside consciousness was not essentially psychedelic; what I had stumbled on was really a kind of deeply meaningful personal symbol for dukkha, for all the painful aspects of the entirety of life. I came to see the art of coming down as an embodiment of what in Buddhism was called “skillful means,” the art of living in a way that minimizes suffering to myself and others.

I constructed for myself another archetype, one that stood not so much in opposition to, but in contrast to, the Shaman: the archetype of the Monk. Where the Shaman has the skillful means to navigating the high energy realms, the Monk has the skillful means to navigate the planetside realms, the realms of dirty dishes, grocery shopping, parents, siblings, traffic, of life and eventual death. The Shaman is Prometheus, risking not just his life but his very soul, wresting fire from the Gods themselves and bringing to the village, only to suffer the agonies of having his liver eaten by vultures. The Monk is Sisyphus, struggling with the dreary toils of mundane existence, sighing as he turns to pace mindfully down the hill once more, perhaps taking in the view until the burden is shouldered once again.

Far too often, the Shaman scouts the same vistas again and again, but the work of personal transformation is never undertaken. The ecstacies glimpsed are never integrated, no lessons are learned, old patterns reassert themselves.

San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I have known many who never seem to take anything of value from their nonordinary states other than temporary escape (not to be dismissed too lightly, admittedly). They return over and over to the well, but as the days pass, the memories fade and they are left as before, looking to the next trip for solace.

The Archetype of the Fool

As time passed I concluded that the Shaman opened doors but that the Monk walked through them. The Shaman left the earth, floated up into another dimension to view life from the above but after a few hours, it was the Monk who had to blaze the trail, making for the psychic landmarks the Shaman had spotted from the higher dimension. The work of the Shaman is terrifying, that the Monk, arduous. Where the core virtue of the Shaman is courage, the core virtue of the Monk is perseverance.

For those few with both courage and perserverence, a synthesis appears to be possible, but though many aspire to it, few realize it. This archetype finally coalesced for me when I began to study Tarot, revealing itself in the symbolism of the Fool. The Fool has a foot in each world. He maintains enough ego to negotiate the world of Maya, but the ego is his servant not his master. In contrast to the Monk, the Fool feels the burdens of the world lightly, fairly floating off the ground.

The true men of old
Knew no lust for life,
No dread of death.
Their entrance was without gladness,
Their exit, younger,
Without resistance.
Easy come, easy go.
They did not forget where from,
Nor ask where to,
Nor drive grimly forward
Fighting their way through life.
They took life as it came, gladly;
Took death as it came, without care;
And went away, yonder,
Yonder!

Minds free, thoughts gone
Brows clear, faces serene.
Where they cool? Only cool as autumn.
Where they hot? No hotter than spring.
All that came out of them
Came quiet, like the four seasons.

Chuang Tzu, translated by Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

The archetype of the Fool contains the path of integration of the ecstatic states into our lives generally. The Fool represents the summit, spied from afar by the Shaman, hard won by the Monk. The Great Work, the path of transformation, of integration, is great, and it is also work.

Transhumanism and The Way Forward

The Emerald Tablet of Hermes, one of the most ancient and revered foundational documents of the Western Mystery schools, offers the following insight: as above, so below. Only recently did it dawn on me that this is an ancient realization that reality is fractal. What appears at one level, reappears on other levels. We are each a Mandelbrot set, embedded within a larger Mandelbrot called culture, in a Mandelbrot Gaia.

As a transcendental and fundamentally mysterious future looms, many of us feel its pull. The prospect of an escape from the mundane is exhilarating, the temptation to put aside the mundane and abandon ourselves to the rapture compelling. I see intimations of this in the explosion of end times thinking around us. The prospect of walking away from our mundane lives, no strings attached, is an appealing one. There is a sense of freedom in the abandonment of the past.

BLAINE FAULKNER: I know how crazy this is going to sound, but...
I want to be abducted by aliens.

BLAINE FAULKNER: I hate this town. I hate... people. I just want
to be taken away to someplace where I... I don't have to worry
about finding a job.

X-files episode 3.20, Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' (the one with Charles Nelson Riley)

The prospect of a transhuman “forward escape” feels exhilarating. But the escapist element feels uncomfortably familiar. I suspect that in our impending transhuman condition, we are entering into a condition not unlike that of the Shaman: higher energy, more extreme, unpredictable, magickal. But I suspect that the wisdom of Hermes will still apply: as above, so below. Our transhuman future may be much more akin to our present situation than we care to realize - because we will be there, we take ourselves with us. Where we are, there also is dukkha. The work of the Monk must continue if our transhumanist future is to realize its promise. The transhuman singularity evokes the cliff that the Fool appears poised to walk right off. If we are to avoid a brilliant plunge into the abyss, our humanity must not be abandoned.

Alex Grey's CoSM

For those of you who haven't heard Alex Grey is working to raise money for the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. There will be a fund raising party in LA this week.

Where: Hollywood Athletic Club, 6525 Sunset Blvd, Hollywood, CA. 90028

When: Saturday, March 5th, 8 p.m. until 3 a.m.

Tickets are $25.00 before event date and $30.00 (cash Only) at the door.

Visit CoSM to find out more or make a donation.

From their press release:

Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM) is a sanctuary in New York City for contemplation and a center for events encouraging the creative spirit. The Sacred Mirrors, on display in the Chapel, are a series of paintings that allow us to see ourselves and each other as reflections of the divine.

CoSM provides a public exhibition of the Sacred Mirrors and the most outstanding works of mystical art by Alex Grey. The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors is a 501(c)(3) organization, supported solely by charitable donations from the community. The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM) is happy to have been invited to open upstairs from Spirit New York.

The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors is an exhibition of the most outstanding and widely appreciated works of art by Alex Grey. Offering devotional portrayals of the universal human journey from birth to death with healing, love, and enlightenment as the iconic narrative, the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors is a unique pilgrimage place for contemplation and spiritual renewal.

Gallery Hours - Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm
For event listings and information:
212.564.4253 www.cosm.org

540 W. 27th Street 4th floor New York, NY 10001

The Sacred Mirrors

The Sacred Mirrors series is a totally unique work of contemporary sacred art created by Alex Grey. This installation of 21 framed images, consisting of 19 paintings and two etched mirrors, examines the anatomy of body, mind and spirit in rich detail. Each painting presents a life-sized figure facing viewers and inviting them to mirror the images, creating a sense of seeing into oneself.

The life-sized representations of the human body, portraying its physical and energetic systems, are both rigorously precise and vividly visionary. The Sacred Mirrors dramatically reveal the miracle of life's evolutionary complexity, the unity of human experience across all racial, class and gender divides, and the astonishing vistas of possibility inherent in human consciousness. Alex Grey has combined ancient wisdom, anatomical accuracy and post-modern eclecticism to produce elegant, universally accessible, eternally relevant and resonant symbols.

Void Meditation

An attempt to catch some of the Essence of Void Meditation :

Sat in the Lotus position with closed eyes and taking slow, deep breaths. The mind is still on the outer layers of consciousness. Thoughts are flowing through my head, some I cling to, some I don't. Scanning my body and one by one relaxing the parts that are still tense. Lower legs, stomach, shoulders, neck, jaw muscles, anything that needs loosening up. I pass to the next layer and relax further.

Now letting more thoughts go and checking my breathing again. Long, slow breaths, paying attention to the breath going in through the nose and down to the bottom of the lungs. It flows and swirls like a dance of energy, in and out, in, and out again. I move into a deeper state of mind. From here the unity is sensed that holds my body and connects it to the space around me. More subtle, soft light, holding me in place. Stiller now and more focused, shifting from thoughts and into purer perception. Seeing and not thinking. Feeling and not thinking. I pass further.

The grosser layers passed by, or unfolded, the body and mind begin to shift into a greater sense of Oneness. The inner nervous system the seeing organ as feeling catches swirling, pulsating energies, colours and shapes, flowing up and down and around the body. Where it was tingling in places and dull in others before, it now flows in waves. Wave after wave, and then it's just present. Attempts at explanation start to prove inadequate, and the reason why the onus is on experience becomes clear.

The waves of ether, molecules, light, patterns, now sometimes flow, sometimes not. Soft energy like a cool breeze and then clearness, movement then stillness, form and mind. Then deeper, and into the part where words go from inadequate to hardly enough to give a good enough description.

The gross and the subtle are one, each level of consciousness one, inner and outer one. Boundaries between the self and the outer world dissipate and are perceived for the illusions that they are as the mind randomly picks out the activity of the void with a heightened awareness. I'm not just my body anymore because at this point my body is nothing seperate from the surrounding area. Dimensions fuse and I begin to float in the void. Unity is attained, the sense of 'I' fades and ego is transcended. Reality is non-dual.

Here, the Huang Po doctrine of Universal Mind makes perfect sense :

"Men are afraid to forget their own minds, fearing to fall through the void with nothing on to which they can cling. They do not know that the void is not really the void but the realm of the Dharma".(1)

(1) Quote from The Way of Zen, by Alan Watts

The Visionary State: California's Spiritual Frontiers

Erik Davis, author of Tech-Gnosis, and hundreds of other fun and facinating articles on cutting edge culture, has a new workshop at Esalen the weekend of April 8-10. The title of the workshop is The Visionary State: California's Spiritual Frontiers. The title of the workshop comes from a new book he is writing along with photographer Michael Rauner.

As someone who grew up in California, I spent a good part of my life so immeshed in the culture of spiritual experimentation that I never considered that it was so revolutionary compared to how most of American looks at the world. At no time was this point pushed home harder than this last election.

"Over the last one hundred and fifty years, California has developed one of the most innovative spiritual cultures on the planet. Many of our contemporary concerns with deep ecology, human transformation, body-positive spirituality, and the technoscience of mind are rooted in the state's maverick "culture of consciousness." California has been home to spiritual mavericks like Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley, to popular visionaries like Starhawk and Carlos Castaneda, to spiritual poets like Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder, and to visionary organizations like Esalen and the Ojai Institute. Why did all this happen here?

This seminar will explore and try to explain this rich legacy using poems, film clips, music, photographs, and slides drawn from Erik Davis's own exploration of California's hidden temples and sacred spots. The program will examine the idea that California's alternative spirituality forms a distinct religious tradition on its own—a kind of West Coast Hinduism, full of diverse and often contradictory sects, philosophies, and spiritual technologies, but sharing a a common cultural landscape."

[note: Future Hi is now the official home to over 100 hours of Ojai Workshop and Seminar Audio in our media section]

Alex Grey: World Spirit DVD

I'm sitting here crying real tears while watching segments of this new achingly beautiful DVD from Alex Grey, called World Spirit.

Experience it here. Watch all the video segments, turn up the volume, and wear head phones if you can. You won't be disappointed.

From the blurb:

WORLDSPIRIT is a landmark audio-visual theater experience featuring poetry and storytelling by visionary artist Alex Grey, music by electronic composer and violinist Kenji Williams, and multi-screen projections of Alex Grey's world-famous paintings.

WORLDSPIRIT represents a radically new form of entertainment that brings together evolutionary spiritual teachings, visual art, music, live performance and advanced technology; speaking at once to body, mind and spirit.

Here is an excerpt of Alex's spoken word from one of the clips:

And now for my biggest trick
Requiring precision timing and a leap of of faith
I shall enfold myself
A topological wunderkind.

Gastolation is perfect this time around
God is at the wheel
Steering thru the Devas eyes
Driving my cell clusters around my morphogenetic field
Those aren't gill slits
Those are my ears
My genomes are humming
There is a veritable Niagra of blood coursing through my umbilicus
The sounds are a deafining roar inside the meat pump of the body.

The Reality of the Psyche

Future Hi pal Daniel Pinchbeck, author of the seminal book Breaking Open the Head asked me to share this with you. This article appears in the latest issue of Arthur Magazine.
__

A few months ago, I attended the Burning Man festival, in the Black Rock desert of Nevada, for the fifth time in a row. Burning Man has been called the world’s biggest party, but I don’t even know if I have "fun" at Burning Man in any ordinary sense – being there is incredibly intense, a kind of psychophysical endurance test. Despite the difficulties, I will continue to return as long as it is possible to do so. The gathering acts as an enormous shamanic transformer, constellating new insights and clearing away old junk.

I chose to go to Burning Man instead of staying in New York for the protests surrounding the Republican Convention. My increasing suspicion is that traditional forms of protest, at this point, are only playing into the hands of the security apparatus. The police and military get the opportunity to test out their latest tactics and shiniest gadgets, while the corporate media finds the most incendiary images to broadcast across the US, amping up the anxiety. The catharsis that protestors get from yelling slogans across barbed wire barriers and out of "free speech pens" might be energy that could be more creatively invested in other ways.

As the corporate and governmental superstructure continue a lockstep march towards their own self-destruction, their attempts to pulverize the collective psyche into submission becomes more transparent and overt. Electrical currents of spite and anxiety ripple across our public discourse and private lives. The individual’s refusal to fall into these traps or accept this negative conditioning can be a great liberation. At Burning Man, I kept thinking that the most meaningful political act, right now, is to continue cultivating fearlessness in pursuit of joy. To be fearless, calm, and joyful is to jam a wrench into the "Brave New 1984" technodystopic machinery that is seeking to impose itself on our world.

I consider the current sociopolitical abyss to be a kind of evolutionary tool. The control apparatus of modern society may be functioning as a training ground for a new level of consciousness. Many different thinkers of the Twentieth Century, as well as the prophecies of archaic and indigenous spiritual traditions, have proposed that a major change in human consciousness is imminent. This has been articulated in various ways. Before his death in 1961, the psychoanalyst Carl Jung saw that the "reality of the psyche," repressed by the modern mentality, would soon become unavoidable. Mankind was being forced to climb "to a higher moral level, to a higher plane of consciousness," to handle "the superhuman powers which the fallen angels" had dropped into our hands.

The Austrian visionary Rudolf Steiner (founder of Anthroposophy and Waldorf education) claimed that the mission of his life on Earth was to return the knowledge of reincarnation to the West. According to Steiner, individual human beings reincarnate again and again, and the Earth itself passes through successive incarnations. He considered this phase to be the fourth incarnation of the Earth. Steiner thought we are approaching a fifth incarnation, the "Jupiter state," where humanity would evolve new capacities and reach a new level of wisdom – actually, not just humans. According to Steiner, the plant and mineral kingdom would reach a higher level of consciousness during this next incarnation, while humanity would split into several different "human kingdoms," undergoing different forms of evolution.

The Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo also felt that we were moving towards a new level or intensity of consciousness. In one of his last essays, The Mind of Light, he defined this as the "supramental" state. Just as life had self-organized out of matter, and mind had self-organized out of life, consciousness would evolve beyond the obscurations and ignorance of our current condition – to attain a level of truth-consciousness, and spiritual awareness, that could not be manipulated or fooled. Aurobindo speculated that our evolution would accelerate exponentially from that point. Once we had reached this supramental state, this truth-consciousness, we would be able to transform our physical reality and our bodies. "Man," Aurobindo wrote, "is a transitional being." The powers unleashed by technology might be reintegrated into the psyche, at a higher level of development.

As counterintuitive as it may seem at first, I propose that our current environment, saturated with noise and chaos and fear-mongering, is the necessary background for attaining this supramental condition, for accepting and mastering the reality of the psyche. The new mindset stems from a fearless curiosity and hunger for truth, and a rejection of the cynicism and negative programming foisted upon it by the corporate-controlled media and current power structure. The new intensity of consciousness accepts the reality of psychic and occult levels of reality, denied by modern materialism, but integrates this understanding with a scientific, pragmatic, and empirical approach to existence. As a speaker at Burning Man pointed out, it is not "New Age," but "New Edge."

My hypothesis is that at least a portion of humanity attains this level of "supramental" consciousness – including, as Aurobindo proposes, an accelerated evolution – as we approach the year 2012, prophesied by the Mayans as the end of the 5,125-year "Great Cycle" of human history. Despite current appearances, we are on the verge of a transition into a new intensity of human consciousness that will institute an harmonic and utopian situation on the Earth. This thesis is not mine alone – it is carefully elaborated by Carl Johann Calleman, among others, in his new book, The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness (Bear & Co.). This book supports the basic ideas of the writers Jose Arguelles and John Major Jenkins – a new outsider paradigm is crystallizing.

Calleman, a biologist who has worked with the World Health Organization, considers the development of human consciousness to be an organic process akin to fetal development. Chemical signals are transmitted to the fetus in an incredibly complex and perfectly orchestrated sequence. The proposal made by Arguelles, Calleman, and others, is that the evolution of human consciousness on Earth follows a similar process on a planetary scale, and we are currently approaching the birth of the higher mind, or noosphere, of the Earth. After many years of research, Calleman as well as Arguelles understand the Mayan Calendar to be a synchronically-attuned device that indicates the year-by-year changes, in this final period, leading to the inevitable phase-transition of human consciousness.

The run-up to the 2012 transition appears, necessarily, as universal capitulation and collapse – just as birth is a messy process that would appear horrific to the uninformed observer. According to Calleman’s study of the Mayan Calendar, the global economy – and with it, the materialist paradigm currently holding the collective psyche at a certain level of development – will collapse around 2007 - 2008. Right now, we are being forced to witness the shadow of the psyche projected into material form through systemic misuse of technology, biospheric destruction, as well as our current political farce. During the transition, things seem to be getting simultaneously – paradoxically – much better and much worse. Time itself seems to be changing form, accelerating, as events follow each other at breakneck pace.

Obviously, it is a difficult leap for most people to accept the possibility that the Maya had a deeper understanding of time – as a synchronic order, rather than a simple linear extension – than we currently possess. However, it seems to me that any impartial study of the current world situation makes it obvious that the current social and political paradigm is unsustainable, even in the short term. We are depleting and burning out our global resources at an ever-accelerating rate. A cynical or nihilistic perspective on the imminent fate of our species is, of course, plausible, but unproductive. An alternate perspective sees the destruction of the biosphere – and the development of technology – as byproducts of the psychospiritual evolution of humanity, bringing us to a new form or phase-state of consciousness.

One of the most beautiful aspects of Burning Man is the wide-open expanse of the desert itself, which seems to represent the infinite potential available to the liberated human imagination. While I was bicycling across the playa one night, enjoying the laser lights and carnival displays of the festival from a distance, I thought that the shift to a new planetary culture, and a new form of nonhierarchical social organization matching our new level of mind, does not have to be a cataclysmic or destructive one. The transition could occur in a manner similar to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Empire – a sudden piffle, and a shocking surrender. However, for this to happen, the new paradigm must already be in place, at least as an undercurrent. Lacking a model or an imprint, the collapse of the current system will result in a world resembling that of the Road Warrior films, without the occasional flickers of irony.

If we can make the transition to a truly rational planetary culture based on compassion, generosity, and dharmic principles, this will inspire a change in our basic conception of science. Rather than seeking to resolve dualisms and institute some final "Theory of Everything," the science of post-history will embrace and explore paradox, going deeper into conundrums, relinquishing delusory attempts to achieve closure. Superstring physics describes a universe of nine, ten, or eleven dimensions. If reality is, as Buddhism proposes, actually maya, a projection of subtler levels of the psyche, then we may come to accept that the extradimensional object or hypercube described by physics is the psyche itself, in its full multidimensions.

I suggest that the planes or surfaces of this object can be incorporated into awareness as the various vectors or intervals or vibrational field-effects experienced in non-ordinary states – induced by psychoactive substances, meditations, dreams, shamanic trances, and so on. Different psychedelics open "lines of flight" or ingressions across the extra-dimensional object that is the psyche itself. When we have matured to the point that we can accept the "reality of the psyche," investigating these areas will be recognized as natural and even essential to expanding the parameters of human understanding. The science and art of post-history will be dedicated to exploring the numinous paradoxes of psychic reality. Instead of seeking closure, we will open new possibilities and explore infinite new realms.

Burning Man 2004: Moving Past the Singularity

I just arrived back from Burning Man fully transformed. I suspect it will take me several months to fully digest this most awesome experience... maybe just in time for next year. It was wonderful to finally give warm embraces to people I've known only online.

As the Official Burning Man Website says, this event is notoriously indescribable. When I was there it becomes quickly obvious that no amount of eloquent speech or series of pictures could ever do it justice. Quite simply, Burning Man has to be experienced. It is Utopia. One of the things that struck me about every 30 minutes or so as I wandered the playa is, "I can't believe this exists, it is beyond description". I would look out to the horizon in nearly every direction to find this immense amount of novelty. During the day, art installations of various kinds were scattered about - some within a few hundred yards, others some one or two miles away, as if a mirage. Certain structures like the Temple were over 100 feet tall and were noticeable from almost any distance. Nighttime was equally amazing, when many more art pieces come alive to join the spectacle. Nearly everywhere I went, looking in front of me and in every direction, there was some kind of dynamic activity. It's not the dense activity of an urban city with its rules and boundaries, but a vast unbounded playa stretching for miles in every direction, filled with light, fire plumes, neon floating caravans with distant yet pleasant volumes of lounge-techno music, and thousands of glow sticks representing and protecting people as they walked and rode their bikes across the playa. So imagine seeing thousands of these various colors randomly crisscrossing the desert, stretching for several square miles in every direction. The sense of freedom, joy, excitement and possibility filled my every cell. I danced and moved and rode my bike hither and thither for hours on end, stopping at different installations, spending time in distant planetarium, and then traveling further out into the playa, which this year represented the heavens. As I traveled further from the Esplanade (the main arced avenue), the further out into "outerspace" I was going. At about a mile and half beyond the Esplanade, I encountered an illuminated and pulsating star with alien creature blowing in the night winds. I took several photos of it, but my camera is very old and doesn't work well at night, so here is a day shot.

On a typical day I would spend some 14-15 hours wandering the interacting with the art and enjoying immensely the company of fellow burners, hanging out at center camp for some hot chai, dance for awhile at Solarhenge, and back to camp to hang out with friends at Prometheatrics. I was introduced to this wonderful bunch through Mark Pesce, who unfortunately was unable to attend this year.

I spent a couple of lazy afternoons hanging out at The Brane, home of the 2nd Annual Palenque Norte lectures. When I first came into the tent I met Carey Thompson whose Galactivation Art is so beautiful. About an hour later I ran into Dlight of Tribal Oasis, who spoke eloquently of creating this type of post-modern tribal community full time. His ideas are very compelling and he now has me convinced of their attainability. He went on to tell me that regardless of what we've been told, hierarchy has ended and we now need to get used to living without those rules. The technologies of liberation are expanding so fast, that hierarchy simply cannot survive, and so we as a species need to finish the job of deprogramming ourselves out of this primitive hangover. He also mentioned that the singularity is really just another form of misguided monotheism, another type of hierarchy. The future is not a singularity, but a Cambrian explosion of diversity and creativity heading out in every direction. Perhaps it was my own state of mind at the time (he he), but his words struck a deep chord, ringing true like few things do for me these days. His message was hopeful, positive and inspiring. LVX23's words ring true too when he says that out on the playa we are expanding the mythos or morphogenetic field of modern humanity. Burning Man is pioneering the cutting edge of possibility - not a counter to culture, but front-runners scouting out the frontier of what is possible. This might sound overly grandiose, but the feeling on the playa of genuine fast-forward evolution is palpable.

I feel like I could write a book on my experiences, like it's been every other year I've been. Burning Man is a super-condensified experience - a day can seem like weeks have passed. I never escaped the feeling that I had landed on some beuatiful alien planet filled with novel delights at every turn. This alien feeling was immediate and viceral and I didn't want it to end. No manner of sci-fi movie watching can prepare you for it. A cross between Barbarella, Mad Max and Tatooine might give you a hint, but that's all. I missed the last few years, and feel very sad now that the event has come to an end. I'm so looking forward to next year, and I'm just bursting at the seams with new creative ideas to make happen for next year’s event. With all the walking and riding bikes I did this year, and coming across so many wandering, tired people, we are planning on creating a playa taxi service for next year, which we're thinking of calling Trip N' Taxi. Great way to meet new people, and a lot easier to get around. It’s merely a single idea of many. Several members of Prometheatrics and I schemed a few more ideas, which will have to remain hush-hush for now. If you're interested in creating and collaborating on some art installation for next year, please get in touch with me at psiphius at yahoo.com

One last thing, LVX23 mentioned this year there was not enough deeply sublime art as last year. I found out today that a lot of regular artists skipped this year’s event because they're too involved politically with the coming election. From what I've heard the numbers are large enough that an impact on the playa art would be felt, and so it was. Having missed the last three years I didn't notice it and was instead just so grateful to be here again, and in turn was even more enthusiastically participatory and social this year, and even more inspired to make more art for next year.

Hope to see more of ya on the playa next year!

Stay tuned for more pics - I'm working on an entire section of photos.

This guy was towering over me and must have been 6'6.

Evaporating Zeitgeist

I have somehow managed to reach a major, if not the most significant crossroads of my life. If you've noticed there has been little blogging from me for a couple of months. Part of the reason is that I have been very busy. Actually more busy than I desire to be, although occupied with things that need to be done. In any case I am going though some kind of crisis. It’s not particularly painful or unpleasant, which is one of the many reasons I think that makes it so damn disconcerting. Deep, unsettling change is supposed to be unpleasant, even painful right? In either case, I have no idea what this crisis is or what I am supposed to be doing about it! The best way I can describe it is that all of my major focal points, or if you will, my underlying, life-guiding zeitgeist, has evaporated. In other words, the one thing that has never changed, despite what has otherwise been profound change in my life across the board, is gone. The only problem is nothing new has emerged to replace it. There is no new zeitgeist to define my life going forward. So for the last couple of months I've been sitting in limbo, and for the first time in my life having no idea what to do next, other than to keep plugging away at the more mundane necessities. What makes this crisis particularly troubling, is I have always felt things deeply and generally connected to what makes life satisfying and authentic. So, this particularly new found emptiness is especially unsettling. I don’t know much of what a mid-life crisis is, other than watching older men (is that me now that I"m 39?) go though various attempts, ranging from pathetic to heroic, to re-live their adolescence. Is this my problem? I'm not sure if identifying it makes it any easier. But if what I'm going through is a mid-life crisis, I suppose it adds a humorous twist to it. :)

Lets see. I now feel that I am old enough to not allow any outside stimulus influence my attitudes, behaviors or desires, regardless of how taboo they are. This is not to say that I have lots of these, only that my locus of control and sense of identity has become increasingly self-defined as I get older. Although I try to participate in socially constructed reality with as much joy and fun as possible, the increasing set of rules, regulations and plain old bullshit have become increasingly irrelevant and/or downright toxic to living an authentic life. I do my best to follow my own ethical guidelines which are in the spirit of Aleister Crowley’s maxim, “Love, and do what thou wilt”. I especially like Robert Anton Wilson’s view that reality is what you can get away with. One thing is for certain, the quote, "I'm not going to take it anymore" really hits home.

So what does all of this mean for Future Hi? Well, there has been a LOT of work put into this site. I expect to keep growing it as I find the time, and keep blogging when the spirit moves me. Flemming, LVX23 and Philip are the other contributors. The last month or so, nothing has inspired me to write anything. I’m much more interested in listening to others. I feel especially receptive to new and fresh ideas, and I’m particularly looking for some hopeful messages percolating out of the otherwise barren spiritual wasteland that corporate globalism (as opposed to democratic globalism) has left in its wake. If the spirit moves you to write in this forum, please contact me.

At this moment, I am reminded of something Cornel West said, "I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic, I am hopeful. But don't confuse hope with optimism. Hope cuts against the grain. Hope is participatory... it's an agent in the world. Optimism looks at the evidence to see if we can do X or Y. Hope says I don't give a damn, I'm going to do it anyway!" (video source).

Here's raising a glass to hope!

Creating Your Own Shamanistic Starship

Message from Galactic Coincidence Control Office

Tune in, Turn On, Blast Off!

Welcome to the neopaleolithic where we poor monkeys get back to the unfinished business of re-creating our selves and going to the stars.

Fear of the Apocalyspe and Suppressed ORGASM

Another brilliant post, this time from Ollapodrida: metaversal hyper-abyssic forecast, again pointed out to us by our pals over at DRT.

The world has become what it has become under the guidance of a sexually repressed priesthood and a moralistic fundamentalist political cabal that recently crucified a president for sexplay; these are the people who wage war in our names. They wage war because they feel guilty, greedy and powerless. If world leaders would let go of their sexual shame, I believe they would kill fewer people (or not want to kill at all) and do less damage to the environment...

Never has mankind been so full of manure, or needed so desperately the proper soil to cultivate its higher consciousness, than now. Now I don't mind telling you that my ego hates the idea of being shit for someone else's buddhahood. Still, if my destiny is to be an untransformed seed-cum-manure of a man - or to put it another way - if I can at least be the source of unconscious friction that triggers another Christ or Buddha's urgency to awaken, then so be it. Fertilize my ego! Now I wish to take the narrative out of all this seedy talk and into a nuclear detonation best suited for a positive future.

If you know you are a sexual being but are holding back out of fear, I suggest you look at the way in which not opening up to, or releasing, emotional, erotic and psychic energy to the cosmos creates tension that is both uncomfortable and detrimental. It is destabilizing. Usually this manifests as a sense of fear or panic. So I suggest that orgasm be a healthy part of your daily life. In my vision of an ideal world, our orgasms would come from masturbation, sex and masturbating with others; not everyone can arrange such experiences, but masturbation is always available, and you can make it good and very honest.

We need the pleasure, the opening up and the release of pleasure-based chemicals, but orgasm also does a few other things. It is a deep release from what some call ego consciousness; we let go of our minds, and this is very healthy. Where friendship and love are present, orgasm takes us into harmony with one another, opening up great compassion (and compersion). It is an experience of letting go, which can be enough of a metaphor for death that we don't need to obsess over death or other negative possibilities. Orgasm reminds us that we are alive, human, vulnerable and fundamentally all the same.

This is a great relief, and we need it. We need to feel and see this, too, and to be witnessed. Metaphysically, orgasm also equalizes the pressure on both sides of the psychic veil or membrane that distinguishes us from the rest of the cosmos (this veil is thinner at night, and when we sleep, which is part of why we are often less sexually inhibited in our dreams). When the pressure is pushing in and we are resisting, or pushing out and we can't let it go, this can create psychic disturbances that manifest mentally and emotionally. But simply put, if you are experiencing fear, it would help to do more surrendering.

You may find that the current level of uncertainty in life is allowing both you and others to be more open to such experiences, and to invitations. It is okay to ask, and okay if people ask you. Just please be polite, and if you need to say no, that is okay. And so is yes, if you mean it. Know your true limits. Choose your partners carefully! Know their overall agenda in life! As Marianne Williamson has noted, we become like the people with whom we are sexual. So you can choose people you admire. And you can admire yourself; that is the starting point, what we commonly call "self-esteem." Love you. It's okay, and gives other people permission to do the same, which we all need. I have found it helps to spend time with people who love themselves, and to put this item first on the agenda of any relationship.

In love, we love ourselves together. Then we can love one another. The influence of self-awareness on the world seems to be a quality rather than a quantity equation in which the smallest mass of a fissionable material that will sustain a chain reaction. The number of enlightened people needed to set off the spiritual liberation of humanity has been bandied about by some of this century's visionaries as between 5 to 200 buddhatomic Christs...

The guru of TM, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who once counted the Beatles and Beach Boys as his disciples, predicts that only one-tenth of 1 percent of humanity is needed to create enough good vibrations to usher in world peace.

The end of the Kali Yuga is history's darkest moment. In her dark age, the population explosion has dumped more unconscious human burdens on the Earth than ever before. According to the Indian mystic, Osho, these darker times exert a higher pressure of unconsciousness, which could produce a greater buddhatomic detonation of joy and awareness. Osho estimates that at least 5 percent of the human idealized appleseed base has the potential intelligence to germinate an awakening. Out of an expected manure pile of 5.5 to six billion people fertilizing earth during the nightmarish nineties, there are more potential buddha buds than there were people alive on the Earth at any time for most of man's four million year history - between 275 to 300 million spiritual rebels.

If only 200 of these found the right gardener to water them, this could turn out to be a great vegetable patch, shit and all, for the next twenty centuries.

Rising Above Paranoia in a Conspiracy-ridden World

From the original post at god like productions:

The only real answer is to recognize the illusion for what it is. When you oppose something, you tend to get caught up in the same energy you are fighting. All of the institutions of civilization, both the visible ones like nations and religions, and the hidden secret societies are illusions. So the best way to "fight" them is to remove yourself as much as possible from their frame of reference (deep anarchy). If the Illuminati, or whoever is really behind all of the conspiracies, are everywhere, you cannot escape them in the ordinary mode of consciousness. "They" are behind every party, ideology, religion, movement, etc. Yet in another sense they are not.

Unless you believe that Evil is the most powerful force in the world (and in that case, we don´t have a chance anyway!), then the world is really made of energy --you might also call it God, the Goddess, the Tao, Love, the Force, or the Great Spirit. So the Illuminati has no choice but to work through this Force. That means “they" can only be in control on the surface of things...beneath is the true reality, where freedom dwells.

Any conspiracy is self-defeating in the long run. The answer is to support the truth to the best of your knowledge, without worrying about who is "really" behind it. For example, if the decline of Bush is really a sinister NWO plot (and it probably is on one level), don´t worry --there is still another, more powerful good “conspiracy”behind that one. A good example is the Internet, which was created for military purposes. It is still used for control, of course, but it´s hard to deny that it´s also one of the most powerful ways for people to communicate and spread information across the globe instantly. So if the Illuminati are planning a devious New World Order, it will not turn out as they plan.

Thanks DRT.

Rebirth: A Personal Journey

It seems that when we get the fullest possible picture of how our brains and nervous systems work at their peak, what we call logic will be a useful subset of a larger gestalt. - R.U. Sirius (Ken Goffman) from an excellent interview in Better Humans.

An excerpt:

"It started when I started a small zine called High Frontiers in the mid-80s, which was dedicated to the notion of a "neo-psychedelic renaissance." I could have called it a techno-psychedelic renaissance since that was largely what it was about. High Frontiers published about once a year from 1984 to 1988. It was well-liked within the zine world, reaching a circulation of about 20,000, which was good by those kinds of standards. Plus we had several lifetimes worth of fun as I'm sure some of your readers can imagine.

I can imagine...

My personal discovery of High Frontiers initiated the most magical day of my life. It started on the evening of May 31st, 1987, when I picked up issue #3 (1987) at Tower Records in Palo Alto, CA. where I happened to be working that summer. When I found and then browsed this astounding magazine, I quickly realized I had found a most remarkable treasure. I bought it immediately and took it home. I still think this is the single most amazing publication I have ever read to this day. That night I stayed up late in bed reading the whole thing from cover to cover.

Very late that night I finally reached the end. In the back of the zine were many ads, including one for the Psychedelic Shop on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. I had never been to anything 'psychedelic' before, and saw this as my chance to go up there and experience some of the culture, which obviously still seemed to be alive as evidenced by this magazine by RU Sirius. So naively, I wandered up to SF the next morning on June 1st, 1987. I got to the shop, and was overwhelmed at all the poster psychedelic art, books and novelty items. It was amazing. Here I am a young man still in college, just a couple of years after getting away from my parents, and I'm being reborn in the heart of psychedelia. It was a sublime feeling I can't describe. I just spent the better part of the night reading all of this psychedelic stuff that was blowing my mind, it was overwhelming, and now here I am in the SF psychedelic shop. The owner could obviously see I was enthralled, and he told me I should go to Haight Ashbury. And this is where you might think I'm naive. Having read many psychedelic books, including most of Tim Leary's and Robert Anton Wilson’s stuff, Haight-Ashbury was only a vague recollection of something "sixties". And then I remembered, "Oh yeah! Summer of Love!” So I took the map from the guy and drove to Haight Ashbury. I got there, and easily found parking, as it was a weekday. I walked just a couple of blocks and there I was standing on the corner of Haight Ashbury on June 1st, 1987 at at noon.

Then blaring on a radio from the bookstore on the corner, the DJ said that today marks the 20th anniversary to the day of the Summer of Love and the Haight-Ashbury Phenomena, as well as the release of Sergeant Peppers Lonely Heart Club! Whaaaat???! I couldn't believe it. I was blown away. Only 2 months earlier I had first learned in depth the idea of Synchronicities from Wilson's book Cosmic Trigger, and now I'm living in one. It was beyond words...

I must have stood there for another 20 minutes, just soaking in the whole thing. Believe it or not, the Haight on the day was really nice. I walked the whole thing, meandering my way into Golden Gate Park, and spent the rest of the afternoon smoking some very good sativa and enjoying my walk through the heart of the 1967 Be-In. It was utterly magickal, almost as if I was there re-living it. As I slowly walked and explored my way through the park I eventually came upon the Pacific Ocean on this warm and blissful day. As I reached the shores of this large ocean, tears of joy rolling down my cheeks, I become initiated into the Great Work.

Thank you Ken.

Apocalypse Now?

By Ron Brezsny

DEAR FELLOW MEMBERS OF THE BEAUTY AND TRUTH TRIBE,

I confess that I suffer from a peculiar variety of chauvinism. I'm not zealously inflated about the glory of my religion or region or football team, but rather of the era I live in. I fantasize that our moment in history is more important than all the others that have come before. I harbor the secret hope that those of us alive today are on the cusp of a radical turning point in the evolution of humanity.

It's a little embarrassing. It associates me with wacky millennialists of all stripes, from histrionic New Age prophets to fundamentalist Christians who fanatically await the "end times." And as much as I would like to imagine my views are subtler and more rational than those of the superstitious extremists, I must admit that I sometimes catch myself dreaming of how deliriously interesting it would be if the sour mass hallucination that is mistakenly referred to as "reality" really did mutate "in the twinkling of an eye," as the Bible insinuates.

Did I scoff at the scaremongers who shivered at the approach of Y2K? Well, yeah, I mostly did. But there was also a Drama King in a dark corner of my psyche who indulged in perversely thrilling fantasies about the possibility that the melodramatic doomsayers might be right. The same is true about my relationship with the Nostradamus wannabes who forecast "earth changes" and a global economic depression in the face of the massive conjunction of planets in Taurus in May, 2000. Ditto the "Cosmic Crucifixion" predicted for August, 1999, when a solar eclipse coincided with a seemingly alarming array of planetary configurations.

And yet there is another part of me, a voice that feels older and wiser, who suspects that even if we ARE on the verge of an evolutionary turning point, even if those of us who are alive today *will* experience the End of Life As We Know It, it just won’t be as simple and obvious and bad as the literalist prophets fantasize. The transformation will not come via some cataclysmic overnight world-wide presto-chango like an asteroid plunging into the earth or the reversal of the Earth's magnetic poles or massive solar flares baking the planet -- or even the most appalling terrorist attack in history.

It is this same part of me -- the older, wiser voice -- who is deeply distrustful of how utterly disposed our culture is to seeing the worst in everything. It amazes me that cynicism is regarded as a supreme sign of intelligence; that Things Falling Apart are inherently more interesting than Things in the Throes of Creative Rebirth. Nineteenth-century poet John Keats once observed that "If something is not beautiful, it is probably not true." But the majority of the prophets, like most of the intelligentsia, the media, and our political leaders, believe the exact opposite: "If something is not ugly, it is probably not true."

Luckily, the jingoistic part of me that yearns to be alive when Everything Changes can find a common ground with the cool eternal part of me that regards the entropy-worshiping, all-or-nothing mindset as a unique signature of the civilization that's dying. Together these two aspects of my psyche can collaborate to conclude the following:

WE ARE INDEED LIVING THROUGH THE APOCALYPSE RIGHT NOW.

But it is nothing like the end of the world visualized by any of the usual suspects. It's different in four ways.

1. It is a slow, gradual apocalypse.

2. The apocalypse is usually invisible to most of us, popping into our conscious awareness only on rare occasions.

3. The apocalypse is as much about rebirth as collapse.

4. The primary way most of us experience the apocalypse is through the intimate events of our personal lives.

I'll explore these four points in more detail.

1. THE APOCALYPSE IS HAPPENING IN SLOW MOTION. It has been going on for decades and it will continue to unfold for many years. Sudden, sensational punctuations arise now and then to expedite it, but for the most part it ferments continuously in the background. Most days bring no emergency that is beyond our capacity to bear, but the cumulative effects of the transfigurations that relentlessly weave themselves into our lives have turned every one of us into towering heroes whose courageous endurance dwarfs the valor of all humans who have come before us.

2. THE APOCALYPSE IS FOR THE MOST PART INVISIBLE, and here's the most extreme evidence: Very few of us have registered the fact that we are in the midst of the largest mass extinction of life on Earth since the demise of the dinosaurs. This is the conclusion of a poll of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, a professional society of 5,000 scientists. Think of it: Animal and plant species are dying off at a rate unmatched in 65 million years, and almost no one knows -- or grieves.

But the work-in-progress that is the apocalypse is not always cloaked. Now and then a single riveting event transfixes our collective emotions, driving millions of us deep into a visceral realization of just how fragile our hold is on life's sweet mysteries. For a brief interlude, the covert, slow motion upheaval explodes into plain view; the hidden truth becomes an open secret. The Gulf War was one of those events, and 2000's disputed presidential election can be counted as a minor outbreak. Maybe nothing exposed the ongoing apocalypse more poignantly, at least for us Americans, than the mass murder perpetrated by kamikaze hijackers on September 11.

3. THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF THE WORD "APOCALYPSE" WAS "REVELATION," and in the esoteric spiritual traditions of the West, the apocalypse is regarded as a Great Awakening -- a marvelous resurrection.

I propose that the apocalypse we're living through applies in both the degraded modern sense of the word -- the end of the world -- and in the original sense. In other words, collapse and renewal are happening side by side; calamity and blooming; rot and splendor; grievous losses and unpredictable surges of miraculous novelty. Yes, the end of the old world is proceeding apace; but it is overlapped by the birth pangs of a fresh, hot civilization that will be beautiful beyond all imagining.

Often the horrifying mayhem and the gorgeous regeneration have no link. But in the case of the trauma of last September 11, I propose that they were meshed. My mailbox was filled with emails from people writing to testify about how the terrorist assaults on New York and Washington, D.C. inspired them to live more authentically. Their dedication to creating peace and love and understanding leaped to a higher octave; their petty worries dropped away, leaving them passionately focused on their core spiritual values; they were roused by an electrifying new clarity of purpose, which incited them to stop wasting their time on dead-end, low-priority desires and instead channel all their vital force into accomplishing their most essential goals; and they had direct perceptions -- gut-level, intuitive, soul-enriching gnosis -- that We Are All One.

It's as if millions of people had a simultaneous Near Death Experience and harvested the revivifying fruits that typically come to those who have peered over to the other side of the veil.

Here's another possible example of mayhem and regeneration arising from a single set of events, suggested by healer Caroline Myss in her book *Energy Anatomy:* China's brutal invasion and occupation of Tibet in the 1950s resulted in the exile of the Dalai Lama, which ultimately brought that great soul's influence, along with his beautiful brand of Buddhism, to the entire world with a breadth and depth that would never have happened otherwise.

Can you think of other breakdowns/breakthroughs that fit this description?

4. MOST OF THE TIME WE EXPERIENCE APOCALYPSE NOT THROUGH THE BIG, BAD EVENTS LIKE THE SEPTEMBER 11 MASSACRES, but rather through the details of our personal lives. The radical but gradual revolution, the agonizing death of the old order and slow bloom of the new, are framed in the storylines of your most intimate dramas. Again and again over the years, you are pushed to a brink that challenges you to either rise to the occasion or decay. The crises may come in the form of a divorce or illness or job loss, or even in less dramatic events like a misunderstanding with a friend or the inexplicable waning of a once-passionate dream.

And seeded inside each of these personal turning points is the crux of the ongoing global apocalypse: You get to choose whether you will adjust by taking a path that keeps you in alignment with the values of the dying world or else that makes you hum in resonance with the new civilization that is being born. In effect, you get the chance to vote, with your entire life, for which aspect of the apocalypse you want to predominate.

*

If you've been reading my newsletter in recent months, you know that we've been ruminating on PRONOIA, which is the opposite of paranoia. Pronoia is the unshakable conviction that life is a conspiracy to liberate you from suffering, fill you with joy, and make you really smart.

As sweet and exalted as pronoia feels in our bodies, however, it is not meant to become a force of repression. Pronoia thrives on an engagement with difficult emotions and challenging events, not by ignoring them.

In that spirit, I ask you: How might you respond to the part of the apocalypse that brings collapse and decay? Will it be with actions that express rage, revenge, hatred, tribalism, fear, and all the primitive emotions that have nourished the roots of the dying civilization? Or will it be with actions that express ingenious compassion, creative inclusiveness, expansive empathy, and all the noble emotions that will be at the heart of the new world to come?

A few more questions for you before I conclude:

What will you do to focus your personal experience of the apocalypse on liberation rather than entropy?

How will you respond to the Goddess's invitation to mercy-kill the bad habits and rotting attitudes that interfere with your ability to express your soul’s code -- the blueprint you came to Earth to carry out?

What if there is even a grain of truth in the notion that what we expect will happen tends to come to pass? What if it's insane and stupid to revel in visions of doom to the exclusion of all other scenarios? What if it's dumb and crazy to be entertained by bad news and to ignore and dismiss and be bored by good news?

How can you personally starve the bad apocalypse -- the forces that tend to lead to loss, corruption, and decay? How can you personally nurture the good apocalypse -- the influences that foster redemption, renewal, and reinvention? What leaps of the imagination and creative actions can you take to crush rampant nihilism? What entertaining tricks can you summon to help shape an environment in which it is more fun and interesting to play with boom and zoom instead of doom and gloom?

With rowdy blessings,

Rob

Rob's Website.

Peace

Regardless of whether you are secular or religious, lets pray for peace. Prayer can be a meditation, an inner resolve, a reflection, a personal affirmation, or a prayer to your own divinity. Whatever it is for you, may we all keep peace close at hand, to see us through this quagmire in Iraq. I can't help but feel that something bad is starting in Iraq, something that could take the world by storm.

Lets pray that peace prevails, that the hearts of men and women see wisdom to guide us through this dark hour, and that we may steer clear of further violence and bloodshead. Lets pray for everyone who is there, no matter who they are, or what they have done, lets pray that peace prevails... And as a butterfly flaps its wings and sets in motions larger forces of nature, may these thoughts of ours spread their own wings and effect first those around us, and those around them, and finally out into the larger world, this fragile planet we all share as one.

Consciousness as a Necessary Scientific Tool

The title I wanted to give this was, Why Consciouness is a Necessary Tool in Creating a Greater Than Human Intelligence.

This is a follow-up to Flemming's most excellent post, Artificial or Natural Intelligences, and my earlier post Turning on Higher Intelligence.

I think the time has come to acknowledge that consciousness itself, our minds, and our innate intelligence, all of it, is as much an instrument of science as any instrument ever invented. More so in fact. In historical terms, now that we are on the verge of being able to engineer greater-than-human levels of intelligence, this acknowledgement could not come soon enough.

Like using a telescope to explore outerspace, our consciousness is our tool, our instrument to explore inner space. I find it odd then that Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Intelligence Augmentation (IA) researchers are trying to improve upon an instrument (the mind/brain) without actually using that very instrument (subjective experience) to determine how it works. This idea of reducing our understanding of the brain from the outside, examining its parts, neurons, glia cells and neurotransmitter functioning, without actually using the instrument itself seems disconcertingly inadequate. It would be like a sports fan telling a pro athelete how to play the sport better based on reading a book at the library, but without ever having played the sport themselves.

Oh sure, those who are working on Self-Augmenting Intelligence (SAI) are very smart, but they are only using one type of intelligence - their analytical, reasoning, "left brained" intelligence, which Timothy Leary called 3rd circuit intelligence. But complex behaviors like super-benevolent morality requires a great deal more than intellectual understandng, it requires a rich variety of situational and nuanced experience that can only come from a life fully lived. That means deep benevolent morality emerges from a wide variety of different intelligences, physical, emotional, intellectual and social. Eastern yogis would go further and say that a deep understanding of the mind and body from years of meditative work are also required to gain a deeper appreciation of benevolent compassion (Baraka). So how could some smart computer guys in a lab hope to emulate something even close to that?

I would argue that in order to create a more comprehensive understanding of intelligence, especially a greater-than-human level of intelligence requires both modes of examination and study to effectively improve upon it, because examining its parts in a reductionist fashion, tells us little of the emergent intelligence we each experience subjectively. Therefore, a genuine IA or AI research program should include both an objective and subjective framework. To me this is so obvious, that I think it's the main reason so many people overlook it. Arguments about the limits of the human mind, its culpability to logical fallacies such as availability bias, conjunction fallacy, Wason selection task, support theory, representativeness heuristic, misperception of random sequences, expert judgement and uncertainty, are all very important, but only a small part of the overall equation. All instruments have their limitations, including the human mind, but the human mind also has vast potential we've barely begun to understand or tap into. So lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. For starters, a good scientific approach to inner exploration might be a good start.

In my opinion, the one person who has done more to map the furthest regions of innerspace in a rigorously scientific fashion is John Lilly, MD, Ph.D. John Lilly once said that, "Science is the Yoga of the West, and Yoga is the Science of the East". For those of you wanting to gain a deeper understanding of how the mind works from an experiential software context, rather than just an exclusively hardware context, should read his book Programming and Metaprogamming in the Human Biocomputer. Another excellent couple of books would be Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You and Your World, and Prometheus Rising.

It is through this internal form of study, that we can determine, discover and access modes of knowledge and understanding of how human minds work, and in turn extrapolate how minds-in-general work, that could never be ascertained by reductionist means alone.

This field is wide open, so take your pick. My personal favorites at the moment are research into the interelationships between lucid dreams, out-of-body (OBE) and near-death experiences (NDE). I have been lucky enough to have had all three experiences - countless lucid dreams, two objectively verifiable OBE's and one NDE. Most often in my lucid dreams, I'm flying around with or without a body, doing impossibly fantastic, very pleasurable maneuvers, from floating in any angle, to jetting around like a UFO. Sometimes I'm flying around at 40mph over houses, futuristic buildings, and sometimes I'm flying thousands of miles an hour. And each and ever time it feels completely real, actually more than real.

Recently, I've also been having moments of what I like to call "waking lucidity". This is happening with increasing frequency. It's very similar to the blissful feeling of having a lucid dream while being awake. It feels amazing. Last time was a few weeks ago while I was driving to the airport. I felt very much the same as if I was in this really lucid dream, it was more real than real, and everything seemed more crisp, alive and joyful. I knew I was awake, but I was simultaneously experiencing the feeling I get while having a pleasurable lucid dream.

In the OBE's I've had, I was flying over my hometown. On two of these occasions I woke up right after the OBE ended (from my regular afternoon naps), and I ran out, got in my car, and drove to the place I flew to, and in my shock and amazement, I actually saw the same thing as in my OBE's - make/model/color of cars, people's faces in the park that matched(!), details like a crate leaning against one of the buildings. I was stunned. Up until that moment, I was skeptical about OBE's, thinking they were highly imaginary fabrications of the mind, now I'm much more open and excited about the possibilities.

For example, is waking life just another type of dream? Or are dreams another type of waking life? In the grander scheme of things, does it matter? Perhaps lucid dreams, OBE's, NDE's, etc. is our consciousness slowly evolving, opening up to a much greater, multi-dimensional, even infinite reality, of which our so-called "waking" life is just one limited way of experiencing it. Shamans, Yogi's, and Psychonauts over the ages have been telling us that we need to wake up from "normal" consciousness, which in their eyes is sleeping. The physicist David Bohm discussed something very similar with his ideas about an implicate order. In either case, I think this idea that there is an objective, reductionist materialist universe seperate from the observer is nonsense. Quantum mechanics supports the necessity of an observer.

Besides when you think about it, everything you know and experience intersects within your head. That would seem to render objective/subjective differences illusions of a primitive either/or aristotlean mind. I believe such differences are transcended through increasing perspective. Neither objective or subjective, but transjective. Another well-known John Lilly quote,

Having said that I find it a bit dubious that the Singularity Institute is proposing to create an altogether "alien" mind that supercedes a human mind, and yet is supposed to have the human minds best interest at heart, while having no direct experiential knowledge of embodiment or the inner workings of our mind. Such knowledge as I have argued can only be ascertained by subjective exploration.

With the IA approach we are pursuing intelligence augmentation and self-fullment from within our own internally guided framework. We are in the best possible position to understand and direct it based on on our own inner knowledge, rather than being forceably programmed into something else by some alien intelligence thats germinated from scratch based on principles derived by AI scientists using a woefully lopsided reductionist model of the mind.

The remaining question is why does it have to be so alien? With a more comprehensive understanding of human contelligence (consciosuness + intelligence) that comes from deep and prolonged inner exploration and mastery - such as the super-benevolent yogi's, would come the answers to creating a super-benevolent SAI. What Greg Burch has called an Extrosattva. With the addition of a morality derived from a systemic embodied experience, such a being would possess a broad understanding of genuine compassion and benevolence, along with a deeb embodied understanding of humaness (necessary to help us), as well as not being prone to logical fallacies. In the light of all this, the idea of creating a competely de-anthropomorphized SAI is completely genocidal and fool hardy, as if we humans don't have anything worth contributing going forward in our evolution. I think the existence of super-benevolent yogis including the likes of people like Ghandi or the Dalai Lama prove otherwise.

Directing the Dream

"Humankind is being led along an evolving course... and though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream, and that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are." - Rumi, from "The Dream That Must Be Interpreted"

Leary's Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness

Below is Robert Anton Wilson's description of Timothy Leary's 8-circuit model of consciousness. One of the most common criticisims leveled at this model is that evolution if left to itself does not necessarily lead to greater intelligence... so talking about future circuits as if they are inevitable might be a bit overstated. On the other hand if we stick with the only empirical example we have - the earth, the history of life and intelligence on this planet has been an inexorable drive from lesser complexity towards greater complexity and intelligence... from entropy towards extropy. Stuart Kaufmann, a complexity theorist at the Sante Fe Institute, has written some compelling academic papers on auto-catalytic sets which demonstrate that life, given the right initial conditions will inevitably lead to greater and greater complexity over time. This trend is continuing to play itself out now in rapid fashion, as technological progress is accelerating even faster.

From Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati

Tunnel-Realities and Imprints

Let's try Dr. Leary's perspective on these mysteries.

To understand neurological space, Dr. Leary assumes that the nervous system consists of eight potential circuits, or "gears," or mini-brains. Four of these brains are in the usually active left lobe and are concerned with our terrestrial survival; four are extraterrestrial, reside in the "silent" or inactive right lobe, and are for use in our future evolution. This explains why the right lobe is usually inactive at this stage of our development, and why it becomes active when the person ingests psychedelics.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

Hyperdimensional Cognition

~Work in Progress~

The idea is that as our brains become increasingly reconfigurable via nanotech-computer symbiosis our minds will increasingly experience the universe (inner/outer) hyperdimensionally. I imagine that our future nano-symbiotic selves will see hyperdimensional spaces as a baseline of experience. Perceptions of the outside universe will in turn be greatly enhanced, with the 3 dimensional view we currently have seen as a very low fidelity "flat" experience. Not to mention of course that our emotional states will be tuned into very high levels of ecstacy impossible for us to imagine in our current primitive state.