Monday, May 01, 2006

In the Air



Oh if there's an original thought out there, I could use it right now - Bob Dylan

One thing this blog has taught me is the fallacy of original thought. Or I suppose, to sharpen the point and turn it on myself, I mean the fallacy that my own thought might be original. A comment to Friday's post, for instance:

In one of Colin Wilson's works...he speaks of certain cases of people with brains that are largely fluid, covered over with a thin layer of cortex. While most people with this condition are severely retarded, there are known instances of such people showing normal or above normal intelligence. Wilson goes on to speculate on the idea of the brain not as an organ of thought, but as some sort of receiver for thought that arises outside of the body. The idea's an odd one, yet in many ways attractive for the number of loose ends it ties up.

I haven't read that from Wilson but I'm familiar with the study he cites, and it's been helping to inform for me a concept of the brain as a receiver of non-localized consciousness. It seems conducive to a holographic model, and it could contribute to an understanding of a number of psychic and even religious phenomena such as mind reading, possession and reincarnation. (For example, perhaps rather than evidence for rebirth, a child's memories of a past life are the result of ego confusion brought about by signal error. Or, to use the radio jargon that's appropriately spooky for this metaphor, when a "strong signal [is] in the proximity on the low bands, it will cause crossmodulation and create a 'ghost' signal.")

I still think it's still a good idea, though I no longer think it's my own. And a good thing, too. Because perhaps the actual fallacy here is not original thought, but independent thought.

I was just thinking that. Maybe we don't need to put our heads together. Maybe instead, we need to imagine our skulls as durable cabinets protecting the circuitry that receives the signals pulsing all around us.

When ideas come of age they're simply in the air. Inventors and great minds, suddenly and seemingly independent of each other, appear to tap into the same ineffable thoughtstream. Great artists are often recognized by the clarity of their manifestations of universality. In Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home, singer Liam Clancy says about Bob Dylan that "it wasn’t necessary for him to be a definitive person – he was a receiver – he was possessed," while producer Bob Johnson says Dylan's work isn't to Dylan's fault or credit: "He’s got the holy spirit about him – you can look at him and see that."

If we're potentially co-authors and participants in ideas that are "out there," then perhaps we can also intuit and anticipate the bad ideas that come of age to work mischief. Because it doesn't always take a secret lodge or a Grove cabin for dark elements to conspire together; it only requires a compatability of unspoken means and motive, up and down the chain of unaccountability. Once the pieces are in place, the commands needn't be explicit and top-heavy and the conspiracy needn't even be self-conscious. For instance, I don't think for a moment that Tony Blair "gave the order" for the murder of David Kelly, though I can well imagine that, on hearing the news, Blair immediately recognized the hand of statecraft and perhaps even his own numb complicity.

Maybe this is what accounts for the 9/11 synchronicities of The Lone Gunman pilot. Rather than Chris Carter being tipped off, perhaps he tapped in.

Many of us have been intuiting spoilers to the story arc of the Iraq War for years: The death squads and black ops creating untenable chaos, sectarian strife and intentional failure to the bogus "mission" of democracy, with the objective of generating the "regretable inevitability" of partition. "Civil War" was talked up, because the End Game for Iraq was always division into impotent colonial Bantusans. We just knew it.

It seems like the End Game has arrived, because suddenly partition, which "just months ago was largely dismissed as a fringe thought," is now being described by the usual suspects in the Pravdas of this empire as being the "surest - and perhaps now the only - way to bring stability to Iraq." And just as The Washington Post chimes in, Joe Biden shows up in The New York Times with an editorial contending that Iraq should be split into three separate ethnographic regions.

If we lack independent thought, then so do they. And if we can see it coming, then maybe we can do something about it before it arrives.

75 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well Jeff, just in time, here's some perhaps new ideas for you about the brain. This should be right up your alley in many, many ways and might just give (yet another) whole new perspective on a lot of your topics. The audio of the presentation is there which is very, very good.

----
http://www.tvo.org/podcasts/bi/audio/BIPersingerBuckman042906.mp3
----

This week BIG IDEAS is about various aspects of religious life.

MICHAEL PERSINGER
Off the top, we'll start off with Michael Persinger and his argument against the metaphysical nature of religious experience. (BIG IDEAS viewers will remember him as one the 10 finalists in last year's Best Ontario Lecturer competition). He is a neuro-psychologist at the Laurentian University and is responsible for innovative research which suggests that by 'massaging' both the left and the right hemispheres it is possible to induce in research subjects a sense of spiritual presences; anything from Christ through to alien abductors. Michael Persinger is introduced by Robert Buckman, the well-known oncologist who is also the president of the Humanist Association of Canada.
-------------
http://www.tvo.org/TVOsites/WebObjects/TvoMicrosite.woa?bigideas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Persinger

8:00 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great post matey, Fits in nicely with the recent biophotonic DNA areas of rigorous investigation.

I've said it before, [on here and elsewhere] and I'll say it again....
Sheldrake, Sheldrake, Sheldrake!

BTW keep up the fab work Jeff and other regular contributors... U kno' Who U R
An I love ya

DD xx

8:09 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great post matey, Fits in nicely with the recent biophotonic DNA areas of rigorous investigation.

It bears mentioning, in light of the commentary on the last thread, that each strand of DNA represents a long, unbroken history of quantum entanglement. It's tempting to think of the ACTG sequences as a code or text, but they are also a very physical things, made up of molecules bound together by various electronic forces. The sequence of these molecules represent a "togetherness" of particles that stretches back to prehistory.

This could be a basis for ancestral memory. In my body resides the recent past of my mother and my father, within whom reside the histories of my grandmothers and grandfathers. And so on ad infinitum. The extent to which I share these particle entanglements can neatly be summarized by kinship coefficient, so that I am half entangled with my father, a quarter entangled with my paternal grandfather, etc. Therefore, outside of spacetime, I have access to all these people in my past, to a greater or lesser extent.

8:44 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah I've heard of that before--Rudolf Steiner talks alot about "racial memory". He claims that only in recent times do people have individual ego awareness. In the past, memory was a continuous stream going back generations. This is why for example on Passover, the story is told in the present and in the first person plural. They remembered those events as actually happening to themselves. Interesting tie in with the above....

9:48 a.m.  
Blogger messianicdruid said...

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher who lived three centuries before Christ. He postulated that all matter and the soul itself was built of tiny particles that could not be reduced or split into anything smaller. He called them atoms (Greek word: atomos). The Apostle Paul refers to him extensively in his writings, but never mentions his name, lest he promote Epicureanism. Epicurus was correct in his assertion that all things were created from irreducible particles, but he did not believe in spirit. He was a classical materialist. He did not understand that matter is spirit that has been given form. Modern scientists proved the existence of small particles of matter, which they called "atoms," using Epicurus' word. The problem is, what they called "atoms" were not really atoms at all, because they were far too big. When scientists split the atom into smaller particles, it proved that atoms were not really atoms at all. But now we are stuck with calling these reducible particles "atoms."
Divine atoms are particles of spirit, and they are formed into matter by the power of love. Love shapes spirit and forms creation. Therefore, you are a combination of spirit and love. Many try to do love or act loving, when in reality, love is our being. Many covet the gifts of the spirit in order to do spiritual things, when in reality, we are spirit. Only when our structured actions flow naturally and unrestricted from our being can we manifest divine love and spirit.
How does one come to this place of being? It cannot be done by doing, but by the soul's submission to the spirit. In this way the restriction is removed and you are allowed to be what you are--as God formed you and purposed you to be. When we are filled with all the fullness of God and know how to speak the truth in love, then we will have the power to do the things that Jesus did while He was on earth.
Within each of us are two centers of thinking. They are referred to as the spirit and the soul. We are primarily familiar with the thought process of the soul's mind. It was created to provide self-awareness and calls itself "I am." Thus, it is introspective by nature and is susceptible to pride. When it does not understand the logic of the spirit, it can easily stage a coup and take over the management of a person's life in order to maintain what it sees as orderly truth. The soul's mind {the meat brain} attempts to understand all things in life by their contrasts. In other words, it is dualistic. It does not understand white except when it contrasts it with black. It does not understand good without contrasting it with evil. It cannot understand long without short. The mind employs its logical ability to polarize its perceptions. In this world system, the mind is the acknowledged master of the universe. But the mind was not created to be one's master, but only the servant of the spirit's heart. The spirit, along with its thinking center (the heart - dare I say the rigourous intuition), is our point of divine contact. It has a logic of its own that is incomprehensible to meat {the mind}. As long as the mind defers to the spirit, recognizing its subordinate role and purpose, it has a very good and useful function. The problem comes when the heart gives signals (truth) that the mind cannot comprehend. The natural reaction of the mind is to think that it is being betrayed by the spirit. To the mind, irrationality is betrayal. It is then left with a choice, whether or not to defer to that which is beyond its capability to understand logically. If the mind's demand for order, structure, and logic is too strong, it will stage a revolt and usurp the authority of the spirit.

9:54 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Call out the instigator
Because there's something in the air
We got to get it together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here and you know it's right
And you know that it's right
We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together, now


-- Thunderclap Newman

Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody's having them dreams.
Everybody sees themselves walkin' around with no one else.
Half of the people can be part right all of the time,
Some of the people can be all right part of the time.
But all the people can't be all right all the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.
"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,"
I said that.


-- Bob Dylan


I would disagree with Jeff's post to the extent that the good ideas and the bad ideas do *not* seem to come from the same place. Good ideas and inventions appear to by inspired by whatever higher repository of truth and creativity we are able to draw upon when we are free of ego and in tune with the cosmos. Bad ideas, in contrast, have far less originality about them.

It's amazing, for example, the extent to which the Neocons keep recycling Iran-Contra. Same people, same ideas, same methods. An inability to change MO is one of the ways petty crooks get caught -- but the big-time crooks are no different.

If the fabric of reality is held together by all of us being in each other's dreams, then the real bad guys are those who deliberately cut themselves out of this loop. Who are too selfish to share their own dreams and too egotistical to subordinate themselves to anyone else's.

Propaganda is not merely a form of public manipulation. It is also the false front created to conceal the fact that everything behind it is hollow and void -- the fake reality of those who have forgotten how to dream in concert.

9:57 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"He’s got the holy spirit about him – you can look at him and see that."

I gazed down in the river's mirror
And watched its winding strum.
The water smooth ran like a hymn
And like a harp did hum.
Lay down your weary tune, lay down,
Lay down the song you strum,
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum.

10:27 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Epicurus was correct in his assertion that all things were created from irreducible particles, but he did not believe in spirit. He was a classical materialist. He did not understand that matter is spirit that has been given form. Modern scientists proved the existence of small particles of matter, which they called "atoms," using Epicurus' word. The problem is, what they called "atoms" were not really atoms at all, because they were far too big.

Strictly speaking, Epicurus was wrong. There is no irreducible particle. The apparent particle-nature of, e.g., a photon, is merely a consequence of the experiment performed. In fact, according to QM, the universe is a sea of probability, upon which an observer acts to produce physical measurements.

This bit of hair-splitting doesn't contradict the rest of your quote. However, it does serve to emphasize where some strict positivist materialists start to go wrong: they imagine the world filled with dead little billiard balls bouncing against each other.

It's intellectually dishonest to presuppose that the axioms of QM prove the existence of spirit. Many positivist materialists do have an accurate picture of QM, but choose to interpret this probability sea in a way that is different from my view. However, in my experience there is a spirit world that is a superset of the material world, and this sea of probability is one way of beginning to understand its properties.

10:54 a.m.  
Blogger Professor Pan said...

Jeff, again you've hit the nail on the head.

My problem with the poor deluded folks who believe in a vast, overarching, multinational, Illuminati-style conspiracy is that they don't understand the concept you've just elucidated -- that history does not need to be controlled by an omnipotent elite for it to follow predictable patterns. The players are not always conscious that they are being sucked along by the morphogenic field, but they fall into lockstep regardless.

The chronically paranoid mind sees the hand of human manipulators behind everything -- one only needs to visit the RI board to see the most extreme examples (Disney's "Chicken Little" as a subliminal CIA program to train a new breed of fascists, to pick just one recent absurdity).

Those who understand the patterns and metapatterns of history know that fascism is one powerful, immortal attractor, while democracy and humanitarianism is its powerful, immortal opposite. Both exert a magnetic pull, and the power balance is always shifting.

I"m fond of Louis Pasteur's quote: "Chance favors the prepared mind." Similarly, those who analyze the patterns of history are more adept at predicting the future.

However it's not just logical analysis of the think-tank variety that enables insight -- it's deeper than that. It requires an understanding of synchronicity, symbolism and, most importantly, the "intuitive wisdom" that Rumi speaks of (in the featured quote on the main blog page).

You've shown a remarkable degree of intuitive wisdom. Let's hope that it's contagious.

1:08 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

watch steven colbert please

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/04/29.html#a8104

1:10 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff, very good and thought-provoking post.

And, I'll echo Dugboy: everyone should watch Colbert at the correspondents' dinner.

1:41 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

JD here.

Awesome post Jeff.

Great comments Professor Pan.

As a collector of anomolous facts; I've struggled with reconciling them into conventional explanations and "conspiracy" explanations. Neither model seems to work.

So more and more I've been musing about some extrenous force being responsible. Morphogenic fields ala Sheldrake? Maybe. Or maybe something else completely, who knows at this point.

I've hinted around this on a few of the discussion board postings; for example on the Donnie Darko thread where I muse about artists "recieving" their work, much as you pointed out Jeff.

http://p216.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm10.showMessageRange?topicID=3692.topic&start=1&stop=20

This topic is worth really working. Far more interesting than illuminati-style conspiracies (which IF EXIST are merely a byproduct of a larger force)

2:06 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Of course, others have noticed this pattern before. For instance:

"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come." -- Victor Hugo.

He was probably making a reference to democracy and the rule of law, but that quote is just too good to resist, in the context of RI.

2:36 p.m.  
Blogger moddey screbbagh said...

i have some difficulties with the use of patients with hydrocephalus to support the claim on the linked alternative science website "is your brain really necessary?" as in many cases the brain is in fact there, it's just compressed by the buildup of spinal fluid. when it is atrophic or never formed, intelligence is almost never normal or above normal.

what i do find interesting is where this idea leads you: that the brain, rather than some command and control center or computer-like device, is rather a kind of sense organ. in this light i have always found interesting the fact that amongst the anomalies that can be diagnosed in the fetus, true absence of brain, or anencephaly, which does occur, is never compatible with life. on the other hand some anomalies, like absence of a face (seen, in this light, as a cluster of sense organs) has never been reported, and must result in an aborted fetus very early on in development if it even occurs. (along these lines, it is interesting to point out that agenesis of the internal carotid arteries, which normally supply the brain, is perfectly compatible with life, but there are no instances of agenesis of the external carotid arteries, the arteries that supply the face.)

if the brain is a kind of sense organ, is it possible to train it, much like a musician's ear is trained, or the eyes of an old master connoisseur, which can instantly spot a fake, or a chef's tactile sense that produces the same amount over and over with each pinch of salt? we know there is more to the world than we are aware of...we need only ask our dog, who can smell things we can't (thank god, probably). might it be possible to (rigorously) train and develop our intuition to see/hear/smell and even think what is "out there?"

and as for the many instances of new ideas popping up simultaneously, i have always thought it interesting (and unfortunate) that freud's idea of the unconscious (and jung's collective unconscious) caught on rather than the idea of a "collective consciousness." for those who are historically minded, the latter concept would bring to the fore the idea of the "evolution of consciousness," an idea that i think is crucial to understanding. for those who have difficulties with this, one can also discuss the evolution of language, in which it is interesting to track how the meanings of words have changed over time, and how our language is filled with dead metaphors. might our cultural development represent such an evolution of consciousness, often led by artists (who provide us with new, "living" metaphors), and who have worked extremely hard to train their senses, here including their brains?

but of course the world is not really "out there" separate from us, although to many living in the 21st century it may appear that way. (we have been conditioned to think this.) through perception, we actually create the world we live in, we participate in it, and always have, just in different ways throughout history. we have forgotten our original connection, but the task isn't to "recover" the residue of original participation. if we are not separate from the world outside, it's obvious that in destroying that world we destroy ourselves. the idea that we can leave this world when it becomes uninhabitable and populate some distant planet is sheer folly.

3:08 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was ready to--excitedly!--post a comment about a story I remembered of Japanese monkeys who learned to wash their food (yams dropped on a sandy beach), and how the idea then SPONTANEOUSLY spread to monkeyes on other islands that had no contact with the first group.

LUCKILY, I stopped to get a link for that story: turns out the version I remembered is a fictional one (see Ken Keyes, in "The 100th Monkey").

In the real version, the idea of washing food did spread, but not spontaneously: with the passage of time, between monkeys of the same age group and eventually, to their children.

Here's the link: http://www.islandnet.com/~see/living/articles/100monk.htm

(I don't discount what you're saying Jeff, but offer this as a cautionary comment.)

But that's not all--

The post at that link does more than set the record straight--it considers the implications of the spread of food washing by that slower porcess (among a certain generation of monkeys, and to successive generations). Washing yams led to other, larger changes: washing food other than yams, swimming, and new sources of food found in the water. Thus, the 'true' version may lack of evidence of a 'cosmic consciousness' but this is balanced by what is shows as the potential to (nonetheless) bring about deep, lasting change. It also showed the importance of a few innovator monkeys: food washing in the first group was started by one young monkey named 'Imo'. When other groups adopted the practice, it seemed to be because they, too, had the example to follow of an brave, innovative 'soul'.

I love the idea of receiving ideas as you outlined in your post, and have casually pondered/felt that such seemed the case, at times, but--if you remember from my take on 'magic'?--I'm drawn more to the here/now, 'concrete' version of things. Dead billiard balls pinging around seems to explain a lot of things of more immediate concern, more directly and clearly. I'll keep reading whatever you/others have to say on this and other cool ideas, but I'm trying to be, and am looking for, an 'Imo' in the world.

Maybe we, your loyal readers, are here because you are our 'Imo'? ;-)

I guess if that's so, I'm watching you washthe dirt from a yam, but I'm stubbornly gnawing a gritty, sandy one.

4:15 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There seems to be a Mongoloid sameness to victims of childhood abuse, and given the generativity of the victim/perpetrator phenomenon, its long long history and its unabated voracity, it wouldn't surprise me if these soulless clones possess a kind of hive mind.
Singleness of purpose facilitates success, but historically only up to a point; doesn't mean that the day won't come when these vampires destroy every living thing.

1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, [a] they found a plain in Shinar [b] and settled there.
3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

4:26 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

don't for a moment think I might buy that all the immigrant protests are all just parallel spontaneous events osmotically welling up out of the void. No. There is a hand behind it. An organized hand. An ulteriorally motivated hand. I think one must be a simpleton to think otherwise. Not saying those who are supporting this thread of thought here today are simpletons. Just saying that while you explore your 'ideas', keep your feet on the ground too.

4:34 p.m.  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

BTW, just wanted to say that Blogger is appearing - on my end, anyway - to be very sluggish with publishing comments. I'm showing there have been 17 but online I see only 13. I wanted to mention this in case you're wondering where your comment has gone. It hasn't vanished, it's just dragging its heels.

4:35 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

While I know there are differing opinions about David Icke, I was reminded of his recent book, Infinite Love is the Only Truth: Everything Else is Illusion. He goes on at length about DNA being a type of receiver/transmitter/ antennae. The global elite understand how it works and can program the masses - the matrix.

5:03 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

JOHN 14:2. In My Father's house are many mansions.

5:33 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"...The third form of monism is the one which finds even in the simplest entity (the atom) both matter and spirit already united. But nothing is gained by this either, except that the question, which really originates in our consciousness, is shifted to another place. How comes it that the simple entity manifests itself in a two-fold manner, if it is an indivisible unity?

Against all these theories we must urge the fact that we meet with the basic and primary opposition first in our own consciousness. It is we ourselves who break away from the bosom of Nature and contrast ourselves as "I" with the "World". Goethe has given classic expression to this in his essay Nature, although his manner may at first sight be considered quite unscientific: "Living in the midst of her (Nature) we are strangers to her. Ceaselessly she speaks to us, yet betrays none of her secrets." But Goethe knows the reverse side too: "Men are all in her and she in all."

However true it may be that we have estranged ourselves from Nature, it is none the less true that we feel we are in her and belong to her. It can be only her own working which pulsates also in us.

We must find the way back to her again. A simple reflection can point this way out to us. We have, it is true, torn ourselves away from Nature, but we must none the less have taken something of her with us into our own being. This element of Nature in us we must seek out, and then we shall find the connection with her once more. Dualism fails to do this. It considers human inwardness as a spiritual entity utterly alien to Nature, and then attempts somehow to hitch it on to Nature. No wonder that it cannot find the connecting link. We can find Nature outside us only if we have first learned to know her within us. What is akin to her within us must be our guide. This marks out our path of enquiry. We shall attempt no speculations concerning the interaction of Nature and spirit. Rather shall we probe into the depths of our own being, to find there those elements which we saved in our flight from Nature.

Investigation of our own being must give us the answer to the riddle. We must reach a point where we can say to ourselves, "Here we are no longer merely 'I', here is something which is more than 'I'."

I am well aware that many who have read thus far will not find my discussion "scientific", as this term is used today. To this I can only reply that I have so far been concerned not with scientific results of any kind, but with the simple description of what every one of us experiences in his own consciousness. The inclusion of a few phrases about attempts to reconcile man's consciousness and the world serves solely to elucidate the actual facts. I have therefore made no attempt to use the various expressions "I", "Spirit", "World", "Nature", in the precise way that is usual in psychology and philosophy. The ordinary consciousness is unaware of the sharp distinctions made by the sciences, and my purpose so far has been solely to record the facts of everyday experience. I am concerned, not with the way in which science, so far, has interpreted consciousness, but with the way in which we experience it in every moment of our lives."


[link=www.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/TPOF/pofc2.html]The Fundamental Desire for Knowledge[/link]

5:43 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff,

Long time reader, first time poster.

I recently purchased Talbot's 'Holographic Universe', after reading about it on your blog. I was really into it until the chapter on Miracles, which seems to rely solely on highly dubious historical anecdotes and fraudulent Indian "Gurus". How did you get past this rough patch in the book, and not lose your faith in the holographic model?

Thanks and keep up your amazing blog.

R.

5:51 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Professor Pan, you are right on the mark. It is so good to see someone think outside of the newtonian global trilateral bilderburger world-bankers illuminati nazi-cia-mkultra-brainwashing ufo-occult conspiracy mindset. Robert Anton Wilson is of the same cold-war generation as his buddy Tim Leary and exemplifies the classic cold war paranoid way of seeing the power structures of the world competing for dominancy.

Funny how the great modern-age hyperspatial DMT shaman Terence McKenna never wallowed in a world of endlessly convoluted kennedy-era occult/government conspiracies.

Funny also how no one here seems to know that there a second "brain" that resides in the GI structure of human physiology, known as the enteric nervous system, or the Gut Brain. Everyone seems to fixate on the head brain and how it decodes "reality", while completely unaware that this second system perceives and interacts with aspects of non-local reality that the head brain does not.

6:02 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

well,anonymous 6:02, some of us are aware of the enteric nervous system, but to suggest that this "perceives and interacts with aspects of non-local reality" is quite a stretch and opens yourself up to ridicule.

ironically, stephen colbert made a reference to the gut brain as you call it in his brilliant attack on bush on saturday night. he invaded iraq not because he thought it was right, but because it felt right in his gut (i am paraphrasing). did you know there are more nerve endings in your stomach than in your brain...etc..

just like my comments about hydrocephalus (see above), there are very interesting areas to explore along these lines, but one should be careful when the starting off point is some apparently "scientific" "fact" there is also a lot of silliness here. and again, why this fascination with the unconscious? the enteric nervous system is what we have in common with the worms we evolved from...if you want to explore what it's like being a worm you can, but i would think it would be more interesting to see what the brain is capable of.

6:20 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Regarding the lone gunmen episode in which shadow government types remotely fly a passenger jet inot the world trade center (but are thwarted at the last moment by the lone gunmen *from the X Files).

This was a pilot for their show which ran for one breif season and it floored me to discover it aired in early 2001 almost six months before the 9-11 attacks.

Since I am one who believes in the remote controlled theory of the attacks, this also spurred my interest in WHY this show might have been aired to further the BFEE agenda.

The fact is that the shows creator has shadow government types who consult with him for his shows. This idea could have been planted and not some kind of 100th monkey idea from outside his brain.

I think it was probably due to a propaganda methodology known as "innoculation". IE the fascists plant ideas or do foreshadowing in a way which "prepares" the minds of the consuming public for the ridicule of conspiracy theorists who will say that the BFEE made 9-11 happen. That it was an inside job.

The Lone Gunman series, like the X Files, was full of ideas promoted to disparage the characters' beliefs. Mulder was always spouting off about conspiracies, the cigaret smoking man was in on the JFK assassination, and the lone gunmen themselves are ridiculed by parody in paet by their name realted to the JFK assassination.

The "source" of an idea like WTC 9-11 MIHOP by the BFEE (being the mostly silly tv show) airing months before 9-11 innoculates the public to the idea that it was an inside job. "How silly. How unpatriotic. How COULD you think that". Witness the Paul Begala attack on Cynthia McKinney when she said that possibly "Bush Knew" the WTC would be attacked.

The best example of "innoculation" (a specialty of Karl Rove)in my opinion was the James Hatfield book "Fortunate Son" where Rove and other Bush insiders "leaked" the Bush cocaine arrest and comunity service story (including easily provable inaccurate details)to Hatfield knowing that he was a convicted felon. His story become noncredible to the general public because he had lied about or hidden his past. Nevermind that his facts were mostly accurate - the Bush cocaine arrest became a nonissue and the later suicided (IMO) Hatfield's credibility became the issue.

Same thing happened in the Dan Rather fiasco re: the national Guard service memo. The source (but not the story) was unreliable because of the damned font used in the document (never mind that the story was true).

So I would uge that folks not look to synchronicity or the collective unconscious for the source of many such stories like the Lone Gunmen pilot episode about a passenger jet crashing into the WTC.

These bastards KNOW what they are doing with their propaganda. Innoculation is a very effective way to COLOR the way we percieve events. Tell us a scary story. Make it seem unbelievable due to the source. And even if the story is true, we will already be subconsiously dismissing the truth of it.

8:02 p.m.  
Blogger ericswan said...

The ego and the id or crack in the cosmic egg. Either way you come close but no cigar. I like the "meat" brain analogy vs. the spirit as being closest to "my" truth..
I am leads to what? next?

Tesla probably came as close as the meat brain can when he pulsed em into the earth and when it came back (timing is everything) he pulsed it again.

Now apply that to the mass mind. Most of the energy in mass mind is feeding the dark side. The darker it gets, the deeper it goes the pendulum swings. The lighter it gets the higher it goes.

Noah was the last man standing.

10:51 p.m.  
Blogger Syn Diesel said...

Hmmm... Open Source Empire?

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com

11:32 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true

Some day I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemondrops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can't I?
Some day I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemondrops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can't I?

If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can't I?


~Dorothy

12:04 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

To seventhson:

Have you ever, by chance, listened to the commentary tracks on any X-Files' DVDs?

Whenever the episode playing comes to the point where Mulder expounds on whatever pet theory he has explaining that episodes paranormal hi-jinks, the writers always descibe it as gobble-de-gook.

Do you think that, maybe, you're reading a wee bit too much into the Lone Gunman episode? Maybe, as writer Alan Moore has explained much better elsewhere, that momentous events such as 911 send ripples forwards & backwards in time.

Maybe events that we perceive as consecutive & causal are, from a higher perspective, not that at all.

If these ideas are meant to inoculate us against their concrete ocurrence in 'reality' they're not working very well.

I've seen more X-Files episodes than I care to admit, yet I spent 911 & 912 & 913 standing on a ladder scrapping paint off my living room walls while simultaneously screaming at the reporters on my television screen to start asking these overpaid government fuck-ups some real questions.

America doesn't need to be forced into stupidity, pal. She embraces it with open arms.
Most men I work with grab the Sports section each morning, read it cover to cover, & maybe, if it's a slow day, they'll scan the headlines. The rest of their news comes from soundbyte CNN or soundbyte FOX news.

It's a complex world that they do everything in their power to avoid looking at.

Y'know, I figured out, oh, about 25 years ago, that my fate was inextricably intertwined with a huge mass of dumbfounded dipshits & halfwits.

Not long after that I figured out that there was little I could do to change it.

Everyone here loves to spout off about Empire America, myself included, but I can't help wondering that if Peak Oil is true & these are essentially oil wars...oil as in power, oil as in money, oil as in control, oil as in the magic lubricating capitalism....how long do you think it would take after the grocery store shelves emptied before all of those 'No blood for oil' signs changed to 'Nuke the Arab bastards?'

12:04 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OT (well, sort of.)

Google Site Bans Slurs Against Israelis, Not Arabs

Marissa Mayer, who runs Google News, referred to “zionazi” as a “degrading, hateful slur.”

...

Further muddying the waters is that racial slurs directed at Arabs and Muslims seem to be allowed by Google News.

Bagded recently searched the site for news about the Iraq war and came across references to “Islamofascists” and other terms. In a search of “green beretiraq” Bagded found an article written by a U.S. soldier that referred to Muslims as “ragheads” and included the following quote: “Instead of being sitting ducks for the ragheads we now are going after the worthless pieces of fecal matter.”

“Their policy is inconsistent,” says Bagded. “They are extremely hardline about taking words like “zionazi” out, but you can go to the site right now and search for “Islamofascist” and find that.” He writes on sf.indymedia.org that he believes “Google News needs to take responsibility for their seemingly one-sided tolerance of what is and is not ‘hate speech.’”


In light of the comments by Marissa Mayer of Goggle News, Pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist and anti-fascist bloggers should consider using a blogging service other than 'Blogger.'

http://thezionazireport.org/zionazi_banned.htm

Pyra/Blogger is owned by Google.

http://www.google-watch.org/

'Two Minutes Hate' on blog comments all day long is fine and dandy, as long as it's recognized as such.

Very soon, using the term 'Zionist' will become illegal as well.

12:52 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One thing that helps convince me that there is something to the brain-as-lens is the brain's capacity to hold data. Encoding of a day's worth images would in itself require huge storage capacity. But a lifetime of memories -- where could that be recorded? Certainly not in RNA base pair sequences.

2:14 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff,

You're right in respect to the fact that your idea was not original although it was independent.

I've had the same thought for sometime (at least 10 years) ... that the body was just an anchor for the the soul in the material world.

Recently, the band "Death Cab for Cutie" released a song (When Soul Meets Body) that reminded me of my previous thoughts of the brain as an interface for the soul to the body.

I read a brain research book "Behind the Eye" years ago that got me on this path.

2:53 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them iss. Most people go though their lives without being hit by even one.

Some are even more unfortunate. They get them all.
- Terry Pratchett 'Wyrd Sisters'

Sometimes I think Terry Pratchett is onto something in his books explaining how things in Discworld work. How can creative people whether they are writers or inventors come up with such vast amounts of material? Why are there sometimes seemingly parallel discoveries like the theory of evolution at the same time by people with no contact with one another like Darwin and the other guy? What if inspirations do in some way fly throughout the cosmos like neutrinos that are only captured by a proper receptor? Here is another quote that tickles my brain into going 'what if'....

Outside of the boundaries of the universe lie the raw realities, the could-have-beens, the might-bes, the never-weres, the wild ideas, all being created and uncreated chaotically like elements in fermenting supernovas.

Just occasionally where the walls of the worlds have worn a bit thin, they can leak in.

And reality leaks out.

The effect is like one of those deep-sea geysers of hot water, around which strange submarine creatures find enough warmth and food to make a brief, tiny oasis of existence in an environment where there shouldn't be any existence at all.

The idea of Holy Wood leaked innocently and joyfully into the Discworld.

And reality leaked out

And was found. For there are Things outside, whose abilities to sniff out tiny frail conflomerations ofrelatiy made the thing with the sharks and the trace of blood seem very boring indeed.

-Terry Pratchett 'Moving Pictures'

3:54 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wacko Conspiracy theorist here?You decide, but please beware your filtering mechanisms

Like you Jeff, I am a huge fan of Bob Dylan, and have been for many years. However a while back my trusty radio show aggregator downloaded a show that I believe was put out by Vzygoths "The Grassy Knoll". The Knoll was a great show and it was the only place I have heard yourself interviewed. I don't know if they are still going.

Anyhow in this interview the talked to a Dr. Stanley Monteith. Although I have heard a couple of interviews with him, I can't say I know enough about Dr. Monteith politics and views except to say he is what I would call a "Christian Conspiracy Theorist". This is quickly apparent from a cursory visit to his website "Radio Liberty.com". Perhaps the first clue is his front page link to "Bible Bars". I shall park my inherant prejidices aside for a moment, since in the infosphere all information may be somehow relevent to the total story or perhaps very relevent?

The interview definately caught my ear, Montieth imparts alot of information that seems a cut above the normal conspiracy banter. The item that made me really perk up was his mention of Bob Dylan's recent
"60 Minutes" interview, the part of the interview Monteith mentioned
can be found here with the interview text below. Based on Mr Monteith worldview from what I can surmise from what Montheith is saying is that Bob D has made a pact with Satan? Are we fighting as Monteith
surmises a Global spiritual battle?


http://soundingcircle.com/newslog2.php/__show_article/_a000195-000647.htm

Ed Bradley

So why is he still out there?

Dylan
"It goes back to that destiny thing. I mean, I made a bargain with it, you know, long time ago. And I'm holding up my end … to get where I am now," says Dylan.

Bradley

And with whom did he make the bargain?

Dylan
"With the chief commander," says Dylan, laughing. "In this earth and in the world we can't see."



Can it be? Is Bob one of them?
What Monteith didnt mention and would have set his "Christian Conspiracy" heart just a palpatating
is that on the last Dylan tour, I saw him in Oakland, on of his back drops was a black drape display in white the huge all-seeing eye with crown and flames. All of the merchandise had the same All Seeing Eye logo! Oh my! Here is a review of a 2002 concert.
http://my.execpc.com/~billp61/050602r.html

And of course here is what the "Conspiracy Theorists" say about this evil eye thingy?
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/All_Seeing_Eye.htm

Please don't tell me Bob is one of them too!!

Maybe the real question is are the 1 eyes on the good side or bad?

4:28 a.m.  
Blogger Sounder said...

The Luciferic tradition was a necessary response to the stultifying rigidity of the static principle promoted by Ahiramanic elements.

The trick that folk will do well to catch up on is that the Luciferic as well as the Ahiramanic factions express their impulses in positive as well as negative ways. If consciousness is less well developed then external controls may be appropriate. The same controls may not be right for the more developed consciousness.

Now do not get ahead of yourself, this does not provide a license to do anything you please. That comes only with the negative pole of the Luciferic impulse.

Think about the raising of children. Stable boundary conditions and external controls are good for the young child, yet if not modified along with growth in consciousness, your relationship to that child (person) will become pretty weird.

Same with society. We are cultural adolescents still being treated like two year olds. The unfortunate fact is that many adolescents, perhaps because they are treated like two year olds, act like two year olds.

Peace-- to and between both factions, then we will do the right thing and be 'saved' by the Christ principle.

6:21 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous 4:28:

And with whom did he make the bargain?

Dylan
"With the chief commander," says Dylan, laughing. "In this earth and in the world we can't see."

Can it be? Is Bob one of them?


Um, 'chief commander in this earth and in the world we can't see' sounds more like the classical definition of God than the other guy. 'Lord of Hosts'. That would be the simplest, Occam's Razor, interpretation.

There's such a thing as being too darn paranoid. And being a 'Christian' is no protection against that syndrome. Speaking as someone who grew up in a Pentecostal/Brethren church which had imploded into a tyranny due to fear of tyrannies.

Age-old story: the group that fears a conspiracy, creates its own counter-conspiracy which can be a lot worse. The Nazis (hi Godwin!) weren't just evil - they were deeply *afraid* of the Evil Zionist World Conspiracy and felt they had to eliminate it by Any Means Necessary. That's what made them bastards. The thorn inside that drove them. They chose to feed that rage, fear and suspicion rather than rise above it. -FOOM-. Goodbye humanity. Same thing with the Bolsheviks. Substitute 'Zionist' for 'Capitalist' and they feared the same World Conspiracy. Only the serial numbers changed.

Moral: Just because the bad guys are bad, doesn't mean a) everyone is bad, or b) people who do bad things to the bad guys are safe from becoming bad themselves. Evil respects neither ideology nor religion. Good pervades the universe and surfaces in the strangest of places. What you look for, you find. What you look at, you become. It takes time, but it happens.

Beware conspiracy theorists who don't see the light side. They're right, but that doesn't make them *right*, if you know what I mean. Yes, there's evil. Yes, it has power. No, it's not running the world, much less the universe.

To quote my new favourite album, The Flaming Lips' 'At War With The Mystics' (an album with a lot of RI overtones):

But this one bird didn't leave you
It stayed with you through the wintertime
You can't hear it sing but you can hear it as it flies
So don't you believe them
They'll destroy you with their lies
They only see the obvious
They see the sun go down but they don't see it rise

7:07 a.m.  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

Dylan "one of them"? I don't think so. But then, he'd probably balk at being called "one of us," too. (Whatever "we" are.) He doesn't like others' easy categorizations, including religious and spiritual assumptions. Just let the body of his work interpret his "Chief Commander in this Earth and in the world we can't see." There's poetry there, but no confusion about where his heart lies.

9:12 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maybe the real question is are the 1 eyes on the good side or bad?

It depends on the context! The Eye in the Triangle was a mystic symbol of God for Boehme and many other Christians before it was ever adopted by the Illuminists.

The "dark side" (more of a tendency towards darkness) cannot help but appropriate sacred symbols. Sacred symbols are not just "good ideas" for representing difficult metaphysical concepts. They are the very embodiment of those concepts and they strike us as they do because they speak to that which is deep within us, that spirit who is reality.

Sacred symbols stem from the same fount of creation as you do. You yourself are a symbol of the same thing they symbolize.

In Traditional Western thinking, good is equated with truth and reality, the creative spirit. If there is evil, it cannot create something new, only recontextualize and reify the most powerful symbols into something it can use.

So symbol-digging tells us about history, and how all these systems are interrelated. But there is not one true flag flying, or one true badge of insignia.

(Minor Threat - "Sometimes Good Guys don't wear white!")

When I went and saw Dylan a while back, and saw that Crowned Eye logo, I couldn't believe it. If you've ever "seen IT", you will know exactly to what it refers, that incredible thing that underlies us all, the only thing which it is not inappropriate to call "God".

9:31 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

YES to "At War With The Mystics". Even the bands sense of 'silly' play resonates with the concepts of this site. Highly recommended!

9:50 a.m.  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

prunes, I think that's very well said: "The "dark side" (more of a tendency towards darkness) cannot help but appropriate sacred symbols. Sacred symbols are not just "good ideas" for representing difficult metaphysical concepts."

I think a failure to recognize this engenders symbolophobia: every occasion of a triangle or an eye or reference "illumination" or whatever becomes suspect. That's cartoonish hermeneutics. Symbols can be invested with power because they tap into the stream from which all power comes.

10:15 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just wanted to add something to the more materialistic side of the discussion that I saw famed neurologist VA Ramachadran talk about not too long ago. he compares the amount of time it would've taken to evolve into something that could live in the arctic and how long it takes one human to learn from another the skills and practices needed for one to survive in the arctic (probably 1,000,000 years vs 15).

I mention this because he measure this effect on an EKG that shows when somone performs an action a portion of their brain lights up, but when they see it happen part of the same area still lights up. He calls them Mirror Neurons. You can interpret this in 2 ways depending on your disposition. I like #1 which posits that Mirror Neurons are just a hyper effective evolutionary change that only hominids have developed and that gives us an increased sense of affinity for even the inanimate world. The 2nd explaination (still not total crap) is that that portion that lights up is your brain actually intteracting with the outside world, and the "Mirror Neurons" Are just the visible effects of the brain functioning as a sensory organ, like a dilating eye or wrinkled nose.

10:23 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

...and it's always been intuitively obvious.

11:31 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Luciferic tradition was a necessary response to the stultifying rigidity of the static principle promoted by Ahiramanic elements.

I believe he was also referred to as Dionysus/Bacchus, back in 'the day.'

:X

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

...

The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started.

As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience.

2:39 p.m.  
Blogger José said...

Dear Jeff and other posters, I have read for some months your intelligent posts and I agree with many of your ideas, but I want to make some general questions and statements (sorry for my poor English):

1.-What do you mean by "fascists" when you critize those powerful people that misrule the world? (family Bush and others)
I ask this because some of you seem to be "socialists" and I don´t see any difference with "fascism", at least if you analyze the countries where socialism has been implemented (former URSS, China, Cuba,North Korea, former DDR...)

I am surprised that intelligent people like you think that "socialism is a good thing". If not what is the sense to call fascist to people that are Satanists?

By the way have you not seen Bill Clinton, a "socialist", making the same satanist sign than Bush?

Have you not seen the Bolzhevists guards making also a satanist sign in Soviet concentration camps?

2.-You are producing many entries somehow related with the paranormal, the subtle planes of consciousness, my question is why do you use new words for something that has been already discovered?
I mean that centuries ago yogis, mystics and sages have written or explained that there are other planes of consciousness, but they had the inner experience and they knew the issue, why do you use a "scientifical language or concepts" for something that cannot be studied materially but psychologically?

Inner experience is needed to deal with those planes of consciousness. Those who claimed to have it have said that there are hostile powers that oppose human progress and there are also friendly powers that help. This has been stated for centuries and in different religions, from East to West.

The knowledge of this helps to understand many things, and you are right, conspirators are a tool of hostile powers, but an important one, don´t understimate them.

3.-The tools of the hostile powers are much richer than the Bush family or CIA and other governmental agency more or less secret.

You forget and neglect the most important tool: money, who owns it? Whoever owns it controls media, corporations, finance friendly politicians and in a sense rule the world. I suspect why you hide this fundamental issue, to avoid been called antisemit, but to hide the truth is not the best way to understand what is happening.

4.-Even though I am unfriendly to leftists in general I would not like that this comment were misunderstood, I respect your work and your ideas, you are doing a very good service and I thank you for it, I am only trying that you expand your field of knowledge and find deep inside you the true rigorous intuition that is not in the mind but over it.

7:49 p.m.  
Blogger Vanished friend said...

Re: the Lone Gunmen pilot, SeventhSon has it EXACTLY right. Any idea that promulgated on the X-Files was tainted, thereby innoculating the public sphere against real discussion of it. In the last couple seasons, the producers and writers used (were used by) FBI/CIA consultants. The LG pilot episode was not an example of psychic synchronicity or Sheldrake osmosis or whatever.

9:11 p.m.  
Blogger Professor Pan said...

Mitch writes:

The LG pilot episode was not an example of psychic synchronicity or Sheldrake osmosis or whatever.

I'll bet if you asked the writers they would insist that they came up with the idea all on their own. But then the paranoid literalists would insist that the writers were pressured by the powers-that-be into silence. The circular, delusional thinking always has a fall-back when the questions get too difficult -- THEY are in control, and that's the end of the discussion.

I don't see why it's so preposterous to think that writers -- typically very in-tune, creative people -- could forseee something in their creative imaginations. We don't even need to get into Sheldrakian morphogenic fields to explain it.

I suppose The Coup -- the rap musicians and their producers who came up with the album cover of the exploding WTC towers -- were also in on the covert op to innoculate the masses?

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/thecoup.htm

And another more personal example: on the night of September 10th, 2001, some friends and I sat chatting about bringing an avante garde theatre group to play in Baltimore at a new warehouse space. The group recreated real air accidents based upon recovered tapes from the black boxes of crashed jets.

We also discussed the number 11, and how we would have them perform on 11/11. Yes, we had been drinking ;-) But when we recalled the previous night's conversation as the buildings fell the next day, it was all terribly ominous. And I don't know what happend to that particular performance group -- I'd imagine they found gigs to be pretty scarce.

So I don't for a minute believe that a group of artists can't predict the future via artistic exploration. It happens all the time. Synchronicity happens, too.

10:44 p.m.  
Blogger Professor Pan said...

Mitch writes:

The LG pilot episode was not an example of psychic synchronicity or Sheldrake osmosis or whatever.

I'll bet if you asked the writers they would insist that they came up with the idea all on their own. But then the paranoid literalists would insist that the writers were pressured by the powers-that-be into silence. The circular, delusional thinking always has a fall-back when the questions get too difficult -- THEY are in control, and that's the end of the discussion.

I don't see why it's so preposterous to think that writers -- typically very in-tune, creative people -- could forseee something in their creative imaginations. We don't even need to get into Sheldrakian morphogenic fields to explain it.

I suppose The Coup -- the rap musicians and their producers who came up with the album cover of the exploding WTC towers -- were also in on the covert op to innoculate the masses?

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/thecoup.htm

And another more personal example: on the night of September 10th, 2001, some friends and I sat chatting about bringing an avante garde theatre group to play in Baltimore at a new warehouse space. The group recreated real air accidents based upon recovered tapes from the black boxes of crashed jets.

We also discussed the number 11, and how we would have them perform on 11/11. Yes, we had been drinking ;-) But when we recalled the previous night's conversation as the buildings fell the next day, it was all terribly ominous. And I don't know what happend to that particular performance group -- I'd imagine they found gigs to be pretty scarce.

So I don't for a minute believe that a group of artists can't predict the future via artistic exploration. It happens all the time. Synchronicity happens, too.

10:46 p.m.  
Blogger Professor Pan said...

Sorry for the duplicate post -- I can't seem to get rid of it.

10:47 p.m.  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

"paranoid literalists" - I like that.

Here's another example of an artist's anticipation of 9/11, and his own death (image of the work at the link):

Michael Richards (1963-2001) spent the night of September 10 working in a studio on the 92nd floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center. He was sculpting a self-portrait as St. Sebastian, whose body is pierced by small airplanes instead of arrows. When the real planes hit, they killed Richards and thousands of others. Artists often predict the future, but the specificity, irony, and mystery surrounding this artist are simply uncanny.

11:42 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

9/11:

http://www.graphicwitness.org/coe/working.htm

12:38 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Personally, I have to give credit to Terry Pratchett's 'ideas- floating-thru-space-infecting- people' meme. In the 90's, before I had access to the internet, one of my best friends and I had read some article about bonobos being recognized as fundamentally different from chimps (especially in their randy and experimental sexual behaviour!) We began speculating that maybe there were different subspecies of humans, only distinguishable from the others by their behavior and began to use the term 'bonobo' for an a human that was living a more 'aware' life,and using 'chimp' for a person (not unlike our head Chimp)who cannot seem to free themselves from a hooting-chest-beating, female raping, knee-jerk automatic monkey past. Many years later, it floored me to find that 'bonobo' and 'chimp'were being bandied around in just that context amongst people on the internet.
I
I was living in Sacramento, CA during 9-11. I was awakened from my sleep early that AM by a nightmare in which I heard a loud, shattering explosion. I woke up about 9:00 AM PST,and turned on my computer to see, much to my dismay, what had been going on while I had been sleeping.

Not that the PTB aren't trying to innoculate us against their evil deeds, but I think if that the Titanic disater could have been accurately decribed in a book 10 years before the fact, the Lone Gunmen could describe another catastrope 6 months before it happened...and come on, how many people actually watched that show? One would think if they were trying to reach a mass audience for psyops they would have planted the plot on 'NYPD Blue' or 'ER'.

PS Jeff, love the blog and board. Best Wishes, Juno

12:54 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff said -

Symbols can be invested with power because they tap into the stream from which all power comes.

I don't disagree with what you're saying overall, but I'm having problems with the word "because" in that particular sentence. I'm finding it very hard to express what I mean, but I'm going do to my best to say it anyway, even at the possible cost of being incoherent.

The most important point may be that I see the power of symbols as innate, and not merely something they can be invested with secondarily.

The power which is inherent in all genuine symbols is the power which derives from their ability to call us to higher things. To remind us there is a realm of being and activity which transcends our mundane life, but in which we are able to participate by means of the transcendent spark within us.

This is why symbols so often refer to light, to upward movement, to the interpenetration of realms, and similar concepts. Those are all attempts to point us in a certain direction, to ask us to cast our vision along a dimension at right angles to the familiar ones. As like calls to like, the spark within us recognizes those appeals and responds to them spontaneously.

But not only do symbols of that sort speak to us -- they also direct our actions. As such they are terribly susceptible to abuse.

Just as when you are at the south pole, all signposts point north, so when you are on "earth" all symbols point to "heaven." And yet religions go to war with one another in the name of which symbols can kick which other symbol's ass. How ridiculous is that?

Even more insidious are the claims of worldly powers to either speak for or actually be the transcendent goals towards which the symbols they appropriate point. Kings and nation-states are particularly notorious for this -- but it applies as well to more petty manipulators, such as cult leaders. The redirection of symbols in this way is the means by which false leaders appropriate to themselves the power of those symbols.

This, I think, may be the real meaning of idolatry -- and why there is always a justifiable tendency to be suspicious of symbols, especially when they have been widely abused. Symbols have a hypnotic power over us, and as such they can be tools either of liberation or enslavement.

Is the eye in the pyramid a friendly call to transcendence which says, "Come on up, you'll like the view"? Or is it the all-seeing eye of Big Brother, saying, "Squirm at my feet, you ignorant peon, my power over you is absolute"?

In the first case, the power of the symbol is a liberating energy which helps up move along from one stage of being to the next. In the second, that energy is damned up and translated into the coercive power of the tyrant, under whose boot we are to be crushed unto eternity.

There are world-wide myths about a dragon holding back the fertilizing waters of a river, and a hero who kills the dragon to release the waters and restore the land to life. Any time a symbol of transcendence appears to have turned bad, it is surely because some dragon-tyrant is holding back its true energies.

1:46 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The Eye in the Triangle was a mystic symbol of God for Boehme and many other Christians before it was ever adopted by the Illuminists."

Say what? It's one of the 10 commandments not to have any engraven image or any symbol that refers to God. A commandment from God himself. I would question anyone's claim to know the God of Abraham if they created an idol of Him. I would claim they worship a god the prophets knew not.

Dylan's crowned eye is clearly the eye of horus. You can also see "33" (the divided spokes of the crown, 3 on each side) and the 3 "6"'s, one being in the eye of horus symbol in this logo (which looks a lot like the time-warner one).

It rather spooks me.

Perhaps Dylan is a kabbalists and not a christian. Do you understand the difference between the Talmud and the Torah? Albert Pike did.

http://stores.musictoday.com/store/product.asp?band_id=381&dept_id=884&pf_id=DYCT30&sfid=2

3:00 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wonder where the mothman fits into this equation? In my experience the mothman infected a whole group of people with independant, terrifying pyschic expereinces yet related in a mind blowing string of coincidences and tragedy. I'm just wondering if the garuda type being I encountered is able to manipulate the brain as a lens in a manner similar to what is being discussed here.

3:02 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Starroute said:
"If the fabric of reality is held together by all of us being in each other's dreams, then the real bad guys are those who deliberately cut themselves out of this loop. Who are too selfish to share their own dreams and too egotistical to subordinate themselves to anyone else's."

Yes, the fabric of reality IS held together IMHO by the human mind...

There is only one thing out there. A "sea of electrons" within which "windows" form that allow that sea of electrons to examine itself (me and you).

Some of these "windows" into reality are going to see nothing but electrons... they don't want to see their reflection in it, or understand how it came about, or communicate with it, they just want to grab it by the nuts and force this sea of electrons into a form more to their liking (ie. Bushbot vampires effing up the world). The dreams of a few are basically crushing the dreams of the many.

Other "windows" into this sea of electrons are going to see order, symmetry and purpose and will attempt to find their proper place within it... for me this leads to a Golden Rule outlook of life where I try to respect what I see out there and treat others as I would myself... as long as they don't shove their way into my "window."

Some of us are trying to ground the dream and make it work, while the others (fascist endtime fanatics) are basically trying to collapse reality so can they fly off into the sky ass naked, get their 70 virgins, find Messiah, begin a Fourth Reich, or whatever so everyone else can grovel at their feet and worship THEIR Dream.

So, if everyone is sharing a dream so to speak... and the bad guys are realizing theirs and we're not... then the problem lies in the nature of the dreamers who are passively *allowing* their dreams to be hijacked by the assholes. Why are they more fearless in pursuing their dream then you are yours?

So the solution to the problem begins in the spot that you stand now. Synchronicity has convinced me personally that this is some type of archetypal war of "dreams".

Yes, the endtimers DO want to see the world destroyed and your dreams with it...that is their FUNCTION... and collectively that is what they are working to achieve...

Multiple wars in the middle east, Trillions in debt, and the destruction of the environment makes NO sense from a reality-based standpoint... unless of course your intention is to COLLAPSE it.

The real "good guys" really need to have more faith... and get out there and try to make the world better. As far as I'm concerned, the stars and electrons are on our side if we can wake up enough to see it...

3:27 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous One,wow the last few comments are great,I think we are starting to get the picture.If they control what we dream they control every thing in our reality.Bring on the Soma,High Def,Blue Laser DVD's,Play Station 3,and what ever else they can feed my mushy gray matter.As Greenday puts it"Don't want'a be an American Idiot",the dream is on folks,I sure hope the rest of the globe isn't as fucked up as it is here in the states.And Juno,you are right about Synchronicity,I have had many events in my life time that you can only explain in this way.Seeing a future event is like,watching a movie or tv,your not quite sure if what you saw was real or not.On the saturday before 9/11 I was working in the backyard,all of a sudden as I was wheeling a load of dirt,I stopped dead in the middle of the yard,in my mind was a vission that became so clear it look like it was in the yard in front of me.There was a plane smashing into a tall building at first,then I felt a wave of sorrow crash into me.This is not the first time I have had these vissions,so I wondered what this one was all about,when the pictures of 9/11 came on tv,I had the same feelings as my voyage in the yard ,later.

7:16 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i just wanted to leave a quick note. while i watched stephen colbert do his jokes at the white house correspondants dinner i got this sense that the bush administration is really on a house of cards. all it really takes is a heavy wind to take it down. the media blackout, i would suggest, is an indicator of that.

Colbert Reaction Shows Media Are Frightened Of Bush

8:54 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's one of the 10 commandments not to have any engraven image or any symbol that refers to God. A commandment from God himself. I would question anyone's claim to know the God of Abraham if they created an idol of Him. I would claim they worship a god the prophets knew not.

That's not quite correct. "Any symbol that refers to God" is not prohibited. Idolatry is prohibited.

You will note that words like "God" or YHWH are themselves symbols that refer to God. Sacred texts are complex symbol systems that refer to God. These are not arbitrary symbols, either. YHWH ("I am that I am") is a deep statement on the nature of God.

Idolatry is confusing a symbol for the pure Reality which it represents. Idolatry is the root of fundamentalism, pretending that we can understand a sacred book better than anyone else. A very hubristic and egoistic pattern of thought. If we claim ownership of absolute truth, we are only averting our eyes from the revelation of God that is occuring right now, that in fact never ceases.

If we attribute any power to a symbol, we are only correct insofar as we recognize that it is the presence of God responding to the symbol of himself, awakening us to his presence which we do not now recognize.

There is no obligation to accept any particular symbol as "genuine". Only God can judge. Personally, I see Boehme's writings as entirely consonant with what (little) I understand of God. Every other person must decide such things for themselves.

Pray for wisdom like Solomon, pray for the humility to recognize when you have made theological mistakes. What more may we do than to be as honest with ourselves as we can? Our conscience and honest attempts at reasoning things out must be our guide. They are in fact prior to any hermeneutic.

God, the True Spirit, the One Thing, the Absolute, wants nothing more than to reveal himself to his creatures, he is seeking us more than we are seeking him.

9:40 a.m.  
Blogger blogbart said...

Jeff said...
... Sacred symbols are not just "good ideas" for representing difficult metaphysical concepts."

I think a failure to recognize this engenders symbolophobia: every occasion of a triangle or an eye or reference "illumination" or whatever becomes suspect. That's cartoonish hermeneutics. Symbols can be invested with power because they tap into the stream from which all power comes.


I've been thinking how best to phrase my appreciation of the gems of wisdom Jeff manages to reveal:

- like a boxer circling, Jeff sees the opening, darts into the center and connects

- Jeff brings us into a dark foggy alleyway, then suddenly flicks on his brilliant flashlight of observation

- panning the sediment of this post and I find this nugget

- like ideas cats, Jeff a herder, this kitty revealed

- the street corner magician pulls his cards from pockets, coins from behind ears, then stuns us all by vanishing

Ah, you get the idea.

11:43 a.m.  
Blogger Vanished friend said...

I'll bet if you asked the writers they would insist that they came up with the idea all on their own. But then the paranoid literalists would insist that the writers were pressured by the powers-that-be into silence. The circular, delusional thinking always has a fall-back when the questions get too difficult -- THEY are in control, and that's the end of the discussion.

I don't see why it's so preposterous to think that writers -- typically very in-tune, creative people -- could forseee something in their creative imaginations. We don't even need to get into Sheldrakian morphogenic fields to explain it.


No need to caricaturize what I said, Pan. Did I demonstrate "circular, delusional thinking"? NO. The fact remains that while the writers could have come up with Scenario 12D on their own through some wild coincidence or floating meme field, they were incorporating plots suggested by military/intel consultants.

11:50 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It takes time, thoughtfullness, skill and ingenuity, not to mention continuous co-operation and goodwill, to create anything that might be of lasting benefit for all; but none of those qualities to simply assainate it's proponents or blow whatever is physically made from their aspirations and ideals to pieces or simply burn them to the ground...hmmm?

How do we second guess those who can and will do anything simply to achieve their own sefish ends???

We cannot contemplate let alone see what we do not truly believe ourselves to be capable of.

Those who would destroy our collective creations and accomplishments do so to instill fear and to negate the genuine power those creations appear to represent. The real assault, however, is against the common ideals and purposes that have inspired them. That is what they are genuinely trying to destroy.

Their intent is to demoralize and confuse, to pit man against man and man against nature and human nature itself.

The all too exploitable conditions wherein fear and ignorance become the rule of the day so that they can most easily manipulate and simply take what they want while someone else will have to bear the consequences and the burden of responsibility for their actions.

It is all an effort to fighten people out of their wits. To have them accept the fallacy that there can only be victors or victims in this brave new world they wish us to believe in. Takers or losers... now or never... dog eat dog, and Devil take the hindmost

What they leave out of this shabby assertion is that there is nothing to take that wasn't first made, either by other humans or nature itself. Failing to respect that destroys not only the value of our own possessions but the value and integrity of our own lives as well.

We have little in the way of choices to make. They can destroy whatever testaments we make to our common dreams and hopes. There is nothing new in that, nor should there be any fear that the real power behind will cannot prevail.

That power cannot be taken, it can only be surrendered by those who foolishly believe that they have already lost it!

12:01 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dugoboy said...

i got this sense that the bush administration is really on a house of cards. all it really takes is a heavy wind to take it down. the media blackout, i would suggest, is an indicator of that.


'Colbert'(a Frenchman) is part of this 'WMD- distraction-' the yokes on Bush, the yokes on us. Brought to you by the Ministry of 'fuzzy' and friendly Fascism:

http://www.clown-ministry.com/images/bozo-show-123-frank-avurch.jpg

The 'Separation Wall'is not in Palestine.

The 'Green Zone' is not in Baghdad.

5:13 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great 9-11 story, anonymous. One final weird 9-11 synchronicity that I experienced was in my choice of entertainment on the evening of 9-10. I watched the superb 70's european movie 'The Damned'. (For those who might not have seen it, Dirk Bogarde plays a ruthless man who becomes head of his perverse family and their industrial empire as a result of his toadying up with the Nazis in the aftermath of the Reichstag fire.) ...Needless to say, with this reminder so close at hand, I have been a MIHOP person from the moment the planes hit the buildings... Could all just be a coincidence, but it has always creeped me out a little.

7:02 p.m.  
Blogger Vanished friend said...

Well, if you want 9/11 synchronicity stories, I could tell you about the Radiohead concert at Suffolk Downs in August 2001. Foreboding cloud formation at sunset, plane flying directly overhead (Suffolk Downs is quite close to Logan Airport) at the exact moment that the "rain down" section of Paranoid Android begins, crowd erupted in cheers.

There were also strange vibes and ominous lyrics on Stereolab's Sound Dust, released shortly before 9/11.

7:28 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Jeff,

Have you seen the highly relevant article "Remote Behavioral Influence Technology Evidence" over at Deep Black Lies?

The author, John Mcmurtrey says it's "a must-read update on present mind-contol technology" that details "technology that can infleunce thoughts and behaviour in a given target" and provides "information about the development of technology able to remotely "read" a person's thoughts."

Wow!!! Fascinating!

http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/remote_behavioral_techology.htm

10:34 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Symbols, archetypes - "They" smash archetypes, so as to build them up again. We are dealing with lies told before our grandparents were born. "They" control the middle by controlling the extremes. we are dealing with secret society synarchism.

TrineDay and other small publishers are a sociological response to a section of our Republic neglecting its job, leaving us with a passel of scoundrels using stealth, secrecy and subterfuges to spin us citizens into a new feudal, fascistic world. Wastrels purposefully destroying our country, using America's wallet and blood to bully the world into shape and then … what? … hand it off to themselves in China?

MHO,
Om
Peace,
K

10:54 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff

Thanks for your post. BTW I was going to burn them but thankfully I have reshelved all of my Dylan CDs on the top shelf of my CD collection!

1:38 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

To Schickelshrub;

I don't get your post at all. Could you please explain it?

I checked out the link you posted and it was nothing but a teeny little picture of Bozo. Waddup widdat?

You may have an idea to relate, but it is not at all clear what that might be.

Say some more.

5:10 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Your article is very interesting. The study of the brain is inexhaustable. Who we really are is invisible. To this end I would like to recommend two marvellous books on this subject as approached from a spiritual standpoint, which can be obtained from Amazon.com:
Dr. Raymond Charles Barker, AS CONSCIOUSNESS YOU ARE INVISIBLE

Ramtha: THE WHITE BOOK.

There is more than meets the eye, then the visible emanates from the invisible.

9:50 a.m.  
Blogger TheWatcher said...

This is another explanation for the sense of'otherness' humans have as compared to animals. The biggest difference between us is that we have a sense of mortality, animals do not. So they don't think about the future they live for the day.

How did so many people know Iraq was a monster f*ck-up? Not because we're psychic, but because it was transparently obvious from the start that there was no proper motive and the USA was hell-bent on attacking Iraq. Still don't really know why, can it simply be to advance the cause of American multinationals?
www.thespectacle.co.uk

11:04 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Late to the thread again. I was offline for a few days, and now I gotta catch up.

Based on personl experience, I do suspect that, in some way or another, information really is 'In the Air'. Our bodies (brains included) act as receivers that are constantly collecting an unfathomable amount of information, only a small fraction of which we can consciously interpret. Even people like the 'Brain Man' linked to (fascinating fellow), are only 'tuning in' to a relatively small fraction of what is out there.

Other points. To come to RA Wilson's defense, though I know he deals with conspiracies quite a bit in his work, I wouldn't call him a paranoid. He's pretty clear on his positions if you read his non-fiction work. Not an exact quote, but close: "One should view the world as being controlled by a small group of infinitely powerful individuals. And one should view that group of individuals as oneself and one's close friends."

Also, to respond to jmaria from far up the thread: It's a mistake to confalte socialism with fascism. There's a good argument to be made that none of the major so-called communist societies have actually practices true socialism. Rather, they practice what could be termed State-Capitalism. Basically, creating one mega-corporation, the State, which then monopolizes every industry. This is still a capitalistic arrangement where the work of the people is subverted to the benefit of the few in centralized positions of power (usually through threat of violence). Check into Libertarian-Socialist theories (Anarchism). By the way, today's 'Libertarians' borrowed that name from the anarchists. Also, anarchy is not the same as chaos. It is the absence of artificial, external control systems, or 'governments'. Order occurs naturally, it does not need to be imposed by government.

3:48 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff, I've experienced this, a few years ago in the UK, we had an oil rig disaster. The rig was called Piper Alpha. I was in bed dozing and dreaming, and when I got up, my dream was on TV. I was disturbed by this, but had it explained as your article explains it.

4:07 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2004/171204haglund.htm

http://www.prisonplanet.tv/video/120105haglundteaserwmbb.htm

7:11 p.m.  
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2:38 p.m.  
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3:20 a.m.  

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