Is Language a Virus from Outer Space?

Gnostic Connections:

Drones, Stones, and Choronzon

            According to Gnostic writer Anthony Testa, “Ego [is] the slayer of the chaotic pre-rational mind, which then (as the myth continues) fashions the world out of the substance of the primordial Chaos. Thus, we are always in danger, from the perspective of the Ego, of the "ordering" of that chaos to breaking down and unleashing the creatures of the Deep.”  Perhaps Jupiter represents the ego and Saturn represents the original ruler of the inner human (and outer) cosmos.

            Aleister Crowley's Thelema incorporates some revealing Gnostic concepts.  From the O.T.O. website: “Thelema has no direct parallel to the Judaeo-Christian concept of the devil or Satan; however, a pseudo-personification of confusion, distraction, illusion and egotistical ignorance is referred to by the name "Choronzon".”  Chronos  Choronzon is said to state “I AM I” upon emerging from daath.  The only One which I am familiar with addressing himself in that way is Jehovah/Yahweh, or Jesus.  In Gnostic views, the Jewish God was none other than Samael, the blind one, the Demiurge.  Anthony Testa writes, “There does not seem to be any doubt, considering these texts that Choronzon is the Gnostic Demiurge and, though, as Colin Low points out, was mentioned by [John] Dee only once in his diaries which were written in the 15th century, the Demon has been known, albeit under a different name, for thousands of years.”

            John Dee owned an Aztec mirror which he used to communicate with angels, scrying.  Obsidian mirrors may have been used to enter dissociative trances which allowed remote viewing or visionary  contact with entities.  Tolkein used the concept of magical mirrors in his Ring novels.  Allegedly, practitioners use mirrored objects to contact and have communication with angels, spirits of the dead, and demons.  Perhaps ancient mystics, Babylonians, or even the early Hebrews used these devices to contact beings which instructed them on the development of language, science, and agriculture. 

            I think the monolith from 2001 A Space Odyssey is a representative of this “scrying” idea.  Arthur C Clarke’s original book portrayed the Monolith differently than Kubrick's movie.  Clark depicts the monolith as a “glowing crystal” with “pale luminescence.”  He describes it's effect on an ape: “He did not move from his position, but his body became animated as if it were a puppet controlled by invisible strings.  The head turned this way and that; the mouth silently opened and closed; the hands clenched and unclenched.”  This sounds like spirit possession, to me.  So the (simplified) narrative is this, aliens intervene, followed by unnatural increase in intelligence, coupled with an increase in violent tendencies.  As for the second, larger monolith, Clarke writes:  “Call it the Star Gate.  For three million years it had circled Saturn...”

            Clark depicts the monolith as producing a throbbing, insistent, and compulsive sound.  “It was barely audible, yet it stopped them dead, so that they stood paralyzed on the trail with their jaws hanging slackly.  A simple, maddeningly repetitious vibration, it pulsed out from the crystal, and hypnotized those who came within it's spell.”  If you look at the literature from people who have had “out of body experiences,” a whirring, buzzing sound is discussed as being a precursor to the event of leaving the body.  Perhaps the abduction phenomenon is an abduction of spirit, from the body; an abduction of the soul.  The most terrifying version of this meme has been The Fourth Kind movie, which had the victims levitating off their beds, possessed, claiming “I am God.”  

            I am an amateur beekeeper, and in the course of educating myself about the colony I have found some useful allegories for the discussion of planetary ecology and possible alien species.  Perhaps the beekeeper is to the hive as aliens are to humanity.  American beekeepers, in order to produce more honey, employ techniques to prevent the hive from swarming.  When a hive swarms, a large portion of bees leave to found a new colony.  Steven Hawkings has some interesting ideas about aliens.  He is one of the few scientific minds that think contacting aliens might actually be a bad idea.  Hawkins stated aliens could be looking to “conquer or colonize.”  Hawkings states: "Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space."  Perhaps, alien intervention in our society, if it exists, is designed to preventing us from spreading our race into the galaxy, and eventually competing with other races.  Human beekeepers employ a complex set of ruses to trick the bees into determining that it is a bad time to swarm.  An oversimplified explanation of these techniques boils down to convincing the hive that they don't have enough resources, food or colony strength.  The techniques, while intended with the best motives, amount to literally confusing the hell out of the bees, destroying their leadership and organization.  Many beekepers believe requeening every year reduces swarming and produces more fruitful honey crop.  Left to their own devices, queen bees, in optimal conditions, can live up to eight years.  Perhaps if there is an “Alien” watcher/keeper presence, it would rely on subversive attempts to keep us unorganized, competitive, hungry and confused.  There are many reasons why a competitor specie, in our galactic neighborhood, might be interested in keeping us “on planet.” 

            The descriptive term “drone” has been used in the Alien myth/literature repeatedly.  I think most people interpret the drone label to signify a heirchal or organizational concept.  I take it as a signifier of origin.  The Gnostic Sophia myth alleges Archons/Aliens to be some kind of force or presence which is present in the universe but not a child of Sophia/Earth.  Philip K Dick's gnosis suggests that our planet is a “black iron prison” which was born “before full term.”   A Queen bee who is unmated, a virgin queen, can only lay male bees, Drones.  Honeybee Drones are  easily identified by their noticeably larger eyes and lack of stingers.  John Lamb Lash has discussed the Gnostic Alien/Archon connection in depth on his website metahistory.com. 

            David Lynch's “garmonbozia,” from Twin Peaks, is a handful of creamed corn which is said to represent “pain and suffering.”  Lynch's Twin Peaks  ends up associating spirit possession (by aliens/demons?) with sexual child abuse.  The Freudian analysis, I assume, would be that Alien abductees are actually victims of some traumatic event, the pain from which is disassociated  by fantasy.  Could aliens be some kind of demonic otherworldly creature which literally lives of the energy of negative emotions?   Michael Ende's “men in grey” in the novel Momo also work on a similar theme. 

            According to the Wikipedia article on Momo:  “...Men in Grey, [are] eventually revealed as a race of paranormal parasites stealing the time of humans.  Appearing in the form of grey-clad, grey-skinned, bald men, these strange individuals present themselves as representing the Timesavings Bank and promote the idea of timesaving among the population.” ... “In reality the more          time people save, the less they have; the time they save is actually lost to them.  Instead, it is consumed by the Men in Grey.”

            I tend to vacillate between literal interpretations and figurative interpretations of these Alien concepts.  Are these psychological/Freudian metaphors, or real forces on the brink of our awareness?  Whitley Streiber, probably the most famous alleged contactee speaks about the insect like nature of his captors, in Communion: “…the way they moved-so stiffly-suggested the insect world to me” Pg.91  “They may be some sort of hive.”  There are repeated references in Communion that these “Aliens” are similar to insects.  Strieber’s overall opinion of the organizational structure, hierarchy, communication, movement, etc, of these beings, contributes to this idea. 

            With all these insect references, I am reminded of Castaneda and his experience with the “Guardian.” Castaneda remembers: "I fixed my stare on the spot he had pointed to but I did not see anything. At a certain moment, however, I noticed a gnat flying in front of my eyes. It landed on the mat. I followed its movements. It came very close to me, so close that my visual perception blurred. And then, all of a sudden, I felt as if I had stood up. It was a very puzzling sensation that deserved some pondering, but there was no time for that. I had the total sensation that I was looking straight onward from my usual eye level, and what I saw shook up the last fiber of my being. There is no other way to describe the emotional jolt I experienced. Right there facing me, a short distance away, was a gigantic, monstrous animal. A truly monstrous thing! Never in the wildest fantasies of fiction had I encountered anything like it. I looked at it in complete, utmost bewilderment." –A Separate Reality Castaneda later states that Don Juan identified moths, flying around a fire, as synonymous with wisdom. 

            There is a neurological condition called “Alice in Wonderland Syndrome” which consists of experiencing visual distortions of regular size and distance.  People experiencing this syndrome state that objects at a distance may appear with great clarity and abnormally large size.   Small objects might also appear large, or vice versa.     

According to blogger and novelist “Aeolus Kephas,” Whitley Strieber was paid a curiosity visit by William Burroughs.  Burroughs had a favorable opinion of Strieber’s work and its authenticity.  The fact that Burroughs showed such an interest in Strieber reinforces my opinion that there is some connection between the abduction and UFO phenomenon and Burroughs own “language as a virus” concept. 

Philip K Dick’s mystical experiences are similar with Streiber’s and Burrough’s in their inextricable oddness.  According to PKD:

"I cannot accept Burroughs' view that we have been invaded by an alien virus, an information virus, yet on the other hand I cannot readily dismiss this bizarre theory as mere paranoia on his part. I think he is onto something real and important, and that his statements do more good--far more good--than harm (that is, he states the problem correctly, although perhaps his analysis of the cause is faulty; still, merely to be aware of the problem is to achieve a great deal). Now, I have been able to find accounts in ancient times of what seems to be a thinking or perceptual dysfunction or perhaps the thinking or perceptual dysfunction.  [Burroughs may have indeed detected an "information virus" or something like an information virus, but my supposition is that, if you grant its existence, it is of long-standing. World mythology supports this. Not just Christian.]  Where Burroughs and I sharply disagree is that my supposition is that if--if--and information life form exists (and this is indeed a bizarre and wild supposition), it is benign; it does not occlude us; on the contrary: it informs us (or perhaps it has no interest in doing either, but simply rides our own information traffic, using our media as a carrier; that is entirely possible. That I myself saw this living information in the spring of 1974 is not something I wish to claim; on the other hand, I will not deny it. The issue is important, vital, and also elusive. If you grant an occluding information virus, are you not then yourself occluded in your very analysis of it, as well as your perception of its existence? There is a paradox involved. I'm sure you can see that. And I try to deal with it in VALIS."-Selected Letters of PKD 1980-1982, p.146

My take on Burrough's “language as a virus” theory is more along the evaluation given by PKD.  Burroughs was close, very close.  I would say that consciousness is a virus, and its carrier is Alphabetic language.  Philip K Dick was familiar with Julian Jaynes book, Origin of Conciousness in the breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.  I am not as sure that PKD was familiar with Tertium Organum.  I believe the concepts of Ouspensky help in explaining some of the paradoxes which PKD and Burroughs attempted to come to terms with.   

            I would have been happy to see PKD go even further in the mystical part of his analysis.  I think part of the answer lies in an experiential aspect, to have these experiences may be the only way to truly understand them.  PKD and Jung are good examples of authors claiming to have this special  variety of intense visionary experience.

            So what about language, and how does it tie in to “Aliens?”  According to Alan Chapman in A Desert of Roses: “Angels, the bene elohim, gave us human language.  Because we did not invent it, this means human language is predicated on non-human assumptions.  Ancient scholars of the great traditions have formalized these assumptions and the types of problems to which they give rise at the human level.”  This is not the same as saying that language is the carrier of some sort of acting agent, nor are we talking about a difference in ideology.  Perhaps there is a hypnotic aspect to language itself which allows something to exist just outside of our perception.

            It has been said that in order to defeat an evil, one must become just such evil.  Burroughs himself asks “Would you offer violence to a well intentioned virus on its slow road to symbiosis?”  Well, I might, if I knew its goals!  But how do you resist that which is a hidden aspect of the very tool you use to perceive the world?
            Perhaps this is all an unintended consequence of being “given” a language that was not our own, that was borrowed rather than co-evolutionary.  Furthermore, our codependency may already be far too great, to extract ourselves without great difficulty.
 

Sources:

John Lamb Lash's Metahistory.com

Anthony Testa's  Aeon, “A Valentinian Exposition, Angel of the Abyss” 

gnostic-scriptorium.com

I also re-quoted the PKD quotes from the two websites which I have found which discuss Burrough's language as virus ideas and the Philip Dick connection, for my own convenience.  These sites are:

pkdreligion.blogspot.com article titled “PKD on Language Virus Theory of William S Burroughs”

www.skilluminati.com/research/entry/william_s_burroughs_on_the_virus_of_language  “William S Burroughs on the Virus of Language”

 

“Through a fractured glass darkly, the facts in the strange case of Whitley Strieber”  by Aeolus Kephas