Will the Real Roberta Sparrow Please Stand Up?

The Philosophy of Time Travel in the life of Philip K Dick and in the movie Sphere

 “Phil wasn’t nuts. Phil was a vortex victim. Schizophrenia is not a psychological disorder peculiar to human beings. Schizophrenia is not a disease at all but rather a localized traveling discontinuity of the space time matrix itself. It is like a traveling whirl-wind of radical understanding that haunts time. It haunts time in the same way that Alfred North Whitehead said that the color dove grey "haunts time like a ghost."”
-Terence McKenna in I understand Philip K Dick (source #1)


The Philosophy of Time Travel is a fictional novel created to accompany the movie Donnie Darko, allegedly written by the character Roberta Sparrow, the book written to detail her experience with 4D reality.  The Philosophy of Time Travel outlines the fundamental nature of fourth dimensional realities called “Tangent Universes.”  If PKD was a vortex victim, perhaps all his novels, as well as his massive Exegesis, are his own “Philosophy of Time Travel.”  Is Philip K Dick the real Roberta Sparrow?


Michael Crichton’s Sphere movie/book is also about a group of individuals who, like the Darko family, discover an Artifact from the future.  This group of military and assembled specialists explore the Artifact with "great interest and curiosity." 

According to The Philosophy of Time Travel, “The Fourth Dimension of Time is a stable construct, though it is not impenetrable. Incidents when the fabric of the Fourth Dimension becomes corrupted are incredibly rare. If a Tangent Universe occurs, it will be highly unstable, sustaining itself for no longer than several weeks. Eventually it will collapse upon itself, forming a black hole within the Primary Universe capable of destroying all existence.  Artifacts provide the first sign that a Tangent Universe has occurred. If an Artifact occurs, the Living will retrieve it with great interest and curiosity... …Water and Metal are the key elements of Time Travel. Water is the barrier element for the construction of Time Portals used as gateways between universes at the Tangent Vortex. Metal is the transitional element for the construction of Artifact Vessels”

 In Donnie Darko, the Artifact is a plane; the engine which falls into his bedroom.  In Sphere the Artifact is the spaceship, which is both from the future and under the ocean, two important points.  The dimensional Gateway,(my term) a tesseract, is different than the Artifact, and functions as the actual wormhole or time travel device.  The gateway in Donnie Darko is the vortex, seen at the end of the movie.  There seems to be a direct physical connection between the Gateway and the Artifact.  In Donnie Darko, the plane/artifact enters the vortex, in Sphere, the Sphere/tesseract enters the Spaceship/artifact. 

“The Living Receiver is chosen to guide the Artifact into position for its journey back to the Primary Universe. No one knows how or why a receiver will be chosen. The Living Receiver is often blessed with Fourth Dimensional Powers. These include increased strength, telekinesis, mind control, and the ability to conjure fire and water. The Living Receiver is often tormented by terrifying dreams, visions and auditory hallucinations during his time within the Tangent Universe. Those surrounding the Living Receiver, known as the Manipulated, will fear him and try to destroy him.” -Philosophy of Time Travel (POTT)

PKD as living Receiver:  The Artifact in Philip K Dick’s own personal experience was the Icthus pendant.  The sight of the Icthus initiated a chain of events culminating in his famous “pink beam” visions.  At the time, PKD believed he was two people, one living as a persecuted Christian in early Rome, another simultaneously living his modern 1974 reality.  This superimposed reality allowed Dick to glean images of this other reality, and even allegedly, "speak ancient languages he had no knowledge of before."  Perhaps this is in some way related to Neitzche's eternal recurrence concept?

In Sphere, Dr. Norman Goodman is the Living Receiver; it is his task to guide the Artifact back to the future.  Norman has to fight the Manipulated around him in order to send the Artifact back before the undersea laboratory is destroyed by their actions.  Fletcher, Edmunds, Ted, and Barnes (the crew members who die) are the Manipulated Dead of Sphere.  The crew of Sphere receive contact through mysterious text in a computer monitor which they believe is from an alien(Jerry) inside the sphere.  The connection between "Jerry," in Sphere mirrors the interdimensional contact produced by the character "Frank" in Donnie Darko. 

The Manipulated Living are puppets of God: the actions of the Manipulated are controlled by the efforts of the tangent universe to right itself.  Their only goal is to make the Living Receiver realize the tangency of the universe.  It is the goal of the Manipulated Dead to teach the Receiver how to use his Power. 

“If a person dies within the Tangent Universe, they are able to contact the Living Receiver through the Fourth Dimensional Construct. The Fourth Dimensional Construct is made of Water. The Manipulated Dead will manipulate the Living Receiver using the Fourth Dimensional Construct (see Appendix A and B). The Manipulated Dead will often set an Ensurance Trap for the Living Receiver to ensure that the Artifact is returned safely to the Primary Universe.” -(POTT)

The urgency of the underwater habitat, and a planted bomb, limit the period of time which Norman has to fix the tangent universe.  The “monsters from the id” are the negative, lurking aspect of 4D tangency.  In PKD’s Total Recall, and in Donnie Darko, the main characters live out a positive projection of their own egotistical goals.  Sphere is not quite as pleasant, perhaps because Normans own inability to realize his Power allows the monsters to grow.  Norman finally sees the unreality of his situation and is able to escape the tangent delusion by forcing the escape-sub to surface.  Neither Power-in-itself, nor Realization-of-Maya/illusion (in itself) are sufficient to close the 4D reality tangent.  I believe Donnie “passed the test.” This is the very same test which is offered to Norman.  Norman failed, and stayed in our three dimensional reality.  Donnie is off to explore greater planes of consciousness. 

Don't settle for pale memories

or fake implants.            

Experience space travel

the old-fashioned way...

on a real, live holiday

you can afford.

-Total Recall

Sources

I understand Philip K Dick by Terence McKenna:  http://www.sirbacon.org/dick.htm

The Philosophy of Time Travel, By Roberta Sparrow: giama.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/the-philosophy-of-time-travel.pdf

Active Dreaming and the Paranoiac Critical Method

The remedy is the experience

-Jason Mraz

I consider myself a Synchromystic, with Gnostic leanings.  While this label is something which I've applied in the last few years, my basic interests have remained the same for a much longer time.  I have been a Salvador Dali fan, and other than Jung, Dali has had a massive influence on my thoughts and artistic tastes.  According to Wikipedia, “the aspect of paranoia that Dali was interested in, and which helped inspire the [paranoiac critical] method was the ability of the brain to perceive links between things which are rationally not linked.”  This definition could easily belong to Synchromysticism, and there are also connections between paranoia and the art form which Castaneda called “active dreaming.” 

All the internet posts about Salvador Dali say the same obligatory things, followed by a segue into a Persistence of Memory screenshot or perhaps a shot of Dream caused  by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate.    Okay, here’s my version:  Dali's id-worship was what inspired much of his creativity.  His paranoiac critical method, with its dream imagery and desire to “reenter the womb,” (sans obtuse, asinine Dali quotes) was his method of madness.  Dali’s philosophy was deeply affected by Freud.  Dali’s future wife, Gala Eluard, on the top of a precipice, and in the heat of passion, exclaimed “I want you to kill me!”  Gala understood that Dali’s philosophy went “beyond the pleasure principle;” Dali fell in love with his intellectual-goddess.   Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle is his attempt to validate the existence an unconscious drive which ruled all the others.  This drive, Freud claimed, was the urge to annihilation, the death instinct. 

Jung's “active imagination,” which he used to create his visionary Red Book, was the origin of many of his later theories.  The Red Book is a record of communication between Jung and characters which, he believed, originated outside his own mind. 

Is there a right type of fear, and a wrong one? 

I believe there is a hindering fear which is ego-based, which is an obstacle to meditative states of mind.  There is another fear which sets you free.  The intense fear that reality itself may not be real, is the ultimate paranoia.  This is the first step in realizing you are in a dream, at which point you can use your flashlight of intention to begin actively exploring your own “subconscious.”  Our overall emotional mindset is something we carry over into our dream state.  This is the same state of fearfulness which Don Juan actually encouraged in his student, Castaneda.

Dali's inspirational use of “delirious phenomena” and the “Hypnagogic State” show that he and Jung were both “Psychonauts: sailors of the mind and soul.”  This is a term which John Lamb Lash uses self-referentially.  Lash and Philip Dick both use(d) drugs, with the effect of destruction of ego and generation of altered states.  But unlike Freud, who was a famous cocaine user, Jung's visionary states were not drug induced.  Castaneda used ethneogens more, early on in his experience, but the state of mind was not considered dependent on drug use; Don Juan could enter it at will.    Other avenues of approaching this (right brain) state are yogic exercise, rhythmic sounds, or deprivation techniques. 

I am of the camp that says:  Any state of mind that can be reached with drugs can be reached without them.  Furthermore, if you cannot reach said state of consciousness without drugs, you probably have no reason being there at all.  The tedious path-to-power itself decides who deserves to be “initiated.”   For those who take the "easy" path, I'd ask: will you be able to survive what you witness?  Like a dream which you can’t remember upon waking, I assert there are laws which determine what you can bring back with you.  The unburdened American style of transcendental meditation, with its lax modicum, may cause very dangerous side effects.  Deep meditation is a type of request for judgment, and those who are not taking the “power realm” seriously, may not live to regret it.   

Organized religions won't offer you the sacrament if you aren't a practitioner; be wary of meditation without asceticism.

Aleister Crowley, in his day, set several world class mountain climbing records.  Crowley used a combination of physical exertion, oxygen deprivation, ritual, meditation, and heavy drug use as his “reality modulators” of choice.  In other words; everything he could think of.

But Castaneda is not Crowley, as John lamb Lash doesn't seem to acknowledge.  Lash, on his website metahistory.org, writes a series of articles discussing Castaneda.  Lash appears to accuse Castaneda of being dishonest about the sexual nature of his “magic.”  Perhaps Castaneda's philosophical system is more Dalinian(and Freudian) than we all realize.  According to Eugene de Klerk, (Source#1) “In attaching his unconscious imagery to the death principle, Dali is suggesting that these simulacra, in their evolution of the ideal, mask and indicate a further desire – one for disintegration [death.]  Klerk suggests that Dali's alliance-with-death is based on a healthy understanding of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle.  Klerk continues:  “Freud asserts that sexual instincts provide for a will to unity... ...[but that the stronger, death instinct, is] “the most universal endeavor of all living substance.”    

Crowley's sex magic falls nicely in this definition of “seeker of unity.” Castaneda is clearly of the other camp, philosophically, regardless of the sexual nature of his personal life.  “Death is the only wise advisor we have.” -Castaneda

Philip K Dick’s novels reek of paranoia.  This is one of the things that make them such a blast to read.  PKD's writing is fast, and does not benefit from rereading a page or two.  PKD is best read straight through, in as manic a state as he was in when he wrote them.  The logical inconsistencies and “shifting realities” of PKD’s work are confusing and disorienting.  These tactics create a state of unease among readers, a form of paranoia.

I like my Synchromystic Pizza with paranoia on it.

The only synchronicity that is real is that which you experience; synchronicity is subjective.  Place yourself in a receptive state of mind to experience this beautiful world!   Take a vacation from the real!

My paranoiac critical question of the day is: Whose subjectivity are you experiencing?

Sources

1. The Paranoid “I”: Dali, Lacan and Questions of Subjectivity by E de Klerk
2. Metahistory.org, Carlos Casanova I: Sex and the Sorcerer, John Lamb Lash

The Atreides Gom Jabbar, Paul Maud'Dib as Horus; The Nagual

“The tonal and the nagual are two different worlds.  In one you talk, in the other you act.  At first all of us secretly do not want the world of the nagual.  We are afraid and have second thoughts.  Our unbending intent and our impeccability gets us through that.”  -Castaneda

Applying this tonal concept to Freudian terms, it comprises the world of ego, and what Freud would term the superego.  Anything that can be thought about, rationalized, or perceived with consciousness is tonal.  Not doing, quieting thoughts, stopping internal dialogue, and gazing are all techniques which Castaneda employs to “stop the world.”  It is these techniques which alter attention, and give access to the nagual. 

Consciousness is a tool.  Perception creates reality, in a very real sense.  I identify the Castenadan concept tonal with consciousness, and nagual with the other: that which is. 

“Thought requires Consciousness; consciousness does not require thought.”  This insight is from a beginners article on meditation called, “Don't Just Do Something – Sit There!  Finding your “Right” Brain” by Robert Kopecky.  Kopecky states that meditation is an escape from “serial thinking” and allows the practitioner to “enter the moment.”  (Source#2)

The human “form” which Castaneda discusses is similar to the Anthropos which John Lamb Lash identifies in Not in His Image.  Is the crucification of the human form an event that leads to higher consciousness?  “A warrior must drop the human form in order to change, to really change.  Otherwise there is only talk about change.” -Castaneda

Another term, closely related to that of Anthropos is the “Mesotes, ” of which Lash states; “to be true to the deepest  intuitions of the human psyche, the Mesotes ought to be identified with animal form.”  Lets get weird here; Lash states: “The Mesotes is the residual bioplasmic imprint of the Aeon Christos.”  Here, Lash takes the turn for some truly Philip Dickian terminology.  Is this Mesotes the Logos entity?  Is it the same entity which Philip K Dick had contact with in his mystical “pink beam” visions?   Philip Dick and Whitley Streiber both had communion with god-like entities which alternatively enthralled them, terrified them, and filled them with joy.

In Frank Herbert's Dune Universe, could the Sandworm, the Old Man of the Desert, represent the Mesotes?  If so, who is this evil God, and what does he do? 

“In his autobiography, [Carl Gustav] Jung asserts that “the phallus of his dream seems to be a subterranean God “not to be named.”  If it is indeed God, then it is one that responds to the visceral needs of the collective unconscious.  The connection between the visceral and the image of the phallus is clear enough, its placement in the earth also ties it to desire and aggression, what Christian morality regards as base and earthly.  Jung's first vision of God is one divorced from the moral deity of Christian dogma; it embraces the desires held in the shadow.”  Source #1

In Dune, the young Paul Atreides is tested by a Reverend Mother, a Bene Gesserit “Witch,” to determine if he is human.  The test consists of “pain by nerve induction,” and observation of the subject's ability to sublimate the fear response.  Paul places his hand in a small “pain box” and is  warned; if he should remove his hand he will be immediately struck with the “Gom Jabbar:” a lethal poisoned needle.  The Reverend Mother states “You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap.  There's an animal kind of trick.  A human would remain in the trap, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.”   Paul Atreides is what Don Juan would have called an “impeccable warrior.”

The fear response can easily be identified with the Freudian concept, the id; pure animal instinct.  What makes a “human” is one who can ignore the fear response.   “I shall not fear, fear is the mind killer...” 

The mystical aspirant Paul Atreides, as a child, is taught “prana bindu,” which is a form of yogic exercise, isolating separate muscles with the combined goal of complete body mastery.  Paul is secretly taught “the voice,” and receives “Mentat” training.  Mentats are true Generalists: “Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos.  They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma... ...It is the characteristics of change itself that the mentat-generalist must look.”  (Source#3)
 

Paul withstands the pain-box, imbibes the sacred Eucharist, and rides the worm. 

 

Paul Maud'Dib wars against the enemy Harkonnen and Sardukar forces.  Later, in response to conspiracy, Paul uses his prescient abilities to overthrow the forces of the entire known universe, causing “casualties as [much as] 61 billion lives, the sterilization of ninety planets, and the demoralization of five hundred additional worlds.  Furthermore, 40 different religions were wiped out along with their followers.”

 

The House Atreide's crest is a red hawk, resonating with the Egyptian Horus, the god of war, sky, sun, and protection.  The Egyptian God Ra-Horus-Aten, a synthesis of earlier gods, was said to embody both masculine and feminine characteristics.  Ra-Horus-Aten is depicted iconically as a large red disk with rays descending.  Ra-Horus-Aten was a monotheistic-form creator god introduced by the Pharoah Akhenaten.

 

Paul Atreides as Horus, God of War, unleashes an unstoppable “Atreides Jihad” across not only the planet Dune, but across the known universe.  “You do not beg the sun for mercy.” -Maud'Dib's Travail from the Stilgar Commentary, Dune Messiah  

 

The awakening of the tonal, according to Castaneda, amounts to a variation of active out-of-body abilities.  Possession of an Other, or astral body, is what makes Carlos Castaneda, like Don Juan before him, a Nagual.  This time, the term Nagual is used to refer to a leader of a tribal unit, as well as implying the ability to project the astral body.  Paul Maud'Dib acts as the Nagual, or leader of the Fremen, in this sense of the word.

 

Dune's “The Preacher,” is Paul returned, blinded by an atomic detonation.   The Preacher has the occult ability of astral, or second sight.  In the miserable existence of living in the aftermath of the Jihad of his own making, the Preacher's message is polemic and cruel.  “you fool yourselves with images you cannot possibly understand.  You cripple yourselves with these toads of ritual and ceremony!...  ...Idolaters!”

 

Don Juan reminds us:  “Only as a warrior can one survive the path of knowledge.  Because the art of a warrior is to balance the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man.”  

Oh, if you're a bird, be an early bird

And catch the worm for your breakfast plate,

If you're a bird, be an early bird-

But if you're a worm, sleep late.

-Shel Silverstein, Early Bird

Sources

 

1. The awakening of Dark Gods: Modern Horror writing and Carl Jung's notion of divine evil  http://www.pleasantfluff.com/2009/09/22/the-awakening-of-the-dark-gods-modern-horror-writing-and-carl-jung%E2%80%99s-notion-of-divine-evil/
2. Don't Just Do Something – Sit There!  Finding your “Right” Brain” by Robert Kopecky.
3. Did you say connect Bruce Lee, Joseph Campbell, Buckminster Fuller, Frank Herbert, and Osho?  by Mahipal Lunia  http://www.radicalchangegroup.com/2009/01/01/did-you-say-connect-bruce-lee-joseph-campbell-buckminster-fuller-frank-herbert-and-osho/

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

Dune, Planetology and Mythology

“The horse-leech is a small fresh-water animal akin to the medicinal leech, with thirty teeth in its jaws. When a beast goes down to a stream to drink, the leech swims into its mouth and fastens on the soft flesh at the back of the throat.  It then sucks blood until completely distended, driving the beast frantic, and its type of relentless greed gives its name to the Alukah, who is the Cananite Lamia, or Succuba, or Vampire.”-Robert Graves

In Frank Herbert’s Dune, the life cycle of the sandworm is: plant sandplankton, animal sandtrout, little maker, worm, water of life (as somatic Eucharist beverage), union with man, ruling king-god, then back to the river as “pearls of awareness.”   With symbiosis between sandtrout and man, Leto II “becomes God.”  This is a complex circular allegory for the soma of god; the Eucharist.

Before the Jesus figure came who could “become god” by ingesting the Eucharist, the Eucharist was transmitted by reverend mothers.  Successful completion of the spice agony resulted in the Reverend mother regurgitating an altered form of the spice which was safe for tribal orgiastic consumption.  In shamanistic cultures, mushrooms, such as aminata muscaria were consumed by shamans.  The urine of a mushroom imbiber has the full potency of the original intoxicant.  Herbert was an amateur mycologist and was likely familiar with this traditional practice.  I believe the “Spice Orgy” was an adapted version of the mushroom rites of ancient shamanic cultures, and the “water of life,” an expelled, second hand intoxicant.

It is also significant that Leto I was killed, in Robert Graves mythological cycle there are always two male twins, one living, one dead.  They represent man and his weird, the spirit of the waning and waxing year.  The best modern Christianity can be adapted into this ancient formula (according to Graves) gives us the Virgin Mary as the White Goddess, Jesus as the waxing sun, the Devil as the waning sun.

From Wikipedia: “The sand plankton is food for the giant sandworms, but also grows and burrows to become what the Fremen call Little Makers, "the half-plant-half-animal deep-sand vector of the Arrakis sandworm.  The sandtrout ... was introduced here from some other place. This was a wet planet then. They proliferated beyond the capability of existing ecosystems to deal with them. Sandtrout encysted the available free water, made this a desert planet ... and they did it to survive. In a planet sufficiently dry, they could move to their sandworm phase. — Leto Atreides II, Children of Dune  Kynes' "water stealers" die "by the millions in each spice blow," and may be killed by even a "five-degree change in temperature." He notes that "the few survivors entered a semidormant cyst-hibernation to emerge in six years as small (about three meters long) sandworms.^” A small number of these then emerge into maturity as giant sandworms, to which water is poisonous. A "stunted worm" is a "primitive form ... that reaches a length of only about nine meters." Their drowning by the Fremen makes them expel the awareness-spectrum narcotic known as the Water of Life.”

             The water of life is an entheogen, and like many drugs, is poisonous to a layman, whereas the master shaman can imbibe the poison.  The drug is produced in the ritual drowning of a juvenile sand worm, who exhorts the liquid upon death.  This ritual drowning is akin to the ancient symbol of the lingam and yoni.  The lingam represents the life force in phallic form and the water trough represents the yoni, the vagina or womb.  Yoni translates to spring or fountain.  The lingam represents the generative force, hence, “water of life.”  A participant in the ancient Indian rite of Darshan enters the holy spring in darkness and drinks from it.  In the Freemen ceremony a reverend mother drinks the water of life and then regurgitates it, transformed from a poison substance into one that the tribe can participate in drinking.  The Freemen ceremony where a small sandworm is drowned in water draws could represent the triumph of life over death.  It is a fertility ceremony and is appropriately followed by group orgiastic rite.

Another myth which Herbert may have drawn upon with his Sandworm, was that of the Serapis.  According to Manly P Hall, “...meanings suggested for the word Serapis are: “The Sacred Serpent,” and “The Retiring of the Bull.”  The last appellation has reference to the ceremony of drowning the sacred Apis[Bull] in the waters of the Nile every twenty-five years.”  The Serapis is depicted as a snake with the head of a lion.  I find it interesting that the Egyptians associated a snake-like being with ritual drowning, as snakes can be a water-loving species; the connection is clearly of a symbolic nature.

Buckminster Fuller taught the importance of seeing the planet as a “spaceship earth.”  James Lovelock argued the entire earth exhibits a form of consciousness.  The movie Avatar, similarly, shows native people "plugging in" into a world tree in order to contact the matrix, or living consciousness of their planet.  Paul Stamets describes the mycelium of Earth as forming exactly the type of super computational grid which is depicted in Avatar.  Dunes’ Frank Herbert was a forester, desert survival instructor, and amateur mycologist.  In Dune, there is a fictional field of science called planetology.  Full-planet ecology is well known today due to the theories of Lovelock and the impact of greenhouse gasses is a “hot-button” political issue. 

The Arrival, is a 1996 Charlie Sheen movie in which an alien race conspires to terraform the Earth by releasing gasses into the atmosphere.  The aliens plan on raising the temperature worldwide and then, presumably, colonization, saying: “If you can't tend to your own planet, you don't deserve to live here.”

Terence Mckenna believed it was possible that mushrooms were interplanetary travelers; a true alien species.  McKenna suggested that the mushroom spore could act as an information storage device for an interplanetary panspermia due to its well known resistance to cold and hostile elements.  Could an alien life form such as the mushroom form a synaptic neural-net type consciousness across the face of the earth?   Are we the only specie with the combined ability to affect the ecology of our planet, intentionally, on a planetary level?  Is the mushroom is the “sand trout” phase of a superior organism?

                               In Tenebroust’s The Stench of Truth Blog, he complains, in a post titled DUNE; Retrograde Apotheosis; rise and fall of the machines; plans within plans, “One thing I want to point out before we go on is what is conspicuously ABSENT from the film.  Can you guess or do you know?  What's missing?  ALIENS!  The whole galaxy in this mythology is peopled by humans; there is no other intelligent life, just humans.”
                               I have to differ, because, while there are no aliens per se, there are many themes which allude to alien abduction and two specific characters that especially resonate with the elusive companion or watcher meme.    Two important characters along these lines are Daniel and Marty.  These mysterious characters have the ability to see across space and to “drop a net upon humans,” to abduct them.  The characteristics of Daniel and Marty diverge even more in the prequel and sequel novels which were not written by Frank Herbert.  Following Frank Herbert's original intention for these creatures:
"Herbert gives us a segment narrated from their point of view only at the very end of the novel. They are offshoots of the Tleilaxu Face Dancers sent out in the Scattering and have become almost godlike because of their capacity to assume the persona of whoever they kill — and they have been doing this for centuries, capturing Mentats and Tleilaxu Masters and whatever else they could assimilate, until now they play with whole planets and civilizations. They are weirdly benign when they first appear in the visions of Duncan Idaho as a calm elderly couple working in a flower garden, trying to capture him in their net..."-Wikipedia

Furthermore, the T-Probe in Frank Herbert’s Chapterhouse novel is a device straight out of an abduction account.  The device, used by Honored Matres, causes full spectrum pain thoroughout the body and is intended to be a mind-reading device.  The result of the T-Probe, with Miles Teg, is that it unleashes latent genetic abilities; blinding speed, prescience, and the ability to see no-ships.

David Lynch was known to use Theospohic concepts in his Twin Peaks series.  As the Director of Frank Herbert’s Dune movie, he added Weirding Modules, which take the users voice through a microphone mounted at the throat, and project the tone as a sound weapon.  This concept predates the modern development and use by modern police and military of sound-based weaponry.  I read somewhere that Herbert liked the weirding module idea.  Theosophy’s founder, M. Blavatsky wrote; “the name Jehovah, said with a certain intonation, was said to kill from afar.”  In the Dune movie, Paul, Muad’Dib explains the weirding module: “This is part of the weirding way, that we will teach you.  Some thoughts have a certain sound, that being equivalent to a form.”  The name of God, to his enemies, is a “killing word.”

I am saddened when I remember that David Lynch was unhappy with his Dune adaptation.  It will forever be one of my favorite movies.  I am now as much Lynch’s fan as I am Herbert’s, and I am thrilled these two amazing, talented people collaborated on a project.  Herbert’s books have always hit on major topics of my own interest, from genetic memory to transhumanism.  Lynch explores reality, consciousness, in his works, and is a practitioner of transcendental meditation. 

Edited on 5/20/12

The 13th Warrior & the Amfortas Wound

In the movie The Thirteenth Warrior, a modern retelling of the Beowulf, exist all the components of an important Archetypal myth that retells itself.  It is the myth of the alphabet people and the murder of the sacred mother.  Leonard Shlain illustrates in the book The Alphabet and the Goddess, that a change of culture began with the advent of the written alphabet.  Female predominance or matriarchal rule may have existed in all pre-literature cultures.  The era of male dominance, a hemispherically-left way of thinking emerged when ancient cultures made the move to alphabet-based culture over previous pictographic scripts and oral heritages.  Symbolically, this change was mythologized by having male warrior characters allegorically destroy, enslave or dominate a symbolic representative of the sacred feminine.  The most common sacred female symbolic archetypes were the cow, the pig, the snake, the bull, the sea serpent, and the bear.  The tasks of slaying which Hercules went about may also be similar mythological events.

The movie The Thirteenth Warrior written by Michael Crichton implies a complete understanding of this specific type of allegory.  Other examples of this myth are; Perseus and Medusa, Theseus and the Minotaur, and Apollo and python.

An early scene in the movie is shows the Muslim main character Ahmad ibn Fadlan learning the Norse language, representing his transition into the male hemisphere.  Thereafter, Ahmad becomes the “13^th” warrior in the tribe of men who would go out and destroy a threat to their whole society, a cave dwelling tribe of Matriarchal cannibals; the Wendol.

Excerpt Wikipedia:  Their numbers dwindling and their position all but indefensible, an ancient wisewoman of the village tells them to track the Wendol to their lair and destroy their leaders, the "Mother of the Wendol" and the war leader who wears "the horns of power". Buliwyf and the remaining warriors infiltrate the Wendol cave-complex and kill the Mother, but Buliwyf is poisoned by her.

The mother figure of the Norse tribe betrays her own sex, entering into the modern mode herself, telling her tribe to go kill the mother of the Wendol.  The mother bear and the horn of power are both feminine symbols.  The hive-like mentality of the Wendol also hints at pre-literate organizational modes of society.  When the Mother bear poisons the warriors the myth cycle is complete. This poison wound is none other than an Amfortas wound, popularized by Joseph Campbell.

The Grail myth as explained by Joseph Campbell, is the reversal of this plight, the redemption of the sacred feminine and the resulting sacred marriage of masculine and feminine.  The 13^th Warrior, as the mythological reversal of the grail castle story, explains what the Amfortas wound is and how it was obtained. 

The Grail Myth was advocated by Joseph Campbell as a highly important myth with modern significance.  To pass information through time, the medium is as relevant as the message.  An aphorism of warfare is best displayed on sword or shield.  An aphorism of peace, to contain its truest intention, is best past from teacher to student verbally.  Upon complete understanding of the concept, the message can be passed on though a new parable of the master’s choice.   This is the mythopoetic way of passing down a right-brain concept through the generations.  A prayer rug or mandala contains a wordless concept which is released through meditation on its iconic form.  In the same way, myth carries its own deeper meaning in between the words, in the metalanguage of the concept itself.  The written word can take the reader out of the mode of perception in which these deeper perceptions emerge.  Poetry is the written form of right brain dialogue.  The marriage of the two forms exists though an equal respect for masculine dialogue and the feminine, surreal, or mythopoetic discourse.  The grail myth directs the observer to a feminine, or right brain version of this same concept.  This is an extremely common myth form of which examples exist in Greek, Nordic, Jewish, Roman, etc, thought.  The synopsis of this myth is that of a masculine society destroying symbolically the feminine principle.  The reversal of this myth is found in the original The Wicker Man movie in which a feminine society destroys symbolically the male principle.  The purest form of this myth implies that neither societal form is perfect unto itself; that either would be a deviation from center.  Placing too much dominance on either principle would create its own Amfortas wound, which in turn can be healed by the sacred marriage.

My Terminology

Philip K Dick’s last scheduled book, The Owl in Daylight, was intended to draw forth the parallels between the three ages of man.  The originator of this concept, Joachim de Fiore, divided the ages into; the age of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit.  PKD reinterpreted Joachim’s original into a modified form.

From Wikipedia:  “The plot [of Owl in Daylight] was to express what he believed was an evolutionary step in humanity, using an interpretation of Joachim de Fiore, where he believed that one age of humanity used the left side of the brain, another the right, and the future would combine the two leading to a greater understanding of what is real. Moreover, the use of Dante was to demonstrate how hell, purgatory and heaven can all be experiences of life, showing how the world is experienced according to the left, right and whole of the brain.”

Here is my interpretation of how this might have played out:

It is relevant that Dante considered the “Beatific vision” to be the way to perceive god.  In any event, this chart should give an understanding of all the terminology I use and how I associate it.