the end of the real

So instead of working or sweating, I spent all day (literally the last nine hours!) compiling my diverse writings from the past half a year, creating what is now over a hundred pages of articles, rants, ramblings, and poems detailing my experiences and experiments with living in a magical world view, as Alberto keeps on asking me to print out my writings. Yet again it is surreal going back through my life and seeing how I've changed, what I've forgotten, what I finally learned. What is important enough to be included. Like I am downloading all the good bits of my life and burning the rest. I've drunk too much coffee and stared at this screen for so long that it has created an invisible and unbreachable wall between me and the rest of the world. I am sitting at the quiet storm but I could be on mars there's so much distance between me and those who walk a foot from the table. And I've got the shakes again, this slight tremor in my muscles as if they ae picking out all the subtle vibrations and amplifying them. No I don't think it's the caffeine, it's been like this all week, along with the head rushes where the world disintegrates around me. Eh, I hope I haven't broken myself with all the psychic breakthroughs. I can turn streetlamps and computers and other electronic devices on and off psychicly but I feel like I am a nervous wreck.

while reading through this file I found myself in one of the most intense cases of deja vu I've had in a long time. I was reading these words and then I saw Alberto reading them and sharing them with Sarah, and knew that I had had that vision shortly after I met her, here in this very spot. And that the people who are at the next table are there, from the vision, and then that person comes in and that one... It is passing now, but I feel like if I could stand it I could have followed that train of visions inward, moment after moment unfolding dreamlike, the future and past and present of this writing and its effects on the world, and those effects' effects and onward. Like a stone causing ripples and I am looking down and seeing all of them colliding in the waters of time. I could let myself go into that right now, but I would probably faint in the process and scare the shit out of everyone here, but it would be so easy. And I think I see where that place is to get back to it. Brrr, I'm giving myself chills. It's like when I located the sciptorum (the record of all things) and realized I could conceivably know all of it if that revelation didn't kill me first. Or when I first realized the connection to all at the back of our heads but wasn't ready to let myself go into it as my ego was still too strong and it would drive me insane. But I learned to do it, and can now and still come back without fear. But here I know I am still not yet ready, or the world isn't ready. Standing on the brink of all this power, looking over the edge at infinity, wondering if I should jump...

It feels like the Universe is holding a knife to my chest and threatening to throw me in if I don't do it myself.

So long...

dream yoga and social yoga

I woke up for the first time in a long time today full of energy and ready to face the world. So I put on Squarepusher and did some intense yoga to get my body moving with my soul. Last night [info]kritusi_vuki and I had another of our intense conversations, the ones where we have intense psychic connections that invariably lead to peculiar instences of telepathy and remote viewing (and that in itself beyond being overwhelmingly enjoyable, points to the potential for using the internet to reach some sort of cybergnosis, a topic I may soon have to explore further). At some point while we talked the question was jokingly raised as to whether we could have flat dreams. So I decided to take on that challenge and intended to dream myself to flatland as I was drifting off to sleep. The night before I had a peculiar dream in which each scene appeared as if it had been filmed and then animated over, much like the movie waking life, except done in multicolored scribbled spirals (based off fibonacci's sequence of course, as it is very deep in my consciousness right now). Last night I returned to that place, but now it was not just animated over the appearences; the dream presented itself as if the world was divided into infinitely thin layers like paper that could each be written on or folded in order to arrive at the multidimensional mode that reality normally presents itself in. The spirals were still there of course, but now seemed much more coherently meaningful as they detailed the manner in which the sheets or planes furled and unfurled around each other.

My words probably don't do so much justice to the experience, but it was quite intense, and reminded me of a certain dream I had a year and a half ago. This was around the time when I kept dreaming that all the radicals I know, including myself, were locked up in concentration style camps by the Bush administration, and coincided with one of my worse downspells of mental instability and apocalyptic anxiety. In this dream I was rotting in a prison cell when it occured to me that I was dreaming and that it would be possible to get out in a very different manner then I got in. I felt like some force was trying to teach me this manner, and suggested that if I folded myself along my main axis and then rolled along it I could move through extra dimensions of space. Now this reminded me of several things, various techniques Castaneda talks about for accessing the astral plane, the teseract method of astral travel in "a wrinkle in time", the scene in Donnie Darko where Donnie discovers he can see his will/ intention and follow it through space-time, and of course yoga, which is all about folding the body in peculiar ways. This dream was actually one of the main reasons I learned yoga in the first place, and have tried to practice it daily. Not that I have yet learned how to project myself astrally, but doing yoga has changed my life drastically for the better and points to a host of "secret powers" that humans can be capable of accessing if they take the practice to change their perceptions of what is possible. And I stopped having the prison dreams, so perhaps I did learn how to escape after all.

Now, I'm not so sure what exactly I could learn from this dream of breaking the world down to its constituent planes, besides the fact that it looks really cool and it is nececssary to pay attention to the planes when spinning a staff or poi or dancing. I suspect though that one could follow their curves like waves and learn how to read the future from its movements. I've had some experiences of that in the past, and perhaps it's time to experiment with them further. The only limits are in our imaginations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. I did have dreams of being able to disintegrate my consciousness into that of all things long before I acquired the skills and mental stability required to actually do it.

While eating breakfast, Grace showed up to talk about the new radical mental health collective that is forming, which seems a good deal more organized than when Eleena and I tried to start one a couple years ago. Grace is mostly concerned with identifying issues that are prevelent in the community and then determining what the social factors are that might cause them, which seems a good approach to the whole subject, especially if it is addressed through drawing and roleplaying to balance out the more linguistically oriented therapy techniques. Madness is a social disease after all. At this point I am mostly concerned with how mental, physical and emotional health are tied in to our spiritual well-being. If people do not find their lives to be fulfilling and meaningful they are less likely to be healthy. I haven't given much thought to how this issue can be positively addressed, but I imagine encouraging yoga could help. As well as hosting social situations that do not revolve around drinking or listening to music so that we can actually get honest and positive feedback from each other in the community. The next meeting is on the 6th at yardsale books, so I've got over a week to get some clearer ideas together as to what I intend to bring to the group.

shifting soul states

[salvaged from Key23]

A question that keeps coming up in my magical practice is how we represent different states on an energetic level. Not just basic physical, mental, and emotional states, but all the subtleties in between that make up the vast range of human experience. What are these states, how can we access them, and what are they good for?

The ancient Chinese system of the I Ching maps out a host of states through the binary interplay of heaven (yang) and earth (yin), from which arise the rest of the hexagrams. But these states are not static positions, they represent process, the movements of one state changing into the next. Likewise I imagine that our internal states are not static but are in a continual flux, feeding back on each other and adapting to wherever our attention lies. And also like the I Ching, though these states can be expressed through a smaller set of basic states (yin/ yang, the four elements, the eight gua) they are only the more recognizable positions in the grand transition of states within us and the world. And yet if we are going to map them out in any usable way breaking them down to a few simple positions will make it easier, since these can be located in the subtle energy centers of the body. Functioning somewhere in the range between black holes and point attractors these “rings of power” assert some sort of pull on the greater flow that we can notice and then exercise into use.

Many cultures and mystical traditions have attempted to map out these layers of being that somehow lay between our physical forms and the godhead within each of us, like a shield of veils or onion peels. And all have come up with their own number of primary states, locations in the body, and methods of use; none of which are wrong, but like all maps were drawn up from the limited information of any subjective experience and subject to revision as other maps come into comparison. The six latifah of the Sufi, the seven chakras of Hindi yoga, the eight trigrams of the I Ching, the ten sephiroth of qabalah, Leary and R. A. Wilson’s eight circuits or dimensions of consciousness. All these systems represent previous attempts at creating a formalized version of this map, but none of them accurately express the territory and can only offer signposts for us to follow in our own explorations of our internal states.

A few years ago I decided to start paying more attention to my internal states from the physiological level up, in order to reach some sort of metaprogrammatic control over myself and my worlds. Assuming of course that handy magical axiom that our worlds do indeed become what we choose to pay attention to. One of the first things I noticed is that everything changes us, the food we eat, the conversations we have, the cultures we live in, even the weather and the movements of the stars. We are so inextricably tied to our environments that it is hard to tell just where we end and the rest of the world begins, much less where each internal state stands in relation to the rest in their constant shifting. To this end I started using yoga and the magical idea of gnosis to create controlled situations where I could be open to awareness of the states unhampered by external influences that would only tangle the processes further. Of course gnosis, like eating or talking, changes our internal states, is in fact intended to do so, altering our perceptions of reality until we can look past it to its more subtle workings. Yoga, entheogens, meditation, sleep and sensory deprivation, sex and ecstatic dancing, there are many techniques towards this end. But while granting us more control for exploration also distance us from learning to utilize the states of the soul on an everyday level. I have found myself in some extreme and powerful places while under the influence of psychotropics, but is it possible to put myself back in those states in full consciousness? I would argue yes, it is in fact precisely what I am attempting to learn to do in one way or another. We’re talking ultimate god-mode here people, the psybernetics of the soul. Now if someone could find the perfect ratio between power and responsibility…

After a few particularly enlightening peak experiences which utterly pushed the boundaries of what I thought was possible I decided to start working with my subtle energy centers while in the state in which the world is perceived as vibrations or wavefronts of energy. I had already done much work in learning to recognize where my chakras are located, and from there it was a matter of determining their vibratory frequencies. Of course like the various maps of the layers themselves several conflicting ideas exist as to just where they each fluctuate, as in the petal arrangements of the chakras or Gurdjieff’s vibration numbers. Being a musician, I decided to use tonal harmonics to vibrate the centers manually, experimenting with mapping each one to a note in the diatonic scale starting the physical center on low C. After several months I had succeeded in being able to move my consciousness from one state to the next by intoning its note, even subsonically, while in deep meditation (and even noticed later that I am now able to sing any given note by placing my awareness on the appropriate energy center and humming). An interesting thing in using vibrations to access the layers is that it points to them being harmonics of each other, or deeper level interpretations of the same vibratory signals. Just as in music where playing one note also resounds with overtones, so to do the lower frequency states resonate with hints of the higher states, like fractals or holograms. The physical layer contains the frequencies of the emotions, identities, sociality, all the way up to the godhead, becoming much subtler unless vibrated directly, but still allowing us to recognize the sublimity of existence while in a baser state.

The other thing peculiar to using a diatonic scale is that its octave form suggests eight distinct layers (or seven layers and the higher octave of the first layer) as if the notes of RAW’s 8-dimension model were hung on the I Ching gua. I’ve always considered eight a sensible number, so that’s what I’m basing my recent maps off of. It’s in no way arbitrary, but it fits my experiences. Or perhaps they fit it, I am trying to shape my reality after all. Though at this point I am much more interested in trying to learn what we can do and how to reliably control it before putting any untrained skills to the test. So for those of you with more time on your hands (or who know how to stop it), here are some ideas for potential uses of each soul-state.

1- physiological – regulating and fulfilling bio-survival needs, physical coordination, general health
2- emotive - regulate and fulfill emotional responses (impulses), balance movements (center of gravity), awareness of reactions to external stimuli (tensions, and their release).
3- conceptual – ease of interpreting (boundaries defined), determine drive to goal states (direction/ intention), relational identity and map making
4- social – balance body community (host of selves), greater external connectivity and compassion, networking and true love
5- resonant – awareness of neurosomatic feedback / vibrational waves, heightened input/ output cycles and communication, breathing and subtle physiological control
6- psychic – awareness and manipulation of energy (electricity, auras, spirits), subtle receptivity, heightened creativity/ visualization, metaprograming, telepathy, telekinesis, and other forms of “mind control”
7- matric – morphogenetic cellular/ DNA control (healing, prevent aging), access akashic records (learning any skill, idea, etc), archetypal role playing/ storytelling
8- quantum – dissolution of self (being atoms of universe), connection to all as one, fractal consciousness, samadhi

Of course, the names and numbers are all flexible, and the uses barely suggestive of all that we are capable of. Perhaps you know more.

tripping in the 21st century

Is Taking a Psychedelic an Act of Sedition?
[via nerdshit.com]

"So long as such stormings of heaven are outlawed and dismissed, the greater the likelihood for relapse from the cosmic consciousness they engender to the coarse materialist outlook that is consensus reality. With religion-inspired hatred on the loose, many see religion itself as a culprit for the Sept. 11 troubles, and point to psychedelics — or entheogens, divine-generating agents — as a means of bypassing religion to get to the wellspring of spirituality. Because they produce the primary experience on which faith is inspired, "entheogens prove that no intermediary is necessary," states Clark Heinrich, author of God Without Religion (yet unpublished) and Strange Fruit (Inner Traditions), a speculative history about the role of the Amanita muscaria mushroom in several world religions. After his own drug-induced awakening, the late British Ecstasy advocate, Nicholas Saunders (see www.ecstasy.org), surmised that religions may very well have been invented to explain entheogenic experiences.

"Still another nondenominational yet transcendental usage seen for psychedelics is as a tool of hyper-ratiocinative perception, a means to deconstruct media charades and help the intellect to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty, according to Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information (Three Rivers Press). "I wouldn't necessarily want to trip in the aftermath of Sept. 11," concedes Davis, "but I can now use my psychedelic training for coping with the epistemological cyclone of a cataclysm such as this. I grew up in the cushiest reality in the history of the planet. Now I see demons pouring over the lip of my existence, but I've learned through psychedelics how to breathe through it and not believe its story."

an assassin staring at the sufi stars

While doing some research on the spiritual beliefs of the Hashshashin I stumbled upon this in the wiki's sufi entry.

"Although there is no consensus with regard to Sufi cosmology, one can disentangle various threads that led to the crystallization of more or less coherent mythic cosmological doctrines. The first is based on purely Quranic notions of the Afterworld (Ahiret), the Hidden (Ghayb- sometimes associated with “hidden” or “invisible” dimensions of human existence, but, more frequently with the state of God before creation or Unmanifest Absolute. Another term for the latter is “Amma”, ie. Divine Darkness) and seven-storeyed Universe explicitly referenced in the Qur’an (and cherished in Prophet Mohammad’s “Miraj” or ascent to the God’s face -- the powerful spiritual motif that inspired generations of later Sufis and ordinary believers). However, these relatively simple Quranic concepts that gave basic structure to Islamic worldview had soon become exposed to Neoplatonist and Gnostic influences, as well as Zoroastrian religious imagery. As a consequence, Sufism developed a welter of frequently contradictory cosmological doctrines."

The article goes on from there to describe several key notions of sufism and thethe six lataif in more detail, creating quite a similair map to the eight layered one I've been working with to chart a path through the subtleties between us and the divine. Mentions of Aalam-e-Misal (the Allegorical realm - reflection of knowledge of the preserved Scripturum), Nuqta-e-wahida (point of unity), Tajalliat (Beatific visions), and Rooh-e-azam (the great soul), sure sound like some of the more remarkable places I have found myself on this long strange trip, but more poeticly described. "It is a bright ring of light in which all the information pertaining to the unseen & seen cosmos is inscribed..."

Peter Lamborne Wilson gives perhaps a more liberatory slant to their spirituality. "For the Sufis, the road to spiritual knowledge - to Certainty - could never be confined to the process of rational or purely intellectual activity, without sapiential knowledge (zawq, "taste") and the direct, immediate experience of the Heart. Truth, they believed, can be sought and found only with one's entire being; nor were they satisfied merely to know this Truth. They insisted on a total identification with it: a "passing away" of the knower in the Known, of subject in the Object of knowledge. Thus, when the fourth/tenth century Sufi Hallaj proclaimed "I am the Truth" (and was martyred for it by the exoteric authorities), he was not violating the "First Pillar" of Islam, the belief in Unity (tawhid), but simply stating the truth from the mouth of the Truth."

But still the question of whether the Assassins were indeed a heretical sect hiding within the heretical sect of sufism remains to be answered, though Wilson's notes on their spiritual beliefs certainly paint them in a similar light.

free agents in fractal space

Free Agents in Fractal Space [via DRT]

"A fractal is generated by a recursive process. So are landscapes and trees. DNA replication, population flux, heart fibrillation, the stock market -- all are based on iteration (cyclicity) and feedback. So are you. And how about language? And, sorry to jump the gun here, but consciousness -- self-consciousness -- is now presumed to be a recursive process.

The butterfly effect is due to a small change in one cycle getting fed back into the process, amplifying itself each time until it is quite significant...

Power, like climate, is a dynamical system, and as such is subject to the forces of feedback and iteration. Male-dominance hierarchies tend to centralize power, to simplify the channels of feedback so that further iterations further centralize power. And they try to minimize the "noise" -- that pesky hiss of human freedom, like escaping steam...

The fractal is a symbol of freedom. It is inifinte within a finite space, sprouting Form as waves rise from the sea. It is the abstraction of Energy as it is enfolded by the material plane. It hints at realities previously reserved for mystical visions."

more spirals...

and just when I wanted a conch shell to draw, a mysterious basket of rare seashells appeared in our craftroom...





The purest , most universal form of motion is the spiral: the counterclockwise spiral, the levogyre, is the one found most often in nature. We discover it in the growth of trees and in other members of the vegetable kingdom, in the majestic sweep of the great spiral galaxies, in the long bones of animals, and in seashells. There are also many instances of double spirals--the two intersecting curves in the seed heads of ripe sunflowers, in the centers of daisies., the seed cones of fir trees. Like curves, spirals are not all the same. The equiangular or logarithmic spiral of the elegant chambered nautilus is one type, seen also in ram's horns. It is interesting to note that the double spiral of the sunflower corresponds to the ratio of the Fibonacci Series. If you count the number of seeds in a clockwise spiral and in an intersecting counterclockwise spiral, the two figures will be that of a sequence in Fibonacci's magic chain.

like ducks in a row

So Pope Benedict XVI has been elected to office.

Does this mean we're one pope closer to the end of the world?

Stay tuned for the this next exciting episode of world powers vs. the apocalypse.