Reality Testing is Politically Incorrect!

I’m all for going down the rabbit hole, but don’t relinquish your discernment.

Writing and Photo © 2006, 2010 by Jonathan Zap

I think I just realized why I get into trouble with so many people—-somehow I never realized what now seems obvious—-reality testing is politically incorrect! Whether you are a religious fundamentalist or a New Age fundamentalist, on the right or on the left, if it feels emotionally satisfying, then it’s true.

What really drives me crazy about this is that people on the left and New Agers, who would be the first to criticize Christian fundamentalists for rigid, irrational beliefs, often have no self-criticism about their own irrational beliefs. For example, twice this week people have forwarded me the following emailed announcement. Here it is in its entirety:

A cosmic trigger event is occurring on the 17th of October 2006.

This is the beginning, one of many trigger events to come between now and 2013. An ultraviolet (UV) pulse beam radiating from higher dimensions in universe-2 will cross paths with the Earth on this day. Earth will remain approximately within this UV beam for 17 hours of your time.

This beam resonates with the heart chakra, it is radiant fluorescent in nature, blue/magenta in color. Although it resonates in this frequency band it is above the color frequency spectrum of your universe-1 which you, Earth articulate in. However due to the nature of your soul and soul groups operating from Universe-2 frequency bands it will have an effect.

The effect is every thought and emotion will be amplified intensely one million-fold. Yes, we will repeat, all will be amplified one millions time and more. Every thought, every emotion, every intent, every will, no matter if it is good, bad, ill, positive, negative, will be amplified one million times in strength.

What does this mean?

Since all matter manifest is due to your thoughts, i.e. what you focus on, this beam will accelerate these thoughts and solidify them at an accelerated rate making them manifest a million times faster than they normally would.

For those that do not comprehend. Your thoughts, what you focus on create your reality. This UV beam thus can be a dangerous tool. For if you are focused on thoughts which are negative to your liking they will manifest into your reality almost instantly. Then again this UV beam can be a gift if you choose it to be.

Mission-1017 requires approximately one million people to focus on positive, benign, good willed thoughts for themselves and the Earth and Humanity on this day.Your thoughts can be of any nature of your choosing, but remember whatever you focus on will be made manifest in a relatively faster than anticipated time frame. To some the occurrences may almost be bordering on the miracle.

All we ask is positive thoughts of love, prosperity, healing, wealth, kindness, gratitude be focused on.

This UV beam comes into full affect for 17 hrs on the 17th of October 2006. No matter what time zone you are in the hours are approximately 10:17 am on the 17th of October to 1:17 am on the 18th October. The peak time will be 17:10 (5:10 pm ) on the 17th October. You do not need to be in a meditative state through out this time, though would be beneficial. The main key time no matter what time zone you are in will be the peak time of 17:10 (5:10 pm) Perhaps at this time if you can find a peaceful spot or location to focus. The optimum is out in the vicinity of grounded nature, likened to that of a large tree or next to the ocean waves. Focus on whatever it is you desire. What is required for the benefit of all Earth and Humanity is positive thoughts of loving nature.

We call this UV beam trigger event, “818” gateway. Please forward this message to as many people as you know who will use this cosmic trigger event to focus positive, good willed thoughts. We require approximately 1- million people across globe to actively participate in this event. Please use whatever communication mediums you have at your disposal. Reach out to as many people as possible. We require 1-million plus people at the least to trigger a shift for humanity from separation and fragmentation to one of unification and oneness. This is your opportunity to take back what is rightfully yours i.e. Peace and Prosperity for all Earth and Mankind.

This is a gift, a life line from your universe so to speak, an answer to your prayers. What you do with it and whether or not you choose to participate is your choice.

Mission1017
Raphiem/Blue

The last person to send me this bit of channeled nonsense was an older, well-educated woman. When I made the mistake of trying to reason with her I got back a snotty dismissal: “OK, stay there.” In other words, if I am such a regressive, patriarchal, unconscious person that I don’t take ultra-violet pulse beams from Universe-2 seriously, based on an email, then I’m just too clueless to even converse with. Unlike the “photon belt” we used to hear about, which attempted at least a patina of pseudo science to justify itself, here we have something so aggressively nonsensical that it would make a Medieval Theologian blush to mumble it in Latin to an empty church.

Notice that the announcement contains the classic pillar of New Age fundamentalism: “Your thoughts, what you focus on, create your reality.” We hear this constantly, ad nauseum: “ You create your own reality.” There is, of course, some partial validity to that principle, but it is not an absolute as adamantly insisted upon by New Age fundamentalism. Let’s reality test it for just a moment. If we create our own reality then how come some sufficiently positive thinking New Ager hasn’t created an earth they can share with the rest of us that has no environmental pollution? Did all the children and babies that drowned in the Tsunami create their own reality? I give a much more thoughtful critique of you-create-your-own-reality in Dynamic Pardoxicalism—the Anti Ism Ism. Since this principle is at the very heart of New Age fundamentalism, here is my critique of it from Dynamic Paradoxicalism:

You Create Your Own Reality vs. Outer Reality Creates You

Recently I was traveling with someone, a very interesting, complex, and worthwhile character, but who also proved to be an absolutist, a New Age fundamentalist whose whole family was under the spell, benign or malign, of various channeled entities. He believed—though pragmatic and shrewd in most other ways—so absolutely in the you-create-your-own-reality principle—deemed the absolute of absolutes by various channeled entities—that his plan for financial independence was to, “Manifest money into my checking account.” This was meant absolutely literally, no deposit would have to be made by him or anyone.

The solipsistic assertion, you-create-your-own-reality, comes from channelers and the entities they claim to channel. It originated with Jane Roberts—channeler of “Seth”—in the early 1960s, and has since been picked up by other channelers and associated entities. For example, Seth says:

“And, if you believe, in very simple terms, that people mean you well, and will treat you kindly, they will. And, if you believe that the world is against you, then so it will be in your experience”

(hear an audio clip of Seth saying this: http://www.sethlearningcenter.org/)

As with most channeled material I have encountered, what is presented, usually with aphoristic authority, are dangerous half-truths. (See:The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts for more on why you should be wary about channeled material). In many social situations, what you expect of others will greatly affect how they treat you. But there are other cases where this doesn’t apply very well at all. Let’s say I am a Polish Jew when the Nazi army is invading Poland. Should I seek refuge in another country? No, that would be a fear-based surrender to negative thinking. Instead I should stay put and focus on how kindly I will be treated by the Nazis.

With fundamentalist consistency, other post-Roberts channelers insist on the same absolutism. For example, John Cali, the channeler of “Chief Joseph,” writes:

“. . .the idea intrigued me, so I kept studying and reading everything I could get my hands on. Finally, it made sense. I accepted we are totally responsible for whatever manifests in our lives—all of it. It’s either that or we’re victims. I never liked being a victim”

Notice that John’s thinking is the opposite of dynamic paradoxicalism: “It’s either that or we’re victims.” In other words, it is either one absolute or another, and this is the absolutism I prefer, therefore it applies in all cases. From this point of view, rape victims should be counseled that they invited or manifested the attack—however unconsciously—and need to look for the cause within. But there are such things as victims, an abused infant for example, but accepting that doesn’t mean the opposite absolutism, that we’re all victims, since there are many people who have discovered ways of being empowered in difficult circumstances. The absolutist never acknowledges that there is a middle range of positions, as well as some cases that fall on either pole of the paradox.

You-create-your-own-reality does not work as an absolutism, but it is a major reality formation vector. In many cases, you do create your own reality, as in the principle, “Psychology is destiny.” This principle applies most potently to our inner reality, and next most potently to our voluntary relationships and life circumstances—much more so if we live in a relatively free society. This principle also applies potently, but not absolutely, to the dreamtime. Since our dreams can involve visits or invasions by other autonomous entities, they may not be entirely our own creations. Also, it is an unproven assumption that even when we are alone in the dreamtime that the dream is entirely our own creation. I have noticed that the surreal complexity of dreams, with their double and triple entendres and layers of symbolism, does not seem to be at all dependent on the imaginative capacity of the dreamer. People whose waking personalities seem dull and unimaginative have dreams that seem like they could have been directed by David Lynch.

You-create-your-own-reality absolutists may invoke quantum mechanics to justify their fundamentalism. Indeed, the wave-particle duality—a photon being a particle or a wave depending on which you expect it to be—does raise questions about reality as observer dependent. Again, I feel that this principle is a potent reality-forming vector; I just don’t think it is the only vector. There may be other humans collapsing the wave function based on different intentions than ours, and there is also the gigantic inertia and momentum of the collective human psyche affecting our world. There is a New Age tendency to use quantum mechanics as a magic wand, or an endless supply of fairy dust, that can be used to justify any proposition, no matter how fantastic. The abuse of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which was created to have very specific application on the subatomic plane, is used by some relativists and New Agers to mean, “Everything is uncertain,” which for them means, “Anything goes.”

Quantum mechanics does have profound implications, but we can’t be cavalier about applying them to the human reality. Quantum mechanics applies to the subatomic domain, and it is comprehensible in the language of mathematics, not English, so we need to be careful about applying our personal mythology of what quantum mechanics means to the human domain.

Another way to justify you create your own reality is to radically redefine the “you” in the principle. If the “you” refers to the personal ego and its wants and desires (which is how most people implicitly use it), then you have the weakest and most repugnant version of the principle. If “you” is redefined as the Self, or expanded to an ultimate degree so that it means a cosmic awareness underlying and connecting everything, then you have the strongest and most valid case of the principle.

Jung defined the “Self” as the totality of all the psychic structures. It is the Self, not the ego that would have access to True Will—a will that derives from essence and that is in accord with the will of the cosmos. If the “you” is the Self creating from True Will, then the principle becomes far more robust.

In many instances, you-create-your-own-reality is the most useful side of the paradox, especially when applied to psychology, individual and collective, and the circumstances created by same psychological factors. Someone who is caught in a neurotic reality tunnel and has a history of abusive relationships as a result of their own unconscious choices would be well advised to move past victim-of-circumstance self-pity to see how they have largely created their own reality. But the you-create-your-own-reality absolutists don’t stop there, they apply this principle to victims of tsunami and famine, they apply it overconfidently to cases where huge macro physical events affect an entire population. In some given case, this could still have a possible validity. For example, statistical analysis shows that a significantly greater number of people than average make last-minute cancellations on plane flights that later crash. Some given person might have watched the water moving away from the shore and instead of accessing some primal intuition to run to higher ground, as many animals did, allowed some inner intention toward oblivion to keep them on the beach. Another way of stretching the principle to cover cases like this is to resort to past lives, and to claim, based on no direct evidence, that everyone hit by a tsunami or erupting volcano, etc, had past life karma that made such circumstances right for them, or unconsciously intended by them. Although this can’t be proven or disproven, it starts to get morally repugnant, as an affluent New Ager can thereby feel that people experiencing catastrophic events are still in charge of their own destinies. From their POV, an infant dying of AIDS is creating their own reality, however unconsciously, as surely as some affluent person repeating a neurotic tendency in romantic relationships.

Although you-create-your-own-reality absolutists never admit this, their principle requires an act of faith as much as any religious fundamentalism.They never acknowledge how much their principle is divorced from empirical experience.Why hasn’t some sufficiently positive thinking you-create-your-own-reality person, for example, created a world without any environmental pollution? If everyone is creating their own reality, why does the rotation and orbit of the earth have such predictable clockwork accuracy? Wouldn’t some true believing schizophrenic who knew absolutely that the earth’s orbit was based on his whims have an influence? Wouldn’t people who wanted a particular day or night to last a bit longer throw off the Newtonian clockwork? Does the you-create-your-own-reality principle apply only to benign, politically correct intentions like world peace—which shows no signs of happening, despite all sorts of individual and mass prayers and intentions? Wouldn’t the principle apply with equal validity to malevolent individuals? Suppose my intention is to bring a black hole into the solar system or to abuse and manipulate someone else’s reality? Since we are part of a human collective, what happens when our application of the you-create-your-own-reality principle is inconsistent with other members of the community? How does that get worked out? Even on the individual scale, the principle seems to work in some cases, but not others. There are all sorts of medical miracles where someone does seem to create their own reality in direct contradiction of medical prognosis. But this effect seems to go only so far; we don’t, for example, have any documented cases of a transsexual, who absolutely believed he was another gender, waking up one day to find a new set of genitals that matched his beliefs, intentions, etc Mark Twain said said he observed many faith healings, and saw many crutches thrown away, but never a wooden leg.  Robert Anton Wilson said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

On the other side of this paradox, outside reality creates you. An example of this point of view is environmental determinism. Environmental determinists believe that that physical environmental factors determine human behaviors, social structures, and culture. I dislike this position as an absolute as well, but the environmental determinist has a much more impressive array of evidence to support their position. Environmental determinism is the position of a book like Guns, Germs and Steel, which makes a case for climate and microbiological factors as keys to explain why technological civilization would arise in some parts of the world, but not others. Marxism is another case of environmental determinism, where the economic structure of a society is said to determine everything else. A potent example of cultural determinism is language. All of us speak and think in one or more languages that long predated us. Our minds were booted up in a domain of English users, and this language, determined outside of us, drastically affects our sense of time and our perception of all manner of inner and outer realities. If I create my own reality then I must have created English since this is too gigantic a factor in my life to have possibly been determined outside of me.

Environmental determinism may be valid in some cases, but it is a deeply flawed proposition if accepted as an absolutism. Environmental determinism is an extraverted, fundamentalist-materialist point of view. It does not sufficiently take the human psyche into account. Nazism was not merely a response to economic and climatic conditions, but an eruption of the collective unconscious.

According to dynamic paradoxicalism, some things are best understood as realities created by psyche, others by outside causation, and still others by a confluence of the two factors. A unified way of including both sides of this duality is to say that, yes, you create your own reality, but this you is not necessarily you as an individual, but rather the universal mind, the source out of which your psyche manifests.

—End of Dynamic Pardoxicalism excerpt

If we create our own reality, then why the hell do we need Ultraviolet Pulse Beams from Universe-2? Maybe we need to scale down this fundamentalism a little bit to some more realistic corollaries like: “You create your own emails” or “You create your own nonsense that you can put in your own emails.”

Oneness vs. Eachness

In a necessary conflict amongst a group of people I just had an inflated New Age type pull out the “oneness” card as though that trumps everything. You can always tell when someone is getting absolutist on you when they start TO USE ALL CAPS TO SHOW THAT THEY HAVE THE ULTIMATE TRUTH!!! Here’s an actual example from channeled material:  “FIRST LOVE IN ALL THINGS – ONENESS!!!! Then everyone will see clearly how to bring about a resolve for all involved.”

I wrote about this sort of “oneness” abuse ten years ago:

Some people in the New Age, particularly those who have dabbled in Eastern practice, have swung with the pendulum of enatiadromia to a new extreme or one-sideness. They will monotonously insist on the oneness of everything no matter what is being discussed, and use this obvious reality as a way of leveling all difference, distinction, and discernment. This point of view can be even more limiting than the tunnel vision of the reductive thinker, since at least the reductive thinker is still thinking about and investigating something, no matter how much they miss the infinite, interrelated context of the something. This type of New Ager, however, takes oneness as a truism that relieves them of the need for thinking, discrimination, and discernment and pulls oneness out of a hat, like the most tired of magician’s rabbits, whenever any issue requiring discernment appears. Recognizing that individuals or groups that are in conflict are part of the same oneness is crucial, but it is also crucial to recognize their individual differences and what sets them apart. The great American pioneer psychologist William James wrote more than a century ago that besides the oneness of things, anyone who glances at the phenomenal world should also be struck by the eachness of things. We see a world of unique individual trees and people, for example, and not an homogenous mass of treeness or undifferentiated pool of humanity. The dynamic paradoxicalist recognizes that there is both oneness and eachness, these are the two poles of the paradox that must be held in mind to understand both interrelation and individuality.

For an hilarious example of a New Ager trying to use the most tired of magician’s rabbits see My Fight with an Egyptian Sun God

Similarly, many of my friends on the left feel so self-righteous and sure of their convictions that fact is no longer a necessary ingredient when criticizing the right. Shortly after 9-11, in an article called Left off Balance I noted the following in a discussion of shadow projection amongst people on the left:

Here’s a classic example that happened just yesterday. I get on email and find messages from two different people, a dire chain email petition that tells me that “they” (there’s always a mysterious dark they) are trying to sneak through an amendment to the constitution trying to outlaw gay marriages. I scroll down and see some very intelligent people I know have added their names and addresses to this document. After a stunned moment, I realize this is utter nonsense, it is impossible to “sneak in” an amendment to the constitution that requires huge Congressional majorities and is going to be a huge-drawn-out high-profile, high-publicity process. The Constitution has not been amended in decades. (I’m no expert, I slept through Civics class in high school too, but isn’t this general knowledge?) People I knew were forwarding this bogus bit of propaganda, adding their names to it, because their shadow projection makes them gullible and able to be blind-sided by darkness. Because they so easily project the shadow onto a “they” which they believe runs every governmental and media decision, they could be made fools of, manipulated by someone who very likely just wants their names and addresses for a shadowy purpose of some sort. It never occurred to them that shadow might instead manifest from one of what seemed like their number. They were giving away, voluntarily, their info, their privacy, because their shadow projection blinded them to the multivalent aspect of darkness—-it shows up everywhere. Most people are murdered not by the government, not by terrorists, but people they are close to, and even more often by themselves, particularly via bad health habits.

Another example of the failure to discern shades of grey are the constant statements I’m hearing that are variations of, “They have complete control of the media, it’s all just wartime propaganda, it’s all lies.” An example of this POV was a very amusing recent Tom Tomorrow cartoon. In the cartoon two news anchor people are going to give a report on “Why they hate us.” The camera turns to a female TV person and she says, “They hate us because we’re free.” The male anchorperson gets on and sniggers that they probably deserve a Pulitzer for that. So I laugh at this cartoon, go with its POV, because I hate plastic news anchor types and love biting sarcasm. But then I look up and see this week’s Newsweek (can’t get more mainstream media than Newsweek) and see the cover says “Why They Hate Us.” I have it in front of me right now. Inside, I don’t find, “They hate us because we’re free.” I find a twenty-page article that begins with the sentence, “To dismiss the terrorists as insane is to delude ourselves.” Four sentences later they dismiss the statement, “We stand for freedom and they hate it.” Then follows a nuanced, probing look into cultural, religious, geopolitical variables that have brought their hatred about. The West is not portrayed wearing a white hat. They also state, “The daily exposure to Israel’s iron-fisted rule over the occupied territories has turned this into the great cause of the Arab–and indeed the broader Islamic—world.” Elsewhere, they look at American policy in the region as “…cynically geared to America ‘s oil interests, supporting thugs and tyrants without hesitation.”

Does this article have a bias or two or three or more? Sure. How could it be otherwise? What human account of events doesn’t? But it is full of relevant information, most of which is factually true. On the other hand if I believe “the mainstream media is in lockdown mode,” then I never bother to read Newsweek since I know in advance corporate-controlled media is all lies. In the aftermath of Sept. 11 I hear people on the left state adamantly that “they” have the media in complete lockdown mode. But often I hear this POV from callers calling into nationally broadcast talk shows, especially on NPR. NPR still gets some money, if not as much as they should, from the government. Most radio call-in shows use screeners, they can easily and invisibly control content by whom they allow on. Caller after caller after caller to a show I listened to on NPR had a radical leftist POV and were unilaterally criticizing the US, saying on national radio that they control the press, there is no freedom of press, it’s just what the government and corporations want us to know. None of them seemed struck by the irony that they were saying this on a national broadcast heard by millions. When I point this out to Leftist friends I hear, “You see, they’re just allowing that so you’ll think there’s a free press!” (end of passage from “Left off Balance”)

In the years following 9/11 a new fundamentalism developed, “The 9/11 Truth Movement.” That this has become a fundamentalism should be obvious from the deceptive name, “The 9/11 Truth Movement.” I would have no problem with it if it were called “The 9/11 Conspiracy Movement;” because that’s honest, it consists of

To be fair, the 9/11 Truth people do present evidence, lots of it, and much of it seemed impressive. I put that in the past tense, because more recently the evidence is seeming less and less impressive. In a three hour debate I heard hosted by Ian Punnett on Coast-to-Coast AM (http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2010/08/21) between Richard Gage from Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth and physicist Dave Thomas I thought the 9/11 side got trounced. The towers collapse started exactly on the side and place where the planes hit, there were perfectly good reasons why building 7 collapsed, etc., etc.(A quick summary of some of the basics of what’s wrong with the Truther view can be found here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/11/national/main20104377.shtml ) The very first, and to this date widely believed conspiracy thought form is that “No Jews died on 9/11.” But there were multiple deaths just amongst the congregation of my parent’s synagogue in Manhattan (owner of the WTC, Larry Silverstein was a member of the congregation!). Some of the recent responses to 9/11 “truth” —-the Popular Mechanics article and book, documentaries from National Geographic and the History Channel have pretty convincing answers. The makers of Loose Change have to keep revising based on disconfirmed theories and now say they don’t make claims about controlled demolitions of the towers. I don’t rule out a false flag conspiracy as a remote possibility, or that some members of our government knew something was about to happen and chose to look the other way. There are more than enough questions and anomalies about 9/11to justify a massive, public, non-partisan reinvestigation. But what I don’t get from the 9/11 Truth people is the self-critical reality testing where you challenge yourself with some pretty obvious questions from an opposing vantage. For example, two pretty obvious questions occur to me, and whenever I ask a 9/11 Truth person I never get a satisfactory response. They say that three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. If 9/11 were stage-managed by the U.S. in the way that most 9/11 Truth people claim, it would require a conspiracy with probably a thousand or more people in the know working together with military precision and no leaks. But the Bush administration, like every administration, was riddled with embarrassing leaks all the time, like the intelligence assessment that said invading Iraq increased our risk of terrorism. Even Noam Chomsky calls the Truther view of 9/11 nonsense for that reason. Second, if these people are such efficient puppet masters, able to create such an elaborate event as 9/11—secretly wiring skyscrapers with thermite, making whole planeloads of citizens disappear forever, etc.— then why didn’t they plant some WMD in Iraq? That would have saved them the tremendous political capital they lost nationally and internationally when they couldn’t find any WMD. Planting WMD in Iraq would be a cakewalk compared to pulling off 9/11! So many evidences get purported without the purporter stopping for a second to do a moment’s worth of reality testing. For example, the endlessly referred to Larry Silverstein quote about “pulling” building 7. Firefighters are on the record, they knew that building 7 which had been burning and mostly neglected for several hours was going to come down and they decided to pull the fire fighters out. “Pulling the building” when it is rarely used in the world of demolition does not mean the use of explosives to destroy a building, but the use of cables to pull a building away from another building. What Silverstein was referring to was the decision by FDNY chief Daniel Nigro to pull firefighters from the building because they knew it was in danger of collapse and so many lives had already been lost. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43F54hR0NW8 But reality-test the other proposition that it meant that Silverstein was saying they were going to demolish the building. So that would mean that Silverstein was part of, or even a commander in, this nefarious top secret conspiracy to stage 9/11. Naturally, he would just admit his demolition command to the press on an NPR special! And given the impressiveness of the two towers coming down why the need to bring down this building? The truthers have an ever-changing set of conspiracies about why the government needed to destroy a building housing numerous government agencies to get rid of certain records, etc. And there were other buildings that were destroyed besides the towers and building 7, it wasn’t the anomaly as claimed.

A truther I just met on 9/26/11 , who claimed to know everything about the subject, challenged me on United Flight 93. He said that “it just left a small hole in the ground and that the flight recorder and no human remains were ever found.” see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkivdEGph9A&feature=related

Finally, what 9/11 Truth people and New Agers have in common is no sense of the trickster aspect of the unconscious and synchronicity. Wherever you cast your obsessive attention you are bound to find weird patterns that are hard to explain as coincidence and that will tempt you to explain in ways that confirm your obsession. For example, it’s a bit of a weird pattern that the terrorist attack in Spain apparently occurred 911 days after 9/11. Does that mean it was an intentional bit of numerological conspiracy? If you are a 9/11 Truth Movement True Believer then the answer is a resounding Yes! because all weird patterning and synchronicity is interpreted in that direction. But I’ve got some politically incorrect news for true believers everywhere: Weird patterning and synchronicities are to be found everywhere you cast your obsessive attention!

Here’s an example of weird, synchronistic patterning—-I just saw a magazine ad put out by a tire company. The ad tells you how to know if you have enough tread left or need to replace your tires. The test is you take a penny, put it between the treads and see if Lincoln’s head is covered. It turns out that Lincoln’s head is exactly one-sixteenth of an inch from the outer edge of the penny. OK, but here’s the spooky part that probably proves that Illuminati operating through the Federal Reserve control every aspect of this country: Lincoln just so happens to have been our sixteenth president! Does this mean that Illumanati, secretly controlling the tire industry and the U.S. Mint set up that parallelism for some nefarious purpose? I think it means that weird coincidental or synchronistic patterning occurs everywhere, and will light up wherever you cast your obsessive attention.

Once again, my mind is open to false flag conspiracies, they certainly do happen. What I am saying is that I wish people would be wary of any sort of “truth movement” and engage reality testing. What disturbs me about 9/11 truth folks I encounter is that they don’t challenge themselves with contrary evidence. None of the ones I’ve met, for example, ever stopped to ask themselves: “If they could pull off 9/11 why didn’t they plant some WMD in Iraq?”

Another force motivating many 9/11 truthers relates to shadow projection. Political correctness is essentially a template of what projections are allowed and which aren’t. So for people from some political spheres—darkness, original sin can only originate from the U.S., Israel, globalizing corporations, and New World Order Illuminati, etc. global conspiracies. There can never be independent origination of darkness originating from exotic cultures, if they do bad things it is merely reactive to an original cause by the U.S. Israel, globalizing corporations, etc. Conveniently they forget that Islam had an ideology of world conquest many centuries before there was a U.S., Israel or corporation. In fact, Muslim armies nearly conquered Europe. They were stopped outside the gates of Vienna on September 11, 1683! For more on the shadow projection side of this see: Projection, the Enemy of Peace and Justice and written a day or two after 9/11: Operation Infinite Projection. Another obvious, gigantic, gigantic elephant in the room that 9/11 truthers can’t see is the voluminous evidence of Al Qaeda’s explicit intention to bring down the Trade Center, their earlier bombing of, etc. Go to peterlance.com for some real investigative journalism by someone highly critical of the U.S. government’s role in 9/11 but who is not a 9/11 truther.

Terence McKenna had something very interesting to say about the conspiracy view of reality:

Into that dimension of anxiety created by this inability to parse reality rushes a bewildering variety of squirrelly notions, epistemological cartoons if you will. Conspiracy theory, in my humble opinion, is a kind of epistemological cartoon about reality. Isn’t it so simple to believe that things are run by the greys, and that all we have to do is trade sufficient fetal tissue to them and then we can solve our technological problems, or isn’t it comforting to believe that the Jews are behind everything, or the Communist Party, or the Catholic Church, or the Masons. Well, these are epistemological cartoons, it is kindergarten in the art of amateur historiography. I believe that the truth of the matter is far more terrifying, that the real truth that dare not speak itself is that no one is in control, absolutely no one. This stuff is ruled by the equations of dynamics and chaos. There may be entities seeking control, but to seek control is to take enormous aggravation upon yourself. It’s like trying to control a dream. —from “Dreaming Awake at the End of Time”

Most mass killings on this planet happen at the hands of various truth movements, people who already own the “truth” and demand other people get moving in lock step with them. What would be helpful, but is apparently as wildly unpopular now as in the Middle Ages, would be a reality-testing movement. I have a feeling my In Box is about to fill up with evidence of just how unpopular and politically incorrect reality-testing is on the left as on the right, in the New Age as well as among the old-time Fundamentalists.

Since writing this article I have gotten the announcement about Oct. 17, 2006 from three more people. Oct. 17 has now come and gone and the only difference I noticed was our first snowstorm of the season here in Boulder. Did anyone notice what the email predicted :

“The effect is every thought and emotion will be amplified intensely one million-fold. Yes, we will repeat, all will be amplified one millions time and more. Every thought, every emotion, every intent, every will, no matter if it is good, bad, ill, positive, negative, will be amplified one million times in strength.”

I have the feeling that the people who sent the email probably think that something sort of cool did happen on that date, and won’t bother to reality test whether they experienced a million-fold amplification of something. For many people, “million” is just a throwaway superlative, but actually, a million is a number and a gigantic factor to multiply any human quality by. Imagine, for example, what would happen if Mel Gibson were a million times angrier! If our emotions intensified a “million-fold” most of us would fly into pieces. Similarly, they probably never stopped to reality test this statement:

“No matter what time zone you are in the hours are approximately 10:17 am on the 17th of October to 1:17 am on the 18th October. The peak time will be 17:10 (5:10 pm ) on the 17th October.”

The peak time of the UV from Universe-2 would happen at the same unadjusted clock time everywhere which of course means that it would be happening an hour to many hours apart in each time zone. So the radiation stops at the edge of each time zone and waits an hour so as to preserve our clock time? Obviously, if I’m going to ask questions like this I’m not ready to feel UV from Universe-2. In a parallel example, I remember once reading something about the old Batman TV series with Adam West. In one episode Batman escapes a snake pit by throwing a batarang around a chandelier. One person criticized this and asked: “Why is there a chandelier above a snake pit?” The author responded, quite correctly, that if you are going to ask that sort of question you’re not ready to watch Batman. Similarly, if you’re going to persist in reality testing you are not ready to play in the New Age fairy dust sandbox of anything-goes-confabulation.

It occurs to me that I should point out a key difference between being a reality-testing skeptic and a debunker. A debunker is not a skeptic, but a true believer in a negative. His reality testing is just as unreliable because he also begins already knowing the answer. Political correctness means the correct answers are known in advance of any situation. Political correctness is essentially a template for what projections are allowed and what are disallowed. You are allowed to project the dark force onto the United States, Israel, and globalizing corporations. But you are not allowed to project the dark force onto exotic cultures. Therefore, if a more exotic culture like Islamic fundamentalism does bad things, it is because the U.S./Israel, etc. made them bad. Exotic cultures are not understood as being their own autonomous sources of darkness. If they are admitted as having a dark side it has to be reactive, derivative darkness that ultimately is caused by the PC trinity of evil. Somehow the politically correct fail to notice that Islamic fundamentalists had an agenda of world conquest (and significant success with that agenda for several centuries) before there was an Israel, a United States, an oil industry or corporations. Darkness is ubiquitous. If you think it can only originate from particular sources then you are inevitably blind-sided by the sources that your template of allowed projections wouldn’t allow you to see.

Most of the above was written in 2006 but in the summer of 2010, a few more episodes have brought this subject to the foreground again. The episode I’ll discuss here, and can reproduce exactly, was a little nonsensical Facebook exchange I allowed myself to get pulled into. When someone referred to a comment I made about a link to an article on SETI I decided to do a little experiment. I decided to intrude a bit of reality testing and found, once again, that in many New Age circles reality testing is as unwelcome as the devil at prayers. I’m pasting in the exchange, in its entirety, or you to judge for yourself. Hope you enjoy it. I’ve changed the names of the correspondents for privacy purposes, just in case anyone was naive enough not to recognize that privacy and Facebook are oxymoronic:

The exchange begins with someone posting the following link:

Aliens Found In Ohio? The Wow! Signal : NPR

Think we’ve never heard from an alien? A radio transmission recorded in Ohio and translated into six little numbers and letters suggests there’s a chance we have.

Claudia:

i beilive this aliens the univers is a masive place we are not as one he said the 2l letter u that u for univers its possible

Jonathan:

SETI operates under many false premises. For example, without doing any homework, they are sure that there is no extraterrestrial contact already happening.

Claudia:

just becouse certain people say it as to be proven who need to do home work when by the public have seen flying saucers object in the sky some even say they came face to face with aliens and they wer awake at the time its happend it lòts of countries so ther for it as to be true scienctist are not marters the give ther answer on ther own opinion wich does not stand by all

Dominic:

yeah but who has said anything about the possiblilities of the signal actually coming from within the Earth itself more like subterrestrials or within the hollow earth perhaps? Remember the Native American Indaians stories of the honeycomb or “hive people”?

Jonathan:

The radio telescopes are pointed up—toward the sky, not down into the earth—-I think that rules out hollow earth folks with radio transmitters.

Dominic:

idk supposedly alot of things in the atmosphere reflecting the signals around too? Isnt there something supposedly another one of them seemingly ridiculous conspiracy theories about how the Government is purposely releasing boron metal & or quartz particles into the atmosphere at high altitudes? Perhaps that is helping keep the intense radiation coming soon to keep from cookin us when the ionosphere gets blown off by electromagnetic/radioactive type pulses from solar flares? I know im using runon sentences but dont really care! lol ;p

Claudia:

aliens guys aliens ok defo

Dominic:

water makes cohesion possible right? Well i would think any viscuous substance could contribute to cohesion but what about surface tension? What if it is true that the worlds Ocean really does flow on the inside of the Earths crust as well and channels light as like a refractory law? Im not pretending to understand these things but my brain never sleeps. It is all good though & I can handle the intensity now thanks to deep meditative disciplines I have been practicing for over 14 years now before it was available to the general public! Yeah im random and wild with my comments but it gets people brainstorming all the more and coalescence is what we need as “All one or none” -♥ HELLO LOVE

Claudia:

i dont sleep my brain go into over drive but i say what i think and im still thinking aliens please dont get a brain storm it to hard work it will just make you think more is ther aliens or not youl be questioning your self yes no yes no ok oy that word hello love iv heard that i dont speak it do you

Jonathan:

There’s a common New Age fallacy that random supposedly intuitive brain-storming leads anywhere—it leads to more nonsense—intuition combined with careful analytical thought and research leads somewhere.

Claudia:

bonjour proffesor jon when i said brain storm i meant dont get think to much cos it causes headaches and as for reasearch people can research all the wish the come up with zero i could do a dam better job than most of them what prof the cant give a straigh answer the guess ok

Jonathan:

You’ve eloquently stated the same New Age fallacy that disparages thinking as leading nowhere—it can when not guided by global intuition—but then falsely concludes that a scattered, lunar, anything-goes mental state is superior. This is a classic example of what Ken Wilber calls “the pre-trans fallacy.” It is also anti-intellectual, disempowering and dangerous.

Claudia:

hey darling dont you rock my boat ok dont you dare have the odasatie to say mental state ok mine and dominic brain is intact ok i need to click to nothink becouse your rude if any body god forgive me as mental probolems look no further than your nose cos i never insulted you ok i mention brain storm as headaches you got the your head in to many books ok please take a breather and come up for air now im beauntifull person but you can not insult people with the word mental state ok that a no go rem

Jonathan:

I’ve said my piece, the term “mental state” is not an insult, everybody is in a mental state of one sort or another, I just happen to prefer mental states that have a certain coherence.

Claudia:

hey proffesor no more said ok im lucky enogh to be able to comment it may not be perfect it may not be the right answer but i try my best so please just forget it ok cos life to short to bare grudges ok

Dominic:

looks at life through a childs eyes despite others of higher superiority calling me the dreaded word “genius”….. Hypothesis “a educated guess?” My first memory of the word from when i first learned of its meaning back in highschool. Funny how some things stick with you huh? I cannot stand the word expert either as that leaves no room for further growth & learning! ha ha ha ha I am laughing with you all not at you all Brothers & Sisters. And no I do not take medication for my seemingly unbalanced perspective on certain matters at hand! WAVES (((PLEASE))) find a way to set aside the illusion of “egotistical” difference and LOVE one another!!! ;))♥

Claudia:

im loving im loving ok i love everybody

The exchange ends, appropriately enough in the It’s all good! New Age sandbox where everybody loves everybody, and everyone is entitled to his or her opinion which is as good as everyone else’s opinion and truth is whatever you want it to be.

I’ve also seen recent cases of people, well-known writers some of them, people I have met personally and found likable and interesting, but who seem to have abandoned their critical thinking skills in favor of anything-goes New Age confabulation. What’s troubling is that letting go of critical thinking seems to be a progressive disease. These were people I respected as thinkers who at one time seem to mostly make sense and now seem to be very deep into making nonsense.

In their minds, slinging around the fairy dust in the New Age sandbox is pushing the envelope and shifting the matrix. To me they seem to have fallen for what Ken Wilber calls the “pre/trans fallacy.” In Dynamic Paradoxicalism I described this fallacy as follows:

Essentially, the pre/trans fallacy notices a common tendency to confuse pre-rational states with trans-rational states, since both are non-rational. The “reductivist” version of this is the tendency of “scientism,” which reduces all transrational mystical states to prerational infantilism, and dismisses authentic spiritual experience as “superstitious nonsense.” Freud clearly fell for this half of the fallacy, especially in The Future of an Illusion. The “elevationist” version of the fallacy, ubiquitous in the New Age, is to elevate prerational states to the transcendent and to demonize rationality. From this side of the fallacy, babies are thought to be Buddhas, and anything tribal or aboriginal is romanticized and inflated as infinitely superior to anything modern. Promiscuity is seen as a daring rebellion from antiquated taboos, even though it is usually in high conformity to what peers are doing. They recognize as conventional the older sexual morays of the past, but fail to recognize that their rebellion is part of a vast conventionalism of the present, and that this new conventionalism is actually based on a still more primitive level of development than the old conventionalism. Regressing to pre-rational hedonism, indulging every impulse and irrational notion is seen as enlightened, post-conventional and transcendent. This is the state of the typically goofy New Age person who never heard an urban legend or bit of mystical-sounding nonsense without adopting it wholesale. This type of person is fiercely anti-intellectual and anti-rational, so it is impossible to talk them down from their absurdities, even the attempt to do so casts you, in their minds, as this clueless rationalist stuck in their ego. They believe they have transcended rationality, while forgetting that to transcend something you first have to achieve it!

What I would like to see is critical thinking and reality-testing make a come back. I would like to see people calling other people on their New Age confabulaitons. SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) points its radio telescopes toward the stars and tries to sift the noise for signs of intelligent signals from extraterrestrials. Right now it feels like we need a STI (search for terrestrial intelligence) that can sift through the ever-increasing noise and find signs of intelligent signaling from terrestrials.

There is a huge part II to this document, a specific case of reality testing breaking down and my much more detailed psychological analysis of why reality testing breaks down in some people and subcultures. Please read:

Carnival 2012 — a Psychological Study of the 2012 Phenomenon and the 22 Classic Pitfalls and Blind Spots of Esoteric Research

Carnival 2012—A Psychological Study of the 2012 Phenomenon and the 22 Classic Pitfalls and Blind Spots of Esoteric Research