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(The first entry, sent by me to JMJ is very, very dense, a telegraphic style of communicating ideas to someone with whom I have had years of dialogue. Subsequent entries are less dense and more readable, but there is a lot of meaning in this one, if you can decipher it. The Lampi dialogue is much more readable throughout.)
Hey John,
Right near the end of listening to the show [John’s 12/27/05 interview with George Noory on Coast-to-Coast AM] a woman said something about an “article on the aging of God.” That odd subject was never fully explained, but the‘aging of God’ phrase immediately sent my mind spinning out on a tangent that may have some relevance to 2012 and a specific suggestion that I already had in mind to email you.
What intuition presented is a kind of macro-developmental cycle that might in some way map onto the alignment cycle. Teillhard de Chardin when he looked at phases of development of life and complexification and the creation of new “spheres” as he put it, suggested some kind of dividing line when simple forms of life began the process of “cephalization” where there started to be a head of some sort, a neural network at the very least, and eventually a brain, and with the process of cephalization there was a new sphere occurring as there was now an interiority created, even if it was only a neural simulacrum of the external world constructed of information imported by sense organs.This process of interiorization is continuing to exponentiate in the evolution of life, especially with our species, and our species seems, in the larger arc of development, to have increased in interiority.We are apparently more able to cognize in the abstract and without reference to incoming sensory input then other terrestrial species. Additionally, we now have a more recently developed capability of metacognition, the ability to think about our thought process itself, a whole new level or layer of interiority.As recently as Homer, apparently, there was no such thing as a private emotion; emotions were always acted out as they are with dogs. In The Odyssey, the narrator marvels at Odysseus because he has the ability (described almost as if it were a mutant superhero capability) to be feeling one way while acting in a way that disguises that. As recently as the time of Saint Augustine people marveled at Augustine’s ability to read silently without even moving his lips and they conjectured that it was as if “he were reading aloud inside his head.”So the first edge of the intuition (and I’m not entirely sure where this is going because I am thinking/ writing aloud) came with the phrase“the aging of God”and for some reason I immediately thought of Julian Jaynes (The Origins of Consciousness and the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind which you are probably familiar?) and the theory of bicamerality (the occurrence of voices in the head as a normal human function which was experienced as communicationfrom the gods). Jaynes felt that bicamerality was the norm up to about the time of Homer and after there was a lament in Greek culture about the Gods having become silent as bicamerality receeded (and now is pathologized and considered symptomatic of schizophrenia). So the intuitive connection is that the “aging of God” has everything to do with what I have called the “location of the godhead.”As interiority has developed, the tendency to project everything as coming from outside is transformed. This transformation is impossible for the literal, concrete brain of a lesser mammal—a dog, for example, who presumablynever considers that its experience of a bone is an inner neurological reconstruction of sensory information about the bone. The dog cannot think about “it’s experience of the bone” as a separate category; no the bone is solidly located as an outside object that glows like a star in the limited dog sensorial universe while it is preoccupied with it.
In the bicameral mind, the inner psychic process may be externalized and experienced as outside gods communicating. In Judaism, Christianity and Islam there is an external godhead above and beyond that is worshipped, while the individual is considered something lesser and inferior. The wholeness of the psyche in general is projected outside, similarly the diminished archetypal masculine and feminine energy of someone bound to cultural stereotypes of their anatomical gender is projected onto a desired love object in a state of infatuation where one becomes a “true believer” in an idealized romantic beloved, a parallel state of projection to the projection of divinity onto an externalized god head. (see Casting Precious into the Cracks of Doom—Androgyny, Alchemy, Evolution and the One Ring) In the externalizing mode of consciousness (which might be connected more to the left hemisphere than the right) there is also the tendency to identify with linear time rather than eternity, one identifies oneself externally as a corporeal mortal body of a given age that is aging and moving toward death. The evolutionary trend we are in right now is, though incredibly unevenly, a circling back to an enhanced interiority but where one isn’t lost in a subjective, grotesque interior world (Freud, surrealism, postmodernism) but where there is a finding of a universal center within, a center of connection where individuality and universality, linear time and circular time come to meet, a place where the aging externalized Godhead dissolves to reveal a transformed god concept where god is the circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. ( examples include the resurgence of Eastern religion in the West, and the increase in “subcreations”— ever more complex fantasy writings, VRs and CGI enhanced movies—the discovery that we are co-creators—even though this can get contaminated with egocentric grandiosity as in the naïve inflation of New Age fundamentalism that “you-create-your-own-reality.”)
It is probably no coincidence that this return to center awareness in the psyche aligns with galactic alignment where we align with a black hole, a singularity where time and externality dissolve. An interior journey that begins with pathologized interiority—-fractured solipsistic egocentrism—-and transforms at the central axis mundi within to a recognition of oneness as well as of the continued validity of individuality and subcreative self empowerment.
We could speculate that this arrow of development of externalization, peaking in the darkness of the Iron Age, where the inner light is ever more eclipsed, reaches its turning point at the galactic solstice of the alignment zone where the aging, obsolescent god concept, the projection by the enthroned ego of a god the father on his throne, becomes re-centered and where the illusory aspects of linear time return to awareness of eternity, and where the increasing theme of alienation gives way to a feeling of connection.
Although I am not a believer in the Time Wave 2000 model, the one possible scenario I have thought of that could map onto Terrence’s view of mind-boggling exponentiating descent into novelty second by second as we approach the evolutionary event horizon would be if the novelty generating, but also pathologizing and highly destructive growth of egocentric interiority suddenly (perhaps with much of the species leaving the body at the same zone of time through a game-over scenario or massive threat to the survival of the genome via nuclear war, super-wave, asteroid hit, etc.) where what I call “homogestalt” might suddenly come into being, an organism that retained individuality, but fantastically novelized it by a collective telepathic interface, like a planet of separated computers suddenly finding they were all networked together with novel emergent properties suddenly blossoming.
This reminds me of the suggestion that occurred to me earlier. The most memorable quote you ever said to me was something like, “2012 is not the end of time, but the center of time” I suggest that you entitle a presentation/book/DVD/something—-“The Center of Time.” This is a title of stark linguistic simplicity with ordinary words of few syllables, and yet it conjures a depth of paradoxical meanings that immediately intrigues and attracts an alert mind, almost as if it were a tiny black hole, cause everybody has heard of the end of time, but what is “the center of time?” I’ve got to open that book or get that DVD to find out because there is something numinous about even the sound of that.
A note about 2012 and the center of time excerpted from a much later email from John (not part of this dialogue) but retrofitted here to clarify what is meant by 2012 as the center of time:
The idea began with my 1995 book called The Center of Mayan Time, which I produced and sold via mail order catalog for several years:http://alignment2012.com/centerof.htm
The idea recurs in my work frequently. In Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 (1998) it is explored in the Mesoamerican practice of “worldcentering” and “worldrenewal.” I emphasize that when a sacred space is created, with ritual activities and usually associated with an altar or a throne, the sacred space that is opened or generated is recognized as a being a sacred center, of time and space.
It’s also mentioned in Galactic Alignment (2002)
The idea was picked up again in relation to my association between cycles on all levels (including the astronomical precession of the equinox cycle) and the basic cycle of the breath. In and out, exhalation and inhalation. This put a different perspective on cycles in which the movement could be seen as a movement into and out of intimate relationship with a center-point and source-point. The still point between the out-breath and the in-breath was thus seen as a metaphor for the beginning pint and origin point of the breath cycle. It is believed that the Maya had a type of yoga and pranayama breathwork is central to all yoga. The connection with 2012 is to the galactic alignment as a recentering of male solar force upon the female galactic root, the galactic center. That’s the interpretive framework. The Maya were concerned with the center of the day, the center of time cycles.
So, the answer is that I wrote a book called The Center of Mayan Time in 1995 which explored the idea of 2012 being the center of time rather than an end or beginning. Said another way, the end-beginning nexus of any time cycle (such as 2012) almost a perpendicular sacred space BEYOND time, essentially a door into the root and center of time.
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for the feedback and comments on the show. Stepping out onto the airwaves has seemed to have catalyzed some responses — a whole spectrum as well as some interesting developments in the Calleman-Arguelles counter-view that I’ll get to below. First, the aging of God — yes I’d like to see your treatment.I thought of the idea that as the universe evolves the supposed inviolable “laws” of physics distort; the cosmological constants change.While we might not notice this effect since we are “inside” the phenomenon, we may suppose that distinct break points will be reached in which (like the patterns of iron filings on a vibrating bed “jump” into shape at distinct frequencies) the organization of culture/consciousness reorganizes. The “aging” of the universe is a mega-process which will reflect all mini-processes. I.e., the birth-growth-aging-death process that all created things go through will also embody a distortion of prior rules to the point where they are no longer valid and a new event horizon of physics becomes more applicable to the aged being. I wrote the above before I read your summation on your take on this aging of god thing.Yes, the “aging” or evolution of god/the universe seems to be about a deepening interiorization. But I would suggest this is, in large scales of time, not an absolutely new development, but a return to the deep center/self from which we became alienated during the cosmogonic “fall” away from our true eternal self-source.The universe, as well as human beings during their life cycle, grow and develop physically and as they engage in the play of incarnated physicality,they forget more completely their essence (their interior spirit nature) At the crescendo of physical development (mid-life) the long lost seed of spirit rekindles; their bodies wane while spiritual concerns begin to return. Of course this is an idealized Neoplatonic framework, but I think it may apply to this topic.The point being that we cycle in and out of communion with the eternal ground of being.I question the endless step by step stairway of Darwinian and Teilhardian modeling. But that’s my assumption of an ultimate viewpoint. It is true that along the way it will indeed appear that new levels of consciousness (evolving) will occur. We are at the crux 2012 point. We can slip the gauntlet and evade cycling into another billion-year round of incarnational play, or we can be drawn into the dance by the seductive Play of Consciousness that offers us incarnations with twelve arms and multiple sex organs on Zebulganubi 5. Wouldn’t that be interesting?
continuing, The Saint Augustine example and the Breakdown of bicameral are selective examples that illustrate or support an
evolutionary bias in modern western thought. We could just as easily argue for the superior cognitive ability of even more archaic people
because Sanskrit is far more subtle and contains more tenses, forms, and conceptual nuances. What Saint Augustine and Jaynes’s book show is the relatively late arrival of Western barbarians into the realm of accessing cognitive subtlety. That animals have some form of cognitive memory / conceptualizing ability is suggested in the simple facts that cats and dogs can recognize their owners from half a block away — it’s all visual, not smell recognition. Sheldrake’s work shows something very deep is going on in nature, beyond the Darwinian / Teilhardian notion of development upward from below. What is touched upon in this is the comment I made about Mayans seeing that all evolution and change comes down from above. This is really a perennial philosophy.Calleman seems to be very skilled in spinning out or generating entire
schools of support in which people are dedicated to promulgating his “message.” I attribute this to the simple fact that he’s devoted energy to evangelizing — seeking converts as it were. He’s riding on the growing dissent that New Agers have had with Arguelles. However Calleman offers an alternative that shares similar packaging, and so is designed to appeal to that same demographic — you, know, magical types who want to harmonically converge at frequent magical date parties. The radio show link I sent seems open minded, and they have a forum and blog section in which my name came up. It would be interesting if we could both contribute some thoughts to it. Yes, I agree with your thoughts about cycling back to subjective interiority but with a difference. — it’s the development that Ken Wilbur sketches as irrational-rational-transrational. The problem with many New Age approaches — the Arguelles stuff in particular — is that it gives permission to be irrational (it criticizes rational process and opts for magical; it doesn’t strive for the transrational faculty which can DOrationalism but also does not exclude the synchronistic
multidimensional perspective) Yes: “aging externalized Godhead dissolves to reveal a transformed god concept where god is the circle
whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere”
(Jonathan, responding to John)
Interesting, when I got your email I was editing some surreal comic fantasy writing where there was the following lines of dialogue:
“The species are always evolving and mutating, but especially after all the irreversible damage the J Bombs did to the reality waves. I wonder what sort of Upright mind came up with the idea of a bomb that actually damages things on the Quantum Mechanical level, a bomb that ultimately burned cancerous pinholes into the black fibers of space-time? And now they say that damage to space-time is spreading. Reality wave distortion is beginning to diffuse back to the past so that it’s starting to make all the earlier times more weird too.”
Certainly a black hole is a place where the rules seem to get bent and broken. I have often challenged rationalists: “Where is it written that the rules of reality are constant?” I do tend to think of reality as an evolutionary spiral, creating a kind of arrow of evolutionary
time, which puts me more in alignment with De Chardin and McKenna rather than a more circular view which would be more in accord, I suppose, with the perennial philosophy. That does embed my view more in linear time, and I’m willing to be convinced of another view, but that is where my intuition leans, and in various versions of the singularity archetype the evolutionary spiral seems to appear.
How would you feel about my turning our exchange into a blog entry? I would strip out anything personal, related to the show, related to opposing camps, or you could do that yourself to your part to be sure? Now that I think of it, maybe someday I should go through my huge email archive and see if there is other dialogue between us on these sorts of subjects that could be proof read and put together into some kind of dialogue document?
I had a bit of a yin-yang experience in relation to the question you have put in the foreground of my mind re whether we are really evolving toward an omega point or going around in a big circle. Yesterday I was hanging out with a young friend of mine, G. who is a very attractive 23 year old woman who has an extremely financially successful career as a software engineer. We talked a bit about generations and about the Millennial Generation of which she is a part. She suggested I subscribe to her blog on My Space and when I was looking for it I saw that I could do a little generational experiment. My Space has a screen where you can specify an age range and see thumbnails of blogs that correspond, and I realized, wow, this is a window into the generations, so I specified an age range corresponding to Millennials and viewed hundreds, even thousands of the resulting snapshots of this generation. The results were disappointing, even horrifyingly disappointing. There were so many wannabe gangsta’ types and other lame stereotypes and faces in the crowd, most of them listed their favorite bands and stuff like that but hadn’t even posted a single blog entry and I kept thinking “What a lack of content!” in every way, and I thought, John is right, this sure doesn’t look like evolution. The last blog I viewed was G’s which didn’t have that much in it either. But this morning I woke up and found an auto-generated email telling me that G had posted a new blog. It was a very big dream (probably not a coincidence that she had such a dream hours after a dream interpreter subscribed to her blog) and is part of a series of dreams reported to me by young women that show, in women at least, a tremendous urge to wake up from the iron age. This became Born Under a Blood Red Moon—-the Dreams of Young Women and the Metamorphosis of the Feminine
ON MYTHOS
Ron Lampi, author, poet, visionary who has, among other things, written the most seminal book on the meaning and history of the “New Age” just initiated a dialogue with me on Mythos.
Ron writes:
Okay, I’m going to try to initiate a dialogue again, if possible, and if you feel you have time for it. I am well aware that we can toss at each other things that we have written. Nothing against the fine, detailed essays you have shared. I know you can toss out more. What I’m suggesting is an exchange that can be composed of brief statements back and forth, but to the point, directly addressing the current reply. Responses can be as brief as a word or two if that is all there is time for, but, again, to the point.
My concern, my theme, which opens out to all others that would come up, is this: Mythos. What I refer to specifically as The Mythos. (Though I assume with your background you know what is meant by this word, but then not to assume too much if it results in confused communication, by Mythos here I mean The Word—The Word of Divinity, The Word of the Gods, The Word of the Greater Reality coming-to-us, the Word that sets into play a whole world orientation, determines the worldhood for a people, civilization. In the beginning was the Word…) Here are possible questions for you, you can choose whatever you wish to reply to to get started: Is such a Mythos possible today? Does it even make sense? Or is the idea of such a Mythos a delusional construct given a Postmodern world? Are there signs of such a Mythos emerging today? Does such a Mythos emerge as a general trend of consciousness examples of which might be everywhere? Or does the Mythos begin somewhere? (not necessarily exclusively, but the fact that it first announces itself in a specificity of place, wherever that place might be) And does the Mythos begin with someone? (again not necessarily exclusively, but the fact that a particular individual might be the condition of it becoming articulated) Might The Mythos today be totally global—that is, (potentially) universally speaking to all living today, embracing all cultures, all other cultural forms? Might this Mythos be an emerging universal religion/global spirituality? Does the Mythos, for it to be genuine, require a supernatural/paranormal event? Does the Mythos require to be embodied in an avatar? I think that is plenty to choose from. Any one is enough to chew on. Again, any reply does not have to be a dissertation, but just a straightforward, Yes, I think…, or No, I don’t think… If your reply is Postmodern in that it is all non-sense really, then perhaps that ends the dialogue right there. So, it’s up to you. For now, Ron Lampi
Jonathan:
A new Mythos could involve or synthesize a combination of any of the elements you suggest, but the area where I have actually seen Mythos speak in our times, more than speak, manifest an alternative reality that is both a distant mirror of our own reality and a transcendence of it, is in great works of fantasy—-especially the Tolkien books (see the Tolkien section of my writings) Frank Herbert’s Dune books, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, Ann Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, Stephen King’s Dark Tower series and a very few other great works of fantasy. Early in life I discovered that the numinous mythos experience came to me in the form of fantasy works—-sometimes sci-fi movies. This is the contemporary art form in which Mythos presently speaks the most vividly and with the most fully realized forms——the complexity of languages, cultures, cosmologies, histories that Tolkien created in the Simarillion and in LOR which tells the story of a brief part of the Simarillion Mythos. The most profound and evolutionary new forms come into being in these alternative worlds that are unprecedented in human culture as far as I can tell in their depth and complexity. I have attempted a beginning into such creation—-Parallel Journeys—–but it is just a beginning—-though for most of my life I have sensed a great fantasy work as my chance to participate in Mythos—-I have mostly waited for the muse to open the curtain to such creativity, but so far it has only come in small fits and starts. The poem “You” on my site, resonates with my inner Mythos.
We live in a time when the emergence of Mythos has never been more possible, the ground for it more fertile, because not only do so many suffer from its lack, but never have Mythos delivery systems been so potent. The novel is a form that has really only come into maturity for a couple of hundred years, and now novels have the potential (though rarely well realized) to be turned into epic movies, as was done with LOR, and where in the movie theater the modern person is mostly likely to experience Participation Mystique—a darkened environment where there can be an all encompassing mythos experience amplified by the most advanced technological magic.The Sixties was an explosion of novel mythos—–androgynous rock star avatars like David Bowie who altered many people’s sense of gender identification, Mythos that derived from psychedelic culture, the first photographs of the Earth seen from outer space, man walking on the moon, it is in popular culture where you can find emergent Mythos. Glad to be back in dialogue, your turn. I’d like to take our dialogue and possibly post it on my site as a blog, any objections?
Ron: Wow, that was some quick and well articulated reply on your part, Jonathan. As it is getting late this evening, I will ponder it for tonight. Yours is certainly a counterpoint to my orientation here on Mythos, but I say, Let the sparks fly! Sparks that catch fire. This world today needs to be set ablaze. Yes, I always envied those Beats of yesteryear who were able to conduct ongoing correspondence with one another (without email!) that resulted in substantial published writings. No objection, by all means post on your blog what you wish.
For tonight,
Ron
(Ron, continuing)
Okay, there are many points you make that I could address. I will try to be brief, as not everything needs to be said immediately but will sooner or later come out. Your take on Mythos is very different than mine, though similarities of focus for the contemporary world are there—there may yet be some common ground after all. Or, better yet, there better be some common ground or else we are speaking utterly different languages. I must really seem like Old School in my orientation on Mythos, though I know that we have undoubtedly studied many of the same scholarly authors. I sense that I’ve been far more influenced by Heidegger, however, as he definitely goes back to an ancient Greek orientation in this matter. Keep in mind that I do prefer the original Greek word “Mythos,” rather than “myth,” which is a defanged, declawed, tamed version of the profound original Greek. The original Greek Mythos implies connection to a Greater Reality—the Gods, Divinity, Being, or today, Higher Self. Examples of Mythos for me (just to name a few traditional exemplars) would be of course the ancient Greek & Roman “myths,” The Bible, The Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita and other what are called sacred books of the past. The Book of Mormon would also be Mythos. But what a contrast to your examples!
I see you are much more psychologically attuned to contemporary cultural forms than I am. Now this is not the first time that I’ve heard that today’s fantasy fiction, science fiction, both in book and movie form, and now including music—rock—rock concerts—you mentioned David Bowie—there’s The Beatles, Pink Floyd, etc etc. is how we are getting myth/mythos today. I have to be honest with you and say that I don’t believe I’ve read any of the books you’ve mentioned, let alone seen the movies LOR. I’ve not been much of a movie goer in recent years, I’m afraid.
This is the crux though as to why I can’t jump on the bandwagon quite yet with all these examples you give. Key points about Mythos: It must speak to other people—it must be collectively engaging (otherwise we deal with private fantasy) and we must be able to live inside its world, that is, live in accordance to its world. Now I agree these examples of fantasy literature and science fiction movies do apparently engage multitudes of people. But, then, what about persons like myself who are left out in the cold because we didn’t read the book or go to the movie? True, some of these works have entered the general culture in certain ways. But my other point: My question has always been, Who lives in accordance to a science fiction book or movie? We read the fantasy work, go to the movie, get entertained by entering its world for a brief time, but then we are back in the everyday world again. Now it is true that hardcore Trekkie fans do attempt in certain small ways to live out the world created by Star Trek (or the Star Wars fans). Though this following example may be unfair, it does point to the discrepancy I’m getting at: It is immediately possible to live in the Mythos of The Bible—not only is the Bible filled with exemplary / archetypal stories, proverbs, psalms, teachings, commandments for living that are all existentially applicable, but The Bible is obviously embedded in our whole Western tradition. We find ourselves using phrases and fundamental teachings from The Bible without even thinking about it. Here’s an example from literature that makes my point: A poet hero of mine is William Blake. What a literary master of mythmaking! What a huge, enormously complex, labyrinthine mythos he set out! But as much as I revere him, his whole mythmaking opus is a failure to truly provide Mythos, for it is utterly idiosyncratic—I don’t know of anyone who lives in accordance to his epic poems, or uses any of the names he coined. Great literature, yes, as Mythos, a noble failure. Last, for now, what I do see is that the new, emerging Mythos (and you must know me by now to know this is my life calling) will address, absorb and assimilate in some way, will present anew in some way, all these examples that you provided. In other words, The Mythos will engage all forms of contemporary culture, must engage them, and set them forth as landmarks in the new landscape of the New Age remythologizing of civilization. To me, the examples you provided are not satisfying in themselves, but are part of a Bigger Picture. Let me throw this out: A perfect example of contemporary mythmaking that focused on a particular time frame that caught on big time at that time was the whole Harmonic Convergence thing spearheaded by Jose Arguelles. That was a true mythmaking work of art—it was, though ephemeral, Mythos, since it tied into the Greater Reality, here, specifically, the unique astrological configuration of that August of 1987. All those Fire signs activated! All the current focus on 2012 is another build up to a grand Mythos opportunity. I wrote more than I realized— That’s it tonight,
Ron
(Jonathan’s response)
Mythos has a way of insinuating itself, there’s really no good word, infiltrating, in the way of a vast network of roots almost invisibly spreading itself with a vast network of diffuse penetration, an interpenetration that some only recognize in retrospect. Tolkien is like that, his work has influenced culture on every level since the Sixties branching out into Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games that were all encompassing experiences for at least some, a thousand elvish influences on the whole hippie thing, Led Zepplin—the most Mythos like music of our day, the most popular books since the Bible, and in more subtle ways—–so many people had the participation mystique level of entering a world and to such a vivid extent that their memories of events in the stories would be far more vivid and complex and finely textured than memories of their own lives. Once someone has had that experience then they may be inspired to create such potent mythos. As aesthetically different as they might seem, a giant milestone in the collective Mythos was the first Matrix movie. People having once had the experience that there are alternative realities, like once having had sex, or taken LSD, or having gone to a third world country, one has had a multi-level shift in perception of reality. Two identical twins grow up in a small town in Idaho. Now send one of them to China for a year, or to Iraq and reunite them (the other one having stayed back on the ranch)—-multiple levels of altered reality perception in them. So when you have had a vivid, encompassing experience of other cultures, and organically real characters living in a dimension that has commonalities with this world but that is phase-shifted toward animism, objects more imbued with spirit, and where evil instead of taking a banal bureaucratic face is a red eye of fire atop a giant tower, you return to the mundane reality almost with a case of the bends and you realize, in the famous words of Peggy Lee: Is that all there is? Is that all there is? Some primal Gnostic thoughts reignite in the collective mind, especially as Tolkien synergizes with some psychedelic experiences, and you come to a recognition that resonates with what a twelve year old boy, a character in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series says as he falls into an abyss, “Go then, there are other worlds than these.” That line is Mythos, and what lines even in the Bible exceed the power of “There’s a splinter in your mind you can’t get out.” and “This is the world that’s been pulled over your eyes.” Movies have, and continue to be, when they are good, peak life experiences for me and others, and I think about someone alive today going to their grave without seeing the LOR films on the big screen or in their extended versions on a really good home theater, as equivalent to going to the grave never having had sex, or a psychedelic experience.
There are other possible forms for Mythos, its nature may be to appear in altogether different forms than in the past, that is sometimes what makes it real Mythos, rather than the “Golden Oldies”—-studying the myths of the past or expecting Mythos to appear in a traditional venue. Techno magic is a leading edge of novelty so look for Mythos to manifest itself on the Internet where a novel thought form, like the hilarious feel good trailer someone made of the Shining, starts propagating itself so that in a couple of weeks many millions world wide have shared this thought-form. What if a thought-form that is not a mere humorous novelty were to have such propagation? Obviously, the LOR films have had a technological propagation. CGI is allowing us to have a far higher resolution experience of fully realized alternative realities. From the time the LOR films were made, and into the foreseeable future, there will never be a single second when those movies are not being watched by many thousands at least of human psyches, and some other huge number at any moment of the day are reading those books. Someone said you shouldn’t read a book unless it is like a ball of glowing light in your hands. Fortunately, that does happen. For me at least, some of those great fantasy works have changed the way I live my life on many levels. Tolkien coined the term “subcreation.” Though he was an orthodox Catholic he knew that fantasy creation was a divine cocreation. An experience that awakens in you an awareness that you are a subcreator—-that is an example of a full functioning Mythos.
Back to the dialogue. (this is Ron writing) Despite how I’ve presented Mythos so far, I do agree with you here, that we cannot expect the emerging
Mythos to look anything like the past, that the emerging Mythos has to be novel for its time. That is something I come up against myself–it’s hard to get many to imagine something that they haven’t already assumed or expected will appear like it did in the past. Our future is certainly not going to look anything like our past. However, certain conditions for a fully satisfying Mythos I would have to assume are in play. I too agree, the potential for new Mythos is tremendous today, and the Call for it in the Air is loud and clear. The possibilities of bringing so many cultural forms and new technologies into play makes it exhilarating. I thank you for the richness of examples you’ve provided from contemporary culture relating to Mythos. These kinds of specifics, actual works, names, details, are what I would eventually have to assimilate into my own work on Mythos. However…one distinction I would like to make here is that between having a mythos experience–of which you provided a number of contemporary examples–and what I still refer to as The Mythos, the actual full-fledged, all-encompassing Mythos itself.
Without trying to be facetious or mocking, this is what went through my mind as I read your replies: It’s as if: Poor Ron, he’s been living a life of alienation, frustration, feeling homeless in his world, suffering the fragmentation of a Postmodern world, he has sacrificed so much in his life to answer some Call for a new Mythos when all this time all he needed to do was to go to a movie, surrender to its participation mystique along with the rest of the audience, and all would have been fine, the suffering of his soul could have been avoided, could have been alleviated, years ago. A good fantasy and all is well with the world. I hope you get the point I’m trying to make though. Again, the examples you provided are cultural forms within a potential new landscape of Mythos. This, to me, is what an emerging new Mythos would have to address today: (I am well aware, this is a tall tall order, almost overwhelming in its demands.) Re-establish the metaphysical “vertical” vector of human existence–what does it say about that Greater Reality, about Being. In particular, how does it open to us the Next Level of consciousness–the astral-psychic plane. (What Ken Wilbur said we as a society are nowhere near ready for.) How does it make sense for us of our contemporary Postmodern fragmented “Crazy World,” as some now refer to it. That is, how does it remythologize the “horizontal” dimension of human existence. Then these three realities must be addressed:
It must say something about all the emerging new exotic and cybertechnologies–Internet, virtual reality (VR), nanotechnology, cloning, AI, biochips, cyborgs, robots, etc. or what I collectively refer to as Technos and the potential threat of a One World Order set in place by Technos. The whole ecological dimension of life on this planet–what does it say about Gaia and our sustainable relationship with Gaia. The new Mythos is not going to be onesidedly otherworldly like Piscean Age religions, it is solidly Earth based and Earth conscious. And the new Mythos most certainly has to address the UFO phenomenon, potential ET contact, a future relationship to Other Intelligence, the Cosmic Community. The new Mythos is unthinkable without Other Intelligence being in the Big Picture.
Your turn, for tonight, Ron
Jonathan: Now you already know that people often find me a bit abrasive in dialogue, that’s just my rhetorical style. Your requirements for Mythos sound quite reasonable, but it also sounds possibly a bit too rational or formulaic, as if you were a interviewing Mythos for an executive position and here are the minimum requirements you expect. Mythos tends to emerge in unexpected ways and to work differently from how anyone can anticipate. For example, I have already pointed out that Mythos in these fantasy works already indirectly meets your criteria by revealing that there are “other worlds than these.” That we are sub-creators capable of generating and traveling to alternative realities is a larger revelation that includes the possibility that we will mutate the world with Technos (this possibility was turned into Mythos by William Gibson who launched the cyberpunk Mythos with his early novel, Neuromancer). They also indirectly imply the larger truth that there are an infinite variety of timelines and possible worlds that can be created and this is a reconnection to the vertical, and a new vision of the axis mundi with human psyche as cocreator. My question for you is does a Mythos have to be widespread to be called Mythos? If those fantasy works function as life-changing Mythos for me and some others, and meet all your requirements if sometimes indirectly, doesn’t that pass the test? Or do you feel that an all encompassing Mythos has to encompass the planet’s human population and become like the next major religion? Also, do you presume that for something to be a Mythos it has to be healthy or virtuous? You used Jose Arguelles as an example earlier, and he is someone who creates twisted and deceiving Mythos, especially his Dreamspell system and calendar which falsely claims to be Mayan. Didn’t the Nazi’s create their own Mythos? Couldn’t you and I, for example, claim to have each created our own Mythos? The contents of my website would address your criteria, including UFOs, and the same is probably true for your website. Does a Mythos have a numerical requirement, or if it functions for a single human psyche wouldn’t it still be Mythos in microcosm?
Jonathan: Thanks, I do see the posting on your site, and it is an honor. But please do get the spelling of my last name right–Lampi, not Lampert! I think you got it wrong at every mention. Psyche, you know, might take offense that Her poet’s name is not appearing correctly. After all, I do call myself the “Lamp of Psyche,” rhyming with “Lampi.” (Of course, the importance of the lamp in the ancient story of Eros and Psyche.)
Okay, I will try to address your various questions head-on. Again, I do agree with you here that Mythos emerges and will emerge in unexpected ways. The talking head pundits of mass media haven’t got a clue. Now I do know that my outline of conditions/requirements is almost too rational or formulaic sounding. All my academic background and scholarly studies have trained me well. But that outline is more of a heuristic device. Now if I were a typical university scholar I should be pleased with myself about it, which would mean I should go back to the university or perhaps become a second Ken Wilbur. The point is: I attempt to use all of my brain to its maximum capacity. This is where it gets interesting: The point is: I’ve developed a polyphrenic mind–in the current simplistic jargon right brain and left brain, equally developed, equally pushed to the max. The point is: I have something of a multiple personality, which is, after all, why as a street performer for two summers on Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz I was the Multi Guy. Now this would only be an interesting psychological makeup, but I claim (it) is more–it is a manifestation of the multidimensional nature of Psyche, the Higher Self. Beyond the Veil is an enormity of Self vectoring in numerous directions, and outside space-time as we know it. Sometime we’ll explore more of this as I know you are hot on this same trail and many of the examples you brought up are talking the same thing.
I said to them, Soul is a Labyrinth, and they looked at me as if I were a crazy man which is how I felt when my own discussion group years ago reacted to me saying it.The point is, simply, I work to maximum effect in various mental modes. I haven’’t let the overly rational interfere with my creative flow. And one last thing for now about seemingly overly rational: In good intellectual conscience we do live in hyper-self-reflective times. After Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, after Heidegger, after Postmodernist thought, we cannot help but be hyper-self-alert to everything we do and think. The same applies to labels: Why do you have to label it, e.g. “New Age”? Because I don’t want to be an intellectual hypocrite–we live in an age of self-conscious historicity. Heidegger wrote an essay about this modern/postmodern stance of ours– “The world picture does not change from an earlier medieval one into a modern one, but rather the fact that the world becomes picture at all is what distinguishes the essence of the modern age.”
Anyway, enough of that, as another voice will say. (I am filled with many voices pushing me in various directions.) As for the personal vs. collective nature of Mythos. Definitely it moves into the collective dimension, though it may begin with one, lone individual (a voice crying in the wilderness (again, that voice thing)) who may go years and years like a crazy person with visions of grandeur. The thing is, Mythos must speak to some collective of persons. If no one else can resonate with it at all, then you have a personal fantasy world or an idiosyncratic work of literature. Have you seen those books on the market–there’s a few–with titles like Creating Your Personal Mythology. That’s an oxymoron–personal is personal and mythology is collective. Obviously, though, I know what these hip psychotherapists are trying to get at (and usually they’re Jungians!)
How far does a Mythos have to extend–worldwide? you ask. In the past, No. But what I refer to as The Mythos would eventually move in that direction. As cyberspace expands exponentially, as the mind field of the astral-psychic invisibly links more and more minds, as serious world crises develop, as global warming begins to devastate the planet, as Earth is in a prolonged “morbid fever” (James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia hypothesis), I cannot help but see The Mythos going universal, but one implying the opening up of multidimensional opportunities of different mythos worlds (which is what I see you emphasizing).
Yes, I do have to say it, this is in the direction of a new world–but universal–religion. If you take the New Age seriously, it’s inevitable. But, again, religion like we have never known. No past Tradition can serve as an adequate model. (As you can see, I am not afraid of the word “religion.” One of my discoveries in my relationship to Psyche (as you know, I have a personal relationship to Psyche, no different really than a Christian to Jesus, which I why I’ve been called a New Age Christian) is this: All Language is alive through Psyche. Psyche revitalizes anew all that was thought empty and dead. Even God is dead–and I accept Nietzsche’s statement as accurate–is now revitalized, living again as Higher Self.
You ask bluntly: Do certain of those fantasy works pass the test of being mythos, if they apparently satisfy most or all or indirectly the conditions I layed out? Here, Jonathan, I will say this about myself–I am not really hardnosed when it comes down to it–I say, stay open and flexible and let the play of new inspiration and cultural forms fulfill their intentions, see where they go, what time makes of them.
I hope all this more or less addresses your questions, directly or indirectly. Again, enough for now.
–Ron
Jonathan responds:
Well I’m glad you haven’t (apparently) taken offense at my sometimes abrasively challenging Socratic dialogue style. Two intuitions assert themselves insistently after reading your response. One is—–to paraphrase Marshall McChluan —-could the Medium be the Mythos? We have been historically conditioned to expect Mythos to be content driven, but maybe the new Mythos is to be found not in any specific content but in the multiplicity and mutability of new media of communication—-the ability of someone without much wealth to create a website, for example, that anyone on the planet can search for and find from any internet portal. The massive interconnectedness, a digital and electronic global telepathy, where the mythic thought forms of an individual can become globally available instantly, and where the mechanical resistance of old means of communication—-struggling with chisel and stone, parchment and paper, mechanical printing presses and physical books, etc.—–has given way to a digital realm of infinite plasticity where the contents of psyche can be broadcast to the world with relatively little resources. Even as William Blake “labored upwards into futurity” above his shop, he still had to devote a large proportion of his meager income to his art supplies and to the manufacture of his prints and engravings. He realized that few of his time would appreciate his work and after a point he stopped trying to promote it. But suppose he could have labored with Photo Shop and posted his work instantaneously? He would have had the satisfaction of knowing that instead of having to wait for the future, others, who like himself, were ahead of their time, who already lived in the future, need only type a key phrase into Google to experience the visions of his psyche. Just as musical experience need not focus on the male white mega rock star, individual religious experience may not need to be a Jesus Christ Super Star experience where all attention focuses on the legendary super stars of long ago and far away. Connection to the axis mundi linked through electronic global telepathy may be the Mythos rather than a specific telling or manifestation of Mythos. My other intuition, which now that I think about it, follows from the first, is that those imbued with psyche need to focus their energy on Mythos creation even more than search for Mythos. Some have said that young people in the Sixties who went out searching, asking the cosmos what is the meaning of life, got the nature of the questioning process turned around, because from an ultimate existential point of view it is the cosmos that asks you, “What is your meaning?” and you need to supply the answer with your life. So for people like you and I, driven by the muse, the real question is what is our Mythos and how can we express it? The more deeply we go within ourselves to discover that the more likely are we to manifest Mythos of universal significance. All we have to do after that is post it on the internet, the World Wide Web of Mythos, the myriad multiplicity of mutable media, where any mutant searching with Palantir/ Search Engine can find nodes of Mythos, like jewels flashing in the night of time.
Ron:
Also, also, your intuition about the drift of the dialogue is right on the mark. This is indeed getting to the essence of it. Despite all the curve balls thrown out, we are moving in the direction about a PROCESS–what I call The Art of all arts. This then is what I want to focus upon tonight.
Jonathan:
This is getting to be very very interesting. I have just read through your whole correspondence posted above with John Major Jenkins. I’m sure you could not fail to notice the parallel themes to our own dialogue. That discussion could be inserted into ours or ours inserted into it, vice versa.
For example, if I may briefly provide my take on that whole dynamic of exteriority and interiority in evolutionary thought that you explored. What occurred to me as an Aha! moment when I first encountered Psyche many many years ago was this:
In the ancient world, before the emergence of the ego, human consciousness projected and externalized its innate multiplicity onto Nature, a Nature alive with a multitude of Gods and Goddesses and nature beings. This was the well-known tribal consciousness. (A complicating factor in this scenario, which I won’t go into right here, is the fact that actual Gods and Goddesses (ET visitors, Those-Who-Came-From-the-Sky) were indeed actively engaging early humanity “out there” in the world.) What did this imply for human consciousness? Human consciousness was other-directed in hundreds of ways–it was a fragmented mirror ball reflecting an (apparent) exterior multiplicity–it was scattered out with loyalties to various Gods and Goddesses. Like in the Iliad, like in the drift of the theme of Julian Jaynes’ book.
Now with the emergence of the ego in the Age of Aries (Aries is the sign that says: I Am! which is perfectly appropriate to an ego just discovering itself. Any coincidence that in the Old Testament (which is Age of Aries times) Yahweh says to Moses “I Am that I Am”?) consciousness begins to consolidate around a center. (This is where astrology is extremely helpful in understanding our evolutionary development.) But to coalesce like that it has to at the same time repress–repress that innate multiplicity (this is where James Hillman is most helpful) and keep it at bay. This is the whole hidden intent of Piscean Age Christianity (and Islam), certainly religions of repression. It is ironic that the evolutionary intent of Christianity was actually the full-fledged development and glory of the ego. (Any coincidence that Jesus said we were all equal in the eyes of the Father? Everyday People, Ordinary People, the Man-in-the-street–yep, we’re all equal. Christianity leads directly to the 1970s Me Generation.) This last 2,000 year Age of Pisces was a long story of repression.
(The whole astrological background to our psychospiritual evolution is what Ken Wilbur missed in this book Up From Eden.)
So comes up the latter 20th Century–Postmodernism, a fragmenting, chaotic transition period to the New Age of Aquarius. Repression is over. The interior multiplicity wants out. But now, the thing is this: THE EGO IS NOW POTENTIALLY READY (that is, in many of us) TO FACE THAT INTERIOR MULTIPLICITY AND INTERACT WITH IT. Consciousness no longer has to endure dismemberment, but is now mature enough, strong enough, with an ego in full awareness, to creatively explore its innate multiplicity, its multidimensional nature. This is my Vision: BECAUSE PSYCHE THE DIVINE ANDROGYNE IS A SHAPESHIFTER, I AM BLESSED WITH A PERSONAL INTERIOR TEACHER WHO GUIDES ME INTO MULTIDIMENSIONALITY. My original Vision of many years ago opened up to me a personal relationship with my psyche/Psyche. When I say that my head is filled with voices, I no longer have to dread schizophrenia, because I have developed a polyphrenic psyche.
There, for now, is but a sketch of my take on your exchange with Jenkins.
I don’t have time to fully lay out what I had wanted to in response to your last posting. But, again, trying to be brief: As I said in that earlier quick note, your intuition is right on the mark. All these curve balls I throw out, all this listing of conditions and requirements I see as prods to get us who are thinking of Mythos to THINK BIG and as all-encompassing as we can.
Yes, the new Mythos–The Mythos, as I put it–as you saw is not going to be another content-driven religion with all its prescribed rituals, taboos, dogmas, doctrines, Thou Shall and Thou Shall Not, only to put us in a Cage. No, not at all. The new Mythos is a PROCESS. It is the Art of all arts. The new Mythos is simply, but most profoundly, this: the Art of Mythmaking. (What scholars call mythopoesis.) The new Mythos is not just a new global myth, it is the Supreme Art of making myths. And that, to me, is not like simply writing a poem, writing a novel, or producing a movie, though any of these arts can and do certainly come into play. Mythmaking is a more embracing process. The Mythos implies staying IN THAT PROCESS regarding all aspects of life. The Mythos, as I see it, engages the whole body–the mythmaking in the future (the New Age of Aquarius/Leo (this is packed with significance here) is going to be transformative of the body itself (bring into play here technologies that are still in their infancy). The SELF beyond banal egocentricity, beyond socially conditioned narcissism, is the SUPREME WORK OF ART. It is the GREAT WORK, as alchemy was all about.
This, I believe, is the Light at the end of the tunnel of nihilism that Nietzsche saw. Yes, the Creative Individual let out of the Cage and free to move out into a hundred directions guided by his/her own PSYCHE into the vast multidimensional realms of the Next Level, the astral-psychic.
The Mythos that is mythmaking is of course not some vague, nebulous, abstract, generalizing schema that some university professor might write a hip book about and that changes nothing. I would claim The Mythos does manifest a specificity of content, concrete words, symbols, images, forms, tangible energies, that are fateful–appropriate–for its time and place. But discovering these is the secret, isn’t it.
So much more…
Ron
Jonathan:
Yes, this really is getting interesting, really does seem driven by the muse, and the words “muse” and “mutate” seem to be juxtaposing in my mind. You have helped me to articulate an unformed antagonism to a new Mythos in the way of Mythos of the past, to paraphrase the Who, “Here’s the new Mythos, same as the Old Mythos.” That was what I was dreading, still dread, a new monolithic Mythos with merely new content, stain glass windows depicting ETs and communion wafers with imbedded integrated circuits, a new template to stamp human beings in the shape of a New Mythos for the next six thousand years. This is what we’ve done in the past, create a new Mythos—-Judaism, Christianity, Islam and then these become cultural conveyor belts for thousands of years churning out human being stamped by these ancient molds whether the process serves or not. And if that process deforms the human spirit, well that is always because of the deformity of the individual sinner, never the conveyor belt, it is sacra-religious by definition to question the molds. If GM rolled cars off the assembly line that exploded once you put gas in them, there would be a massive recall, the company might even go out of business. But when the Christianity Mythos factory rolls out Crusaders, Inquisitors, women burners, onward Christian Soldier types for a couple of millennia, or when Islam rolls out Jihadists and women haters and people who want to explode into suicide bombers (whose aggressor programming is spelled out right in the Koran—which relentlessly promotes Jihad against the infidels, oppression of women and praise of martyrdom–see Projection, the Enemy of Peace for documentation) oh well, these are a few bad apples, can’t blame the tree for the apples. But Jung, the son of a Protestant minister had the courage to ask himself a question few Christians ever have the courage to ask, “Why has more blood been spilled in the name of Christianity than anything else in history?” He found the reason encoded right in the Mythos itself, dating it back to that early point in Christianity when they tried to exterminate the Gnostics and their Gospels.
If Christianity had retained just two sentences said by Jesus in the recently discovered Gospel of Thomas, a completely different template for the human being would have been encoded,
“HE WHO WILL DRINK FROM MY MOUTH WILL BECOME LIKE ME. I MYSELF SHALL BECOME HE, AND THE THINGS THAT ARE HIDDEN WILL BE REVEALED TO HIM.”
Instead of being stamped in the mold of one who will forever look for the divine as something out there, the inner fountain of divinity/muse/mutation could have been (had more of humanity been ready for it) made central. I was brought up in an environment that was part scientific intellectual modernism and part Reform Judaism. Reform Judaism is a valuable half step in the right direction. It is a break with patriarchal tradition and any type of fundamentalism, it recognizes old gospels as representative of an earlier stage of evolution, but badly in need of reform, and that any living religion needs to be constantly reforming, and for that reason I believe that Reform Jews are correct, Reform is the mainstream of Judaism. All references to God as having a masculine gender have been removed, females get Bat-Mitzvahed, can be rabbis, have exactly the same status as males. These are gigantic, life-saving reforms, but it wasn’t the type of reform I was looking for. This was more like the reform created by responsible rational adults in committees reaching a new consensus. I was also told, “The age of miracles is over.” Inwardly the muse/metamorphic mutant inside me, who had already experienced paranormal anomalies was screaming: “Bull shit!” Reform Judaism was still a confining mold, softer, more flexible, less objectionable, but where adult rationality and ethical sensibility were enthroned and magic was tossed into the dust bin of historic past. The religion could slowly, responsibly be reformed, but so what! Not enough for a mutant already experiencing the miraculous! This Mythos wasn’t like drinking a cup of hemlock, it didn’t actually kill the spirit in one gulp, it was more like drinking a cup of decaf with non-dairy creamer.
I was fascinated to hear you refer to the androgyne and the shape-shifter in this context. In Casting Precious into the Cracks of Doom—-Androgyny, Alchemy, Evolution and the One Ring I wrote the following,
From my point of view the ultimate outer form of the androgyne would be that of a mercurial shape-shifter. Inwardly, the androgyne is a shape-shifter and inter-dimensional traveler connected to the axis mundi. As a changeling, the outer manifestation of the androgyne would alter to accord with the vicissitudes of psychic intentionality and circumstance. Singer points out that the Gnostics had a similar idea about Christ: Another Gnostic conceptualization of the Son of Man is that he is Aipolos, the pole (also a pun on the Greek word for goat herd, the one who must turn in all directions).This figure is symbolized by Mercurius, the ever-elusive trickster who is of essence but whom one cannot grasp; also Proteus, the shape shifter, in whom every quality exists in potentia. ….from the Gnostic Gospel According to Thomas:
…Jesus said to them: When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below, and when you make the male and the female into as single one, so that the male will not be male and the female (not) be female…then shall you enter (the Kingdom).
So I make this prediction about a new Mythos—it will involve a core alteration in subject/object, individual/collective, self/cosmos, ego/body/gender/eros/mortality. Instead of a new Mythos becoming the new Mold with which to stamp the individual for a new Zodiacal Age, it is the individual awakening to him/herself as self molding, mutating, changeling, subcreative, metamorphic generator of Mythopoesis and Realitypoesis. I just learned that “reality” derives from “King”—“re-“ as in “regal” and “realm.” “Reality” is what the King says is real, even the word itself reveals the source of our present reality/matrix—-the patriarchal.
In The Glorified Body—-Metamorphosis of the Body and the Crisis Phase of Human Evolution I wrote about our unlabeled but core will toward the Glorified Body—-toward breaking free of corporeal limitation and we see strained efforts to work that out on the corporeal plane with body building, anorexia, tattooing, piercing, plastic surgeries. In Friends Don’t Let Friends Incarnate in the Babylon Matrix I wrote,
I want to walk down the interdimensional highway, I want to break free of material form, I want to step across portals into green worlds, I want to hang out with elves, mutants, changelings, shapeshifters, angels, adolescent Jedhi struggling with the dark side of the force. I want to shimmer and become incandescent, want to shift my form at will, want to shift my form at will, want to step across the doorway, want to see out the corporeal incarnation here with you in the Babylon Matrix, want to let that portal have the impact I signed on for, want to let it know that I know that there are other worlds than these, know that there are other worlds than these, know that there are other worlds than these, that there are other worlds than these, there are other worlds than these, other worlds than these, other worlds than these, other worlds than these.
In Chapter V of my book The Capsule of Intentionality I wrote about UFOs: The truth about UFOs is likely far more interesting and significant than some of the threadbare, conventional alien scenarios. Valle quotes a scientist who describes UFOs as “reality transformers.” Reality transformers may well be the best and most accurate descriptive phrase that can be applied to UFOs at our present level of understanding. UFOs are apparently able to appear in a great variety of different forms to different people and, like an archetype, the variations seem to have much to do with the belief system and cultural conditioning of the perceiving psyche. Valle compares observing the UFO phenomenon to looking at a screen in a movie theater. You look at the screen and all sorts of fantastical images pass before your eyes. But to really understand what’s going on you need to look over your shoulder back at the projector, the source of all the endlessly varying images. This is where we need to look—not from the back of Plato’s Cave waiting for the shadow of a new Mythos/mold to stamp us into a new shape, but back over our shoulders, back into the lens of the projector, where we discover that we are reality transformers. What is Technos, or any magic, but reality transformation? And this brings us back to your writings about the “New Age.” What is the pillar of New Age thinking —-“You Create Your Own Reality”. This represents a key insight even as it destroys credibility by over-stating the present case. Presently, given enough inner resources and neurological health, we create our own inner realities, we create our own reality in the dream time, but all too often others on this plane create our reality for us and we have to suffer through the wasteland that is the collective reality. This is why no positive-thinking New Ager, armed with every possible affirmation, has ever created for themselves a world with no pollution or no George W. Bush. But the new Mythos is partly revealed in the movie the Matrix, which was consciously based on Gnosticism, where we uncover the source code, where we really do eat from the tree of the knowledge of the zeros and ones that constitute realities and learn to generate other worlds than these. In the most recent dream reported to me, a young male has sex with a changeling and then he becomes a changeling. We see the androgyne trying to wake up from the nightmare of history, of dominator Mythos where you are this wretched sinner, this nothing, meant to worship father-gods on your knees. But the new awakening will not deliver us from dark possibilities; it will actually generate a vast novelty of new forms of light and dark. Many who are deeply conditioned to be materialists will seek to live out the mutant androgyne path in materialist ways by confusing an intrapsychic orientation with an interpersonal one and confuse androgny with the interpersonal path of pansexuality or laborious mutation of the corporeal body. For example, Larry Wachoski, one of the two brothers who created The Matrix, is in an obsessive relationship with a dominatrix and is apparently trying to become female
(see Rolling Stone article http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/9138137?rnd=1137942109093&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.1059)
That’s fine with me, except that it apparently took away the real reality-transforming magic and the two sequels to the Matrix were sucktacular failures. The real purpose of the old Mythos, and the patriarchal dominator forms that arose with it, were, from the vantage of our present phase of evolution, there to so oppress the reality-transforming androgyne spirit so as to secretly potentiate it into a form capable of throwing over the Babylon Matrix. The eons long compression of carbon yields a diamond. As it says in so many words in the I Ching, some things do not fully blossom unless they are fully compressed and oppressed. This is the discovery of a mutant sage who transforms his body to merge with a nearly immortal giant sand worm in Frank Herbert’s God, Emperor of Dune. He sees a vision he calls “the Golden Path.” Essentially the Tao calls him to become an oppressive emperor with a reign of thousands of years. He is not motivated by power, but a selfless duty to serve evolution, and his vision shows him he can do this by so oppressing the human species that when mutants do emerge that are strong enough to overthrow him the species will never again allow its evolution to be suppressed. We need patriarchal forces to oppress us to potentiate the will to break with the essential conservatism of all organism, homeostasis, propagating the genome with a minimum of transcription errors, propagating the old collective baseline of consciousness and social forms, propagating Mythos as external mold.
In George Orwell’s 1984 the protagonist, Winston Smith, is taken to room 101, a place of ultimate torture and conditioning. Bewildered about the ultimate purpose of the monolithic evil he is confronting, he asks his tormentor, O’Brian, a party leader, “What is your vision of the future?” O’Brian responds, “Imagine a boot stepping on a human face forever.” Consider this as the new Mythos in a single sentence, A boot stepping on a human face for six thousands years until it explodes into novelty, metamorphosing into a reality-transforming changeling. Go to Part II
Last Entry on 1/22/06 For more recent entries go to Part II
Check out the website of depth psychologist Dr. Remo Roth, for his theories on Body Centered Consciousness and ‘psychophysical reality’ a theory which has taken him 33 years to develop, which combines quantumn physical epistomology with post-Jungian depth psychology. It blew my mind, and I’m glad my mind is not the same. There is Mythos for NOW. The future IS now. What is says, in fact, is the the Mythos as we have known it, guessed at it etc. is over. We enter a different realm through the temple of the ‘body’ – the gut – an its connection with the brain. This is cutting edge stuff, and I believe holds the key to healing for many.
Best to you guys,
Kristin
website: http://www.psychovision.ch
forum: http://psychophysical.free.fr