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082: Cryptoprophecy

Speaking of notebooks, I opened mine last night and noticed the last entry was over two months ago. I had recorded a surreal experience I had had in the checkout line at my local supermarket. At least I think that is what I had written. My handwriting has a tendency to be unreadable which, I think, is part of the charm of the notebook. When the book is discovered by my grandchildren, I want them to have to puzzle out the entries. They will scratch their heads and wonder if I was a raving visionary or just an addled ancestor whose pen hand had a tendency to wander across the page.

I won't have to wait two generations. I get that feeling now when I try to decipher what I wrote back in February. I think the last word is "cryptoprophecy." I have no idea its relevance to the story that I was trying to get down which, in a sense, gives it that much more weight and import to the surrounding words.

I was reading a bit of Rammellzee's Gothic Futurism manifesto yesterday. He argues that there are twenty-six Letters which contain the mathematical secrets which will allow us to return to the stars. It is our culture, our oppressive religious fascism, which prevents us from seeing the true nature of the Letters. We have been convinced that the twenty-six make up the "alphabet," and we can know longer see the "alphabeta."

Robert Anton Wilson argues in The Cosmic Trigger that reality is not a singularity and that "reality" as we define it is a perceived universe. What is "real" is based emphatically on our senses, on our perceptions of what surrounds us and is separate from us. We create our world by witnessing it. A blade of grass is not inherently green; it is our perception of the manner in which light is reflected from its surface that makes it green.

We bring a lot to the table. Too much, probably. Beneath all the perception, beneath the obscuration of language and the totalitarianism of culture is something immutable (though Wilson will argue that even believing that statement constitutes a belief structure and, as such, limits your possibilities). Is it Rammellzee's Letters? We have to explode language in order to hear the sound of the Letters. We have to decode the confusion and maze of our perceptions in order to unlock the secret histories stored in our brains.

At least, that's what I get out of it. It's just a scribbled word on a page. I could be wrong. I could be imagining things.

Posted by Teppo at April 26, 2004 08:10 AM

Comments

In "Magic and Mystery in Tibet" Alexandra David-Neel makes the reader note that the most enlightened sages in Tibet warn or explain to their students that much of what we perceive is within ourselves, but we should not be so naive as to assume that ALL is within ourselves. Maybe, just maybe, there are gods and demons controlling and haunting us. Sometimes it's safer to assume they're real and treat them as such, and sometimes it's healthier to pretend they're just a part of our imagination.

Reminds me of this on-going conversation about tulpas as well.