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073: Gateway

"Modern human beings no longer listen to God. Modern human beings no longer listen. The first sentence is a theological statement. The second one is proven by, for example, the fact that in spite of all our advanced technology we obviously do not consider it necessary to supply our television sets with a sound system that reflects the technical posibilities...

"Wherever God revealed Himself to human beings, He was heard. He may have appeared as a light, but in order to be understood, His voice had to be heard. 'And God spoke' is a standard sentence in all holy scriptures. The ears are the gateway."

-Joachim-Ernest Berendt, Nada Brahma: The World is Sound

Posted by Teppo at 08:05 AM | Comments (0) February 23, 2004

072: The Invention of Belief

"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creature, shaped by their hard, defining edges..." (Gene Wolfe from The Shadow of the Torturer)

A comment which reflects Jung's concept of the collective unconsciousness, Huxley's commentary during his mescaline experience of the existence of the Not-Self reality of objects, and Plato's concept of the Ideal Form. God is in the details, we say, but aren't the details just symbols?

Okay, I may be stretching on the last one, but the idea started in my head by Travis in the thread comments of the last entry is that we don't invent anything, we rediscover through a process of remembering what is already there.

Which, as an aside, reminds me of a thought experiment about the commingling of genetic theory and the existence of Adam and Eve. Now, if we accept the possibility of genetic drift brought about by mutation and you accept that the eating of the apple as First Sin, then it follows that this was the introduction of a mutation into the system which, through the generations which follow, gradually decayed the human DNA. Now, I'm not bringing this up as an argument for racial purity or some such thing, but as an observation of an abstract system. If your system is pure, then it won't develop anomalies. Since we, as human beings, have anomalies (birth defects and what not), then we can conclude that our genetic makeup isn't as rarified as it once was. And, purely as a thought experiment as to the makeup of our mental and physiological states, how like we've become the runt children of Adam and Eve. How less "human" are we?

Now, I'm a child of evolutionary theory and the use of Christian theory of our existence is simply a useful tool to concretualize the discussion of a single point of creation. What I'm circling throughout these observations is the idea that there is some underlying unity to the human experience which supersedes the regionalisms and culturalisms which make us think others are different or of a lesser quality than ourselves. Beneath all the distinctions is a unified system of symbols -- of Ideas -- and it is our ability to touch this abstract (or truly Real) system which makes us human.

And, as we become more and more the stunted runt of the litter through our perseverence in a course of forgetting and denial, are we becoming less human and more just like animals that happen to walk upright and put on fancy dresses for parties?

Anyone remember that dream sequence of the wolves at the dinner party in The Company of Wolves?

Posted by Teppo at 10:52 PM | Comments (0) February 18, 2004

071: The Great Work

There are aspects of Gematria which fascinate me --- well, aspects of any attempt to reduce our comprehended breadth of knowledge down to a single luminous moment is fascinating, when you get right down to it -- and the effort to reduce language to a series of inter-related numeric sequences is one of my favorites. Now, a proper technique of Gematria -- the art of reducing words and phrases into numeric values -- really requires a knowledge of Hebrew because the art is based on the idea that one is attempting to pierce the veil of mystery surrounding God's words which have been set down since antiquity and since God's words were transcribed in Hebrew (and I'm only really talking about the Torah here, anyway), performing gematric valuations on sentences and words in any language other than Hebrew is already removing yourself one step from your solution.

However, the basic idea is this: distillation. It's the alchemical Great Work all over again: attempting to distill the unpure into a single drop of purity.

[And I'm distracted for a moment by consideration of that phrase "single drop of purity." If you define this as a brief dollop of Godhead, then you can call it a "single drop of God's blood." What about our blood? A single drop from you or I contains enough coded information to recreate the human race. Your DNA stand (which is evident in every cell of your body) identifies your individuality, but it also preserves our identity as a species. How's that for singular purity?]

So, distillation. The argument follows that we would recognize a more pure state, we can distinguish between more and less pure (and I use these terms instead of "simple" and "complex" because I don't think it follows that "more pure" is necessarily "less complex" -- it's that DNA thing again). And "recognize" may be the wrong term; we are "cognizant of" greater purity, we understand the possibility of greater purity. We "know" greater purity.

What I've been circling for a few weeks is the idea of a single core language, a pre-Babel lingua franca that was universally understood and known by all mankind. God's own tongue, if you will. Some will say -- and there may even be a quote by Einstein or some other historical scientific luminary to this effect -- that mathematics is the pure form of language.

Posted by Teppo at 03:59 PM | Comments (3) February 15, 2004

070: Gathering The Pieces

Editor Man Travis pointed out in a comment to the last entry that the 69th chapter in Aleister Crowley's Book of Lies is subtitled: "The way to succeed -- and the way to suck eggs." Now, Ministry's Psalm 69 record has been a favorite of mine for years and I never made the connection between the symbols on the sleeve (and the quote which seals "Psalm 69"), and Crowley's Book of Lies which only serves to accentuate the point for me that all understanding of the world is a matter of your own knowledge. The picture makes sense if you have all the pieces. So, with that aphorism in mind, I go to gather some more pieces.

Crowley's Book of Lies: "This Interchange, the Double Gift of Tongues, the Word of Double Power -- ABRAHADABRA! -- is the sign of the GREAT WORK, for the GREAT WORK is accomplished in Silence. And behold is not that Word equal to Cheth, that is Cancer, whose sigil is...? This Work also eats up itself, accomplishes its own end, nourishes the worker, leaves no seed, is perfect in itself. Little children, love one another!"

The Great Work is the ultimate goal of all magicians and alchemists: the transmutation of dross into gold. While some remained slave to the physical realization of this goal (turning lead into gold -- which, by the way, was the name of a Ministry side-project just to keep track of all these things), others applied this effort to their spiritual selves, seeking to venture beyond their mean flesh and blood existences into purified realms of spiritual and mental enlightenment.

The sigil of Cancer, as mentioned before, is a sideways "69," an Ouroborean birth death life cycle. The more we learn, the more we can nourish ourselves, begatting a self-perpetuating creation which becomes fully self-realized. And, if you have all knowledge, can you not comprehend the totality of all and, in doing so, finally know yourself?

Crowley's Liber 777: "The five letters used in the word are A, the crown; B, the wand; D, the cup; H, the sword; R, the rosy cross; and refer further to Amoun the Father, Thoth His messener, and Isis, Horus, Osis the human-divine triad...but always the symbol will remain the Expression of the Goal and the Exposition of the Path."

Posted by Teppo at 11:04 AM | Comments (0) February 11, 2004

069: 69

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind with this number for any child who attaches themselves to Beavis and/or Butthead is obvious. But, if you pick a font with some flourish or squint just right, it starts to become the ying/yan or even the astrological symbol for Cancer.

There was an email that spammed its way through the inbox recently that included a picture of a couple fucking. Or, at least, that is what I saw. My son, or any innocent for that matter, would see dolphins if he looked at the picture. And, sure if I squinted just right and disengaged my libido, I could see the porpoises playing. But, not surprisingly, I had to be told to look for them before they made themselves visible.

I'm standing at a bus stop in Seattle right now, thumbing this onto my handheld, waiting for the 66 bus. Seattle doesn't have a 69 bus, for the obvious reasons. Some things get marked for all time.

Posted by Teppo at 12:10 PM | Comments (2) February 08, 2004

068: The Supra-Reality Rift

The Rift separates us from the combined mind of Binah and Chokmah. The veil is drawn between the enlightened mind state of Pure Thought and Emotion. The twin paths of Severity and Mercy cross the Rift, but the way is guarded and protected. The demon Khoronzon watches over the Abyss, ready to snatch the unwary -- the unprepared initiate who has not girded themselves properly against the monster of the Rift. His is like Goya's Saturn, ready to devour his own children, the very progeny who seek to discover the true reality on the far side of the Rift.

Neither of the twin paths is easy, both have their traps and snares. They are not wide paths, broad boulevards down which you can hurl yourself in the hope that your resultant velocity will be enough to carry you across the Rift. The path is narrow, twisted, the roadway marked with craters and crevasses. You can stumble, fall, and even break your ankle in a crooked hole. There are skeletal memories along the path, other magicians who have caught their legs in the cracked pathway and been unable to free themselves.

There are tiny parasites who live on the breast of Khoronzon. They have no eyes or ears and their noses are but raw slits on the flat faces. They can smell the fear and the panic of a astral traveler who has found themselves trapped on the path. These parasites have short, stubby wings that carry their burr-covered bodies through the hot air which boils off the Rift. They float like bloated bats on the thick breeze, their blank faces quivering as they taste the air for the scent of fear.

I watch them feast on a struggling magician. They attach themselves to his spectral form, the tiny burrs on their thick flesh adhering them to his gossamer form. There are mouths on their abdomens, bleak slits filled with cracked teeth which stretch and burrow into the struggling magician's astral form. His soul breaks and bleeds, white smoke drifting in a thin line. Two of the parasitic creatures lap at the trail of fading spirit milk, their tongues as equally ridged as their skin.

It doesn't take long for the parasites to devour the astral visitor. There is nothing left of him but a dim outline, a polygon composite like a black and white vector drawing. The parasites, too heavy to fly now, drag themselves back to the edge of the Abyss where Khoronzon waits for them. The intelligent fire in his eyes watches me.

I am afraid of Abyss and its keeper. I am afraid of what lies beyond the hazy veil which hangs across the Rift. I am afraid of losing myself in the Pure Reality of the other side. Khoronzon knows this, knows that I do not have the strength or the skill to evade his grasp if I try to cross the Rift. His fiery eyes dance with glee.

-Jump- his eyes tell me. -Make the leap.- The fires twist hypnotically. -I will catch you.-

I have no doubt he would.

Posted by Teppo at 04:58 PM | Comments (0) February 04, 2004

067: Dream Languages

What happened at Babel? Did the architects and workers have the same nightmare one feverish night and all awoke with their tongues scrambled? If you subscribe to the Biblical view of the universe, the events at Babel are the explanation for the sheer diversity of tongues which can be found across the globe. If you're in the Darwinian camp, the explanation for linguistic diversity is a bit tougher of a sell; you can't just write it all off as several thousand years of "regionalisms." Even if the human animal, as he graduated to more upright status, developed in isolated pockets and language was strictly a result of his reactions to his region, the functional spaces in his brain wherein language developed were the same from man to man.

For a moment, though, we'll consider the nexus point of Babel as simply the point where language began because, when you get right down to it, "language" didn't really exist prior to that moment. In fact, it may very well be that we all communicated by telepathy or some other direct brain-to-brain interface because what happens the moment you introduce "language" into the equation, you introduce "interpretation" and, well, the Fall of Babel takes place.

Our dream states are language-less. They exist as self-contained creative environments. They aren't any less real if you speak French or German or Japanese or some Urdu dialect. You don't dream less or less vividly if English is your primary or secondary language; your brain continues to fabricate reality regardless of how you form concepts and sentences. What kills your dreams is the act of communicating them -- putting them to words -- to others.

But how different are your dreams from mine? If I could jack into your dream state, would I be able to understand it simply because I, too, am human? Would I unconsciously know what is happening or what I am seeing? Is there a universal symbolic system by which we all know and comprehend the universe that exists a priori to any spoken or written language?

Posted by Teppo at 12:42 AM | Comments (0) February 01, 2004

066: Dream Machines

Japanese toymaker Takara have announced a dream machine -- a portable device which will allow you to influence your dreams by seeding it with some key phrases and words. During your slumber the Yumemi Kobo ("dream workshop") will whisper these words back to you (in your own pre-recorded voice, naturally) as well as drip some ambient music into your ear canals and frost your nasal passages with a fragrant scent. It's all very scientifically crafted to influence your dreaming mind and allow you to become suseptible to suggestion.

My son was born in the final hours of last year and I can't remember the last time I had a full night's sleep (actually, it was January 2nd and it was glorious). I would pay good money for a dream machine right now, but there are some interesting things to be discovered in sleep deprivation. My dreams aren't dreams so much as quicksand. The other night I was being suffocated by a bean bag chair. It's the first time that I have ever realized I was dreaming (only because we don't actually own a bean bag chair) and, because I was suffering, I forced myself to wake up in order to escape the smothering embrace of the bean chair. I remember working very hard to wake myself up and, once I had, I was even more exhausted than I had been a few hours earlier when I had laid down.

But I influenced my dream. I didn't need a dream machine; I didn't need some device whispering in my ear. "You are in Venice. The tide is high and the waters are lapping against the flagstones along the Grand Canal. You can smell the salt in the air." Whether it be through a hypnogogic state or through a direct neural interface, we can change the world, we can change OUR world.

And how different is our world from actual reality? Aldous Huxley in his seminal work The Doors of Perception talks about a Not-Self state, a state of perception outside the mental baggage of your own history and perceptive understanding where you perceive things as they truly are. Language, he believes, is a convenience that allows society to exist, but it is a pale reflection of the True Being of objects.

If we use language to influence our dreams, are we not then just reinforcing the reduced awareness which language inflicts on our perception? If we inject our dreams with words, are we not constraining the possibilities of flight?

Posted by Teppo at 01:13 PM | Comments (0)