The Gnostic Prerogative
― Andrei Tarkovsky
The iconic image of a winged being that mimics our own biology. Dispassionate, observant, a recorder of events as a witness to them as well as being an intermediary between physicality and a universe that we cannot sense directly. The choir of voices said to exude from their ranks as a paean of exultation to something quite larger than themselves is composed simply by their existence in service to a process of creation. What is missing from this portraiture?
It is the carrier wave of emotion, the pulling and pushing of instinct as a biological automatism.
One would be tempted to say that this creature is a projected image of the workings of the human mind, a visual signet of consciousness as a omega state freed from the vicissitudes of
flux that emotions carry us upon.
Then again, we have an answered question before us. From whence did you I originate? Its a debate of contention and a perennial mystery as to whether the mind represents what some call in Biocentrism, the mystery within the origin of consciousness that contains the sliver of self awareness by way of ” I Am “ lodged between physicality and awareness itself having no objectified image. Have we transited from elsewhere, adopted ourselves to the environment, only to return to our origin state? And in this enfoldment into physicality have we developed amnesia, a loss of memory?
Why this transit of states if such a thing represents an actual transience? Why be here versus there? This is a more profound question. What possible purpose could this embodiment serve?
Does our existence have something to do with serving the welfare of this living planet? As we are differentiated from other creatures in what is possible within our domain of tasking..is this becoming increasingly apparent in relatively recent events? Is there a tug of war occurring surrounding us?
I express these questions without any corresponding answers and wonder if it is we who are the extraterrestrials, the visitors to Earth? If so, something went terribly wrong.
The Gnostics would suggest that it is the nature of physicality itself as a process prone to a spectrum of corruptions, and that a small group of overseers known as The Demiurge are in contest to wrest control of consciousness by channeling it to empirical physicality using a control system which William S Burroughs borrowed this concept from and transposed it as a metaphor wrapped in science fiction. One could call this a dominion of a planet by a chosen elite whose aim is to usurp nature and all that the term nature entails as a interdependent living system, an open versus a closed system whose realm incorporates the physicality of effects as well as the implicit nature from whence it derives which is non local. A sort of local rebellion as it were utilizing the steering of the psyche versus tactical missiles.
Why do so?
From the pages of many a arcane and ancient text, it seems this wresting of natural forces in a unnatural manner is to create an alternative kingdom of subservience wherein the entire purpose of this transit here becomes a resource for a rebellion of resistance or more cogently, an upending of who serves whom. You could say that the means of empirical controls is poised against an end that has no physicality if you can follow this line of very old metaphysics.
It makes for an interesting framing of this situation.
In writing this I am playing with contrast and comparison although the parallelisms are odd, even perhaps striking depending on our mood. On Earth as it is in Heaven might have an entirely different contest as representational of a bridge wherein we are the embodiment of the local as well as the non local. The metaphors of consciousness as effects is a interesting tunnel to traverse between what is optical,....sensory.. if you will ..and that which we cannot observe that which lies behind it as a foundational premise of causation.
I continue to wonder as I wander.
I do not know if this will stick. They finally discovered electric bacteria.
ReplyDeleteFeeding directly off of electrons, I am sure that is rather basic. I do not know if there will be any studies of genetic predisposition, collectives in the upper atmosphere responding to the local population in the soil, water, or frontal lobes. Sometimes I wonder how it would be if the distribution curves of sentience feeding on pure energy would just be the thing itself.
Instead of warfare, and politics.
It would be a hell of a thing if the War in Heaven was literally between pathogens and eternal Life collectively responding to human interpretations. Small things, and Chaos. Processed through identity, seawater and pathogens, symbionts, and something that is before and after.
That sparked some thoughts that I won't try to tease into place:
ReplyDeleteGnostic theology always reminds me of Phillip K. Dick and his novels VALIS, Radio Free Albemuth and The Divine Invasion.
On angels and other levels of being above man, I wrote in my blog:
"On the other hand, God the absolute can have no experience in the way we do; being All, with nothing outside himself, there can be no separation of subject and object. To have such experiences, he must limit his point of view, and to that extent he becomes less than absolute. The full range of experiences demands all possible types of splits between self/selves and other(s). Thus all our and others' views of the [Indra's] net and each other are a consequence of God's need to limit himself so that he can be not only everything but each thing."
The process of incarnation has some other resonances for me. As I wrote in this comment on SF author and mathematician Rudy Rucker's blog about a mandala-like symbol he found on the sidewalk and its connection to Yeats and Kabbalism:
"Another instance of a form similar to the double-cone [besides Ain Soph joining trees-of-life in different worlds] occurs in Bruce Moen’s exploration of what the Monroe Institute calls “Focus 27″, though the cones are more like bells or hyperboloids. He describes a large, antenna-like, horizontal structure of this double-cone form whose function is to compress souls (which he says look like cocktail shrimp or cheese curls) so that they can reincarnate without excess awareness, which would lead to sensory overload."
The question of who is running this device and what their motivations are is not fully explained. A brief and bland interview with one of the "Entry Directors" at the "Reentry Station" is in Bruce Moen's book Voyages Into the Afterlife: Charting Unknown Territory, but there seems to me to be something evasive and high-handed in this character's manner that makes me think of Archons.
Anon
ReplyDeleteThis is a fleshed out version of what a semi-regular correspondent had sent me on two previous occasions. Unfortunately the concept was abbreviated to the point of being difficult for me to unravel and consequently I was fairly certain it would be for readers. I was hoping he would send a more cogent version which is what this appears to be. It may seem highly improbable to some but recently bacteria was studied by scientists as a potential source of the biological compulsion toward theology, believe it or not.
E Harris
ReplyDelete"The Exegesis of Phillip K Roth" was one of the most excruciating examples of a mind at the end of it's tether in terms of logic to come to grips with anomalous experiential realities I have ever come across. In one sense it was breathtaking,in terms of the amount of thought and philosophy he put to the task.as well as Gnostic metaphysics..The nature of whether his memory was encapsulated into the alternate reality be became enmeshed in makes for somewhat painful reading...although he was brilliant, I think we all suffer the same near sighted capability to fathom the full scope of what we are involved in, willingly or otherwise, to the full extent it is potentially possible.
Dick's writings are all literally dread-full, but became more so in his latter years due to his chronic amphetamine abuse and resulting psychosis. I think his ideas and speculations were more often a help to him in getting a handle on his paranoia than they were leading him further into madness, but it was a close thing, and certainly some of the truths as well as imagined horrors that he found were not conducive to a peaceful state of mind.
DeleteTimothy Leary also had a bout of perceived extraterrestrial telepathy as well, which he records in hisStarseed Transmission. Robert Anton Wilson did as well, which he wrote about in Cosmic Trigger. Ingo Swann, the first remote-viewing star also wrote a book about it, Penetration: The Question of Extraterrestrial and Human Telepathy, which I haven't yet read (though I just found a pdf of it near the top of a search on the title.) Another remote viewer and author, Courtney Brown, seems to have pretty much lost all pretense of objectivity by mixing psi and ETs.
The subject of alien telepathy is about as far out as it is possible to go, so it isn't surprising that those who specialize in going as far out as it is possible to go have gone there. But are these aliens? Certainly the extra-dimensional or demonic interpretation is even more relevant here than with UFOs. Early magical texts were the first to concern themselves with entities from other worlds, though these entities were seen as personifications of astrological spiritual dimensions and angles as well as angels or demons. Unfortunately messing around with this spiritual filing system seems to often lead to going way nuts. A certain amount of care is needed when trying to use these ideas, just as when dealing with other hazardous areas. RAW called it "maybe logic", and declared: "Convictions cause convicts!".
Always pay out a string behind you if you venture into the labyrinth, and don't neglect to frequently follow it back - the Abyss is an unhealthy place to dwell for long.