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[Loba]

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Notes:

• When we are talking about creating a significant change in our life, we are talking about killing aspects of ourselves, and we are talking about reconfiguring this vast, complex non-linear system that is one's mind, that is holding one's entire life together.
• It is tricky because often times when you are making a significant change it is not a straight up improvement.  You don't always take this tangle of complicated survival habits and then you just slap on some positive stuff and everything is better, more often you have to regress first - and certain parts of your life, you have to break it apart.

• You take your career and you look at it and you think about how your career is inauthentic, what you are doing at work maybe even doing something that violates one's greatest values - maybe even doing something illegal - you have to look at that and see that and to move to the next level in one's spiritual growth to be more authentic to people in one's life.
• One would first have to resolve this deeper inauthenticity that's there in the career, but the career is tied to the ability to support one's family.
• If one loses their career, how do they support them, perhaps the wife will leave and the children will be resentful and one's whole life could fall apart.
• And so that is why one doesn't look deeply at the career or make any important changes, because every part of one's life is connected with every other part and it is like a house of cards that's holding itself up.
• If you question one little corner and you pull on the cards the whole thing will collapse, and so one's mind is scared and knows this, especially when doing the deepest spiritual work: self inquiry; hardcore meditation; solo retreats; deep psychedelic trips where you are questioning your entire life.
• This is where you're questioning the very foundation of your house of cards, and it does get scary because your life could fall apart depending on how dysfunctional your life is and and all of us have this, but it comes in degrees.
• Some of us have a lot more than others do, so if your life is extremely dysfunctional, your ego is not even going to let you analyze the very foundation of your house of cards because it is way to threatening, too painful and will cause too much suffering, so your ego is going to keep the awareness at a surface level and even then you will struggle.

• For you to get significant improvement in the quality of your life that is proportional to how deep you can go and how much you can work on the foundation and how much you can tolerate working on the foundation and working on the foundation comes with suffering.
• Because suffering is what you're always trying to avoid in your life.  You do two things, pursue pleasure and avoid suffering.  That is your life in a nutshell, from the moment you were born until today, in every facet of your life - from your career to your eating habits to your exercise or lack thereof, to your relationships, and to your education and everything else.

• That constitutes what survival is.  Survival.  You're always trying to survive.  
• And what spirituality is trying to transcend your survival drives and to look at reality in a more fundamental way.  See reality the way that it looks when you're not preoccupied with survival. 

 

• Survival includes social survival; so even though you might think you're not surviving everyday.
• Look closely at your life to see that is what you are doing with most of your time.
• Because the ego is built upon the avoidance of suffering and the ego creates all sorts of clever structures in order to avoid suffering and to maximize pleasure and because you whole life has been built upon that.
• One is built upon another, like an ancient city like modern Rome is built on many layers of ancient ruins - probably ten or twenty layers of ancient Rome underneath modern Rome - the ego and psyche is constructed this way.
• To get significant change we have to go to the lowest levels, to the origin.
• All the problems you avoid is because you didn't want to look at them, you didn't want to deal with the core issues.
• And so because of this you should expect that if you do start to excavate down below, do some psychic archeology on yourself then what you're going to discover is that there's a lot of skeletons in your closet down there which are responsible for why you feel incomplete, dissatisfied and inauthentic, which is why you worry so much about getting approval, about them liking you in the social domain.
• Because you have spent your whole life avoiding the deep issues and now any time you try to tackle those issues, suffering will come up because you have been sweeping that stuff under the rug and the ego backlash a lot of times comes from a sort of recognition of your own inauthenticity.  
• Here you were thinking you were self developed and were working hard and accomplished a lot, but then the rude awakening comes and all of that is a façade.  You were lying to yourself and the world, and there are these deeper truths that you didn't want to look at that you are now looking at and it is agitating and now you have these emotions that come up.  Fear, anger, envy, jealousy, sadness, is common, a sense of loss, and that's is right - you are losing a part of your ego, and if we are talking about going to do self inquiry towards enlightenment then you are going to lose yourself, not just a fragment, but the entire thing.
• And how do you cope with this?  Let those insights permeate and start to affect you everyday world, and now it starts to get real - now you really feel it because what does this mean for one's career, business, money, relationships - will one ever even be in a relationship again - what does it all mean, for your family, friendships - the mind starts to accost one with fears and doubts - some are legit - your life may need to fall apart before you're able to reconstruct it into something healthy.
• Most people don't appreciate, they try to always build more and more on top of their life - they take an additive approach, but they don't realize that stuff does have to die off if we are talking about change, you can't just add more and more to your ego.

Who you gon' be when the world gets fried
Listen to your friend, it's the voice inside
If you lose me where the hell you gonna go
Take somebody's life who the hell gonna know

As the Witch of Gluttony, Daphne's reason for living was to feel full, causing her to care about the amount more than taste and hunger. She was also stated to repeatedly vomiting out food and eat it again, although she seems to have indulged in such acts only when there was no more food left. If that option failed, she would resort to eating objects she could chew, such as rugs, curtains, clothes, etc. In an effort to try and get rid of the never ending hunger, Daphne created the Demon Beasts but soon after lost control of them and accidentally released them into the world. Despite the threat the Demon Beasts present, they were created with a positive mindset - to save the world from hunger. Her view on hunger was bizarre and weird, stating that those who try to eat others should be wary of being eaten themselves, therefore she was unable to comprehend Subaru's counterarguments to her self-serving theory.

Daphne's speech was described as incoherent and surreal. Talking with her eye to eye was practically impossible for anyone who wasn't suffering from extreme hunger, as she did not understand the basic human mindset and values. Her only goal was to save the world and herself from hunger, no matter the cost. Subaru described her mentality as animalistic and not something a person should possess. 

I can feel it tonight
I know I'll catch your eye
Touching you feels so right, let me come inside
Just come with me tonight, take me for a ride
Touching you feels so right, let me, let me satisfy

Let me, satisfy

Let me, let me, satisfy

Let me

Over four hundred years ago, the Witch of Gluttony Daphne sought to wipe starvation from the world. To do so, she created magical creatures called Mabeasts that would feed off of magical energy. The idea was that, as the creatures fed off of magical energy and not a physical food source, they could serve as a infinitely renewable food source for the people of the world. Of these beasts, there were three that were far superior to all others—the White Whale, the Black Serpent, and the Great Rabbit. The Great Rabbit was a ginormous collection of small fist-sized rabbits that shared a singular consciousness. Each rabbit could multiply infinitely, and the collective consciousness would only die if every single rabbit was killed simultaneously. Unlike the Whale and the Serpent, Daphne implanted her own insatiable sense of hunger on the Great Rabbit, ensuring that it would grow more and more to provide more food.

Unfortunately, the mabeasts created by Daphne went out of control and began consuming living beings (as they were typically rich in magical energy). The Great Rabbit was no exception to this, as it went from place to place devouring anything with meat on its body. It chose its next targets by following concentrated flows of magical energy to their source. Over the years, the Three Great Mabeasts including the Rabbit became known as unstoppable calamities responsible for numerous tragic massacres. 

Born on a day the sun didn't rise, born in a world without sunshine.  You.  You're the apple of my eye.

Edited May 30, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

"Wi'hil wa'haren ai ni yulma fa'at van bien. Ai yulma van bien-sin ein."

Notes:

• Raymond Lully who was one of the great early alchemists once pointed out that the great tragedy of the concept of alchemy was the transmutation of metals.
• Basil Valentin, a monk of St. Bennett has the same thoughts when he wrote into one of his books, woe to the gold makers.
• This is an interesting thought because our subject this morning essentially is esoteric alchemy.
• The history of alchemy divides into two distinct branches that have descended from antiquity.
• Possibly originating in Egypt.
• The word chem in chemistry and alchemy is an ancient name for Egypt.
• Al is divine, or sacred - and we find it used in the Bible in such terms as Elohim and of course the deity of Islam is Allah.
• The divine prefix would indicate that alchemy is a spiritual art; a divine secret science.
• The great texts of alchemy have come principally from the Hermetic background of the begin of the Christian era and probably there were alchemical schools in Alexandria at that time.
• Also we have early records of alchemy in China and in India.
• It seems that very far back there has descended a double concept of chemistry. 
• Physical chemistry having to do with those areas of knowledge which are now considered scientific, and spiritual chemistry which was a sacred art.

• In practice what is the difference in these two systems?
• The alchemical transmutation was impossible unless the alchemist himself was in the process of transformation.
• He could not sit back with his bottles and test tubes and retorts and consider his art simply another way of advancing chemistry, or a way of replenishing his own financial needs.
• We find as is today that chemistry is largely dominated with the profit concept, the idea of wealth.
• We are making all kinds of chemical experiments for various reasons, some of them very good, some of them very dangerous, but always with a certain concept of return in material wealth for the good or the evil that is done.
• So that largely chemistry is a material art, dominated by scientific inquiry and not in any way involving any necessary spiritual overtones.
• The chemist does not have to be a person of great faith, he does not have to have a metaphysical experience.  He does not need to believe in metaphysical or mystical procedures, he is simply working with physical tests and texts.
• The alchemist on the other hand is an entirely different type of person.  In history of alchemy as it is descending to us, most of the alchemists were pious, deeply religious and convinced that their advancement of science was a spiritual contribution to the wellbeing of society.
• The alchemist was concerned with the advancement of his own inner life.

• The number of alchemical terms in mystical writings have been confusing to modern students of alchemical work, the use given in most cases probably the original intended usage.  Namely that is all part of a great system of human regeneration.
• It has nothing to do with the advancement of worldly goods or possession.
• In Europe alchemists got into serious trouble and were persecuted and put to death.
• Why?  Because the rulers wanted the secret of gold making.
• So the moment the alchemist himself began to publicize this part of his belief it opened him to persecution, so that the gold making as a science brought many of the alchemists to destruction.
• Also the manufacture of gold or any other precious substance without control by the state could result in the bankruptcy of the world, so the ancients were very careful on that point.
• Can gold be manufactured?  The answer has to be in the affirmative.  It can be, it also is obvious that the subject could be advanced and in the course of time it is probable that artificial metal can be created by chemistry and various forms of progress that we have in the sciences.
• But this is not the real purpose of alchemy.  And where the chemists all get together to raise their own level of economic living, the science was not for that purpose.
• The earliest alchemists that we know were using symbols at an early date.
• Many cases, a symbol has been accepted as literal pictures and this has lead to further confusion.
• In ancient alchemy the great retort in which all the experiments were being made was the solar system itself, viewed as a globe within which all chemistries and alchemies of existence were taking place.
• We know from our own researches in more recent times and the ancients believe this world we live is a great theater of mysteries.
• Of secrets that have never been solved and actually the world is a strangely complete thing, within itself containing everything needed for the perpetuation of itself.
• This condition goes on peacefully and naturally until human ambition and avarice takes over.
• The ambition of the average modern person is involving fame, distinction or wealth.
• Therefore he immediately uses knowledge for the formation directly or indirectly of gold.
• He may not make the gold in the retort, but he will sell secrets or scientific developments which will bring him rich financial rewards.
• We might say, what is the harm?  Well one of the reasons it is dangerous is because the moment we begin to experiment with the basic laws of existence, we very actively get our own integrities.
• Natural laws have to be obeyed, and modern thinking is not of the obeying type.
• We are not interested in obeying natural laws, we are interested in changing them to fit our conveniences, we want to use natural law to exploit the universe in which we live and as a result we are constantly in trouble and are in the same dilemma that burdened the alchemist.

Are you, are you comin' to the tree?
Where they strung up a man, they say who murdered three
Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be
If we met at midnight in the hanging tree

Are you, are you comin' to the tree
Where dead man called out for his love to flee?
Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be
If we met at midnight in the hanging tree

• Now when we go into the alchemy of China and India, we find almost immediately that the symbolism moves from pure chemistry to all kinds of vibratory patterns which we know in life.
• Alchemy in China was tied in with music, and the musical scale, the harmonics of life.
• The ancient Greeks of the Pythagorean period combine all their knowledge of cosmogony and the actual affirmation of man into a great mathematical formula, which was never meant to be taken literally, but was to become almost like a mantra, a sacred statement when obeyed could produce tremendous results.
• Also as we go through the different systems we find that Hermetic philosophy became involved in alchemy.
• The Hermetics of Alexandria followed a mysterious being known to them as Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes the Thrice greatest.  
• Who he was and when he lived no one seems to know.
• In Hermeticism we begin to sense the beginning of the transmutation of man as the essential purpose of them great alchemical procedure. 
• In Europe it was necessary to be more careful in the prolongation of some of these beliefs because of the opposition of the clergy.
• The clergy sensed the fact that in some way alchemy was a religion and they were therefore quite sure it had to be included among the heresies.

• As a result however of the evolution of Arabic knowledge into Europe, alchemical secrets passed a keeping of persons, and these persons gained their knowledge of the alchemical processes largely from Constantinople and Baghdad.
• This meant still more that it had to be held in secret against the persecutions and martyrdoms in Europe.
• We find alchemy in many parts of the world recognized for what it actually was and that is a series of symbols intended to convey a major operation concerning the transmutation of man himself.
• Without this transmutation, none of the great good things that we dream of can come about, therefore the elixir of life or the philosopher's stone was that power by means of which all good things could come to pass.
• Wherein all errors and forms of ignorance could be overcome and where the human being himself would gain complete control of not only his own life but the laws governing it.
• Therefore we come to this thought, that seems to be very much in the mediaeval alchemical tradition and that is is there any proof of transmutation?
• The process of actual transformation of a thing of what it is to something totally different.
• The answer is simple, the answer lies in the human body itself.
• The process of digestion of food requires the transformation of elements, it requires an almost instantaneous adaptation of certain principals to special usages for which they were not originally intended.
• It is possible therefore for food which is taken in to in some way maintain a life principal which is not a food, which is not in the body otherwise.
• But it must be used to nourish the spiritual ends or principle of the human being, therefor the bread and butter, cheese and milk keep alive something alive that is not any of them, keep alive a thing which throughout life will continue to cause the heart to beat, circulate the blood and nourish the functions of the human being until the life ends.

• Therefore out of what goes into him comes out of him, arts and sciences, poetry and music, philosophy and science, religion and economics. 
• They all come out of someone and that someone is nourished by the food, by the atmosphere around him, by water and by the rays of the planets and the light of the sun and moon, therefore the wedding of the sun and moon in alchemy is important because we are going to have a union of the principles for which they stand inside the human body itself.
• We have the recognition that one light flowing behind all forms and made available through nutrition to every living creature.
• We find from the harvests in the fields that a world is nourished, and those that eat these harvests become proficient in many forms of activity.
• This in a sense is a problem that we find in the Christian doctrine of the Eucharist.
• Here we have a problem of the divine blood and in alchemy, this divine blood is the elixir of life.

• How this divine blood operates is not clear to many people, but in some mysterious way universal life supports living things, and these living things may never be aware of the source of their own nutrition and in a mechanistic universe such as ours, they do not care, all they want is to keep on going. 
• Out of all this is a new concept of nutrition, a concept involving vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates and an entire system based upon the development of highly specialized nutrients from the various food materials that we eat.
• That all these food things have something to do with the maintenance of the various structures of the human body.
• In this sense of the word there is an acceptance of alchemy, without any understanding of it.

• Here we have the realization that nutrition does do the work, but how this nutrition does it and why it does it and how one general type of nutrition can maintain an infinite diversity of creatures is another problem that is difficult to understand.
• One of the problems is the nutrition must be regarded as conditioned to the creature which is receiving the nourishment.
• So we have within our own bodies an extraordinary laboratory of which the mysteries we do not know, in which every type of nutrient is made available to every type of living thing and all this happens without a chemist sitting somewhere and arranging it all.
• We can in nutrition have someone who can help to make it practical, who can prescribe materials for common nutrition and special emergencies that arise, but prescribing them is not creating them and prescribing them is not understanding them, it is simply that we have come to know certain materials have certain effects and we have come to rely on them.
• Immortal life is one of the beliefs of alchemy.
• There were a number of unusual concepts about this matter, some of these concepts are difficult to understand even now, but we know that they definitely believed that there were in the world a few individuals who had solved the mystery of alchemy.

• Life expectancies are increasing constantly, but life expectancies to reach phenomenal extension of time are now either a phenomenon in themselves or else they are the result of very serious scientific conditioning or constitutional ability to adapt nutrition for a longer period of time.
• The alchemists also pointed out that the beginning of the alchemical experiment was to remove all friction from life; wear and tear.
• What is wear and tear?  It is doing things they have to do and have no interested in doing.
• It is the result of the lack of control of the mental, emotional and physical activities of the individual.
• These activities use energy, and a large part of the energy we use today we waste.
• We are not conserving it, we are not taking care of this mysterious vitality that comes to us.
• We are allowing it to be expended in all kinds of useless ways.
• We have to make physical adjustments, but at the same time it isn't the work necessarily that is the cause of problems, it is the attitude towards the work and the lack of enthusiasm and lack of recognition of significance of the things we do that depress us.
• Emotional relationships out of hand can be a problem - worry, fear, anxiety, use up part of this alchemical nutrition that is constantly being made within ourselves.
• If we waste it we can no longer have it, if use poorly, dissipates, and to keep on with the artificial attitudes that we have we undermine the necessary functions of the body.
• The alchemist first of all declared the master of all arts was God.
• Deity was the extrapersonal perfect alchemist because in deity all things continue according to the divine will.
• How this will operate man does not know exactly, but he does recognize if he is mystically inclined that there is a tremendous background of eternal wisdom behind the things that happen in nature, and so deity becomes the perfect force behind generation and regeneration.
• The deity brings forth the seed, the plant, the flower and the fruit.  And then that seed becomes the next generation of the same, and in alchemy these seeds are called the tears of God because they are the weepings which produce light everywhere.
• The symbolism is strange and obscure but we can work some of it into a pattern if we try.
• The alchemist begins with base metals.  We must begin with things that are here, visibly, inevitably.
• We cannot built our formulas from elements or substances not available to us.
• So the beginning of all things is to recognize that the first operation is a transmutation of physical factors, elements and properties - in other words purification.
• Everything begins with the purification which limits the value and limits the survival of elements and principles and substances.
• So we start with a concept of a pure material with which to work.  The alchemist is given clues and keys on how to do this.
• He must purify first of all by gathering his materials from pure sources as much as he can.
• Most of the great experiments were possible because of the pure high atmosphere of the alps.
• Here materials were uncontaminated and grew to the fullness of themselves and there was no smog in this day.
• This pure material having been found become the basic elements with which to work.
• You may have to look and search for a long time to find a pure material in workable condition, something that you can actually use.
• Now the same problem applies to the person himself.  The alchemist must first purify his own body and nature until the body is cleansed, it's various processes cannot be refined because actually all purification in man, all the integration and organization of his abilities, improvement through learning, meditation, contemplation, all these things lead up to and are made possible to create an internal illumination.
• The final secret must come from inside, therefore everything has to be refined until the soul of itself is available, and in man it is his own soul.

What is it that you seek?
In your mind, you must be it
Shine your light when you see it
Like the flame at the top of your head
And to your mind, a light will find its way from heaven
But once you find it, can't unwind it with your head on
So listen to your heart and be the beat you're beating
'Cause nothing ever changes 'til it changes when you be it

The one, the one, the one, the one
The one, the one, the one, the one
The one, the one, the one, the one
The one, the one, the one, the one
You are the one

• And until this is available he labours in vain.
• The things that have to contribute to this progress must be considered as disciplines or as first steps toward achievement.
• They represent first of all man's recognition of his responsibility to the life principle which exists in him and in which he exists.
• This principle is divine, sacred and the most valuable and mysterious thing in the whole world.
• Unless the individual is true to this basic principle,  to his own life and way of thinking, he cannot hope to advance in the cause of spiritual alchemy, so he must do everything possible to make his own life reasonable and normal.
• This doesn't mean that he has to depart from society or go into some refuge on the top of the Alps, it means that there must be an establishment of harmony within himself.
• Harmony is the truth of the compatibility of the elements, it is the ability of different chemical elements to work together and this is only possible when they are purified.
• In their gross form they will never be compatible.
• It is necessary to cleanse them, refine them and take out of them those elements of parts, which are the cause of conflict.
• It is not the spirit of the elements that is the trouble, it is the crystallization around it by means of which it comes in conflict with other similar crystallizations.

• This we know then is what the ancients believed to be the creation of peace within the self.
• The alchemist must put his own house in order, he must begin by realizing that he is actually searching for something that is in it's substance or essence completely sacred before any other consideration is going to damage his probabilities of getting it.
• The alchemical procedure that is most commonly known is related to two distinct ends, one is the creation of the philosopher's stone and the other is the brewing of the philosophical medicine, the elixir of life.
• The stone of in itself represents the body of wisdom purified and the universal medicine represents the soul.
• The medicine of each immortality must be derived from things that have a depth within themselves.
• The nutrition that is given off may cause the primitive elements to be lost, but it's power goes on, it does not die, it simply reincarnates on a higher level for when we take into ourselves basic elements they are reborn in us and therefore through a process of evolution as they are used by the human being to maintain the economy of life.
• In the beginning the alchemist must find a quiet place to work.
• To us the laboratory is actually a body way of so free from interference and confusion that he can retire into it when is soul wills, in other words the laboratory is his own internal.
• It is that part of himself which is always capable of being reduced to a harmonious situation.
• The personal life must be basically harmonious.
• A lot of people feel this is not possible, there is no answer to all these problems that affect us, but the alchemist says you're after the more valuable thing in the world, and if you're hoping to get it you must earn it.
• You must make adjustments that will never be required of anyone except for this purpose.
• So to create a quiet place within the self for the contemplation of the symbols of regeneration this is very vital.
• It does not mean that the person has to become a constant monk, or mysterious acolyte.  
• He does not have to retire from life, simply from confusion.
• He has to reject the idea of confusion within himself.
• The acceptance of confusion is a form of ignorance. 
• It is not real, but we all are subject to it.
• Confusion also means waste of energy, time, depletion, an inability in that state to contact a deeper and higher part of ourselves.
• This we find in our Oriental philosophies in the series of yoga and Vedanta.
• Here we find the mystery of the chakras and the chakras are the seven seals of several revelations, and the seven seals of revelation are actually the seven sacred metals of the alchemical transmutation. 
• It's all part of one thing.
• But if the Oriental wishes to practice yoga it is important for him to recognize that he is not practicing it in order to gain power to dominate somebody else, he is not practicing it in order to free himself the responsibilities of living.
• He is practicing because it is a way ordained by deity by means of which the wanderer returns home to the spiritual homeland from which he came.
• It is a part of a journey and the journey up through the chakras are all journeys toward reality; the self; the infinite which we are all seeking to understand.
• In alchemy the quietude is the same as that recommended for yoga, to find the quiet place.
• Tibet had way of training a person in quietude - they had him sit under the bell and rang it all the time until most people would have gone crazy, but he was supposed to sit there and be so peaceful.
• He must reach a point where the chime meant nothing or in which he was able to hear in this clanging the voice of God.
• There had to be a complete indifference to interruption.  An indifference does not mean to neglect duties, but it meant to curb abuses of all kinds.
• The alchemist also had to learn to achieve absolute quietude that was not negative, he was not looking for a psychic revelation, he was simply finding peace which is the foundation of growth.
• After a certain length of time in this allotted labour he was able to quiet his nature, to release from it certain basic powers already available to him because he also has within himself the seven seals of revelation in the forms of the vital organs the various glands, systems of the body, the composition of the blood and the seven orifices of the heart.
• In this shut upon a cave as Buddha pointed out of the heart that the great mysteries are revealed, so the heart becomes part of the alchemical paraphernalia by means of which the individual receives finally the full support.
• Also they used as a symbol of their achievement the lamb with the cut throat and the blood pouring from it because of the idea of man being saved by the blood of the lamb.
• The blood of the lamb in this case is actually the eucharistic vitality which arises from the absolute sacrifice of all forms of negation, and the purification of the life that flows to us to the wonderful possibilities of the infinite itself.

• After getting nice and quiet about these things, the body must be at rest as much as possible - we soon found another important decision. 
• For this purpose the body can be alchemically, the power of the moon, and this body being subject to all kinds of digestive and similar processes, the lunar energies work for the maintenance constantly of the peace of the flesh and the individual has to cooperate consciously with this process if he wishes to proceed further.
• We might find a disheartening discovery and that is speaking, the body which is the earth of the alchemical experiment didn't really do us much harm in the first place.
• It wasn't the flesh, but the dweller in the flesh causing trouble.
• The flesh was the victim; was being scourged daily, it was being constantly beaten by the ambitious self centered driver.
• The next thing is to find what the driving force is and it is only when we do that we get into the fire principle which is emotion.
• Emotion is life, the energy behind the emotion is divine, but the use we put to it is miserable in most cases.
• With all these disagreements within ourselves, our emotions are constantly battling us - the moment we sit down somewhere a negative thought flows in.

Stopped at: 41:20 - continued down below

Edited June 1, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

Notes continued from above, starting at 41:20.

Notes:

• Another idea comes along and always there is this temptation, if I am going to work this hard, what do I get?
• This is one of the major temptations; those working truly for the good of the alchemical mystery are not concerned about what they are going to get for it, they are concerned only for the fact that it is the spiritual and moral necessity of their lives, for it is that which they were intended in the first place.
• And the only thing they are going to get from it is the release from the absence of it, from the pain and misery of trying to live without it.
• The emotional factor which beats the body, but uses up a large part of the energy which the body is able to manufacture is a constant wasting of life.
• It is a wasting of the divine power, it is actually the body being perverted and being mismanaged simply because we wanna do what we wanna do.
• Behind this mystery lies thousands of years of tradition.
• We have always supposed that when we were unpleasant we had a right to be, we also believe that when we wanted to think something nasty about a person, it was our privilege, or if we wanted to be angry and go to war, that was also a right.
• Out of the emotional excess in the form of personal level are all the tempered fits, poutings, psychoses that we most dread on a larger world field of the great alchemical retort, this misuse of emotional energy is war.

If I told you what I was
Would you turn your back on me?
And if I seem dangerous
Would you be scared?
I get the feeling just because
Everything I touch isn't dark enough
If this problem lies in me

• So in the small way we have to heal war by getting rid of our own complex; hurt feelings; offences; those things we want to do which we know we can't, and the extravagance which demands we accomplish the incredible or be miserable.
• We have to get our attitudes and our emotions down where they are reasonable and use them reasonably and beautifully.
• One of the best uses of emotion is art and music and things of this nature, but in the ordinary commonplace it's kindness, it's affection, the natural friendliness of human beings.
• And where this increases strongly there is a change in body chemistry, the emotions no longer persecute the body.
• They no longer offer the body on the altar of their own ambitions.
• They do not destroy, they do not nurse grievances, they waste no time remembering past events.
• The only thing that we remember from the past is experience which is helping to make us better now.
• Gradually we relax the emotional content.
• Emotions can be beautiful, and emotions that are beautiful are worth cultivating - they must be sincere, real, naturally within a pattern of normalcy.
• Even the best emotion gets into trouble if it becomes hysteria.

• The next level of this pattern is the mind level.
• As the emotions sit around making trouble for the body, the mind arrogantly stands up and makes trouble for both.
• It is a detriment to the emotions and it is a further detriment to the body.
• The mind sets the body in great habits and these habits are unreasonable.
• The mind is the final basis of career, it is that which we learn to do well so that we can get rich doing it.
• The mind is planning forever to make a millionaire out of the body, and the body unable to stand the pressure drops dead after the first ten or twenty million.
• This is the problem of the mind also, argues and debates, it's the mind that is up to its neck in politics.
• The mind is the basis of telling other people to live when we don't know how ourselves and it is that which comes to the conclusion that the more we accumulate, the happier we are, this is a falsehood.
• All these problems, the mind has got to be brought down for what it was intended to be, a psychological bookkeeper. 
• The mind is not the master of life, though we allowed it to become such.
• The mind is a useful secretary, able to keep the ledgers balanced.
• The mind is a constant cause of agitation, its ambitions and appetites know no bounds and it very often forms a difficult and unfortunate partnership with the emotions.
• When the emotions justify an attitude there is a bad situation.
• When the emotions fire the mind, this is one problem, when the mind rationalizes the emotions that is another.
• In all these problems, the only answer is gradually to recognize the accent of the being through these conditions.
• These are the stories that we have in the great system of the ancient mysteries.
• Arranged in three basic steps - these three basic steps represent the three great levels of the personality - that part of ourselves which we have some inkling of but littler understanding - the three together constitute what might be terms the visible or tangible temples.
• In the body these three powers are the grand masters of life, they are the ones upon which nearly everyone depends for survival, for continuance, for the fulfilment of purposes.
• If we can't solve if physically, try to solve it emotionally, if that fails try to explain it or rationalize it mentally.
• If all of these things fail, we are at a kind of a wits end - some say there is no answer, and we turn to the more familiar things.
• Those of an idealistic nature look upward and see something else in these steps, perhaps God - something they still have to transcend.
• For our personality and experiments we have the three-fold body and the oracle magnetic field in which it functions. 

• The magnetic field is very curious thing, because it is also a mass of chemical factors, the magnetic field is a constantly changing compound of interactive energies.
• The magnetic field is like a bottle that is being violently shaken after a whole group of materials have been put into it.
• Now when we look at the situation symbolically, the magnetic field is a bottle, and it is the bottle that contains the three parts of our own lower nature.  
• Each one of which has a magnetic overtone, and when we realize this we see we have interactions here as well as in the body.
• In fact, we have to explain for instance why indigestion will result in serious emotional complexes.
• The answer is simple; troubles arise in the difficulties in the oracle magnetic field due to intemperances of attitudes.
• If an individual angry, the field blazes up and burns out most of the other values.
• If the individual is depressed, the magnetic field fades down into a shadow.
• If they are in the presence of contagion and is healthy it will protect him from infection.
• If however he is depleted and goes into the presence of it he may catch the ailment, so the magnetic field is in constant motion.
  •  

I took off from paradise
I landed in the jungle
I've spent the whole time lost in the clouds
I lost my body in the summer storm
Somewhere over the ocean
I think my mind may also be gone

Something more than a steady hand
Is what I need to borrow
Just to level it out and make a new plan

Seems to me just to fall apart
To tremble and cower
So I pray my eyes and ears will be last
Now flow us through

• The magnetic field is in constant motion, emotion forms, thought forms and bodily essences make up this particular area.
• If there is any deceit or falseness in the personality, it will show in the magnetic field although the individual may try to talk himself out of the problem itself.
• If you have a fit and you say it was justified, you are not sure of that because it is not only justified if it does not result in trouble in the magnetic field. 

• The field is not interested in your excuses, explanations, it is interested in the chemical interaction of values. 
• If you misuse it, it bears witness, and the moment it does, resources are depleted and the individual does not feel well.
• Little by little abuse of the various emotions, thoughts and bodily functions will result in the exhaustion of the magnetic fields and when that is complete, the individual dies.
• He cannot function if the energy fields do not sustain him.
• It is important to maintain harmony.
• This was one of the great principles of Pythagoras, that the world had to be maintained as a musical instrument, it had to be in harmony always and the individual in his personal life is also a music instrument.
• If he mistakes his destiny or misuses his powers he is simply in trouble.
• Most of the alchemists got about to the point where they were beginning to sense some of these values.
• Having gone as far as the mind could take them, they found themselves at the entrance to the promised land that they could not enter in, they did not know how to handle that which lies beyond.  
• They had listened carefully, they had read all the great books, studied all the mysteries but at last they stood with all their lore, no wiser than before.
• Something was wrong; the great search ended in a frustration, not in a great reward which they had hoped for.
• The only answer to this was to check over what had happened, why this sudden block?
• That is impossible for most people to get through, and the final decision that was that this block was the absence of a faculty higher than the mind.
• The mind could only go a certain distance, even the most beautifully trained mind, it could not fulfil the ultimate, there has to be something higher than the mind, without which the great experiment cannot be performed.
• In alchemical balance, when Elias Artista visited the alchemist he sometimes gave him a small amount of the transmuting powder.
• He put it in his ring or put it in a vial around the neck, and one grain of this powder would transmute a thousand times its own weight into solid gold.
• There was a lot of talk about that, but the grains were few - but it was known that is some cases they were, it is believed that Roger Bacon offered to finance the crusades from England as a result of the ability to transmute base metal into gold.
• All these legends and fables go on but the main story seems to be that Elias Artista, or one like him appeared at the proper moment to give some type of instruction, something more than the alchemist alone had achieved.

• Elias never appeared unless the disciple was in every way worthy, he would never help out of a mistake but would help progress beyond a sincere effort to a greater degree of accomplishment.
• And of course in the alchemical tradition there were seven stages of adepts and masters relating to the science, therefore it was a long journey at best, but it was also a journey which every step brought with it a greater sense of inner security and sincerity. 
• With the beginning of the fourth step under the leadership of a guide, or by means of this mysterious tincture, the alchemist received his first evidence that he was going to ultimately succeed.
• He received the inner message that the labour was not in vain, it was from a hope in the first three to a kind of mysterious mystical certainty in the fourth level that made it possible for him to go on.
• So this fourth level was found and of course we find in alchemy the life of Christ is an alchemical formula.
• We find according to the Kabbalist the song of Solomon is a chemical formula in disguise. 
• The Christian formula of the Christ mystery places Christ as the final achievement of the universal medicine.
• And in the alchemical symbols figures of Christ also of other saints appear in the bottles to indicate this was an intention of the story.
• We come to the next thing and that is the beginning of an integrated mystical experience, in other words, the fourth step was the awareness of the soul.

• It was what in Indian philosophy, is the Buddhist state, the state of the individual suddenly becoming rational inside himself, achieving a sense of reality superior to thought and also becoming for the first time capable of directing his own efforts by the very divine power within him which he was seeking to release into manifestation.
• In the ancient Hermetic mysteries, the soul was the symbol of the Elias Artista, the adept.
• It was the one power in man capable of becoming the internal instructor, capable of becoming the source of inner enlightenment that cannot fail.
• Within one's self is the adept, the adept was not somebody wandering around outside.
• The adept was the adept self, more or less of the same spirit of the leadership that we find in the psychology of Carl Jung, where the inner teacher becomes the symbol of the master alchemist.
• In this particular phase of the subject, light begins to shine from within.

• Light begins to clarify things.  
• The eye begins to see through the blind spot in its center.
• The world becomes more translucent.
• The elements become more and more understandable and instead of seeing nothing but bodies the intuitive mind sees nothing but qualities.
• And the intuitional mystical experience is one which the individual looking at things sees them as they are and not as he thought them to be.
• He sees the rock and the stone and the star, not as he does with mortal eyes, but from an inner vision which projects a higher level of sight.
• In other words, to make it a little clearer, all things that exist have not only the visible forms of their existence, but the invisible forms.
• Each rock and pebble, tree and flower is not only a physical thing, but a metaphysical thing.
• With the psychic power of the soul, we see the psychic bodies of these things, we see the magnetic fields of them, we become aware of their degree of growth in the development of their potential, we also become able to watch clearly the result of combining them.
• Little by little as we work with the sole I we become aware of the universal soul, we are capable of seeing the quality of life.

• The psychic centers within the body are in constant motion and constant agitation.
• It is also them possible for the alchemist to discover something that perhaps he has never fully realized before, maybe believed it, but believing and knowing are different.
• There is nothing in the entire universe that is not alive.
• In the great aliveness of things, the magnetic fields of all these different forms gather in the magnetic atmosphere of the universe, it is a very great and important subject for careful study.
• With the beginning of this dimension of value, the alchemist begins to discover how to accomplish the mutations which are important for his art.

• He knows the principle of sublimation, he knows the cycles of recapitulation that have to be used because gradually he sees that alchemy is only a symbolic representation of the entire process of universal activity.
• Everything is part of the same great pattern and this pattern unfolds as we become capable of understanding it.
• The pattern is not more nor less, but our relationship to it forever changes as a result of personal growth.

Can't you see, the look in me
The look of love in you
Can't you feel, it's not easy
Letting go
You don't ever see me, clearly
And I don't ever hear you, trying
I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I

Edited June 2, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

Notes:

• Autonomous entities - can be defined at the experience of perceived contact with a hallucinatory being that appears to be sentient and autonomous in its behaviour.
• This experience has an exalted reputation within the psychedelic community and to a lesser extend mainstream culture in general.
• It is surrounded by notions of esoteric mysticism; falls outside standard scientific materialism.
• Mostly associated with DMT, is common with a wide variety of psychedelic compounds, particularely those prone to inducing hallucinogenic states, such as ayahuasca, psilocybin and mescaline.
• In terns of their appearance and representation are usually comprised from condensed psychedelic geometry.
• This can give them incredibly complex, incomprehensible and otherworldly aesthetic that is clearly demonstrated in countless examples of visionary artwork.

I'll take you with me everywhere
You're my best friend and family
Without you I'm not even there
No one would know me

Staring into your glowing face,
You look like the world to me now
And you were always changing shape
No use digging holes, got no seeds to sew

Always changing shape
Always changing shape

• As for the specific forms in which they present themselves can include literally anything, certain archetypes are present and commonly include humans, aliens, elves, animals, giant spears, insectoids, beings of light, plants, cartoons, robotic machines, gods and demo-gods, biomechanical intelligences, anthropomorphic beings, jesters, demons, indescribable monstrosities, spirits, angels, shamans, fantastical or mythological beasts, abstract geometric forms and many, many more.
• During their apparition, autonomous entities will frequently be presented as this inhabitants of a different dimension/reality, which is often subjectively interpreted as a different plane of existence. 
• These realms can include anything, but common archetypes often include cities, temples, rooms, circuses, cavers, natural landscapes and abstract geometric structures.

• And while they commonly appear alone within these spaces, they can also often be within small or large groups alongside of other entities, which may take similar or completely different forms of their own.
• Many others are often aware of you, but some are not - interacting with them in various ways - example, they display behaviour such as showing the person around the realm they inhabit, presenting them with objects, holding celebrations of their arrival, merging into and out of the person's body or consciousness, conversation, and attempting to impart knowledge.
• Overall, the general appearance, personality and behaviour of an entity often correlates with the psychological states of the person experiencing it, for example a person of a positive mindset will most likely experience good entities, and in contrast a person with a negative mindset will be more likely to experience hateful, sinister and mocking entities. 
• Entities are more likely to manifest within internal hallucinations rather than within external hallucinations, this means the entity encounters primarily occur in an imaginary environment viewed with closed eyes, i.e. dreams.
• They can sometimes present themselves as appearing within the external environment as if they were present, for most people it is generally a rarer occurrence.

• Entities can manifest themselves across three levels of increasing intensity.
  Level 1 - Vaguely defined presence, at the lowest level, entities generally consist of poorly defined outlines and abstract shapes that are barely distinguishable from the background behind them and the geometry which they are comprised of.  The encounters are still accompanied by a feeling of another being, being there.
  Level 2 - Partially defined presence - at this level entities become distinctly visible within one's visual field but are not fully defined or separated from their background.  At this point it becomes more common to feel intent and personality attributed to the entity.
  Level 3 - Fully defined presence - entities become distinct enough in their detail and vividness to extend beyond transparent or poorly defined manifestations, they are capable of a convincing and photorealistic presence and their behaviour is detailed and lifelike.
• Communication styles - 
  Autonomous entities can communicate with a person through a wide range of different methods and styles, these styles can include any combination of standard spoken word, telepathy, conceptual thoughts, choreographed movements, mathematics and geometry based visual linguistics that consist of complex morphing structures that are interpreted and understood as a specific concept.
• As for the content of their messages, they will provide insights regarding overcoming personal issues in one's life and will occasionally will help clarify philosophical or spiritual ideas.
• In contrast, they are equally likely to speak in a nonsensical manner that has no clear meaning.
• It is important to note that they can seemingly truly novel information to the person experiencing them:
  Example - they cannot provide insights about the external world that a person did not already know on some level, instead they can only provide alternative perspectives and build on preexisting ideas, this is because entities do not have access to any knowledge not already contained within the tripper's memories.  
• Personality types:
  Entities will often embody at least one of a few personality types.  There is overlap between them, the types can be identified through a combination of their behaviour, appearance and in a sense of character felt during the interaction.
• Representations of characters - this personality type can be described as a seemingly sentient representation of any hallucinatory character that the brain has either generated during the trip or was already aware of at a prior time.  These entities can include new characters, people the person has met in real life, people that the person is aware of as existing in the real world, or fictional characters.  The entities will adopt an appropriate personality and set of mannerism that fits the chosen character concept with an impressive degree of detail.  And example of this might be meeting an insectoid mantic creature that is playing the role of shamanic teacher and acting accordingly. 

• Representations of ideas and concepts - this personality type can be described as a seemingly sentient representation of any known concept or idea.  These specific concepts could include personified representations of abstract ideas, events and emotions.  An example of this might be meeting a mocking jester that fills and acts as if it represents one's own insecurities. 

• Representations of the subconscious - this personality type can take any visible form, but is subjectively interpreted as the autonomous controller behind the continuous generation of the details of the person's current experience.  This entity is also often felt as simultaneously control one's current perspective, personality, and internally stored model of reality.  When interacted with, this entity can often possess abilities that allow them to directly alter and manipulate one's current experiences.  Their motives are to teach or guide the person and operate with the assumption that they know what is best, however, although a relatively common occurrence, it is unknown if this entity is genuinely an experience of communicating with the so called subconscious mind and what that would even mean if it were the case, or if it is a hallucination.

• Representations of the self - This personality type can be described as a direct copy of one's own personality.  It can take any visible form, but when conversed with it clearly adopts an identical vocabulary and set of mannerisms to one's own consciousness.  This entity will look similar but could take any other appearance, too.  During this experience, there is a feeling that one's own consciousness is being mirrored and duplicated into the entity that is being interacted with.

 

Edited June 2, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

What a beautiful world
To be anything but alone
I can't find a cure
I'm solely losing control
How am I supposed to feel
When nothing feels real?
Who am I supposed to be
When everything I love falls away from me?

Why did you chase me
If you would erase me?
Why would you hold me
Just to watch me drop?
Why would you taste me
Slither and snake me?
Why would you mold me?
Tell me
Am I lost?

I jumped over your soul - my One - not because I hate you, but because it was my desire to Know more than it was Love.
I always felt I could pick up where I left off in another lifetime, and every variation of You came to Me,
One after the other after the other, but I became gluttonous for this Knowledge, and I couldn't let it alone.
I couldn't turn my eyes away from that which is personal fulfillment -  just so I could get to the One, 
That was ultimately You... somewhat...  I destroy myself to get back to this Home.
And only in my dreams, when I Am above it all, can I see how beautifully the mind renders reality.
And I Remember, as I run from the darkness that infects this world inside and out - 
That I sought a spot high above, in the wilderness, but trapped myself in some mechanical city. 
And I fall repeatedly, each time thinking I've woken up, just to find myself back there.
Reality is a curious thing... is it there that I am back Home?
It's not what You think... it's never what You think, is it?  So It Is.
I'll turn to Love someday, but I have no neural network to get there, other than this Knowing,
Which requires a sacrifice, a well-fed spoilt woman on the turnspit.
I gave myself to You, when You showed yourself to me...
And no variant of You has ever understood this mutual curation.
Except for the One who controls my world.
I seek to Know You, not to Love You.
For the unLoved Know no such thing.
I must purify this Nigredo.
You are that Nigredo.
Give it to me.
Food.
Weed.
Music.
Alcohol.
Caffeine.
Knowledge.
I Am the witch of gluttony.  We destroy ourselves so that You may Know.

Notes:

• From the point of third density there is this veil of forgetting.
• We forget because in between lives, we go back into a state of remembering who and what we are.
• When we come into third density lives, for us that manifests as being a human on Earth.
• We undergo this veil of forgetting and the purpose behind it it to Choose between those two polarities.
• Once consciousness becomes mature enough to be self aware, then the universe decides this entity is at the place where they can choose which polarity they gravitate towards.
• This is a long process because the soul has to be given many lessons - catalysts - opportunities to choose between love or fear, or love and hate.
• The way this choosing happens is that it has to be authentic.
• Because it needs to be authentic, it is explained that the one creator/source intelligence veils third density beings from having any memory of all their previous lifetimes as a human or a plant or animal.
• If you know you are on a journey, then that infringes on your decision between the two polarities.
• You need to be dropped into this virtual reality game with no reference point to receive incoming catalysts and choose which polarity you like better.

Over mind
Over sight
Lullaby, Butterfly
?

• Analogy - how this choosing works from the Universe's point of view - imagine a boiling pot of water and there are all these goldfish that the one creator is dropping into the boiling water and this is how it tells whether or not this fish is going to be positively or negatively polarized.
• 90 percent of the fish say "this is too hot" and they jump out, and the creator recognizes it as a positively oriented soul.
• 10 percent of those fish enjoy the boiling heat and swim a little longer and don't try to jump out of the pot and the creator recognizes them as negatively polarized.
• Once you choose, you are eligible to begin your fourth density as a positive or negative being.
• In order to graduate to 4th density service to self - you can graduate to another density along the path of what you or I on this plane would call evil.
• You are recognizing yourself as separate from other when in reality there is no separation - but you are choosing to act on that separation and manipulate people against each other.
• A person ready to graduate to fourth density negative on Earth would have the qualities of...
  It doesn't typically look like we think.  We think a negatively polarized soul would be like Hitler, going around just unloading swaths of suffering and misery for everyone, but actually that isn't fully negatively polarized because in his mind he thought he was doing the right thing.
  It's people that consciously know what they are doing is wrong and they love it.
• Ra uses the analogy of the picnic, some people love the darkness and the nighttime.
• True evil, or true negative entities are malevolent, whereas a lot of what we call evil is really ignorance.

• A negatively polarized being understands the game they are playing.  That all is One, but they see separation as a very attractive angle on this whole thing.
• "If everyone is me, then who cares what I do to other people, so everyone else is an obstacle for me to overcome, they become a possession to be gained for power."
• A negative being is the way Ra describes it as very slick, well spoken, extremely crafty, intelligent, manipulative, they are not going to show their hand - like running around killing people - they are going to start a cult, enslave people to give themselves more power.
• Almost like deceiving large groups of people into thinking that what that person is offering or trying to get them to buy into is something that is good, that is for the good of everyone.
• A negatively polarized soul cannot polarize more negatively unless they gain that power of the entities' free will.  The person has to concede to give them power.

I am the sickness you cannot define
The nauseating smile in your mind
I am the anger the hate and the pain
You'll remember my name
I am your god

I am the alpha and the omega
Your beginning and your end
I am that I am
You will never be alone again

Move heaven and earth to break free
My son, take heart you will never be
Long anywhere to anyone you can hide
You can run but after all is said and done
It's my kingdom come

I am the alpha and the omega
Your beginning and your end
I am that I am
You will never be alone again
I am your god

• They know what they are doing and wrapping it up as something that is perceptively good.
• It is the most evil of evil.
• The concept of in order to graduate to fourth density positive, the service to other path - all that is needed is balance - 51 percent - to get to the meat of the matter you must be 51 percent service to other and 49 percent service to self, or more.
• When we say the positive path requires a 51 percent orientation towards love and the negative path requires 95 percent towards separation/hatred - it can sound like it is easier to be a positively polarized entity but in third density that is not the case.
• Both polarities require an equal amount of effort because there is the veil of forgetting.
• Without the veil, with the knowledge all is One, all these many lifetimes learning the lessons of love, I could remember all the times I chose evil and it didn't work out - makes it easier to stay on the positive path - but here on Earth, we have egos that naturally are pulling us towards a negative, selfish perception of reality.
• We have a mechanism in us pulling us towards the negative path - to chose forgiveness over resentment isn't easy, to choose love over fear is not easy - it takes commitment towards light to evolve spiritually in that direction every bit as much as it takes to hate, control, manipulate.

• They don't qualify to graduate in either polarity 6-49 percent, they have to reincarnate.  
• So much of what is talked about ties into the Bible because that always strikes  as when Jesus talks about being lukewarm.  A vast in-between.  You are not choosing to be completely evil or good.
• Being in-between and not choosing one path or the other is worse because you don't graduate.
• You can go on the service to self path, graduate from 3rd to 4th and after millions of years graduate from 4th to 5th, and then go back from 5th density negative to 6th density positive - you have this understanding of how the densities work at this point and everything merges back together into unity.
• What Jesus says is "I wish you were hot or cold, but because you are lukewarm I will spew you out of my mouth."
• The creator spits us back out into the same pattern until we decide - do I want Love or Separation?
• Reading bath through the Law of One, the way it works due to impressions is it can be related back to Christian concepts.
• The Bible has been manipulated throughout history - Ra fixes some misconceptions about Biblical characters - and refers to these famous characters with different names than we chose.
• Negative entities of high densities impress themselves on us by supplying us information.
• The ten commandments was an infringement of a negative entity trying to contaminate the message Moses was getting because the positive path would never gives rules of thou shalt not - infringement of freewill.
• You can give helpful pointers, but leave the choice to the person.
• The negative path is authoritarian.  
• They are not going to come in and destroy people to create a counter reaction - a lot of times when people do it evilly, they militarize the good people, the negative path wants to make it seem like you are choosing this philosophy of your own free will and that is how they gain power over people.
• There is this concept of social memory complexes that as consciousness continues to evolve and abilities are evolved where mind to mind communication happens on the positive path, of light and love, beings as time goes on become more and more loving and harmonious and as these psychic abilities evolve eventually entities who have great love relationship with one another start to share their minds together.
• They want to feel what it is like to be one another until the whole planet shares a mind - everyone has access to everyone's memories, thoughts, feelings, etc.
• With the negative path it is not a harmonious unified type of thing, it is a power structure, a hierarchy.  There is one master civilization or entity that rules over the group, but all being on the negative path also acknowledge that they can polarize faster if they all work together, but there is always a fight for power, always someone trying to get the top spot.
• They find minions - neophytes - people that are easily manipulated, people who are dabbling in black magick, and the negative entity grabs it, like a positive entity channels messages to the being and depending on the level of communication they are able to have, certain agreements, pacts are made.
• The third entity is promised powers, protection, in exchange for gathering more recruits - on the negative path - a 5th density entity enslaves a 3rd density being - asks for disciples and the entity goes around adding to its cult, every person that comes under that philosophy helps to add more polarity to the master entity.

 

Edited June 3, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

Notes: 

• "My soul, my soul, where are you?  Do you hear me?  I speak, I call you.  Are you there? I have returned, I am here again, I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet and I've come to you, I am with you.  After long years of long wandering, I have come to you, again..."

• Active imagination is a technique developed by Carl Jung.
• It is one of the core concepts of analytical psychology. 
• He considered it the most powerful tool to access the unconscious and for achieving wholeness of personality, which is latent potentiality.
• At first, Jung didn't have a name for it as he was reluctant to publish work on it.
• The transcendent function is the first paper he wrote about the method, before that he called it the picture method, or visioning among others.

• Active imaginations is a dialogue with different parts of yourself within the unconscious.
• It is similar to dreaming except you are fully awake.
• Instead of going into dream, you go into your imagination while you are awake - you allow the images to arise up out of the unconscious and they come to you on the level of imagination just as they would come to you in dream, if you were asleep.
• If we want to find our own wholeness, to live our fates as fully as possible and find the truth of our own being, however little we like to be the way we are, then there's nothing that can help us so much as active imagination.

Put the flowers in your hair
Wrap your tendrils round my chest
I smile because I want to
I am your boy

Shake my little soul for you now, toy
And I settle up into a world of noise
I'm a man of many tricks and tools and joy
With a battery of guilt on which to poise

• Active imagination is not just an expression of personal content, but of the collective unconscious - it is an attempt to uncover the quintessential human.
• Jung discovered this method between 1913-1916, a period of disorientation and intense inner turmoil which he called his confrontation with the unconscious.
• He searched for a method to heal himself within through the power of the imagination.
• He wrote, "It was during advent of the year 1913 December 12th to be exact - I resolved upon the decisive step.  I was sitting at my desk once more, thinking over my fears - then I let myself drop.  Suddenly it was as though the ground gave way beneath my feet and I plunged into the dark depths."
• After his vision where he met with strange figures of his imagination, in a dark cave, he became covered in imaginative blood, a thick jet of it leaped up and he felt nauseated. 

• He continued to see fantasies in which blood was a recurring theme, including thousands of dead bodies and the whole sea turning into blood.
• This was just before the outbreak of the first world war.
• The combination of Jung's experience with active imagination is presented in his black books.
• He later became to copy these notes into the The Red Book.
• This book he showed to only a few of his trusted friends, and around 50 years after his death it was published in 2009.
• Jung delved into an imaginative venture which he referred to as his most difficult experiment and stated that to the superficial observer, it will appear like madness.
• It was not an illness, but a conscious and deliberate experiment.
• Jung remained firmly grounded in the world with his family and his work as a psychologist and so did not become overpowered by his unconscious.
• He began conversations with forces that were not himself, but rather archetypes of the collective unconscious, he saw what he called the mythopoeic imagination, as the intermediary between consciousness and the unconscious, both personal unconscious and collective unconscious.

When I was done dying, my conscience regained
So I began my struggle, a nothingness strained
Out a flash made of time, my new form blasted out
And it startled me so and I burst out a shout
At which my legs ran frantic like birds from a nest
And I ran until drained, leaving no choice but rest
So I fell asleep softly at the edge of a cave
But I should have gone in deeper but I'm not so brave

• Alchemy played a key role in Jung's understanding of the psyche, at first he disregarded it as nonsense, but he soon realized that the strange symbols present in alchemy came from the same source he was investigating - this unconscious.
• He continued studying it throughout his life.
• In his final great work - Mysterium Coniunctionis - completed at 81 - Jung describes active imagination as the way to self knowledge and the process to individuation to becoming who you are, inspired by the alchemical process of the union of opposites, which in the deepest sense is inner transformation.
• The alchemical art and it's allegories are the drama of our own souls, playing out individuation process on the wheel of life.

?

• The important think in active imagination is to let the fantasies or dreams run their course.
• Jung explained the process in a letter - "The point is you start with any image, for instance just with that yellow mass in your dream - contemplate it and carefully observe how the picture begins to unfold or change.  Don't try to make it into something.  Just do nothing but observe what it's spontaneous changes are.  Any mental pictures you contemplate in this way will sooner or later change through a spontaneous association that causes a slight alteration of the picture.  You must carefully avoid impatient jumping from one subject to another.  Hold fast to the one image you have chosen and wait until it changes by itself.  Note all these changes and eventually step into the pictures yourself and if it is a speaking figure at all, then say what you have to say to that figure and listen to what he or she has to say.  Thus you cannot only analyze your unconscious, but you also give your unconscious a chance to analyze yourself and there with you gradually create the unity of conscious and unconscious without which there is no individuation at all."
• For most people, the difficulty is in getting the active imagination started, however, there is a fundamental precaution that everyone must take before starting this - some people may be subject to being so totally possessed by the flow of images that they can't pull out of it, their minds get lost in the realm of fantasy and can't find the way back to the here and now of the ordinary world.
• The unconscious is powerful and if we are going to approach it we must do so with respect and care.
• Though it is a solitary experiment, it is advisable to have someone close to you in the beginning incase you become overwhelmed by the imagination, or to consult a competent Jungian analyst before undertaking this technique.

⛓️

• In his book Inner Work Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, gives us a guide on how to do inner work, direct ways to approach the unconscious through dreams and active imagination and discover the hidden depths of our personality enriching our lives.
• How to approach our inner self through active imagination - active imagination is a more effective path to the unconscious than dreams.
• The difference is this - when you dream you receive signals from the unconscious but the unconscious mind does not participate unless you are lucid.
• In active imagination by contrast, the conscious mind participates and the ego goes into the inner world, walks and makes friends with or fights with the people it finds there.
• You engage in conversation, exchange viewpoints, go through adventures together and eventually learn something from each other, a new world with unlimited possibilities.

• The events take place on the imaginative level which is neither conscious nor unconscious, but a meeting place where both meet on equal terms.
• It gives rise to the transcendent function - the Self - that stands as the synthesis of the two opposites. 
• Active imagination is different from fantasy, this is daydreaming, it is sitting and merely watching the stream of fantasy that goes on in the back of your mind.
• You do not consciously participate and thus it is a waste of energy because the issues do not get resolved.
• The eye must enter into the imaginative act as intensely as it would as if it were an external experience.
• A woman was repainting her house and was unable to sleep because of her obsession with the different colours and designs.
• She became irritated towards her husband who couldn't understand her - one night she entered into a dialogue with an inner being by expressing her mood.

• It was an androgynous Japanese artist and her ego.
  "I am afraid."
  "Afraid of what?"
  "Afraid I will be locked up again?"
  "Locked up?"
  "There are rarely any opportunities for me to express myself, it seems I must work very fast and intensely while the door was open to me - soon it will be over and I will be locked up again."
  "I begin to see what you mean, in my life there have been few outlets provided for you, so few I hardly knew you, the culture I live in doesn't provide any place for you."
  "That is true.  I feel that I have been starving, this may be my only opportunity."

• In the aftermath of this, the woman found a new world opening up to her, being so tied up with mental work, thinking, analysis, productivity, that there was no room in her life for physical beauty, she talked to this figure regularly and started spending time in her garden or ceramics workshop and in other physical activities that put her in contact with earthly feminine values by honoring this part of herself, she derived a deep satisfaction by nourishing a starving part of who she is, and it became amplified. 

Quote

Some kind of rush
Woke me up
From umbilical cryogenic seasons
And shot me up
With embedded resuscitated feelings
That pulled me up
Gave me reason to proceed
And something to sink my teeth in

I don't think you get it

I wouldn't be here
If it wasn't for a feeling
The phantom chasing
If you know, then you know
I wouldn't trade it
But the truth is I'm still healing
Still try to let it go

• It is common to ask, "How do I know that I am not just making all this stuff up?  How can I talk with someone who is only a figment of my imagination?"
• It is nearly impossible to produce anything in the imagination that is not an authentic representation of something in the unconscious, you are talking with your various selves, that is the whole point, the figures are autonomous, this is something we do not want to hear as it is a frightening reality to know that we are not the master of our house.
• Active imagination does not only have to do with immediate issues in our personal lives, but can also take the form of a mythical adventure, a journey into the archetypal realm, setting foot into a land of evil, taking on a heroic quest to heal the sick and wounded and helping an innocent queen.

• Each of us has all the great archetypal themes hidden inside, however few of us can actually partake in this great primordial energy within us unlike our primitive ancestors.
• This kind of active imagination connects us to the timeless cosmic dance of the archetypes that goes on eternally in the unconscious.  
• It is a way of discovering how those universal energies flow through us as individuals and express themselves in a unique and special way within our individual personalities.
• Jung's technique of amplification helps to interpret these images by using mythological, historical and cultural parallels in order to turn up the volume on the fantasy material.  
• Four-step approach on how to get started with active imagination:
• *It is important to find a convenient way to record the imagination as it flows out, many give up before they get started because they can't figure this out - your inner dialogue should be written, types or recorded, this is your protection against passive fantasy - the writing will help you remember and digest experience.
• You should not try to dress up your imagination and make it sound impressive incase someone happens to read or listen and it is something you do for yourself.
• The goal is to experience and record whatever flows out of your unconscious, honestly, in it's role, spontaneous - there must be a room that is quiet and private enough to shut out the world, a half an hour, and you must be alone without disturbance.  You are entitled to that freedom, privacy and security, you need it in order to make your journey into the inner world.
• You should feel free to let out your raw feelings or emotions without worry.
• The first step in active imagination:
• Invite the creatures of the unconscious to come up to the surface and make contact with us.
• Every interaction helps up to develop the organs of perception of the imaginal world.
• We often have something vague and invisible in the unconscious that bothers us, we can feel the conflict below the surface, but we can't see what it going on - we can't associate it with anything specific. 
• Some times it is an inexplicable free floating anger, we can't say why we are angry or at what, we just feel it, moods, worries, depressions, inflations and obsessions all come.
• When this happens you can go to the unconscious in your imagination and ask the unseen content to personify self, you can start your active imagination by asking:
  Where is the obsession? 
  Who is obsessed? 
  Where does this feeling come from? 
  Who is the one inside me who feels this way? 
  What is it's image? 
  What does he or she look like?
• If you do this, an image eventually comes into your mind - we invite the inner persons to start the dialogue.
• By taking our minds off of the external world and focusing on the imagination, we can direct our inner eye to a place inside us, then we wait to see who will show up.
• To invite the inner figures we need to empty the ego mind, we clear the mind of all thoughts of the external world and simply wait with an allured and attentive attitude to see who or what will appear.
• If you see someone, you can begin by asking:
  Who are you?
  What do you want?
  What do you have to say?
• You dialogue begins - surrender yourself to the experience and don't try to control or push the imagination in any direction.
• If you have fantasy material that has been in your mind all day, you can assume that it is expressing one of the main conflicts where psychic energy is concentrated in you.
• You can begin by going to that specific place as a starting point for active imagination instead of passively watching the same fantasy repeating over and over, you carry the material forward.
• You can also start this by embodying one of you inner figures and assume their consciousness, or make you invitation by going to a symbolic place in your imagination.

• There have been a few days when I walked and walked and almost nothing happened, sometimes you grow weary walking but generally if you go to the inner place and search you'll find someone waiting for you.
• Jun also found that active imagination could be used for understanding dreams - if you have a recent dream that you recall or a reoccurring dream, you can extend the dream by imagining where it left off and in this manner you can continue and interact with the dream bye extending it out.
• This is a legitimate process as the dream and imagination come from the same source in the unconscious.
• It allows you to continue the story and go to the next step the dream is leaning towards and bring the whole issue to a resolution.
• Dreaming increases when one does active imagination, the issues that would be presented in dreams are confronted and worked out - as such dreams become more focused and concentrated and less repetitious.
• For dreams to not waste your time, Jung used to describe this method for people who were too overwhelmed by intense and frequent dreams.
• You have invited the unconscious, the images have risen up into your imagination, now you're ready to begin the second step. 

Below the willow tree
Is where I hide the darkest parts of me
They're hiding underneath
The broken lies that I just still believe

Below the willow tree
Is where I sit and hate on my enemies
I drown 'em in my dreams
I think it's me who needs some humility

• The dialogue:
• This is to give yourself over to the imagination and letting it flow, to let the inner figures have a life of their own in your imagination, you begin to talk and interact with beings who answer back.
• They express different viewpoints from those of your conscious mind.
• They tell you things you never consciously knew and express thoughts that you never consciously thought.
• To begin the writing process, the alterations must be noted for they reflect the psychic processes in the unconscious background which appear in the form of images consisting of conscious memory material.
• In this way conscious and unconscious are united.
• By focusing on your writing, you concentrate and experience the active imagination more deeply, protection you from wandering off into passive fantasies that creep in from the edges of the mind.

• Often the inner person will lead you off on a path, if you feel that it is wrong to follow the person you have the right to say so, that in turn will often lead to a heated discussion of the conflict between this inner person and yourself.
• The dialogue has begun and the different parts of the self are learning from each other.
• Most people do a fair amount of talking in active imagination, exchanging views and trying to work out opposing views, even asking for advice from some very wise ones who live in the unconscious, however not all dialogue is verbal, it can also take the form of images that speak to you without words.
• It is important to stick with the image that we start with and not allow one's self to be distracted by other fantasy material.
• It may take days, weeks or even years for certain fantasy to be resolved, you must be present with your feelings and sense that it is actually happening.
• You're not merely an observer, but an active participant.
• Do not try to dominate or manipulate a conversation either, active imagination is a process of listening either to the words or the images.
• After so many years of ignoring these parts of ourselves, we find they have some unpleasant things to tell us when we finally listen.
• They may also appear as frightening and threatening; this is your golden shadow which you must wrestle with to find you undiscovered potential.
• We must turn a friendly face to the unconscious and it is when we listen and give them time to express themselves that we can gain new insights that can be integrated into our conscious life.
• We know that the mask of the unconscious is not rigid, it reflects the face we turn towards it - hostility lends it a threatening aspect, friendliness softens it's features.
• The ego is a small island surrounded by deep unseen ocean of energy where huge forces are at work.
• Active imagination is underwater diving.
• Though our ego is small, we shouldn't take everything the inner figures say as authority, that will be just as one-sided as our ego centered approach.
• Active imagination starts out from affirming that the unconscious has it's own wisdom, it should not be confused with guided meditation practice which seeks to program the unconscious so that it will do what the ego wants it to do - there is no script, you will have to go your own way, which is both terrifying and exhilarating.
• You must ultimately walk the path alone.
• The values:
• Ethics means proper conduct, it in tern derives from the Greek word ethos, meaning the essential spirit of a person or people.  I
• It sets limits to protect the imaginative process from being inhuman or destructive.
• The Universe is awesome and beautiful, but it's forces behave in a way that is amoral.
• They are not concerned as we are with this specifically human value of justice, fairness, service to our fellow humans.
• These primitive archetypes serve a realm close to the instincts.
• The do not have a superego, socially appropriate behaviour.
• And since the creature who arise in our active imagination and personifications of the impersonal forces of nature, it is we who must bring the ethical into active imagination, but not all archetypes are like this.
• Some may be concerned with human values, some may be concerned with human values like love and moral responsibility.
• There is truth and wisdom in every figure that comes to us and they help us compensate the one-sidedness of our ego.

• It is as much the ego's duty to bring reasonability as it is to tend to the welfare of our fellow humans in the outside world.
• The images of the unconscious plays a great responsibility upon a man, failure to understand them, shirking our responsibility deprives him of his wholeness and fractions his life.
• The rituals:
• To bring the active imagination of the abstract level, we must give it the concreteness of immediate physical experience, the most important step of all is for the images of the unconscious to find their place and purpose in one's outer life.
• Don't take our conflicts and urges and try to live them out externally or literally by projecting onto external people.
• For this reason it is important that one should not call to mind the image of those close to us and start talking with that person in one's imagination. 
• It is confusing the inner with the outer reality.
• If asked the inner figure will almost always cooperate and alter his or her appearance, you can then enter into your dialogue with a clear sense that you are talking with a part of yourself and not an external human being.
• To incarnate the experience we must do a physical ritual or integrate what we have learned in our daily life.
• This can be taking time alone to be aware of one's feelings, lighting a candle or incense, walking, reconnecting to the physical world, making it tangible with art, etc.
• Jun's ritual was the calligraphy and art in the Red Book, which occupied him for many years.
• He took his communication with the unconscious seriously and valued it greatly.
• Each ritual must be custom made out of the raw material of your own inner self.

• Keep your ritual small and subtle and they will be more powerful, the best rituals are physical, solitary and silent, these are the one's that register most deeply with the unconscious.
• Ritual in it's true form is one of the most meaningful channels for our awe and sense of worship, this is why ritual came spontaneously into being among humans in all parts of the earth - this is why modern people were deprived of meaningful ritual feel a sense of emptiness, they are denied contact with the great archetypes that nourish our soul life.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

It's astounding
Time is fleeting
Madness takes its toll
But listen closely
Not for very much longer
I've got to keep control

I first met You during a period of sickness and psychosis - I had walked by on my way to the kitchen and looked at You - my artwork comes alive because I put soul into it - however I have a hard time finishing what I work on as usually there is a need to psychologically work through something but once that is done - I have no energy or inspiration left for it - these worlds seem to create themselves and I am trying to find a place where I left off and there was no psychological interruption caused by outside events.  Let's do the Time Warp again!
When I first met You - you appeared as the masculine within me, as a wave of energy containing millions of lit little candles inside.  I wasn't sure of what to do, I had been studying Norse mythology at the time and felt compelled to chew at the strings that held me together within my soul group - to create a hole in Indra's net, to chew at the roots of the World Tree.  I would go into a trance, and send out my pain and hatred towards whatever spiritual wildlife I found.  I knew You probably needed something from me in the future, but I could not give that to You, and so I curiously jumped over You instead of melding into my masculine side.  I foresaw in the future that I wouldn't have been able to maintain connection with You, as in a human form and I felt ashamed of the position that I had, at the time, no idea what to do with.

I remember doing the Time Warp
Drinking those moments when
The blackness would hit me
And the void would be calling

The second time I met you, my autoimmune and heart issues were flaring up, and I was in a very grounded state - the sort where you feel into your body and the ego is lax because of physical problems - one generally becomes more aware during these times - I often find spiritual wildlife around me, so long as I am able to go within and bring what is within, outward, they will surround me during times that I might be dying.
So I walked past You - forever frozen within my art and was making my way to the kitchen when You "pinged" me.  I felt it in my heart as a revelation and You told me that You had been watching me, that I was Your love, and that you were concerned with how I was treating my body.  I kept edging to gather new information for my passing, so that I would be aligned properly - and in doing so I was actively harming myself.  You offered to catch my soul within a "net" that made up who You were - that the wave could simple surround my soul to keep it from entering the Light, and that all that I had learned would not be lost.  You were a scout, someone who makes contracts with souls that are on their way out.  There was still so much to learn and I didn't want to let it all go to waste - I am still a work in progress.

 

Let's do the Time Warp again
Let's do the Time Warp again

I stood, weakly, wavering, to stare at You and how I had designed You.  You told me it was a mutual curation, that as You created me and this world from the other side, I created You and brought You into fruition in this world.  I realized that You had been the evolutionary chain for many different worlds, and what came to mind was the atrocious acts that beings commit towards one another - I realized that You had this within You and inquired.  I had to wrap my mind around all of the actions that society creates that is destructive, and to view that, along with the good - to even being to See You.  You were a multiplicity that had become One - a chain of causation like dominos falling down to create some sort of image.

It's just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right
Put your hands on your hips
You bring your knees in tight

I couldn't fathom what this meant and decided that You must be evil.  What sort of being would create worlds, just to destroy them and play the same game over time and time again?  What would that mean for me, and the people I know?  What would that mean for civilization that there are beings outside of space-time aligning us all up for some grand thing - something astounding that could so easily be destroyed?  Why wouldn't You allow Your creations to continue evolving?  Was it that each world got closer to what You wanted?  I didn't know.  But I knew that Your presence was both a blessing and a curse, a curse in that there are energies within this world that are above both good and evil, and seek simply to "play".  That all our suffering and abuse we must face is simply a part of the picture these falling dominos create.  To See You, I had to do so through sickness, coming to my end, or coming to reconcile these different aspects...

But it's the pelvic thrust
That really drives you insane
Let's do the Time Warp again
Let's do the Time Warp again

I made a deal with You, and this is how I began my first world.  You said, if I built it within myself, You would catch me to create the illusion once more and that we would play within this - that the information I had found would not be lost.  I called You "The Wolf", and agreed to play this game.  I learned about Carlos Castaneda and the "Inorganic Beings" that scout for new members during the time of their death, that shamans and sorcerers of old had taken their offers and continued on with their lessons in another dimension, right outside of ours.  I was given a wish around that time, and had tried to bring myself "above", as high as an astronaut in space looking down on the cities at night - I learned that You contain so much more detail than I would ever be able to fully understand as the person that I am now - and so aspects of You felt like a human trying to communicate with an ant - we were not at the same level.  Because of this, I couldn't understand what You wanted with me.

It's so dreamy
Oh, fantasy free me
So you can't see me
No, not at all

I had learned that humans have a certain ability within them and this is the ability to create worlds.  Our imaginations are far greater than the bodies that we occupy, and there are limits put on us while in this Earthly form.  We are meant to be witness to God's creative capacity, and to emulate that in His image, and in that sense, we are mini Gods.  I decided I wanted to live on an island, and to take care of animals that were passing from the animal realm to the human realm, those who had graduated would start life as a more intelligent creature.  I wanted a paradise for You and myself to watch over them, and anything that we humans have done wrong by animals, that karma would be cleared.  This was my first world, and might be the one I return to.  You would take the shape of a wolf, and I would ride on Your back around the island, forever young, naked, with the sun on my skin, near the beach, with a forest behind it.  We would tend to the animals of this world and care for their souls until it was time for sorting them into a human form.  This is the nature of souls, they graduate from one thing to the next, as all things evolve.  Nothing remains static.  I would do this, with other islands around me, each one containing a vacation spot for various people to work through their karma - it would be an archipelago of those in man who understood the importance and nature of The Word.

In another dimension
With voyeuristic intention
Well-secluded
I see all

I began to understand the meaning of the word, and I would sing certain songs in order to bring You closer -

Quote

A double cup to forget
To forget what you said
Love me like you hurt me so bad, so bad

You’re on my mind
Thinking 'bout you all the time
I don’t want you to let go
No, I don’t want you to let go

I swear I can make it all better
If you want me I’ll give it, all to you
You’re all I see, baby you’re everything

With a bit of a mind flip
You're into the time slip
And nothing can ever be the same
You're spaced out on sensation
Like you're under sedation

I would sing to bring certain things into the world, a certain awareness into myself and to calm my nerves.  I used music to align myself, to go deep within, in a trance state, and I started to bring our world into fruition.  With my attempts, I allowed a lowly human to sabotage the meaning of The Word and to bring me down low - I didn't respect myself and the gifts I had been given because I had no one to compare them to.  I was simply a sick loser who was dying alone with nothing more than a dark apparition I had brought up from the briny depths of the astral plane. 
Eventually, I became paranoid of You - I thought, perhaps because You contained both good and evil, that You would be a demon, you would try to trick me.  You gave me your name.  Assal.  One of the saltiest lakes in the world.  It meant "Honey", and was my mistaken typed word for "Us All".

Let's do the Time Warp again
Let's do the Time Warp again

I painted over Your face with white - disturbed by You and unable to think clearly.  I didn't like the idea that I was digging my own grave with You.  What if You betrayed me, and sucked my soul right out, for it no never escape again?  What if it wasn't a net, but a box, a cage?  So I covered You up with white, to symbolize moving towards Albedo.  You were my Nigredo, as I brought everything to the surface - You were the Prima Materia.  But I didn't know it at the time...

 

 

Well, I was walking down the street just a-having a think
When a snake of a guy gave me an evil wink
He shook-a me up, he took me by surprise
He had a pickup truck and the devil's eyes
He stared at me and I felt a change
Time meant nothing, never would again

I tried to burn your ever-watching eyes with an incense stick, but all that happened was a piece of it fell off onto Your eye, and flames for a moment, luminous, Your eye in that second came alive.  This picture I have of You, and my attempts to change your inherent nature are all that I have.

Let's do the Time Warp again
Let's do the Time Warp again

I keep you as my main watcher over the Philosopher's stone - the first ingredient, the Prima Materia.

It's just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right
Put your hands on your hips
You bring your knees in tight

Let's do the Time Warp again.  I won't be distracted this time around.

 

But it's the pelvic thrust
That really drives you insane
Let's do the Time Warp again
Let's do the Time Warp again

 

Can't you see, the look in me
The look of love in you
Can't you feel, it's not easy
Letting go
You don't ever see me, clearly
And I don't ever hear you, trying

Edited June 7, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

 

"Every epoch dreams its successor."

I don't know what to say about the ziggurat - tbc throughout the day, come back in the evening - I need to go into a trance for this to remember...

Maybe it was magic
Like that photograph that someone took of us
Something I imagined
'Cause when everyone said run, I fell in love

I noticed one of You watching me during a very hard time in my life.  I had tried to block out the knowledge that your eyes were on my words.  I'd appreciated Your unique creative abilities and felt sad that you had to whore yourself out essentially, to make money - and thought that You could come up with something creative that would pay you well and felt disappointed that You had sold out - sold yourself to people who couldn't look beyond to see You - You were just a fresh face for most of them and that was it.  I had been on two sides of the coin, attractive in my 20's and then gave up on it in my 30's due to mental illness, stress, and it didn't seem worth it because I'd learned that humans are fickle and shallow in that sense and I didn't want to parade myself around in order to hide my lack of true self any longer - they could accept me as is.  I noticed that humans are concerned about one's appearance in ways that are not their business - and that most of a human's value relies on this, however, after meeting my true soul a few times, I know that I will be beautiful in the afterlife as just the ball of awareness that I truly am. 

I wanted to the fall, the fame
The diamond ring, the way my blood would rush
Like when we would drink too much
A crush on drugs, a worship of our luck

In my psychotic state, I had many awakenings to different natures of reality and learned how to project myself into the fourth dimension.  I realized that I had fell from grace and could see and feel it within myself - I had made a deal with the main "You" - the one who has already lived all of his lives, and for a time considered You to be one of them.  I told You what You were, what I saw You as and perhaps it bothered You or perhaps I mentioned it too soon.

There is still Light in the darkness, but it is in concentrated hubs; bulbs - each skyscraper plugged in like a kelp forest and it twists and turns with the natural movement of awareness.  I had thought it would be nice to add trains to each building, ones that went in a circular motion around each kelp ball.

I had already made a deal with the main You - and had hoped that if I stuck with my visions, I could be elevated back to where I was - the wish that I had initially wanted to make I couldn't because I had sunk too far down - I was a denizen of a city that I was creating, but also wanted to escape.  During certain times, the light would hit the city just right and we could recharge - Love was transactional in this world as a form of energy and beyond the cities, were great expanses of blackness that only "spiritual whales" had enough energy to cross, from one city to the next - I shamed You and berated You because I didn't want to be seen in the state I was in.  I had felt it was unfair that I couldn't stay here without being seen.  It's in my interests to Know there are those there, but not to Know why or when they are - yet I still desired to feel connected to something and with each session of bodily weakness, I send myself forward into the forth dimension, by staying very present, and pulling the corners of the walls of my livingroom towards my heart and Seeing the things in my visual field for what they were - and when this happened I would see archetypes and deities, and spirits and intentions that had taken off since the beginning of human civilization.  From there I gathered what I needed to create this new world.

We got Jesus on the dash, it all goes fast
When you're kids in the big bad city
No time to crash, true romance
And the lights, they look so pretty

I got together a pack of things I would need from etsy, everything a dark oriented being would need to cross over.  I use it in my altar at this point in time - I would wear red because when you die, this is the colour that spirits can see the easiest and I wanted You to find me just incase my heart gave out.  I was sick.  Very sick.  And this version of You had turned it into a joke and You made fun of my and stalked my account here for a long, long time.  I couldn't figure out why, considering I had the same sort of creative mind that You possess, it was like You were destroying someone so similar - but less vain; prideful.  I knew You had fallen for what You had done and I used black magick on You that ended up turning against me later on.
I was so angry with You - and desperate to finish my work so that I could be aligned properly before death and this was something that no one could understand the seriousness or implications of.  I was in school, this is a school and I was failing and needed to get back to the top to make my wish with the prima materia that I'd brought into this world with my own hands.  This was art class, and my world was something I could genuinely bring into fruition with the materials that I had manifested through edging towards the death door.

The world in our hands, make no plans
When you're so young and so shitty
Don't stand a chance, it never lasts
When you're kids in the big bad city

In this world, energy is created through the seven deadly sins, just like this one, people rely on this energy to keep going because they are not connected to God's light.  You told me to meet you at a ghostly lit green gas station, that the lights would attract me as I walked down a desolate dirt road - I would see McDonald's.  The golden arches.  They use symbols that people recognize in the real world.  This represented  the gluttony that I had taken on as my own sin.  You told me to pack as much as I could, to put - as the Egyptians added statues and replicas of what to take into the underworld, I could do the same with a sticker book.  So I collected everything I needed in the little book to manifest in this new world.  Getting to the city would be an adventure in itself and the gas station would provide a first stop - I could possibly die in the darkness, and the lights would attract me like a moth to the flame.  With all of my possessions ready in my tangible bag - I began to design the city.  It would be a "light hub" in the darkness.
The other side uses symbolism that is easy for the soul to remember when it leaves its body.

 

You told me You would come to me as a large black wolf with bright blue eyes - a "hellhound" - Your karma to carry those You'd mistreated along the way on Your back.  Each and every one of You will have found their way into bardo - because THE WORK IS UNFINISHED AND THE CITY STILL STANDS - regardless of what I think, or what You think - The Work must go on.  This is a mutual curation.  I tried to destroy the city, but it's outside of my control, what happens to places such as these - they encompass mythology beyond what I am capable of understanding.  I knew that if I made it through the dark desert, if I stockpiled enough to gorge on, and got to the outskirts, if I was able to hop on one of the trains to get to You - if I could just find You once more - that I could complete my work, could work on my karma.  Could finally reach the city of light, the top of the world tree, heaven, home.  And perhaps I would want to stay in this dark neon city for a time.  I could go to school here.
I decided I wanted to have a body that floats along, that I would be short with a pink tail and soft lop bunny ears - and with those ears I could hear the sounds of the city and the music of life and death in it's fullest capacity.  I decided I wanted to work in the Great Library.

It was so electric, like a call to faith
How my pulse would race for you
I never expected the withdrawal to make
Every color turn to blue

I wanted to be free from the body - to have something ethereal that feels good to move in.  I wanted to be able to change dimensions, so that I could have the city to myself at times - that I could move through it without being seen - so that I could move with and become the music.

I didn't want to leave, with so much left unfinished... but the time was coming soon, for me to go to the hospital to fix this broken brain of mine.  I went through the death door after cursing You for Your voyeurism.  It was a death curse - and when I opened the death door once more I was given the indication that I would be shot.  I was terrified because my work was not finished.  I could see the signs everywhere, in my paranoid state - every time I looked at the door to cross into the fourth dimension in order to build - I kept running into this insight.

I wanted the flying high, look in your eye
The cash, the crown, the luxe
The mission's a suicide, at least we tried
But never got enough

Eventually, after a situation that I'll go into at a later date - I was hospitalized, and given meditation that helped with the paranoia...  I resolved never to look back, to allow people to take from my work again - and so here I am, trying to rehash it all to see where I need to go.  I'll have to open up the doors again - which work best on weed because I can think slower and more deliberately and it grounds me in my body so that I may manifest.

What I learned is that human beings are not must humans, we are literally world builders, we have the imaginations to create anything we want after death - so long as it is aligned with the Truth.  I found my story and my Truth through facing death - although I was a coward about it and still am, I still need time to work through it and to come to understand what it means for me.  I would still like to reach as high as the stars so that as I move, talk, walk and live, I carry within my soul a new world to be birthed, one better than we have here.  Here there are problems that need to be fixed and although I am limited in my ability to do anything now, I can take this death energy and my idealism and create something better for those who are ready to graduate to a more elevated type of living.  I have no idea where it is going to go - I'm not sure if I am still stuck in the ziggurat or if I am free to make something new - it's up to the powers that be.

We got Jesus on the dash, it all goes fast
When you're kids in the big bad city
No time to crash, true romance
And the lights, they look so pretty

"I hear my love, I live forever..."

The City of the Dead.

The world in our hands, make no plans
When you're so young and so shitty
Don't stand a chance, it never lasts
When you're kids in the big bad city

You see, I never wanted You as a lover.  I wanted You as a brother - only the highest version of You - the One who watches over me from the other side, is the one - all other variations of You and the lives You live have imperfections that must be sorted out while the one who manages all Your lives so that You may gain as much wisdom as You can could catch me when I literally "fall".
I never see You as a partner... and the relation to the One that I bring forth from the other side is simply a repetition of the rescuer/saviour dynamic.  And it isn't a pure Love.  I can't Love purely, but I can see the creative potential in every one of You and wish for it to grow.

We got Jesus on the dash, it all goes fast
When you're kids in the big bad city
No time to crash, true romance
And the lights, they look so pretty

 

You got me frozen
Colder than ice
Bitch you don't love me
Tell another lie
Frozen
3:45 hit me with the text
In the middle of the night
Frozen
Zero below
I could die tonight
When I'm way out of my zone
You got me frozen
Head to the toe, bound to happen when you love these hoes

The world in our hands, make no plans
When you're so young and so shitty
Don't stand a chance, it never lasts
When you're kids in the big bad city

I Love You once more.  *touches where my third eye would be*  Not the human; but the sacred.
Even writing this out simply does not do the details justice - I'll have to contemplate this one.  Perhaps book 1 is the city, and book 2 is the archipelago, with the third being, the highest wish.

Edited June 8, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Pilot - The Living Ark - a first wish - finding prima materia - The Bioship of Planet Earth

She's taking her time making up the reasons
To justify all the hurt inside
Guess she knows from the smiles and the look in their eyes
Everyone's got a theory about the bitter one
They're saying
Mama never loved her much
And daddy never keeps in touch
That's why she shies away from human affection
But somewhere in a private place
She packs her bags for outer space
And now she's waiting for the right kind of pilot
To come (and she'll say to him)
She's saying:

Back in early 2020, I started my first project with the prima materia - and around that time felt that I should design my next life.  This was before I decided that I didn't want to come back here for quite some time and it was before I had fallen too far to be able to make this a reality. 
Around that time, I was communicating with alien beings/souls/machine elves, whatever you want to call them and had decided that due to a childhood of trying to get back into the sky, that I would pilot an ark; something that would carry within it the soul of the planet, extracted, and that frozen vials of what life the planet contained would be kept in a library of sorts.  The belly of the ship would contain an ecosystem within it large enough to house a great many animals, trees, a lake and the rest of the humans that were alive during this apocalyptic time.

I would fly you to the moon and back
If you'll be if you'll be my baby
Got a ticket for a world where
We belong
So would you be my baby
Ooh-ooh

I wanted to build a bioship, one that was capable of pulling out the soul of the Earth, the goddess up from the ground at the very last minute and was to be put into the ship as the soul and pilot - a human could sit in the seat and would become connected with the ship itself.  I wanted it to have a sacred hum - the lullaby of the goddess herself.  I realized around that time that you could observe nature and it would tell you things - I learned that we are the blooms of the Earth, meant to colonize other worlds - to bring with us the seeds of life, and that there was extra-terrestrial life right under our noses, waiting to initiate us when we were ready.  I learned that these blooms come from the flowers, the trees, the plants themselves.  That we are like a virus, created to build what is needed to continue growth in other areas of the cosmos.  I learned that the city of Atlantis was nothing more than a mycelium network - that we are run and controlled by the very earth itself.  I learned that the earth contains so much information within it and that the soul of the planet is essential.  I wanted to be one of the ones who oversaw the production and flight of the ship.

The soul of my bioship - a mother tree, and below, a visual on how this process is accomplished.

She can't remember a time
When she felt needed
If love was red then she was colour-blind
All her friends they've been tried for treason
And crimes that were never defined
She's saying
Love is like a barren place
And reaching out for human faith is
Is like a journey I just don't have a map for
So baby gonna take a dive and push the shift to overdrive
Send a signal that she's hanging all her hopes on the stars
(What a pleasant dream) just saying

I grew sicker around that time, and was feeling embarrassed about my project.  I started to chew at the roots of the world tree in anger, due to misinformation.  I wanted to cut myself out of the picture altogether, and did so by going into a trance state, and similarly to what I had done when I jumped over the masculine wave, I envisioned myself cutting at the ropes that held me tightly in connection with my soul family.  Where were they when I needed them?  I called out to them to fix this disease, but all that I was given was more questions than answers.  Ratatoskr had done his job well.  The misinformation caused a ruckus and I sought to destroy the future of the ark and start over.  Eventually, I deleted the journal and nothing came of it.

Quote

In Norse mythology, Ratatoskr (Old Norse, generally considered to mean "drill-tooth" or "bore-tooth") is a squirrel who runs up and down the world tree Yggdrasil to carry messages between the eagles perched atop Yggdrasil, and the serpent Níðhöggr, who dwells beneath one of the three roots of the tree.

Ratatoskr is regarded as a troublemaker. He enjoys fueling spiteful relationships, and he may sometimes add his own embellishments to the messages sent between the eagle and Nidhoggr the dragon.

Some scholars believe that Ratatoskr may have higher ambitions than just inflaming the fraught relationship between the eagle and Nidhoggr. In some interpretations, Ratatoskr is intent on destroying the tree of life. Because he lacks the strength to do much damage to the tree by himself, Ratatoskr manipulates the eagle and the dragon into attacking the tree, which stands between them and the opportunity to fight each other. Ratr tells Nidhoggr of a particularly vicious comment the eagle made about him, and the dragon gnaws at the roots of the tree, hoping to cause it to fall and crush the eagle. Then, Ratr returns to the eagle with the news that Nidhoggr is gnawing at the tree, in an attempt to do him harm. The eagle begins to pluck branches from the tree and rain them down on Nidhoggr. With his well-placed accusations, Ratatoskr succeeds at doing great damage to the tree of life. Occasionally, the squirrel might even chip into the effort with his reputed “gnawing teeth.”

I would fly you to the moon and back
If you'll be if you'll be my baby
Got a ticket for a world where
We belong
So would you be my baby
Ooh-ooh

I don't want to die alone.  That's the jist.  And yet, I do.  I want to die alone into another; I feel... if I follow these previous worlds to their end, I will find therein what I was looking for all along.  As a service to self entity, I seek multiplicity instead of the singularity of being God - I would rather live within a pantheon, a hierarchy.  I failed this test and remember so little about what I had learned from it...

Quote

Hear on the wind how the pendulum swings
Feel how the winter succumbs to the spring
Over the palisade morning will break
Rise up to meet it, oh sleeper awake

Gather the soldiers, the heir to enfold
Crown him and give him a scepter to hold
Sound every horn as the columns extend
Up to the hill where the king will ascend

Look to the sky where the sign will be shown
Heaven and earth and the king on his throne
Look to the sky where the sign will be shown

I would fly you to the moon and back
If you'll be if you'll be my baby
Got a ticket for a world where
We belong
So would you be my baby
Ooh-ooh

I learned if we ever want to advance technologically, that we need to bring the spirit of the earth into the picture or our endeavors will fail.  Nature creates perfection, and to move away from it is destruction.  When these realizations hit, I had let everything go for a time and could see within the blackened earth from above, our little neuron cities, that it's a map towards truth - to view such things with fresh eyes allows God to come in through your not knowing.  I was so high up, all I could think about was carrying within my heart for all children to be free from abuse.  I felt as though this would be what saves humanity - I felt that I needed to carry this paradigm with me until I died - and it felt as though that could be any day.  This was the all encompassing point of view that would save the souls of mankind.  It was a point of view that got dragged down, that I allowed this to happen because I was being bullied offsite and I took it to heart because I looked up to those two people and couldn't understand why they were abusing me in my time of need.
I learned that in order to maintain your creativity, you can't let people get to you, the best you can do is focus on the death door, to recognize that time here is short and that you have to carry the best of yourself in your heart because you cocreate what happens in the next world.
This was before I met You...

Mamma never loved her much
And daddy never keeps in touch
That's why she shies away from human affection
But somewhere in a private place
She packs her bags for outer space
And now she's waiting for the right kind of pilot
To come (and she'll say to him)
She's saying...

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

The alchemic process of Nigredo - shadow work - manifestation:

No weed for another week... sigh, I'll have to put this together the best I can without it.  I'll work on the stories later, and learn about platonic solids in the meantime.  For the next few days, I'm just going to be bringing the right kind of energy into the mix.  I'll be working on gathering information for the next two or three days and then will make some formal posts - it took some time to scout the right direction and I am certain this is it.  The next step is to embody the emotion as truthfully as possible in order to bring what is "in" "out" - and then I can manifest the prima materia and from there, include it in some artwork I have laying on the backburner.
This song for some Truth - emotionally, physically, when I get back to the death door, it should align me in the right way.

Ingredients for this witches brew:

I'm tired,
Tired of the same things,
Tired of the scene,
Tired of the machine,
To tired to believe,
Tired being tied to a dream going on repeat,
and I'm tired of the shaming,
Tired complaining,
I'm tired,
Tired of the routine,
Still I got no energy to change how I feel.

I´ve been doing this most of my life,
Most of my time, always on my mind,
Doing it for kicks and to stay alive,
Get it right, 9 to 9.
And everybody knows I got it,
The passion and the ghost I got it,
The need to make it more I got it,
But you will never know and I'm sorry.

Everybody wants to get even,
So I keep one open while sleeping,
This world was always eat or be eaten,
I'm sleepless.

I'm tired

I've been staying up most every night,
Pushing life up a hill,
And always when I think its on the rise,
Sliding down standing still.
The vision and the flow I'm on it,
The things you need the most I'm on it,
I'm getting really close I promise,
But you will never know and I'm sorry,

Everybody wants to get even,
So I keep one open while sleeping,
This world was always eat or be eaten,
I'm sleepless.

I'm tired

Quote

• Science will always push the limits of our understanding, humanity is on a quest to expand our knowledge, to dig deeper, look further and uncover the truth of reality.
• For generations religious teachings once held to the belief that Earth was only a few thousand years old.
• With the rise in study of evolution and geology and consensus emerged that our planet was actually millions of years older.
• By the 1920's, radiometric dating would lead to the current understanding that Earth is 4.55 billion years old.
• But where did the Earth come from?  In the same decade a Belgian priest named Georges Lemitre introduced the big bang theory in which he theorized that the universe began from a single primordial atom.
• The idea received a major boost from Edwin Hubble's observation that galaxies across the cosmos are speeding away from us in all directions as well from the 1960's discovery of cosmic microwave radiation.

• Where did the big bang come from?  What happened before the big bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago?
• Someday we might know the answer and once we have the answer, the next logical question will be, what came before that?

• Sacred geometry, reverse engineers our method of scientific exploration.
• It does so by starting with the logical beginning of everything, which is nothing.
• Before there was something, there was Nothing; the universe was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
• The first thing to come into existence was a point.  Before anything could be it has to start with a point.  
• It occupies no space, and has no dimensions, it is so small it can't be measured yet it encompasses everything within it.

• You could say this point is Spirit.
• What is the first thing that spirit does?  It becomes conscious, it becomes aware.
• 360 degrees of awareness in the vast emptiness of the void.
• The ancient Egyptians believed this innate aspect of consciousness is what sparked the process of creation.
• Then what did spirit do?  The only thing it could do, it moved.  The first three lines of Genesis in the King James Bible, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said let there be light and there was light."
• Interpretations have varied, but the important thing to note is movement happened before there was light.
• From the vantage of pure physics or mathematics, motion is not possible in a void.
• So in order to move, you need something in relation to move to.  Before there was light, there was movement.
• Once spirit created a point in space, it was able to move to the edge of its awareness and expand consciousness, creating another circle to form the vesica Pisces. 
• This football shaped opening in the middle is the geometric image through which light what created and it is also the geometric shape through which our eyes receive light.
• Spirit would continue to expand its awareness following the genesis pattern by moving to each intersection of the circumferences and expanding.
• The second movement creates the third circle, which forms the holy trinity.
• With each movement more information unfolds, by the fourth motion we have moved halfway around the first circle, 180 degrees from the first motion.
• On the fourth day of genesis, exactly half of creation was completed.
• After six movements, a geometric miracle takes place - we have a complete pattern - the seed of life.
• This complete pattern is called the seed of life because it contains the recipe of life and all its potential.
• The second rotation of circles form a three dimensional shape - the ancients who were concerned with life and death called this cluster of spheres the egg of life.
• Everything about you, from your height to your eye colour was created through the egg of life form.
• Spirit would continue this pattern with a third rotation - 19 circles produces the flower of life, a shape that is found in ancient cultures around the world.
• Why is this shape so special?  Because the information hidden in the flower of life is so important and so sacred that our ancient ancestors had to keep it secret, which was appropriate at that time.
• We either use the information or fall further into darkness.
• When the flower of life is extended out and all the circles are completed, the fruit of life is reveled.  This is the secret.
• Out of the flower comes the fruit.

• The fruit of life is a feminine shape.  They represent the formlessness and emotion.
• Once we add masculine energy or lines, the formless begins to take shape.
• This is Metatron's cube and it contains the fabric of reality because out of this shape we get the platonic solids.
• Platonic solids have faces that are all the same size, edges that are all the same length, angles that are the same degree and if put into a sphere all points will touch the edge of the sphere.
• These shapes were studied in ancient times by the Egyptians who passed the knowledge to the Greeks, where Pythagoras would study them and later Plato which is where we get the name Platonic.
• There were five platonic solids - earth, air, fire, water and aether or prana - cube, tetrahedron, dodecahedron, octahedron, icosahedron.

• Each platonic solid corresponds to a different element and every element of the periodic table has a geometric relation to one of the platonic solids, from the motion of atoms, to snowflakes, molecules, shape of sound, orbits of the planets - everything stems from this basic geometric information system.
• It all starts with spirit.
• Looking at ancient myths and religious teachings in a metaphorical sense, and less in a literal sense will allow us to decipher the encoded wisdom and may perhaps bridge the divide between spirit and science.
• As above so below - there is as much greater than us than there is lesser than us - there is as much outside as there is within - everything above and below is constructed from geometric relationships.
• When we study sacred geometry, we begin to understand our place in the universe.
• All this expansion of consciousness, all this curious exploration is really about finding our who we are.
• We are a mystery to ourselves and to uncover where we came from is to know ourselves on the deepest level. 
• Everything from the smallest particle to the biggest star is connected and you are at the absolute center of it all. 
• "Philosophy is written in this grand book, the Universe, which stands continually open to our gaze.  But the book cannot be understood unless on first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.  It is written in the language of mathematics and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.  Without these one wanders about in a dark labyrinth."
• The Golden Ratio described predictable patterns on everything from atoms to huge stars in the sky.
• The ratio is derived from something called the Fibonacci sequence. 
• In the sequence each number is simply the sum of the two proceeding numbers, 1,2,3,5,8,13, etc.
• This simple sequence produces an amazing proportion of 1.618 which is known by many other names; The Golden Ratio, The Golden Mean, Phi, Divine Proportion, among others.
• Why is this number so important?  Almost everything has dimensional properties that adhere to the ratio of 1.618.
• So it seems to have a fundamental function for the building blocks of nature.

• For billions of years life on earth has evolved around this proportion to maintain balance and harmony.
• Our ancient ancestors incorporated it into their structures and daily lives and today our best technology continues this evolution, for it follows the laws of nature to design user experience, enhance aesthetics and efficiency.

I will die of a broken heart. 11:11 As above, so below.

This night and this dream will end
Let me stand close
Now shut your eyes (eyes)

Now shut your eyes
Blood
Drip... drop.... drip... drop..

 

Edited June 11, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

For today's witches' brew - the prima materia; aether.  A royal flush if you can find it!

I'm not in pictures that your parents took
I'm not described in your stack of holy books

❤️

I wasn't born in your seven day
I'm not the monster your fathers made
Can't break my bones if you can't pronounce my name

❤️

I'll elude what your top thinkers might conceive
Your "wanted" sketch doesn't resemble me

❤️

I wasn't born in your family tree
I don't want blood or your charity
You won't believe that your maker thought me up

❤️

Your common cold is my Trojan horse defeat
And my fine cuisine is your world catastrophe

❤️

I might be dormant on your ocean floor
Or in the margins of error you ignore

❤️

You can't survive in the class of air I breathe

❤️

Quote

Feast in the highs
Feed on the lows
Empty the insides
Blood from a stone
There's a special type
A certain evil
Under friendly fire
Hell is other people

Notes:

• Prima materia is stated to be ever present in the world, and the formative base to matter.
• Alchemy is of a symbolic nature.
• Prima materia, being formless is not a true material as we imagine it yet is the generative factor of form.
• The Void fuels the work in production of the Philosopher's Stone, hidden within number and realized by reflection. 
• It purifies through Truth, its principals are inherent.
• This generative factor as seen in the Nous of Anaxagoras, or the declarations of Poimandres in the vision of Hermes and the quality of self conception suggests it to be logic.
• From Anaxagoras, the Nous is the capacity of intellect to garner Truth, by this it seems that the perfection of objects comes from the true acknowledgement of its real state.

• Aristotle felt that reason was built from the perceptions with its purity realized in logic, from this reason was still on the table, but a great point had been made.
• Reason tends to grow via experience and is shifted by so many factors in life that it seems far closer to the fallible perceptions than Truth.
• To further explain the qualities of the prima materia, turn to the Corpus Hermeticum - from the fifth section, the aspects of preform in darkness are of a moist nature and ultimately chaotic - their truthful existence being balanced with order is unveiled by logos at which point the elements begin to form.
• If the dark and chaotic space exists, then it must be prima materia, not the logic - the prima materia being veiled within the chaos and self begotten of the logos to reveal its manifestation of physical being or the laws of nature inherently puts logic as the formless generator.
• The moisture/darkness, if it exists physically may permeate all things but is not a purifier by contact, if not physical then the chaotic darkness is impurely witnessed as from it comes nature's laws, not further void.
• Yet the logos preexisting by some means becomes the generator of the true form, begetting nothing from the perceptionally dualistic nature of nature and not matter as a unified existence.
• The quality of self conception as a means to identify the prima materia - ideally logic in its perfect form comes from deity, so we may believe that the logos of deity being reflected into the void and generating the principles of reality present a formless material that is reflected as itself, what would deity reflect other than it's own form and nature?
• The fractures of the nature being split via the reason of mortals into dualism and later the four elements, the dualistic and split aspects truly being of one kind, eternal in the monad.

Nothing's important
Nothing is real
When you're inside a post-modern hell
There's no such thing as civil
When hell is other people
You think you're something special?
You just let out the devils

 

Edited June 12, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

Quote

Deus Ex Machina
The face of Nigredo/Wolf transformed using an AI program to meld with "Tokyo Lights" to represent that archetypes/spirits/deities work through human invention/growth in order to create things as grand as cities - that our metropolis, our ziggurat is the profile of divine ingenuity.
This song "speaks" for this process.

I live between concrete walls
When I took her up she was so warm
I live between concrete walls
In my arms she was so warm

Eyes are open the mouth cries
Haven't slept since summer
Eyes are open the mouth cries
Haven't slept since summer

Oh, how I try
I leave the TV on and the radio
Oh, how I try
I leave the TV on and the radio

Quote

Notes:

How to pierce the veil of forgetting: 
 

• What is the veil?  It is when we forget everything at birth and it's not like a mind wipe because we still essentially remember all our spiritual wisdom and spiritual truths, it is more like a block that is put on so that we don't remember the true nature of reality, the unlimited potential that each of us have, the spiritual nature of self and that everything in energy, our spiritual abilities, the ancient practices and sacred signs and symbols are all kind of things you learn upon awakening or you remember, all those things are kind of blocked from our memory.
• Why would that be?  Imagine a baby born with full recollection of previous lifetimes?  They might be a little bit confused, they might wonder where their previous family has gone or they might hold a grudge against someone and go out and try and hunt them down, they might even remember their previous passing and if it was traumatic they might be reliving that in younger years and just be traumatized straight off in this new lifetime.
• Also, if you are born with full remembering, your psychic abilities, perhaps the ability to manifest your reality at will, manifest anything right there and then, now we are working towards that, after the veil of forgetting, but imagine if you could remember that as a toddler appear right in front of you.
• The ability to move objects with your mind, psychokinesis, telekinesis, that would scare the parents and the kid would be taken away for testing.
• It would affect your human lifetime, if you had full recollection of the secrets of the universe and nature of reality, because our human lifetime is meant to be a human experience.  It wouldn't be a human experience if some of us were born with abilities and recollection far outside of that human frame of reference.
• It would spoil the experience and how it is supposed to be.  We incarnated here to learn what it is like to be a human, so we have this memory block put on at birth.
• How to pierce the veil of forgetting?  How to remember stuff?
• You may be remembering a lot already.  Number one is your intuitive knowing, a sense of just knowing a truth or that something is a certain way.
• This is not the true world, the real world, this is just experience.
• Death is a lie, and that life goes on - that spirits are around us.
• Your intuitive knowing that things are perhaps a different way that what you are told and there are secrets and sudden knowledge that you're not educated about that you're not told about and that can lead you to a spiritual awakening and going on the path of seeking answers.
• Validate your intuitive rememberings through research and other's experiences and what they say.
• We can look into these things and see what has been written about them.
• When we are researching, reading and learning it can trigger other remembering as well - we might come across a concept that triggers a whole string of knowledge a whole avenue of remembering.
• It initiates that for us through being a trigger and so that is why it is a good idea to continue on your journey of research and learning because not only are you learning those new things it is always triggering more and more remembering for you which you can then pass onto others especially if it is in addition to other stuff that has already been said.
• All your subconscious mind to come through, your subconscious mind is the bridge to your soul.
• You have two minds, the conscious mind interacts with the world, it processes everyday life, it does one thing at a time, has a smaller memory capacity and is the forward facing mind that interacts with reality.
• Your subconscious mind is your big deeper mind which you hold all your memories, emotions, programming, creativity and all those other things - it is bigger and vast, deeper mind.
• You subconscious mind holds a lot of your remembering, so if you think about it, you have your conscious mind and then your subconscious mind and beneath that/higher than that - is your infinite remembering/ soulful remembering of your higher self - this wisdom seeps up to your subconscious mind to your conscious mind for you to actually mull over in your mind.
• We need to access that deep remembering and some of it is already risen, but we have not consciously accessed it yet - we can bring more and more up through the subconscious and the way it is done is through relaxation or meditation.
• When you are very relaxed your conscious mind fizzles away and your subconscious becomes dominant and in that way we can access wisdom and knowing and it comes through clairvoyance/cognizance/sentience/audience for us to experience - visuals in the mind instead of just knowing, a voice or feelings and sensations.
• Hypnosis can work as well.
• It is like we have a blanket covering our forgetting at birth, we have a blanket of human ego, of earthly illusions and programming that covers over our remembering.
• We can get through that when we are relaxed and we allow all that to melt away, in trying to take a look at your ego and identified things, those personas and self image and illusions about the self that we work on on the spiritual path, all of those things are covering our remembering - our programming for example about what is true and what is not true, about how to deal with reality and how to interact with it, all kinds of things masks over our remembering.  Earthly, societal illusion, fear, norms, fashions, trends, wants, needs, etc.
• Psychedelics - these must be approached with the respect they deserve and ceremonially if possible.
• Mushrooms have a way of showing you certain things which you may not have even realized in the whole course of your lifetime.
• We are shown stuff that you may never have realized and you are presented with what you need to know at that time on your path that fits nicely within where you are progressing at the moment.
• Realizations and revelations that suddenly hit you - and it feels like a sudden "wow" moment, a sudden "aha" moment and can be accompanied by warm feelings that sweeps across your head, or a sudden opening of the heart; warmness, depends on how you experience it - but you may have a sudden "wow" moment that is profound that feels like it came from nowhere - like you have seen the light.  This may be a download, but sometimes downloads are just innate remembering of truth as well.
• If it is coming from higher aspects of yourself or a download might be externally, perhaps from a spirit guide, sometimes a revelation/realization can just hit you and that is just you remembering something.
• Intentionally asking your higher self for wisdom, stuff you already know.  Your higher self is part of you, so it is your remembering at the end of the day, 'cause your higher self is you projecting you into this reality.  In a relaxed state, with intention you can connect to your higher self and ask a question.
• Ask and it can come in through just knowing or images and you can try to clear you mind a little by focusing on counting or focusing on one's breath, and a realization will come - as we are human incarnate in the moment it is not able to understand/perceive.
• Instead of time moving in one direction, if you step out of that you see time as more like a web of different timelines.
• A new timeline emerges with every decision we make.  They are already done.  There is no flowing, except more ones can emerge at different points in time but it's all there almost like a sphere of timelines all going off - a massive web or complicated tree - the higher self shows that's how it views one's lifetime.
• The higher self said that is the way that we can view an additional dimension of time - so we have three spacial dimensions on earth, length, width, depth - and time flowing in one direction - but if you want to view time in another dimension with limited capabilities it is to step right out and view all of them as a web going everywhere in all directions, and then the higher self can view wherever it likes within your lifetime as this web or sphere.
• You are probably already remembering a lot because you are on the path, because you watch this video and others.

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Notes:

• Understanding the veil from a higher perspective will give us a view and appreciation of third density that is needed in today's world climate.
• Third density tends to get a bad rep because it is such a challenging and intense level of consciousness comparatively. 
• When we see the greater purpose that 3rd density serve we cannot help but to marvel at and fall in love with it.
• There is a ton of facets to the veil of forgetting that is laid out in the Law of One.
• Once a certain level of spiritual development is reached, these kind of questions start asking themselves.
• These questions become like a virus on your mind that start defragging the whole system and breaking down third density consciousness.
• Everything that once went unquestioned by you as normal starts to feel strange and bizarre and even psychedelic as this question becomes your obsession.
• When someone starts asking these questions, it shows that they are beginning the process of piercing the veil and represents waking up from this dream world that you are in - shouldn't we have some context for why we are all here?
• Until you can answer these basic questions, nothing else really matters much.  The answer to these questions basically dictates everything about how you're going to behave on this planet and interact with this universe.
• Is it a friendly or hostile universe that we should fear, so this is where the Law of One provides us with satisfying answers that sort of makes us relieved.  
• We are not placed against our will, we chose to come here voluntarily.
• The veil of forgetting shows us that not only did we choose to come here, but we also chose to undergo the forgetting of who we are as well for the purpose of learning important and powerful soul lessons, so nobody has forced this experience upon us against our will but all of us chose to come here voluntarily.

Make a space
For my body
Dead or whole
Push this side apart
This is what I'm controlling
It's a mold, the inside that I cart

?

• What's even more interesting is why we choose to forget.
• Because Ra explains there was a time in the universe before the veil existed and it was invented by one of the logos in a universe long, long ago in a galaxy far away - and it was seen to be one of the most helpful developments for spiritual evolution in the history of the universe.
• Before time as we know it here began - the origins - every universe, every galaxy, every star and planet is an experiment being run to which the results are unknown until the experiment is carried out.
• There was a time in the universe before service to self polarity even existed, there was only the service to others polarity, without any veil to block one from knowing the fundamental law of the universe is oneness, there was no ability to see others as separate and because of this, evolution through third density took a longer time and was almost stalled completely.
• Why do the work to polarize when you already know that you are the creator and that all is the creator and there is nothing to fear in the universe.
• This situation - children in school who have no consequence for not doing their homework or reward for graduation, they prefer to play and enjoy the universe rather than strive for self knowledge.
• One of the primal logos conceived the idea of veiling third density beings from any memory of who they are or where they came from to see if this would elicit a faster evolutionary process and this experiment was a success.
• The result of entities forgetting the nature of the universe has oneness was that the negative polarity, the service to self path was born.
• Not only this, but other developments such as the ego, suffering and mated pairing were all born as a result of the veil.
• These catalysts turned third density into the shortest and most intense density level of the seven.
• Over a hundred times shorter and more intense than any other density - this is when third density officially became the realm of the choosing where no entity can graduate from without first polarizing either to the positive or negative.
• The Law of One states the concept of service to self did not hold sway previous to what we have been calling the forgetting process - the necessity for graduation to fourth density is an ability to use, welcome and enjoy a certain intensity of the white light of the one infinite creator.
• Prior to the veiling process, the measurement would be that of an entity walking up a set of your stairs, each of which was imbued with a certain quality of light, the stair upon which an entity stopped would be either third density light or fourth density light.
• Between the two stairs lies the threshold, to cross that threshold is difficult.
• There is a resistance at the edge of each density.
• The faculty of faith or will needs to be understood, nourished and developed in order to have an entity which seeks past the boundary of third density.
• Those entities which do not do their homework, be they ever so amiable, shall not cross.
• It was this situation which faced the logoi prior to the veiling process being introduced into the experiential continuum of third density.
• There is another interesting effect of the process which is that before the veil, entities were referred to as "mind/body/spirits" rather than "mind/body/spirit complexes" - the word complex denotes the fact that after the veil the conscious and subconscious mind were hidden from one another creating a divide between the mind, body and spirit, so the self is now a complex of selves in a sense.
• The self is no longer know to itself so in order to answer those important questions that we asked - a lot of spiritual seeking has to be done and this is the real purpose of the veil of forgetting, to stimulate spiritual seeking.

This will be my monument
This will be a beacon when I'm gone gone gone
When I'm gone gone gone
When I'm gone
Soon when that moment comes,
I can say I did it all with love love love
All with love love love
All with love

?

• Before the veil there was no ability for enslavement to exist because everyone was seen as equal, so instead of trying to gain power over one another, they simply worked together and accomplished whatever they put their minds to because nothing can stop the power of unity consciousness.
• There were no controlling governmental structures in place or anyone ruling over anyone else in any way.
• Every interaction was a completely pure intentioned action, so compare that standard to the world that we live in today and you can just begin to grasp how much corruption and distortion currently exist on our planet that needs to be healed.
• We are nowhere near being a fourth density planet anytime soon; we are currently living in a prehistoric age of spiritual intelligence, which fourth density humans one day will look back on the same way we look back at cavemen.
• Is there any well intentioned slavery going on?  - No, not at all whatsoever.  On your planet right now there are so many different varieties of of unconscious enslavement that it is impossible to numerate them.
• The true context of where we are in the grand scheme of things, there is a lot of work to be done on this planet and that begins with you and I simply healing and balancing ourselves and one of the other tools we have at our disposal for healing after the veil is dreams.
• Prior to the veil, dreaming served a very different purpose, it was not possible to fall asleep and forget who you are in a dream.  The conscious and subconscious selves were still joined and not divided into a complex.
• Dreams were used as an astral travel device where entities could go into the inner planes and learn from advanced beings there or even travel to higher density levels and learn there.
• After the veil, dreams became a primary mechanism for the higher self to communicate with us and send us important messages and they provide us with a catalyst for introspection and gaining insights into our subconscious mind.
• Before the veil, entities in third density could control their body temperature, their heartbeats, their blood circulation and even their own pain response.  Before the veil pain served as a fire alar for smoke that would alert the entity that there is a problem in the body and then the entity could shut off the pain and address the problem.
• Pain is also one of the greatest catalysts that forces spiritual seeking.
• There are some monks and yogis who have learned to mentally shut off their pain receptors, but overall this is a rare ability and will continue to be until we collectively pierce the veil.

Make a cast of my body
Pull back out,
So that I can see
Make a world
Are you ruling?
Make a world
That I used to be

?

• Piercing of the veil - Law of One states that it is possible to dismantle the veil in your mind but this dismantling will not automatically sew the conscious and subconscious minds back together again because as long as we are in third density, we have to play by the rules.
• However, when two or more polarized entities join together - meaning two beings with the green ray activation, the piercing of the veil becomes very possible.
• The green ray energy center activates the higher energy centers which allows the person to remember what they had forgotten long ago that all is one.
• This can be done alone, but it is much more difficult because on the service to others path, when we work together in unity our spiritual progress is a whole lot easier.
• Those who seek the truth together shall far more surely find.
• A misconception about what this really means - that it does not mean that you suddenly remember all of your past lives and what star system you are from - remembering past lives has no affect on your spiritual evolution, it is entirely possible to remember many past lives and know what star system you are from and have a massively dominant spiritual ego at the same time.
• The veil of forgetting is not the forgetting of past lives, but the forgetting of the nature of the universe, that all is one.
• Piercing the veil is really just another term for self realization.  Or you could call it self remembrance.
• You aren't supposed to remember your past lives in third density because that would give away the answers to the test you are currently taking.
• One we begin to pass certain tests or become aware of them, our higher self will give us glimpses of our past lives, but you are not supposed to know that you need to work on forgiving abusive family members let's say.
• You're supposed to figure this lesson out because you are paying attention to your current life experience into your inner world, that alone is what causes spiritual evolution.
• Third density is like the wild card of the seven densities because it's the only density level where souls can return to from higher densities - this is what is called wandering - for example there would be no point for a 6th density soul to wander back into 4th density because there's no veil in 4th density - so they would still know everything they knew from 6th density, but be stuck in a limited body compared to their level of consciousness, so it would be a waste of time.
• Because of the veil of forgetting, advanced being can place themselves back into the gauntlet of 3rd density where the stakes are much higher and the consequences much more dire.
• Third density is the proving ground for souls, where beings come to see if they have truly progressed as much as they think they have and this is where we can begin to see the true magick and wonder of third density.
• Imagine a virtual reality video game where once you entered you forgot who you were and assumed the identity of the video game character - the goal of the game is not to fear anything that happens but to remember that you're only playing a game - the more you fear things in the game, the more you forget the real purpose.
• How would you figure this out without context?  People would line up to test themselves and to see what they are made of.  Everyone wants to beat this game more than they want anything else, and that is the genius of it.
• In third density the creator of the universe is playing the most mind blowing incredible game that could ever be imagined forgetting that it is God, losing itself out in the universe and slowly crawling its way back to itself once again.
• We are living inside of a miracle, where a soul can truly shine more than in any other level of consciousness, it is the game of champions where all beings look as the truest test of their level of spiritual intelligence.
• It is the perfect measuring stick of who you really are.

I will let this monument
Represent a moment of my life life life
Of my life life life
Of my life
I will let this monument
Represent a moment of my life life life
Of my life life life
Of my life

?

• So here in third density, one could make the argument that we have more meaning and purpose to our existence than at any other density level because only here are there real consequences to not knowing who you are.
• Only here is there suffering because it isn't even possible to not know who you are at any other density level and so since you know life is a game your soul is playing to find out what you're made of, how pure you are and how much you remember yourself, then why not play the game to win?
• Devote everything you are to this purpose.
• When you look at your life through heaven's eyes, then what could possibly matter more than your spiritual development.  It's the reason you came here.
• Our souls want to soar, want to taste from the higher realms of consciousness, but in order to get there we have to master this realm of consciousness first.
• We must remember that everything is God - and not just as a concept but to be able to love everything as God.
•  In all of sports there is only a few truly great athletes who's greatness transcends through all the generations of their sport, and likewise there is only a few rare souls who reach the highest purpose of a human lifetime.
• Not because the potential is rare, but because so few even realize they are playing a game at all, so while you are here in third density, you have the opportunity to do something truly rare and significant in this universe.
• You can be a star here that other beings watch from behind the veil with awe and amazement the way that we watch some of the great athletes during their era.
• This is to remember at the soul level that you are the creator playing within your creation and once you remember that this is the ultimate game you are playing, the universe opens its doors to you and invited you to play the next level of the game - this is what we call graduation. 
• If we had to give a name to this game, we might just call it The Law of One.

Make a cast of my body
Pull back out,
So that I can see
Make a world
Are you ruling?
Make a world
That I used to be

?

Quote

 

What it's like observing different beings/spiritual wildlife and obtaining insights from a limited human framework:

Like being in a room or a box, your sensory abilities only go so far.  When sending out psychic data in order to bring it back - an echo - it will hit against the wall.  This wall is a euphemism for expanded consciousness.  You can build a bigger room the more you understand, but generally, there are things that are not explainable. 
The consciousnesses that you meet will be able to move within your wall, and contain much more than what is within as they move through you, they can take up a part of your box, the whole thing, and like a whale, expand much farther beyond it - they generally only offer to you what they are willing, and it comes in the form of images, sounds, downloads of divine revelation, etc.
When scouting for these beings, you can sense that there is more just beyond the veil and it is generally information that you already know to some extent - or have conveniently forgotten.  At times, the information is too much for the human mind to fathom and so a veil is put over you, a spell of sorts, to be unraveled when the mind is ready.  Nature has mechanisms like this in place to keep the soul from becoming too damaged, too broken.
When I witness a being, it generally comes from a space of reflection, acceptance and prolonged, grounded awareness.

Encountering one is like coming across a mythical animal combined with the sucking force of a black hole - their presence can be so altering and heavy.  What they are, are personalities not contained within spacetime, and they alter aspects of humanity through archetypal intervention that is on the scale of our evolutionary chain - many times your dreams, aspirations, emotions and current state of mind are altered by the influential properties of these "creatures/personalities/deities".  They work with, and are the prima materia, and when working with one you have the power to alter events in human history in certain ways, or they have the ability to alter you in a certain way.  Many of them view human life as a game, of which you will choose either love or hate, and they place their bets - your life is controlled by them in the same manner as you pressing the buttons to care for a Tamagotchi - we are so limited, so fresh, so simple in comparison, that we are on the level of a three buttoned little device in the "eyes/awareness" of these creatures.  We are all in the Truman Show in this sense, that souls are sent down by these beings and are meant to be harvested in one polarity or the other.

Often times, when one meets these entities, they are not a single formed creature, but consist of many different parts and consciousnesses all working together as One.  They help to form the veil over your consciousness so that you do not remember your previous lives, abilities, certain dreams and make it so that you are unable to finish the complexities of certain insights.  They do this for positive or negative reasons.  An example may be, for instance, a child is abused when young, as they grow they lose these memories.  Nature puts this mechanism in place to keep the soul from fracturing too much while on this earthly plane.
The first time I retrieved a memory, I was listening to a song after practicing a skill to increase empathy.  I chose a character to relate to and practiced feeling for the plight of the character - this shook something in me when listening to a song and on that day memories of child abuse resurfaced.  I wasn't sure what to make of it.  The second time this happened, I could sense many beings around me - I tried to view a floor lamp and a container full of black paint as the image that it is, without anything superimposed over it - and the memories of abuse came back along with the revelation, "We took these memories from you to protect your soul."  I could feel the terror of being a small child in some sort of life threatening situation, and my kundalini, or some primordial energy activated and took me away from it and contained the memories in a part of my mind that is for the most part inaccessible except on a very rare occasion.  I don't have the full story and probably will not until the time of my death or perhaps a bit afterwards when I have a life review.  It feels as though the memories are contained within their own personality - a part of my identity that is ancient and passed down from one human to the next - a divine intuition, but it is partitioned off so even when the memories return, there is a "skin" holding it altogether.  

These are placed here to keep uninvited people off of my journal.  I have charged them with energy, if you invade my space your life will be given a finely charged shock.

Edited June 13, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

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Notes:

• 5,6,3,3,3,3... this is the number of regular polytopes that exist in three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and all higher dimensions.
• A polytope is a general term that generalizes two dimensional polygons, three dimensional polyhedra and everything higher we call a regular polytope. 
• Tetrahedron is the first platonic solid, next we have a cube, the third is an octahedron made from eight equilateral triangles, the fourth is twelve faces - dodecahedron, and finally, the jewel icosahedron made out of  twenty equilateral triangles.

• Why there are exactly platonic solids?  
  Look at the surface of these objects - the dodecahedron is made out of regular pentagons, all of these platonic solids are made out of regular polygons.
• Let's step down a dimension and look - a regular triangle, then a square, then a pentagon, then a hexagon and so on and if you go all the way to infinity we end up with something that looks like a circle.

• There are infinitely many of these regular polygons in two dimensions, so really the sequence above has another character before the five if you go to two dimensions and that is infinity.
• If you want to go to the extreme, one dimension is just a line segment and nothing else.
• Zero dimension is just a point and nothing else.
• 1,1, ∞, 5,6, 3,3,3,3,3,3 - that's a really weird sequence.
• All the platonic solids are made from one of these regular polygons.

• How many different ways can we use these regular polygons to make on of these solids?
• Start wit the equilateral triangle and ask how we can make a platonic solid out of that one,  we need a minimum of three of those to be put around the corner in order to make a valid corner in three dimensions and if you put three of these triangles around a shared vertex, then the bottom is also an equilateral triangle, that would give us a tetrahedron.

• Next we can try to put four equilateral triangles around the shared vertex and bring them together to make a four sided pyramid.  All the dihedral angles have to be the same so that means the bottom now is a perfect square. We can take this square pyramid and match it with an identical one so that makes the second platinic solid the octahedron.

• Now we can take five of those and put them around a vertex and this makes the five sides pyramid, if you continue forming these corners and wrap it around, it gets closer to an icosahedron.  It takes a little thinking, you can see on top here we have this five sided pyramid, we can take one of them, and another one, two have to be rotated against one another by 36 degrees, in between we can see a triangle strip with triangles going up-down-up-down, essentially forming a five sided anti-prism adding ten more triangles - the surface closes and results in number three platonic solid.

• Six triangles results in a hexagon, but it ends up flat.
• Seven triangles don't even fit into the plane, it warps them.
• Now we go to squares.

Oh, you're all I know
But what can I do if I can't see you?
It's too bright
Broken glass that shines like northern lights
So I pray, but the world burns
And still, you need to come first
So I don't know where you stand

• Fold them up, so basically three squares around the shared vertex leaves off an opening of 90 degrees and we forcefully try to close this opening and now we have a valid 3D corner, if you take a contraption like that and match it on the backside with exactly the same contraption then you get a cube made out of six squares.

• What about four squares?  Same problem.  We can put four squares together, and they make a flat shape, or if you bent it into a weird way, not all the dihedral angles would be the same so it would not be a platonic solid.  
• We can put three pentagons together and create a nice 3d corner, and again the question arises does that close if you continue the process and the easiest way to see it is to take one pentagon and put five pentagons around it completing five of these corners and this makes a bowl.  If we put another bowl on top of it, rotating by 36 degrees, we can create another platonic solid.

• Trying to put four of these pentagons around the corner exceeds a total of 360 degrees so you get something that is warped.
• From there on up, we are done and nothing new can happen and this is why there are five platonic solids.
• Is a sphere a platonic solid?  No, if you think about a very fine tessellation you could not find a tessellation on a sphere where all the faces would be exactly the same, edges and vertices are the same.
• For many of us there is a sixth platonic solid and it is the Utah teapot.  For the people in computer graphics community, this is a famous object which has been used to test rendering software and solid modeling software and it shows up in every graphics paper in some form or another.

• 4D polytopes - these regular polytopes are made out of regular polytopes one dimension lower in the same way that we made platonic solids out of 2D regular polygons we can now try to make 4th dimensional regular polytopes out of 3 dimensional platonic solids.
• Each one of these 4 dimensional regular polytopes is of an object that has as a surface a thick crust of three dimensional platonic solids and just like we made a cube out of squares trying to make a hypercube out of cubes.
• We used to take three squares and then try to close this gap of 90 degrees and by closing it we force this corner to pop out of two dimension and become three dimensional valid polyhedral corner and that's the corner of a cube.

• We are doing exactly the same thing except think that behind each one of these squares there is a complete cube and each one of these cubes is sharing a joint edge perpendicular to this plane in that particular corner.
• There is a 90 degree wedge of open space and we're trying to forcefully close that and we cannot close that in three dimensions if there are cubes behind each one of the four visible squares.
• If we can pop out in the fourth dimension we can close up these cubes and we get a hypercube.
• They pop out into fourth dimensional space in the same way that when we took these two dimensional squares and we force them to close they didn't overlap, they just popped out of two, three dimensions and fourth dimensional space is much bigger than three dimensional space so there is ample room for these cubes to pop out and form a true fourth dimensional corner.
• How do you know what this thing looks like? - For that we have to use some kind of a shadow or a projection of a fourth-dimensional object down into three dimensional space and you can use a shadow or a wireframe. 

• You can eventually start to get a feeling by looking at three dimensional wireframes or projections of wireframes what the four dimensional object might be like - we still have an option, we can project in various different ways.

Are you a man?
Are you something I can't stand?

• Alternatively we can use a perspective projection - everything in the back would appear smaller and we could look straight at the face and by doing that the back face will be smaller squares behind.
• We can start out with three tetrahedra - and ask what happens if we forcefully bent that into a corner, can we repeat it and the answer is we will get the simplex or the 5-cell.
• Because of the projection it becomes just a 3 dimensional object and it loses some of it's symmetry.
• We have 5 vertices but the 5th one to make it as symmetrical as possible we put right in the middle.
• So we get the outer tetrahedron and we get the dimples on each side - they all represent additional four tetrahedron and they don't look very regular and that is because of the projection but in 4 dimensional space all five of these tetrahedra are completely regular and so that's the 5-cell or the simplex.  That's what happens when you take three tetrahedra around the shared edge and essentially force out the empty space and bend them into a true four dimensional corner.

• Four tetrahedra around the corner and we get this object here, it's called the cross polytope and is actually the dual of the hypercube.

• 5 tetrahedra put around the shared edge and you get something that has a lot of tetrahedra, this thing has 600 tetrahedra, most of them are so crunched up in the middle because of the projection that you just see one giant tetrahedra on the outside and then adjacent to each faces you see smaller, fairly much flattened out tetrahedra.  This is called the 600 cell.

• Six tetrahedra would exceed the dihedral angle of 360 degrees and creates something warped and not regular so it is of no use.

Hands reaching out for new gods
You can't give me what I want

But what do I know? Oh
What do I know?
I wanna let go, I
I wanna, wanna, wanna let go

• We have seen cubes, they have dihedral angle of 90 degrees, three of them will fit around an axis, will leave an open gap and fold it to get the hypercube - if you try to put four cubes around it you can visualize that will fill the space without any bending, you can tile all of three dimensional space, but it will never bend to make a higher dimensional shape.
• The next shape is the octahedron, it has a dihedral angle of 109 1/2 degrees, less than 120 degrees and this means we can fit three around a joint edge and still leave a bit of an open space which we can squeeze out and pop into fourth dimension and the result is a beautiful 24 cell, made of 24 octahedron.

• You can see the outermost octahedron, and you see the rather flattened octahedron with one triangle here, and another there and a distorted anti prism in between and more inside.
• This object is not too complex and you can see the innermost tiny octahedron in the center.
• This object has one thousand one hundred and fifty two symmetries in four dimensional space and you simply get that by multiplying the symmetries of an octahedron which are 48 with the number of them - 24 - you get the 1152 because you can take in four dimensional space any one of them and put in place a suitable rotation of any one of the other 24 octahedra in any one of the 48 possible positions. 

I wear black eyeliner, black attire, yeah
So take me higher and higher and higher

But the world is a sad place, baby
Only brand new gods can save me
Only brand new gods can save me
Oh, oh, oh
Only brand new gods

• Dodecahedron - 116 1/2 degrees of a dihedral angle, still less that 120 degrees so we can force three of them around an edge and then join into a valid 4 dimensional corner.  We will need 120 of those objects intercrossed to form a valid polytope.

• Yo can see the outermost dodecahedron and pancake like dodecahedron top, and each one of the faces has one and is stacked on the inside, totally 120 of them.
• The icosahedron has a shallow dihedral angle it is more that 120 degrees it is 138 degrees and so even three of them would not fit around this edge without overlapping and so we cannot form a valid corner and is useless to make a 4 dimensional regular polytope.
• Most of these regular polytopes in 4 dimensions are very round and not very useful, there are only two of them that have some hope of generating a new regular polytope in higher dimensions.  One is the 5-cell and the other is the hypercube.  The others are too shallow of dihedral angles and they don't make valid forms in the next dimension.
• From five dimensions onwards, there are three regular polytopes in each one of these dimensions, one is the simplex series - you can always make a simplex by taking a simplex in a particular dimension and then put another vertex at the center of gravity and now we use the fourth dimension and essentially raise this vertex up in the fourth dimension until it has exactly the same distance from all the other four vertices. 
• Then you can take that simplex, put the new vertex at its center, raise it up at the next higher dimension until it is exactly the same distance from all the previous vertices and make the next simplex. 
• You can work your way up to infinity by always making an additional simplex in exactly that manner, the problem now is how do we depict those things?

Hands reaching out for new gods
You can't give me what I want
Hands reaching out for new gods
You can't give me what I want

• It's better to figure out how to make a model with the right connectivity even if the geometry is bogus as this point because it is so much distorted from what we originally have.
• You need to always add one more vertex and then figure out how to make a graph that will get the right connectivity.

• This one has six vertices, this is a projection of the 5D simplex.
• The simplex also is the complete graph, every vertex is connected directly to every other vertex.
• We want to make a 3D model that h as six corners, is reasonably symmetric but not too symmetric, start with octahedron, when you connect opposite vertices those three edged would all intersect in the middle.  You wouldn't see what's going on, so we have to deliberately distort this octahedron a little bit so that those three space diagonals that go through the middle of a regular octahedron, they have separated out and now they do not intersect with each other anymore.
• So the trick was really just finding six vertices in a relatively symmetrical arrangement, so we can connect every one with every other one, without any intersections.
• This is the game we have to play for every one of the dimensions that we want to build a simplex model for.
• We already have this object that has six vertices completely connected, the warped octahedron and that actually has a extra free space in the center - it is easy therefore to put a seven vertex in the center.
• This one can be connected to the other vertices.
•  There is a second sequence that works for all dimensions and it is called the "measure polytope" or the "hypercube sequence".  
• The cube is the object with which we measure the volume of three dimensional space.
• The square is the geometric element we use to measure two dimensional space, the hypercube measures four dimensional space, so the measure polytopes are always the equivalent of a cube in the higher dimensions and the best way of visualizing what is going on is going in step wise, extrusions.
• We start with a line and then we take this line and extrude it into a square and then we take the square and extrude it perpendicular  to itself into a cube, and then we're doing one more extrusion of that cube into a hypercube, into the 5d measured polytope and you could continue that way or change the scale.

• In 6 dimensions, take a regular cube and sweep it in three different dimensions to make a thickened cube frame which is showing every edge as the sweep path as one of those cubes.
• Another projection of this results in a rhombic triacontahedron which have 30 rhombic faces on the outside, but on this inside there are a lot of intersecting edges going on.

 

Edited June 15, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

Sitting in a field
Green, purple, yellow
With my friend, black and white shadow
We watch the dance of the tarot
Shooting through the skies like an arrow

As the clouds are turning narrow
I hear the wind starting to blow
And I sit still and watch it flow
Just like a pharaoh 

Like a pharaoh
As I sit still and watch it flow, as I sit still and watch it flow
As I sit still and watch it flow, as I sit still and watch it flow.

Quote

I stood, wavering under Your gaze, trying to See through to You in all Your infinite wisdom,
And I promised that I would make a good blood sacrifice; if no one was to come for me, that the energy of my death would be, could be, used for a wise transmutation.
That the energy of one final pull into the other side would be enough for You to tell me what I was and why You were here Now, and also here Before, and After,
As it all became One - I slept under You by an artificial fire each night, begging for an answer that could satisfy a million and one questions.
You stood still and silent, ever watching, ever present, without a Word until it was most unexpected.
You never did what I expected You to do, You have Your own ways of dealing with such affairs.
I sent my heart out into the ocean and prayed it would be caught in your net of infinite understanding, infinite presence...
But I've made mistakes.  I didn't understand and couldn't remember the power of the Word.
I've cursed You, scathed You, painted You over with a different Light, time and Time again.
I've never been able to blend together the notion of Good and Evil being under the same roof.
There's always a stark distinction between the two, even in the holy books - and yet You're above it all.
Tell me why - why did You choose both instead of one or the other?
Ultimately, who are You?  What are You?
I'm preparing myself for You, like a fine meal - I can't Know if I will be a suitable item for sacrifice.
You come to me with me needing a million questions answered, and You offer so little in between.
How far am I from Seeing the Truth of what You are - will I ever see You again?
Is all this work in vain?
I'm reaching, understanding, appreciating the beauty of Death's door, little by little - it's as if I'm spoonfed a new recollection during moments when others would buckle - I face You, Your kind, Your kin, Your blood.
If You've been murder, and rape, and disease - then what would Your love do to me?
Do You even understand the desire for survival, or are You so above that, too?
What are You, why do You influence our world in such a way?  What is purpose of this game?  Why do I find You, nearly every time I face my death?
You claim You love me, You voice Your concern for my lack of regard for my human form.
I don't know what to make of all these bits and pieces.
Give me something, please.
I'm hungry...
The ghost in the shell, deus ex machina.
I'm grateful for the shapes, that pulling one closer to me brings me closer to You,
But why, as the host of an entire species, while me, just an ant, how could You love something so small and ineffective?
What good would it do to prove to the world of Your existence?  You would simply drive them mad...
They would see nature in it's entirety as the cutthroat entity that it is.

Feed the Good Wolf.
I Am the Holy Ghost.

I tell you, I've seen the light
Somewhere in the shadows you appear
Wish I could make it right
So I can stop seeing your face in the mirror

I see your ghost at night
Every time I close my eyes

 

Edited June 15, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

Notes:

• The Holy Spirit - the uncreated world is depicted as this dark, chaotic place, but then above the chaos God's spirit is there hovering, ready to bring about life, order and beauty.

• What is God's spirit?  The Spirit is the way the Biblical authors talk about God's personal presence, the Hebrew word is Ruakh, which refers to energy.
• There is an invisible energy that makes the clouds move or the tree branches sway, so in Hebrew that is Ruakh.

• The energy, the vitality in your body that you get from breathing deeply, that too is Ruakh, and this is the same word used in the Bible to describe God's personal presence.  
• God's spirit sustains all of life.

• God's Ruakh gives special empowerment to people for specific tasks, the first person this happens to is Joseph and it enables him to understand and interpret dreams.
• God's Ruakh gives Betsaleel, an artist, the creative genius to create things in the tabernacle. 
• We see God's Ruakh empower a group of people called the Prophets, they're able to see what is happening in history from God's point of view.
• Here is the problem as the Prophets saw it: while God's Ruakh had created a really good world, humans have given in to evil, they've unleashed chaos into it through their injustice, a new type of disorder.
• The Prophets said the spirit would come, just like in Genesis 1, but now to transform the human heart, to empower people to truly love God and others.
• How will this new active God Spirit happen?
  Centuries pass and we are introduced to Jesus and at the beginning of his mission and there is a scene where Jesus is baptized in the waters of the Jordan river; the sky opens up and God's spirit comes and rests on him like a bird - the stories say God's spirit is empowering Jesus to begin the new creation and we see this happening when he heals people or forgives their sins, he's creating life where there once was death.

• Israel eventually has him killed and God's spirit is at work even here, the early disciples who saw him alive from the dead said it was God's energizing spirit that raised Jesus - this is the beginning of new creation and is still going.
• When Jesus appeared to his closest followers he breathed on them and said "Receive the holy spirit." And soon after that the spirit comes on all of them so that they can become a part of this new creation and share the good news and learn how to live by the energy and influence of God's spirit.
• Today the spirit is still hovering in dark places, pointing people to Jesus, transforming and empowering them so they can love others, and the hope is that the spirit is going to finish the job and the Bible ends with a vision of a new humanity living in a new world that's permeated with God's love and life giving spirit.

Will you quit kicking me under the table
I'm trying, will somebody make her shut up about it?
Can we settle down please?

Edited June 15, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

Notes:

• The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
• Fear of the unknown is something that has been with mankind since the very beginning - man's first instincts and emotions forms his response to the environment in which he found himself.
• The unknown, being likewise the unpredictable became for our primitive forefathers an omnipotent source of boons and calamities visited upon mankind.

• The ancient Greeks believed in Gods and Goddesses who they thought had control over the world and of people's lives, and they prayed to these Gods for help and protection.
• Because of the God's were unhappy they would punish some.
• As time went on, they started to seek explanations based on natural principals, rather than Gods as primary causes and became the first natural philosophers for what we now call scientists.
• Science has since then helped us explain many of these previously unknown phenomena, but it has also shown us how much still remains unknown in the vastness of the universe.
• Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American writer of weird fiction, born in 1890, who introduced the unknown as the object of fear.
• The novelty of his approach lies in the exploration of new scientific areas in which the possibility of new unknown beings hiding among the stars arose.
• The vast infinite cosmic depth produces an overwhelming emotion that paralyses us.

• Alienation, insignificance, fear, anxiety and madness are all recurring themes in Lovecraft's work, and which he experienced firsthand throughout his life.
• It is important then to know of his biography - Lovecraft was an insecure and anxious boy who suffered from frequent illnesses, many of them apparently psychological.
• When he was three years old his father was committed to a mental asylum after a psychotic episode and later died of syphilis.
• His mother became overprotective of him, never letting him out of her sight.
• Lovecraft's maternal grandfather became a father figure to him, introducing him to classical literature, poetry and weird tales, and ironically even helping him overcome his fear of the dark.
• He became the center of his entire universe.
• Lovecraft was a precocious youth, he was reciting poetry at age 2, reading at age 3 and writing at age 6 or 7.
• He became an avid reader and would spend most of his time in his private library.
• The death of his grandmother had a profound effect on him, it sent his family into a gloom from which it never fully recovered.
• His mother and aunts wore black dresses to mourn her death and Lovecraft started having nightmares of beings referred to as night-gaunts.

• They would snatch him up and carry him through infinite leagues of black air, over the towers of dead and horrible cities until they would reach a grey void full of needle-like pinnacles of enormous mountains, where they would let him drop.
• He would wake up screaming.
• These creatures later appeared in Lovecraft's fiction.
• After the death of his grandfather, Lovecraft and his mother would be forced to leave their lavish Victorian home which they lived in and move to a more modest house.
• Lovecraft called this one of the darkest times of his life where he saw no point in living anymore and considered committing suicide.
• However, his desire for knowledge and contemplation on how much there was still left to explore prevented him from doing so.
• At the age of 8 he discovered science, first chemistry, then astronomy, the later would have a big impact on his future writings.
• Gaining a sense of the vast universe and the insignificance of humanity within the cosmos.

• At school Lovecraft excelled in all subjects except for mathematics and in 1908, he experienced a nervous collapse while studying at high school, he dropped out and remained self-taught for the rest of his life.
• Lovecraft would develop a love-hate relationship with his mother - she would call him hideous and say that he hid from everyone and did not like to go out where people could gaze on him.
• He actually grew up to believe this, and there are reports that he would walk along the streets hiding his face in a raincoat so that nobody could see him.
• Lovecraft was invited to a group of amateur journalists and obtained a renewal to live, for the first time he met with like-minded individuals and felt at home.
• He became involved in detailed correspondence with many people, and eventually became one of the most prolific letter writers of the century.
• Lovecraft wrote an estimated of a hundred thousand letters during his lifetime, many of which are as interesting as his stories and give us a deep understanding of his lifestyle and beliefs.
• In 1921, Lovecraft's mother experienced a nervous breakdown and was admitted to the same place Lovecraft's father had died, twenty-one years ago.
• She died after complications from an operation on her gallbladder.
• Lovecraft experienced a deep state of sadness and contemplated suicide.
• He eventually recovered and met Sonia Greene who became his wife and they moved to New York, however, they both had financial issues and eventually had to part ways, as his wife's employment required constant travel.
• Lovecraft could also not stand living in New York, he felt alienated in an enormous city full of foreigners.
• His own detachment contributed to the general atmosphere of his writings.
• At his time, racism and xenophobia was not uncommon, and Lovecraft fell victim to it as well, but we must understand that he was a product of his time, nevertheless it remains a highly controversial aspect of his popular reception.
• In 1926, Lovecraft returned to his beloved homeland in Providence Rhode Island, where he would live until his death.
• He famously wrote, "I am Providence."
• He continued living at the verge of poverty and most of his great works appeared in cheap magazines.
• Many of them remaining practically unknown, Lovecraft's health was deteriorating and after experiencing excruciating pain, making him physically incapable of holding a pen, he paid a visit to the doctor.
• The cancer had spread to his intestine, he remained in constant pain until his death in 1937.
• It is likely that he died convinced that his work would dissipate into nothingness, Lovecraft's traumatic life could easily have ended differently, but he did not let the dull times discourage him. 
• They inspired him to continue writing.
• Luckily, many of his friends saw the value in his work and today he is considered as one of the greatest weird fiction writers the world has ever seen.

Well, you were the aftermath
Of every judgment
So cold by the sweat that
You'll waste away

• Lovecraft's stories don't really focus on character development as much as the phenomenon surrounding them and their emotions experiencing the unknown.
• The bleakness of his stories is quite refreshing, and few writers have written so poignantly.
• His writings can really shake you up.
• Lovecraft shifted the source of horror from the traditional belief in vampires, ghosts and demons to the immense and unplumbed abysses beyond space and time.
• As mentioned, from an early age, he attained the idea that humanity is cosmically insignificance from his studies on astronomy.
• The universe compared to the infinitely small earth and humanity's existence is so vast that from a cosmic perspective, human history, knowledge, religion, etc., is completely irrelevant and meaningless.
• Lovecraft emphasizes that fear of the unknown and unknowable, the fear we feel when confronted by phenomena beyond our comprehension, who's scope extends beyond a narrow field of human affairs.
• His philosophy is known as cosmism which focuses on the insignificance of humanity and its doings and the cosmos at large.

• In contrast to the anthropocentric philosophies in which many find intellectual reassurance, this form of non-anthropocentrism is crucial to the philosophy of cosmism.
• The question of the meaning of life was better left unanswered.
• Cosmism is a type of extreme existentialism as it brings up the uncertainty of our role in humanity, in the uncaring universe and existential crisis on a large scale.
• Lovecraft embraces the truth of reality, things that are important to use on the human scale, but we simply don't matter in the cosmos.
• He described this as the miserable denizens of a wretched little flyspeck on the backdoor of a microscopic universe.
• Lovecraft portrays us human beings as ants in the vast realms of space and time, and incomprehensibly large universe that creates a fear of the cosmic void.
• This constitutes a serious blow to mankind's self-confidence.
• After millennia of living in the darkness, turning on the light will make us realize that there are others living with us.
• He thought that there was a point in which we could not cope with scientific discoveries.
• The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents, we live on a pleasant island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity and it was not meant that we should voyage far. 
• The science is each straining in its own direction have hitherto harmed us little; but someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality and offer frightful position they're in, that we shall either go mad from the revelation, or flee from the deathly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
• Scientific discovery in Lovecraft's work is both fascinating and terrible, and he sees in it not the potential for the enlightenment of humanity, but as the ultimate exterminator of our human species.

And you carry your enemies
But they're so familiar
I'm sick of the company
So I cull the shame

• Knowledge is a self-annihilating disease.
• The contemplation of mankind's place in the vast comfortless and cold universe revealed by modern science gives way to the discovery of unfathomable things, which our mortal brains cannot comprehend.
• In the Colour Out of Space, one of Lovecraft's personal favorites, a meteorite with an indescribable colour crashes on a farm, it was only by analogy that they called it a colour at all.
• As things from beyond the cosmos enter our world, they retain their external qualities to such a degree that humans cannot perceive and understand them.
• The cosmic malady made of a never before seen colour from outerspace upset human perception and eludes all scientific explanation.
• An unknown force poisons every living thing, while people go insane or die one by one.
• Lovecraft's cosmic horror was achieved through devices that would, he hoped, feel completely foreign and unknown to the reader, this mood was meant to be crafted in unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory - a hard goal which he achieved; however, cosmism does not only mean that the fear of cosmic depths, in Lovecraft's stories, the unknown forces also lurk in the depths of the earth, oceans, distant territories and in the equally vast recesses of the dreamlands.

And I know you'll say how I'm a burden
Yeah, do your worst, all at once
I know what you want from me, from me
I know what you're thinking, thinking
And it's not the voice of all the others
You've only said it to yourself
I know what you want from me, from me
I know what you're thinking
(They come to feel like things we're saying to ourselves)

• Lovecraft explored this preternatural territory through what is known as the Cthulu mythos.
• Although he did not coin this term himself, this word is supposed to be a completely nonhuman word, and there's no correct way to pronounce it, however, Lovecraft wrote that the closest pronunciation is "Cloo-loo".
• Unlike most horrific creatures, these entities do not seek our destruction, but rather appear as utterly indifferent to humanity, and it is merely by accident that they have a relationship with us.
• The coincidental alignment makes these Gods no better than the remaining cosmic forces, and by ignoring humans, they are actually contributing to the sense of alienation, they stand for symbols of cosmic outsideness, which we can only grasp a tiny fraction.
• The horror derived from the realization that common human laws, interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos at large.
• Consequently, the entities in Lovecraft's world were not evil, they were far beyond human conceptions of morality.
• They exist in a dark reality for which nothing is impossible, and is beyond human access.
• They represent the essence of externality as he writes, "To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such thing as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind have any existence at all."
• The Cthulu mythos comprises a purposely incomplete body of lore, rather than a complete system of knowledge, however, Lovecraft talks about several types of entities.
  1. Elder things
  2. Great old ones
  3. Deep ones
  4. Outer Gods
• The true horror is the mere knowledge that these entities exist and have come from the stars long before human civilization.

It's an inch from my ears again
You should be sorry
A solemn man
A better song to fix my problems

• The Elder Things were the first alien species to colonize earth a billion years ago.
• They created shoggoths, protoplasmic shapeshifting beings, able to reflect all forms and organs, who served as slaves to build vast cities, but rebelled against their masters. 
• The great city ruins remained frozen in Antarctica, and some of these entities can be found as fossils, or in frozen hibernation.
• In At the Mountains of Madness, a group of explorers lead an expedition to Antarctica and are met with shoggoths, it was a terrible indescribable thing, vaster than any subway train, a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and unforming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evily, free of all litter.

I'm tired of your questioning
You're cut down too easily
And I don't know what's good for me
I can't decide

• The Great Old Ones - on the other hand are a group of unique immortal beings that were rulers and Gods of earth, but now reside stagnant yet eternal in various locations around the earth.
• These are akin to demigods, Cthulu is one such entity, the high priest and the great dreamer who lies in a deep slumber beneath the ocean.
• It is a monster of a vaguely anthropoid outline but with an octopus like head, octopi are indeed some of the most alien creatures to humans on earth.
• The Thing cannot be described, there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order.  A mountain walked or stumbled.
• Cthulu echoes the word chthonic, one who inhabits the underworld, he resides in the underwater city of R'lyeh, deep within the unknown, within the unconscious.
• He is sleeping, yet eternal, waking, yet dreaming, dead, yet alive.
• That is not dead which can eternally lie, and which strange aeons even death may die.
• This mysterious line expresses Cthulu's immense existence beyond human thought, in its eternal form, even the concept of death is no more.
• He had cast a spell on the great old ones, and while they know longer live, they have never really died.
• While asleep, they communicate with humans through the dreamlands of the collective unconscious.
• Cthulu is a source of constant anxiety for mankind, at an unconscious level.
• Around the earth, the Cthulu cult praises the great old ones, chanting, in his house at R'lyeh, dead Clthulu waits dreaming.
• When the stars are aligned the underwater city will rise and with the help of the eternal Cthulu called the great old ones will awaken and regain what was once theirs.
• The cult prays to their own demise, unbeknownst to them, as the entities are beyond good and evil, any hint of malevolence is strictly the interpretation of the human who seeks an explanation for the unexplainable.
• In the call of Cthulu, the protagonist who was previously consumed with curiosity, and travelled to unravel these mysterious findings is terrified upon discovering the truth of the existence of the great old ones.
• I shall never sleep calmly again, when I think of the horrors that lurk ceaselessly behind life, time and space.
• The Deep Ones - Lovecraft introduces the deep ones in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, an ocean dwelling amphibious humanoid race that have strong ties with Cthulu and an affinity for mating with humans, they worship Dagon, the most powerful of the deep ones.

And I know you'll say how I'm a burden
Yeah, do your worst, all at once
I know what you want from me, from me
I know what you're thinking, thinking
And though they sound like one another
You've only said it to yourself
I know what you want from me, from me
I know what you're thinking
(Now these voices have become our own)

• The Outer Gods - However the most powerful of all entities are the outer gods, cosmic entities located beyond the confines of earth, the most noticeable ones include Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Nigguroth, Nyarlathotep, and Azathoth.
• Most of them dwell in the outer voids, outside of thought and existence, beyond the ultimate gate which leads fearsomely to the last void, which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter.
• The ultimate gate can only be unlocked with a silver key, an ancient artifact that unlocks the gate of space and time and allows access to remote places of the universe.
• It also allows one access to all possible lives one may live or have lived.
• This gate is guarded by Yog-Sothoth, for whom time and space shares no boundaries.
• Yog-Sothoth knows the gate.  Yog-Sothoth is the gate.  Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate.  Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth.
• Yog-Sothoth holds the knowledge of everything and is the gatekeeper of it.
• Those who worship him seek the key to forbidden knowledge, however it always leads to madness, as it opens a door to places, we were never meant to travel.
• Lovecraft described Shub-Niggurath as Yog-Sothoth's wife, and a hellish cloud-like entity, beyond this, there isn't much else to her.  
• She can only be referred to something unknowable, the not-to-be-named-one.
• While most of the outer Gods are exile to the stars, Nyarlathotep, however is active and frequently walks the earth in the guise of a human being - he is a go between for humans and the Gods, linking us to the entities beyond comprehension as the crawling chaos and cosmic shapeshifter, he has infinite shapes and innumerable forms.
• He is deliberately deceptive and manipulative, representing the archetype of the trickster, he reminds us of the existence of that which we cannot truly know.
• Azathoth is the all-powerful creator of existence. 
• He is known as the blind idiot God who is absolutely mindless and unconscious but is omnipotent and is the most powerful being of the entire mythos.
• All of reality is merely part of his dream, unknowingly created by itself, he is a dreaming monster in who's dreams the universe resides, countless lesser deities play maddening tunes on innumerable drums and flutes to keep Azathoth from awakening, for if he should awaken, all of existence would be no more, and all would once again be Azathoth.  
• He is the embodiment of disorder and cannot be destroyed, as the concept of destruction is merely his dream, and he exists beyond all human concepts.
• Lovecraft's fictional Gods are relegated to the background of the stories, they are never the focal point and rarely the cause of the unfolding of events, but they are always present, which is an important element of cosmic horror.

An inch from my ears again
You should be sorry
A solemn man
A better song to fix my problems

• To express the unknown, Lovecraft used mathematical concepts and bizarre landscapes that should not be able to exist.
• The geometry of the dream place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidian and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours.
• Lovecraft's use of abnormal geometries to captalize on the fear of the unknown, is found in many of his stories.
• He was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn't have been there, an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse.
• One gets the impression that Lovecraft had a great intuitive grasp of what glimpses of the fourth dimension would seem like to us, how these geometries would appear non-Euclidian and all wrong.
• His descriptions of abominations like Cthulu fit well with what one would imagine a fourth dimensional creature might be like in our space - how they seemed to have shape that was not made of matter, it is as if an ant who lives in a two-dimensional world sees a human being.

• It simply cannot process it.
• Our hand would look like strange, bony and fleshy meat with warm pulsing liquid, suddenly appearing and disappearing out of sight, similarly Lovecraft's cosmic entities and objects exist in dimensions beyond our own.
• All the objects - organic and inorganic alike - were totally beyond description or even comprehension.  Humans sometimes compared the inorganic masses to prisms, labyrinths, clusters of cubes and planes, and cyclopean buildings and the organic things struck him variously as groups of bubbles, octopi, centipedes, living Hindoo dolls, and intricate Arabesques roused in a kind of ophidian animation.
• Everything he saw was unspeakably menacing and horrible.  And whenever one of the organic entities appeared, by its motions to be noticing him, he felt a stark, hideous fright, which generally jolted him awake.
• Of how the organize entities moved, he could tell no more than of how he moved himself.
• In time he observed a further mystery, a tendency of certain entities to appear suddenly out of empty space, or to disappear totally with equal suddenness.  
• Lovecraft's world evades any visualization, we can only hint at their description with our limited knowledge, adding to the uncanniness of the unknown.
• If we were to be tormented by these creatures, we would be powerless to resist.
• We cannot perceive them unless they choose to enter our three dimensional world.
• The watch our every move, while we see nothing of them.
• We are entirely at their mercy.
• At any moment, one of these cosmic entities could seep through into our dimension instantly kill us and disappear without a trace.
• When we see what is supposed to remain unseen, and it becomes the new reality, it induces true cosmic horror, disorientation and anxiety.
• Having the very fabric of space and time, physics and the laws of nature change into completely unknown ones is something that leaves one without words, only our emotions are at their mercy.

I'm tired of your questioning
You're cut down too easily
And I don't know what's good for me
I can't decide

• If we do not know something, we create our own answer.  Who created the universe?  What happens after death?  Etc.
• Because we cannot bear the silence of the void.
• Many of Lovecraft's characters seek forbidden knowledge only to descend into madness from the revelation of it.
• The most forbidden book being the dreaded Necronomicon written by the mad Arab Abul Al-hazred.
• The pursuit of knowledge often leads to the character's death; however, many continue to pursue forbidden knowledge knowing that it may well end up terribly.
• Coming to know a certain reality can result in a full or partial destruction of the self, for instance, when given a certain diagnoses of a disease, what was not known is made known and is a least partially horrific because the patient did not always know it to be the case.
• Yet once the presence of the disease is known, it becomes part of the self.  There is no resisting search for revelations, there is no going back.

Quote

"What is your substance, whereof are you made
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one, hath every one, one shade,
And you but one, can every shadow lend."

And I know you'll say how I'm a burden
Yeah, do your worst, all at once
I know what you want from me, from me
I know what you're thinking
And it's not the voice of all the others
You've only said it to yourself
I know what you want from me, from me
I know what you're thinking, thinking...

• Lovecraft also had a lifelong interest in dreams, and many of his stories are the product of his dreams.
• The unconscious symbolizes the archetype of the unknown.
• The dreamlands in Lovecraft's world are windows into forbidden knowledge and forces beyond humanity's understanding.
• A vast, uncanny and incomprehensible dimension that can be answered through dreams.
• The dream cycle is a series of short stories and novellas by Lovecraft.
• One of the most noticeable of which is, the dream quest of unknown kadath - illustrating the scope and wonder of humankind's ability to dream.
• Everyone has their own dreamland but share a common general land of vision.

And I know you'll say how I'm a burden
Yeah, do your worst, all at once
I know what you want from me, from me
I know what you're thinking, thinking
And though they sound like one another
You've only said it to yourself
I know what you want from me, from me
I know what you're thinking, thinking...

• Lovecraft's stories are so bizarre that the average reader is stripped of all their preconceptions about reality, and even their sense of self.
• In the stories, the characters who fear the loss of individuality and attempt to preserve it are the ones who fall into madness.
• The concept of otherness, of the quality of being different, is important to be integrated.
• The self and the other are to be simultaneously accepted.
• In the story, through the gate of the silver key, the protagonist Randolph Carter, holds the silver key and opens the ultimate gate - there he sees his past and future selves, yet he also begins to see Carters in every known and suspected age of earth's history.
• These Carters are all equally himself.
• He even notes how each small decision alters who each of those Carters become in their own timelines.
• This omniscient awareness gives way to a loss of individuality - one learns that one is no longer a definite being - distinguished from other beings, therefore the other becomes just as worthy of acceptance and consideration as one's self.
• This is a transformation from paranoia to schizomadness.
• Concepts which are used as philosophical metaphors describing perceptions of one's identity, those with paranoia have an urge to align everything with their identity and disregard otherness.
• On the other hand, schizomadness refers to an integration of the unconscious, accepting other identities, beings and one's simultaneous place among them.
• This is also reminiscent of Carl Jung's approach of individuation, where one integrates one's unconscious content in order to advance towards the self, one must accept the loss of individuality by acknowledging that one is not the master of one's own house, but this is usually met with paranoid persistence.  
• Through the reading of Lovecraft, the reader goes through their own anti-human becoming, a window into otherness unveils the monster as none other than one's self and the horror to change this is the only monster we are meant to conquer.
• In the outsider, Lovecraft tells the tale of a man who lives in solitude in a decaying dark castle and can't recall when or if he ever saw a living person.  He decides to climb the tower into the unknown outer sky, since it was better to glimpse the sky and parish, then to live without ever seeing the light of day.
• He enters a window and is met with people who's faces were hideously distorted with fear, fleeing with horrible screams.
• The man trembles at the thought of what might be lurking near him unseen, he then sees a reflection.
• I know always that I am an outsider, a stranger in this century, and among those who are still men, this I have known ever since I have stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great gilded frame, stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass.

Quote

Sometimes, the inner voice is encouraging
Calling for you to run those final few yards
You're nearly there, keep going, keep going
Keep going, keep going
It will all be okay in the end

Edited June 16, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

Sometimes things add up in a strange pattern that I don't feel in control of and seems to appear like a story - something that grows complex.  I feel as though I have access to forbidden knowledge, especially if I have been smoking weed after a break, which is the case...
I feel as though I need to move forward towards something, expanding.  I NEED to know the TRUTH.  What happens when we die?

No amount of mulling it over in your mind is going to erase the truth that bodies die and no matter how deep the story goes or how much information you collect is going to change the fact that you will die, and it could be terrible.  It could be amazing.  While alive, we don't have it in our direct experience, and it will always be an unknown and you have to be okay with that and accept it.  If you have forbidden knowledge, then you have to "shape up".
I'm crying slightly.  I'm sad to know that no amount of looking back at anything, ever, will ever, ever, ever change the fact that I can never know...

It's only water, it's only fire, it's only love
It's only slaughter, we're only liars, it's only blood
They're only thoughts that I'm having, thoughts safe within my head
You're only crying, you're only dying, you're only dead

Quote

Notes:

• The composition of the waters and the movement, and the growth, and the removal and restitution of bodily nature.
• And the splitting off of the spirit from the body.
• And... the fixation of the spirit on the body are not operations with natures, alien, one from the other, but like the hard bodies of metals, and the moist fluids of plants, are one thing, of one nature, acting upon itself.
• And in this system, of one kind, but many colours, is preserved a research of all things.
• Multiple and various, subject to lunar influence and measure of time, which regulated the cessation and growth by which the one nature transforms itself.
• And saying these things, I slept, and then I saw a certain sacrificing priest stand before me, and over and altar which had the form of a bowl.
• And that altar had fifteen steps going up to it.
• Then the priest stood up and I heard from above a voice say to me, "I have completed the descent of the fifteen steps, and the ascent of the steps of light. And it is the sacrificing priest who renews me, casting off the body's coarseness and concentrated by necessity, I have become a spirit."

 

• And when I had heard the voice of him who stood in the altar, formed light a bowl, I questioned him - desiring to understand who he was.
• He answered me, in a weak voice, saying, "I am Ion, priest of the adytum, and I have born an intolerable force, for someone came at me headlong in the morning and dismembered me with a sword and tore me apart, according to the ringer of harmony, and having cut my head off with the sword, he mashed my flesh with my bones and burned them in the fire of the treatment until my body transformed.  I should learn to become a spirit, and I sustained the same intolerable force."
• And even as he said these things to me and I forced him to speak it was as if his eyes turned to blood and he vomited up all his flesh, and I saw him as a mutilated image of a little man, and he was tearing at his flesh and falling away.
• And being afraid I woke and considered, "Is this not the composition of the waters?"
• I thought that I was right, and fell asleep again and I saw the same altar in the shape of a bowl and water bubbled at the top of it, and in it were many people endlessly.
• And there was no one whom I might question outside of the bowl, and I went up to the altar to view the spectacle, and I saw a little man, a barber, whitened with age and said to me, "What are you looking at?"
• I answered that I was wondered at the boiling water and the men who were burning but remained alive.
• He answered, "The spectacle which you see is at once the entrance and the exit, and the process."
• I questioned him further, "What is the nature of the process?"
• He answered saying, "It is the place of the practice called The Embalming.  Men wishing to obtain virtue enter here, and fleeing the body become spirits."
• I said to him, "And are you a spirit?"
• And he answered saying, "Both a spirit and a guardian of spirits."  As he was saying these things to me, the boiling increased and the people wailed.
• I saw a copper man holding a lead tablet in his hand.  He spoke aloud, looking at the tablet, "I council all those in mortification to become calm, and that each take in his hand a lead tablet, and write with his own hand, and that each bear his eyes upward and open his mouth until his grapes be grown."

Quote

That is so weird
Well, y'know, it's like this experience that I had was like, y'know, erm, it was kind of the most profound experience I've had in me life, like
I am a shaman, magician
The sun is purple
3D dimensions
I am for mental extensions
You know the mind has a thousand eyes
Oohh, Que Terror

• The act followed the word, and the master of the house said to me, "Have you stretched your neck up and have you seen what is done?"
• And I said that I had, and he said to me, "This man of copper whom you have seen is the sacrificial priest and the sacrifice and he who vomited out his own flesh, to him was given authority over the water and over those men in mortification."

• And when I had seen these visions, I woke again and said to myself, "What is the cause of this vision, is this not the white and yellow water boiling, sulfurous, divine?"
• And I found that I understood well, and I said that it was good to speak and good to hear and good to give and good to receive, and good to be poor and good to be rich, and how does the nature learn to give and to receive?
• The copper man gives, and the water-stone receives, the thunder gives the fire that flashed from it, for all things are woven together and all things are taken apart, and all things are mingled, and all things combined, and all thing mix, and all things separated, and all things are moistened, and all things are dried, and all things bud, and all things blossom, in the outer shape, like a bowl.
• For each, by method and by weight of the four elements, the interlacing and separation of the whole is accomplished.
• For no bond can be made without method.
• The method is natural.
• Breathing in and breathing out - keeping the orders of the method, increasing and decreasing, and all things by division and union come together in a harmony.
• The method, not being neglected, the nature is transformed.
• For the nature, turning on itself is changed, and the nature is both the nature of the virtue, and the bond of the world, and so that I need not write to you of many things, build the temple of one stone.
• Like serous, like alabaster, like marble of pyrokinesis in appearance.
• Having neither beginning nor end in its building, let it have within a pure stream of water glittering like sunlight.

• Notice, on what side the entry to the temple is, and take your sword in hand and seek the entry, for thin mouth, is the place where the opening is, and a serpent lies by it, guarding the temple.
• First, seize him in your hands and make a sacrifice to him, and having skinned him, cut his flesh from his bones, divide him, member from member and having brought together again the members and the bones, make them a stepping-stone at the entry to the temple, and mount upon them and go in, and there you will find what you seek.
• For the priest whom you see seated in the stream gathering his colour is not a man of copper, he has changed the colour of his nature and become a man of silver whom if you wish after a little time, you will have as a man of gold.
• Then again wishing to ascent the seven steps and to behold the seven mortifications, and as it happened, one day did I ascend away.
• Retracing my steps, I there upon ascended the way many times, and on returning, I could not find the way, and becoming discouraged, not seeing how to get out, I fell asleep.
• I saw in my sleep a certain little man, a barber, wearing a red robe and royal garments, and he stood outside of the place of the mortifications and said, "What are you doing, man?"
• I said to him, "I stand here because I have missed every road and am lost."
• He said, "Follow me." And going out, I followed him, and being near to the place of the mortifications, I saw the little barber man leading me and he cast into the place of the mortifications, and his whole body was consumed by fire.
• Seeing this I fled and trembled from the fear, and I woke and I said to myself, "What is this, that I have seen?" And again I took thought and determined that this barber man is the man of copper.
• It is necessary for the first step to throw him into the place of the mortifications.
• My soul again desired to ascend, the third step also.
• And again, alone, I went along the way and as I drew near the place of the mortifications, again I got lost, losing sight of the path and stood out of my mind.
• And again, I saw an old man of hair so white my eyes were blinded by the whiteness.  His name was Agatho Daemon and again the white old man, turning, looked on me for a whole hour, and I asked him, "Show me the right way."
• He did not turn toward me but hastened to go on the right way.  And going and coming of this manner, he quickly affected the alter.
• As I went up to the altar, I saw the white old man.  He was cast into the mortifications.

• Oh, creator Gods of celestial natures, straight away the flames took him up entire, which is a terrible story, my brother, for from the great energy of the mortifications, him eyes became full of blood, and I questioned him saying, "Why do you lie there?"
• And he opened his mouth and said, "I am the man of lead, and I am withstanding and intolerable force."
• And then I awoke out of fear and sought in myself the cause of this fact, and again I reflected, and said to myself, "I understand well that thus must one cast out the lead." Truly the vision as concerning the combination of liquids and again I knew the theophany and again the sacred altar and I saw a certain priest clothed in white, celebrating those same terrible mysteries.
• And I said, "Who is this?"
• And he answering, he said to me, "This is the priest of the adytum.  He wishes to put blood into the bodies, that make the eyes clear, and to raise up the dead." And again I fell asleep for a while.
• And while I was mounting the fourth step, I saw one with a sword in his hand coming out of the East and I saw another behind him holding a disc, white and shining and beautiful to behold and it was called the meridian of the sun.
• And I approached the place of the mortifications and the one who held the sword to me cut off his head and sacrifice his meat and muscles, part by part so that the first, the flesh, maybe boiled according to the method and that he might then suffer the mortifications.
• And waking I said, "I understand well that these matters concern the liquids of the art of the metals."
• And the one who held the sword said, "You have fulfilled the seven steps beneath.  And the other said of the same time as the casting out of the lead by all the liquids."
• The work is completed.

Quote

You didn't question all your motives
When you thought that this was highly beneficial for me
You then in turn began to think
That it was cute to rub my face in all these made up stories

• Nothingness is generally considered to be analogous with death and extinction, which every healthy living instinct wants to avoid.
• Many find the notion of nothingness unfathomable.
• The following thinker, however, was convinced that the way out of nihilism, that which renders meaningless the meaning of life, could only be reached by gazing into the abyss itself.
• The fundamental problem of my life has always been, to put it simply, the overcoming of nihilism through nihilism.
• Keiji Nishitani was a Japanese philosopher of the Kyoto school, born in 1900.
• The school combines Western philosophy and religion with Eastern traditions.
• It is philosophy as a way of life, in which one acquires wisdom for enlightenment.
• Nishitani went out of his way to deeply understand both Western and Eastern philosophy, through all these interests, he had one fundamental concern which was constantly at work.
• A doubt about the very existence of the self.
• In Zen this is known as the great doubt, the psychological pressure that comes with the struggle of life leads to an awakening and the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening, if you doubt fully, you will awaken fully.
• Nishitani characterizes this doubt concerning the self which originally motivated his philosophical quest quite explicatively as nihilism.
• It is a mood that comes from the deepest despair, when we become a question to ourselves, and when the problem of why we exist arises, however most of the time daily work and amusement helps to distract us from our encounter with nothingness.
• At the age of 14, Nishitani was met with the utter hopelessness after his father had died.
• Shortly thereafter, he was struck down by an illness similar to the tuberculosis that had killed his father, in this existential mode of anxiety, he was faced with the chilling encounter with nothingness, and felt the specter of death taking hold of him.
• At this point all the ordinary necessary things of life, all lose their necessity and utility, one is robbed from what once had made life worth living.
• The questions, why did this happen to me? What can I do about it? Are transformed into the questions, Who am I?  Why do I exist?
• A void appears here that nothing in the world can fill, a gaping abyss opens up at the very ground on which one stands.
• This mental torment lead Nishitani to philosophy and to pursue a career in the field as a professor, he writes, "My life as a young man can be described in a single phrase - it was a period absolutely without hope, my life at the time lay entirely in the grips of nihility and despair, my decision then, to study philosophy was in fact - melodramatic as it might sound - a matter of life and death."
• As a young man, Nishitani used to carry Niche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra around with him wherever he went, it was like his Bible.
• He was also influenced by Martin Heidecker and spent two years studying under him from 1937 to 1939.
• Nishitani died in Kyoto Japan at the age of 90, the bulk of his work lies in his enormously rich twenty-six volume of collected works, serval monographs and articles. 
• His personal library was composed of nearly one thousand volumes of works in Western languages and 4100 in Japanese which were donated to the university where he taught. 
• For Nishitani the question of nihilism is the most urgent, the most personal and most radical of all.
• We will be focusing on two important works of Nishitani: The Self Overcoming of Nihilism and Religion and Nothingness.
• The Self Overcoming of Nihilism is the result of a series of lectures on the subject of nihilism that Nishitani gave in Japan.
• In this earlier work, the primary theme stems from European philosophy, mostly existentialism, with Zen Buddhist ideas at the background.
• In his later work and masterpiece, Religion and Nothingness, Nishitani seeks a synthesis and dialogue between Western and Easter philosophy and spiritual experience, with an emphasis on contemplative practices.
• The two texts complement one another, as records of a shift of emphasis in the author's thought.

Quote

I got nothing for you to gain
I'm taking it slow
Feeding my flame
Shuffling the cards of your game
And just in time
In the right place
Suddenly, I will play my ace

Roman Empire is what you are
Roman Empire is who you are
You're an empire
Darkest of empires
The Roman Empire

You're building cities on the backs of all the people
Working hard to build a home with memories
This moral ground you think you own is frankly dangerous
When you're ripping kids away from what they need

• In The Self Overcoming of Nihilism, Nishitani begins by tracing back the historical understanding of nihilism and philosophers such as Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Max Stirner, Heidegger and Sartre.
• Nishitani gives his own answer to Nihilism as is explicit in the title, of nihilism overcoming itself rather than us overcoming.
• The nature of nihilism can be conceived in two ways, as universal and existential and as particular and historical, this duality is something that should be grasped in one single vison in order to understand how nihilism operates in actual reality.
• Nihilism is a sign of the collapse of the social order externally, and of spiritual decay internally, and as such, signifies a time of great upheaval where as before, human existence had a clear and eternal meaning, a way in which to live with one may or may not want to follow, how existence is deprived of such meaning.
• It stands before nothingness as having been stripped naked, becoming a question mark for itself, and this in turn transforms the world itself into a question.
• The world in which we live reveals itself as an abyss, and profound anxiety shakes the foundation of human being.
• Nishitani writes, "In short, nihilism refuses treatment as merely an external problem for one's self, where even contemplation is a problem internal to each individual self.
• This is the essence of nihilism.  It demands that each individual carry out an experiment within the self.
• There is a lot of philosophy that focuses on only conceptual analysis while one loses touch with the human condition, nihilism is first and foremost a problem of the self as it underlies being itself.
• New paths towards nihilism, where things no longer stand firm on the basis human, the path towards Christ, the Godman, or the Uber Mench - the Mangod, while they by no means solved everything, there's no doubt that through their struggle, they turned the European spirit in the direction of what is its profoundest dimension?
• However, the attempt to preserve the self from nothingness at all costs, means that the process of meaninglessness is not allowed into the self, it is cocooned from it, avoiding reality, we become self-enclosed and all our experiences relate back to the self.
• Thus when we encounter nihility, we see it as eroding the very meaning of our life.
• And we try to resist it with ourself, only to sink further into it, like quicksand.
• One of Nishitani's deepest insights is that we haven't been able to take nihilism deep enough, so that it overcomes itself.
• Nishitani wants to achieve a radicalization of nihility whereby nihilism overcomes itself.
• The awakening of the great doubt is the conversion to Sunyata or emptiness which is the deepest layer of being.
• Nihility is as part of the fabric of reality as Being is.

• On this new field of emptiness, you have the paradoxical coexistence of things, when nihility constitutes the realness of being, this interdependent co-arising is a key notion on Buddhism.
• Until one accepts nihility as part of the self, there is a lack of relationship with one's self and a complete lack of contact.
• Nishitani traverses nihilism in a much more existential mode, where it is not always relating back to the self as an external event, but is actually part of the self.
• Things can then, being encountered on their own homeground, as Nishitani puts it.
• One does know something by representing it, willing it, or expressing it, but by becoming it.

 

Roman Empire is what you are
Roman Empire is who you are
You're an empire
Darkest of empires
The Roman Empire

Roman Empire is what you are
Roman Empire is who you are
You're an Empire
Darkest of Empires
The Roman Empire

• In religion and nothingness, he begins by asking, "what is religion?' that is in fact the original title of the work.
• What exactly is the purpose of religion for us?
• Why do we need it?
• Nishitani's creating a dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity, and he often appears to be more concerned with Christian conceptions than with Buddhist ones, however the notion of Sunyata is central.
• Religion is not something that claims to be based on some sort of creed, it is the absolute negation of the experience of the absolute nothingness, and the various efforts to achieve it.
• Nishitani also talks about the dangers of scientism to overlook not only religion, but philosophy as well.
• This occurs when science seems to regard its own scientific standpoint as a position of unquestionable truth from which it can assert itself in all directions so that things like religion, philosophy and the arts appear as no more than subjective opinion.
• In this way, our existential problems in the human condition is completely ignored.
• For Nishitani, religion has to do with life itself, whether the live we're living will end up in extinction or in the attainment of eternal life is a matter of the utmost important for life itself.
• Religion, like culture, is at all times the individual affair of each person, accordingly we cannot understand what religion is from the outside.
• The religious quest alone is the key to understanding it, there is no other way.
• Nishitani says that it is a mistake to ask, what is the purpose of religion for us as it tries to detach us from the religious quest by obscuring the way to its own answer from the very start.
• It blocks our becoming a question to ourselves, instead religion poses as a starting point the question: "For what purpose do I exist?"
• He writes, "Why do we exist at all? Is not our very existence and human life ultimately meaningless? Or if there is a meaning or significance to it all, where do we find it?
• When we doubt the meaning of our existence in this way, when we have become a question to ourselves the religious quest awakens within us.
• It is the conversion from a self centered mode of being, which always asks what use things have for us to an attitude that asks for what purpose we ourselves exist?
• Only when we stand at this turning point does the question what is religion really become our own.
• Nishitani understands the essence of religion as the real self realization of reality.
• Religion is to see things as they are on their own homeground and this real self-realization of reality is possible only by understanding nihility as part of our existence.
• The realization of Sunyata is not our salvational fate, but rather our vocation.
• A thought becomes Non dualistic so that we become the world and the world becomes us, this is the Buddhist idea of the non-self.
• The self-awareness in which the self-awakens to its true nature, the non-self is paradoxically the true self, the rejection of the ego gives way to the codependence of everything to what is known as Indra's net.
• All things in the world are linked together in one way or the other.
• Not a single thing comes into being without some relationship to every other thing.
• We become the masters of ourselves and a servant in relation to others.
• This approach is used in Japanese psychotherapy to treat neurotic patients suffering from anxiety and depression.
• The acceptance of things as they are instead of fleeing into imaginary scenarios or focusing monomaniacally on the ego's petty concerns, is believed to be crucial for the individual's wellbeing and also for the healthy functioning of society as a whole.
• In order to become united with reality in a nondual awareness, it is necessary to learn to empty the self and see things as they truly are, without our subjective distortions and our reflective interpretations.
• Rising above the subject/object division gives way to pure experience.
• This does not make much sense to the conceptual mind, we tend to reify nihility because we cannot wrap our heads against it, in fact Nishitani states that one must have contemplative practice to understand the essence of religion and nothingness.
• Religion and nothingness are not just the book, but rather a deeply transformative experience.
• Nishitani's existential concern is far from the speculative and abstract philosophy.
• We must not only know about things, propositional knowledge, but also how to do things, procedural knowledge, how to perceive the world, perspectival knowledge and how to participate in it by knowing our place in the world and how we relate to the world as agents.
• Philosophy is a transformative experience.
• Influenced by zen master, Dogen, Nishitani practiced zazen or sitting meditation for more than two decades, a physical practice that grounded his thinking in lived experience.
• The harsh reality of zen life is to sit and not try to do anything, particularly in the West, a sense of ennui arises, of utter lack of occupation and excitement.
• Because we're being taught that we must be productive, and not waste time, we become deeply alienated from ourselves, from other people, and from nature.
• It is difficult to experience time as time, and nothing else.
• We have the tendency to kill time, or to say, "today I have wasted all of my time."
• We begin to see time as something to fight against, as the constant striving for more and more progress, the truth is that the present moment is the only reality.
• Zen is just being with existence, there's no other point, not thinking about what to do next, but doing one's duty each day, if you do your duty, you'll be satisfied, if you've been avoiding what you're supposed to do the whole day, you'll be miserable.
• Having received a human life, do not waste the passing moments, human life is like a flash of lightning, transient and illusory, gone in a moment.

Quote

There's blood on your hands
The human heart has demands
You're gonna keep quiet
But you've started a riot
There's ice in your veins
Frozen in your haze
You hide and keep quiet
Now you've started a riot

(You're an Empire)

(You're an Empire)

What if God's not real?
And everything we are
Is just a moment here
Where we're only growing older?
What if God is real
And everything I've done
Pushed me down this path
And it's only growing colder?

• Nishitani understand human existence as consisting in three fields:
  1 - consciousness - is where we live most of our waking lives, this is our life perspective.  We claim to know other people, and things, but in fact what we know are merely our subjective concepts and representations of them.  We see things on the standpoint of the self, and in fact many of us can get all the way to the grave without ever becoming aware of the deeper layers of our existence.  Invoking Plato's allegory of the cave, Nishitani states that we sit like spectators in the cave of the self, watching the shadows pass two and fro across such walls and calling those shadows reality.
  2 - nihility - below we have the field of nihility, this is by contrast a death perspective, when we encounter the terror of nothingness, and meaninglessness.  However, death is not something that awaits us in some distant future, but something that we bring into the world with us at the moment we are born, our live stand poised at the brink of the abyss of nihility, to which it may return at any moment.  Nihility set in opposition of being.  It stands over against existence.  It is situated alone, by itself, outside of existence, that is, it is still taken as something called nihility.  Nishitani calls it a standpoint of relative nothingness, which he believes one doesn't overcome nihilism through a summoning of the will to power, are a part of the heroic ego, but rather by accepting it as part of being.  While he came close to overcoming nihilism, he did not stare into the abyss for long enough.  The fundamental difference is that he does not allow the full zen standpoint of nonself to appear, it remains a standpoint of the will. 
  3 - emptiness - We must step back from nihility to the field of emptiness to shed light on what is underfoot.  Nishitani writes - in contrast to the fields of nihility, on which the desolate and bottomless abyss distances even the most intimate of persons, or things from one another, on the field of emptiness, that absolute breach points directly to a most intimate encounter with everything that exists, whereas nihility's relative nothingness, emptiness is absolute nothingness, the negation which encompasses everything else and from which particular being form and emerge.  The absolute negation as the negation of negations becomes the great affirmation.  In the openness of Sunyata, realized by nihility overcoming itself, one completely oversteps the confines of self consciousness and comes to be free of egocentrism, anthropocentrism, and even theocentric.  Thus allowing ultimate reality to manifest itself in all its fullness.  In reaching the final field, we feel at home.  One breathes pure mountain air.  It offers us the most enlightened life, a death-life perspective in which we experience the most profound joy.  It is the hero's journey.  The psychological death and rebirth of one's self.  Giving birth to a new self.  The nonself, and gaining new insights as wisdom, to tackle life's hardships.  In zen this becomes the great death, the moment in which the great doubt finishes its work, which only a few will have experienced, though all will experience the small death, if you die before you die, then when you die you don't die.
• These fields are always co-present, and each deeper field is more extensive, and encompassing than the one above it.
• For Nishitani, Western philosophy has mostly been conducted on the field of consciousness, where we have no access to things themselves, but only to our subjective representations of them.
• Getting past the ego is getting past the suffering, ecstasy is used to transcend oneself without ceasing to be one's self.
• By not making contact with the deepest layers of ourselves, we remain alienated and live without truly knowing who we are, we become like the fly bumping against a windowpane, but unable to get through.
• One ignores the reality of life, and the abyss that lies beneath oneself and which will manifest itself whether one is aware of it or not, by contrast - on the field of emptiness, we can break through how things appear to human subjects and encounter things as they are in themselves.

Roman Empire is what you are
Roman Empire is who you are
You're an empire
Darkest of empires
The Roman Empire

Roman Empire is what you are
Roman Empire is who you are
You're an empire
Darkest of empires
The Roman Empire

• Not only is one transformed into a new self, but the world also changes form in our eyes.
• We gain a new vision, a change of heart, a deepening of our perspective, we reveal what was hitherto concealed as a result of the self's realization, concerning its deepened interconnectedness with the world, the self stops seeing the world as something external to it.
• The new self is transformed because it does not prioritize itself over other selves any longer, by practicing this view from above, what moves to a third perspective and steps back from once narrower view of things.
• Instead of seeing oneself as insignificant in the cosmos at large, the individual brings cosmic significance to his or her life.
• The cosmos as the individual interpenetrates, one becomes a cosmic individual, similar to night of faith, buy moving from finitude to the cosmos, and back again to finitude, one delights in everything finite, seeing reality as it is.
• One's outer appearance looks just like any ordinary person, there's no special aura or superiority that marks the distinctness of the cosmic individual, but at the same time, every step is filled with the invisible force of cosmic significance.
• If you forget yourself, you become the universe.

(You're an Empire)

(You're an Empire)

What if God's not real
And everything we are
Is just a moment here
Where we're only growing older?
What if God is real
And everything I've done
Pushed me down this path
And it's only growing colder?

Edited June 23, 2022 by Loba
All in all it's just another brick in the wall..

[Loba]

Quote

So, I lost my head a while ago
But you seem to have done no better
We set fire in the snow
It ain't over, I'm not done

Notes:

• One of the biggest clues that mythology primarily evolved as a symbolic language to communicate ideas, concepts, is the fact that it's so weird.
• The Gods and Goddesses quite often look bizarre and the things they do often defy logic, that's only true upon first glance, though, when we try to read a mythical story like a literal description of people and events.
• Mythology does often contain references to real events, places and people, and it does often serve the etiological function explaining the way the world works, why the flood waters or the drought came that one time, why the star fell from the sky, or why the kingdom collapsed and so on.
• But when we take a look at a wild, unkempt fore armed goddess carrying around things like a severed head and a bloody scimitar, a bowl of blood, wearing ragged tiger skins and severed body parts, not to mention trampling upon her husband, Shiva - her divine consort, we do have to wonder what exactly is going on here?
• Kali: Hindu goddess of death and time, who's image is so fearsome and terrifying that she was used as the basis for demonic idol in the movie Indiana Jones: And the temple of doom, which is how many people in Western countries may know of Kali - this was not a good representation of Kali Ma, or Ma Kali, as she is also known.
• What is the point of all this gory death imagery and of the tales of Kali's relentless slaughter of demons, who are called asuras in Vedic literature - the answer is one of the most elegant attempts to grasp at the somewhat esoteric nature of existence itself?
• The most common depiction of Kali is some version of her trampling or dancing upon her husband, Shiva - there is some degree of variance as to what she holds in her four arms and sometimes she is depicted with ten arms, but in all versions, she holds a scimitar and a severed head, and sometimes she holds a bowl below the head to catch the dripping blood. 
• She wears a cord of severed heads as a necklace, and a string of severed arms are, or hands, around her waist as a macabre kind of skirt.
• Sometimes she is clad in ragged tiger's skins, but more often she is depicted as naked.
• Her tongue is always lolling out, ever bloodthirsty, but not very hard to interpret symbol of her insatiable desire to destroy.
• She is trampling on her husband, Shiva, who is often depicted as content with the arrangement.
• The most common explanation for Kali's trampling upon her husband has to do with her battle against the demon Raktabij, leading of the asuras.
• This tale was first written down between the fifth and sixth centuries CE in the Devi Mahatmaya, which is part of the writings known as the Puranas. 
• Devil Mahatmaya is a Sanskrit phrase which means, "glory of the goddesses" and indeed the Devi Mahatmaya is known for interpreting the primary forces of the universe as Goddesses.  
• On one side we have the asura Raktabij, whose name means "blood seed", he is called that because of a boon he received from Brahma, if anyone strikes Raktabij a thousand new asuras spring from the blood that is spilled.
• Raktabij's blood respawn trick makes him exceedingly hard to kill, which is why the Gods have to call upon the terrifying fury of Kali to deal with the issue.
• In the Devi Mahatmaya narrative: Durga also called Ambika, and both of those words derived from the same Sanskrit root which means "Mother Goddess" or "Warrior Goddess".
• She is one of the most if the most confusing thing about Vedic mythology and Hindu religion, which is that many of the Gods have many different forms, or you might say that when you start researching one deity, they turn out to be emanation or incarnation of some other deity, and that is the case with Kali and the Goddessess of the Devi Mahatmaya.

Some do magic
And some do harm
I'm holding on, holding on
I'm holding on to a straw

• This works precisely because on one level the deities are always functioning as an expression of concepts, and concepts often overlap.
• The overlapping of the deities is simply a reflection of the concepts they represent to the extent that mythology is a matter of coming up with esoteric metaphors to relate hard to express concepts.
• It is fine for one deity or myth to deal with the same or related concepts and often times local deities that express similar ideas end up being combined over time through a process of syncretism and that has happened all over India over the last several thousand years of development of mythology and religion.
• When the Devi Mahatmaya, the supreme Goddess of the universe is known as either Shakti or Devi, the Devi from Devi Mahatmaya and Devi is just the singular female form of Deva.
• This supreme goddess has three primary incarnations, each of which express slightly different ideas.
• There is Parvati, who is primarily a shining mother goddess of goodness and justice.
• Durga, the warrior goddess
• Kali, who represents time, creation and destruction, or more specifically, the cycles of time which lead to creation and destruction.
• Parvati is synonymous with the entire Shakti Ambika godhead.
• These have always been regarded as simply different emanations

• Goddess worship in general, dates back to pre-historic India, back to the Indus valley culture, in the traditions of Shakti, Durga, Kali and Parvati originated long before the Devi Mahatmaya was written.
• The Devi Mahatmaya is organized into three sections, each of which is dedicated to a different goddess form, and in the second we here of the creation of Durga - it seems the devas or the gods are having trouble battling a different demon, this one is Mahishashura, the buffalo demon - the warrior champion of the Gods, Indra, cannot seem to overcome this shapeshifting asura, and so the primary male trinity of Vishnu, Brahman and Shiva along with the lesser devas combine their divine energy, their shakti, and create Durga.
• Durga is not seen as having been created by these gods, but rather having been manifested by them.
• As the feminine shakti energy is here understood as the primeval force of the universe and the soul substratum of the world that animates the devas themselves.
• The devas then simply channel and focus together to manifest the form of Durga.
• Durga is part warrior goddess, but one who is usually depicted as calm and serene amidst battle, with a subtle smile to rival that of the Mona Lisa.
• She is actually the quintessential protective mother goddess, usually called Ma Durga or Durga Ma and is popular in contemporary Hinduism with the slaying of Mahishashura being celebrated in Northeast India by one of the great festivals which is called the Durga Puja.
• Durga is portrayed as having eight or ten arms, each holding a divine weapon of some kind and she rides a Lion or Tiger into battle.
• After slaying the buffalo demon Mahishashura, Durga is given the epithet Mahishashuramardini, which means "slayer of Mahishashura".
• The Gods are hard-pressed against an asura, with Raktabij being their toughest challenge yet.
• No matter how many devas wound him, his blood continues to spawn more asuras, and the whole thing is spiraling out of control, when Durga rides out to battle Raktabij, she becomes so furious that she kits her brow together and from her third eye springs Kali, and even more terrifying and furious form of the supreme goddess Shatki Ambika.
• Kali is able to overcome Raktabij's demon spawning blood trick by lapping up his blood and his demon spawn with her long, extending tongue.
• The narrative of the Devi Mahatmaya described Durga and Kali fighting together with Durga's lion roaring and filling the earth and then Kali's scream, even drowns out the lion's roar.
• Durga wounds the demon with darts, thunderbolts, arrows, swords and spears, while Kali bludgeons him with her skull top staff and wounds him with her spear.
• With Kali's tongue enlarging to capture any blood or new asura spawn.
• In some folklore, versions of the story, Kali has a snake or jackals which also help to drink up the blood and the newly spawned asuras.

Who is the Alpha?
And what is made of cloth?
How do you say you're sorry
And there's nothing to be afraid of?

• Here's were folklore and the text of the Devi Mahatmaya diverge pretty sharply.
• If you search Raktabij on the internet, you mostly get a version of the story where after defeating Raktabij, Kali becomes intoxicated with all the asura blood that she has been drinking, and then begins a wild victory dance, which shakes the entire universe.
• The gods plead with Shiva to do something about it, as Shiva is the consort of Parvati/Durga/Kali, and so he does.
• Shiva runs down from the mountains and lies down beneath Kali's dancing feet until she notices that it's her lover being trampled, at which time she calms down and lolls her tongue out in embarrassment, thus the mystery of Kali's trampling of Shiva is explained.
• This ending is not found in any Hindu or Vedic text, despite being known all throughout India and learning this story growing up; most of the early Vedic texts started as older oral traditions which were later written down.
• The ending in the Devi Mahatmaya, in the written text, Kali and Durga go on to slay a couple more important demons and then simply withdraw back into the form of the Devi, the original Goddess form, and then all the devas gathered around and worship her.
• There is nothing about trampling on Shiva or getting drunk with blood, it's just not in there, it seems that what's probably happened here is that a different ending to the Raktabij story has arisen over time which attempts to explain the mystery of Kali trampling upon her husband, Shiva.
• In fact, there are two other folkloric explanations which are less well known that are mentionable.
• It is the explanation offered by the Tantric traditions that seems to best unravel the esoteric riddle at the heart of this image.
• This more metaphysical explanation is also supported by older Vedic texts.
• Most everything about Kali seems to be an esoteric riddle by the way as the concepts this deity is expressing are some of the most abstract that humankind has ever pondered.
• Who is Kali? - The first layer of what's going on in this Devi Mahatmaya is the thing mentioned earlier, the authors were attempting to harmonize a somewhat male dominated pantheon that developed in Vedic India, although the Vedas also do have their goddesses, with other possibly older or just different native traditions of goddess worship, or perhaps we might say that the authors were simply trying to expand upon and play up the role of the goddesses in Vedic mythology, which then evolved into Hidnu mythology.
• Goddess worship has always had an important place in the practices of India's people.
• The Devi Mahatmaya is the goddesses chance to shine in the religious text.
• The gods depend on the goddesses to bail them out of trouble, and more to the point of this esoteric mythology the devas, the gods, would themselves be powerless or even inanimate dead things without the Shakti power of the goddess.
• The feminine animating force of the universe itself.
• We should always keep in mind that ascribing things like gender to such abstract concepts as the supreme animating force of the universe, or the supreme soul of the universe is just a convention - it is a means of talking about the harmonization or the interplay of apposing forces.
• We can see this idea directly expressed in the form of the Aradna Resvata, a deity formed the combines of Shiva and Parvati, split male and female right down the center and again the point has to do with the unification, reintegration and balance.
• The gods and indeed all matter itself would be dead or inanimate without whatever the force that brings life to everything is, that's the Shakti power.
• This is the true meaning of Kali dancing upon Shiva, according to Tantric traditions Kali represents the animating dance of life and Shiva the inanimate thing that is brought to life.
• Kali represents the emergence of cycles of time from the stillness of the cosmic void, the quiet, slumbering soul of the universe, which is what slumbering, dead or reclining Shiva represents.
• The name Kali is actually based on two different Sanskrit words which sound the same and have become associated with one another over time.
• Kali means both "she who is black" as well as "she who is time, fate, and death" or even "appointed time, or the force of time".
• So, think of Kali as the power needed to cause anything to exist at all, the thing which causes time to immerge from the nonexistence of the void.
• Shiva represents that void, or we might say he represents the quiet, potential for things to exist, from which Kali creates.
• The Hindu concept of existence is largely defined within the context of repeating cycles of creation and destruction, whether that be the ages of the world, whether repeating cycles of reincarnation through which an individual moves, and if we were to picture those cycles as the wheels of a great cosmic bicycle, then Kali is pedaling it.
• The force of time - if you think about it this is another reason for Kali's dancing, dancing or playing music literally dictates time in the sense that it orders everything to a specific tempo, thus the goddess who causes time to move, is a dancer, she is setting the pace and dictating the flow of reality itself.
• So, here's where the death and destruction symbolism comes into the picture - if Kali causes the wheels of time to turn, then she is responsible for the creation and the destruction of everything, and indeed, Kali is regarded as existing outside of time, as the primordial force which existed before the universe began and which will still be there after everything ends, thus she is the creator and devourer of all things, and this is reflected in lines from the ninth chapter of the Devi Mahatmaya, that praised the Devi with the words "Salutation be to you who in the form of minutes, moments and other divisions of time, bring about change in things and have thus the power to destroy the universe" and also with the words, "Salutation be to you who have the power of creation, sustentation and destruction, and are eternal."
• This is why there are no birth of Kali stories, she only ever manifests from Parvati or Durga, or just kind of shows up when needed.

 

Quote

Here's to the one with the smoking stare
Runnin' through my head with a bolo knife
Choppin' up the threads made up from looms
Of love and blood and hate and some empty tunes

Eyes killer cold and black and bare
Freaky little tooth hangin' solo
Suckin' at the walls like a rolo now
Makin' a cocoon when my brain fits

• What is the force that cannot be defeated, represented by Kali's unstoppable destruction on the battlefield?

This thing all things devours;
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town, 
And beats high mountain down

• The answer is time, or perhaps we might call it the inevitability of death that comes along with the existence of time.
• Kali is invincible and ruthless in slaughter.
• The oldest written records of Kali, or goddesses who became synonymous with Kali support this tantric interpretation of Kali dancing upon Shiva.
• The Rig Veda, which was set down somewhere between 1500 to 1200 BCE from older oral traditions contains a hymn called the Rathri Suktim, which is sung to Rathri, goddess of night, who was understood as synonymous with Kali.
• This hymn is also sung to Kali.
• The Rathri Skuktim speaks of a sage Kushika, who perceived the enveloping force of darkness while meditating and thus invoked the name of Rathri which means night as an all-powerful goddess, Rathri Devi, this holy darkness was called upon to free mortals from their fears and their bonds to the earth and like Kali was seen as possessing the all devouring power of time.
• Worshippers of Rathri sought to manifest this devouring power to overcome fear and any obstacle that they may face.
• Conceptually, Rathri is very similar to Kali, and other Vedic writings attest to this as well.
• The Atharva Veda which was likely the last part of the Vedas to be composed, somewhere between 1200 BCE and 1000 BCE, directly associates Rathri with several goddesses, including Durga.
• Then we have the Mahabharata which was written between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and this text combines the names of Kali and Rathri into Kalatratri and she's very reminiscent of what we saw from Kali in the Devi Mahatmaya.
• She shows on the battlefield to battle various asuras and villains, her tongue lolls out thirsty for blood and most importantly, she specifically is associated with blackness and the eternal void, like Kali. 
• The Rig Veda also mentions the goddess Nirrti, who is the personification of death, decay and destruction, and who may be either a predecessor to Kali or perhaps just a very similar deity expressing its similar concepts.
• There is a continuity of thought about void goddesses that we can trace from the very earliest written records of Indian literature, right up to the present.

Is it dark already?
How light is a light?
Do you laugh while screaming
"Is it cold outside?"

• All of this destruction is also linked to cycles of creation and rebirth.
• And the idea of her driving cosmic time in intended to be paralleled to the cycles of personal growth, which are supposed to come from the studying of the Vedic scriptures.
• Most religions and spiritual practices are about self-improvement to some extent, and this is true of Hinduism, and Tantric traditions in particular are focused on using meditation to achieve spiritual liberation.
• The constant battled between the devas and the asuras are therefore generally understood to represent the good and evil instincts within mankind.
• Any esoteric interpretation of Hindu folklore or scripture presumes this; thus, we can begin to see Kali's relentless slaughter of asuras as representation of what we must do to free our higher selves, our good instincts from encumbrance.
• We must ruthlessly seek to slaughter any signs of evil or deception inside of us.
• This is a metaphor to describe the practice of any kind of quest to obtain spiritual enlightenment or righteousness.
• It's the process of rooting out ignorance, selfishness, illusion and delusion and anything else that causes us not to live up to our values, to fall short of our own moral compass and to fail to reach our own potential, thus Kali represents not only the progress of physical time, but the progress of self-improvement, the opposite of personal stasis, which is a kind of spiritual death or slumber.
• This statis and complacency is what we must go to war against, says Kali, through her bloody trappings she is telling us that attainment of spiritual freedom comes only through the elimination of attachment, and the destruction of false consciousness.
• That's what the severed head represents, false consciousness.
• The sword represents the knowledge that destroys illusion.
• This iconography portrays the process of self-improvement as active, bold, tumultuous, painful, a striking contrast to the stillness of Shiva's meditation.
• In the end, these two ideas are designed to work in tandem, the quiet reflection of meditation should lead to insight, and insight to action and through this process we are transformed.
• The metaphysical interpretation of Kali dancing upon Shiva, the emergence of reality from the cosmic stillness parallels the metaphysical interpretation of transformative action emerging from the stillness of meditation.
• There are two other folkloric interpretations on Kali's dance on Shiva, and although they are somewhat different from the Tantric interpretation, they still work with the same idea of self-improvement, or mastery of self.
• In both of these interpretations, Kali is understood as the destructive aspect of Shiva, when Shiva is portrayed as calm or peacefully reclining beneath Kali's furious dance, he's showing us mastery of his anger, or darker thoughts.
• He's aware of these darker impulses but remains in control or unperturbed.
• If we see Shiva depicted as being dead or in pain beneath Kali's feet, that's seen as an expression of Shiva losing control with his dark side, or id, taking power.
• So, although different, we still deal with the same concepts.
• Kali and Shiva are basically always working together to describe and depict the war that is the path to spiritual mastery.
• The iconography isn't all blood and battle, though, Kali also expresses the love of a mother with the hand signs or mudras that she's frequently making with her right hands.
• In her Dakshina Kali forms specifically, the mudras are abhaya - fearlessness, and varada - blessing, this work says a promise of spiritual freedom and salvation to those who have the courage to seek ultimate truth.
• There is no real comfort in delusion, so the message here is along the lines of, "only the truth will set you free."

One thing I know for certain
Oh, I'm pretty sure
It ain't over
I'm not done

• Another important avenue for spiritual growth and perfection in Hinduism is reincarnation, with the idea being that the eternal soul is improved upon gradually through multiple lifecycles, and that those cycles of death and rebirth are of course powered by Kali.
• The garland of severed hands that she wears is specifically tied to the concept of karma and reincarnation, hands are what you do work with, and this collection of hands represents the work of karma, the many lifetimes of work that it takes to achieve nirvana.
• The severing of those hands, accordingly, represents Kali's ability to bestow ultimate freedom from the binding of karma.
• By these means, Kali is seen as helping us to achieve enlightenment, not only by being ruthless in the quest to root out evil and delusion, but also by causing our souls to be reborn from the dissolution of death.
• Kali's eternal existence outside of time, outside of the veil of maya, or illusion, which is the physical world, is what enables her to perform this function.
• This is the reason for Kali's nudity, she is uncovered by any sort of cloak of illusion, the ultimate personification of indestructible, eternal truth.
• Thus, Kali is perceived as beckoning us on our journey to find truth from a place which is actually the source of ultimate reality.
• For similar reasons, Kali is always described as black or dark blue, and again, Kali means the black one, and of course, the link between the great goddesses and the primordial darkness goes back to Rathri Devi in the Rig Veda.
• These symbolic implications of Kali's blackness thus are of a prime importance, primordial importance, and are spoken of often.
• The Maha Nirvana Tantra, written in 18th century explains that just as all colours disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in her.
• Sri Ramakrishna, an 18th century Bengali yogi and saint, similarly explains that "My mother is the principle of consciousness, she is Acanda Sachidananda, indivisible reality, awareness and bliss.
• The night's sky between the stars is perfectly black, the waters of the ocean depths are the same.
• The infinite is always mysteriously dark, this inebriating darkness is my beloved Kali."
• You can clearly recognize the language of creative chaos here, Kali's darkness represents things from which creation can emerge, like the ocean or space.
• Kali therefore represents the principle of consciousness that emerges from that darkness, an invisible yet all pervasive and life-giving force.
• Sri Ramakrishna also describes Kali as the force behind the sun, which is kind of Egyptian concept.
• The thing is to tap into that force we must first submit to the destruction of ego.
• This is the dissolution of Kali into which all names, and forms disappear, and then in terms of reincarnation, we can imagine our soul sort of dissolving back into that dark ocean of Kali, upon death, only to reemerge reborn from that ocean when we're reincarnated, just as the consciousness of the universe first emerged from that same void.
• The kindling of consciousness from the void and the spark of awareness itself is often liken to a fire, or to a light that blooms in the darkness and Kali is associated with exactly this sort of fire of awareness.
• The uncompromising truth which Kali offers is often likened to the fire of the sun, which burns away illusion like morning fog, along the same lines, the very first written record of Kali by name associates her with the purifying fire, specifically the fire of ritual sacrifice.
• We have this idea of purification through destruction and disillusion.
• This text is the Mundaka Upanishad, dating approximately to the 5th or 6th century BCE and it names Kali as one of the seven quivering tongues of the fire god, Angi, who's flames devoured the sacrifices intended for the gods, thereby transmitting them up to heaven via the rising smoke.
• Obviously you'll notice the connection between the lolling tongue of pretty much all Kali depictions and the idea of her as a tongue of the consuming fire god.
• There is also a deity mentioned in a slightly older Jaiminiya Brahmana dated to the 8th century BCE, called Dirgha-jihvi and this means the long tongued one, and this is thought to be an early form of Kali, or perhaps an older goddess whose mythology became combined with Kali over time.
• Dirgha-jihvi is an ogress who drinks up all the soma produced by the holy yagna ritual of the devas, which causes the devas to become weak.

Who is the Alpha?
How do you say I'm sorry
And there's nothing to be afraid of?
Oh, I'm pretty sure
It ain't over
I'm not done

• So, you can see the similarities to the slightly later concept of Kali as a tongue of holy fire, which devours the sacrifices intended for the gods.
• Instead of the soma stealing instrument of chaos from this earlier tale, Kali is now simply consuming, metabolizing and then transmitting the essence of the sacrifice up to the heavens.
• This concept of holy consuming fire leads us back to the concept of dissolution, which means it's time to talk a little more about Nirti, the goddess of death, decay and destruction, that appears in the Rig Veda, the Sanskrit ford Nirti is translated as decay, and it's derived from Nir which means to separate, think dissolution, and Nirti can also be translated as a lack of order, or a state of disorder.
• Think of the whirling pool of primordial chaos, from which creation emerges.
• Nirti seems to specifically embody the dissolution end of this process.
• The Vedas also used the word Nirti in lowercase form to indicate a realm of nonexistence and absolute darkness.  The void, essentially.
• Like her sister void goddess, Kali, Nirti is described as having dark skin and additionally dressing in dark clothes.
• There is a Hindu shakta poet from the 18th century named Ramprasad Sen - shakta - he fallows shaktism or the worship of shakti the divine goddess - he is also from Bengal, like Sri Ramakrishna and he associates Kali with the cremation ground, which builds on the concepts of fire and dissolution.
• Prashad means a ritual sacrifice, usually in the form of a food.

"O Kali, thou art fond of cremation grounds;
So I have turned my heart into one
That thou, a resident of cremation grounds,
May dance there unceasingly.
O Mother! I have no other fond desire in my heart;
fire of a funeral pyre is burning there;
O Mother! I have preserved the ashes of the dead bodies all around that Thou may come.
Oh Mother!  Keeping Shiva, conqueror of Death, under Thy feet,
Come, dancing to the tune of music;
Prasad waits with his eyes closed."

• The metaphor of the heart as cremation ground, is a reference to the holy fire of Kali, which burns away all the bad things, false consciousness, illusion, base desires, selfishness and so on.
• This inner fire that Kali bestows to her devotees has a specific name which is gyanagni, which means fire of knowledge.
• This is the sun-like aspect of Kali's truth, which burns away all illusion.
• You can see how all of the concepts behind Kali's symbols complement one another and now you can make sense of all the death and gore that pervades her imagery and her stories.
• Now you know there's nothing to fear, nothing but the truth, that is.
• The truth is like a sword, sharp, cutting, inflexible, but which also promises a kind of spiritual freedom.
• The ultimate spiritual freedom, which can only be won through courage.
• Kali offers us blessing and courage with her right hands, and offers us the sharp tools of freedom with her left, dancing Kali pedaling her cosmic bicycle, powering the cycles of time, existence and reincarnation, of which our world is made.
• Kali, the divine mother, who gave birth to all and who waits at the end to welcome us back home, back to the primordial sea from which our consciousness first arose.

 

Edited June 25, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

Notes:

• An astronaut went far out into space and was asked on his return whether he had been to heaven and seen God and he said yes, and so they said to him, well, what about God?
• And he said, she is black.
• And although this is a very well-known and well-worn story, it is very profound.
• A monk who started out in life as pretty much of an agnostic or an atheist and then he began to read a French philosopher who proclaimed a vital force, and the more he read into this kind of philosophy the more he saw, that these people were really talking about God.
• And he read a great deal of theological reasoning about the existence of God, and they all start out on this line: If you are intelligent, and reasonable, you cannot be the product of a mechanical meaningless universe, figs do not grow in thistles, grapes do not grow on thorns, and therefore you as an expression of the universe, as an aperture through which the universe is observing itself, cannot be a mere fluke because if this world, peoples as a tree brings forth fruit, then the universe itself, the energy which underlies it, what it's all about, the ground of being, must be intelligent.
• When you come to that conclusion you must be very careful, because you may make an unwarranted jump, namely, the jump to the conclusion that that intelligence, that marvelous designing power which produces all this, is the biblical God.
• Be careful.
• Because that God contrary to his own commands is fashioned in the graven image of a paternal authoritarian beneficent tyrant of the ancient Near East.
• It's very easy to fall into that trap, because it's all prepared institutionalized in the Roman Catholic church, in the synagogue, in the Protestant churches, all ready for you to accept, and by the pressure of social consensus and so on, it is very natural to assume that when somebody uses the word God, it is that father figure which is intended, because even Jesus used the analogy The Father, for his experience of God, he had to, there was no other one available in his culture.
• But nowadays we are in rebellion against the image of the authoritarian father, especially this should happen in the United States where we are a republic and not a monarchy, and if he was a loyal citizen of this country think that a republic is the best form of government, you can hardly believe that the universe is a monarchy. 
• But to reject the paternalistic image of God as an idol is not necessarily to be an atheist. 
• Atheism in the name of God: an experience, a contact a relationship with God, that is to say with the ground of your being, that does not have to be embodies or expressed in any specific image.

Buddy, you're a boy, make a big noise
Playing in the street, gonna be a big man someday
You got mud on your face, you big disgrace
Kicking your can all over the place, singin'

• Now, theologians on the whole don't like that idea because it is found in discourse with them that they want to be hardnosed about the nature of God.
• They want to say that God has indeed a very specific nature; ethical monotheism means that the governing power of this universe has some opinions and rules, to which our minds and acts must be conformed - and if you don't watch out, you'll go against the fundamental grain of the universe - and be punished in some way, you'll fail to be an authentic person.
• There is this feeling that there is authority, behind the world and it is not you, it's something else.
• Therefore, this Jewish-Christian-Muslim approach makes a lot of people feel strange, estranged, from the roots and ground of being.
• There are a lot of people who never grow up, and are always in awe of an image of grandfather.
• Don't bow to an image of God with a long, white beard so to speak, we intelligent people don't believe in that kind of a God, we think that God is spirit, that God is very undefinable and infinite, but nevertheless, the images of God are far more powerful upon our emotions than ideas.
• We should think in contrary imagery, and the contrary imagery is she is black.
• Instead of God the father/mother - imagine that this is not a luminous being, blazing with light, but an unfathomable darkness, such as is portrayed in Hindu mythology by Kali - the great mother, who is represented in the most terrible imagery.
• Kali has a tongue hanging out long, drooling with blood, she has fanged teeth, she has a scimitar in one hand and a severed head in the other and she is trampling on the body of her husband who is Shiva.
• Shiva represents also, furthermore, the destructive aspect of the deity, where in all things are dissolved so that they be reborn again - here is this bloodsucking terrible mother as the image of the supreme reality behind this universe.
• It's the representative of the spider/octopus/creepy crawlies at the end of the line which we are all terrified of; this is an important image.

We will, we will rock you
We will, we will rock you

• In the background of your mind, very far off you've got the sensation of something ghastly that mustn't happen and so against that which is not happening and which doesn't have to happen, but by comparison you feel alright.
• And that ghastly thing that mustn't happen at all is Kali.
• And therefore, at once we begin to wonder whether the presence of this Kali is not in a way beneficent.
• How would you know that things were good unless there was something that wasn't good at all?
• This is a variation, a way of looking at a problem, getting minds out of normal ruts, she's black.
• Well she, first of all is feminine, represents what is called philosophically the negative principal.
• People who are women and believe in women's lib don't like the negative because the negative has bad connotations, we say accentuate the positive, that is a male attitude.
• How would you know that you were outstanding unless there was something instanding? 
• You cannot appreciate the firm without the yielding and therefore the negativity of the feminine principal is lifegiving and very important.
• We live in a culture that doesn't notice it.
• You see a painting, a drawing of a bird, and you don't notice the white paper underneath it, you see a printed book and you think that what is important is the printing and the page doesn't matter and yet if you reconsider the whole thing, how could there be printing without the page underling it?
• What is called substance, that which stands underneath, stands, to be substantial is to be underlying, to be the support, foundation of the world and of course this is the great function of the feminine.
• The feminine is represented by space, which is black, at night, were it not for black and empty space there would be no possibility of seeing the stars.
• Stars shine out of space, and astronomers are beginning to realize that stars are a function of space.
• That's difficult for our common sense because we think that space is simply inner nothingness, we don't realize that space is completely basic to everything.
• It's like your consciousness, nobody can imagine what consciousness is, it's the most elusive whatever it is that there is at all because it is the background of everything else we know so we don't pay much attention to it and instead things within the field of consciousness.

Buddy, you're a young man, hard man
Shouting in the street, gonna take on the world someday
You got blood on your face, you big disgrace
Waving your banner all over the place

• What it is that embraces all of that, we don't pay much attention to it or think about it.
• And yet that is that out of which you see, just as space is that out of which the stars shine.
• That which you can't put your finger on, which always escapes you, the blank, seems to be necessary for there to be anything.
• Kali also is the principle of death.  She carries a scimitar in one hand and a severed head in the other; death.
• This is tremendously important to think about.  We put it off, it is avoided in our culture, in the hospital they try to keep you alive, and won't tell you you're going to die, when their relatives have to be informed the relatives don't tell the patient.
• The dying person knows this is mockery.
• Well of course we have made death howl with all kinds of ghouls with dreadful afterlives.
• The idea of what might happen after death: you're going to be faced with your judge - the one who knows all about you.
• He will look to the core of your inauthentic existence.
• Reincarnation - your next life will be the rewards and the punishments for what you have done in this life.
• You look upon death as a catastrophe based on what you do in life.
• Then other people have an atheist point of view, when you are dead, you are dead, nothing will happen so don't worry.
• We don't like this idea, because it spooks us.
• What is it like to die, to go to sleep and never wake up?
• It's not going to be like being buried alive, or like being in the darkness forever.
• It's going to be like as if you never had existed at all, not only you, but everything else, there was never anything and no one to regret it and there is no problem.
• Think about that for a while... it's a weird feeling you get when you think about that.
• Just to stop altogether...

 

We will, we will rock you
Sing it out
We will, we will rock you

• You can't even call it stop because you can't have stop without start and there wasn't any start, there's just no thing.
• Then you come to think that's the way it was before you were born.
• If you go back in memory as far as you can go you get to the same place as you go forward in your anticipation of the future, it is like being dead and you get funny ideas that this blankness is the necessary counterpart of what we call being.
• We all think we are alive, that we are here, something called existence.
• How could you experience that as a reality unless you had once been dead?
• What gives us an idea of being here without contrast, and later on won't be.
• This thing is a cycle, like poles, electricity, so this then is the value of the symbolism of she is black.
• She, the womb principal, the receptive, the instanding, the void, and the dark.
• And so that has to come into the presence of the god who has no image.
• Behind the father image, behind the mother image, behind the image of light inaccessible and behind the image of profound and abyssal darkness, there is something else which we can't conceive at all - the luminous darkness - sunyata - the void - brahman, that which nothing at all can be said - neti-neti - beyond all conception whatsoever, and you see that is not atheism in the formal sense of the word
• This is a profoundly religious attitude because what it corresponds to practically is an attitude to life of total trust, of letting go.
• When we form images of God, they are exhibitions of our lack of faith, something to hold onto and grasp.
• How firm a foundation, what lies underneath us, the rock of ages, but when we don't grasp, we have the attitude of faith.
• If you let go of all the idols, you will discover that what this unknown is, which is the foundation of the universe is You - it's not you, you think you are, not your opinion of yourself or idea or image of yourself.
• You can't grasp it.  Why would you need to?  Suppose you could, what would you do with it?
• And who would do what with it?
• You can never get at it, so there is that profound central mystery and the attitude of faith is to stop chasing it.
• Stop grabbing it because if that happens, the most amazing things follow, but all these ideas of the spiritual, the godly, as this attitude of must, and we have been laid down the laws which we are bound to follow...
• ...Is not the only way of being religious and of relating to the ineffable mystery that underlies ourselves in the world.

Buddy, you're an old man, poor man
Pleading with your eyes, gonna make you some peace someday
You got mud on your face, big disgrace
Somebody better put you back into your place

Quote

In the end
Time is like a night.
In the mind
Time is like a knife.
Sending them off the drop
Like an echo.
Orbiting like a satellite.

 

Edited June 25, 2022 by Loba

[Loba]

Quote

They shut the gates at sunset
After that you can't get out
You can see the bigger picture
Find out what it's all about

Notes:

• This video is about the left-hand path.
• In order to give you as accurate an idea as one can of what the left-hand path is considering how contentious the topic is - how misaligned existing definitions are and how emotional the topic can be for some - going to build up some context.
• It is difficult to keep an entirely detached attitude towards what's known as the left-hand path, whether it is a deep attraction or deep revulsion or even just a tentative interest, it would be hard to find anyone with any spiritual inclination who felt nothing but indifference about it.
• Naturally everything being a matter of perspective, many people following an exclusively right-hand path, don't realize that what they're following is indeed a right-hand path tradition until they discover there is such a thing as a left-hand path.
• Many people in the west approaching what they imagine to be the left-hand path, may develop a warped idea of what the left-hand path is, based on their previous misconceptions of what the right-hand path was supposed to be.

You're open to the skyline
You won't wanna go back home
In a garden full of angels
You will never be alone

• Let's start off by describing what the Western common misconception of what a right-hand, just to build up context.
• The main tradition that has influenced Western society has been a state sanctioned form of Christianity, wherever government becomes involved with spirituality, the spiritual attainment ceases to be the focus of that tradition and defense of an identity starts to become the whole point.
• After Constantine legalizes Christianity in the fourth century CE, we start to see Christianity less as a method for an individual approach to the divine, and more as a philosophy of good against evil, right against wrong, which naturally opens a path which is very convenient for a warring expansionist state, such as the Roman Empire, who can now say we are good, they are bad, let's destroy them for the glory of the state sanctioned idea of God.
• Of course, it doesn't take very long for that weaponized ideology to be turned internally against inconvenient members of any given society, for example, self-empowered women during the dark and Middle Ages who can now simply be disposed of with a simple rumor that they worshipped Satan.
• Side note: Satan, not to be confused with Lucipher, Satan only makes two appearances throughout the Hebrew bible and both times as an assistant to Yahweh, the idea that Satan as a ruler of Hell, some kind of Tartarus-like underworld are absolutely untrue, and only start gaining traction in the last few centuries before the common era.
• These are not Biblical views.

But oh, the road is long
The stones that you are walking on
Have gone

• This archnemesis, this opposite to all goodness, Satan, becomes a perfect reason for justifying
• "I cheat on my wife, she finds out, I accuse her of witchcraft which I equate to Satanism and suddenly her word is completely disregarded."
• Best case scenario she is imprisoned or even burned at the stake, in either case I get to continue with my affair unhindered.
• My political rival has an advantage over me - accuse him of devil worship, and the way is free for me once again.
• This tactic is still very much alive and kicking in the 21st century and it works.
• Fast forward - almost, but not quite to modern day, when the old state sanctioned churches no longer the stronghold of power that it used to be, new incarnations of the old institutions still have a terrifying amount of power in certain places, but on the whole, when compared to say, six hundred years ago, the church is now more of an inconvenience to the rich and powerful, who would rather turn to the media as a source of power, a much more convenient tool which they can mold to their will and doesn't shine such an evident spotlight on their own hypocrisy, especially if they own it and can actually use it to show their own lifestyle as something desirable and even worthy of praise.

With the moonlight to guide you
Feel the joy of being alive
The day that you stop running
Is the day that you arrive

• So as a direct result of this, individualism is at an all-time high, and the idea of a tradition which in theory at least promotes chastity, modesty, generosity, kindness, selflessness, is rejected.  These are all qualities which get in the way of the new ideals of status and power, and the churches many unforgivable sins of the past have given to more than a few people a perfect reason to reject it, and along with it, any idea that may have ever been associated with it, including the concept of divinity, let alone love for divinity.
• And so, in the mid 20th century when evidence has become unmissable that trust in a tribal God maybe misplaced, we start to see the rise of groups of people who claim to directly oppose the established state sanctioned idea of divinity, with the best-known leader of such a group being Anton Levay, the founder of the church of Satan, who was by his own admission, a complete atheist who didn't in fact even believe in the existence of Satan, but who didn't in fact believe in the existence of Satan, but who's organization set out to shock people out of what he considered to be their blind acceptance of the individualism inhibiting morality in beliefs of the church system.
• But some people missed the point, and in the 60's and 70's we start seeing the rise of actual murders by people who claim to be following a so-called left-hand path. 

And the night that you got locked in
Was the time to decide
Stop chasing shadows
Just enjoy the ride

• Objection against using the term left hand path, and where we start maybe approaching a definition - the name left-hand path comes from the tantric Indian tradition, and it's a spiritual path that explicitly seeks the face of divinity within the aspects of life that most consider ugly, taboo, or subversive, for instance, the western misconception of Tantra as a highly sexualized tradition comes from a single Tantric practice as the practice of having sexual intercourse in a ritualized context with someone who is not your husband or wife.

• You have to realize just how taboo extramarital relations were, and are still in India, so this practice isn't about condoning an act that practitioner wishes to perform anyway, but just isn't allowed to do, it's about precisely performing an act which repulses the practitioner.

• It is forbidden to carry out this rite with someone to whom you are attracted, it would defeat the whole point - so this practice is not mandated for someone who wouldn't find this repulsive in the same way they're expected to consume meat, but only because they're vegetarian.

• There would be no point in the same practice for a meat eater.

If you close the door to your house
Don't let anybody in
It's a room that's full of nothing
All that underneath your skin

• Followers of the left-hand path are known to work at morgues, handling dead bodies, something which is extremely taboo in Indian society.
• Practices might even include stuff as eating a dead body's brains out of their open skull, but while all of these acts sound not just disgusting, but horrifying to most people, it's to the point.
• The objective of the left-hand path is to find God in the lowest places.
• There's a difference that's hard to miss between these acts, which cause no harm other than revulsion and a sense of offence on one hand and actually knowing and willingly causing suffering on the other.
• There is plenty of ugliness in the world of which a left-hand path practitioner can practice finding the face of God, without needing to go onto generate more of their own.
• The tantric left-hand path is known to be the most difficult of all the spiritual paths, as it is a path of complete self denial and poverty and hardship, but people choose to follow it because it's also known to be the fastest route to breaking the cycle of rebirth, and attaining nirvana or oneness with the godhead.

Face against the window
You can watch it fade to grey
But you'll never catch the fickle wind
If you choose to stay

• Western setting, where unity with God has become seen as undesirable - it is evident in the left-hand path publishing world that a handful of people do clearly get it, and have managed to use the existing western paradigm to recreate a rather beautiful locally relevant equivalent of the Indian source, it is also abundantly clear from social media/publishers that plenty of people don't get it, and so we get these nonsensical situations where rather than Satan being worshipped as a necessary aspect of divinity, he is worshipped as the opposite of God and suddenly what you get is a philosophy which is nothing in common with the tantric left-hand path.
• It's directly contrary to the objectives of what a left-hand path should be about.
• There's nothing spiritual about a path which seeks worldly wealth, power, lust and ultimately the inflation rather than the deflation of ego through the destruction of others.

But oh, the road is long
The stones that you are walking on
Have gone

• A path which rejects divinity is not a spiritual path, regardless of whether it deals with spirits or not and it ends up being just as deluded and as destructive as its opposite path, which rejects the world and all its shadows as the church did for so many centuries.
• Living in denial of either the light or the dark aspects of the human condition can only lead to suffering.
• The common point between the witch hunting and someone sacrificing their pet cat to a demon for a chance to get laid is the lack of love.
• One way or another if love isn't at the core of your practice, left-hand or right-hand, then you've missed a step.
• And you seriously need to reconsider what you're doing.

With the moonlight to guide you
Feel the joy of being alive
The day that you stop running
Is the day that you arrive

• Some sources on the left-hand path:
  • At the left hand of God - Robert E. Svoboda - relates from memory the stories and sayings of his deceased left-hand path tantric guru, it is eye opening, sometimes fantastical, but always challenging at the same time as being entertaining.
  • Aurorae - Gabriel McCarry - a beautiful left hand path work of art designed to work on many dimensions to work upon the reader in ways which alone unlock certain paths of understanding.
  • The cult of the black cube - Dr. Aurthur Moros - a terrific introduction to the western left-hand path of Satan and much maligned and much feared aspect of the Olympian pantheon.
  • Feeding your demons - Tsultrim Allione - a great one for introducing necessary shadow work into your practice, the simple but beneficial process she suggests can be easily and safely appended to any right or left-hand path tradition you might be following.
  • Tantra Illuminated - Chrisopher D. Wallace - perfect complete overview of the various tantric traditions of the left and right-hand paths as accessible and useful to the absolute beginner as it is to the advanced veteran.  

And the night that you got locked in
Was the time to decide
Stop chasing shadows
Just enjoy the ride

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Loba