FRONTIER ADJUSTMENTS

The frontier is never somewhere else  

For anyone who thought that my musings of a shadowy group of individuals (called the Metrix) who control time, and thereby the fates of all our lives, was just the insane ramblings of a mad lunatic, I present to you Hollywood's latest science fiction adaptation, The Adjustment Bureau. Now as we know, Hollywood is the bastion of truth where all things of an Androidosophical nature are concerned, so we would be wise indeed to take heed of the messages presented to us in this movie.

Based loosely on a story by American science fiction author Philip K Dick, The Adjustment Bureau follows the exploits of a shadowy agency that directs the course of human lives by the application of subtle techniques. The Bureau has a plan for mankind's future, and in order to get us to stick to that plan they must resort to certain coercive methods, such as traffic accidents and spilt cups of coffee. In any case, the film connects with the doctrine of Androidosophy in three simple ways.

Firstly, all agents of the bureau are given a manual, as part of their kit. This manual displays all the choices open to a particular individual, along with their resulting consequences, in the form of circuit diagrams. The fact that the diagrams look like electronic schematics reenforces the idea that the characters are mere electronic impulses, trapped inside the circuits of a giant machine (the Metrix). The agents, in this instance, assume the role of electrical engineer, as they ensure that the paths their subjects take around the circuit diagram is the one most in keeping with the overall system requirements. The idea of agents running around consulting notebooks is very similar to the concept of the Wayfinding manuals utilised by Upper Realm agents; in Androidosophy.

Next, the case officers of the Adjustment Bureau make use of seemingly ordinary doorways as dimensional gateways, through which they travel the length and breadth of the country in an instant. This makes them equivalent to the Dark Runner Teams of the Shade Alliance. In downtown New York City (the former hub of the technosphere) the network of these doorways is so complex that agents refer to it as the 'substrate' i.e. the Technospheric substrate. I have been discussing the Technospheric substrate of the Metrix for months now, and I feel that this movie is confirmation, by Hollwood, of it existence.

Just take a look at these posters for the movie. They are like billboards, screaming at you to take notice of the fact that the entire path of human history is under the regulation of the Shade Alliance and the Metrix.

Imagine seeing these driving along the motor way or going shopping? They look like campaign posters: Only for once, they appear to be saying something close to the truth.

The final thing that struck me about this movie was the 1940's dress style of the Bureau's case officers. It makes sense that they should be wearing these clothes, because that is when the Metrix was first set up (in 1945). It would not be necessary for the agents to alter their general appearance throughout the course of time, because they themselves operate outside of its guidelines.

Perhaps the most iconic and important shot in the whole movie shows the four case officers standing atop a tall building in New York City. The general mood, style and setting of this scene synchronistically echoes those of Norman Maccaig's Hotel Room, 12th Floor, a poem which tries to give a sense of the divide between; past and future, night and day, chaos and order, civilization and primitive society. As you can see below, the scene is shot at dusk, and I will bet my hat that the window they are try to steal a look into is on the twelfth floor. What do you think?

Hotel Room, 12th floor 

This morning I watched from here
a helicopter skirting like a damaged insect the
Empire State Building, that
jumbo size dentist's drill, and landing
on the roof of the Pan Am skyscraper.
But now midnight has come in
from foreign places. Its uncivilised darkness is shot
at by a million lit windows,
all ups and acrosses.

But midnight is not
so easily defeated. I lie in bed, between
a radio and a television set, and hear
the wildest of warwhoops continually ululating through
the
glittering canyons and gulches
police cars and ambulances racing
to the broken bones, the harsh screaming
from coldwater flats, the blood
glazed on sidewalks.

The frontier is never
somewhere else. And no stockades can
keep the midnight out.

Norman McCaig

What this poem is really talking about when it says the frontier is never somewhere else is that line which eternally separates us from that undiscovered country, we call the future. The future is always just ahead of us, and no defenses or blockades can prevent its on-coming forward march. This is why the poem is trying to draw comparison between the Old West and the modern day streets of Manhattan Island, and why the case officers of the Adjustment Bureau are dressed in regalia most befitting men of that time.

This connection between The Adjustment Bureau and the wild west is interesting when we note some of the other movies that Mat Damon is appearing in at present. Films like, The Hereafter, which was directed by old Spaghetti Western star Clint Eastwood, and True Grit, which is actually a Western, and probably the best film of the lot.

POETRY CORNER

These are two poems I wrote when I was 12. Enjoy.

Autumn; Full Cycle

Reaping, rotting

The rebirth comes,

from birth to life,

from life to death.

Round and round,

clockwise through time,

like time

doomed to repeat itself

forever and ever.

Each circle brings new life

flushing out death and cold

Once it is over, the cycle

turns full!

The Cage

Walking into the unknown 

is difficult

To take the first steps

into the light or darkness

is strange

Unfamiliar darkness and loneliness,

If you try to call into the void

there is nothing there except

your voice echoing forever.

It is your immortality

after you pass through

the confinements of life

and the echo...

Your immortality on earth

SATAN'S PICNIC

Slightly creepy ad campaign.

Christine O'Donnell referencing a "witchcraft" statement she made on Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" during a 1999 appearance that never aired.

"I dabbled into witchcraft -- I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. ... I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. . . ., " she said. "One of my first dates with a witch was on a Satanic altar, and I didn't know it. I mean, there's little blood there and stuff like that. ... We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a Satanic altar."

SALVIA & the ART OF DREAMING

In Carlos Castaneda's book The Art of Dreaming, Carlos is given a description of the universe which tallies well with the description of the Salvia Bardo given in the last post. This description is of the essence of the universe, that which is occluded or latent within reality.

They said that the essence of the universe resembles incandescent threads stretched to infinity in every conceivable direction, luminous filaments that are conscious of themselves in ways impossible for the human mind to comprehend.

From seeing the essence of the universe, the sorcerers of antiquity went on to see the energy essence of human beings. Don Juan stated that they depicted the human beings as bright shapes that resembled giant eggs and called them luminous eggs.

Within these eggs is a point known as the assemblage point that "is located on a place at the height of the shoulder blades, an arms length from a person's back." The assemblage point is accompanied by a glow, and both of these allow us to perceive the worlds contained within the luminous filaments.

... they saw that out of the millions of the universe's filaments passing through the entire luminous ball, only a hand full pass directly through the assemblage point...

None of this has too much to do with the Salvia Bardo experience, until Carlos attempts to understand the logistics of just such an environment.

Finally, after much pounding, I could follow the idea of energy filaments inside the ball and outside it. But if I thought of a multitude of luminous balls, the model broke down in my mind. In a multitude of luminous balls, I reasoned, the energy filaments that are outside one of them will perforce be inside the adjacent one. So, in a multitude there could not possibly be any filaments outside any luminous ball.

"To understand all this isn't an exercise for your reason," he replied after carefully listening to my argument. "I have no way of explaining what sorcerers mean by filaments inside and outside of the human shape. When seers see the human energy shape, they see one single ball of energy. If there is another ball next to it, the other ball is seen again as a single ball of energy. The idea of a multitude of luminous balls comes from your knowledge of human crowds. In a universe of energy, there are only single individuals alone, surrounded by the boundless."

Don Juan may not be able to explain what the sorcerers mean by 'filaments inside and outside of the human shape', but the rules of hyperbolic geometry can. This is because the curve of a Poincare Sphere allows for squares and other polyhedra to be constructed with angles of greater than 360 degrees. By focusing on a single vertex - or assemblage point - on a Poincare disk (below) we can achieve the same isolation that Don Juan speaks of in the above extract.

(1. Homogenous or general view (2. Zooming in on one vertex

effectively isolates it from the rest. 

Earlier on in the book, Don Juan explains how a sorcerer can manipulate the position of the assemblage point to perceive universes commonly outside the sphere of human perception. Furthermore;

Don Juan explained that the end result of a movement of the assemblage point is a total change in the energy body of a human being. Instead of a ball or an egg, he becomes something resembling a smoking pipe. The tip of the stem is the assemblage point, and the bowl of the pipe is what remains of the luminous ball. If the assemblage point keeps on moving, a moment comes when the luminous ball becomes a thin line of energy.

A similar thing occurs in the Salvia Bardo, the energy body is divided into an infinite number of energy strands, which are then stretched to infinity, around the edge of the Poincare Sphere. Thus the mind of man is stretched like a rope, or a thin line of energy;

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman - a rope over an abyss.

Friedrich Nietzche     

Hitler said; I have seen the Superman, and he is terrible.

The Superman is the man behind the curtain, that in Hitler's case was no doubt the bent figure of the Wizard of Oz; Dietrich Eckhart.

The stereographic projection of a dodecahedron is behind the curtain. Wrapped around a Poincare sphere. Infinitely bounded, and bounded by infinity. Each line represents a world, each vertex a Christmas time (a time of coming together), and between all of these, the dark depths of the abyss. The abyss is warm and fuzzy, it plays lounge music to those it keeps.

Stereographic image of a 24 cell polytope.

The stereographic polytopes behind the curtain are responsible for the mandorle of esoteric wisdom; the brands of Audi and Chanel.

Disclaimer: Neither Salvia, nor this post, has anything to do with dreaming.

RUE DE SALVIA

The mind altering drug Salvia Divinorum has been legally available to buy over the counter in many countries for some time now. The plant, which is a member of the Sage family, is generally smoked, wherein it produces an altered state of consciousness; lasting for anything up to fifteen minutes. It is often said that psychedelic experiences tend to vary greatly from person to person. However, in researching user's accounts of the drug on the website Erowid, I have identified a number of persistent themes running throughout the course of a Salvia trip. Experiences which are common to most users, who take a moderate dosage, include;

the experience of being pushed or pulled (also known as Salvia Gravity)
being ripped apart and stuck back together
being folded or forced face first into a corner (also Salvia Gravity)
being told that the world is an illusion

Of these, the first three experiences are inextricably linked, in that they all represent the same process of being blown or pushed around the lines and vertices of an undefined polytope. The method by which this process occurs has been defined as Salvia Gravity, and this includes the feelings of motion, dissolution and resolution, and of course the feeling of being pressed into a corner. An attempt to describe the experience of a Salvia trip in terms of hyperbolic geometry can be found here.

From what I can gather, the experience most people have of Salvia is profoundly negative. Their fits of laughter are merely a defense mechanism to distract them from their uneasy terror. Having said this, immediate, and long term, after effects can be very positive. I would only advise people to try this drug if they are well practiced in the art of meditation, or have an open, confident, relaxed frame of mind; in which case you probably don't need to take this drug at all. Congratulations!

If you do, however, manage to take this drug, and find yourself in the unpleasant situations described above, you could try one or more of these practices;

1)  The conscious entity that resides within the Salvia Bardo does not have very good multitasking skills. It also appears that if you ask it a question it is under obligation to respond to you. By combining these two bits of information, you can easily distract the Salvia plant from its task by asking it repeat, rapid fire questions of a relevant nature. Normally, the entity is very abrupt, so try to ask him questions which are not of a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer. The fact that the entity is obliged to answer your questions suggests that it is a paid administrator, who you entered into contract with either when you smoked the bowl, or countless eons before hand.

2)   The Salvia Bardo is a holding mechanism for conscious awareness. Just as it is impossible for a passenger in a car to halt its movement by pressing in the opposite direction against the seat cover, it is impossible for a conscious life form to negate the motion of the Bardo mechanism while being swept along inside it. The only way to address your own forward motion in a vehicle that you have no control over is to bail out. You can bail out of a Salvia experience by peeling your consciousness away at a ninety degree angle to the mechanism while at rest. It is unclear if this is advisable however, as the salvia spirit itself suggests that you would be better to go through with the entire experience and have done with it.

Nevertheless, the ability to detach from the mechanism may be desirable, as it could afford you the opportunity to investigate the polychoron from an outsiders' perspective. You may even be able to get a hold of the Bardo Administrator, and get a look at the information on his out-dated computer screen; although I highly doubt this.

3)   Other methods of consolation during this difficult period include; singing mantras and counting the number of branch points or corners within the Bardo mechanism to get a better idea of its size.

THE TOURIST

The 2010 movie The Tourist starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp may not have been a great movie (and I sure haven't seen it), but it did have a thought–provoking tag line;

The Perfect Trip, The Perfect Trap.

Its thought–provoking in the sense that life itself can be described as an hallucination, a trip, a fantasy world emerging out of a blank canvas of unlimited energy.

This zero point energy, that existed before the Big Bang, is said to persist in the brains of each human being. Its very presence distorts the space around us. Could this be a type of hyper-dimensional DMT ? – an analogue of which is only produced in any great quantity in the minds of humans at three times throughout our lives; when we are born, when we sleep/dream, and when we die? So much for the light at the end of the tunnel for NDEs (Near Death Experiences), it is just a natural release of DMT, nothing to get excited about. But then again, you could say the same thing for life itself. So, what's there to worry about, you ask?

Well, that all depends on what you really believe takes place after death. In the East, there is the belief that when you die you reincarnate, and the type of body you get depends on the type of life you have lead up to this point. In Tibetan Buddhism - even more so in the Hare Krishna sect of Hinduism - the concept that desire can lead to rebirth is an ever present concern. For example, if you like fine clothes, food, cigarettes etc. your desire for these material items will cause you to take a new body in the material world after death.

Life, it appears, is therefore an hallucination, and you are utterly alone, playing out a role which in no way conforms to your inner being and yet you are driven on by an instilled appetite, which forces you to eat and become drunk on the very material which is to be your ultimate downfall. This may not be the perfect trip, but they sure have the trap part down - and no mistakes.

So what if you ingested an inter-dimensional analogue of DMT, before the creation of the universe, and since that time you have been forced to take endless forms as befit your amnesiac desires? Would you call that really living? I wouldn't.

But the yogis of the East tell us there is means of escape. They tell us not to get frightened, not to get angry, not to spend our time accumulating money so that we can attempt to satisfy our insatiable desires and be forced upon another round of rebirth that might take us into less propitious circumstances. But it is all a matter of belief; is it not? Perhaps Buddha will save you, or Jesus Christ. I believe he will, if you do.

HYPERBOLIC CEILINGS

The picture, on the right, was created to show how, through the process of reincarnation, a soul can take another life in another body. But it also shows how as youths we are preoccupied with attaining manhood, and once this fleeting zenith has been transgressed, we spend what's left of our lives revisiting those earlier moments. In a word, our attention 'twists' back upon itself. According to Hindu philosophy, if at the point of death we are still preoccupied with the events of our material existence we shall take on another body. If, however, we have twisted back upon ourselves in another direction - towards Godhead - we shall be born into the realm of eternal life with Lord Krishna.

A common feature of Salvia Divinorum trips, as seen posted on You Tube, is that those under the influence twist their bodies to look behind them. This is because, in general, the drug has stripped them of their bodily covering, leaving them exposed, as raw perception. The phrase 'going around the twist' is applied to salvia, because taking it makes one feel as if they are losing their mind.

In Le Mystere des Cathedrales the eminent alchemist Fulcanneli discusses the meanings of the enigmatic relief sculptures that appear in the Notre Dame cathedral, Paris. One of these simply known as the man turning around, which according to the author;

well illustrates that alchemical maxim solve et coagula, which teaches how to achieve the elementary conversion by violatilizing the fixed and fixing the volatile (pl. XXVIII).

If you know how to dissolve the fixed, 

And to make the dissolved fly, 

Then to fix the flying in powder, 

You have something to console yourself with.

I believe this sculpture to be another example of man turning back upon himself in order to reflect upon himself and upon his past deeds.

In the Teachings of Buddha it is written;

Once upon a time a man looked into the reverse side of a mirror and, not seeing his face and head, he became insane. How unnecessary it is for a man to become insane merely because he carelessly looked into the reverse side of a mirror.

And so it is with meditation, because when the mind is quiet we can begin to focus on the consciousness of consciousness, that first principle which is the cause of all causes and which is emptiness itself. The goal of the alchemist and the Buddhist practitioners are the same, as this passage from the Teaching of Buddha reveals;

Pure gold is procured my melting ore and removing the impure substances. If people could melt the ore of their minds and remove all the impurities of worldly passion and egoism, they would al recover the same pure Buddha-nature.

It has puzzled me why Fulcanelli focused so intently upon the sculptural and relief works of those famous cathedrals, but neglected to say a word about the vaulted ceilings and flying buttresses, which make the gothic style of architecture so distinctive. While I have made it clear, in other posts, that these should be likened to the energy centres or chakra points of Eastern medicine, there is one other consideration that I feel is necessary to bring to your attention.

The typical vaulted ceiling of a gothic cathedral ought to be viewed as an early depiction of a hyperbolic manifold, hewn in stone and mortar. Instances of hyperbolic mathematics incorporated into the designs of more modern day cathedrals (like this one, left, in Australia) would appear to support this idea.

The next logical step in teasing out the hyper-dimensional aspects of the cathedrals, would be to generate a computer model of a Gothic cathedral in which all of the angles are hyperbolic in nature. This would allow the user to witness dramatic changes in perspective typical of hyperbolic geometry (see video below), whilst navigating the backdrop of these beautiful cathedrals.

Now imagine that kind of geometry (above) with this kind of imagery (below), and you should have a clearer picture of what the vault of heaven, and the mind of God and the Metrix, look like (on a bad day).