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).

GOBLIN MANTRAS

The old Gods of Ireland were a warrior race called the Tuatha de Danann. They lived alongside men, fought battles for and against them, and were told to be two or three times the size of an ordinary man. As time went by their presence dwindled and they were thought to have taken up residence in the passage tombs and dolmens that dotted the land. After this fashion they became known as the Daoine Sidhe, the Good People or Faerie Folk of Ireland.

As mentioned in the Bardo of the Real, the Buddhist believe in six different transitional realms known as Bardos. These worlds can be accessed through meditation, but is described in imagery as being like a journey deep into the Earth. According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, an auspicious realm for the reincarnation of the souls is the Bardo of the Gods. The Bardo of the Gods is a truly divine realm, where faeries, Gods, and UFOs all intermingle. But despite this the Gods and other inhabitants are almost driven demented with boredom. Existing so close to the source of all reality, but being unable to go beyond it they find themselves in a distinctly anti-climactic position; one which they regularly assuage by bouts of mischief, music, art and love-making.

While the realm of the Gods is a beautiful sight to behold it is not too dissimilar to our own world. This is because it is still a predominantly sense-based realm, like all of the lower realms of Samsara. When the Gods, faeries or aliens (as we call them) enter into our world, they can appear as beautiful, strange or terrifying creatures. As the ancient legends of Ireland suggest, these entities once lived alongside men and there is no reason to think that this will not happen again; in a couple of thousand years or so. It should be noted that, while our human perceptions divide the class of deities into Gods, faeries and aliens, no such distinction really exists.

The Gods routinely leave the Earth of their realm and travel in ships of light. If by chance a human can see beyond the bounds of this world and into the bardo of the Gods, they too will see these UFO-like craft, which are, as I have said, not distinct from faeries or the Gods themselves. It is interesting to note that the word 'bardo', as it appears in Tibetan Buddhism, is identical to the Irish word for poet. The bardos of Ireland were among the most well respected figures in the land, as their knowledge of the Gods and the history of mankind was unsurpassed, at the time.

It was while I was drifting through the sixth and last of the Bardos – that region we call Hell – that I was so in fear of my life and sanity that I reached for my copy of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. As soon as my fingers touched the pages, my mind was assailed of a vision of goblins, as they were imagined by Brian Froud for the movie Labyrinth. I could here them chattering; he has got it! he is going to read from it! etc. This closely mirrors what the goblins were saying in the darkened closet-world of the movie Labyrinth, just as Sarah was about to send her brother Toby to live with the Goblin king. I always wondered where that goblin realm existed, and now I know. It is in a dark in-between realm, a kind of observation point between our world and the next.

The goblins must have something to do with the mantras and prayers in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which would make sense, as Tibetan Buddhism is historically understood to be a blend between Shamanism, and Indian Dharmatta. Traditionally, Shamanism is preoccupied by spirits and demons, and the luck or misfortune they often bring. So, I would suggest, if you want to read the poems and prayers of the Little People to go and read the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.