The Known Universe

Take a trip from our home on planet Earth to the vast reaches of the Known Universe. Take a breath, you'll need it.

WARNING/ACHTUNG!: May cause you to feel insignificant.

The Whisper of a Willow

"As above, so below. As below, so above." -Hermetic axiom

As I was driving down this road today the Beauty of the Trees brought to my Eye a sense of Mystery. I have read a good amount of text on Hermetic philosophy. In a manner all these sort of euphoric and daemonic levels events of Communication seem to occur, a thought and Realization seemed to hit me quickly and out of Nowhere.

In those few moments of carnal time, I imagined how we view ourselves as a sort of singular, whole organism; when in reality that sense of Individualism is also the result of unfathomable levels of complexity of all levels of our Being. I then turned my thought from within outward, to the World I perceive beyond me. We view the trees, the ground, the air, the clouds, the unfathomable level of complexity that exists on what many of us have collectively agreed to call Earth. Just like the unfathomable levels of complexity that combine to give us our emergent-like sense of Individualism, isolate and unique at it's core; so too is all the smaller parts of the Earth that combine to emerge as the object we call Earth.

This can be further viewed in continually larger scales; viewing the Earth as the macrocosm of the individual "atom." Even further; the Galaxy to a cell. The Universe, in all it's known and unknown factors, to the Individual Being (you and I) in our own equal Known and Unknown Realms.

I've always favored the famous Hermetic axiom "as above, so below"; but never with so much respect and brilliance until after I have made it Self-Evident.


---

"Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?" -Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

"Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life." -Hermann Hesse, Wandering


"Among archetypal images, the Sacred Tree is one of the most widely know symbols on Earth. There are few cultures in which the Sacred Tree does not figure: as an image of the cosmos, as a dwelling place of gods or spirits, as a medium of prophecy and knowledge, and as an agent of metamorphoses when the tree is transformed into human or divine form or when it bears a divine or human image as its fruit or flowers." - Christopher and Tricia McDowell, The Sanctuary Garden, 1998, p 128

Incoherent Babbling: 4-6-2010

I'm proud to be crazy, it's a sure sign that I'm on the right path.
Sanity is for those who can't keep up!

Location: On the highway. Never did like your way.
*( "It's my way or the highway!" )

Die. Hate. Weep.
*( "Live. Love. Laugh." )

How To Operate Your Brain

AN OWNER'S MANUAL by Dr. Timothy Leary

The natural state of the brain is chaos. We’re dealing with a complexity of in-formation. The first thing to do is to overwhelm your focused mind, your linear mind, by overloading signals, digital patterns, clusters of photons and electrons which produce a pleasant state of confused chaos. This is the state of the brain when it is ready to be informed, that is, to be reprogrammed.

The human brain contains one hundred billion neurons, each neuron is as powerful as a large computer, and each neuron has around ten thousand connections with other neurons. Within our foreheads there is a chaos, inside our brains there is a galaxy of information, which is incomprehensible to our linear minds.

This contrasts and compares perfectly with the chaos without. We’re living in a universe, which has one hundred billion galaxies, each galaxy with star systems, planets, a complexity, again, which to our minds right now is chaotic, incomprehensible.

Chaos is beautiful. Now many times we are afraid because we want order. We can’t deal with the confusion and disorder. We want form. We want rules. Yes, throughout human history there have been people—religious leaders, political leaders—who will give you order. They will give you rules and commandments.

But chaos is basically good. Relax. Surf the waves of chaos and learn how to redesign your own realities. Sit back. Flow. Open your eyes. Turn off your minds. Unfocus, and let the waves of chaos roll over your brain. Float. Drift, Zoom. Design. Create new order, your order, your style from chaos.

Yes. Yes. Chaos. Yes, yes, chaos . . .

The aim of human life is to know thyself. Think for yourself. Question authority. Think with your friends. Create, create new realities. Philosophy is a team sport. Philosophy is the ultimate, the ultimate aphrodisiac pleasure. Learning how to operate your brain, learning how to operate your mind, learning how to redesign chaos.


The religious leaders, the political leaders want to give you orders to run your life, to determine how you think. The basic goal is to operate your own mind. Think for yourself.

Around three thousand years ago, a group of human beings in Athens, Greece, developed a new philosophy, a basic religion of humanity that is called humanism. Socrates said that the aim of human life is to know thyself. Create and design your own order from chaos. Socrates did not give commandments. Socrates did not impose order. Socrates asked questions. He encouraged his friends to speculate, design, to create, to interact their own versions of reality. Socrates said the way to perform philosophy is in small groups, raising questions, learning from each other, changing, changing your mind, growing together, thinking together.

The religious leaders said "You can’t say that, Socrates. The gods are in control. Who are you to say you have a self? How dare you think you can know? The Gods determine. Sacrifice to the gods; obey the gods." Socrates said, "No. Look within." For that, they gave Socrates the hemlock, because he dared to tell people, "Think for yourself. Question authority.”

To think for yourself, you must learn how to reprogram, reform, inform your own brain. To do this, to take responsibility for your brain, it is necessary to question everything that you have been taught, to question authority, to learn to take the brave step of taking responsibility for operating your brain. For designing, redesigning, reforming the chaos within.

Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities—the political, the religious, the educational authorities—who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing—forming in our minds—THEIR view of reality. To think for yourself, you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness, chaotic, confused vulnerability to inform yourself.


Think for yourself. Question authority.

Then came Marshall McCluhan, in the 1950's. McCluhan said, in the Socratic sense, "The medium is the message." The words you use, the modes of communication you use determine the realities you inhabit. Most of our lives, most of us live in realities determined by others, imprinted in our brains by education, by religion, by politics, by the authorities. McCluhan said, "If you want to change your mind, change the medium." Change the words you use. Change the mode of communication. If you change the medium, you change yourself. You change your society.

In the 1960’s, a new mode of communication developed: television. The kids growing up in the 1950’s learned how to tune in, turn on, fine tune, turn off, select, determine what hits your eyeballs. You control your eyeballs and your eardrums. You direct, manage the media that program your brain. McCluhan said, "Who controls the media is programming your mind and programming your brain."

We are using in this tape the new media of digital, multimedia, audiographic overload, attempting to create the state of open-mindedness, pleasant vulnerability in which we will in-form and imprint the messages of The Sponsor: "Use your head. Learn how to operate your brain."

To operate your brain you must understand how to use your eyes. "Oh say, can you see?" Oh say, can’t you see what is being done to your eyes? Who controls your eyeballs, controls your mind, imprints your brain. Oh say, can’t you see that the messages that hit your eyeballs in modern television are creating realities, imprinting messages from the sponsors who are not usually interested in your learning how to design your own realities.


Warning! Warning! Warning! Warning! Who controls your screen controls the programs in your mind. Your eyes are the windows of your brain. The eyes are extensions of the brain. The eyes are made up of hundreds of layers of neurons, rods, cones. Your eyeballs deal with one energy: It’s light. Through your eyes come illumination, vision, perception, enlightenment, illumination. Your eyes are the windows of your soul. Who controls your eyeballs programs your brain. Learn how to dial, fine tune your eyeballs. Learn how to unfocus your eyes, dilate your pupils, learn how to open up to illumination and light, and then refocus and redesign your own inner order, your own designs, your own language.

In the 60’s, we said. "Power to the people." In the 90’s, the digital multimedia 90’s, we say, "Power to the pupil."

Illuminate. Enlighten. Envision. Light waves. Sound waves. Light waves. Open eyes. Open mind. Open your brain. Learn how to send messages using electrons. Your brain loves light. Who controls your eyeballs programs your mind.

We are also passing on, in this demonstration, the message of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the first and probably the greatest American philosopher who said, "Divinity lies within." Don’t look to the churches or to the big marble institutions. Your divinity lies within. You must learn to operate your brain, operate your soul. Learn how to communicate brain to brain, soul to soul with other people. Your divinity lies within.

The brain is designed to design realities. If you operate your own brain skillfully, you can learn to design your own realities, learn how to communicate in the language of the brain: electrons and photons. We are doing this now. We are sending messages from our brains, using the vehicle of electrons and photons, to your eyeballs. As we watch this screen, our minds are bedazzled, our minds are softened, our linear, sharp logical thinking is gentled, and we are communicating brain to brain. We are using the electron, computer circuits, to feed each other’s brains with light.

This is the first paragraph, the first attempt, the first child’s primer in how to communicate using both the orderly left brain and the chaotic, confusing language of photons and electrons. The brain is a photovore. Your brain, my brain, our brains live on light. Just as the body needs air and carbohydrates, our brains are starved for light, for illumination, for revelation.

Use your head. Learn how to operate your brain. The brain is designed to design realities.

Marshall McCluhan made the prophecy. He told us that the aim of evolution was to use media to create what we all want: the global village, the language, which can be understood by every human being, by every brain. The basic language of humanity, the language of the brain, lights, sounds, rhythms, pulsating your bones, moving your body. We all know this language. We can all sing and dance this language of electrons, of radio waves, of rhythms.

Now we have digital communication. We can create our fantasies. We can create our rhythms, design on screen. A new language will develop, a global language, not based on letters, not based on grammars, the language which we all understand, based on clusters of waves of light and sound. We all understand. We all celebrate. We all glory in the light, the illumination, the contact, the intersection, the interaction from around the world, the language of form. We will create a language of international, global brain linkup. Anyone in any culture watching this screen will get the general picture. It’s one global village. It’s one global human spirit, one global human race. As we link up through screens, linked by electrons and photons, we will create for the first time a global humanity, not separated by words or minds or nationalities or religious biases.

We Have Just learned to communicate brain to brain, soul to soul.

Source/Thanks To:
Dedroidify: Mind Expanding Mission - Blog/Website

Dedroidify: to evolve beyond B.S. (Belief Systems)

The following is an introduction from a blog (and website) that I frequent often and am very grateful for the time and effort of the owner to compile such great thoughts and resources that I find very refreshing. It sums up the overall purpose and background info on the mission and aims of the website. This introduction has inspired me to adopt the same attitude and disclaimer of the blog added below.

Dedroidify!
Ideas are Toys. The Search for Truth is a Game.
Believe Nothing. Explore Everything.

Disclaimer: All posts are works in progress. I post probabilities, not certainties - I post what I find interesting, not what I "accept".

What is this blog about?
The main focus on this blog is posting articles & videos related to my two most favorite subjects: Consciousness and Conspiracy research. Mainly, it's a source of interesting brainfood and popularizing mind expanding information - including some of my own thoughts (dedroidify label). You may call a lot of it weird, I call it interesting, and consensus reality weird (and boring :p).
This blog sees the world through the eyes of a Model Agnostic, which means I didn't choose a model of reality out of the ones available, wether it be atheist/materialist, religious, new age, pagan or whatever - so I don't dogmatically filter out ANY potentially interesting information & I don't consider assumptions to be unbreakable truth. I find it the most reasonable non-model out there, if you know a more flexible one let me know! ;p
That obviously doesn't mean I don't have opinions which I like sharing, though I consider them much more flexible than any dogma. They are considered catmas: temporary flexible opinions subject to change or re-evaluation after new information is acquired.
Obviously I am human and I will make mistakes, I am here to share as much as I am to learn though so please comment on posts in a respectful manner if you have comments, questions, elaborations or possible corrections. Communication only truly exists between equals (in treatment)!
This blog accompanies my website dedroidify.com, which features over 100 pages on must see consciousness, mystery history and conspiracy related material. The site can't keep up with me though and it's impossible to keep the site evolving along the same pace. But I try to post the most interesting and helpful stuff on there asap. You can't be bored in the dedroidify realm, I mean check out the main site, the vids page, and the archives of this blog, it's freaking huge! :p

Why consciousness AND conspiracy?
Because everything is connected and I find sombunall (some but not all) humans act kind of like droids, robots. With knowledge of psychology, philosophy and mysticism we can de-robotize, 'dedroidify', so we no longer behave like automatons as slaves to our automatic responses that are for a large part conditioned unconscious reflexes. Conditioned by the authorities in the form of the priesthoods, governments and the mainstream media. I think it's time to claim our consciousness for our own, and instead of consuming and reacting what we're being served, to read between the lines of what they're serving us, see possible agendas and most importantly bring our own vision out there through any medium.

"Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission."
Robert Anton Wilson

Believe nothing and explore everything?
Jacque Fresco said when he was young, he explored a lot of the ideological models out there at his time and couldn't understand why people stuck to only one. He said in technology, if you build something, next time you go beyond it!
A study has shown that when liberals & democrats debate, they will ignore whatever evidence does not support their cause and find other arguments to support theirs, brain activity on EEG's lit up mostly in emotional centers (2nd circuit) and nearly no rational thought (3rd circuit) was shown to occur. In the words of the article: "The study pointed to a total lack of reason in political decision-making."

This is not only true for politics. It has to do with beliefs, and ideologies are the modern forms of religions. Belief Systems. BS!
This is divide & conquer in its purest form. I think the time for division is over, and this doesn't mean we all have to conform or anything, start looking at ideologies and religions as a sort of form of art and stop identifying with them so passionately. Ideas are (evolving & not static) toys!

"In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination." Mark Twain

As Terence McKenna said "(sub)culture is your operating system", it is not your friend, it's an impediment to understand what's going on. It's a truth filter and history has shown it has its downsides ;) If we could try to be more conscious about our views and how we communicate it with our language there could be a lot more sanity in this world.

The 8 Circuit Model of Consciousness
is the map or model I find the most useful for Dedroidifying.

A quick summary of the lower 4 circuits & how we allow the authorities to use them over us:
Circuit 1: Physical, Safety, Nourishment - "Terrorism" & other threats ("you need us") , economic slavery and the living standard, health (junk foods, chemicals etc).
Circuit 2: Emotional, Territorial, Belief Systems - Divide & Conquer through religions, politics, and ideologies: the modern form of religions. Which are all passionately & dogmatically defended, not reasonably.
Circuit 3: Rational, Logical, Mapmaking - Propaganda, 'education', mainstream media bs and the power of (negative) suggestion.
Circuit 4: Social, Moral, Sexual - Not thinking for yourself, Guilt, Taboo.

Once we learn how these four states of consciousness operate, we can see our reactions rising and choose wether to act on them or not, thus deconditioning ourselves from what we no longer want to be or do and reprogramming our circuits to be more rational, happy and enlightened humans.

Believing nothing in conspiracy & consciousness
Not only is discarding "belief" healthy in general, because it is emotionally based and not rationally. Assumptions are taken for truth, how could this possibly help us? What the thinker thinks, the prover proves. I find it's absolutely necessary in these 2 fields because Consciousness and conspiracy are too broad and uncertain to believe anything about it. You need to re-search in Conspiracy and you need to experiment in Consciousness, so you know instead of believe. What you saw proven with evidence yesterday, can be disproven with evidence tomorrow. And not just that but the entire heaps of misinformation and disinformation campaigns out there make it just naive to believe anything.

"The datastream is corrupted, return to first principles." Terence McKenna

I feel we learn the most in these two fields by keeping a lot of opinions (of which sombunall may contradict eachother) and thus having the most associations when new ideas present themselves.

A lot of people I know that are into consciousness ask me why I bother with conspiracy
Because from what I've learned humanity has much more potential than is currently being put out or maybe even allowed. We have now entered the global era, and there is little truth to be found in the international mainstream media. By the way I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist (a term demonized by the media), you need a theory for that! When you're just observing, there is no theory is necessary. It's Conspiracy Re-Search. Here is some stuff to think about: The polluting and poisoning of our environment & food. The economic system which causes a great divide between the rich and the poor (How much tax money has gone to banks now?). Where's the freedom in this wage slavery system where you have to work to get money: paper that no longer can be traded in for actual value like gold (and that value was decided by a few humans too) and is now an illusion maintained by us. The leaked seeming future New World Order intentions of a select group of people who want to ensure their status. The fear-based taking of civil liberties through false flag operations that are blamed on terrorists (trained by the governments that use that fear, btw Zbigniew Brzezinski, foreign policy advisor of Obama has boasted in his books and elsewhere he was responsible for the Jihad Movement). The global warming agenda pushed by a slow talking politician using selective data and ignoring solar aspects: I support environmentalism on principle, against pollution - btw pollution by the companies the politicians are affiliated with - not because it's "getting hotter". A sham US (s)election won by Obama, who won against Clinton and McCain, all of whom their voting record showed they are pro-war and anti-civil liberties so no "change" there. The media mostly ignored people who stood for real changes like Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and Ralph Nader. And the twisting of all these disturbing things by the entire western mainstream media makes it not only reasonable to investigate, but necessary.

A lot of people I know that are into conspiracy ask me why I bother with consciousness and reality
Because we ARE conscious :p, take out consciousness and reality and what is left? If you want to master a craft it sure is helpful to master the instrument. So if you want to master life, wouldn't it be necessary to master consciousness? I've found that learning a lot about psychology, philosophy and mysticism has helped me a lot personally and socially. It's like you read different versions of operating manuals for your mind. There's a lot more to this reality than what we see with our eyes and I find exploring that fascinating. See the 8 Circuits page for an interesting start. I think if kids were in moderation helped with their internal thought processes, psychology, memory, meditation, our collective progress could skyrocket.

More on consciousness and belief systems:

"The materialist fundamentalists are funnier than the Christian fundamentalists, because they think they're rational!" Robert Anton Wilson

Sombunall (some but not all) materialists/atheists (I used to be one :p) feel sort of like they are more rational than religious people, and vice versa sombunall religious people think they hold the only truth. Not quite so though, sombunall atheists and/or materialists are just as fundamentalist - but then materialist - as religious people, instead of just rational thinkers.

There is enough evidence to show that reality is much stranger than materialism allows for. (DMT = three letters that should suffice for this argument). Sombunall materialists don't realize that what they "believe" was handed down to them with a spoon just as religious people got their beliefs. As Ginsberg Said:

"Recent history is the record of one vast conspiracy to impose one level of mechanical consciousness on mankind." Allen Ginsberg

And what has it done, well it has brought us a significant amount more reason, that is true, perhaps it was a necessary stepping stone to get away from dogmatic religions, however wouldn't it be a shame if we changed to dogmatic materialists?
And where are the ethics? An overly materialist population allows its government to go to war just as much as a religious one after some media & government manipulation.
Sombunall materialists also like to call themselves "skeptics". But they're not really, they're only skeptical of what doesn't fit their belief system. That's not skepticism is it? I mean a leading man in the skeptic movement is Michael Shermer, a former fundamentalist christian who just shifted Belief Systems to a fundamentalist materialist. It's funny to see the denial & reactionism to the former BS in action!

Here is a page from dedroidify.com on science and what a lot of people don't know about it.
Don't get me wrong though, I am for the scientific method, I am a skeptic, but reason & science are not always the same. And objectivity in consciousness research isn't always possible, simply because of the subjective nature of consciousness. Does that mean however that consciousness shouldn't be investigated? I don't think so.
A lot of science is biased from the get go, or suppressed, or bought, or declared pseudo-science, or hailed as the new consensus while it's data is faulty. Thus science needs to evolve as well if we are to consider what it brings "truth".

"What the thinker thinks, the prover proves." Leonard Orr

BS, my opinions on this blog & catmas.
Catmas are relative metabeliefs, dogma are rigid beliefs! So go catma for sanity ;)
I feel exposing Belief Systems (BS) is one of the most vital concepts that humanity needs to learn more about to achieve a global era of peace, cooperation and enlightenment.
As I said I used to be an atheist materialist, spoonfed by my parents. I even went to a catholic high school for a while which was hilarious. Now like Robert Anton Wilson I call myself a "model agnostic" which means I don't prefer one map of reality over another but use an all-inclusive map to make the most sense of reality, it means you have flexible opinions and not rigid beliefs. You can select your reality at any time so to speak. Yes my "Opinion System" was handed down with a spoon by RAW, but it's a healthy flexible one ;p I have opinions, and some of them are strong opinions that I express on this blog, but that doesn't mean I'm not open to evidence or ideas that don't support my seeming viewpoint at that time, in fact, I would love it if you contacted me (politely) whenever you disagreed and provide me with some illustration of your point of view. We can only learn more! And don't get me wrong, I respect any belief system and love ideas and models in general, I see them as a form of art, but there's no need to get violently passionate about them or dogmatically ignoring reasonable evidence because they contradict your current limited world view. Evolving beyond BS! It could bring humanity together.

-From Dedroidify blog and website, http://www.dedroidify.com

Socrates speaking on Death.

In wake of the two-year anniversary of my dear friend, Stephen Jon Ellenberger's death, and the death of three Marine Corps poolees on their way to process into the Marine Corps, I'd like to share a quote from the wise philosopher on the matter of Death.

"Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is
Death either a good or nothing: - a profound sleep.
great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two
things - either death is a state of nothingness and utter
unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and
migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you
suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the
sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be
an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in
which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to
compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then
were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the
course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I
think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the
great king will not find many such days or nights, when
compared with the others. Now if death be of such a nature,
I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night.
But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men
say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges,
How blessed to have a just judgment passed on us;
to converse with Homer and Hesiod; to see the heroes of Troy,
and to continue the search after knowledge in another world!
can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in
the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice
in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give no
judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and
Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in
their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What
would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and
Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me
die again and again. I myself, too, shall have a wonderful
interest in there meeting and conversing with Palamedes, and
Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other ancient hero who has
suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be
small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with
theirs. Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search
into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in the
next; and I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be
wise, and is not. What would not a m an give, O judges , to be
able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or
Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women
too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with
them and asking them questions! In another world they do not
put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not. For
besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if
what is said is true."

R.I.P SJE 4-1-08 / R.I.P Fallen Brothers


Live, Love, Rejoice.

Ode to the Horizon

Under a large Oak do I spot
the peaking Eye of a new Day.
It brings a tear which I'll admit not.
Of sadness or delight I'm not sure to say.
Not quite too hot,
nor dark with decay.
In such a way I ought
to smile and say
in a thought
that such beauty could say
even the man caught
in his sorrowful way.

The Night is nought
death and decay.
But a Sun caught
and waiting to Play.

~JWG

To the Stars

The years
have grown
since I left
my home.

The Deserts
I now roam.

At a time
I missed home.

Wondering,
where am I going?

Home,
I say,
to the Stars.

~JWG