The Gates of Dawn
The horrific events of the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut offer another glimpse of the strange phenomenon of synchronicity, and with this glimpse comes possible understanding of the entire Fall of Twenty Twelve.
The nominal connection of Sandy Hook with Hurricane Sandy is immediately obvious. An Oct. 29th
article from the Weather Channel makes an exact hit:
Sandy's Hook: How Unusual Is This?
Several other syncs between the Sandy Hook shooting and the Dark Knight shooting in Aurora, Colorado have been pointed out by Loren Coleman in his fascinating
Twilight Language blog.
One of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting was principal,
Dawn Hochsprung. Aurora, of course, means dawn. December 14th, the day of the shooting, was the anniversary of another mass killing at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant on Dec. 14th, 1993. This shooting
happened, unbelievably, in
Aurora, Colorado.
An even more incredible sync, though, has been uncovered by web researchers in recent days. About an hour and 58 minutes into
Dark Knight Rises a map of Gotham City is shown where the area Sandy Hook is marked -- the only legible name on the map (centre left). Police Commissioner Gordon places his hand directly on this point of the map.
This can be more clearly viewed in the official Gotham City map provided in the
Dark Knight Rises viral package. Incredibly, Sandy Hook is marked as the place where arch-villain Bane would begin his campaign of terror in Gotham. There are four other points marked.
This blog has tracked several syncs from the Aurora shooting onward. It is worth listing some of these in order to attempt to envision a big picture of what might be going on.
12 people died and 58 were wounded at the Aurora shooting. This sums to 70 and, as this blog
explained in depth, the event took place during the 70-day London 2012
Olympic Torch Relay. 70 days is also the amount of time that the star
Sirius spends in the Duat, the Egyptian underworld.
People caught in the theatre at Aurora were moved by police for questioning to the nearby
Gateway High School. Prominently
displayed at the high school is a sign announcing that
Gateway is "the home of the
Olympians."
In the preview for
Skyfall, played right before the opening of
Dark Knight Rises, the Shanghai skyline is shown with the
Aurora building, its name lit brightly in red letters and framed centrally.
The August 5th mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin provides other
syncs. A Sikh temple is called a
gurdwara, which means "
gateway to the Guru." The father of filmmaker Armardeep Kaleka, Satwant Singh Kaleka -- the temple's president, died as a hero in the attack. Armardeep Kaleka was at the time directing a documentary on disclosure called
Sirius.
Loren Coleman also
notes that the recent shooting on December 11th in Clackamas, Oregon, as in Aurora, also occurred at a shopping complex with a Century movie theatre.
These are just a few of the syncs interconnecting these tragic events. The attacks themselves are quite depressing and it was never the intention of this blog to focus on the negative. The sad fact is, though, that most of the world's attention, due to mass media, does converge most readily on tragedies.
Converge Cross Tip
There are different ways to analyze these syncs. Many people speculate that there is a grand conspiracy behind the events. There may indeed be conspiracies involved, but it is difficult to explain how and for what reason these synchronicities would be orchestrated.
The skeptics argue, and this is no surprise, that these are all just unrelated coincidences. To the challenge of why so many "coincidences" should be found in such events, they reply that similar "coincidences" can be found everywhere if we only look. This is an astonishing response.
Perhaps they are right. If so, however, this leads to an even more radical conclusion than even most sync-heads are prepared to make -- that the whole worldview of scientific materialism is insufficient to make sense of current reality.
The Aurora/Sandy Hook syncs are beginning to go viral. Many people still cling to the conspiratorial explanation but a rapidly growing number of people are becoming convinced that something much weirder is going on. Consensus reality is beginning to crack. Synchronicity is piling on top of synchronicity.
Just as five years ago thousands of people suddenly began to search for conspiracies everywhere now, as conspiracy theory has gone mainstream, more and more people are starting to see synchronicity in everything. Sandy Hook may represent a tipping point. Could this be what 2012 is about in the end?
Richard Tarnas, quoted in the last
post, wrote that a new threshold is crossed when multiple, interconnected synchronicities converge suddenly. They begin to have "
the effect of an overpowering epiphany of new meaning and purpose in the life of the individual."
A lattice of synchronicity is created, and life itself becomes an epiphany. Epiphany can be viewed, in this way, as a step beyond synchronicity. Epiphanies arise when one's experience has already been sync supercharged. This is certainly the case of James Joyce, whose life seems filled with overabundant, interlocking meaningful coincidences.
The Wicked Chapel
Joyce's view of epiphany, therefore, provides another entry point to Twenty Twelve and its Fall. In
Stephen Hero he most clearly lays out this idea of epiphany.
Stephen Daedalus is taking one of his long nightly walks through the streets of Dublin. He strolls down Eccles' Street, a street Joyce later makes famous as the address of Leopold Bloom, and hears a snatch of a couple's conversation.
He was passing through Eccles’ St. one evening,
one misty evening, with all these thoughts dancing the dance of unrest
in his brain when a trivial incident set him composing some ardent
verses which he entitled a “Vilanelle of the Temptress.” A young lady
was standing on the steps of one of those brown brick houses which seem
the very incarnation of Irish paralysis. A young gentleman was leaning
on the rusty railings of the area. Stephen as he passed on his quest
heard the following fragment of colloquy out of which he received an
impression keen enough to afflict his sensitiveness very severely.
The Young Lady-(drawling discreetly) … 0, yes … I was … at the … cha … pel …
The Young Gentleman- (inaudibly) … I … (again inaudibly) … I …
The Young Lady-(softly) … 0 … but you’re … ve … ry … wick … ed .
This juxtaposition of "chapel" and "wicked" expressed audibly is enough to provoke a "sudden spiritual manifestation" in Stephen's mind. This is how Joyce defines an epiphany.
This triviality made him think of collecting many such
moments together in a book of epiphanies. By an epiphany he meant a
sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of
gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it
was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme
care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent
of moments.
All of Joyce is contained in this bit of overheard talk -- it happens on Bloom's street, it reveals the missing element of the
Portrait's aesthetic theory, it shows the structure of all the stories of
Dubliners, and especially of "The Dead" which even takes place on the night of Epiphany. More significantly, though, the word "cha-pel" is an anagram of HCE and ALP. The word is even split into two 3-letter segments. The
Wake is also here in its bewildering entirety.
Just as
Dubliners is a series of epiphanies, and
Ulysses is the epiphany of one day in Dublin, the
Wake is all of human history "epiphanized." Joyce develops his theory of aesthetics from Aquinas. According to this theory a thing is deemed beautiful if it possesses three qualities -- integrity, symmetry and clarity.
A beautiful thing is a whole in relation to other objects -- it stands out, it has an organized, symmetrical relation in its parts, and it unveils its "whatness" or its soul to us as we behold it. It reveals its radiance or clarity. This moment of revealing beauty is what Joyce means by epiphany.
Conspiracy theory weaves together various threads of political and social intrigue that are not generally accepted or contemplated by the consensus. Synchronistic analysis brings even more into the mix. Vast conspiracy clusters are tethered together through space and time by examining the "coincidences" common to each.
As these synchronicities build one of top of the other, creating vaster and deeper webs of meaning, receptivity and awareness are both enhanced. It is from this matrix of hyper-sensitivity that epiphany naturally emerges. At this point literally anything can become a "spiritual manifestation."
Joyce's definition of epiphany is very similar to the original meaning of psychedelic as "mind manifesting." Both epiphanies and psychedelics reveal meanings and connections between things that usually go unnoticed. Both, for a moment, break down the apparent barriers between mind and the objects of perception and conception. The mind and the world reflect each other in interpenetrating radiance.
Zero
The Fall of 2012 can also be examined as epiphany. An epiphany releases a moment from the bonds of time. It becomes eternal. For a brief instant we awake from the nightmare of history. This is really what
Finnegans Wake is all about on a grand scale. It is what history is when it ceases to be history. It is what happens when history is opened up into eternity.
This is precisely what 2012 is -- the eternalization of history. Another term for this is the apocalypse and the Wake is a vision of the apocalypse.
An earlier
post explained how Terence McKenna's idea of Timewave Zero, and of 2012 as zeropoint, was in large part inspired by
Finnegans Wake. The Wake expresses in miniature everything that Alfred North Whitehead, McKenna's primary theoretical source, attempted to conceptualize as "concrescence." In short, all times, all places, all languages, all possibilities, all phases of every cycle are brought together at once. In McKenna's terms, this is the point of maximal novelty.
McKenna's biggest intellectual shortcoming, if we want to call it that, was his attempt to quantify the timewave. He tried to present what is really transformative poetry and vision in the sterile mantle of scientific and mathematical respectability. Predictably, he is now being ridiculed for offering nothing more than pseudoscience.
We can speculate, though, that this is the Bard McKenna's greatest practical joke on humanity. He promoted, almost created, a meme that the end of 2012 would be a time of total transformation. By prophesying this did he make it come true?
As the cycle comes to a close, the debunkoid hordes grow increasingly hoarse in their ridicule of all things 2012. Even the most fervent believers are beginning to suspect that they have been duped. Only the fanatics insist, as there are just hours left, that anything could happen. The masses, cynically noting that events are not aligning with the script of Emmerich's movie, have largely moved on to the next thing. The end of the world, "skeptics" scoff, has been postponed once again.
Ego Tripping
Most of the criticism of twenty-twelvism is as disposable as the vast bulk of books written on the subject. A few critiques stand out, though. The best of these comes from religious scholar,
Martin Ball.
Ball outlines a whole slew of predictions for 2012. Among these are that humans will become inter-dimensional travelers, that we will realize our divine nature, that we will become "one," that we will join the "galactic community," that humans will develop "Christ Consciousness" and/or "free energy" and/or become "enlightened," etc. Maitreya and/or Christ and/or Quetzalcoatl will return, ancient prophecies will be fulfilled, "earth changes" will happen, governments and economies will collapse, Nibiru will appear, and on and on.
What is common to all of these predictions, according to Ball, aside from the fact that none are likely to take place on the 21st, is that they all involve either salvation or destruction from an externalized source. In contrast to the Buddha's teaching that enlightenment can only come by doing the hard work of eliminating our false sense of self, these predictions all involve an encounter with an outside "other." In short they, and 2012 in general, are dualistic rather than non-dualistic.
For Ball, this means that beliefs like this will never lead to enlightenment. In fact, they will only mire us deeper into illusion. These beliefs are pseudoscientific, contradictory, romantic and "
decidedly egoic." Instead of allowing us to liberate ourselves from the reign of the ego, it is precisely the ego that is reinforced and inflated by these beliefs.
There is much wisdom in this critique of 2012ism. Clearly many people have used such beliefs as excuses to not work on themselves. But is all of 2012 dualistic hokum as he suggests?
Ball has a special place in his critique for the work of Terence McKenna. He briefly outlines McKenna's idea of Timewave Zero, which Ball claims McKenna developed "
during his sessions of psychedelic ego-tripping" and involves the idea that the "
ingression of novelty" will build to a point of the "
end of history" by the end of this week.
Ball claims that for McKenna this will involve humans developing the ability to "
build UFOs out of translinguistic matter and fly off into the cosmos on Dec. 22nd, 2012." Ball quotes
McKenna that in regard to the Timewave, he (Terence) is either an "
unsung Newton" or "
completely nuts" and that there is very little "
wiggle room" between the two.
Because of this Ball feels justified, almost obligated, to totally reject the whole of McKenna's ideas after the Winter Solstice if the translinguistic UFO fails to manifest. But is Ball being fair to McKenna and his ideas here? Is Ball accurately depicting what Terence actually thought would happen? To determine this it is helpful to examine the origins of McKenna's ideas about the Timewave and 2012.
Abyssal Thunder
Recently, Dennis McKenna
was interviewed on the Joe Rogan podcast to promote his new book
The Brotherhood Of The Screaming Abyss, about his life and adventures with his brother Terence. Dennis recounts the story of the brothers' original experiment in La Chorrera, Columbia in 1971, in which Dennis went into full-blown shamanic ecstasy and Terence made contact with the "Logos" -- the intelligence of the Mushroom itself. It was the Mushroom who taught the brothers how to conduct the experiment.
We developed this experiment, this idea, which had a whole lot of predictions that.... you would have a physical object that would be outside the body, but it would be you.... And it turns out that there are all sorts of precedents for this. I mean the idea of the alchemist's stone, the philosopher's stone, the time machine, the flying saucer, the alchemist's scrying mirror that you can look into and see the future. I mean this idea haunts the human imagination that there is a way you can externalize the imagination and still be it. And this thing that you would have, or whatever it was, would be responsive to your imagination, and it would be able to do literally whatever you imagine. [26 minutes into the interview]
It is clear from this story, and from the many accounts that Terence gave of the experiment, that it cannot simply be reduced to the attempt to create a trans-linguistic UFO. This is only one metaphor among many used to describe something that essentially defies description.
Dennis goes on to explain that when the experiment did not seem to achieve its objective, the Mushroom or Logos assured Terence that this goal would be accomplished in the future. The Mushroom further afforded Terence an insight into time by which he could calculate when this momentous event would take place.
This insight involved study into the hexagram sequences of the I Ching. Based on this cosmic tip Terence set out to find the end date. Dennis explains that the first date of transformation that Terence postulated was a series of four 64-day cycles after the experiment which happened to coincide with Terence's birthday. A series of two 64-day cycles prior to this was their mother's death and the fact that this insight was "given" at a point between her death and Terence's birthday appeared very auspicious.
When nothing happened in November of 1971, Terence looked for other end dates. He explains this process in his 1994 book,
True Hallucinations:
Even though my twenty-fifth birthday came and went with very little shift toward the novel, either in my own life or in the world, I continued to propagate the cycles of the chart forward into the future. I felt that the idea of a hidden structure of time was correct but that this could not be argued for until the correct alignment between that structure and human history had been found and confirmed. I began looking for a date with special features related to the wave, a date that would be a good candidate for the emergence of a special event.
Here is a part of my story that I found most puzzling: After the seeming disconfirmation of the cycles by my birthday, I looked at other future dates on which the three-hundred-and-eighty-four day cycles would end if I continued to assume that the sixteenth of November, 1971, was the end of one such cycle. That meant that the next ending date of the three hundred and eighty-four day cycle would be the fourth of December, 1972. I consulted several astronomical tables, but the date seemed unpromising. The closing date of the next three hundred and eighty-four cycle was immediately more interesting, as it fell on the twenty-second day of December, 1973.
Terence noted instantly that this date was the Winter Solstice, but he quickly found out that it had other significance as well. Around this date an
annular eclipse of the sun moved across the Amazon basin and La Chorrera itself, and coinciding with this was the appearance of the
Comet Kohoutek -- itself the focus of much end-of-the-world
speculation in 1973.
We see with this, therefore, that McKenna had already seen the passing of several "end dates" before he ever even considered 2012. For Terence, 2012 has already happened multiple times. Dennis praises his scientific approach in this. Terence was always willing and able to readjust his theory in order to fit with the available facts.
By 1975, the full Timewave began to gel and Terence postulated an end date of mid-November, 2012. An earlier
post has explained how Terence was inspired by the Ten Thunders of
Finnegans Wake to set the beginning of the 67-year cycle that is now ended at the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. It was only afterward that Terence synched his end date with the end of the Mayan calendar.
Nutshell Games
Finnegans Wake, plays a much bigger role in McKenna's thought than just this insight. As I noted in my previous post on the Wake, Joyce's book already presents in language what the McKenna brothers attempted to produce as substance in La Chorrera, and what Terence believed we all will soon experience in 2012. In essence, the Wake
is 2012. It is the concrescence, the singularity, the omega point, history "epiphanized" -- "
Allspace in a Not-shall."
In his excellent
lecture on
Finnegans Wake, McKenna explicitly makes this
point. The Wake in 1939 reveals exactly what Dennis and Terence attempted to manifest in 1971.
Maybe I didn’t make clear enough why that, to my mind, is an eschatological phenomena, this production of the philosopher’s stone, it’s because it’s about the union of spirit and matter, that’s what the Philosopher’s Stone is about. And writing a book which aspires to be the seed for a living world is about the union of spirit and matter as well, and the Christian scenario of redemption at the end of profane history is another scenario of transubstantiate union, union of spirit and matter. This seems to be in fact the over arching theme of Finnegans Wake and of the 20th Century.
Eschatology is the study of end times and in academic philosophy it is very taboo these days, although at a popular level it is of tremendous concern. Martin Ball shares this academic scorn for eschatology. It is precisely what he hates about 2012ism -- the belief that, for good or bad, the end of the world will somehow resolve everything. There is no need to do the hard work on ourselves. The end will happen whether we meditate all day or not.
This belief in the end externalizes our need to change ourselves. It makes an inner process an outer event. It is the worst kind of dualism. The problem with this critique, however valid in many aspects, is that it also posits a dualism between individual and collective processes of awakening.
Ball, speaking largely from the perspective of early Buddhism, views enlightenment or awakening as something that happens to the individual. It is not an inevitable, historical process. This, for Ball, is the big mistake of the the Abrahamic faiths. To think otherwise is to put a dualistic "faith" in something outside of one's self. The problem is that this is itself dualistic. Maybe history is also striving to awaken.
What both McKenna and the Wake and many others appear to be suggesting is that a collective awakening is very possible and perhaps it
is inevitable. Carl Jung certainly thought so. For history to wake up, though, for it to transform itself into epiphany, into eternity, an altered perception of time is needed. Mircea Eliade in his classic,
Cosmos and History, explains how the so-called primitive conception of time vastly differs from our modern sense of it:
... the life of archaic man (a life reduced to the repetition of
archetypal acts, that is, to categories and not to events, to the
unceasing rehearsal of the same primordial myths) although it takes
place in time, does not bear the burden of time, does not record time's
irreversibility; in other words, completely ignores what is especially
characteristic and decisive in a consciousness of time. Like the
mystic, like the religious man in general, the primitive lives in a
continual present. (And it is in this sense that the religious man may
be said to be a `primitive'; he repeats the gestures of another and,
through this repetition, lives always in an atemporal present.) (p.86)
This "atemporal present" or "eternal now" is exactly what is expressed in
Finnegans Wake. All points in time and space occur at once. Every instant of every cycle is present and congruent. We wake up from the nightmare of history by realizing it is all one colossal lucid dream. It dissolves upon the realization that it has always already been eternity. This is also the crux of what Terence meant by his "archaic revival" -- the revival of the archaic sense of time as an ever-recurring present.
Single Vision Double Vision
William Blake famously wrote:
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
This is exactly what McKenna, Joyce and Eliade are on about. Blake believed that the true artist and poet is a prophetic visionary who creates as if the world would end at any point. Blake knew of the philosopher and mystic Swedenborg's teaching of the Last Judgement, which Swedenborg insisted had already taken place on a spiritual level in 1757. Blake was impressed that this year was also the year of his birth, and he took from this doctrine the idea that the Last Judgement is always happening.
Nearly everyone is familiar with Blake's writing about the "doors of perception" being "cleansed" -- a bit of verse made famous by Aldous Huxley and Jim Morrison, but most are not aware that it contains a specific prophecy that points exactly to this time.
The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.
For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite, and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.
This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.
But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged: this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
These lines from
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell contain everything that this blog has ever tried to express. The "ancient tradition" which Blake mentions is that the world would last 6000 years from its creation which, following
Bishop Ussher, took place in 4004 BC. The Wikipedia entry is helpful here:
Ussher's specific choice of starting year may have been influenced by
the then-widely-held belief that the Earth's potential duration was
6,000 years (4,000 before the birth of Christ
and 2,000 after), corresponding to the six days of Creation, on the
grounds that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a
thousand years as one day" (2 Peter 3:8).
What Blake is saying is that in 6000 years after around 4000 BC, which takes us to the millennium in 2000 AD and pretty well now, very specific things will happen. The world will be consumed in fire, the Covering Cherub of Eden will be removed so that humanity will once again have access to the Tree of Life, the whole creation will appear as holy and infinite, our senses will be perfected, the soul and the body will be experienced as one, and the doors of our perception will open out into the infinite.
Doesn't this sound exactly like the predictions for the end of 2012?
The thing about Blake, though, is that he is a poet. For Blake, poetry and metaphor are far more important than the literal and the historical. Poetry exists in eternity while history is bound by time. Patrick Harpur, in his
The Philosopher's Secret Fire, begins with another Blake poem in order to criticize the modern obsession with literalism.
This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.
These lines of Blake's pinpoint the fundamental shortcoming of the modern post-Cartesian consciousness: its literalism. To see with the eye alone is to see the world as if in single vision, as two-dimensional only, as literal. To see the world through the eye is to cultivate what Blake called "double vision," which perceives in greater depth, beyond the literal to the metaphorical.
Single vision sees the sun as only the sun; double vision also sees it as a heavenly host. We need double vision to see daimons -- to see that they are real, but not literally so. Unfortunately we have become so literal-minded that the only reality we recognize is literal reality which, by definition, rules out daimons.
Both the true believers of 2012 and the skeptics are being literal-minded, are lacking "double-vision." They both see with the eye and not through it. It is as ridiculous to believe that the Motherships will appear in the skies this Friday as it is to "debunk" this belief. But at least the true believers have imagination. The debunkers have an acute and tragic sclerosis of this faculty.
All of the transformative predictions that Ball cynically lists are completely fine if taken metaphorically. As with the McKenna brothers' experiment in La Chorrera, any number of things may take place but it is folly to take any one of these literally. They are real, but not literally so.
To possess "double-vision" is to eliminate the dichotomy between what exists and what doesn't exist. Everything imagined is very real. This, along with transcending the split between individual and collective, and time and eternity, is another aspect of non-dualism.
Mountains Are Mountains Holy is Holy
A higher spiral of non-duality, as my Zen teacher once taught me, is the non-duality between duality and non-duality. This is expressed in the philosophy of the Indian Mahayana Buddhist, Nagarjuna:
nirvana is samsara. The cycle of life, of birth, death, and rebirth, is itself the state of highest awakening.
My teacher used to say: before awakening we see trees as trees and mountains as mountains. During the process of awakening we see trees as
not trees, mountains as
not mountains. But after becoming awakened, after achieving nirvana, we again see trees as trees and mountains as mountains.
The perspective of non-duality can experience the non-dual in everything, even in the most dualistic of 2012 predictions.
Ball also published an
essay in Reality Sandwich focusing entirely on Terence McKenna and his work. The gist of this essay is that Terence is only really exploring the contents of his own ego. Again, though, samsara being nirvana are we ever able to experience anything that is not our ego? Even the Buddha lived and died with the discomforts of physical existence and dualistic, language-based conversation with others.
A comment to this article suggests that even the "enlightened" Ball might not have fully transcended this fallen world of the ego:
Like many have pointed out: YOUR ARTICLE REEKS OF YOUR OWN EGO. Just listen to yourself: ...
Martin
Ball has fully trancended his ego and is now offering his services to
help others see the influence of thier own egos, beause Martin Ball is
so incredibly awesome at seeing the effects of ego and separating them
from "true" reality:
"Indeed, I routinely counsel people about
their entheogenic experiences and help them sort out the illusions of
ego from the reality of genuine being."....
And
finally, we are invited to employ the "Entheological Paradigm,"
developed by Martin Ball, to see the obvious egoism of Terence McKenna.
Let's read the description of this breakthrough paradigm, which will
assure us that there is no trace of ego within this pure framework:
"Grand
Unified Theory of Reality that accounts for the most sophisticated
scientific discoveries, the most sublime mystical states of
consciousness, and the true nature of all that lies in between. In
short, it is a theory of everything! But it is much more than a theory:
it is also a clear guide to personal liberation and self-transcendence.
The Entheological Paradigm is a map of all of reality and your
personal path to freedom, true responsibility, and ultimate human
happiness. This is the system of knowledge and self-transformation
that humanity has been waiting for but has never been able to clearly
articulate or understand . . . until now"
Hmm . . .
We cannot judge Ball too harshly here. We are all similarly trapped and/or liberated. We can, however, use this as a means to counter his own judgement of Terence. For all his faults, at least Terence never claimed to have been enlightened.
Once Upon A Time
Ball's critique, though, is still quite valuable. In the conclusion to his essay on 2012, Ball writes that perhaps the real apocalypse, after the Solstice passes as just another day, will be that people will realize that it's all bullshit, take responsibility for their own thoughts and actions, and cease to form attachments to unproven beliefs and speculations.
If this is what happens this year it would be wonderful. Hopefully, Ball will also detach himself from his own bullshit -- or at least celebrate it as Terence did. What this may mean, though, is that we cease to take things literally. History can end if we want it. Perhaps 2012 is the moment in history when we all realize that history has always been an illusion -- that everything is always happening at once.
Eliade's study of cyclical views of time, like that of the Mayan calendar which does not really end but
turns over, makes clear that at such turning points, like New Year's Day in an annual cycle, traditional people believed that they returned to what Eliade called
in illo tempore -- that mythical time of "once upon a time"when the world was new and fresh and the gods walked with men.
"Primitive" people always live in the eternity of
in illo tempore, ancient cultures returned to
in illo tempore at the turning of cycles of time -- some of them vast, and modern people having a linear, progressive notion of time only reach
in illo tempore at the
end of time.
This is what 2012 is about. We moderns, acutely sensing the deep interlocking crises of our time, long for the return of eternity. We are bound by linear, literal, historical thinking and it is very difficult for us to envision a return to eternity without time coming to an end.
When time comes to an end we return to our roots, to what Jung and Deleuze called the
rhizome. All points converge. Things once separated and neatly categorized begin to meld and shimmy together. Boundaries dissolve. We realize that the symbols and archetypes of our
dreams begin to resonate with and acausally affect and be affected by those of both the dreams of nature and the nightmare of the consensus.
Chaos Reigns
The crafters of the consensus have a vested interest in perpetuating the nightmare and preventing our becoming awake. This is also what 2012 is about, and there are those who believe that this is what it is
all about.
Ball's friend, Jan Irvin, is one of these. Irvin believes that 2012 is perhaps the biggest psyop ever unleashed. Its aim is to ensure that those who have mentally unchained themselves from the shackles of traditional religion will be unknowingly trapped in the nets of the cult of 2012.
Psychedelic use, without the necessary training in critical theory afforded by study of the classical Trivium, was promoted in order to melt away the last vestiges of traditional thought or customs.
Aldous Huxley was instrumental in this process, according to Irvin, as was Huxley's follower, Terence McKenna. The "archaic revival," mushroom use, advocacy of feminism and the destruction of the nuclear family, etc. were all used by McKenna to advance this Agenda.
Intentionally or not, in this Irvin has merely provided a new psychedelic overlay to old, right-wing paranoia about the "Aquarian conspiracy." This is conspiracy theory in its most complex and byzantine form. Irvin's thought is outlined during an
interview on the Always Record podcast. In his own Gnostic Media
podcast, Irvin and Martin Ball combine their critiques of McKenna and others.
One wonders what Ball thinks of Irvin's focus on conspiracy theory. Nothing is more dualistic than thinking that an elite other is out to oppress us. But is there anything to Irvin's theories? Is 2012 just one big psyop?
In a way, this is also the conclusion of this blog. The
108-year period between 1904 and 2012, the transition between the Aquarian and Piscean Ages, has apparently been manipulated throughout, presumably by the Golden Dawn, other similar and even more occult societies, and their successors. Their goal, following the Rosicrucian cycle, is to make explicit what was once in the shadows. After this year their Great Work will become public.
But what is this work? Is it the full implementation of the New World Order and one world government? Is it population reduction and mind control? Is it to herald the imminent reign of the Antichrist? Perhaps so.
Traditionalist philosopher, René Guénon, in his excellent book
The Reign of Quantity, lays out how an occult group that Guénon calls the "counter-initiation" has plotted throughout history for precisely this goal. In their machinations they often use false prophecies and bogus dates to steer society in a favoured direction. Guénon writes:
...from time to time, on the strength of the ‘prophecies of the Great
Pyramid' or of other predictions, and as a result of calculations of
which the basis is never very clearly defined, it is announced that such
and such an exact date will mark ‘the entry of humanity into a new era'
or else ‘the coming of a spiritual renewal' ... ; several of these dates are already
past, and it does not appear that anything very notable has happened;
but what does all that sort of thing really signify?
In fact, it is just
another way of making use of predictions (additional, that is, to their
use for increasing the disorder of our times by broadcasting seeds of
trouble and disorganization), and perhaps not the least important, for
it turns them into an instrument of direct suggestion, thus contributing
to the effective determination of the course of certain future events;
for instance, to take a simple and easily understood example, does
anyone believe that the repeated announcement of a revolution in a
particular country at a particular time will not assist those who have
an interest in its breaking out at that time?
Underlying the present
situation is the fact that certain people want to create a ‘state of
mind' favorable to the realization of ‘something' that is part of their
plans; this ‘something' can no doubt be modified by the action of
contrary influences, but they hope that their methods will serve to
bring it about a little sooner or a little later. It remains to be shown
more exactly to what this pseudo-spiritual' enterprise is leading, and
it is necessary to say, without meaning to be in any way ‘pessimistic'... , that the outlook for the fairly near future is anything
but reassuring.
(p. 310-311)
Is this, then, what 2012 is all about? An "instrument of direct suggestion"? A means of control? This has always got to be considered. I view Terence McKenna as being primarily a neo-Hermetic philosopher and poet in the direct lineage of the Renaissance mages and alchemists, Swedenborg, William Blake and James Joyce. But were all these men, wittingly of not, agents of the counter-initiation?
A Collidoscape
The study of 2012 on this blog began with conspiracy, linked even more together to arrive at synchronicity, wove together synchronicity with synchronicity and fashioned an intricate weaving of epiphany -- eventually "ephiphanizing" all of history, only to arrive back at a higher order conspiracy theory.
This conspiracy is the conspiracy of the Archons, of the jealous gods, who aim to prevent us from knowing what we already know. Like the medieval Brethren of the Free Spirit, we begin to realize that we are already redeemed, that all sins are forgiven, the we are in reality unbound by all earthly law. We are gods ourselves.
The conspiracy of the counter-initiation is to prevent this knowledge from returning. But I suspect, as on all levels of nature, that there is more than one conspiracy in play here. As Jung (who may or may not be a part of the conspiracy!) taught, Christ and Antichrist, and all of the Hero Twins of myth, return together at the end of the Age.
Perhaps even Guénon is still too dualistic. The process of liberation and enslavement is one ever-swirling, conflicting process. And my intuition tells me that McKenna, Blake, Joyce and others are on the side of the angels. Anyone who inspires and encourages the use of individual creativity and imagination must be trusted.
But, aside from this, we should use our "double vision." Conspiracy, synchronicity, epiphany and nothing at all are occurring in all of their contradictions and paradoxes at this same moment of time and eternity. We are just beginning to see through the narrow chinks of our cavern. 2012 is being born now and forever.
Happy Solstice!
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