Since I started this blog I have frequently abandoned articles in a half-finished state .. I've collected them together here .. its a bizarre fragmentary glimpse into the workings of my mind .. I realise there are entire repeated section and many errors .. this is RAW .. if you want polished, finished articles look elsewhere ! ...
Letter to Niall, 21/06/2009
Happy Birthday! I originally sent some random erotic art, but it was
returned because the message was too big.
I am trying again, I have attached five pages from our book 'Hell'
that I was working on last year.
Like all my books it is a riddle, and the solution is printed
upside-down at the back. Naturally this complementary book is called
'Heaven', and I have attached five pages from this book also.
The closest literary parallel to this conceit is 'Songs of Innocence
and Experience' by Blake - I recently discovered Blake and found
thousands of 'co-incidental' parallels with 'my' ideas.
I have also compressed a couple of readings from 'Hell' for your
delectation, one is read in the style of Benjamin Zepahiah.
I am juggling with 200,000 words of spirtual and revolutionary texts,
in the form of meta-physical poetry, comic verse, philosophical and
political argument and pseudo-fiction, as well as thousands of images.
All my life's work is a appears to be mysteriously coalescing into a
vast adevertising campaign against capitalism and dogmatic religion.
"This is the reason the necessity for different religions has always
gone over my head: -
If we accept that the Gods of other religions are the same as our God
- then are we not of the same religion?
If we do not accept that we share the same God? Then either we are
acknowledging the existence of other single supreme beings (a
contradiction in terms) or we are denying the validity of everyone
else’s mystical experiences.
At best, it seems, we can claim that our preferred sacred texts are
better written - that our particular sets of words for describing The
Divine are more likely to guide an individual towards a meaningful
communion with God, or to make us happier, collectively and
individually, by exhorting us to act in a more ethical and loving fashion.
Soldiers, lay down your arms, violence only begets violence. I know
this is the very hardest thing to do when the blood of your loved ones
is fresh, but there is no other way to heal yourself, Man, Mankind,
there is no other way to heal the ancient harboured grudges, but to
forgive the freshest wounds. This is The Holy War – the war that is
fought upon hate in ourselves and is won by Love. This is the Whole
War. There are no ‘Muslims’, no ‘Christians’, no ‘Jews’ - there are
only Holy men, and those that aim for wholeness." the jesTer, 2009
This quote best summarises the revolution that we are working towards:
“The more people do, the more society develops, the more problems
arise. The increasing isolation of nature, the exhaustion of
resources, the uneasiness and disintegration of the human spirit, all
have been brought about by humanity’s trying to accomplish something.
Originally there was no reason to progress, and nothing that had to be
done. We have come to the point when there is no other way than to
bring about a ‘movement’ not to bring anything about” The One Straw
Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka, 1978
It is a handy 'coincidence' that my illustrations from 1998 (featured
in 'Hell') prominently feature a cat not unlike Nim, and tell the same
story that I always tell - the story of Faust, the story of The Master
and Marguerita, the story of Robert Johnson meeting the devil at the
crossroads, the story (from the Koran) of Al Khidr meeting Moses at
the junction of the two seas.
I have the dubious pleasure of being one of those eccentrics with an
entire hermetically sensible theory of everything. I see the
speculations of the quantum physicists (particularly on the
relationship between consciousness and quantum particles and quantum
entanglement) as the key to uniting all Mankind's disparate
speculations into a single known truth, which incorporates the
sciences, universal archetypal narratives, memes, memomes, morphic
resonance and eastern mysticism, and rebrands the most popular
elements of New Age prophecy (incl. Indigo children, The Green Man and
2012)
To me this is not esoteric, it is simply how I perceive the universe
- I would suggest that Leo was right in suggesting that when 'if all
that was unseen became seen then that which is now seen would be
unseen'. I take this further - 'when that which is insane becomes
sane, then that which is now sane will become insane'.
CURRENTLY SANE ACCORDING TO THE DOMINANT ETHOS:
War
Wanting more
Needing national governance
Leaders
The Cult of The Individual
Market driven economy
CURRENTLY INSANE ACCORDING TO THE DOMINANT ETHOS:
Not wanting what you do not have
Anarchy
Unity consciousness
The culture of the collective
Non-profit making social enterprise and social entrepenurs
Progress is fast. Bill Gates is promoting 'Creative Capitalism' and
social enterprise is coming to the fore - and war, eugenics and
nationalism have lost significant ground in the collective dialogue
since mankind enacted the terrible narrative of WWII upon the stage of
the world.
"I for one believe that insanity (in the strictest sense) is something
that is unavoidable if one is to be an artist, pure and simple. But
the flip side to that is - as in all nature, there is an inverse to
everything - the same thing could be ........as absolute sanity." You,
2008
"The Gospel of John says "you do not need any man to teach you...the
same anointing teaches you all things and is truth...you have an
anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things...Beloved, now we
are the sons of God. He who keeps his commands dwells in him, and he
in him. And we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has
given us." Thus, surely, the contemplations of any 'righteous' man -
by John's or any other definition - should be 'true' (if 'true' is a
meaningful term) and worthy of our consideration? It is in this sense
that we might regard all virtuous beings as prophets, as
theythemselves, and what they produce, are 'prophecies', expressions
of an Immanent God that dwells both within them, and that they,
equally, dwell within. Are not all stories allegories, parables,
timeless
riddles, that are as much mirrors on ourselves as they are reflections
of the topics they ostensibly explore?" The Jester, The Secret Poetry
of The Cosmic Joke
This might be described as a 'we're-all-Jesus' complex. But what if
the CERN particle accelerator was able to prove the following:
"According to Big Bang theory, the matter that make up you, me and
everything in the universe was once condensed into a singularity and
burst into existsnce at the same moment. The theory of quantum
entanglement says that two electrons created together become forever
entangled and that what affects one will instantly affect the other.
This could mean we are all ‘entangled’ at a quantum level and that we
are all one consciousness and ‘space’ is just an illusion." The Metro
If science proved the above? We would KNOW that John was right, that
"we are all the sons of God" - all religions would instantly be proved
to be one, and all disciplines of human thought would be united.
"And he who beholds all beings in the Self, and the Self in all
beings, he never turns away from it" Isavasaya Upanishad
"Come forth, o children, under the stars, & take your fill of love! I
am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your
joy.” Aleister Crowley, ‘The Book of The Law’
"He sees himself in the heart of all beings and all beings in his
heart. This is the vision of the Yogi of harmony, a vision which is
ever one. And when he sees me in all things and all things in me, Then
I never leave him and he never leaves me." Bhagavad Gita
If science proved the above? This would be The Philosopher's stone,
the final brick of the tower that we have been building - a tower of
words and symbols, that stretches from the smallest of the quantum
things to the biggest of the big. And this final stone would connect
man to God, The World to Heaven. Not unlike The Tower of Babylon,
funnily enough.
'The rest of mankind, that were not killed by these plagues still did
not.. stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone
and wood. [Revelation 9:20] The nations were angry; and your wrath has
come. The time has come.. for destroying those who destroy the earth.
[Revelation 11:18] Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power!
In one hour your doom has come! [Revelation 18:] The merchants of the
earth will weep and mourn ... because no one buys their cargoes any
more. [Revelation 18:9] All your riches and splendour have vanished,
never to be recovered. [Revelation 18:14] Your merchants were the
world's great men. By your magic spell all the nations were led
astray. [Revelation 18:23]
'Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the
heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered
over the face of the whole earth." But the LORD came down to see the
city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, "If as
one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then
nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go
down and confuse their language so they will not understand each
other." So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth,
andthey stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel
—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From
there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.'
Why would God do this to himself? Why would he break himself on this
way? If we knew this we would know the reason for human suffering.
"It was necessary for humanity to depart from God, and for all
original unities to undergo differentiation, desire, and conflict - as
in the rebellion of Satan, the separation of Eve from Adam and their
acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil - in order for creation
to evolve to a new state of redeemed harmony that would be more
perfect than the original state of innocence, allowing God to achieve
a new self-awareness by interacting with a creation that was both part
of, and distinct from, Himself." Wikipedia extract about the
philosophy of Jakob Boehme
I have attached a map I drew when I was twelve, from my book 'Quest
for The Sceptre' - all the cities of ‘Duodonia’ are anagrams of the
word ‘evil’ and all the cities of ‘Monodonia’ are anagrams of the word
'Holy’. The conclusion explained that upon retrieval of the sceptre
Duodon and Monadonia became one – ‘The Wall of Separation’ came down -
and ‘Marudan, The Wild Lands’ were farmed by the people of this united
state and became ‘The Crop Lands’. This IS the philosophy of Jakob
Boehme, expressed above. I am trying not to rely on this type of
evidence to make my case for the existence of a sinlge immanent
consciousness, but I think the prophecies of children are more
marketable than weighty intellectual hypotheses.
This lifelong endeavour is my equivalent to procreation. It is
interesting that I creditted my 1988 book 'An Infinite Number of
Llamas in Cupboard' to Yesod, the part of the Sephiroth that
interfaces with mankind via 'the sexual centre'. The Emin do not use
Kabbalistic terminolgy, so I do not know where I acquired this term,
yet there is an unlabelled diagram of The Sephiroth at the back of
Gemrod. Above it Leo says:
"A drawing of no meaning, and yet,
it has a name. It is called:---
Let everything be driven to its place.
For only when everything has its place may 'the abode' prevail"
"Where are we going? Home, always home" Novalis
"Now is the dominion of eden and the return of Adam to paradise" William Blake
"Happy birthday! You have just WON! The cosmic joke isn’t ON you - you
have just ONE - it was FOR you! Happy Birthday! Beelzebubjesus,
welcome home, you silly boy. WE ARE The Son of God – at the end of HER
story (the story of the matriarchy and the goddess) began the epoch of
HIS story (the story of the patriarchy and the son). Now we are at the
beginning of MY story, when we will be reunited and become ONE. Begin
to notice and ACT upon the fact that everyone around you is humming
with purpose, intention and will, our one will, our will to be ONE –
to BECOME ONE in WILL - to be done. You THOUGHT you were a fish –
after the corner has been turned you will KNOW that you are The Sea."
The Secret Poetry, 2008
returned because the message was too big.
I am trying again, I have attached five pages from our book 'Hell'
that I was working on last year.
Like all my books it is a riddle, and the solution is printed
upside-down at the back. Naturally this complementary book is called
'Heaven', and I have attached five pages from this book also.
The closest literary parallel to this conceit is 'Songs of Innocence
and Experience' by Blake - I recently discovered Blake and found
thousands of 'co-incidental' parallels with 'my' ideas.
I have also compressed a couple of readings from 'Hell' for your
delectation, one is read in the style of Benjamin Zepahiah.
I am juggling with 200,000 words of spirtual and revolutionary texts,
in the form of meta-physical poetry, comic verse, philosophical and
political argument and pseudo-fiction, as well as thousands of images.
All my life's work is a appears to be mysteriously coalescing into a
vast adevertising campaign against capitalism and dogmatic religion.
"This is the reason the necessity for different religions has always
gone over my head: -
If we accept that the Gods of other religions are the same as our God
- then are we not of the same religion?
If we do not accept that we share the same God? Then either we are
acknowledging the existence of other single supreme beings (a
contradiction in terms) or we are denying the validity of everyone
else’s mystical experiences.
At best, it seems, we can claim that our preferred sacred texts are
better written - that our particular sets of words for describing The
Divine are more likely to guide an individual towards a meaningful
communion with God, or to make us happier, collectively and
individually, by exhorting us to act in a more ethical and loving fashion.
Soldiers, lay down your arms, violence only begets violence. I know
this is the very hardest thing to do when the blood of your loved ones
is fresh, but there is no other way to heal yourself, Man, Mankind,
there is no other way to heal the ancient harboured grudges, but to
forgive the freshest wounds. This is The Holy War – the war that is
fought upon hate in ourselves and is won by Love. This is the Whole
War. There are no ‘Muslims’, no ‘Christians’, no ‘Jews’ - there are
only Holy men, and those that aim for wholeness." the jesTer, 2009
This quote best summarises the revolution that we are working towards:
“The more people do, the more society develops, the more problems
arise. The increasing isolation of nature, the exhaustion of
resources, the uneasiness and disintegration of the human spirit, all
have been brought about by humanity’s trying to accomplish something.
Originally there was no reason to progress, and nothing that had to be
done. We have come to the point when there is no other way than to
bring about a ‘movement’ not to bring anything about” The One Straw
Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka, 1978
It is a handy 'coincidence' that my illustrations from 1998 (featured
in 'Hell') prominently feature a cat not unlike Nim, and tell the same
story that I always tell - the story of Faust, the story of The Master
and Marguerita, the story of Robert Johnson meeting the devil at the
crossroads, the story (from the Koran) of Al Khidr meeting Moses at
the junction of the two seas.
I have the dubious pleasure of being one of those eccentrics with an
entire hermetically sensible theory of everything. I see the
speculations of the quantum physicists (particularly on the
relationship between consciousness and quantum particles and quantum
entanglement) as the key to uniting all Mankind's disparate
speculations into a single known truth, which incorporates the
sciences, universal archetypal narratives, memes, memomes, morphic
resonance and eastern mysticism, and rebrands the most popular
elements of New Age prophecy (incl. Indigo children, The Green Man and
2012)
To me this is not esoteric, it is simply how I perceive the universe
- I would suggest that Leo was right in suggesting that when 'if all
that was unseen became seen then that which is now seen would be
unseen'. I take this further - 'when that which is insane becomes
sane, then that which is now sane will become insane'.
CURRENTLY SANE ACCORDING TO THE DOMINANT ETHOS:
War
Wanting more
Needing national governance
Leaders
The Cult of The Individual
Market driven economy
CURRENTLY INSANE ACCORDING TO THE DOMINANT ETHOS:
Not wanting what you do not have
Anarchy
Unity consciousness
The culture of the collective
Non-profit making social enterprise and social entrepenurs
Progress is fast. Bill Gates is promoting 'Creative Capitalism' and
social enterprise is coming to the fore - and war, eugenics and
nationalism have lost significant ground in the collective dialogue
since mankind enacted the terrible narrative of WWII upon the stage of
the world.
"I for one believe that insanity (in the strictest sense) is something
that is unavoidable if one is to be an artist, pure and simple. But
the flip side to that is - as in all nature, there is an inverse to
everything - the same thing could be ........as absolute sanity." You,
2008
"The Gospel of John says "you do not need any man to teach you...the
same anointing teaches you all things and is truth...you have an
anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things...Beloved, now we
are the sons of God. He who keeps his commands dwells in him, and he
in him. And we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has
given us." Thus, surely, the contemplations of any 'righteous' man -
by John's or any other definition - should be 'true' (if 'true' is a
meaningful term) and worthy of our consideration? It is in this sense
that we might regard all virtuous beings as prophets, as
theythemselves, and what they produce, are 'prophecies', expressions
of an Immanent God that dwells both within them, and that they,
equally, dwell within. Are not all stories allegories, parables,
timeless
riddles, that are as much mirrors on ourselves as they are reflections
of the topics they ostensibly explore?" The Jester, The Secret Poetry
of The Cosmic Joke
This might be described as a 'we're-all-Jesus' complex. But what if
the CERN particle accelerator was able to prove the following:
"According to Big Bang theory, the matter that make up you, me and
everything in the universe was once condensed into a singularity and
burst into existsnce at the same moment. The theory of quantum
entanglement says that two electrons created together become forever
entangled and that what affects one will instantly affect the other.
This could mean we are all ‘entangled’ at a quantum level and that we
are all one consciousness and ‘space’ is just an illusion." The Metro
If science proved the above? We would KNOW that John was right, that
"we are all the sons of God" - all religions would instantly be proved
to be one, and all disciplines of human thought would be united.
"And he who beholds all beings in the Self, and the Self in all
beings, he never turns away from it" Isavasaya Upanishad
"Come forth, o children, under the stars, & take your fill of love! I
am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your
joy.” Aleister Crowley, ‘The Book of The Law’
"He sees himself in the heart of all beings and all beings in his
heart. This is the vision of the Yogi of harmony, a vision which is
ever one. And when he sees me in all things and all things in me, Then
I never leave him and he never leaves me." Bhagavad Gita
If science proved the above? This would be The Philosopher's stone,
the final brick of the tower that we have been building - a tower of
words and symbols, that stretches from the smallest of the quantum
things to the biggest of the big. And this final stone would connect
man to God, The World to Heaven. Not unlike The Tower of Babylon,
funnily enough.
'The rest of mankind, that were not killed by these plagues still did
not.. stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone
and wood. [Revelation 9:20] The nations were angry; and your wrath has
come. The time has come.. for destroying those who destroy the earth.
[Revelation 11:18] Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power!
In one hour your doom has come! [Revelation 18:] The merchants of the
earth will weep and mourn ... because no one buys their cargoes any
more. [Revelation 18:9] All your riches and splendour have vanished,
never to be recovered. [Revelation 18:14] Your merchants were the
world's great men. By your magic spell all the nations were led
astray. [Revelation 18:23]
'Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the
heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered
over the face of the whole earth." But the LORD came down to see the
city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, "If as
one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then
nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go
down and confuse their language so they will not understand each
other." So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth,
andthey stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel
—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From
there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.'
Why would God do this to himself? Why would he break himself on this
way? If we knew this we would know the reason for human suffering.
"It was necessary for humanity to depart from God, and for all
original unities to undergo differentiation, desire, and conflict - as
in the rebellion of Satan, the separation of Eve from Adam and their
acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil - in order for creation
to evolve to a new state of redeemed harmony that would be more
perfect than the original state of innocence, allowing God to achieve
a new self-awareness by interacting with a creation that was both part
of, and distinct from, Himself." Wikipedia extract about the
philosophy of Jakob Boehme
I have attached a map I drew when I was twelve, from my book 'Quest
for The Sceptre' - all the cities of ‘Duodonia’ are anagrams of the
word ‘evil’ and all the cities of ‘Monodonia’ are anagrams of the word
'Holy’. The conclusion explained that upon retrieval of the sceptre
Duodon and Monadonia became one – ‘The Wall of Separation’ came down -
and ‘Marudan, The Wild Lands’ were farmed by the people of this united
state and became ‘The Crop Lands’. This IS the philosophy of Jakob
Boehme, expressed above. I am trying not to rely on this type of
evidence to make my case for the existence of a sinlge immanent
consciousness, but I think the prophecies of children are more
marketable than weighty intellectual hypotheses.
This lifelong endeavour is my equivalent to procreation. It is
interesting that I creditted my 1988 book 'An Infinite Number of
Llamas in Cupboard' to Yesod, the part of the Sephiroth that
interfaces with mankind via 'the sexual centre'. The Emin do not use
Kabbalistic terminolgy, so I do not know where I acquired this term,
yet there is an unlabelled diagram of The Sephiroth at the back of
Gemrod. Above it Leo says:
"A drawing of no meaning, and yet,
it has a name. It is called:---
Let everything be driven to its place.
For only when everything has its place may 'the abode' prevail"
"Where are we going? Home, always home" Novalis
"Now is the dominion of eden and the return of Adam to paradise" William Blake
"Happy birthday! You have just WON! The cosmic joke isn’t ON you - you
have just ONE - it was FOR you! Happy Birthday! Beelzebubjesus,
welcome home, you silly boy. WE ARE The Son of God – at the end of HER
story (the story of the matriarchy and the goddess) began the epoch of
HIS story (the story of the patriarchy and the son). Now we are at the
beginning of MY story, when we will be reunited and become ONE. Begin
to notice and ACT upon the fact that everyone around you is humming
with purpose, intention and will, our one will, our will to be ONE –
to BECOME ONE in WILL - to be done. You THOUGHT you were a fish –
after the corner has been turned you will KNOW that you are The Sea."
The Secret Poetry, 2008
THE DEVIL'S TOAST RACK
Welcome! Welcome. I say this, now, to each of you - tho' I do not speak as to a crowd - no! - but as if to ONE . Twenty ears & four will listen to these notes, & these twelve heads will comprehend twelve different tones - courageous friend! - patient one, faithful one. You owe it to yourself, to ask of your Self - cast your mind back, consult the shadows of the cast back your mind Remember - do you recall? - when first you ventured West you feared Nothing. Some called you 'The Brave' - did you ever wonder why? This is why - because you had no fear of Being. No fear, no fear - no fear of Being exactly what you were. Some call you 'The ACTor' - did you wonder why? Ever? It was because you had no fear of ACTing on your Being. first propose a toast to thee. Be you healer, dealer, of heart or head; a gardener of soil or the soul, be you a wanderer, or watcher, a gardener I raise my glass to you. for you have faced that which you most fear, but you need not fear nothing now. You ventured hither, Courageous One, fearing nothing, yet scared that you would. &, even for a fleeting time - in fear - inventing Hells. tormented for one imperfect action; though you know not what you do. Have no fear - for each among you will be treated as befits a guest of honour. We are all welcome here, here in the Beautiful House of Words and Song. Do please take a seat if it suits you, it matters not whether you sit down, or sit up. make your Home feel at Self. I would like to propose a toast. A toast to a friend who is with us every second of the day, but sadly few of us ever stop to , many of uPlease raise your glass & spare a thought for the moment
ONE Beast - ONE Beast with MANY ears, ONE Beast with many voices.
Thanks are in order though. I propose a toast
--chingching-- "EVERYONE! - can I have your attention, please -- Welcome! Welcome. I say this now to each of you, tho' I do not speak as to a crowd - no - but as to ONE Being, ONE existent Being that IS, between & in & through you. ONE BEING, ONE BEAST, ONE who speaks with MANY voices, ONE Being with MANY ears to hear & MANY eyes but just ONE VISION. Courageous friend! - Patient ONE, Faithful ONE. the forgotten Summer, the umber Fall Remember - do you recall? - when first you ventured West you feared Nothing. Some called you 'The Brave' - did you ever wonder why? This is why - because you had no fear of Being. No fear, no fear - no fear of Being exactly what you were. Some call you 'The ACTor' - did you wonder why? Ever? It was because you had no fear of ACTing on your Being. first propose a toast to thee. Be you healer, dealer, of heart or head; a gardener of soil or the soul, be you a wanderer, or watcher, a gardener I raise my glass to you. for you have faced that which you most fear, but you need not fear nothing now. You ventured hither, Courageous One, fearing nothing, yet scared that you would. &, even for a fleeting time - in fear - inventing Hells. tormented for one imperfect action; though you know not what you do. Have no fear - for each among you will be treated as befits a guest of honour. We are all welcome here, here in the Beautiful House of Words and Song. Do please take a seat if it suits you, it matters not whether you sit down, or sit up. make your Home feel at Self. I would like to propose a toast. A toast to a friend who is with us every second of the day, but sadly few of us ever stop to , many of uPlease raise your glass & spare a thought for the moment
Welcome! Welcome. I say this now to each of you, tho' I do not speak as to a crowd - no - but as if to ONE Beast - ONE Beast with MANY ears, ONE Beast with many voices. Twenty ears & four will listen to what I say. Courageous friend! - patient one, faithful one. You owe it to yourself to ask of your Self Cast your mind back, consult the shadows of the cast back your mind Remember - do you recall? - when first you ventured West you feared Nothing. Some called you 'The Brave' - did you ever wonder why? This is why - because you had no fear of Being. No fear, no fear - no fear of Being exactly what you were. Some call you 'The ACTor' - did you wonder why? Ever? It was because you had no fear of ACTing on your Being. first propose a toast to thee. Be you healer, dealer, of heart or head; a gardener of soil or the soul, be you a wanderer, or watcher, a gardener I raise my glass to you. for you have faced that which you most fear, but you need not fear nothing now. You ventured hither, Courageous One, fearing nothing, yet scared that you would. &, even for a fleeting time - in fear - inventing Hells. tormented for one imperfect action; though you know not what you do. Have no fear - for each among you will be treated as b efits a guest of honour. We are all welcome here, here in the Beautiful House of Words and Song. Do please take a seat if it suits you, it matters not whether you sit down, or sit up. make your Home feel at Self. I would like to propose a toast. A toast to a friend who is with us every second of the day, but sadly few of us ever stop to , many of uPlease raise your glass & spare a thought for the moment
* * *
Prejudice based on size is deeply ingrained in our culture, not so much in some black subcultures, or early civilisations, where size was often a mark of status, of abundance and wealth - for only those of abundant means could afford to be fat. I blame the Greeks for their statues, depicting arbitrary ideals, based on the idea that there are perfect forms from which all other things are deviations. The popular ideal got rapidly thinner and thinner in the last years of the twentieth century, clearly demonstrated by sex icon Marilyn looking plump to modern eyes and standards - I think the tide is slowly turning.
A lot of larger women have said to me that they would rather be found attractive despite their size than for it - perhaps this is because they themselves have accepted the conditioning that fat is unattractive - but, given the option, I would rather be with someone who found my body attractive AND the person I was inside. However - if it was an either/or situation - I would rather be wanted for being the person I am than for my body alone.
Women who DO conform to societies ideals often manifest an inverse insecurity to that expressed above - it is no better to feel that your personality is eclipsed by your physical attractiveness than the other way around - indeed it is possibly a worse affliction, as we identify our essential selves more with the mind than the body - to be loved for the body alone is not actually to be loved, it is merely to be desired, and physical beauty is a fragile commodity.
These last observations have certainly led me to a deeper understanding of why someone who didn't regard themselves as physically beautiful could feel undermined, threatened even, by being desired for their body - their self-esteem, to that point, is actually likely to be more resilient than that of the Bulimic supermodel, as the women who have expressed this to me must have learned to love themselves for who they are (even if incompletely), while the Bulimic supermodel has such a high premium placed on her physical beauty that there is likely to always be some doubt in her mind about whether any positive affirmation received is for her beauty or for herself.
I think there is more sense in the reasoning of the woman who says she would rather be desired despite her body size than for her it than, at first, I realised - however, sex is a very fundamental physical activity, and the woman who makes this assertion is unlikely to feel quite the same way once she has become accustomed to being an object of physical desire.
I had low body self esteem myself for a long time, not being a stacked Adonis, but it was an important realisation for me that it was very much a matter of taste - though it still narks me that I am attractive to at least 75% of gay men, if not more, and I am not gay - on the other hand I can make a guess at how many gay men find me attractive, whereas I have no idea how many women find me attractive - perhaps the proportion would not be as different as I assume - I do find it very hard to tell when women find me attractive, there is still, deep down inside me, some assumption that women won't find me attractive - and gay men are more open & obvious in the expression of their preferences.
I may appear to have diverged from my theme, but I am trying to answer a question relating to the previous point through introspection - I have observed that what at first I thought was an odd perspective is actually almost directly equivalent to my own experience - and while I certainly do not regret acquiring a sense of body pride the main reason for this is that with it came a greater physicality, a sense of oneness with my body - but at the same time I did acquire a greater vanity, which has subsided greatly since its peak
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think. ~Author Unknown
Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart. ~Kahlil Gibran
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir
Our hearts are drunk with a beauty our eyes could never see. ~George W. Russell
I've never seen a smiling face that was not beautiful. ~Author Unknown
By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower. ~Rabindrath Tagore
Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart. ~Kahlil Gibran
Against Him those women sin who torment their skin with potions, stain their cheeks with rouge and extend the line of their eyes with black coloring. Doubtless they are dissatisfied with God's plastic skill. In their own persons they convict and censure the Artificer of all things. ~Tertullian
That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful. ~Ninon de L'Enclos
Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked. ~Ralph Ellison, "Battle Royal"
Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their beauty - they merely move it from their faces into their hearts. ~Martin Buxbaum
Tell them dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Rhodora"
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. ~Leo Tolstoy
In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty. ~Christopher Morley
Beauty always promises, but never gives anything. ~Simone Weil
What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn! ~Logan Pearsall Smith
The most beautiful view is the one I share with you. ~Author Unknown
When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. ~Chinese Proverb
Beauty comes in all sizes, not just size 5. ~Roseanne
I don't like standard beauty - there is no beauty without strangeness. ~Karl Lagerfeld
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. ~Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Beauty and folly are generally companions. ~Baltasar Gracian
Beauty comes as much from the mind as from the eye. ~Grey Livingston
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. ~Confucius
Plainness has its peculiar temptations quite as much as beauty. ~George Eliot
As we grow old, the beauty steals inward. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone. ~Johann von Goethe
A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful. ~Karl Kraus
Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light. ~John Ruskin
Beauty in the flesh will continue to rule the world. ~Florenz Ziegfeld
Do I love you because you're beautiful,
Or are you beautiful because I love you?
~Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cinderella
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance. ~John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 1851
Beauty is the promise of happiness. ~Stendhal
One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be see many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will. ~Rachel Carson
Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. ~Walt Whitman
Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
Beauty... is the shadow of God on the universe. ~Gabriela Mistral, Desolacíon
Beauty... when you look into a woman's eyes and see what is in her heart. ~Nate Dircks
You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. But if you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your soul's own doing. ~Marie Stopes
Beauty - in projection and perceiving - is 99.9% attitude. ~Grey Livingston
I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want - an adorable pancreas? ~Jean Kerr, The Snake Has All the Lines
Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked. ~Saint Augustine
Taking joy in living is a woman's best cosmetic. ~Rosalind Russell
I hope you have lost your good looks, for while they last any fool can adore you, and the adoration of fools is bad for the soul. No, give me a ruined complexion and a lost figure and sixteen chins on a farmyard of Crow's feet and an obvious wig. Then you shall see me coming out strong. ~George Bernard Shaw, to Mrs. Patrick Campbell
Beauty isn't worth thinking about; what's important is your mind. You don't want a fifty-dollar haircut on a fifty-cent head. ~Garrison Keillor
RAINBOW
One more thought - I recently sent you a short recording by email ("Violet Shrine") that is a setting of several of my verses - they are intertwined & unravel as the piece progresses (reflecting the lyric "there is no twisted mystery that cannot be unraveled!")
Once it has wound down I conclude the piece with a short excerpt of my lover singing a line from a healing Tibetan Sanskrit mantra, for untangling twisted mysteries is my business (after all it is the men/the masculine principle that made the mess & thus must untangle it) while the feminine principle is that which will remain when the knots are untangled, so in the recording she plays the part of the eternal feminine unleashed, healing the bleeding rope burns* on our collective etheric presence.
I am not being sexist, we all contain male & female principles to differing degrees, and while there is a tendency for Men to be more red-focussed & women to be more green - one vibration "better" or "worse" or another (remove the energy source from the machine and the machine stops, remove the grist from the mill & we shall go hungry).
However - it might be more accurate & mystically correct to describe the current era of so-called PROGRESS as being dominated by the RED! vibration ...
[RED, the raw sexual/creative root emanation from which all others emerge, the emanation that cries alone in the wilderness "I AM! I AM HE THAT IS!". I AM is selfish like a baby (yes &, beautiful & innocent like a baby too) - but unless this baby is nurtured, upgraded - it evolves in isolation from the Creation & in conflict with its Creator (it is at war with itself, for the creator IS the creation, and I AM but one facet of the creation]
... & to describe the coming era of PROCESS as being characterised by the awareness of the whole Rainbow
[including the Green emanation, which endlessly weaves the marvels of creation from the deeper energies (I prefer 'deeper' to 'lower') via the harmonious union of apparently binary opposites]
**Note on the "bleeding rope burns": -
The scars of time? I have seen them! - what a beautiful sight! I love them & I long for the day when we can all rejoice in them! - for I have glimpsed the world around the corner...
Today, when I look upon the body of Mankind? - I see no scars, only open wounds. On the day Humanity reaches maturity? - on that day the baggage, that we have borne like a cross - it will not be taken from us at the Gates of Eden - it is our perspective that will be altered, raised, the burden of HIS story revealed to be our experience, the learning that makes us wise.
So - should we hide our scars, cover them with make-up, try to forget them? No, we must wear them with pride. The scar on my hand serves to remind me of the pain of touching a heated iron as a child - I have never touched an iron again.
The Holocaust is still a bleeding wound.
"Out of a gap
A million soldiers run, Redcoats, every one" [Plath].
When the soldiers join together, when the wound is left alone & the blood allowed to congeal - then WWII will be amongst the most beautiful scars of all!
So- should we strive to ignore WWII, forget the most shameful & ignorant events we engineered, cover them over with cheap slap? Of course not! - then all of our suffering will have been in vain - today we enact these terrible dramas on the stage of the world, but the only way we can collectively learn is from our mistakes, &; the worse our mistakes the wiser we have the potential to become.
If I traveled back in time & killed Hitler? What lessons would the West have failed to learn? .. ?
Yes, as a whole (within the strait-jacket of the competitive, consumerist, capitalist ethos) we still behave like total shits - but without WWII we would have no reason not to behave like Hitler. Indeed, if Hitler didn't exist we would have had to invent him. Which we did.
Yes, we are slow learners - but imagine George Dubya Bush a few years back if there had been no Hitler - we rightly criticise him for having turned a terrorist incident into a "war" (exactly what the perpetrators wanted) - and the result for Muslims living in Western countries has been that they are treated like the enemy, perpetuating & escalating the endless cycles of hatred & violence. Yet Bush has stopped short of Gas Chambers. Aberrations such as Guantanamo indicate that the will is still there, but that Western culture has evolved to the point where genocide is almost considered unacceptable.
There is a long way to go. Not all progress is imaginary, yet not every step is forward. Sometimes a step backwards precedes a leap that bridges a gap.
**
[The following collection of writings are from an email to my sister dated 24/09/09]
Dear Sister,
I have begun to put my writing into an historical literary perspective, giving an insight into how I think (or rather I how we think). I am writing this introduction retrospectively,
In form, though, I choose not to offer an exposition- rather, I have collected here a series of fragments. These are not new thoughts. Yet - it is always as if this thought was as fresh as valley dew.
These reflections are not yesterday's dewdrops- my words, like the dew, are as old as the hills. & when this blanket of tiny, shimmering diamonds refracts the sky, & you catch that web of light in the vessel of your eye? - it is always as if it were the first time, as it were at first.
I AM The Prism at The Beginning of Time,
I AM The Light that shines through it.
I AM the raindrops at the beginning of the rainbow,
I AM the sunlight that shines through the rain.
I AM The ONE, broke The Pure White Light’s Heart,
Mirror-like, it shattered, love and will torn apart,
Me, February 2009
Man, the sub-creator, the refracted light
Through whom is splintered from a single White
To many hues, and endlessly combined
In living shapes that move from mind to mind
Tolkien, ‘Mythopoeia’
You come to me with tears and blame, I’m your future,
Ask tomorrow, I am the end.
David Bowie, Telling Lies, 1997
Civilisation is on the brink of collapse,
within twenty years we will know the future.
I am Evil. I am Time.
Me, 1989
Good is the passive that obeys reason.
Evil is the active springing from energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.
Energy is Eternal Delight.
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven & Hell
The following quote was top of the list on Google when I typed in "2012 heaven and hell" -
"Not to be outdone, there is a third set of believers in 2012 who actually look forward to both Heaven and Hell happening together, that the coming spectrum of disasters and the sudden advent of spiritual enlightenment are somehow dependent on one another." http://www.religioustolerance.org/jochmans01.htm
Compare the above quotes with what I wrote the below in 1989, aged 15 -
Bet he fancied himself for the "Mr Boring 2012 Award". Well, he's got no chance now! It's mine, mine, mine! Me, me, me! I want it, I want it, I want it! ...
Blow us up! Humans are too irresponsible! Blow us up... KAPOOM.. end of life as we know it.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Heaven is being closed due to overcrowding, will all tenants please report to Limbo to be relocated in HELL.
“Oh, Great! Hells much more fun than stuffy old 'pray to God' Heaven!’
Me, 1989, The Horrible and Harrowing Fading in and Out of The Helter-skelter Hedonist
“The unveiling of the company of heaven.
Every man and every woman is a star”
Aleister Crowley, The Book of The Law
All the world is ACTually a stage and YOU are THE STAR!
It’s not WORK, it’s a PLAY! And the time to ACT is NOW!
All the world is ACTually a PLAY and the next ACT is even better!
I can’t wait for the next STAGE!
THIS, the TRUTH, & THESE, the LIES,
THIS, the POETRY, & THE PAIN INSIDE,
The Cryptic Crossword in The Cosmic Rag is solved:
Who are THE ARTS about?
THE STAR.
And who is THE STAR?
YOU are THE STAR.
And who are YOU?
YOU are THE SUN.
And who is THE SUN?
YOU are THE SON.
THE ARTS, THE STAR, THE SON, THE SUN:
ALL ONE!
When you look forwards - you see where you are going.
When you look behind you - you see where you have been.
When you look out ‘The World’ you see is not an illusion – it is the caused.
When you look within, that which you see is not an illusion – it is the cause.
Me, 2008
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves,
and looking backward they beheld the Elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined
Tolkien, ‘Mythopoeia’
“What they're doing is making objects with their voices, singing structures into existence.”
Terence McKenna on “Self-transforming machine elves”
“imagine the archetypal uber-meta-story as an invisible loom which we illuminate with words – without the specific threads of words we weave we cannot see the looms at all, but our choice of colours and stitch are merely transient decorations, patterns that play upon the surface of that which I AM.” Me, ‘The Secret Poetry of The Cosmic Joke’, 2008
“I AM The Looms of time, and men’s lives are the threads of the tapestry of HIS story, MY story - the story of all men. And as such – HIS story is MY story, and is the highest expression of that which I AM; just as I AM Mankind’s highest expression - for his Genius is mine, and mine his.”
Me, 'Beyond Truth and Fiction, or The Book of Fictions’, 2009
Bible quote and commentary from The Catholic Catechism-
"I Am who I Am"
Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you', and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you'. . . this is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations."10
206 In revealing his mysterious name, YHWH ("I AM HE WHO IS", "I AM WHO AM" or "I AM WHO I AM"), God says who he is and by what name he is to be called. This divine name is mysterious just as God is mystery. It is at once a name revealed and something like the refusal of a name, and hence it better expresses God as what he is - infinitely above everything that we can understand or say: he is the "hidden God", his name is ineffable, and he is the God who makes himself close to men.11
Where is the difference between all these religions? There is no real difference in philosophy, upon inspection the apparent differences are superficial, aesthetic - the real difference is in which Men have power over you, not which God - there is only one God, that which I AM.
That a hair's breadth seperates you - this is obvious. That you share a common source, a common cause - this much is clear. Your spirituality? This IS your relationship with your common source, thus that which separates you is not the source (though this, too, comes from thence and returns there). Yet that which binds us and unites us? This IS The Source, this is of The One Whole Spirit. Of this the mystics of each and every tribe agree. Then who is it that sets us up with fear and shame, to swindle, pilliage, condemn and maim?
It is The Devil, to be sure - Beelzebub, Lucifer - yet The Devil only lives in the hearts of men, for he IS Adam after the fall - Humankind, the sons and daughters of The Divine, The Bringers of Light. Within your secular sacred heart - you know whether you are a light worker - or whether your holy task is to to perpetuate this dark.
Soldiers, lay down your arms, violence only begets violence. I know this is the very hardest thing to do when the blood of your loved ones is fresh, but there is no other way to heal yourself, Man, Mankind, there is no other way to heal the ancient harboured grudges, but to forgive the freshest wounds. This is The Holy War – the war that is fought upon hate in ourselves and is won by Love. This is the Whole War. There are no ‘Muslims’, no ‘Christians’, no ‘Jews’ - there are only Holy men, and those that aim for wholeness - and neither state of being is better than the other - though for some the road is simple, for others the road is hard. The harder the road the greater the potential for heroic deeds, acts that free your great-great-grand childrenfrom the ancient cycles of hatred and violence. It is braver to run or hide than perpetuate this cycle. When we avange the wrongs done to our own? We call it 'justice' - yet the sword that strikes this blow? It may as well be thrust straight through the skin and bones that holds the heart within our own children's children's chests.
Why anyone continues to conflate the authority of Jesus with that of the canon authorised at The Synod of Hippo is beyond me. Absolute truth cannot be arrived at by committee - whereas absolute lies can be perpetuated by concencus.
The Gospel of John says "you do not need any man to teach you...the same anointing teaches you all things and is truth...you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things...Beloved, now we are the sons of God. He who keeps his commands dwells in him, and he in him. And we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us." So, surely, the contemplations of any 'righteous' man should be 'true' (if 'true' is a meaningful term) and worthy of our consideration? It is in this sense that we might regard all virtuous beings as prophets, as they themselves, and what they produce, are all expressions of an Immanent God that dwells both within them, and that they, equally, dwell within. Are not all stories allegories, parables, timeless riddles, that are as much mirrors on ourselves as they are reflections of the topics they ostensibly explore?
It is not the sacred texts, nor the holy men, in truth, that betray us - is it the dogma, then, that sets men up against each other, and the church's walls that divide brothers?
If an organisation becomes created for this [spiritual] purpose it becomes a
crutch, a weakness, a bondage, and must cripple an individual and prevent him
from growing, from establishing his uniqueness, which lies in the discovery for
himself of that absolute, unconditional truth. Krishnamurthi
We are all prophets, and both mankind's most ancient noumenous expressions, and the musings, fictions and machinations of this apparently Godless age are, collectively, the most diverse and beautiful, spiritual canon in this or any other universe. The Life of Man, in its entirety - let us not waste any of it, then none of our suffering will have been in vain
Jester, 2009
And he who beholds all beings in the Self,and the Self in all beings, he never turns away from itIsavasaya UpanishadHe sees himself in the heart of all beings and all beings in his heart.This is the vision of the Yogi of harmony, a vision which is ever one.And when he sees me in all things and all things in me,Then I never leave him and he never leaves me.Bhagavad Gita
"According to Big Bang theory, the matter that make up you, me and everything in the universe was once condensed into a singularity and burst into existence at the same moment. The theory of quantum entanglement says that two electrons created together become forever entangled and that what affects one will instantly affect the other. This could mean we are all ‘entangled’ at a quantum level and that we are all on consciousness and ‘space’ is just an illusion." The Metro, 2009
In one strange dream..
In one strange dream I saw you cry,
know I know I wonder why,
And when I ask you, ‘what is wrong?’
you ask me, ‘what is right?’,
‘Fore I can answer I’m swept along
by these words that you recite:
“Its as though all life on Earth
had only just begun,
It’s as though a myriad of lights
combined to make just one,
It’s as though I’ve been passing through
A thousand million places -
Behold! I will corrupt your seed
and spread dung upon your faces”
In one strange dream I saw you cry,
what is it that you need?
‘Fore I could e’en wonder why,
you began to read:
“I want to know,
I want to see,
Everything,
Nothing.
I want to have,
I want to be,
Everything,
Nothing.
But all I know and all I see,
And all I have and have to be,
Someone,
Something.
Only occasionally, in strange dreams,
Do I witness these extremes,
In which I am all and all is me,
In which I’m not here and I can see,
That I am dead and I am free,
So I can have and I can be,
Everything,
Nothing.
So I can know and I can see,
Everything,
Nothing."
Josh, 1988, aged 14
know I know I wonder why,
And when I ask you, ‘what is wrong?’
you ask me, ‘what is right?’,
‘Fore I can answer I’m swept along
by these words that you recite:
“Its as though all life on Earth
had only just begun,
It’s as though a myriad of lights
combined to make just one,
It’s as though I’ve been passing through
A thousand million places -
Behold! I will corrupt your seed
and spread dung upon your faces”
In one strange dream I saw you cry,
what is it that you need?
‘Fore I could e’en wonder why,
you began to read:
“I want to know,
I want to see,
Everything,
Nothing.
I want to have,
I want to be,
Everything,
Nothing.
But all I know and all I see,
And all I have and have to be,
Someone,
Something.
Only occasionally, in strange dreams,
Do I witness these extremes,
In which I am all and all is me,
In which I’m not here and I can see,
That I am dead and I am free,
So I can have and I can be,
Everything,
Nothing.
So I can know and I can see,
Everything,
Nothing."
Josh, 1988, aged 14
'I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in everything, and as I was then persuaded, and remain confirm'd, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote. William Blake' ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’
These fragments of writing - both my own & those of our forefathers (& moremothers!) - in essence, surmise the nature of the 'insanity', the fever that rocked my world & those around me from 2008 onwards.
Why would I continue to choose to express them over & over again
Josh
x
2012 & ALL THAT
I'd like to clarify - I speak a lot about 2012, but know nothing about the Mayan prophecies. Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell is giving one of the Faraday lectures, "The end of the world in 2012? Science communication and science scares", and begun summarising the origins of the prophesies when speaking on a program on Radio 4 - I went and made coffee.
I'd like to clarify - I speak a lot about 2012, but know nothing about the Mayan prophecies. Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell is giving one of the Faraday lectures, "The end of the world in 2012? Science communication and science scares", and begun summarising the origins of the prophesies when speaking on a program on Radio 4 - I went and made coffee.
I was more interested in what was said on my return (with my cup of coffee) - that was more my my area of interest - why people want to believe in the End of the World. I am interested in psychology.
As an artist growing up I was fascinated with attempting to make the unconscious conscious, to cast light into the darkness, to make that which is unseen seen. I decided to take LSD when I was 14 (though didn't go there until I was 16), I wrote poems with titles like "The Desire for Madness", and a lyric -
"Daniel J [Daniel Johnston, schizophrenic singer] has demons in his head,
I don't have no demons in my head - they must be invisible!"
Its inelegant verse, but it sums up my feeling at that time - that I had glimpsed behind the veil of illusion and I wished to pull back the curtains and let the sunlight into the darkness.
"I for one believe that insanity (in the strictest sense) is something that is unavoidable if one is to be an artist - pure and simple. But the flip side to that is - as in all nature, there is an inverse to everything - the same thing could be ........an absolute sanity" Niall Richardson, 2008
My closest artistic contemporary and best friend sent me the above when I was most psychotic myself on 2008, reaffirming the validity of the journey I felt I was on - I was having a genuinely psychotic episode, triggered by excessive Ketamin use, very close to the schizophrenic experience, or what I understand of it. I was determined to see it through to the end, a dangerous experiment for which I sacrificed everything else, and all to often - for the schizophrenic - there is no return journey.
I was aware of all this, but I was convinced that any deviation from the pathless path that I had to follow would result in my becoming permanently lost, so I followed it without deviation, and after a year I was released - somewhat broken and shell-shocked, but with my critical reasoning in tact and the veil restored (no more voices, channelled writing or visions).
I was aware of all this, but I was convinced that any deviation from the pathless path that I had to follow would result in my becoming permanently lost, so I followed it without deviation, and after a year I was released - somewhat broken and shell-shocked, but with my critical reasoning in tact and the veil restored (no more voices, channelled writing or visions).
As a teenager years before, in my search for the unconscious, I also went for days without sleep & reflected on my dreams and their allegorical meaning.
When I was 10 or 11 I dreampt that I was walking through Pitshanger Park on a sunny day in Ealing, on my way home. A thickening crowd of people began hurriedly walking by in the other direction. As this river of people thickened in density and pace I was drawn into it and what they were saying - that the bomb was about to be dropped and that there were a number of planes waiting to take us to safety in a hangar - and that was where they were going. We reached the hangar and waited, a vast dirty brown warehouse full of people in the grip of a rising panic. I was there for several hours but no plane came, so eventually I walked back home through the park - no bomb. On the way I spoke to a passer-by, who knew about the people and the hangar and explained that the people were a cult and that there was no truth in their prediction of the bomb and that they didn't even have any aeroplanes.
I was reminded of this dream when listening to the afore-mentioned show on Radio 4, they mentioned a cult who believed the end of the world was coming and that UFOs were going to take them away on a certain date, and were obviously rather disappointed when no UFOs came. Similar to the suicide cult who believed the same thing, but that only their souls could join the mothership, so all killed themselves at the same time. [note to self - research for names]
The allegorical meaning I took most to heart from this dream is that the direction taken by the majority is not necessarily the right direction
collective unconscious
interest in insani8ty
daniel j
psychomimetics
radio 4
The end of the world in 2012? Science communication and science scares
Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell DBE FRS, University of Oxford
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