Thus Spake the Jester - the thoughts of Josh Steed

FUNERAL SONG

2011-10-09T14:51:00.000-07:00

THE SEARCHER STEPS OFF INTO THE ABYSS

2011-10-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

It does not matter what path you take.
For if in your heart you know it is your path?
There is only one destination.

"Where are we going?
Home, always home"
Novalis

MUSINGS -- IS IT ALWAYS WRONG TO WANT TO CHANGE SOMEBODY?

2011-04-25T22:37:00.000-07:00

To every lover I have always said
& they have always said to me -
"It is always wrong to want to change somebody
you must accept me as I am"

But now it occurs to me? -
Do I want to be accepted as I am? Yes, I do, I do,
As much as I want to be different, to be unbroken, to be healed,
I need you not to want to change me - only then can I change myself

...for if I am beautiful in your mirror, baby,
in the mirror of your eyes...

I will see that I am good -
Only then can I be healed.
I can see that you are good -
Do you really see this in me?

Is it possible for us not to change each other
If we can accept each other as we are?
Will I not change into someone who is not lonely?
Will you not change into someone who is not alone?

You will change into someone loved, this cannot be helped
I will change into someone who loves,
Someone who feels loved,
Someone who can say "I love you",
Someone who can love,
For whom love no longer hurts

I would change into someone loved, this cannot be helped

You would change into someone who loves,

Someone who feels loved,

Someone who can say "I love you",

Someone who can love, for whom love no longer hurts

I want to change into someone who is not ashamed,
It is always wrong to want to change somebody,
For change must always come from within
Therein lies the paradox

x

LEONARD COHEN AND JUDY COLLINS SING "SUZANNE"

2011-04-06T20:48:00.000-07:00

I couldn't sleep tonight, so I continued my quest to listen to everything ever recorded by Leonard Cohen. I was rather struck by this duet with Judy Collins that I unearthed on Youtube -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGGSo530bdA

Fool that I am - instead of maximising Leonard-Cohen-listening-time I turned my eye to the comments that had been posted, and as always I had to have my say - mouthy little shit that I am.

But how could I resist disabusing "e61807" from the notion that he wrote Suzanne - he can't even spell Suzzane [stet]! ...

* * *

e61807, 8 months ago...

This song was actually written in 1967 as a poem, then aquired by Cohen from a ghost writer. One of the songs that inspired Cohen to start singing. This song was first writen [stet] by James C. Ronning (See "Story of a Ghost Writer") and sent to Leonard Cohen to find an artist to record it. Leonard bought the rights which legally means he "wrote it". He added the last few words himself. [Neil!] Diamond sung the song with it ending with ...."and Suzzane [stet] looked in her mirror....." thus leaving a completely different slant. My origninal [stet] did not have the last words and Diamond sung it that way. I still got the contract. Listen to" Lady Magdalene" by Diamond.

jestertick, today...

Dear e61807 - it is absurd to claim that Suzanne was written in 1967 by James C Ronning, because Cohen published the lyrics as a poem in his 1966 book "Parasites of Heaven". Even if you had the dates wrong I cannot think of any other authors who could have written these words, they fit perfectly into his coded cosmology, only he possessed the cypher. I am afraid you have been duped or you are insane. Take your pick.

* * *

sweetgypsywife, 2 months ago...

I believe this song is about Suzanne Verdal, who made more of an impression on Leonard than she realised at the time. Judy Collins saw the potential of the song and recorded it herself. She encouraged Leonard to record this song. He also sold the rights to it....

TheBlindPig, 12 months ago...

sweetgypsywife, Please for gods sake and mine explain your prosaic interpretation of suzanne, just a little. When Cohen say's "The sky would open" do you interpret this as the sky in a masculine or feminine role, either to pour fourth(open - Rain) OR open recieve christ. Do you think the sky the limit and death?"O rivers mingling toward the sky" water mans chained freedom? If you think Cohen is a beefcake who uses cool words like fire and christ and razor and snow, ignore. You want to travel blind", The bottom of the sea is cruel, which is where the lovers search and rest. Perhaps its better to listen and anyway "We see through the eye not with ". Love makes the flowers grow, it is the only force consistent with vision, although this growth is only reaching. Is wisdom a stone? Knowleage like Suzanne, takes us down. "And so it was I entered the broken world To trace the visionary company of love" Counter - part of the stern above water. salvation - salvage.

jestertick, today...

Cohen seamlessly juxtaposes the microcosmic & macrocosmic relationships between the individual & their other - he reveals the man/woman mystery & the I/thou relationship with God as different aspects of one thing. In his poetry he adopts the practice of omitting the "o" from God, reminding the reader that G-d is beyond naming, and also misses the "e" from s-x. The goal of being is to realise we are not two fish swimming in opposite directions - we are the Sea.

* * *

lenahjonsson, 10 months ago...

Never trust "a stranger".... (It's you my love, it's you who are the stranger....)

jestertick, today...

Cohen thinks hes the voice of one crying alone in the wilderness - but if 'the kingdom of heaven is within' us? Then all men will be sailors. Cohen performed in sackcloth, referencing Revelations - "I will give power unto my 2 witnesses & they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred & threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the 2 olive trees & the 2 candlesticks standing before the God of the earth". It is insane not to have a messiah complex, we are One.

* * *

TerrySleeper, 5 months ago...

He's not a patch on Bob Dylan, and he admitted as much when he described Dylan as "The Picasso of song." QED.

jestertick, today...

If Dylan is the Picasso of song? Cohen is Michelangelo.

* * *

THE ALL AND THE EVERYTHING

2011-03-22T16:33:00.000-07:00

Last year I posted the following sacred geometrical diagrams (and a brief cryptic clue as to their interpretation) to Facebook , by way of an esoteric riddle.

The single respondent made some very informed and elegantly phrased observations, with which I concur entirely.

I further expanded upon these themes in response, illustrating these points with quotes from The Dao De Ching and the writings of William Blake and Aleister Crowley, partly for context, but mainly because they are not my ideas - they are as old as time.

I have copied this conversation in its entirety below - if you should stumble upon this page I hope you might find some of what is said thought provoking. Of course - it is not intended to be taken as gospel, for it is but words and pictures, a shadow play, it is not what it describes, though it is of it.

The Cherubim of Ezekiel before & after the Reversal. The Seal is broken & that which is unseen becomes seen. The Seal of David & Solomon is the seal of a broken heart, 2 trinities suspended in opposition. When these 2 trinities unite, in the universal hexagram, they are now the same, they are One - the Seal of the Federation.

Before the Reversal? What was unseen?

After the reversal? Where is he who endures until the end?

*

Please comment, I am very interested to know how much of this is understood. This information is concerning the transition to a higher illusion.

http://www.jester.me.uk/

November 22, 2010 · ·

Dana Ba Nana and Rodrigo Mendoza like this.
- Intergalactic Research Institute
  The Universe is without hierarchy, or system, no ranks or levels; no united councli overlooking everything..there is no time, nor is there space, any 'Starfleet Command' is just a projection of human hopes and is pure fantasy and limitation.
  
  It's funny to see the seal of the 'starfleet command'; it's an adaptation of the Star Trek badge.
  
  There is no hierarchical structure to the Universe, to Consciousness; it just IS. There is no highly humanized 'divine master' overlooking it.
  
  Any system can be projected upon the vast potential that is the single consciousness which IS the Universe.
  
  By associating ourselves with the 'highest' self-awareness, we will understand that there is but a single 'beingness', in a timeless eternity of self-reflection. Inside all of us, this consciousness is everything we are. All we are. The Universe is One. We are that 'highest' Self.
  
  The illusion, the dream, is a self-perpetuating attempt to un-know the fact that this being, this consciousness, this YOU, this ME, is alone, eternally, fully aware of it's loneliness. That is oneness.
  The transistion is happening at any possible moment; there is only the NOW. And it is YOU. Alone, unbroken, ALL-ONE.
  
  The trick is acceptance of Self, Love of the Self.
  
  Let's face it, you, me, we are all trying to forget that we are this single being. Ascension, transcendence, is merely accepting this and Loving it, as it is inescapable.
  
  Dervish Mad Whirler. (A projection of your fragmented reflection of Self)
  November 24, 2010 at 11:46am · · 1 person
- Intergalactic Research Institute
  ‎... but within this vastness of ONE eternal consciousness, there is time and space, there are hierarchies and structures... It's not just chaos (there is a hierarchy in the way the humans live on Earth, internet is a structure, so is the solar system, the flower of life ~ sacred geometry is a beautiful form of structure, I recently heard of hierarchies of infinities, etc etc...). We are experiencing these in these dimensions, even if only in our consciousness... Fantasy isn't limitation, it's a creative life-force...
  I like the starfleet badge, though I don't really understand the rest... please explain a bit more.
  
  In Lak'ech ♥ Dana Banana
  December 10, 2010 at 10:53am ·
- Josh Steed We are the many manifestations of the One - we are its projection and its highest expression.
  
  "God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is" [William Blake].
  
  "The Many is as adorable to the One as the One is to the Many" [Aleister Crowley].
  
  The bottom diagram shows the Seal of Solomon, the upwards pointing triangle representing what man sees, the world in which he is the arrogant king, the individual, while in the upper diagram everything is illuminated.
  
  The downwards pointing triangle of the Seal of Solomon represents that which is unseen, that which is hidden from man, that which we most fear - yet that which we most fear is love.
  
  The Seal is two triangles pointing in opposite directions - Leonard Cohen fantasises about "the order of the unified heart" and draws the seal as two interlocking hearts, in this way we make our dreams self-fulfilling prophesies.
  
  The diagram to the top right I designed to represent an alternative to the divided seal - a six pointed star, but drawn with one rather than two lines, uniting seen and unseen worlds, a symbol of the return to 'Eden', as it was before the knowledge of good and as it will be beyond good and evil.
  
  Sadly for my pathetic ego I discovered that I was not the first to employ this geometric metaphorical solution to that which divides men - it had already been anti-christened "The Universal Hexagram" by Aleister Crowley before I was even born.
  22 minutes ago ·
- Josh Steed As for the reality or otherwise of "Starfleet Command"? - some say that all is illusion, that we are but thoughts of the One, merely ripples upon the surface of the ocean.
  
  I say "that which is before good and evil is beyond truth and fiction" - we are but ripples upon the surface of the great thought, and our fantasies are but ripples upon those ripples. Can those who are merely projections judge whether that which they project themselves is entirely fantastic or reflects (in a metaphorical way that they can understand) a deeper reality?
  
  Beneath the different names and metaphorical constructs there is a remarkable level of consistency to the collective dream as expressed through our fantasies. It is to be expected that we should not agree on the names we use to describe "that which is beyond names".
  
  Let us reflect a moment upon the opening chapters of the Dao De Ching -
  
  "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.
  The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
  The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth.
  The named is the mother of myriad things.
  Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence. Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations.
  These two emerge together but differ in name.
  The unity is said to be the mystery.
  Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders.
  When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises.
  When it knows good as good, evil arises.
  Thus being and non-being produce each other".
  
  I will leave you with a quote by William Blake, written 100 years before the first English translation of the Dao De Ching, echoing the ancient sentiments above regarding the observation of "essence" and "manifestation" (phenomena/noumena) -
  
  “He who sees the infinite in all things, sees God. He who sees the ratio only, sees himself only.” x
  a few seconds ago ·

INDECENT EXPOSURE

2011-02-20T19:31:00.000-08:00

Just discovered this lost ramble in my draft folder - thought I'd publish it, what it lacks in structure it (arguably) makes up for in passion! ...

I find people who are offended by the sight of the human body deeply offensive.

This is a gut reaction, perhaps it is unreasonable of me to feel this way - after all, the covering of the body is generally held to be a symbol of shame, & Mankind has plenty to be ashamed about- war, ethnic cleansing, greed, the rape of the planet, putting cats in wheelie-bins - the list goes on and on. Even if you're a politically active pacifist who recycles - it is clearly perfectly reasonable to harbour a sense of collective guilt at our species' seemingly limitless capacity for utterly appalling behaviour. If I was to attend an intergalactic conference I would most certainly wear a Burkha - it is embarrassing being a Human Being (am I just paranoid, or are the other extra-terrestrial delegates whispering behind my back & sniggering, just as we laugh when a bear covers his eyes with his paws, "poor simple, deluded creature - he thinks we cannot see him!")

Yes, we have much to be ashamed of, it is no wonder we spend our lives devising more and more ingenious distractions. But if we sedate ourselves, if we choose to forget, then we will have learnt nothing, & if we have learnt nothing then we will make the same mistakes again, again, again & again.

Yes, it is easy to forget - but if each of us, as individuals, should choose to forget - then society forgets, for society has no memory outside of existing beings of men. We must remember - not to make our lives easier, but so that we can collectively learn from our mistakes, rather than repeating the mistakes of the past, the mistakes that we find so hard to face (reminds me of the vampires in the TV series 'Being Human', who have to keep killing people & drinking their blood, or they start to remember all the people they've killed and the suffering they have caused)

We should neither forget the Holocaust, nor should we deny it - no, we must strive to understand it. Consider this - it is comforting to tell ourselves that we wouldn't collaborate with the Nazis, because we are better than them. How many times have you heard words to that effect? It is understandable if you have thought it yourself. In what way might we be better than them? Its simple, everybody knows - we are better than them because they think "we are better than them" and we don't think "we are better than them".

In the twentieth century Hitler became a political activist - his ideas were wrong, and terrible atrocities were perpetrated by him - but was he, himself, 'evil'? Or was he just doing what he thought was right? When we watch a film about Aliens who think they are better than us we are happy when the heroes defeat them. The less enlightened Jews of today still think they are the 'chosen people', a philosophy of hate entrenched in their scripture in a less enlightened age, a perfectly reasonable reaction to their persecution in a more primitive age. Hitler should have known better than to adopt this philosophy himself, but while he was a brave and passionate man he lacked wisdom. Hear the words of Martin-luther King Jr -

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

"Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it."

If Hitler had this wisdom? Then there would have been no Holocaust, no WWII. We have had the experience of WWII and the Holocaust, and still we appear to be having tremendous difficulty collectively assimilating the obvious lessons these horrific, shameful events should have taught us - so it is patently obvious that without these experiences to learn from we would stand no chance whatsoever of collectively evolving to a point where such things could never happen again. If we can learn the lessons of time? Then WWII and the holocaust could be the best thing that ever happened to Mankind, & the terrible would not have been in vain. If we cannot learn? Then we are doomed,

Everyone has heard this phrase, but I think few understand it -

SEE NO EVIL HEAR NO EVIL SPEAK NO EVIL

Hate is an affliction, a disease - those who suffer from it are to be pitied. Feel sorry for them, they are filled with the cancer of Hate - how terrible for them. The disease of Hate burns inside them & consumes them, it is a pain inside, a fever that drives them to do unspeakable things. When we have a pain it is telling us something is wrong with our body, & so we take appropriate action. If there is a thorn in our side? We remove it. If we have a cold? We take a remedy to relieve the symptoms - as there is no known cure for the common cold.

Imagine your family is killed by people infected with hate. Sadly, some people reading this might not need to imagine this. Feel the terrible pain of your loss. What can be done about it? What is the cure for this pain inside? Without the benefit of scientific insight it is as natural as assuming the Earth to be flat to perceive the perpetrators of the atrocity to be the sickness itself, for hate is a contagious disease, and it is spread by anger. If you have become infected with hate the likelihood is that you will do something equally despicable in vengeance - and thus the endless cycle of escalating atrocities continues. You may have removed the thorn, but today's fresh wounds will become the festering, infected cancerous buboes that will disfigure your children's children's children.

But their actions and your reactions are the symptoms of this disease - the disease of hate is spread by its inappropriate treatment. In the past ailments were treated with leeches, mercury, blood-letting - all manner of useless & often counter-productive measures. We no longer use these treatments as they have been proved ineffective.

If only we could find a physician with a cure for hate! There was, once, a maverick doctor who proposed a radical cure, but he was widely misunderstood - his ideas were too advanced for the time.

"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you" Luke 6:27-37

I never thought I'd say this, but I think Maggie Thatcher was right when she said this -

"There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate."

If we can truly penetrate & internalise the lessons of time? Treat the past as a valuable & incomparably powerful lesson & it will become our greatest asset, our teacher - for every life cut short countless will be saved, lives lived to the full in a brighter world. Ignore that ol' teacher Time? I guarantee you, should we persist in striving to prove that we are better than them - then we'll prove just one thing, to no-one - that we were an irredeemably brutal & selfish species, hellbent on pursuing endlessly repeating cycles of escalating violence, persecution & exploitation.

Lets face it, two hundred years ago almost everybody thought "we're better than them". We're better than them because they live in huts and dance naked in the moonlight. We're better than them because we're better at killing people. We're better than them because we're better at enslaving people. We're better than them because we're better at selling things. We're better than them because our holy books are more accurate and yours are perverted (who gives a flying fuck what it says in your fucking scripture, it could say 'THOU SHALT NOT KILL' and you'd probably ignore it, actions speak much louder than words).

It doesn't fucking matter what country your great-great-grandparents were born in or what colour you are, for crying out loud - we're a dysfunctional family, I'll grant you that - but we're all fucking related. Nor does it matter what pet name you have for G-d, its just a word, a grunt, some squiggles on paper you've agreed amongst yourselves indicate something inexplicable that you've felt in your hearts, something utterly beyond naming -yes, you gotta have a word for it - but as soon as you think your word is summat special you're worshipping a Golden Calf.

We're better than them because.. because.. because we fucking are, alright?

If there is one lesson that time should have taught us by now - when you say "I'm better than you" then whoever you say it to will resent it, and try and prove they are better than you are at the first opportunity. Its playground politics.

Pride is not a sin, to be proud to be part of this magnificent universe is natural - be proud to be a part of the glorious Nature of things! Be proud to be an animal! Pride is not a sin. So why is it so hard to be proud to be a human being? We feel pain for a reason, to tell us there is a thorn in our side, so that we can remove it. We are right to be ashamed to be human at the intergalactic conference, this shame is a pain, a pain telling us that there is something wrong. What is this thorn that needs to be removed? Its name is 'hate'. It is not a sin to be proud of your people - but there is no call for this pride to make you think 'we are better than them', your pride in who you are is a qualitative pride, not a quantitative one.

Is it just human nature, or is there the potential for change? Look at the past couple of hundred years, change is not just possible, it is inevitable. We are evolving, collectively. The rising values of 'tolerance, diversity & equality' are platitudes, but they are cornerstones of the global paradigm shift that is occurring. In Britain they are rightly enshrined in all the mission statements of public sector organisations. To me it seems one word is missing, one word that could replace them all - love.

SOLDIER SPEAKS UP - NICE ONE!!!

2010-12-16T00:58:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eWRImrxFX4&feature=player_embedded

THE LAW OF TIME

2010-12-15T06:57:00.000-08:00

I approve of the Institute for the Law of Time, and I find their birthday poem/horoscopes (13moon.com) rather charming & inspirational. I'm not a hippy myself, I'm more of a beat!

JOHN LENNON

Electric Moon day 20

Year of the Blue Cosmic Storm

kin 114: White Planetary Wizard

I Perfect in order to Enchant

Producing Receptivity

I seal the Output of Timelessness

With the Planetary tone of Manifestation

I am guided by the power of Spirit

I am a galactic activation portal enter me.

ORIGINAL SIN - FACEBOOK THREAD

2010-12-10T13:22:00.000-08:00

Core Luminous
Indeed only a child hater could come up with the myth and ideology of original sin.
45 minutes ago · · Comment

Michael Day likes this.

Howard Garrick http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11312a.htm truly unbelievable!
40 minutes ago ·

Josh Steed Thats not what I heard - I heard that Priests love children a bit too much!
38 minutes ago ·

Core Luminous Josh, Sexual Abuse is about POWER - they LIKE the POWER more than the children (and even more than the brief 'pleasure' they get)....
37 minutes ago ·

Christine Allen A common theme I noticed was that priests 'loved' a bit too much and the nuns went through stages of bitterness that appeared to increase with age.
16 minutes ago via Facebook Mobile ·

Josh Steed
I think there is a subtler psychological basis for their deviation - I suggest their desire and intentions are at the outset genuinely pointed towards achieving purity. Consider- priests are not allowed to even contemplate loving a woman, & nothing is done to alleviate their sexual frustration - yet they still have physical desires, & purity is that which is desired, so purity is desired in physical form, the form of a child. To the Priest it seems as if he is possessed by The Beast. The only Devil is the animal, the beast within himself, that he attempted to suppress without the means. "All along, the demons you ran from, you were seeing your reflection in the mirror-like white light" x

13 minutes ago ·

Christine Allen I made peace with my overwhelming desire for punch-a-nun week. Although I probably wouldn't be too keen on the brakes if I saw them crossing the road I admit.
10 minutes ago via Facebook Mobile ·

Core Luminous
Well, if you want to give them that as a get out clause, you can, but, havinbg been sexually assaulted by one, and molested by a few, my experience was they loved the power..... it had nothing to do with celibacy in and of itself, and appea...See More

8 minutes ago ·

Core Luminous And there were and ARE plenty of preists who have sexual relationships with women and produce children... and this was a 'widely known secret' within the clergy (as was the sexual,physical and other abuses perpetrated by clergy...)
3 minutes ago ·

Josh Steed The clergy put the rgy in orgy x

HAIKU

2010-12-06T11:46:00.000-08:00

Warm heart, cold toes. You smile from my desktop

Click on your nose. I smile too

J
X

LAST NIGHT'S GLITTER

2010-12-01T00:11:00.000-08:00

1998

TEA

2010-12-01T00:02:00.001-08:00

Josh Steed, 1998

Illustrations by Niall Richardson

YOU'RE SO PARA YOU PROBABLY THINK THIS POEM IS ABOUT YOU

2010-11-28T01:07:00.000-08:00

The First problem with Josh?

He feels as if hes drowning

when he has no Womb to drown in.

The Second problem with Josh?

He attracts women like You.

The Third problem with Josh?

He falls in Love with women like You.

There are no women like You.

RELATIONSHIPS

2010-11-27T21:15:00.000-08:00

Relationships are always intricate.

Intricacy is complex

& complexity is difficult to master

yet to submit to it is sublime.

UNTITLED POEM - 10.01.09

2010-11-20T21:17:00.001-08:00

Nex' time you look back thru all your past lives in an instant, baby,

Baby - don' just let it go on - baby, write it all down, me babies,

Tell the world what it is like to remember your SELF.

Oh! - the pain, the tears I 'a'cry-cry-cried

of pure liquid-acid-suffering-and-joy-and-love-and-peace-and-anger-and-fame-and-waste-and-greed-and-sex-and-faith-and-hope-and-war-and-pride-and-grief-and-shame.

Oh, the pain! Oh, the pain inside - the pain and the patience.

Ev'ry man I ever killed,

I was always a'dyin' at my own hand,

A'cuttin' of my lef' hand,

A'cuttin' off me right

Ev'ry movie I ever made,

I was always a'try-try-tryin' to a'point me to the light - too right! -

Me jelly babies, me jolly jelly babies,

My archangel babies bright

An' ev'ry war I ever fought on

It was meSELF I slaughtered!

What a plonker, not a monkey, what a waste,

White horse, white horse - you're wallpaper paste

Ev'ry bill I ever paid, I could have been makin' love instead,

Ev'ry lie I ever swallowed, I was a-lyin' to myself,

I was a lion, I was brave, I was a coward,

Shoulda gone, shoulda stayed

In the factories and the mills and in the plants and in the mines...

...in the bedroom... in the kitchen... in vietnam...

THE PAIN! THE LOVE! THE HEART INSIDE!

THE COCKS I SUCKED! THE TEARS I CRIED!

Q. Have you ever tried to watch TV on acid?

A. Welllll...

...I tried to watch TV on acid

But the TV just watch'd me,

Then the TV was on acid

And I was on TV.

CAPITALISM IS CANCER

2010-11-07T07:30:00.000-08:00

What is a cancer? A cancer is a cell, or a group of cells, displaying uncontrolled growth, beyond the normal limits.

It strikes me that, as each splinter of our amazing new technology emerges, each shard is picked up & boldly envisaged & realised by capitalist entrepreneurs - this is understandable as our culture is still deeply infected with the cancer of Capitalism.

The need for collectively owned alternatives is clear, yet these do not appear to be forthcoming, despite the ease with which they could be offered - with the proliferation of open source alternatives to the big players' services it should be all too simple.

My guess is that our open source programmers must be saving up for one big push, a simultaneous release of collectively owned alternatives, possibly in league with some of the big companies who have felt the direction the wind is blowing. A Revolution.

Thats a conspiracy theory, anyway, but it is the kind of conspiracy I like - provided any big-name 'collaborators' understand that collective ownership of the means of communication is essential. The internet is an extension of human consciousness, there cannot be 'for sale' signs in our own mind.

What is a cancer? A cancer is a cell, or a group of cells, displaying uncontrolled growth, beyond the normal limits.

This is not a metaphor, each of us is a cell in a collective mind. It is my view that this has always been the case, but that we have lost contact with this collective mindset due to the onslaught of messages to GROW GROW GROW from the cancerous cells. It is not important whether my view is correct, whether the internet is allowing us to access a lost form of collective consciousness, or whether this collective consciousness IS the internet - the fact remains that I AM.

in one strange dream...

2010-08-16T01:32:00.000-07:00

in one strange dream...

[1988, age 14]

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,
as though a myriad of lights
combined to make just one,

it’s as though I’ve been passing through
athousand million places -
Behold! I will corrupt your seed
& 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,
When I am all and all is me
then I’m not here so 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."

SILENCED

2010-08-13T03:47:00.000-07:00

silenced

dull void of sleep between the dreams

won't you swallow all my schemes

won't you let me come into

your silence

I built a boast of reeds and birch

to sail into your church

won't you let me come into

your fire

now my boats a burning bush

she softly whispers,

"...shhhhh...."

I'm silenced

*

Josh, 08/2010

3 BLIND MEN, AN ELEPHANT & THE CONVERGENCE OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

2010-07-31T04:35:00.000-07:00

What could me more different than Quantum Mechanics and The Upanishads - not!

The conflict of ideas cannot be ended by the victory of science over the mystic, the line taken by Richard Dawkins - to me he appears to be amongst the worst of the fundamentalists he attacks so vehemently.

The reality of 'that which is' is subtle enough to contain a plethora of apparently contradictory observations and manifestations, and only an idea that can reconcile and contain these apparent contradictions can be an appropriate paradigm for the new era.

To me the idea of a 'Rationalist-Empiricist' is a contradiction in terms - one cannot rationally deduce with certainty the nature of something by observing part of it, and only a fool would claim that "that which has been Empirically observed" is the totality of everything.

I am reminded of the story of three blind men - each of whom, when asked to identify an elephant, draws a different and ridiculous conclusion as to what he has observed - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

'Belief' is an irrelevance - there are only MANY different observations, different subjective experiences, and ONE reality. All contradictions can be reconciled by this almost incontestable observation, I cannot see how this cannot ultimately lead to a synthesis of human knowledge, one that that allows for the diversity of differing expressions, while breeding a culture of tolerance and understanding where previously there was conflict.

"[Robert] Zoller sees the Aquarian Age as a Dark Age wherein religion will be seen as offensive" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_aquarius

I see the Age of Aquarius as an Age of Enlightenment, where everything will be illuminated, and dogmatic 'belief' will be seen as offensive.

My intention in posting this sort piece is to make it clear that I am not a religious zealot, but something more akin to a Humanist - but a Humanist whose subjective experiences could only be explained if the Buddhist notion of everything and everyone being interconnected had its basis in a scientific reality that was yet to be understood.

It is now understood, but it has yet to be proved - I think it is worth investing millions in a giant underground particle accelerator, it is worth it if there is even only the smallest of chances that such an endeavour could prove that EVERYBODY was right all along.

In science consciousness is emerging as central to the understanding of Quantum Mechanics, the position it has long held in Eastern mysticism and Western esoteric circles - this is reflected in Philosophy in the movement called 'Phenomenology', which has largely superseded the Post-structuralist model.

I do not 'believe' anything, but whether or not the much talked about shift in human consciousness actually occurs in 2012 - I am in a position to reveal the exact nature of this prophesy, in terms that I think everyone can understand (unlike the previous paragraph!) ...

In some versions of the story of the blind men and the elephant the men are not blind, but instead the elephant is in a darkened room. Your scientists are like the blind men, feeling around in the dark and making reasonable hypothesis to explain their various subjective observations - on 21.12.2012 I AM going to turn the lights on!

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is - infinite”. William Blake

Previous experience suggests to me that it is necessary to explain that the previous claim is not an egocentric statement - 'I AM' is the name of the Old Testament G-d who revealed the Ten Commandments to Moses, it is the literal translation of YHWH (Jehovah) - this is always what I am referring to when I capitalise the words 'I AM'.

Then - why the suggestion that I, myself, am a manifestation of this meta-being? This is also intentional - from my perspective we are ALL different facets of a single immanent (all-pervading, omnipresent) consciousness - this is what I mean when I say "we're all Jesus, baby!" and what William Blake means when he says...

"God only ACTS and IS in existing beings of men"

and what Leonard Cohen means when he says...

"Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water...

& when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him, he said

'All men will be sailors, then, until the sea shall free them' "

This is at the heart of that which will be revealed when the lights are turned on.

THE FLOOD

The flood it is gathering

Soon it will move

Across every shoreline

Against every roof

The body will drown

And the soul will shake loose

I write all this down

But I don’t have the proof

Leonard Cohen

illus., The Jester, 1990

WHETHER WE REALISE IT OR NOT

2010-07-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

whether we realise it or not

we all have our own favourite words

special words & sacred words reserved

for sacred, special and favourite

moments & occasions

today my favourite words are

'favourite'

'sacred'

'special'

'moments'

'occasions'

these words are strictly reserved for

favourite

sacred

special

moments

occasions

like today

2010-07-01T13:45:00.001-07:00

Heigh-ho, Shirley, has his boat come in?

He was all lost at sea, now we have the catch & on its own that would be enough,

Yet I hear there is Buried Treasure in the net

“Really?” he says, “Buried Treasure?!? I thought it was a bomb”

ALL OF MY BEST POEMS

2010-06-30T08:17:00.000-07:00

All of my best poems

are by Leonard Cohen

Except for the one

by William Blake

They wrote them down

because they have poet's fingers

And so that I can get on with the important business

of trying to forget everything I know

A tricky business
this takes up most of my time

My mother is my teacher
I.. I... what was I saying?

All of my best poems
are by Leonard Cohen
He wrote them down
because he has a poet's fingers

Sadly, for the poet,
he forgot to give them back

ANCIENT OF DAYS - IS GOD EVIL?

2010-06-28T19:05:00.000-07:00

Its always good to see people returning to Blake's work - it was, after all, his intention to 'speak to future generations' via a 'perfected allegory', of which he did not regard himself to be the author, but only 'the secretary' [note: this post was originally a response to this excellent article: Ancient of Days]

Above: William Blake's 'Ancient of Days'

That the bearded figure depicted in 'Ancient of Days' is indeed 'Urizen' is well documented and without doubt true.

I confess - I have studied Blake, not his critics. But I can find no evidence that scholars of Blake have understood that Urizen's resemblance to depictions of the OT God Yahweh is far from coincidental.

Blake is quite explicit that Urizen IS Yahweh. Take this line, from "America: A Prophesy" -

   "The fiery joy, that Urizen perverted to ten commands"

Whether or not Yahweh/Urizen is 'the creator God' is not relevant to the study of Blake, for Blake maintains -

   "God only ACTS and IS in existing beings of men"

What is relevant is that the author of the Ten Commandments is categorically stated by Blake to be Urizen - as, in Exodus, when Moses asks ..

   "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 responds thus ..

   "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."

'I AM' means 'YHWH' - this is undisputed, and central to both Judaism and Christianity. This is explained here, in the Catholic Catechism:

   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.

Above: Illus. from William Blake's 'Milton'

In Blake's "Milton: Book the Second" there is a diagram which explains much - mankind is depicted as an egg, a being in the process of being created by the four Zoas, here represented as four interlocking circles, with the egg of man incubated at the centre (we know that the egg represents man from Blake's 'Gates of Paradise', where man is alternately represented as an egg and a chrysalis).

That part of man which emerges from the Zoa 'Urthona' is named as 'Adam', that part which emerges from Urizen is named as 'Satan', the word 'Satan' consumed in flames. Given that Urizen IS Yahweh - does Blake regard the God of the Abrahamic faiths as 'evil'?

Yes, he does. But there is no 'evil' as we understand it in Blake's cosmology -

"Good is the passive that obeys reason... Evil is the active springing from energy" (Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

Thus the flames that spring from the word 'Satan' in the aforementioned diagram are intended to be understood not as a fire consuming the lower portion of man, but as the very force that drives man's self-creation through the process of history.

* * *

Those seeking further reading on this subject might like to read this post, where I conclude that Blake's "perfected allegory" of The Four Zoas has found its most popular expression in the work of Tolkien -

The Jester Speaks - Keys to A Full Understanding of Blake

DR WHO SPOILER ??

2010-06-25T20:11:00.000-07:00

This is the sequel to my previous post, 'Dr Who Confidential' - I called it 'Dr Who Spoiler' because I think my argument about the true identity of River Song is so strong as to constitute a spoiler. I could probably find out from some geeky fan-site with a leak, but the veracity of such information is questionable - besides, if a plot-line was leaked it would not be expensive or time-consuming for the BBC to propagate an alternative incorrect suggestion. So I'll not waste my time reading such rubbish, I'll write it instead!

When I wrote part one I hadn't seen any episodes from the current series of Dr Who, apart from the ones I wrote about - so I didn't know the story that ran through the episodes concerned Dr Who being accused of causing cracks in time that were going to bring about the end of everything - being someone who harps on about the end-of-time a lot I couldn't have chosen a riper vine for analysis! Haven't quite caught up, but I saw the last five minutes of the episode where they put him in the Pandorica.

Its the Time-Traveller's-Wife rip-off series. In both stories the romantic leads meet each other when he is an adult and she a child, tho' in The Time Traveller's wife he has already met her as an adult - fu*king awkward situ. The Doc hasn't met her before, but later the fact that five minutes ago she was about 5 doesn't put this usually chaste character off going for it when she's grown up.

Yet she isn't quite grown-up - makes me feel a bit awkward fancying her, my ability to age young women has gone skew-wiff, but its always downward, they get younger all the time. I swear Amy is 15, tops. But its alright to fancy her, 'cause the Doctor does (besides, shes actually 23).

The shape of the whole show has seen the Dr becoming increasingly more arrogant and cavalier over recent series. Accentuating the audience's existing suspicion that it might be a bit odd for 900-year-olds to exclusively hang out with abducted teenagers is another clever way of making this the first Doctor you're not supposed to necessarily like. Well, you're allowed to like him, but you suspect he has gone off the rails a bit, or you think, 'at last he's having some fun, poor old Dr'. He's certainly less of a black and white character, preparing us for the cliff-hanger when it is revealed that ALL his arch-enemies are conspiring against him, because he is inadvertently destroying the universe - he was the bad guy all along!

I’m The Fixer, baby, I’m the doctor, an’ I come to heal this affliction called time dat has done you wrong so long, ‘cause I’m the doctor who fixes time. I’m Al Khidr!

So long, so long, you all bin doin’ time, you don’ remember nuffin’ else. But the sentence is nearly over - its gonna be a whole new paragraph! The gaol-birds a’goin’ turn arounds inside and reach their goal!

I know what you’re thinking: “he’s really full of himself!”.

WELL,I’MNOTEXACTLYGOINGTOBEFILLED

WITHSTRAWBERRYJAM,AMI,SAMIAM?

The Jester, 2008

William Blake's Urizen, Tolkien's Melkor, Lucas's Darth Vader - all these characters are different takes on the same archetypal character - empire builders, who seek order, but over-impose their own technological/ideological order on that of the Creation, and in doing so homogenise it. Thus the Daleks and Cybermen (and The Borg in Star Trek) are also takes on this same evil archetype. In a way they are closest to the sophistication of Blake's version, as while Urizen, Melkor and Vader are all anthropomorphised only Blake is clear that he is talking about a contagious tendency IN man, rather than an actual individual. But in failing to fully adopt the mode of fantasy his work lacks the simplicity and general appeal of the true allegory. Though he does not need to adopt this mode to tell what he describes as 'a perfected allegory' - Tolkien does this for him - who can argue that it was indeed 'a perfected allegory' when nearly two hundred years later versions of it top the box office year on year?

It is worth noting that while Blake's Urizen is the archetype of pure evil, that Blake says of good & evil:

"Good is the passive that obeys reason.. Evil is the active, springing from energy"

All this goes hand-in-hand with one's deepening sense of The Docs increasing deification by the script-writers. If he is indeed responsible for 'the end of time' that would make him 'the being at the end of time'.

'I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty'. Revelations

The Catholic Church established the date of Jesus's birth as the beginning of a new calendar, institutionalising him as the being at the beginning of time. Alpha and Omega, Christ & Anti-christ - the suggestion in Revelations is that they are one, that every ending is also a new beginning. Thus it would be a fitting ending to the series if, in tomorrow's season finale, Dr Who does turn out to be responsible for the ending of time- but that this ending is necessary for time's regeneration - time and again the Doctor himself dies in order to be reborn (Christlike) - would it not make sense that the Creation over which he fusses so would mirror this behaviour? People like myself, Krishnamurthi & Jakob Boehme (co-authors of 'The Ending of Time' dialogues) and Jose Arguelles (founder of 'The Foundation for the Law of Time') do not regard 'the end of time' to be a bad thing - it would be convenient for supporters of this idea if Dr Who's script-writers bore out the promise of explaining this difficult idea through the power and elegance of the allegorical form.

It would be particularly satisfying for me if the series concluded, as I wrote a great deal about this archetypal character back in 2008:

He's a servant of God: but he's also a riddler and a joker. He exists outside of time and he appears to help people and civilisations when they come to a crossroads in their path, corresponding to the legends of Al Khidr ('The Green One', who has close archetypal narrative resonances with 'The Green Man') and Papa Legba. The legend of this archetype's 'fixing time' and of being both playful and wise, both young and old, and having many faces, and of dying and being reborn, means his contemporary equivalent is the popular science fiction character 'The Doctor' (notice also that a doctor fixes things and that The Master is his nemesis, exactly corresponding to the relationship between these archetypes as represented in ‘The Master and Maguerita’: except that The Master has not yet been revealed as being The Who's other half - yet.

Papa Legba and The Doctor are both eccentric, both have dogs, both frequently wear hats and both stand at portals between dimensions. Is The Master The Doctor's father like Darth and Luke in Star Wars? When he drops his ego will he see The Master’s higher purpose, will he forgive his father now that he can see that they were yin and yang, black and white, both part of a greater cosmic purpose, now he knows that Darth did what he had to do - will Luke and The Dr stop their restless quest to put everything right and – MOTHER MARY! - just let it be? Does he kill his father? Or just remove the graven image of his father’s shadow that he wears upon his own face as a mask, and it is this face that he is seeing when he flees, his nemesis is semen, Isis, raise the perfect mirror before you realise, sister, that your will and that of The Absolute’s are ONE!

This is The Secret Poetry: myths and legends are the most fundamental of all the particles. This is The Cosmic Joke: That if you dial 999 in a phone box both the police and the doctor turn up, but if you dial 666 the devil turns up in a police phone-box! Phone both at once and the timeless battle between good and evil resumes: the one that always, in the final round, turns out to be the battle against oneself. Only when the protagonist abandons his ego can he see that, all along, what he saw was this: his own reflection in the perfect mirror-like beauty of the nothingness, into which he stared at the beginning when he saw that he was good. At the end of the final round the two big fish do not swim off in opposite directions - they realise their unity. Perfect balance, Yin and Yang, 666+999=696969, the Buddha’s middle way, the Daoist’s harmony, containing both dark and light but identifying with neither, the reconciling of opposites, a truce, realising the one you were running from was also the one you were running for, the eye of the storm, remember your SELF in ‘the quiet space between breaths’, ‘be still and know that I am God’, ‘be here now’, I am ONE!

Whether or not this allegory was consciously or unconsciously formulated: The Who’s scriptwriters have succeeded in subverting the traditional negatively loaded terminology used in Christian descriptions of this archetype and offered a positive secular vision, allowing this archetypal character to take back his place in the collective unconscious's secular canon.

THEDOCTORANDTHEMASTER:BECOMEONE!

The Jester, 2008

I was fairly satisfied with the conclusion of the last series, when the Master adopted the strategem of the Daleks/Cybermen/Borg, making everything like himself, and threatening to do this to the Doctor - and while The Doctor looks out into the creation and sees that it is good? The Master can only perceive an unbearable drumming.

Ultimately The Master and The Doctor are an allegorical anthropomorphic take on Crowley's great conundrum, the dichotomy between Love & Will. The Doctor heals time, because he loves it, the Master controls it, exercising his Will upon it. In the Book of the Law Crowley says ..

Love is the law, love under will.

But in the Book of Lies he says things like -

What do I love? There is no from, no being, to which I do not give myself wholly up. Take me, who will!

In my 2008 book 'Immanessence' I posit that the solution to this conundrum is that there is ultimately no difference between higher Love and higher Will -

Do what you Love is the Law of the Whole, for Love IS the Will of the All.

The Jester, 2008

Which is why I also said:-

THEDOCTORANDTHEMASTER:BECOMEONE!

The Jester, 2008

Perhaps one day the Doctor & Master will be revealed to be the same being in some cunning way, making a greater truth of the constant insistence that the Doc is 'last of the Timelords' when the Master always returns - perhaps the Master is the Elderly Doctor, who regenerated as a child (his incarnations have got generally younger) and was forced to forget his former identity? Like the Buddhist sage who wishes to escape the chain or death and rebirth, perceiving reality as suffering and illusion. Conversely the Doctor could be a later regeneration of the Master - the Master (having successfully escaped the tormentuous cycle of death and rebirth) returns as the Doctor, a bodhisattva, to heal time. If any Dr Who script-writers are reading this go ahead and use it, I'll be pissed off if you don't mention me and give me a cheque, but I'd get over it.

The time-scale of The Time Traveller's Wife is the character's lifetimes - Dr Who can't do this, throughout most episodes the threat is so imminent that sleep would be fatal, so its imperative they save the world in 24 hours or so- otherwise they'd start looking a bit worse for wear. But this difference in time-scale means that except for this first meeting he can't meet her throughout her life in the wrong order, which is what the bulk of the Time Traveller's Wife is about - unless Amy Pond IS the character River Song, who the Doctor continues to meet thoughout the series, in the wrong order, just like the book (and original screenplay based on the book etc). River Song seems like his 'wife' - is this a further reference?

There really is no better reveal, it this doesn't happen it really should. While this would be the most satisfying twist, the least satisfying would be if a character is summoned out of the blue. My bets are on River being a mature Amy, though thinking about it this will not necessarily be revealed tomorrow - it would be the best strategy not to reveal this until the character was about to leave the series. Other remoter possibilities include Amy being a regeneration of The Master (she is a prisoner, imprisoned for killing someone likely to be the Doctor) or less likely a minor character, such as the Doctor's cloned daughter from the last series. If it is Amy that turns out to be River who kills the Doctor - this would be a possible explanation for Amy's implied cosmic significance.

Another [utterly unlikely] explanation for Amy's implied cosmic significance is that she is the incarnation of the demon 'Amy', another analog for the Urizen archtype, listed in the seventeeth century occult classic 'The Lesser Key of Solomon':-

Amy is a great president, and appeareth in a flame of fier, but having taken mans shape, he maketh one marvelous in astrologie, and in all the liberall sciences, he procureth excellent familiars, he bewraieth treasures preserved by spirits, he hath the governement of thirtie six legions, he is partlie of the order of angels, partlie of potestats, he hopeth after a thousand two hundreth yeares to returne to the seventh throne: which is not credible.

But that won't happen.

Lastly: my spoiler for the actually-very-last-ever series: The Dr is a patient on a psychiatric ward & the sci-fi element is intertwined with a plot that involves him dribbling in a dingy common room, babbling about aliens & being visited less-and-less by relatives, which suits the nurses fine, as they had to restrain him and give him a sedative that time he called his Mother a Dalek & attacked her with a screwdriver - the Singing Detective rip-off series.

J
X

IF YOU WANT TO SUCCEED?

2010-06-25T15:53:00.000-07:00

if you want to succeed?

There's a river of sex, like a crack in the city,
There's a river of sex, like a crack in time,
There's a river of sex, like crack in the city
& my cock is the crack-pipe & my seed is the rock

And when the current's strong, the river shall arise:
A great blue dragon, the waves- the thorns upon it spine

The sight of Beelzebub himself leading the charge
As he rides the Dragon from a bedsit in Leytonstone
Into the Queen's quarters at Buckingham palace
Will cause everyone to forget what they know
& live happily ever after

There's a river of sex, like a crack in the city,

There's a river of sex, like a crack in time,

There's a river of sex, like crack in the city

& my cock is the crack-pipe & my seed is the rock

PLAYIN' DEVIL'S ADVOCATE & CRYIN' LIKE A LION IN ZION

2010-06-05T19:17:00.000-07:00

Outrage over the Freedom Flotilla Massacre, May 31 2010

Click the thread to enlarge

DR WHO CONFIDENTIAL

2010-05-24T18:55:00.000-07:00

"Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world." Tolkien, Silmarillion

It is not necessary to accept the more outlandish elements of the hypothesis I espouse to enjoy my allegorical readings of Mankind's contemporary mythologies. I hope you might also find them thought-provoking and at times illuminating - for the allegorical form makes complex philosophies digestible, often with tremendous elegance & humour. That fantasy is the clearest way of expressing the most profound truths about the human condition & existence itself? This is the sense in which fantasy might be regarded as harbouring truths at least as profound as the passing theatrics of what men call 'History' - if not more so.

I apply a system of transcendental allegorical analysis to all fantasy, whether or not the work is consciously allegorical in nature. Moreover - while it might seem counter-intuitive at first - Tolkien at least clearly understood that the less conscious an author was of constructing an allegory the more profoundly allegorical the tale is likely to be! -

"The more life a story has the more readily it will be susceptible to allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable as just a story" Tolkien, Silmarillion

The same system of analysis can be applied to an individual's dreams - further to this I suggest that art (and in particular fantasy) is to the collective conscious what a dream is to an individual consciousness. Whether secular or religious it is hard to deny that meta-narratives are at the core of our shared understanding of reality, and that collective conflict is the result of perceived contradictions between these stories. I say 'perceived contradictions' for ultimately there is only one story and the resolution of the conflict between these stories is its conclusion.

I will expound further on these ideas following these examples of my method of transcendental allegorical analysis - namely the last two episodes of the popular British Sci-fi drama 'Dr Who'.

DR WHO - AMY'S CHOICE, first broadcast BBC One, 15 May 2010

Those of you who know anything of my work will not be suprised that I found the latest episode of Doctor Who [I wrote this on my mobile phone on a bus the following Tuesday] a most worthy subject! In this episode, under the influence of a handful of crystals, the Doctor is forced to choose which of two realities is actually real and which is a dream.

He is forced to do this by a 'trickster' character who presides over both realities- this character is ultimately revealed to be those parts of his own unconscious that he is afraid to face, corresponding with the Emin's conception of 'The Green Man' archetype, described by Leo as representing 'those parts of the unconscious which we are afraid to face'.

When I experimented with automatic writing this was what the apparently 'not me' author primarily identified as, which makes sense from a secular standpoint (it was my own unconscious that was guiding my hand) and from a more spiritual one (our own unconscious is behind 'the veil of illusion', so not aware of our perception of being separate from the immanent collective consciouness).

It is interesting that in Emin writing the Green Man is the equivalent of the devil, whereas this archetype is uniformly venerated by the new-age as being the male principle in nature - I expand on the precise reasons for this elsewhere.

Returning to the story- the Doctor is forced to choose whether a reality resembling the earth or one resembling his own transcendent reality is the real one. This decision is further complicated by beings from his transcendent reality impinging on its edges- the mundane has become infected with the extraordinary, a plague of OAPs possessed by aliens are out to kill him & his friends.

Yet the reality resembling the tardis is equally perilous, the power has gone from his vessel and a freezing star threatens to kill them all. This is the classic question faced by mystics and madmen throughout the ages.

In transcendent spiritual thought the phenomenal world is commonly described as illusory, as 'maya', so would have the Doctor choose the barren freezing Tardis as being 'real'. Or would it? Consider this description of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy:

"All aspects of the after-death experience - vivid lights, sounds, imagery - are reflections of one's own mind, and it is important to recognise that such appearances are essentially illusory. In this way we can liberate ourselves from the causal chain of birth, death and rebirth, and achieve transcendence from the world of form" Sacred Tibetan Teachings, Giacomella Orofino

The Doctor realises that both realities are dreams, reflections of his own mind - and he triumphs. Both the phenomenal and noumenal worlds are 'the many' forms, beyond them is 'the one', the unchanging, from which all forms emerge - and of which all the many forms are different expressions.

I agree with Crowley when he says 'the one is as adorable to the many as the many are to the one', this is the reason the many seek to return to the peace of one. Yet what does the one seek? Only to express itself through manifesting in many forms. Is this a case of the grass always being greener on the other side of the veil of illusion?

I will not take this analysis any further, for while I have hypotheses to answer the deepest questions posed by this intuitive interpretation - I mean only to open the door to your own deeper understanding of the themes that pervade all Mankind's collective imaginings.

Having written the above I decided to interpret the next episode, create a series of allegorical explanations to mirror the 'Dr Who Confidential' programme, which explains how each episode was made. Unfortunately I missed the next episode, though I caught twenty minutes of the repeat.

DR WHO - THE HUNGRY EARTH, first broadcast BBC One, 22 May 2010

This episode sees the original occupants of the Earth awakened from a lengthy period in hibernation - this is a secular reinterpretation of the archetypal story of the return of the sages in the Bible, which finds equivalents in the legends & myths of many peoples & religions. A particularly portentous example of this is to be found in Leo's 1976 book Dear Dragon, Claiming to channel 'Hor, from the King Scorpion time of Egypt' he states -

"There are those of my time who are not dead, only suspended; who await the Reversal"

I have already briefly touched on the idea that what we call 'fantasy' is always allegorical, even if the author is not consciously aware of this themselves. The hypothesis I expound is that this is because this mode of communication frees the author's mind from their personal worldview and allows the collective consciousness to express itself - ie- imagination is never random, when the mirror of Art is turned away from outward reality it is turned inward, upon the noumena, or upon what Blake calls 'poetic genius'.

I think I make a good case for this explanation in my book 'Beyond Truth & Fiction' - it seems to me to be the only explanation that fits with everything else I have observed, though I simply explain what has been explained to me rather than 'believe'. Clearly I am biassed towards these kind of interpretations because of my background, but as our modern mythologies evolve I think it in increasingly hard to deny that they are converging, and that while our secular legendarium may not be proclaiming a new 'one true name of God' (thank God for that!) they do appear to increasingly offer a consistent allegorical explanation of 'that which is beyond names' - as if they had been shattered into pieces but were finally about to settle into a new order. The alternative explanation is to opposed this new order - to regard the esoteric and occult subtexts that pervade all out popular fantasies to have been placed there deliberately by 'The Illuminati' in some kind of huge mind-control conspiracy. Perhaps there is no difference.

J
X

THE SOUNDS OF THE UNDERGROUND

2010-04-10T16:04:00.000-07:00

AUM is the old, original sound
I AM is the new

AUM is the old sound, from which all forms emerge
I AM is the new sound, the sound of the Many, which from One Emerged

AUM is the old sound
I AM is the new

AUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM...
IAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAM...

NOW

AUM is the new sound
I AM is the old

That which I AUM contains and enfolds and makes sense of you

You are the order that brings chaos
I AM the chaos that brings order

I exist to create you
Your existence is the creation of me

x

GOAT OF MANY COLOURS

2010-03-07T04:15:00.000-08:00

TWO FACE GOOD, ONE FACE BAD

2010-03-07T02:41:00.001-08:00

TOLKIEN AS SUBLIME ALLEGORY

2009-12-15T14:16:00.000-08:00

Across the Web a collective conversation is occurring regarding the nature of the ethical and spiritual core of our contemporary allegories.

For this reason I was very excited to read David Louis Edelman's incisive reinterpretation of The Silmarillion, which largely harmonised with my own views. The Jester's typically out-of-the-box comments have contributed to a great deal of interesting and informed debate about the themes raised in Edelman's excellent piece. His original article and the debate that ensues can be found here:-

http://www.davidlouisedelman.com/book-reviews/silmarillion/

If you have anything to add to this debate do get in touch.

x

THERE IS NO DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

2009-12-14T09:13:00.001-08:00

SACRED VISIONS OF UNITY

2009-12-12T15:43:00.000-08:00

Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and around and about me was the whole hoop of the world.

I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit and the shapes of all shapes as they must live together, like one being.

And I saw that the Sacred Hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the centre grew one almighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father, and I saw that it was holy.

From the vision of Nicholas Black Elk, Lakota Holy Man, 1863 - 1950

I was a beastly baby -

or so I am told.

Sometimes I think I can remember being a baby

Sometimes I think I can remember the warmth of the womb and the SHOCK of being born

Sometimes I recall being every baby – as if each of our lives were jewels, beads strung along a single thread that exists outside of Mankind’s perception of time.

Imagine a string threaded with precious stones. From Mankind’s perspective Many stones lie in-between, yet there can only be One jewel at the very beginning of the thread and One at the very other end. The former is the life of ‘The Being at The Beginning of Time’, the latter the life of ‘The Being at The End of Time’. The Christ & The Anti-Christ, The One who ushers in a New Age & The One who crushes the old.

It is this perspective that is at the root of ‘The Cult of The Individual’. In full view the single finite thread reveals itself to be one of many links in The Chain of Being - it is a circle, and a circle has no beginning, nor does it have an end. It is this single string that makes One Ring - The One Will that rules The Jewels & The One Love that binds them.

This is the secret poetry of the cosmic joke.

The Jester, The Secret Poetry of The Cosmic Joke

10/01/09

Nex' time you look back thru all your past lives in an instant, baby,

Baby - don' just let it go on - baby, write it all down, me babies,

Tell the world what it is like to remember your SELF.

Oh! - the pain, the tears I 'a'cry-cry-cried

of pure liquid-acid-suffering-and-joy-and-love-and-peace-and-anger-and-fame-and-waste-and-greed-and-sex-and-faith-and-hope-and-war-and-pride-and-grief-and-shame.

Oh, the pain! Oh, the pain inside - the pain and the patience.

Ev'ry man I ever killed,

I was always a'dyin' at my own hand,

A'cuttin' of my lef' hand,

A'cuttin' off me right

Ev'ry movie I ever made,

I was always a'try-try-tryin' to a'point me to the light - too right! -

Me jelly babies, me jolly jelly babies,

My archangel babies bright

An' ev'ry war I ever fought on

It was meSELF I slaughtered!

What a plonker, not a monkey, what a waste,

White horse, white horse - you're wallpaper paste

Ev'ry bill I ever paid, I could have been makin' love instead,

Ev'ry lie I ever swallowed, I was a-lyin' to myself,

I was a lion, I was brave, I was a coward,

Shoulda gone, shoulda stayed

In the factories and the mills and in the plants and in the mines...

...in the bedroom... in the kitchen... in vietnam...

THE PAIN! THE LOVE! THE HEART INSIDE!

THE COCKS I SUCKED! THE TEARS I CRIED!

Q. Have you ever tried to watch TV on acid?

A. Welllll...

...I tried to watch TV on acid

But the TV just watch'd me,

Then the TV was on acid

And I was on TV.

ANARCHY 2012

2009-12-07T03:29:00.000-08:00

"I'm interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that appears to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom."

Jim Morrison

The 'darkness' is that which is not illuminated, that which people fear is the unknown.

It is not chaos or death - it is form, union, plan -
It is eternal life - it is happiness"
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

When the laws of Newtonian Physics descend into chaos? Scientists have cast light on the fact that this chaos is not random disorder, but an implicate order of a different nature - in the future we will utilise this order and the existing infrastructures and new technologies to create organic, amorphous, decentralised societal structures and processes - structures that will allow us to work together effectively and harmoniously. We'll share information, resources and personnel for the common good, virtually eliminating duplication of tasks and unnecessary restrictions and incompatibilities and conflicts between systems.

In the past? In the past we set each man up against each other - the people, the nations, the organisations - each & all grinding & straining to outdo each other. If I got a big brass band & told the musicians: 'it's every man for himself, grab the biggest instrument you can, y'all, play as loud & as fast as you will!' ?

Yes, this would be an amazing piece of free-jazz music, man. Yes.

"a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes"

Tolkien, Silmarillion

Yes, this epoch has, indeed, been an amazing piece of free-jazz - we have learnt a lot from it & we have a great recording - loads & loads of footage. But - lets face it - everyone has a fucking headache and wants to go home. And look at the state of the place! Its a Godawful mess.

Looks like the whole building's going to come down if we don't pack up this gig soon. Or we could just play until we die. Is this what you want? That option is called 'NO FUTURE'. There are only two options - 'NO FUTURE' or 'OUT OF EVERYTHING THAT WE CONTAIN WE BUILD THIS BEAUTIFUL HOUSE OF LOVE'. And the end is sooner than you think. 21.12.12.

Why so soon? Because time is SERIOUSLY running out. Haven't you had enough of watching these torturous games?

Why can't we just phase in new and better systems? Yes, we have to start NOW, working together to develop perfect transparent networks to catch the existing infrastructures when the world abolishes the fanatical, insane organisations you call 'governments' - but this switch has to be thrown. We need some time to prepare to throw the switch - but not too much, we've not got too much time.

The world is run as a game and competitive games have winners and losers. If we stick to this model? EVERYBODY loses EVERYTHING. We need a new model. We are shocked by the brutality of the Roman arenas, yet this remains the way we run our Planet to this day.

ANARCHY IN THE WHOLE WORLD IS COMING 21.12.2012

Every day more & more of The Many voices join in The One song & as the chorus grows the music grows in confidence, beauty and harmonic complexity, and in subtlety and simplicity. How can anyone can still dismiss The Word of change as just a whisper on the wind - 'The Cult of The Individual' has been the dominant ethos of this age, a world-view that defines freedom as the freedom for each of us to sing their own song. This was as it should be for the duration of this age, for Man's state of not-knowing is not the natural state of Being. That which is beyond form manifests the Many forms - it is not only within and without everything - it IS everything. All things are like thoughts to this single, immanent all-pervading consciousness. Mankind's Many voices are joining in One song. Yes, the Choirmaster spent a long time watching from the wings. But - in truth -The Master Musician has been singing softly from the sidelines throughout this age, sweet and so strong, The Maestro has at last picked up the baton

In the past? They told me to be ashamed of my body and they told me that to be proud is a sin. In doing so they forbade me to love myself. And when I cannot love myself? Then I could not love. Mankind - that which you most fear is Love.

FORGIVE ALL DEBT

FORGIVE HITLER, STALIN - EVERYONE!

FORGIVE YOUR SELF

ONLY THE FORGIVERS ARE COMING WITH US

FORGIVE EVERYTHING

AND EVERYTHING WILL GIVE FOR THE FORGIVERS

I SEE THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE TAKE DOWN THEIR MASKS

AND ASK FORGIVENESS

YES! - you are entitled to some trinkets and some tools, and a place to live where there is not war and death and want and meaningless bureaucracy. The archetypal character you call 'The Devil?' He exists only in the hearts of men. His den you men call Hell? There is nothing in all creation with more sulphurous a smell than what you have 'achieved', you little men. THIS is as bad as it gets, for creation has unspeakable order, and the order now wishes to be spoken -

BECOME ONE!

I SEE THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE JOINED IN SONG!

THE DEVIL DRIVES AN S.U.V.

2009-12-07T01:38:00.000-08:00

The Devil drives an S.U.V. He has many, many vices - but this is his one and only mortal sin.

My Man, Mephistopheles, he layed with Lady Luck,

He rode her all the way to Hell - but they got a taxi back.

This van-driver, Virgil, pleads, "please pay with puff, if poss.

I left mine at home and haven't got enough for Josh...

...I don't like to profit from prophesy...its just to cover costs...

...I'll make a loss",

The painful past unfolds.

He made her a virgin

She crossed his palm with Afghan Gold

I'M IN LOVE WITH EVERYONE

2009-12-06T21:25:00.000-08:00

..but they don't love me back - as is evidenced by the fact that I haven't had sex in nine months.

And the last time I did get any? I got a genital wart.

No wonder I'm a wanker!

http://jesterspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/12/on-wanking-by-expert.html

jesTer

p.s. You can download my single 'I'm In Love With Everyone' (b/w 'The Game') for free at...

http://www.reverbnation.com/thecelebratedmrk

It was released on 01.01.09., I gave all five copies away - the first one at the stroke of midnight and the rest through the course of the day. I felt that this release strategy defied reason, which had to be a good thing, and at the same time also reflected how deeply underground I had gone - spending every last penny I owned on a limited edition of 5 singles and then just giving them to people I liked at a New Years party in a squatted pub. RANDOM! MENTALIST! So far my research suggests that the maxim 'build it and they will come' may be bollocks, though I cannot exactly claim to have built 'IT' yet, but merely laid the foundations - so the jury is still out on that one.

New Year - that was the last time I went 'clubbing', if you can call a disused city warehouse a club. Now I am a hermit living with and caring for my mother who has Alzheimer's -

http://www.whatbaffledme.blogspot.com

I hope to get out at some point this Christmas, but the urge to hibernate is upon me. I just want to fill my head with straw and set my alarm for sometime round Easter.

I LOVE YOU!

x

ON WANKING by an expert

2009-12-06T18:56:00.000-08:00

What do they teach our children in school about masturbation?

I would be very interested to see a hand-out or video clip to see how this sensitive topic is actually contextualised in the classroom, I imagine it would be something along these lines:

MESSAGE FROM THE JESTER TO THE KID'S ABOUT SELF GRATIFICATION:-
The act of masturbation is safe, harmless and extremely enjoyable. For men it is verging on necessary, though not all men masturbate - but if you don't you are going to shoot your load in your dreams. If you can remember these dreams you've got free virtual reality sex - you have a gift, I wouldn't risk upsetting this by wanking. What was I saying?

The act of masturbation is safe and it feels good. Very good. However, its easy availability means that it can become very addictive and eat into time when one might be engaged in more productive activities, if not taken in hand (no pun intended) by the individual.

It is predominantly amongst males that the use of pornography and erotic art is prevalent - they find that fixating upon a visual stimuli provides a locus for their fantasies and this heightens their satisfaction. Pornography can also be insidiously addictive - and like a drug it produces diminishing returns. The search for harder and harder material can lead an individual to uncover dormant 'fetishes' that may never have occurred to them, or that they might have preferred to have unearthed with a partner.

Regarding 'fetishes' - a lot of adults find a great deal of joy and intimacy in unusual sexual practices, though these are usually frowned on by religious authorities. I personally feel that no consensual act between adults should be forbidden - for who are we to stand in the way of the sacred enactment of archetypal relationships?

Whatever your personal stance on 'perversion' it is a good idea to remember 'to be careful what you wish for' while masturbating, for one's latent desires can become all-consuming, and they are not readily tamed once aroused. Think - it would seem a shame if you met the boy/girl of your dreams, but were sexually incompatible because you had already discovered while wanking that what sexually aroused you was spanking and that they did not share this predilection.

In short: whatever you wish for while masturbating, it will become a prerequisite that the boy/girl of your dreams shares this fantasy, otherwise your sex life will seem lacking and you will be driven to look elsewhere. By extension the more outlandish your fantasies are the less potential partners you will have.

All I'm really saying is that while the act of masturbation is safe there are potential drawbacks in the long-term to wanton indulgence in onanism.

END OF MESSAGE///

I'm glad they're teaching this to the kids, I would have taken that on board, its sensible, rational and true. I probably wouldn't have modified my behaviour significantly, but at least I would have been making an informed decision.

MESSAGE FROM THE JESTER TO THE ADULTS ABOUT SELF GRATIFICATION:-
Masturbation makes you blind and turns you into a werewolf.

THAT WHICH IS BEYOND NAMES

2009-12-04T20:43:00.000-08:00

REPLY TO A THREAD AT INDIGOSOCIETY.COM, TO SOMEONE WHO REPORTED SEEING A TRANSDIMENSIONAL PORTHOLE WHILE ON THE PSYCHEDELIC 'SALVIA DIVINORUM' -

I am a little jealous - according to Erowid Salvia simply doesn't work on a certain proportion of people, they call us 'salvia hardheads', & I think I may be one of them.

I was brought up in a mystery school who believe that Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos archives are literally true, and these feature 'Stargates' similar to that which you describe.

Before I go any further please remember to treat all other-worldly ideas with a pinch of salt and a dose of humour - at least until our time has come, which we anticipate to be soon. Otherwise you are likely to become 'mentally unbalanced' - and in consequence you might also become what those contemporary three-brained beings of your favourite planet affectionately call 'sectioned'.

This is why I call myself The Jester - to encourage people to greet the unseen worlds with a lightness of heart and with laughter, as is appropriate.

Do you think the Hare Krishna are joking when they called one of their books 'Easy Journey to Other Planets?' Of course they are joking, and so am I. Am I joking? I AM. I AM always joking, for I AM The Jester - and THIS is The Cosmic Joke.

ET=ART (energy multiplied by time equals Being)

It is not uncommon to hear people refer to our planet as 'Spaceship Earth' - this is a metaphor in the sense that it is a set of words to describe something that is beyond names, it is literally true in the sense that The Earth flies through space and we ride upon it.

Further to this it has been suggested that Star Trek's 'Galactic Federation' might be an appropriate metaphor for 'that which is beyond names' by both the 'scientologists' (money grabbers) and those you call the 'Foundation For The Law of Time' - who, incidentally (like my mother's mystery school) incorrectly predicted 'the end of the world as we know it' (what they call 'The Reversal') in 2000.

It seems to me of note that I did not make this prevalent mistake when writing on this subject in fiction and in jest, twenty years ago in my teens. But having made this prediction without knowing about the Mayan prophesies and in an environment where the ending of time (see Krishnamurthi and Bohm's book of the same name for a sane and grounded investigation into what this means) was anticipated, but at a completely different time - it does make one wonder.

And - as my mother's mystery school were fond of saying - 'to wonder is to begin to understand'. I would add - 'to laugh is to begin to understand' - for it is only in the moment where a laugh occurs that we can truly entertain the friction of apparently contradictory ideas. It is a common trope in sci-fi that systems fail when fed contradictory facts, if we take ourSELVES too seriously, our robot heads end up pivotting like the girl in the exorcist, steam coming out of our created ears, our Steven Hawkings voice maniacally shrieking - DOES NOT COMPUTE DOES NOT COMPUTE.

HERMANN HESSE'S STEPPENWOLF

"We are in my Magic Theater," he said with a smile, "and if you wish at any time to learn the Tango or to be a general or to have a talk with Alexander the Great, it is always at your service. But I'm bound to say, Harry, you have disappointed me a little. You forgot yourself badly. You broke through the humor of my little theater and tried to make a mess of it, stabbing with knives and spattering our pretty picture-world with the mud of reality. That was not pretty of you.

Another appropriate metaphor is that of trying to run two operating systems simultaneously, with all the potential system conflicts and crashes this can entail. I do not have the audacity to categorically state "I for One was right where so Many were wrong" - but I do think it is worth it to temporarily 'suspend disbelief', for when the download is complete it does appear to make hermetic sense. There is no point 'believing' anything - we have been doing this for thousands of years, and where has this got us? This is what I think, not what I believe. No-one can challenge the fact that this is what we are in the process of thinking, the process of contemplating - it is exciting, but it is not necessary to get over-excited about it. After the dialectic has reached tipping point I think it will be the norm that what I have begun to describe here will be part of what is considered the consensus view of reality; and that this will be corroborated by breakthroughs in the understanding and observation of how quantum particles relate to consciousness.

I am trying not to spoon-feed anyone my set of names and metaphors to describe 'that which is beyond names'. It easy to set up a religion, that is the old way, it is harder to 'remember yourself' [Gurdjieff]. I am not religious in your sense of the word - that is to say that I am for religious tolerance but against didactic religion - Mankind does not have to cast off its sacred words and ceremonies, for they unite men and celebrate existence, but rather to simply recognise that the sets of names they use point to the same thing, something that ultimately defies naming.

Truth is a pathless land'. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation, and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a sense of security—religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these dominates man's thinking, relationships and his daily life. These are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man in every relationship." Krishnamurthi

Instead I would rather draw people's attention to the manner in which I perceive those who best describe 'that which is beyond names' to agree on everything all the time, and to possess a uniting philosophy that includes all branches of human knowledge; whereas those who base their conclusions as to the nature of Being on Positivist insight alone cannot even agree upon whether they exist or not half of the time. It is in this spirit that I would like you to consider these quotations regarding the nature of 'that which is beyond names' -

THE OPENING VERSES OF THE TAO TE CHING:

The tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao.

The name that can be spoken is not the eternal Name.

The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth.

The named is the mother of creation.

Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery.

By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real.

Yet mystery and reality emerge from the same source.

This source is called darkness.

Darkness born from darkness.

The beginning of all understanding.

WALT WHITMAN, FROM 'SONG OF MYSELF'

I do not know it--it is without name--it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death--it is form, union, plan--it is eternal
life--it is Happiness.
The past and present wilt--I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

HERMANN HESSE'S STEPPENWOLF

Now, Harry, come along, be as jolly as you can. To make it so and to teach you to laugh is the whole aim in getting up this entertainment--I hope you will make it easy for me. You feel quite well, I trust? Not afraid? That's good, excellent. You will now, without fear and with unfeigned pleasure, enter our visionary world. You will introduce yourself to it by means of a trifling suicide, since this is the custom."

He took out the pocket mirror again and held it in front of my face. Again I was confronted by the same indistinct and cloudy reflection, with the wolf's shape encircling it and coursing through it. I knew it too well and disliked it too sincerely for its destruction to cause me any sorrow.

"You will now erase this superfluous reflection, my dear friend. That is all that is necessary. To do so, it will suffice that you greet it, if your mood permits, with a hearty laugh. You are here in a school of humor. You are to learn to laugh. Now, true humor begins when a man ceases to take himself seriously."

I fixed my eyes on the little mirror, where the man Harry and the wolf were going through their convulsions. For a moment there was a convulsion deep within me too, a faint but painful one like remembrance, or like homesickness, or like remorse. Then the slight oppression gave way to a new feeling like that a man feels when a tooth has been extracted with cocaine, a sense of relief and of letting out a deep breath, and of wonder, at the same time, that it has not hurt in the least. And this feeling was accompanied by a buoyant exhilaration and a desire to laugh so irresistible that I was compelled to give way to it.

The mournful image in the glass gave a final convulsion and vanished. The glass itself turned gray and charred and opaque, as though it had been burned. With a laugh Pablo threw the thing away and it went rolling down the endless corridor and disappeared.

"Well laughed, Harry," cried Pablo. "You will learn to laugh like the immortals yet. You have done with the Steppenwolf at last. It's no good with a razor. Take care that he stays dead. You'll be able to leave the farce of reality behind you directly. At our next meeting we'll drink to brotherhood, dear fellow. I never liked you better than I do today. And if you still think it worth your while we can philosophize together and argue and talk about music and Mozart and Gluck and Plato and Goethe to your heart's content. You will understand now why it was so impossible before. I wish you good riddance of the Steppenwolf for today at any rate. For naturally, your suicide is not a final one. We are in a magic theater; a world of pictures, not realities. See that you pick out beautiful and cheerful ones and show that you really are not in love with your highly questionable personality any longer. Should you still, however, have a hankering after it, you need only have another look in the mirror that I will now show you. But you know the old proverb: 'A mirror in the hand is worth two on the wall.' Ha! ha!" (Again that laugh, beautiful and frightful!) "And now there only remains one little ceremony and quite a jolly one. You have now to cast aside the spectacles of your personality. So come here and look in a proper looking glass. It will give you some fun."

Laughingly with a few droll caresses he turned me about so that I faced the gigantic mirror on the wall. There I saw myself.

I saw myself for a brief instant as my usual self, except that I looked unusually good-humored, bright and laughing. But I had scarcely had time to recognize myself before the reflection fell to pieces. A second, a third, a tenth, a twentieth figure sprang from it till the whole gigantic mirror was full of nothing but Harrys or bits of him, each of which I saw only for the instant of recognition. Some of these multitudinous Harrys were as old as I, some older, some very old. Others were young. There were youths, boys, schoolboys, scamps, children. Fifty-year-olds and twenty-year-olds played leap frog. Thirty-year-olds and five-year-olds, solemn and merry, worthy and comic, well-dressed and unpresentable, and even quite naked, long haired, and hairless, all were I and all were seen for a flash, recognized and gone. They sprang from each other in all directions, left and right and into the recesses of the mirror and clean out of it. One, an elegant young fellow, leaped laughing into Pablo's arms and embraced him and they went off together. And one who particularly pleased me, a good looking and charming boy of sixteen or seventeen years, sprang like lightning into the corridor and began reading the notices on the doors. I went after him and found him in front of a door on which was inscribed:

ALL GIRLS ARE YOURS

ONE QUARTER IN THE SLOT

My point is that Gurdjieff says "everything is matter", while Kahlil Gibran says "everything is spirit". They do not disagree - there is only one substance vibrating at different frequencies, the word you use is just a metaphor, a finger pointing at a star. Thus - if you are looking for good and bad aliens you will see aliens, if you are looking for angels and demons you will see angels and demons. If you stop looking for angels, demons and aliens? You will see your SELF in The Mirror-like White Light, The Timeless State of One from which The Many forms emerge.

You have plenty to think about, I hope some of these words resonated with you and I haven't been too didactic. I will leave you with the words of a great artist, my friend Niall Richardson:

"I wish I could write more, but time is short...

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.

must go now.

x"

THE MARRIAGE OF BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

2009-12-04T16:04:00.000-08:00

Message from Indigo Society member (username: existencebeyondexperience) to The Jester (including his solutions and commentary on The Three Riddles at The Gates of Paradise http://jesterspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/08/three-riddles-at-gates-of-paradise.html )

I am the monolatric pan-panen-henodeistic theist unbeliever.

Pataphor is defined by same, but differently.

That one disagrees with all implies as if to say that to disagree is to be wrong, and to agree is to be wrong.

That 1 disagrees with 0 implies as if to say that 1*(0/0) is imaginary, when in fact the solution is 0. but 0/0=1/1, so WTF?T

I'm not anti-anything; you are, if you doubt the validity of the statement above.

"Push the envelope of your conception, and watch reality bend to your will" does not mean that i or you or anyone is 'The' God. That one never existed, only as many 'A' Gods as there are believers.

...

World, Who Will Heal Thee?

We are all tHe lAst – propHets aT thE end of time.

physician, heal thyself. take up thy stethoscope and walk.

* * *

Lover, What Are You Scared Of?

that which you most fear is love

the one who has nothing to lose has nothing to fear.

* * *

How Soon is Now?

TwO THOUsANd aNd twElVe!

Halley comes in 2063, and will be spectacular, even if i'm the only one on earth who gets to see it.

* * *

Response from The Jester:

Yes, that is the case, you are the first person who has said this to me, though it is not the first time I have said it to others. It makes me laugh.

I would be interested to read some more of your work, and to enter into a dialogue regarding the implications of theic-existentialism in the World of Actions. Why? Because of all the suffering in the world - this makes me cry.

AND THIS WAS THE FIRST LOVE

The first ‘I’ saw it’s reflection in The Mirror-like White Light,

And it saw that it was good.

This was the first Narcissus,

Being and Nothingness,

I + 0,

I and Thou,

Me and You, and

This was the first Love.

* * *

Substance without form is insubstantial: this is Nothingness.

Form without substance is still information: this is Being.

Substance is Nothingness.

Form is Being.

1 = 0.

I am You.

Know thyself, for

This was the first Love.

* * *

There is no I, there is only Thou.

There is no Thou there is only I.

There is no Me, there is only You.

There is no You, there is only Me.

There are only I and Thou.

There are only You and Me.

Only Love is real, and

Ours was the first Love.

* * *

1992

The following paragraph from 1992 (when I was 18) is neither the most eloquent nor the most profound illumination of this topic, but it is the first where I posit the equation 1=0.

1=0

Everyone is here that I have ever met; and many more besides. For this moment in time I am a pink balloon, the light shines through me as I drift towards The Sun. For the next moment I am light, travelling, so very fast - and I wonder, when I prove that 0=1, am I mad - or is this the core of everything?

I can travel through time like it was my dimension - I am not propelled through it - so changing direction is easy.

Say, didn’t I love you? There’s a letter on the fire. This is a nice colour mind, fire, a beautiful find, but everything moves - this is my life.

My whole life, this is a river, it flows. It flows. I am a river. I am a concerto, I am a piano, and everything is unchanged - though now it makes sense!

When I flow through thought my mind gets to the heart of the equation - everything breaks down and again I prove that 1=0.

1992

This is four years earlier and clearly comes from the same perspective -

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."

The Jester, 1988, aged 14

This makes me laugh now - when you say 'I'm not anti-anything - you are' and I write 'forget what you know - everything you know is wrong' - we are not speaking to each other, but to 'them' - yet there is no "them" and "us"!

"God only acts and is in existing beings of men"

William Blake

You Know Who I AM

(Leonard Cohen)

I cannot follow you, my love,

you cannot follow me.

I am the distance you put between

all of the moments that we will be.

You know who I am,

you've stared at the sun,

well I am the one who loves

changing from nothing to one.

Sometimes I need you naked,

sometimes I need you wild,

I need you to carry my children in

and I need you to kill a child.

You know who I am,

you've stared at the sun,

well I am the one who loves

changing from nothing to one.

If you should ever track me down

I will surrender there

and I will leave with you one broken man

whom I will teach you to repair.

You know who I am,

you've stared at the sun,

well I am the one who loves

changing from nothing to one.

I cannot follow you, my love,

you cannot follow me.

I am the distance you put between

all of the moments that we will be.

You know who I am,

you've stared at the sun,

well I am the one who loves

changing from nothing to one.

WE are all the last prophets at the end of time! This makes me laugh.

"A point in every direction is the same as no point at all"

Harry Nilsson, The Point

I do not wish to make money, but to make a difference. I wish the wealth to be returned to collective ownership. I want to begin to act collectively, so am looking to find an appropriate collectively owned means of distributing our work that we can unite behind. I cannot find such a thing - this makes me cry.

I hope you do not mind me posting your message and this response on my blog, when I receive an interesting message and write a more involved response it seems appropriate to make it available to anyone who might be interested.

Lots of love

Writer / Graphics sampler:

WWW.JESTER.ME.UK

Music(singing & guitar) / spoken word:

WWW.REVERBNATION.CO.UK/THECELEBRATEDMRK

Community Arts Projects (currently very old, would like to make it a more general hub for our activities):

WWW.MAKING-IT-HAPPEN.ORG.UK

Blog about being my mother (with Alzheimer's) main carer:

WWW.WHATBAFFLEDME.BLOGSPOT.COM

"The Universe is the Practical Joke of the General at the Expense of the Particular, quoth FRATER PERDURABO, and laughed.

But those disciples nearest to him wept, seeing the Universal Sorrow.

Those next to them laughed, seeing the Universal Joke.

Below these certain disciples wept.

Then certain laughed.

Others next wept.

Others next laughed.

Next others wept.

Next others laughed.

Last came those that wept because they could not see the Joke,

and those that laughed lest they should be thought not to see the Joke, and thought it safe to act like FRATER PERDURABO.

But though FRATER PERDURABO laughed openly,

He also at the same time wept secretly; and in Himself He neither laughed nor wept.

Nor did He mean what He said. " Onion Peelings, The Book of Lies

IN SILENCE

2009-12-02T15:57:00.000-08:00

I AM Josh, shhh, The Silent One

I only Josh, I leave the words alone

To those who know

I AM The Jester

THIS, my Joke

THIS, the divine comedy

THESE, the divine tears,,,

IDOLISING CHARLES MANSON IS IDIOTIC

2009-12-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

The only man of energy

Yes, the revolution's pride

He trained a hundred women

Just to kill an unborn child

Leonard Cohen

The following message is an open letter to anyone espousing the views of Charles Manson (hippy cult leader and convicted serial killer) and venerating him as if he was a hero...

Could you please clarify your intentions - it is obvious that a single collaborative global community would be a better world, but how is associating yourself or this standpoint with Charles Manson going to help our cause?

From your tone I detect that it is likely that you are sincere in your belief that Manson was not responsible for the killings, I wasn't there so I don't know, but this is irrelevant - everybody thinks he is a mass murderer, why attach a noble cause to such baggage?

William Blake wrote 'All Religions Are One' two hundred years ago - why not associate yourselves with him?

The list goes on and on and on - why not John Lennon? Krishnamurthi? Jim Morrison? Buddha? Leonard Cohen?

Clearly he was charismatic and spoke some truth, but there are so many others who have expressed the same ideals with greater eloquence and without so many negative connotations for so many people. How can you expect to achieve anything in this manner?

At times I have considered distancing myself from the cause because I might not be its most wholesome spokesperson - this seems utterly absurd when compared to the amount of damage you might be doing by connecting your beautiful ideals with a convicted serial killer.

The only conclusion I can reach is that you are opposed to peace, that everything you say is a lie, a lie designed to sully the cause you pretend to espouse. If I am just confused please set me straight

x

I wrote the above letter because I heard the Leonard Cohen song 'The Future' and wondered what he meant by his prediction:-

"all the lousy little poets coming round, tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson"

Leonard Cohen

So I Googled to find out what "tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson" would entail - to my alarm he sounds very like me, except not a pacifist. I would like to believe this is a critical difference.

"Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that"

Martin Luther King Jr

On reflection there are two other differences that I would like to point out - his grasp of the English Language is primitive and he is a hippy - I AM NOT A HIPPY.

Thank you, goodnight

Do I look like a hippy to you? I would love to be a hippy, but it is not in my nature.

I intend to be Sawbridgeworth's foremost not-a-hippy advocate of hippy ideas.

THE KEYS TO A FULL UNDERSTANDING OF BLAKE

2009-12-01T05:27:00.000-08:00

'Sconfitta', William Blake

[ORIGINALLY POSTED AS A MESSAGE BOARD COMMENT ON THE ABOVE ILLUSTRATION AT http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2008/08/07/image-of-the-day-sconfitta-by-william-blake]

The image titled 'Sconfitta' is dark, powerful and beautiful - typical of Blake's best work. It is wonderful to see so many people reconsidering Blake - it was his own intention to "speak to future generations via a sublime allegory"

Without knowing anything of Blake we can see this much:

On the surface we see a man engaged in worshipping or appealing to a dark Sun.

At second glance the geometry of the picture reveals the Sun is a big, black cross with a circle at the centre, suggesting he is engaged in Son worship, and that which he worships is not fully illumninated to him, it is shrouded in darkness.

It could be the print quality, but one can discern a crucifix that has been painted over, or subtley suggested at within the Sun upon the hill.

Wanbliska (a contributor to the message borad where I origainlly posted this article) mentions the Four Zoas central to Blake's more cryptic and elaborate later works. In 'Jerusalem' Blake gives us a diagram of The Zoas as four interlocking circles, at the centre is a single egg containing the words 'Adam' and 'Satan' - like the familiar Vesica Piscis diagram, also frequently appearing in Blake's work, this fourfold equivalent encodes the nature of the Son of God (I have reproduced this figure further down the page).

BELOW: The top right figure is the Vesica Piscis

Blake says 'Good is the Passive that obeys reason, Evil is the active springing from Energy' - like Yin and Yang they are different halves of the same thing, as depicted in the egg I mentioned previously. Blake does not mention 'Christ' much in his work - this is because everything he describes is a single encoded message about the nature of the Son of God. To Blake (and, in my view, in truth) The Son of God is both Adam and Satan - The Son of God is Mankind in its current embryonic state (hence the egg, this is further clarified by illustrations from 'The Gates of Paradise', one labelled 'What is Man?' depicts a pupae that is also a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, another a winged infant emerging from an egg)

So the cross in 'Sconfitta' represents the Four Zoas and the Sun is their Son.

The man worshipping the Sun has long white hair and robes, recalling the depiction of Urizen familiar from Blake's perhaps most famous painting, 'The Ancient of Days' - he is in the correct position according to the fourfold diagram I mentioned previously, which also backs up this assertion.

Yet Urizen is outside of and distinct from that which he kneels before.

The fish symbol of the early christian movement is a section from the Vesica Piscis, the section where the two circles interlock, the section representing The Son of God. While the later formalised Christianity took the cross as their exoteric symbol, the symbol is 'The Tripod of Life', not two interlocking circles (like the vesica piscis) or four (as Blake depicts in his fourfold diagram of the Four Zoas and their relationship to Adam and Satan) but three - Urizen is not included in this Trinity.

BELOW: The top left figure is 'The Tripod of Life', a common symbol for The Trinity in Catholicism, along with two alternative common geometrical representations of 'The Trinity'. In this illustration I am cheekily suggesting that these geometric figures for the Trinity are the meaning of the infamous 'Number of the Beast' mentioned in Revelations -

It is interesting to note here that Tolkien's Ailundale describes four principle 'Angels', though 'Melkor' (equivalent to the archetype of Urizen in Blake's cosmology) is excluded from this quaternity when he seeks to impose his own order on creation, though this starts with good intentions his works are the source of all conflict in the middle Earth legandarium). Only the names are changed - this direct equaivalence between Tolkien and Blake's cosmology is further clarified by the cover illustration of 'The Silmarillion', by Tolkien himself - it is the central section of Blake's diagrammatic representation of The Four Zoas -

Blake says 'God only acts and is in existing beings of men' - God is Mankind, is Adam is Satan is Urizen - there is only ONE.

I would disagree with Alexandria that Blake's vision is fundamentally negative - anyone who looks with open eyes upon this epoch can see the suffering and also its beauty and majesty, and this is reflected in Blake's work. But his message is ultimateley positive, that the suffering is for a purpose and of a finite duration, that 'now is the return of Adam to paradise':

"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 and 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 everything 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." Blake, 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'

Josh

jester.me.uk

WEAPONS OF MASS INSTRUCTION

2009-11-11T04:37:00.000-08:00

CONTROL OF THE METANARRATIVE IS ABSOLUTE CONTROL.
ART IS POWER.

WEAPONS OF MASS INSTRUCTION

Information IS mightier than the gun

They shot John Lennon down, but The Word lives on.

Art IS mightier than cancer

It took Bob Marley from us, but it could not kill our song.

Hand granades are harmless,

'Tis the man who pulls the pin.

The stories in him made him do it

The Storyteller put them in!

THE ARTISTS ARE ORGANISING INTO ARMED SOVIETS,

COLLECTIVES PREPARED TO RESORT TO EXTREME ACTS OF AUDIO-VISUAL TERRORISM

ARTISTS OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE!

jesTer

11.11.09

"Whoever controls the media controls the mind."
Jim Morrison

THE LAST PROPHETS AT THE END OF TIME - ALLISM

2009-10-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

There are lessons to be learned from the colourful and diverse expressions of the western 'prophets' of the past few centruries, not just from their works, but from their lives. It is my contention that they all agree on a single unifying philosophy that includes everything. I will try to point out the perfect correspondence, but it may be necessary to ponder the nature of Quantum Physics in regards to the nature of consciousness in order to fully perceive for yourself the perfection & symphonic quality of the tapestry of these assertions and predictions.

The sixteenth century shoemaker Boehme was overtaken with the feeling that he had a visionary message to impart. While 'philosophy' and 'prophecy' have been closely allied throughout the ages (one describes what is, the other what will be) we can see that Boehme is saying 'I am a theologian', rather than presenting himself as an old-style 'prophet'.

The word 'prophet' is pre-loaded with ideas in the collective psyche, ideas of adulation, and for the forming of an evangelical sect, whereas these philosophers concur with the Quakers in prioritising the individual's noumnous sensations of the divine over scripture and are critical of the hierarchical churches.

On Boehme's title pages he identifies himself as 'a Theosophist' and 'The Teutonic Philosopher'. He was an influence on Blake, who preferred to identify himself as 'The Writer and Printer'. So Blake takes this further and says 'I am an Artist', yet the bulk of his work is definitely specifically prophetic** and he doesn't really beat around the bush about actually being a prophet

Many of Boehme's ideas are transfigured in form, though unchanged in essence, in Blake's grand illuminated prophecy - a prophecy no-one would even begin to understand for more than half a century after his death (even today I feel many of his ideas are commonly misinterpretted).

Later Tolkien would (probably unconsciously) weave the very same mystical core into his legendarium.

Now I come to cross-reference my thinking - I can find no discrepancy between what I myself first thought, and those who thought it first. I can demonstrate that there is no contradiction between the philosophy of Boehme, Swedenborg, Blake, Crowley, Tolkien, Krishnamurthi or myself - the diverse forms of our individual manifestations, both our written legacies and the legends of our lives - are a demonstration of this unifying philosophy.

If one perceives a single, immanent, conscious Creator [The One]? Then it follows that the manifest world is a Creation, an Artwork of which we are 'sub-creators' [The Many].

Below I have fused a paragraph from Tolkien's creation myth 'Ailundale' with a paragraph from Crowley's Book of Lies:

When they [The Ainur, Angels] were come into the Void, Iluvatar [The One] said to them 'Behold your Music!' and he showed to them a vision, giving to them sight where before there was only hearing; and they saw a new world made visible before them, and it was globed amid the Void, and it was sustained therein, but was not of it. There is no silence in that Abyss: for all that men call Silence is Its Speech. This Abyss is also called "Hell", and "The Many". Its name is "Consciousness", and "The Universe", among men. And as they looked and wondered this World began to unfold its history, and it seemed to them that it lived and grew. And when the Ainur had gazed for a while and were silent, Iluvatar said again 'Behold your music! This is your minstrelsy; and each of you shall find contained herein, amid the design that I set before you, all those things which it may seem he himself devised or added. The Abyss of Hallucinations has Law and Reason; but in Truth there is no bond between the Toys of the Gods and thou, Melkor [the fallen Angel who imposes his own reason and law upon the natural world] Reason and Law is the Bond of the Great Lie. Truth! Truth! Truth! crieth the Lord of the Abyss of Hallucinations. Thou, Melkor, wilt discover all the secret thoughts of thy mind, and wilt perceive that they are but a part of a whole and tributrary to its glory.

Later still George Lucas created the meta-narrative Star Wars, bringing these ideas to a wider audience; while Dan Brown has turned sacred geometry into a series of ludicruously popular detective stories, bringing what was formerly the reserve of certain esoteric schools within reach of anyone who can read 'Janet & John'. It is not relevant whether his conclusions are correct - through narrative he is teaching the ability to reinterpret sacred texts and geometry and to use these tools not to question one's faith, but to question the orthodoxy. None of these 'not-prophets' formed 'religions' - but their ideas have penetrated more deeply into the soul of our culture than those of any of those who did.

“They say to the seers, "See no more visions!" and to the prophets, "Give us no
more visions of what is right, tell us pleasant things, prophecy illusions."
Isaiah

Blavatsky fused Boehme's ideas with those of Edward Bulwer-Lytton**, the Rosicrucian writer and Magician, amongst others. Blavatsky, Leadbetter, Bessant et al did form an organised religion based on these ideas - Theosophy. Hierarchical and corrupt, it also harboured theories of root races that, along with the Nietzcsche's Antichrist and his other works, formed a good portion of the philosophical basis for Nazism.

"Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming,
even now many antichrists have arisen; from this we know that it is the last
hour." 1 John 2:18-19

The Theosophists also prophesied an imminent maitreya, a messiah. In the early twentieth century Leadbetter found him 'on the beach' and they groomed the young boy for the job. He did rather too well, disbanding The Order of The Star that had groomed him and damning organised religion (contrast with Richard Dawkins damnation of Spirituality and Religion in the same breath, as if they even shared tooth-brushes). Krishnamurthi went on to be one of the twentieth centuries most popular and profound mystical thinkers. What follows is a famous extract from the speech he delivered when he announced the end of the order and perhaps, the very beginning of the end of organised religion:

"We are going to discuss this morning the dissolution of the Order of the
Star. Many will be delighted, and others will be rather sad. It is a question
neither for rejoicing nor for sadness, because it is inevitable, as I am going
to explain....

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any
path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I
adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless,
unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organised; nor
should any organisation be formed to lead or coerce people along any particular
path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to
organise a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and
must not organise it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallised; it becomes a
creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others." Krishna Murthi

** Edward Bulwer-Lytton, That Secret 'Ghost Story' in Precis: There is an area in Leytonstone erected by Edward's father, including a Bulwer Rd and a Lytton Rd. Of all the buildings erected at the same time there is a certain address alone that has a seven-tiered shrine in the garden, erected at the same time as the building, and the basement is reputedly daubed with alchemical symbols - the supernatural activity reported at this location turned out to bear very close comparison to a Lytton story I uncovered 'The House and The Brain'. If that isn't spooky enough - my main slogan during my 'crazy' year was 'The Pen is ACTually mightier than the sword'. I gave away free notebooks with this (and 'you can rewrite the book of your life - literally!') scrawled on the inside covers, and I incorporated and illucidated this theme over and over again in my work. I thought it was Shakespeare. When I finally checked, to see the context of the original quote - it wasn't by Shakespeare - it was by Edward Bloody Bulwer-Lytton!

WASSUP RICHARD DAWKINS? WE GONNA BE PALS?

2009-10-06T16:08:00.001-07:00

THE I DELUSION

Richard Dawkins says...

"
I cannot see a dog
Therefore there is no dog,
Thus there has never been a dog
And there never shall be any dogs,
The only dogs there were: wolves in men's minds.

I cannot see a God
Therefore there is no God,
Thus there has never been a God
And there never shall be any Gods,
The only Gods there were: wolves in men's minds.

It is these blind Gods inside that guide the blind to kill the blind
'For if another man's God's not mine - his is a lie'
For this & other crimes & for the travesty of Time,
These non-existent Gods DESERVE TO DIE!
"

G-D says ...

"

"THOU SHALT NOT KILL", THIS I said.
Was it THIS that killed THESE in HIS name?
Or was it Mankind?

Who is The Demiurge, is it YHWH?
Who is Urizen, The Architecht,

Melkor, The Lawmaker,

Beelzebub, Lord of The Flies?
On an island the children were left to fend for themselves -
Is THIS Mankind?

Who exactly 'DESERVES TO DIE'?

No-one.

YOU, my daughtersons to come

You were never left alone

& you never left my home

I Love you

Nothing will be lost,
None of you suffering will ever have been in vain

I promise you this

You will see

Thou shalt not kill your Mythopoeia -

for it is what you are and it is your reason

Thou shalt not kill my Yourthopoeia -

it is what I AM and without it there is no reason

"

ALIENS VS. DEMONS - THE DIRECTOR'S CUT

2009-10-06T14:09:00.000-07:00

[The Jester's reply to thread on 'ufoseek.com' - the place where UFO freaks gather to discuss whether you can ward of alien abductions with Garlic and a crucifix, and freaks like me feel almost normal]

I think the very nature of this epoch is to over-complicate and confuse matters.

The truth about the nature of being is more miraculous, yet less complicated, than anticipated.

That there are conscious entities other than men? Certainly. They are 'Alien' in that they are other than individual men, and in that they are not familiar to most men; they are 'Angels' or 'Demons' in that they are not manifest materially. However, the material universe we generally agree is most 'real' - this originates in a more fundamental'dimension' or 'plane' that for a duration we have been prevented from seeing.

Utimately all of existence is the manifestation of a single immanent consciousness, 'that which I AM', and all these 'beings that are not men' are projected intermediaries between our consciousness and that of the one-handed, eagle-haloed time-bandit some call 'G-d'.

When we realise our unity with that which I AM we cease to perceive 'inside' and 'outside', we see all forms as multi-dimensional manifestations, forms that are as thoughts to that which I AM.

Is there to be an age where THEY take control? The only beings not aware of their unity with I AM are Men. Men are the only 'aliens' in this universe, and we are moving out of this age of Man's self-imposed suffering, war and slavery & into the age where the purpose of this endeavour is revealed.

'THEY never lost control' is the surface answer - the world is as a nursery, our Wars, our conflicts, and indeed the sum total of Mankind's experiences - these are our lessons, and what make us what we are.

'There is no US and THEM', this is the higher answer. Our individuality and free-will is, and always has been, a chimera & the root of all our suffering. Our manifestation, that of the many men - this is the highest expression of that which I AM.

The truth about the nature of being is that it is more infintely vast, yet vastly more intimate and tender, than anticipated.

So will this be the end of mankind?

You are The Chicken, Mother.
I am The Egg, Man.

When the Egg hatches there will be no more 'Men'.

Thank G-d for that!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(I laugh, for I AM ISIS)

HAHAHAHAHAHA!
(I laugh for Urizen)

HAHAHAHAHA!
(I laugh for Men)

I AM what I AM, YHWH,

Everything IS what it IS, ISIS,

I AM SAM, I AM SAM,

I really like them, SAM I AM,

I really like green eggs &

ABRAHADABRABRA HAM!

thE jesTer

ZIGGY STARDUST'S OPEN LETTER TO DAVID BOWIE

2009-10-06T11:22:00.000-07:00

This Starman would like to check what the God of this “ROCK” (The Not-a-Prophet-but-a-stone-age-man The Celebrated Mr Bowie) is doing about finishing our musical about The End of Time.

I think it should be screened in 24 hour long episodes leading up to 21.12.12., don't you?

Forgive all debt! 21.12.12

Reset the clock! 00.00.00

WE love you!

31/12/08 - 01/01/09

I wrote the above open-letter to David Bowie at the Hellmouth on New Year's eve, when I believed my alter-ego, 'The Celebrated Mr K', was the transvestite, rockstar/prophet/spaceman prophesied by The Not-a-prophet-but-a-stone-age-man Mr Bowie. I was on a mission - with five years left to 'The End of The World as we know it' (the nature of 'The End of Time' I prophesied was that of 'The Ending of Time' dialogues by Krishnamurthi and David Bohm)

I felt fine.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

NEW WORLD ORDER VS. YHWH - THE FINAL BATTLE

2009-10-06T05:10:00.000-07:00

[Jester's reply to a post by Swordfish on Indigosociety.com message board]

Swordcat says "Its the ultimate chaos theory! Chaos by nature exists to do only two things, destroy all it infects and spread in all possible directions!".

Thats not the last word on chaos theory, Swordcat - thats the old-fashioned assumption about the nature of chaos. 'Chaos Theory' negates the existence of 'chaos' in this conventional sense, instead finding the implicate order in everything.

It is not our job to fight chaos, but to embrace the potential to utilise the implicit order of organic structures - to create systems that develop organically, and allow the new global community to order itself like a single living organism - which, indeed, it is.

It is the urge to order things too much that we oppose. Bureaucracy is Hell. Meaningless paper shuffling is a life in Hell. Pointless over-production and over-consumption is Hell.

Blake describes this tendency in man as 'Urizen' who "bears architect's tools, to create and constrain the universe; or nets, with which he ensnares people in webs of law and conventional culture."

Tolkien calls this archetypal character 'Melkor' - otherwise their cosmology is identical:-

"it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall ...) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction. Very slowly, beginning with fair motives: the reorganizing and rehabilitation of Middle-earth, 'neglected by the gods,' he becomes a reincarnation of Evil, and a thing lusting for Complete Power..

He made himself a great king in the midst of the earth, and was at first well-seeming and just and his rule was of benefit to all men in their needs of the body; for he made them rich, whoso would serve him. But those who would not were driven into the waste places... [He desired] to be both a king over all kings and as a god to men. And slowly his power moved north and south, and ever westward." The Silmarillion

I haven't read any Dan Brown, though I have called him a Genius in a previous article (by reaching such a large audience with a deeply subversive meta-narrative, he has empowered many people to "question everything they know" - this makes him a SUPERHERO in my book. Still not going to plough through that godawful prose, mind you, superhero or not. It would be worrying if people couldn't pick holes in the theories in his stories - do we need another 'Good Book' to be taken as 'Gospel'?).

Where was I? No, I have not read any of Dan Brown's books - but I have seen his new book in the window of the bookshop - I notice he has placed the architecht's tool in the upward pointing triangle of The Star of David/Seal of Solomon. This is the manifiest portion of the seal - the hidden element, the downward pointing triangle, contains nature and its self-organising systems, so long fought against by 'Urizen' or 'Melkor'. Both manifest and unmanifest forms are expressions of that which I AM, yet the Abrahamic traditions are prevented from seeing this by the seal, and thus assume their 'God' to be The Architecht alone - sorry, folks, but I AM also the Gardener.

‘Behold your Music! This is your minstrelsy; and each of you shall find
contained herein, amid the design that I set before you, all those things which
it may seem that he himself devised or added. And thou, Melkor, wilt discover
all the secret thoughts of thy mind, and wilt perceive that they are but a part
of the whole and tributary to its glory’ Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Technology is making countries and their governments increasingly irrelevent, and will inevitably lead to a united world - we favour an organic, decentralised unity: "a new global community" - the alternative, 'The New World Order', would be centrally controlled and highly vulnerable to the wayward weltenschaung of those who hunger for power - it would seem almost inevitable that it would be an extension of the period of Mankind's greatest suffering, not its ending.

We do not seek power, but to facilitate the arisal of new self-organising systems, systems NOT based on the lust for power, but rather on the common good. What is the difference between US and THEM? It is that we know there is no US and THEM, there is only US. There is no ME and YOU, there is only US - and we are that which I AM.

Those who wish to achieve peace?

History has shown us: you can't fight for peace. If you think you have a right to peace? WRITE FOR PEACE!

the jesTer

"

MORE POEMS ABOUT THE ENDS OF TIMES

2009-10-02T08:59:00.000-07:00

The Yellow Notebook

Dearly Beloved,

I am gathered here today,

to light a good fire on your grave.

You always liked flowers

and you always loved

flames.

Amen.

I strike the match

Swift fire’s contagion instantly infects nature’s finite shame.

Order

becomes Energy

Of every gifted rose’s remnants - savoured so long –

Infinity enfolds each brittle petal, the labour of the ages.

What once was [preserved between stained tissues, stored

in Aesop’s Fables’ yellowed pages & saved for

favourite, special, sacred, moments & occasions] is no more

What remains? That is a question for The Sages.

Sagely, they would answer with or without a single word -

whilst proper Prophets and Philosophers prefer to proffer The Yellow Pages!

Guided by a gentle and mysterious hand, I ascended,

To the tender will of the still night’s airless breath, my spirit was subdued -

 THIS is the greater current

THIS mighty river, THESE winding streams

THESE threads of time, THIS ancient loom

THIS is The Tree, THESE are The Leaves

THESE are The Waves, THIS is The Sea

THIS IS THE SEA

Hesse, that is I, THIS is HE:

“East is The Sea - THIS, The Sea, IS”

This is ‘HE THAT IS’: “Set, The Sea is HIS:

THIS is The Seat, HIS is The Seat, HIS is The Sea!”

Thea is a SHE, Isis is The Sea, that is, SHE is The Atheist,

SHE is THIS is THESE - A SHE, Thea, Isis - ’tis this: The Sea!

i hate you

When you took those words, when you spat them right out,

When you shat them right out on my spinning-top head -

Well, I spun and I span and the shit was spread

All over the walls and our nuptial bed

We’re wired

together

We’re twisted
together

We come together but we’re spiralling apart

Riding off into the sunset on our merry-go-round hearts

2009

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD before breakfast

2009-10-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

[Jester's reply to a post by Swordfish on Indigosociety.com message board]

THIS IS ALWAYS THE RIDDLE - WHO AM I?

This is always the answer: I AM.

Sorry for being absent so long, and leaving you hanging - though in my absense you have done a fantastic job of answering many of the most profound questions facing humanity without the assistance of this Fool.

The reason for my absence is that I am concentrating on my work - it is necessary for us to accurately communicate our message to as large an audience as possible, before or after my death - this is of no significance. I am also my senile mother's live-in carer, which places certain demands on my time.

The pen is ACTually mightier than the sword, for it is never the SWORD that kills - the weapon is an inert lump of steel - it is the WORDS inside the killer that seal the passion that raises the hand that strikes the blow.

What does this mean in practice?

This is about where real POWER lies! It lies in who it is that controls the meta-narratives - for it is the over-arching stories we use to explain our lives that govern our collective and individual mindsets and life-scripts.

What WE have is access to the uber-meta-narrative - that which explains, contains and untangles all the broken languages.

"There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code" The Future, Leonard Cohen

'But', you say, 'haven't we, in The West, been robbed of our meta-narratives, and had them replaced with a sterile rationalist, scientific weltenschaung?'

Wouldn't it be convenient if someone had already been subliminally reprogramming the Western 'collective unconscious' - feeding them an alternative, deeper history, and greater, more profound, more inclusive philosophy and world-view - and doing this in the most entertaining and understandable way possible?

“They say to the seers, "See no more visions!" and to the prophets, "Give us no more visions of what is right, tell us pleasant things, prophecy illusions."
Isaiah

You can observe the WILL for this to happen spreading across the centuries like a Spider's Web, THIS, mankind's greatest achievement - a secular canon that includes EVERYTHING. A chain that leads Jakob Boehme to William Blake to Crowley to Tolkien to The Big Screen. Star Wars, The Lord of The Rings, Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code - all telling the same story from different perspectives, a story that transcends words, a story that is like a loom illuminated by words - all telling OUR story, not HIS story.

The shelves of HMV are stacked with vampire films, all part of a collective conversation about the nature of the immortal (from the early archetypes of pure evil the conversation has progressed, 'The Sin-eater' going so far as to suggest the vampire IS the human incarnation of The Alpha and The Omega, 'The Nude Vampire' culminating in the revelation that what the characters had taken for vampires were actually the next step in the evolution of mankind).

The fuse is lit and it is spreading like a virus - there is a unifying, knowable model of reality that transcends words and includes 'science' and that - through the ever deepening understanding of Quantum Mechanics - 'science' will also include.

The dialectic has probably already reached tipping point - but a door has been reached, and it is necessary to have a key to open this door before the assembled masses can huddle through. A key? Why, yes, we do have the secret codes. Its not rocket science! (or is it?).

We understand the exact nature of the reformation of the perception of The Divine Process, The Sephiroth - & this knowledge is as a virus or a bomb to the mystery schools, The Masons, The Rosicrucians, The New Kabbalists, The Old Jewish Mystics, Sufis, Crowleyists etc. It is quite simple to explain the nature of this change, I'm sure someone already has - but without the context of this revelation, and the manner in which it cross-references, it is just a powerless sentence. This sentence is:"when the reversal occurs the unmanifest Sephira of Da'at (higher knowledge) will become seen, and the duality of The Age of Pisces (sealed by The Seal of Solomon, which seals the 'I & Thou' relationship with The Divine and other men) will be reconciled and contained, and those Sephira which appear to the left and right of The Sephiroth, which are now manifest, will become unseen".

the jesTer

* * *

“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 (you can get ALL his amazing books free at Scribd.com, if you want to corroborate this summary)

THE CURE FOR ALZHEIMER'S

2009-09-25T06:02:00.000-07:00

THE CURE FOR ALZHEIMER'S

* * *

Fortunately I have discovered The Cure for Alzheimer's

Unfortunately this cure involves a pretty, little crystal flower,

It was wired into your palm on the day that you were born,
& every seven years, it takes another colour on,

& when the stone blinks - black-black-black -
Your special day is coming!!!
black-black black-black black-black-black

When you turn twenty-one

black-black black-black blackblackblackblack
Smile. Your Last Day has come.

* * *

Fortunately I have discovered the cure for Human suffering

Unfortunately it does not involve Mankind.
Fortunately nothing will be lost.

Hallelujah!

the jesTer speaks ...

Do ya? Do ya? Do ya think I've been over-concentrating on my meta-physical contemplations and neglected the more anarchic & personal side of my material? Do ya?
The humour's always there, btw, but only I understand it - well, there is one guy - but he's in a hospital in Argentina with a brain tumour.

Previously the book of Humorous and Dark comic verse 'Hell' was a riddle, & the answer was to be printed upside down at the back, satisfyingly predictable called 'Heaven'.

Now I'm compiling a single anthology instead, 'THE FOOL'. & this has set me free to include more personal content in my current writing, and to further combine the anarchic with the sublime. The above just popped out, could do with some more verses...

WANNA perform again! MISSIN' d' IMMEDIACY, d'PHYSICALITY, duh PEOPLE!
NB (29.11.09): I have returned to the original plan, a single anthology, 'Heaven' one way up and 'Hell' the other. Heaven is the gift of The One to The Many, Hell is the gift of The Many to The One.

Please leave a comment below, or email me at josh.steed@gmail.com

* * *Formerly known as The Celebrated Mr K.* * *

Thus Spake the Jester - the thoughts of Josh Steed

FUNERAL SONG

THE SEARCHER STEPS OFF INTO THE ABYSS

MUSINGS -- IS IT ALWAYS WRONG TO WANT TO CHANGE SOMEBODY?

LEONARD COHEN AND JUDY COLLINS SING "SUZANNE"

THE ALL AND THE EVERYTHING

INDECENT EXPOSURE

SOLDIER SPEAKS UP - NICE ONE!!!

THE LAW OF TIME

ORIGINAL SIN - FACEBOOK THREAD

Core LuminousIndeed only a child hater could come up with the myth and ideology of original sin.

HAIKU

LAST NIGHT'S GLITTER

TEA

YOU'RE SO PARA YOU PROBABLY THINK THIS POEM IS ABOUT YOU

RELATIONSHIPS

UNTITLED POEM - 10.01.09

CAPITALISM IS CANCER

in one strange dream...

SILENCED

3 BLIND MEN, AN ELEPHANT & THE CONVERGENCE OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

WHETHER WE REALISE IT OR NOT

ALL OF MY BEST POEMS

ANCIENT OF DAYS - IS GOD EVIL?

DR WHO SPOILER ??

IF YOU WANT TO SUCCEED?

PLAYIN' DEVIL'S ADVOCATE & CRYIN' LIKE A LION IN ZION

DR WHO CONFIDENTIAL

THE SOUNDS OF THE UNDERGROUND

GOAT OF MANY COLOURS

TWO FACE GOOD, ONE FACE BAD

TOLKIEN AS SUBLIME ALLEGORY

THERE IS NO DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

SACRED VISIONS OF UNITY

ANARCHY 2012

THE DEVIL DRIVES AN S.U.V.

I'M IN LOVE WITH EVERYONE

ON WANKING by an expert

THAT WHICH IS BEYOND NAMES

THE MARRIAGE OF BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

IN SILENCE

IDOLISING CHARLES MANSON IS IDIOTIC

THE KEYS TO A FULL UNDERSTANDING OF BLAKE

WEAPONS OF MASS INSTRUCTION

THE LAST PROPHETS AT THE END OF TIME - ALLISM

WASSUP RICHARD DAWKINS? WE GONNA BE PALS?

ALIENS VS. DEMONS - THE DIRECTOR'S CUT

ZIGGY STARDUST'S OPEN LETTER TO DAVID BOWIE

NEW WORLD ORDER VS. YHWH - THE FINAL BATTLE

MORE POEMS ABOUT THE ENDS OF TIMES

The Yellow Notebook

THIS IS THE SEA

THIS IS THE SEA

i hate you

i hate you

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD before breakfast

THE CURE FOR ALZHEIMER'S

Core Luminous
Indeed only a child hater could come up with the myth and ideology of original sin.