A Dream Within a Larger Dream

The ayahuasca trip of 2020, my first, was long and arduous.  It was also expensive.  I dropped about seven thousand dollars just on the journey to the journey in fact.

There were two days of spiritual preparation in the jungle.  I found myself in a state of high anxiety during that time of preparation.  I was in the company of a score of other psychic explorers, most of them young people from Europe and the British Isles.

In the event, on the third day and in the deep darkness of a large yurt, I drank the wretched brown liquid from a bowl held by our Colombian shaman.  Only about 15 minutes later I purged.  That experience was characterized more by relief than torment happily.  A young woman related to the shaman then took me by the hand and led me to what would become "my spot" for a week.  I reclined there with my back against the wall of the yurt.  She lay a large candle at my feet.

At about 2AM (we weren't equipped accurately to track the time) I lapsed into what felt like a lucid dream.  I was walking along a trail back home, not far from Walden Pond.  I turned a corner to find a woman sitting in a small clearing in a meditative pose, but with her eyes half open.  As I approached she raised her right index finger, gently to stop me.  She then opened her eyes completely and said "Young man, do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

She sighed. "Now that everything material has come to dust, and everyone can see it, and we can see as well that we inhabit a realm filled with spirits, some real, some imaginary, some mocking our fears of them, who shall I choose to worship?"

Somehow inspired to speak without hesitation, and only half joking, I said "There's an algorithm for that."

She sighed more deeply.  She had by her side a plastic Halloween pumpkin.  She drew from it a single Chinese fortune cookie, still in its cheap plastic wrapper.  She tossed it at my head.  I caught it mid-air, but could not open it with my fingers, so I tore it open with my front teeth.  I cracked it in two and read the fortune aloud to her. "Garbage in; garbage out" it read.

 

A Turning Point?

"Age of Disclosure" was released theatrically and on Amazon Prime five days ago, on Nov 21.  The theatrical release was limited to three theatres and apparently intended principally to qualify the film for Oscar nominations.  On Amazon the price of admission is 20-25 dollars, which has some people howling at the moon at a time when you can spend about that much for two fish filets and a large Coke at McDonald's.

What does the movie say, and will it "move the needle" as the saying goes?

The film says only a little that I did not know, and that other people steeped in the lore did not know, but the genius of its creator, Dan Farah, was to assemble 34 highly-credentialed people in government and the security apparatus who believe that non-human intelligence walks among us, or at least that the same security apparatus has been hiding secrets related to non-human intelligence from the American people for 80 years, in hopes that the US would be able to reverse engineer mind-bending and paradigm-shifting technology developed by "the Others" before the Russians and the Chinese do.  Because the 34 are so highly credentialed, one can choose to dismiss one or two of them as delusional or as psyop agents, but the picture remains the same.  Those people can be dismissed, but the premise of the film cannot.

Among the claims:

• The Roswell crash of 1947 was real.
• UFOs can operate beneath the oceans at speeds of hundreds of miles an hour -- far faster than any submarine or torpedo.
• Even presidents of the United States have not been read in to the entire story, because they are not considered to have the requisite "need to know."
• Notwithstanding this, George H.W. Bush in retirement told a prominent physicist, interviewed in the film, that NHI landed at Holloman AFB in 1964 and interacted with Air Force personnel.
• UFOs have repeatedly interfered with the functioning of both US and Soviet ICBMs.  An eyewitness to one such incident in South Dakota describes a craft, hovering low over a silo, that was "as large as a Walmart."
• The secret of seemingly impossible UFO maneuvers may lie in the ability to manipulate spacetime such that the craft operate in an independent "bubble," impervious to forces that would otherwise tear them apart.
• The craft are sometimes credibly described as being much larger inside than outside ("say again?").
• The whistleblower who narrates the film, Lu Elizondo, was told by friendly sources on Capitol Hill that they attended a meeting in which senior Pentagon spooks discussed the possibility of having Elizondo and one other person killed in order to prevent the secret from leaking.  (One of the attendees said that he was reduced to vomiting from shock and disgust after the meeting.)

My own position is that at this point skeptics need to do more than play the "three monkeys" game; they need rather to proffer an alternative "theory of the case" that has some plausibility, and for those who have bothered to marshal the salient facts, there is none.  

And yet, so far at least, the extraordinary claims made in the film have made barely a ripple in the public mind.  Jake Tapper has called the film Oscar worthy on CNN, and Bret Baier on Fox has more or less said the same.  Joe Rogan, whose podcast audience dwarfs all of the cable shows combined, spoke sympathetically with Farah and dove deep on the issues for a couple of hours.  Print media from the Guardian to Variety to the New York Times have touched the story.  But Chris Mellon, one of the 34 in the film, is right to call the story the most important in the history of mankind, and by all rights it should be as top of mind over Thanksgiving turkey at least as prospects for peace in Ukraine or the Epstein files, but the stigma and the squeamishness around the topic remain.

There is one wrinkle that could make this moment different, however.  Dan Farah and prominent whistleblower David Grusch are making explicit public pleas to Donald Trump to reveal what the government knows, rather transparently appealing to his narcissism and his desire to leave a lasting legacy.  Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe are known to be sympathetic to the cause (as are prominent Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand).  And Trump, for good or ill, seems to love to "flood the zone" with crises and controversies, whereas his predecessor and his minions like Jake Sullivan are reported to have shied away from this topic because Joe Biden had more than enough on his plate.

So there may be some non-trivial chance that "Big D" disclosure arrives fairly soon in a form previously thought to be the stuff only of the sci-fi world -- an astounding announcement of some kind from the Resolute Desk.

UFO world is alive with fervent discussions of how the larger world would react to such news.  Many say that people would take it in stride; many others predict widespread panic.  My own thought is that there would be waves of reaction, with the real ontological shock coming only when the implications begin to crystallize.  To use only two examples (1) the Judeo-Christian myths, which I contend are as dear to the materialists and secular humanists as they are to the Talmudic scholars and the Vatican, will lose their underpinnings entirely; and (2) the possibility that we, homo sapiens, were bioengineered in the distant past by what we can only call demi-gods will have to be confronted.  We will need to start seeing ourselves as plankton in the sea rather than as apex predators blessed by an indulgent God.

 

One Man's Fate

                                                                     Tues March 15, 1836

                                                                     10 nm ssw of the Nantucket Shoal

We lost a shipmate, Edgar Reims of New Bedford, overboard today while reefing the fore t'gallant in a freshening breeze.  There was no point in mounting a search as his head had made hard contact with the starboard rail before he entered the sea, which was very cold, and at the end of the first dog watch the sky was grey and the light was faltering.

His kit has already been distributed among his friends in the fo'c'sle.  It included a small tin whistle and a black onyx ring that he never wore when he might have to go aloft.

At the Sunday noon muster we will pray for the repose of his soul.

 

Watch Your Steps!

Even today, were you to be walking along a path in a German meadow, and you came upon a dilapidated wooden sign with a skull and crossbones in the middle and the words "Achtung Minen!" at top and bottom, respectively, I venture that you would steer well clear of the entire area.

Likewise there are minefields along the path that leads into the so-called paranormal, such that I sympathize with those who choose not to step onto the path at all.  As I have said before, once you are on it there is no natural place to step off, even as things get weirder and also often more sinister.

One dark spur on the path leads to the "secret societies," including the Rosicrucians, the Golden Dawn, the Skull & Bones, the Freemasons, the Theosophists, and those guys with the hoods and masks who scared the bejesus out of the Tom Cruise character in Stanley Kubrick's last film, the frustratingly enigmatic "Eyes Wide Shut."

And so if I should start referring to myself as "Frater Luminotrious" or some such, you have my permission to break my spell by hitting me in the face with a banana cream pie.

To my point, another frater has just instructed me via his podcast how to "cross the abyss" -- a spiritual journey not unlike C.J. Jung's, but inspired more directly by the philosophy that underlies the Kabbalah.  Specifically, in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life there are ten "sephirot" or emanations of the Divine.  In our spiritual development, we move from contact with the lower emanations to contact with the higher.  To reach the Top Three, which are capped by the Ultimate Godhead Itself, we must first cross the abyss between Lower Seven and Top Three, which entails utter ego dissolution.  The good frater avers that for everyone, it also entails a symbolic detachment from one's corrupt and disposable body; that detachment is acted out, within a separate reality that is more real than this one, as being torn apart by a swarm of crocodiles, to which swarm we voluntarily submit because it is the universal and mandatory path forward.

Baptisms of fire.  Violent ayahuasca vomiting fits.  Walking over burning coals.  Why is it that we cannot make our way to the Godhead in a Barcalounger that is attached to a cheery yellow conveyor belt?  Please do not reply "it is what it is."

 

 

I Wish that I Had the Talent, and the Energy, and the Time

To write a novel about an America that is deep into the demographic collapse that the experts are predicting (I know; beware the experts!), circa 2100.  

The population long ago peaked at about 340 million.  It is now 28 million.  Only six million are under age 25.  The major cities are completely hollowed out.  

The old infrastructure set aside for taking care of the elders is gone.  Robots ran it for a while, but they are largely gone as well.  Where there is family, family cares for the old folks, but for many reasons mean longevity has dropped to 58 for males and 64 for females.

People cluster in settlements.  The largest is near Tallahassee and comprises about 340,000 inhabitants.  Almost everywhere they are sustained by local agriculture.  Horses and oxen accordingly have made a comeback.

Conflict occasionally breaks out among the settlements.  In the main, the people are not culturally aggressive, but as in Native American times, competition for resources -- famine -- drives them to it.

In some places, certain women of strong constitution and character choose to be "breeders," each having ten children or more, often from as many fathers. Their fecundity allows them to accumulate power within the tribe.  Thus, in the sociology of the time, communities sometimes are classified first and foremost as matriarchal or patriarchal.

The children are raised communally, but the circumstances are such that infant mortality is high, and those that survive to seven or eight invariably are hard at work by then.

And yet I don't want my novel to be a novel of dystopia and despair a la Cormac McCarthy.  There is a spiritual resilience among the people.  Further, as in our time and in times past, passion sometimes evolves into love, and familial bonds awaken that cannot be broken.  Indeed, mirabile dictu, a long-dormant anthem of kitsch somehow has risen from the ashes to become our new, but informal, National Anthem, and it becomes the subtext for the novel -- "Que sera, sera."