Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem:
Hermetically Sealed:
Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem:
Fuck man, you have a good point. I think it's actually a lot like that, except instead of a visible light aura which would be bloody obvious to everybody, it's an invisible affective aura which is only felt intuitively. So those more in tune with their feelings would notice it, while others would repress the feeling aspect or ignore it and explain it via other means like body language or something. Essentially it's the same phenomenon as when someone is very charismatic and has a large 'presence', except multiplied by a factor of a lot.
Precisely although I suspect that this 'invisible affective aura' which can only be felt intuitively is perhaps only the leakage that escapes from the sheath in which the awakened being veils himself to dim his radiance. In theory it's possible that if the awakened being were to completely withdraw his sword from the stone, so to speak then a much broader spectrum of energies may be radiated including but not limited to visible light. This might explain the Light symbolism in Buddhism, Christianity, and Freemasonry to name a few traditions who associate Light with the awakening of consciousness. Keep in mind that all I'm doing here is playing with concepts from mainstream religion for the sake of a thought exercise. For me it's as you say an 'invisible affective aura' that may or may not be 100% psychological. For the Buddha however perhaps there really was an effect in the range of visible light or beyond. As the Buddha says at one point in describing his Awakening, "Ignorance was destroyed; knowledge arose; darkness was destroyed; light arose — as happens in one who is heedful, ardent, and resolute."
Personally I think any experiences of visible light being emitted would be strictly psychic - that is, hallucinatory - in nature. I'm reminded of a street magician that some of my family members witnessed. They all saw, with their very own eyes, the street magician levitating a plate! All of them except for my great-grandfather, that is, who was hard of hearing and didn't understand what was going on. For him, the plate didn't move at all. That is, in actuality, the plate never moved - everyone else was just somehow drawn into this consensual hallucination by the street magician. It seems it would be the same sort of thing with radiating light. The Saints and Saviours are said to radiate light that, just as the sun is brighter than the moon, so too are they brighter than the sun, yet it's not a physical, actual light, just this psychic hallucination.
I agree, although I happen to believe that pretty much all we ever experience is a kind of psychic hallucination. Modern science seems to be pointing in this direction with their study of 'actual light'. Is a photon a particle or is it a wave ? It depends on the consciousness of the observer therefor 'actual light' seems to be very much a psychic phenomenon in a certain sense. The psyche is a mysterious, substance-less substance through which spirit and matter work out their seeming differences and intermingle so as to reveal their unity. We never have an experience, of either the world or ourselves, except within the psyche. Recognizing the psychic nature of our experience is analogous to recognizing the dream-like nature of our universe. Unaware of the role that our psyche plays in the co-creation of our universe, we of necessity “dream up” or create our world in such a way so as to remind us of the profound importance of the psyche.
This is analogous to how, in a night dream, we “dream up” our unconscious into manifestation in, as and through the dream so as to reveal itself to us and help us to awaken. And just like in a night dream, if we don’t get the “message” that our dream-like universe is revealing to us, we can expect to have endless re-iterations of the same waking nightmare, as if we are having a recurring dream. I think this is what's playing out on a global scale in the seemingly outer world.
Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem:
Hermetically Sealed:
Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem:
Personally things like this are why I no longer think enlightenment is the solution I am looking for. It doesn't eliminate the power struggle or power dynamics we were talking about earlier. It just puts you right at the top, and gives you the task of then going about figuring out how to get other people up to where you are. But it's inherently uneven. And quite rare, as you said. Is it really a solution that will lead to peace on earth? Enlightenment has already been around for a few thousand years. Buddha wasn't the first one, and he said so himself. Yet humanity is still in a pretty shitty state. All the enlightened people before you have failed to save humanity. It seems to just perpetuate it, if the power dynamic thing is part of the problem, for example - which I think it is.
I agree that humanity is in a pretty shitty state, but what if there is some hidden relationship between awakened consciousness, Light, and the 'meat an potatoes' power dynamics of the real world ? Isn't such a paradigm what most of the Abrahamic religions are claiming is the case ? If you think about it isn't most of the world's population operating under the assumption that there is going to be a Master who shows up and in some way uses his power of awakened consciousness to forge global peace and start up a new golden age ? In these traditions that Master is always associated with light symbolism and with spiritual development. Now that does sound very Dragon Ball Z but so do many events in the Bible, and in the Pali cannon for that matter. None of these cartoon like speculations have anything to do with my own personal reason for seeking awakening of course but since you brought up DBZ I thought I'd play along.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ovFZEHs2EU
Hehe. It's more fun to have a sense of humor about all this.
I agree that most of the world seems to be operating under this assumption. And where has that gotten us? Nowhere. We as humans are not that much closer to global peace and harmony than we were thousands of years ago. We're not even closer to interpersonal peace and harmony... how many couples have persistent strife in their relationships? If one man and one woman can't get along then how can the whole human race be expected to?
So I agree that there is a relationship between awakened consciousness and the 'meat and potatoes' power dynamics of the real world. The relationship is one of the denizens of the real world looking up to and placing on a pedestal and surrendering to this awakened consciousness. Yet this does not eliminate those power dynamics. It just perpetuates them, and perhaps even intensifies them, focusing them all on the awakened consciousness. Since the power dynamics are the problem in the first place, how will that lead to global peace and harmony?
So maybe the problem is that people are all waiting for a Savior. There have been many Saviors already and they haven't managed to save much, yet. Perhaps instead of perpetuating this global meme by becoming the next Savior and slipping right into it, it's time for everybody to throw away this notion of waiting for a Savior and go about helping themselves.
In any case, I don't want to be the next Savior. Screw that! I'd rather be cheery and anonymous, enjoying my time with whomever I am interacting with, without having to deal with 'me' being better than 'them' or 'them' being jealous of 'me' or 'them' surrendering to 'me' or placing 'me' on a pedestal or 'me' trying to save 'them' etc. That all sounds mighty dramatic and not ultimately very pleasant.
Oh I completely agree about that in a certain sense. The last thing I'd want is to be the next Savior celebrity also. However as I pointed out above I believe that humanity is having a nightmare that it can't seem to wake up from, so those of us who are at least slightly more awake do feel a sense of responsibility to help roust the others, but as you say playing into the savior meme might not be the most skillful means to accomplish this, in fact it's an obvious trap. One problem I see out there is that those characters in the dream who are supposed to be the responsible adults are actually engaged in scheming up every possible way to keep their fellow man deeply asleep. You mentioned that couples are having a hard time getting along with each other. At the risk of being overly verbose let me take a moment here to examine why I believe that is so.
"Kids won’t even find out how much their values have been perverted until they hit high school" - Esquire Magazine
Due to chronic symbol illiteracy, we live our lives largely unaware of a great poison in our midst, something that has a profoundly negative effect on our conscious and unconscious selves. This is the use of subliminal persuasion in media and advertising. Subliminal and subtextual persuasion of this pernicious kind constitutes nothing less than a psychic dictatorship. It involves the deliberate and subversive manipulation and public purveyance of words, images, numbers, colors, rhythms and symbols which are subsequently directed, via ubiquitous media oracles, toward limbic areas of the brain.
The artifice of the Media Persuaders produces an elaborate and insidious cryptic language specifically designed to stimulate conflict between fantasy and reality. It also serves to stimulate the compulsive urges of man's base appetites, and a plethora of mundane and dissonant drives that conflict with our higher aspirations and intentions. Constant exposure to subliminal content serves to undermine our healthy drives. It subverts our natural moral sensibility and
ultimately arrests our spiritual maturation. The devastating effects of such subversion on ourselves, and our children, has rarely been explored in great depth. It has yet to be recognized by the public at large, who - being victims of chronic symbol illiteracy - are unshielded against the constant barrage of subliminal information entering their minds causing, over time, a nightmare list of physical and psychic disorders.
Robert D. Mcllwraith of the University of Manitoba states that the main attraction of television-watching is not the content of programming, but a dependency on the medium itself...The volume of television-watching in the United States might be seen as indicative of an addiction. It is estimated by the Smithsonian Institute that the average American household has the television on seven and a half hours per day. The average American watches twenty-five hours of television per week. The average preschool child watches television about twenty-eight hours per week, and the average elementary school age child watches twenty-four hours per week. By the completion of high school, a child can be expected to have watched 15,000 hours of television-far more than the child's accumulated hours of classroom time and more than any other activity except sleep
- Ronald Schenk (Spirit in the Tube)
In my mind there can be no question of positive social change, no question of national or global healing, until human beings (particularly those in the western world) become lucidly aware of, and profoundly educated concerning the power of symbols, not only as transcendental portals, and mathematical indicators, but as weapons in the hands of plutocratic elites, with occult agendas, laboring to arrest the mental, emotional, and spiritual maturation of the underclasses.
The alarming existential chaos which the young presently experience, though mostly deplored and ignored, serves as a direct indictment of the symbolic subversion I seek to expose. The young are, by definition, closer to the creative force than the average adult. They are also more influenced by the limbic brain and, therefore, respond with greater zeal to the erotic and even perverse symbolic messages which have become increasingly pervasive in their life- and think-space. The invasive, clandestinely directed, content has been adroitly designed to bypass their moral conscience and rational filters. The results of this psychic dictatorship are devastating.
Subliminal messages permeate television programs, computer games, magazines, billboards, products and musical productions. They are, however, not limited to the ambience of the young. They are just one of the weapons in the arsenal of psychopathic corporations whose entire modus operandi concerns profit and dehumanization. All that is truly aesthetic, traditional and culturally substantial, stands in the way of their monopolistic strategies; their aggressive, relentless efforts at reducing the entire human race to a body of narcissistic, sense-infatuated, desensitized, amoral, immoral or actively criminal "smiling depressives."
…the corporation remains as it was at the time of its origins, as a mad business institution in the middle of the nineteenth century, and legally designated “person” designed to valorize self interest and invalidate moral concern. Most people would find its “personality” abnormal, even psychopathic, in a human being, yet curiously we accept it in society’s most powerful institutions
- Joel Bakan (The Corporation)
Business is business we say; people are merely selling their products. If only this were true. A little research and objective observation tells a different tale. The elite at the top of the world's major advertising agencies are extraordinarily educated and intuitive people trained by private schools and prestigious think tanks. Although it may come as news to the consumer, it is a fact that selling products is only a minor concern for them. Though it may sound rather bizarre, it is their job to implant political and aesthetically conditioning motifs within the minds of their erstwhile viewers. These implanted messages, more often than not, contradict our conscious drives. The elites to whom I refer, know a great deal about human and social psychology. They understand the operations of the human body and mind. They have made an indepth study of the complex nature of desire, emotion, libido, and appetite, and their researches have even taken them into occult fields. Arcane subjects such as Astro-Theology, sabeanism, numerology, and ceremonial magic are assiduously studied. It would appear that the advertisers consider their logos in the same manner as a trained sorcerer considers the various talismans, amulets, symbols, mudras, mantras, and rhythms that employs in his work to disaffect minds and enhance personal power.
Down through the centuries, symbols are memorized. They become part of the collective phylogenetic reservoir. They are in our "Race Memory." When such symbols are used, they invariably stimulate reactions, often emotional and sexual. Some symbols were, and still are, specifically designed to affect the limbic centers of the brain. In primitive cultures we hear of the voodoo doctor and his attendant zombie. Before he fell under the spell of his master, the zombie was a live, active, thinking person. His will was weakened because he was slowly and surreptitiously administered the juice of the Datura plant, which drugged him into state of listlessness and passivity. Each day, lest he revive, the zombie had to ingest more of the potion.
Today we see a similar process at work, only with greater frequency and over a larger demographic. In this case, the "Datura" is not organic but auditory, visual, and digital. We have technological witchdoctors and cyberspace sorcerers. Their particular concoction of spells are cast via techniques that go by names such as Tele-hypnosis, Metacontrast, Hemisync, Synaesthenia and Embedding to name a few. New techniques, yes, but with the same deadly effect as any past voodoo, sorcery or telepathy. Recently, a professional hypnotist declared that the very same skills used to lull the mind into a state of suggestibility are unquestionably used by advertising agents operating carelessly and narcissistically when it comes to their contributions to the fate of civilization.
Yes, it appears that the "enchanters" of the story books are alive, well and busy. In one sense the advertisers are like the “Leonardos” and “Michaelangelos” of the modern age. Moreover, they are still under oligarchic patronage. They are, however, not utilizing their prodigious endowments for the spiritual or cultural uplift of mankind. They are master persuaders and deal in behavioral and motivational sciences. Their modus operendi is the systematic erosion of the moral, intellectual, and spiritual foundations of society. Cannot the spiritual vacuity and moral degradation of our century be traced to the corruption peddled by these Apollonian persuaders in their gleaming corporate penthouses?
No one's really worrying about what it's (advertising to children) teaching impressionable youth. Hey, I'm in the business of convincing people to buy things they don't need
- Advertising Executive (quoted from Business Week, August 11, 1997)
…In boy’s advertising…antisocial behavior in pursuit of a product is a good thing - Disney Marketing Executive
We readily accept that other species on the planet can be trained to have their behavior altered. We know that this manipulation occurs either by direct training or gradual change of a creature’s environment and habitat beyond its awareness. Although it may sound controversial, the situation is no different when it comes to the control of humanity. The results of the artifice are around us in plain view:
In the cybernetic age, the individual becomes increasingly subject to manipulation. His work, his consumption, and his leisure are manipulated by advertising, by ideologies, by what Skinner calls “positive reinforcements.” The individual loses his active, responsible role in the social process; he becomes completely “adjusted” and learns that any behavior, act, thought, or feeling which does not fit into the general scheme puts him at a severe disadvantage; in fact he is what he is supposed to be…What has happened in modern industrial society is that traditions, and common values, and genuine social personal ties with others have largely disappeared. The modern mass man is isolated and lonely, even though he is part of a crowd; he has no convictions which he could share with others, only slogans and ideologies he gets from the communications media
- Erich Fromm (The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness)
Without personal study or experience, the reader will be inclined to balk at these facts. The oligarchs have made sure that little information regarding this subject reaches the public. Although there is an unbelievable barrage of symbolism in our world, and though it is known that billions of dollars are involved in their production, distribution, and monitoring, the average person has little awareness of the fatal impact they are having on his life. Walking around decorated with the logos and brand names of exploiting corporations and conglomerates is considered normal and even chic today. Although thousands of classical musical and artistic creations are debauched under their hand, and though our visual space is cluttered with ad-copy and billboards, few in authority raise a murmur against it.
The man who does not know what it means to be under psychic hypnosis, is probably already under it - Vernon Howard
The return to sanity, personally and socially, has been a major theme of innumerable psychologists, activists and philosophers for decades. The men and women of reason have concluded that something is very existentially wrong with Post-Industrial humanity. Experts have gone to great lengths to describe what is wrong with the way urban man lives. However (despite some rare exceptions), modern-day intellectuals and academics rarely offer substantial solutions to mankind’s vexatious problems.
We are now in the twenty-first century and the time for "problem-think" is, in the mind of this writer, over. It is now time for "solution-think." This means that it is time for mankind to proactively face reality in order to change it, and to have zero-tolerance for the factors which enslave and befuddle. This paradigm shift involves the acceptance and confrontation of the "dark sides" of the human ego-personality, and a desire to see ourselves for who we are morally and psychologically. It is our habitual avoidance and denial of what we falsely regard as the "darker" side of ourselves, that has brought humanity to the brink of ecocide and psychosis. It is this avoidance that plays right into the hands of the architects of world control who have preyed over humanity for so many ages.
The confrontation of the dark aspects of the personality liberates us from the control of the ego. The ego, as a few thinkers discovered, is not unique to one person. It is really a "social ego." Man's persona or pseudo-self is simply a bi-product of his society. The face we show to the world is ultimately a creation of that world. If we wish to be truly unique, we must transcend the ego and social persona. However, this process of individuation cannot occur until we develop the capacity of seeing ourselves rightly. We must have the courage to look into the mirror of the self, rather than that of the ego.
Cynics who continue to doubt whether symbols and images have any lasting negative affect on consciousness should remember and study the most recent example of mass control, that of Nazi Germany. The Nazis openly used ritual choreography, ancient symbols and rallying chants, powerful mystical logos and regalia, and so on, to force men into a hive-think. We now know that Hitler and his cronies were deeply involved with powerful occult societies and fascinated by ancient mysticism. Hitler sent agents throughout the world, to visit tribes and sects, in order to procure occult works, and learn how to employ magical arts. Although it might sound controversial, the same arcane archive is made use of today, not only by advertisers in Hollywood and on Madison Avenue, but by leading Evangelists and other churchmen. It is used by the heads of leading corporations. As financier J. P. Morgan once said, Millionaires don't use astrology...billionaires do!
Every news anchor and talk show host subtly emphasizes stereotypes that force men into consensus trance. Every movie-maker of significance uses subliminal and subtextual devices to embed ideas in the minds of his audience. Every high-end set designer knows what symbols and shapes to use so that his audiences are emotionally attracted and ingratiated. Most informed broadcasters and media executives know how to provide surrogates for what is missing within us, and how to help us hide from ourselves in the "light" of collective. They know what kind of power the super-lit, florescent, convenient, user-friendly, one-seasoned world of their manufacture has over human minds. They also know that what psychosis occurs if those under their control are not provided with illusions of freedom, diversity, plenty and choice. This is one of the reasons why we are given many pseudo-choices, particularly between products. It accounts for why there are so many dialectical divisions in the corporate world - for example, Levis versus Jordac, Coke versus Pepsi, ABC versus CNN. Stones versus Beatles, Letterman versus Leno, Russia versus USA, Republican versus Democrat, Conservative versus Liberal, Catholic versus Protestant, Atheist versus Believer, Gay versus Straight, Black versus White, Arab versus Jew, Rich versus Poor, and even Male versus Female, ad nauseaum. Under the guise of plenty and choice, man's ability to choose well is eroded. His true intelligence is assaulted and he becomes incapable of deciding anything for himself. In the end, his good is whatever his masters say it is. His freedom is whatever they feel like bestowing. His thoughts are whatever makes him safe and secure in the prison created by his overlords.
Signs and symbols control the world, not phases and laws - Confucius (551-479 BC)
Obviously, a man can never attain true and lasting happiness or independence if he does not own his mind and emotions. If he is colonized and branded, he inevitably loses charge of his own destiny. He becomes emotionally and spiritually naked and his children inherit a bleak but brightly-lit busy dystopia without meaning or depth.
The man of today gives rise to the man of tomorrow. And it seems that as things currently stand tomorrow's man will not be the inhabitant of a secure utopia where freedom, justice and truth are cherished. On the contrary, he will be an obsessed, addicted victim suffering psychic and emotional dysfunction, riddled with guilt and shame. His inner life will be a miasma of unfulfilled desires and misplaced allegiances. He will be under the "Hex." Once the connection and rapport with the inner self is occluded, man becomes a slave of external approval. Consequently, those who command our adoration must be like ourselves or be those who appear to possess a greater abundance of those chimeras we think valuable. To fill his inner void, he repeatedly returns to the very oracles that caused his problems in the first place. He lives out his entire life unaware of the origin of his miasma. Indeed, he'll rush to the defense of his destroyers should they come under attack, and become neurotic the moment the spell they've cast over his soul looks like dissipating.
The twenty-first century will be the era of the World Controllers…The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles, and mysteries. Under a scientific dictatorship, education will really work…most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown
- Aldous Huxley (Brave New World Revisited)
Tragically, that which man consumes also consumes him. Sickened and desperate in his own soul, and knowing next to nothing about his essence, he charges back and forth vainly with a thousand and one ideas and plans, pathetically ministering to the maladies of his equally debilitated neighbors. His mind is plagued with "media viruses" and his libido rages within from all kinds of toxic programming. By divorcing ourselves from our center and losing our natural intelligence, we become a generation of people who must have but cannot be, who know what but not how to think. The needs of our persona, and limbic brain, compel us to live on the periphery of Being, on the surface of ourselves. Pestilence and injustice ride their steeds through the world sowing the seeds of doom among the innocent and pure, within unprotected hearts and minds oblivious about what is happening to them.
The subversive forces which deal so contemptuously with the underclasses they fear, can be sanctioned, penalized and even overthrown once we return to the "Symbolic Literacy" natural to our forebears. When the "inner eye" is opened and when Pattern Recognition becomes as natural as breathing, the tables will be turned on subversive malefactors and tyrants. After we develop a rudimentary critical intelligence, Truth will decide to return and dwell among us. Our indifference and neglect has banished both Truth and Virtue to the voids. To welcome them back into the human circle, and be nourished again by their company, we must not only enhance our discernment, but show zero-tolerance toward any entity whose agendas and artifice flies in the face of reason. We must have zero-tolerance for the insidious forces whose artifice leads to the desecration of earth and the lifeforms who dwell on it.
Perhaps in this "new age" it is not the Savior's role to be put on a pedestal, but rather to do his part in some way to promote "Symbolic Literacy" and to persuade the Persuaders with whatever Force of mind he can muster so that the Persuaders themselves undo their malignant spells and begin to work towards the betterment of mankind. The snake must be convinced to eat it's own tail, so to speak. It's fun to think about at least, and in theory this kind of action could be accomplished while being as you say cheery and anonymous. The savior would have to be a pretty good persuader himself though.