Things I Know For Sure
For those who may not be aware of the book, the title of this post is a nod to the Vonnegut book Sirens of Titan, wherein the main character, after being shoved around by the powers-that-be, has been brainwashed as a member of the Martian army. Though he starts off as a rather self-assured wealthy man in the beginning of the book, with the world at his fingertips, through a much more detailed chain of events than I have room to impart here (read the book!), he winds up as just another infantry soldier in the Martian army. He is repeatedly brainwashed as his natural proclivity for figuring things out arises again and again. During this time he makes a list entitled “Things I Know For Sure” which his brainwashed self repeatedly finds, learns from and makes additions to, thus this list helps him in clarifying his position within the state of things.
This notion of a list of Things I Know For Sure resonated with me from the first reading of that book. I could relate to the idea of having information and perspective that is somehow primal to what I experience in day-to-day life. By the age of 6 I’d had a handful of mystical experiences that I could plainly compare to the ‘this is how reality works’ messages from the status quo; which were conflicting and clearly rather silly in comparison –but I could also see that this is just how this place seems to work, the agreement, the parameters. As far as mystical experiences are concerned, it’s not that what I experience in day-to-day life is false, or an illusion, but that day-to-day perspective is a modification of or addition to the more primal ones –(the difference between a beautiful Potential with many possible outcomes, and the thrill of seeing how it actually plays out. We are the players). In short, these experiences of other frequencies/perspective have allowed me to see which patterns are most relevant -as above, so below, as the Hermetic maxim goes.
I think that everyone has some experience of the mystical -that is, what lies beyond the box of perception that we are fed via status quo from birth. Of course, as with any life, there have been the usual bouts of tedium and normal everyday stuff, but the topic of this writing are my primal knowns as I see them, the B Influences and resulting mystical experiences and perspectives, so let’s begin at the beginning.
The Walls are Funny
The first B type experience I recall is being about 2.5 years old. I was walking from the hallway into the living room and was thinking about ‘the parameters of this place’. It’s difficult to put into words, but I’ll do my best. It’s like being able to tune into a signal that tells me things about ‘this place’ (life matrix?). I have not been in touch with these signals all my life, but early on and then during my teenage years I spent quite a bit of time just sitting by myself, listening to these, and thinking about how everything fits together. Back to the memory: I remember thinking that the physical laws/limits seemed odd compared to some other frequency of existence I don’t quite recall, yet the comparison was there, just like how we compare a new person’s face to all the faces we’ve ever seen, trying to draw connections. I recall a distinct knowing that this clarity about the limitations and peculiarity of physical laws would probably not last very long. This was some awareness of this life involving immersion such that there is at least one major curve, seemingly, to most people’s lives, if not more, that describe the immersion path deeper into mundane life -we are closer to ‘mystical’ frequencies (/larger perspectives) when we are very young or very old, for example. Life is like a dive into a pool, the immersion is the curving path into and out of the water.
SO, I decided, “I will make a quick test to see if what I remember of freer physics can be applied despite the local rules, while I still see the larger view as clearly as I may ever be able to”, or so the thought went something like. I looked around to see if mom or dad were nearby. The coast was clear. I walked over to the orange couch and decided I would attempt to use 1 finger to lift the front end. I remember knowing that believing I could do it was important. Who knows how much hindsight has affected the memory, but I remember bending down and putting a finger underneath the edge and lifting the whole front end of the couch more than a foot off the floor.
For what it’s worth that memory set seems pretty unadulterated because the memories are simple and very childlike in the re-experiencing, but whether or not the couch-lifting was an impressive physical feat or not, I think it’s interesting to note the clear distinctions I had such as: that there was also something/existence outside this experience, that forgetting what I do recall is to be expected, and knowledge that my expectations and beliefs play a part in what I experience.
The Hero Story
When I was between the ages of about 5-7, I was supposed to be napping or going to sleep for the night, and oftentimes this particular fantasy would play through my mind. It felt like a true memory, though I was somehow aware that I was experiencing it through a template based on typical human imprinting/indoctrination // I recognized it as a sort of fable/myth that had much truth along with (buried within) the comforting representations/story. In the story as it would play out for me, it was some close variation of seeing: my true family and friends who are saying goodbye to me as I embark on some kind of trip or mission. When I was 5 or so, the next part went like: i had agreed to go on a mission with Superman, and along the way complications arose: I Fell and broke my back — or some such result of having Fallen while setting out to assist someone or someoneS else. I would then find myself back in contact with my true family/friends, who were the ones telling me the story all along -refreshing my memory. Each time I played this fantasy out in my mind it was like a comforting bubble of truth, that this is temporary. I wasn’t sure why I should care that this is temporary, because being a little kid was full of all kinds of fun stuff // this wasn’t a concerning memory, but a very unique and comforting one, but still this memory/fantasy played out like a message with the tag: REMINDER for much of my early childhood.
When I was 7 or 8 I started having out of body experiences, though I was not aware of the term or phenomenon and did not learn for some years later because these early experiences were all very short and the transition effects were confusing. I would be lying in bed, and the next thing I know I’m spinning around and around, and it tickles something fierce. Then wheeee up into the air, and slam down onto the ground. I had my eyes closed the whole time once the spinning started, so I would lie on the floor, scared to open my eyes to see what had happened. But when I did, I was still lying on my bed. ???
Personality versus Essence
When I was in sixth grade (11 or 12 years old), I had to give an oral presentation/ book report. Up to that day I’d been one of the more outgoing kids in the class. I remember thinking the class system starting to emerge was wrong (the unpopular kids v the popular kids). I was friends with anyone/everyone, and that suited me just fine until junior high the next year, when the class system and my own divergence from said, took decidedly different paths. This experience was a threshold along these lines, and the first time I saw a clear difference between personality and essence/Self.
During lunch before the presentations were to be given, my friend Z. was talking about her report, trying to get feedback, and generally fretting about the best way to do the thing. My nature at the time was not to put much thought into these kinds of things. I thought, “Well you get up there, talk about the themes of the book, and it pretty much tells itself”, so I was listening to my friend, but not particularly concerned with giving my presentation. When it came time, I volunteered to get up and present mine, which was on the Stephen King book Cujo. When I got up in front of the class I was surprised to discover a completely different experience than I’d been expecting. I guess it started by seeing the disapproving glare of the student teacher who just knew I hadn’t prepared a formal presentation. I started getting nervous. The nervousness led to a switching-off of my previously on-tap ability to just talk through a situation. In that moment, I looked out toward the class as I stumbled over repeating some of the main themes of the story, looking for a connective POINT to express (to be done with the report).
What I saw was: my Personality. It was this amorphous blob of labels and ideas floating out in the middle of the room. Trying to readjust to ‘normal reality’ seeing as I was still up in front of the class, what I assessed in that instant was that it mattered little what MY picture of myself was, there were 20-30-some other people adding to this consensus of WHO I AM, and for the most part, that is also what they base their personal IDEA OF ME upon.
I stammered through the report and sat back down. This was a rather large blow to my general beliefs about interacting with others. I was not developed enough to really analyze this additional perspective in the ways I am now, but that in itself makes for some very clear timestamp/snapshots. In general I’d say the change was one from seeking a known transparency and trust (fun and exploring) mode of interaction to seeing that I was working with a completely different perspective than others might be.
But yeah, personality and Self. I see Self as that which is our Nature, what we come into the world with, those traits from experience which cannot be taken away, and even something like a spiritual genetic code (our mission). Personality is what we’ve absorbed (at least as much as to interact with others in a commonly acceptable way) as our identifying traits or labels. Personality is that which others, the system in which we live, has decided to bestow upon us for easy identification within the system.
Much more can be learned by studying such works as those of Gurdjieff, Mouravieff, regarding Personality (one quote is below) and some modern Science as regards the psychosexual development and the windows of Imprinting (the Wave Series by Laura Knight-Jadczyk explores these in this chapter -check out the whole series for much more context).
From the Wave Series article, Laura includes this excerpt from Pearce, which says that the infantile mind (before programming by environment/peers) is:
…Autistic, a rich texture of free synthesis, hallucinatory and unlimited. His mind can skip over syllogisms with ease, in a non-logical, dream-sequence kind of “knight’s move” continuum. He nevertheless shows a strong desire to participate in a world of others. Eventually his willingness for self-modification, necessary to win rapport with his world, is stronger than his desire for autonomy. Were it not, civilization would not be possible. That we succeed in moulding him to respond to our criteria shows the innate drive for communion and the flexibility of a young mind.Maturity, or becoming reality adjusted, restricts and diminishes this “knight’s move” thinking, and tends to make pawns of us in the process. …If we believe our social view sacred and made in heaven, we tend to shut off a deep potential in which many of the terrors and shortcomings of our logic and reason might be averted.…We force our children, consciously and unconsciously, to selectively ignore certain phenomena and look for and nourish other phenomena.…To take part in society we must accept the social definitions and agreements that make up the society’s reality picture. Our definitions outline the socially acceptable framework for what shall be considered real. This network of definition changes from culture to culture and period to period. It is arbitrary to an indeterminable degree, but is always the form for the only reality available.…The stage if this development lasts throughout infancy and early childhood. The word and the concept become fused in that early period of development and grow up together.If language is not built in during this formative period, it cannot be built at all.…The emerging mind will have mirrored whatever model it had during that formative period. The pattern formed in this plastic stage becomes firm. It hardens into the functional system of representation-response we call a world view.…The infant’s dream-like association of ideas is slowly won over to an agreement of what should constitute reality. By the time our reasoning has developed enough to reflect on the process by which our reasoning has formed, we are part and parcel of the whole process, caught up in and sustaining it. By the time the young rebel reaches the age of rebellion his is inevitably that against which he would rebel……Whitehead [wrote of fundamental assumptions"] …But people do not know that they are assuming, for no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them; they are always merely responding to “obvious facts.”…We are limited by our agreements on possibility. Agreement is a common exclusion of alternate possibilities. Agreement is the cement of social structure.…The condition called reality exists as an ever-current sum total of our representations and responses. Whatever we see is what reality is for us……We used to think of the nervous system as a simple telephone switchboard, bringing in messages from outside. We know no .. that the system is every bit as much an “editorial hierarchy” – a policy-making device determining what is perceived.…The visual world is what we practice day by day. [Pearce, 1971]
On Personality, Gurdjieff said
…The question of will, of one’s own will and of another man’s will, is much more complicated than it seems at the first glance. A man has not sufficient will to do, that is, to control himself and all his actions, but he has sufficient will to obey another…
I mentioned before about fate and accident in man’s life. …Fate exists, but not for everyone. Most people are separated from their fate and live under the law of accident only. Fate is the result of planetary influences which correspond to a man’s type. A man can have the fate which corresponds to his type but he practically never does have it. This arises because fate has relation to only one part of man, namely to his essence.
It must be understood that man consists of two parts: essence and personality. Essence in man is what is his own. Personality is man is what is “not his own.” “Not his own” means what has come from outside, what he has learned, or reflects, all traces of exterior impressions left in the memory and in the sensations, all words and movements that have been learned, all feelings created by imitation – all this is “not his own,” all this is personality.
…A small child has no personality as yet. He is what he really is. He is essence. His desires, tastes, likes, dislikes, express his being such as it is.
But as soon as so-called “education” begins, personality begins to grow. Personality is created partly by the intentional influences of other people, that is, by “education,” and partly by involuntary imitation of them by the child itself.
In the creation of personality a great part is also played by “resistance” to people around him and by attempts to conceal from them something that is “his own,” or “real.”
Essence is the truth in man; personality is the false. …As personality grows, essence manifests itself more and more rarely and more and more feebly and it very often happens that essence stops in its growth at a very early age and grows no further. It happens very often that the essence of a grown-up man, even that of a very intellectual and …highly “educated” man, stops on the level of a child of five or six. This means that everything we see in this man is in reality “not his own.” What is his own in man, that is, his essence, is usually only manifested in his instincts and in his simplest emotions. There are cases, however, when a man’s essence grows in parallel with his personality. Such cases represent very rare exceptions especially in the circumstances of cultured life. Essence has more chances of development in men who live nearer to nature in difficult conditions of constant struggle and danger.
Culture creates personality and is at the same time the product and the result of personality. We do not realize that the whole of our life, all we call civilization, all we call science, philosophy, art, and politics, is created by people’s personality, that is, by what is “not their own” in them
The element that is “not his own” differs from what is man’s “own” by the fact that it can be lost, altered, or taken away by artificial means.
…In Eastern schools ways and means are known …to separate man’s personality from his essence. For this purpose they sometimes use hypnosis… If personality and essence are separated by one or another means, two beings are found who speak in different voices, have completely different tastes, aims, and interests, and one of these two beings often proves to be on the level of a small child. …And it happens that a man full of the most varied and exalted ideas, full of sympathies and antipathies, love, hatred, attachments, patriotism, habits, tastes, desires, convictions, suddenly proves quite empty, without thoughts, without feelings, without convictions, without views. Everything that has agitated him before now leaves him completely indifferent. Sometimes he sees the artificiality and the imaginary character of his usual moods or his high-sounding words, sometimes he simply forgets them as though they had never existed. Things for which he was ready to sacrifice his life now appear to him ridiculous and meaningless and unworthy of his attention. All that he can find in himself is a small number of instinctive inclinations and tastes. He is fond of sweets, he likes warmth, he dislikes cold, he dislikes the thought of work, or on the contrary he likes the idea of physical movement. And that is all.
As a rule a man’s essence is either primitive, savage, and childish, or else simply stupid. The development of essence depends on work on oneself.
In order to enable essence to grow up, it is first of all necessary to weaken the constant pressure of personality upon it, because the obstacles to the growth of essence are contained in personality.
As has been said earlier, in the case of less cultured people, essence is often more highly developed than it is in cultured man. It would seem that they ought to be nearer to possibility of growth, but in reality it is not so because their personality proves to be insufficiently developed. For inner growth, for work on oneself, a certain development of personality as well as a certain strength of essence are necessary. …An insufficiently developed personality means a lack of… knowledge, a lack of information, a lack of the material upon which work on oneself must be based. Without some store of knowledge, without a certain amount of material “not his own,” a man cannot begin to work on himself, he cannot begin to study himself, he cannot begin to struggle with his mechanical habits, simply because there will be no reason or motive for undertaking such work.
It does not mean that all the ways are closed to him. The way of the fakir and the way of the monk, which do not require any intellectual development, remain open to him. But the methods and the means which are possible for a man of developed intellect are impossible for him. Thus evolution is equally difficult for a cultured or an uncultured man. A cultured man lives far from nature, far from natural conditions of existence, in artificial conditions of life , developing his personality at the expense of his essence. A less cultured man, living in more normal and more natural conditions, develops his essence at the expense of his personality. A successful beginning of work on oneself requires the happy occurrence of an equal development of personality and essence. Such an occurrence will give the greatest assurance of success. If essence is very little developed, a long preparatory period of work is required and this work will be quite fruitless if a man’s essence is rotten inside or if it develops some irreparable defects. Conditions of this kind occur fairly often. An abnormal development of personality very often arrests the development of essence at such an early stage that the essence becomes a small deformed thing. From a small deformed thing nothing else can be got.
Moreover, it happens fairly often that essence dies in a man while his personality and his body are still alive. A considerable percentage of the people we meet in the streets of a great town are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead.
It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror. And indeed people often do go mad because they find out something of this nature without the proper preparation, that is, they see something they are not supposed to see. In order to see without danger one must be on the way. If a man who can do nothing sees the truth he will certainly go mad. Only this rarely happens. Usually everything is so arranged that a man can see nothing prematurely. Personality sees only what it likes to see and what does not interfere with its life. It never sees what it does not like. This is both good and bad at the same time. It is good if a man wants to sleep, bad if he wants to awaken. [Ouspensky, quoting Gurdjieff in In Search of the Miraculous, 1949]
The thing is, we all have varying degrees and different types of Essence that shine through (and hopefully are developed rather than suppressed) during the trials and tribulations of his thing we call Life. It seems much of my recent life has been seeing how these Glimpses are not necessarily a part of other people’s experience.
Culture Shock
When I was 13 I moved from a smaller town in North Dakota, to Houston Texas. It was a very big change, culturally, socially, the climate, everything. This changes coincided with the beginning of more conscious personal development experiences. I guess it was a mixture of not having friends in the new place, and all the new input streaming in, but whatever the operative factors might have been, I often just sat in my room for hours upon hours, perfectly happy to just sit and think and consider all the information available to me. Some of this was like the informative signal I mentioned earlier, but now the information from these streams would have more visual, mental framing. At the time of those earliest experiences, these signals were just knowledge that I drew upon like we do all the time, but I knew it was from ‘before life’. Whereas during this time, these signals were clearly that: information about this world, but finer details and connections than general laws. I could interact, at least to some small degree, with my mental models: I could tune into a concept and see how it connected with others, explore the balances and relationships.
When I moved to Houston I’d not been prepared for the culture shock. Though it sounds funny now, as I can easily distinguish between accents from around the world, I had trouble understanding and being understood by the ‘bag boy’ at the grocery store on my first outing in the City with my parents. A year or so went by, acclimating to the South. My parents kept encouraging friendship with the two boys in my neighborhood, but I was not very interested. I was all about hanging out in my room, absorbing the new sounds and frequencies… I would listen to the cicadas and crickets –a tropical jungle soundscape compared to North Dakota. The culture shock went on to exhibit some negative as well as positive effects. On the one hand, it helped me to spend more time with myself, to compare myself within different cultures, on the other hand, being the odd-one-out has had it’s negative impressions along the way.
The Hum
During these solitary nights upon first arriving in Houston, there were many new sounds, the near jungle species of insects and just more noise in general -it took at least a year or so to quit distinctly hearing the freeway almost a mile away. Then one night as I was just sitting there, I heard/felt this intense hum. Very much like the hum that powerful electrical current or transistor might produce. It was underneath everything. I thought maybe it was from the higher concentration of electronic stuff in the city, then that maybe it was a greater concentration of living, thinking beings in the city. To this day I do not know. I sort of left it suspended at: awareness of some facet/frequency of energy that is connected to manifest reality.
Bullying and Hermetic Withdrawal
During 7th grade I was enrolled in a middle school and doing alright, though it was a big change –many more kids, much larger classroom changes, much more diversity of culture -middle of Houston in the Montrose area (which would turn out to be very Bohemian young-adult landscape years later). One day after gym class I was changing into my street clothes when a girl started trying to pick a fight with me. Long story short, non of my mother’s advice about moving-toward the person who is pulling your hair (her training from working in the state mental place as a counselor) paid off, I got: a black-and-blue knee, confusion about being called a stuck up white bitch and attacked though I’d done everything I could think of to stop it, and threatened by her friends as I sat in the principals office ”we’ll get you..[some time]” etc. this had at least something to do with my growing distrust and impatience with the public school system, which helped me find more reasons to think school was potentially dangerous bullshit, in addition to the growing impression that school was really more about programming people than helping them find their own way in the world.
This developed into a period of time where I ha a home school teacher for just an hour a day. I could sit up at night and do this important thinking, and wished this arrangement would go on as long as possible, but knew it was doomed. This is not really a type B experience, but the results are… Eventually, after being put into some different private schools and those sucking too, my parents put me into a mental type of place. I sort of didn’t really even care too much because I could sit and think anywhere. But it turned out to be pretty horrible. What’s interesting are the experiences I had of the General Law way back then. How even though I was only there because I was scared to go to school -had never been violent or a troublemaker of any kind, this one ‘tech’ guy I thought was an okay guy would tell how I was going to end up in prison. WTF? Such messages wouldn’t make any sense until later on when I could see this whole era as a clear example of systemic reprimand because i wouldn’t just do what I was told and not ask questions.
When in Rome
When I was almost 15 I got a job. I only mention that fact because I recall that during this time I received regular messages all about finding the correct place in life –as I outgrew childhood and became an adult. These messages were like a two-way conversation, sort of checking on my awareness and decisions related to a general agenda, but the gist was that I was to find the most common position among the most common people. It sounds strange to me to type the ideas, but there they were, as simple as that -a source of information / perspective that was primal to anything here. I could not consciously remember being anywhere but here, yet these messages reminded me of a full self and a deep joy to be here participating. So, ok, I was not to struggle to excel in academia and make a name or to make tons of money -that shouldn’t be too hard, right? I laughed to myself. It seems like these messages became more fervent to be heard when I got my first job –so I have many memories of wandering around behind the Wendy’s counter, making food or filling drinks from the fountain drink machine while this conversation was carried on. Though this information was primal or larger/truer, it’s not as though I accepted it as reality in the day-to-day world. I understood that part of the mission was to pull what I know through what is available here, to refind my Knowns, comparing and sorting through all the bits, just as anyone here must do.
Meeting Source (or the Mold of Man)
When I was 15 or 16 I had my big Meeting Source experience. I guess I’d been thinking about those physical limits again, though now I definitely felt like I was inside trying to look out. I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom and scooted over to a big mirror I had on the floor. I sat and looked into my eyes. I immediately noticed the spark –window to the soul and all that– but the spark seemed to be the only truly alive and eternal thing about me. I tuned into it and just looked for several moments, not shifting my eyes at all (letting my eyes blur), and for several moments more. It occurred to me that the spark was Me! But there was something else to it too. What is that other essence entwined that I can so clearly see in my own eyes?
The next thing I knew my entire perspective had changed. I was still very much in my body, but my mind was not seeing the room, it was interacting on a completely different frequency. I was talking with Source. I would call it telepathy, but it was even more elemental than that, as the messages communicated were simple packets of truth (not in images or words, but there was a visual quality to the patterns and structures of truth). It (he/she/it/Source) was very glad that I’d made the trip. I felt the joy and love of this being radiating toward me –pure and agenda-less, like the warmth of sunshine on your body x10. Next, was a message something like, “I’ve waited very long for someone(you[at me]) to meet me here / to make it this far [more joy expressed]“. This is where I knew it was what I can only call Source. I could ^see^ that it was Source because I could see the connections between it and myself. From Source were several branches, and from each of those several more, and so on exponentially… and popping out the end of one of those branches wayyyy down the line was Me. I termed these branchings and the ongoing generation of branchings Diversification. Once I saw this clear picture of Diversification, I looked again across the great Distance toward Source. It was dizzying (in a good, but extremely intense way). I tried to keep the perspective in focus, but the level of info/details coming in was becoming unbearable. I laughed and laughed, feeling a spinning, up, whee kind of feeling, absorbing this knew knowledge. And then it was over.
view of Diversification and Layers (what others call Ray of Creation and Octaves)
This understanding of Diversification was installed as a very primal known –a pattern that can be seen in every frequency, on every level, from cell division to trees and the Is itself. This clear picture of flowing Creation developed during this time. I could see how the Absolute consciously sought Diversification and how it extended itself through various generations. I could see how I’d come about through this process, and more excitingly, how as individuals develop we travel back up through those same generations (octaves), becoming more conscious and refined. I saw how in this way the All is constantly expanding; when individuals make it back to the Absolute (or near?) they become another major branching through which the All manifests greater diversification; we become what to human perspective is godlike. To quote Robert Earl Keen, “The road goes on forever and the party never ends.”
Several months ago, some 15-16 years later, I came across a reference to this same truth, described in very much the same detail, which was very exciting and intriguing. Mouravieff (not the first to) calls Diversification the Ray of Creation. There are infinite rayS of Creation, with each of us having a unique Ray between Creation and us. What I considered to be Generations or the like concentric sphere realms radiating out from the Source, Mouravieff calls Octaves -which is a lovely descriptor. And makes even more sense when he goes on to describe detailed correlations between musical octaves and the way in which one might move up or down between octaves. I’m nearing the end of Gnosis Book One, so you’ll have to check back on the esoteric teachings series for more thoughts on Mouravieff’s works.
On another note, I did not think that the Source I’d met was God. It felt a lot like I’d imagine meeting god would feel like (completely awe inspiring), but I also saw that it too was a product of a branching, whose roots went beyond the horizon of my perception. It was not really godlike or omniscient or anything like that, so though it was the greatest root I’d ever seen, I knew it was not god. Sort of like a mold or that the meeting experience was like a holographic message from a marker way back at that proximal branching I’d once traveled through to becoming. I realized that I’d become differentiated/individuated enough to have this experience, to see this parent in an objective way (or at all). This recollection immediately jumped to the forefront when I came across a reference to this same thing in Castaneda’s book The Fire From Within:
Don Juan reminded me hat he had talked a great deal about one of the most sturdy aspects of our inventory: our idea of God. That aspect, he said, was like a powerful glue that bound the assemblage point to its original position. If I were going to assemble another true world with another great band of emanations, I had to take an obligatory step in order to release all ties from my assemblage point.
“That step is to see the mold of man,” he said. “You must do that today unaided.”
“What’s the mold of man?” I asked.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
I refrained from saying that i did not know what he was talking about. If he said that I had seen the mold of man, I must have done that, although I did not have the foggiest idea what it was like.
He knew what was going through my mind. He gave me a knowing smile and slowly shook his head from side to side.
“The mold of man is a huge cluster of emanations in the great band of organic life,” he said. “It is called the mold of man because the cluster appears only inside the cocoon of man.
“The mold of man is the portion of the Eagle’s emanations that seers can see directly without any danger to themselves.”
There was a long pause before he spoke again.
“To break the barrier of perception is the last task of the mastery of awareness,” he said. “In order to move your assemblage point to that position you must gather enough energy. Make a journey of recovery. Remember what you’ve done!”
I tried unsuccessfully to recall what was the mold of man. I felt an excruciating frustration that soon turned into real anger. I was furious with myself, with don Juan, with everybody.
Don Juan was untouched by my fury. He said matter-of-factly that anger was a natural reaction to the hesitation of the assemblage point to move on command.
“It will be a long time before you can apply the principle that your command is the Eagle’s command,” he said. “That’s the essence of the mastery of intent. In the meantime, make a command now not to fret, not even at the worst moments of doubt. It will be a slow process until that command is heard and obeyed as if it were the Eagle’s command.”
He also said that there was an unmeasurable area of awareness in between the customary position of the assemblage point and the position where there are no more doubts, which is almost the place where the barrier of perception makes its appearance. In that unmeasurable area, warriors fall prey to every conceivable misdeed. He warned me to be on the lookout and not lose confidence, for I would unavoidably be struck at one time or another by gripping feelings of defeat.
“The new seers recommend a very simple act when impatience, or despair, or anger, or sadness comes their way,” he continued. “They recommend that warriors roll their eyes. Any direction will do; I prefer to roll mine clockwise.
“The movement of the eyes makes the assemblage point shift momentarily. In that movement, you will find relief. This is in lieu of true mastery of intent.”‘
I complained that there was not enough time for him to tell me more about intent.”
“It will all come back to you someday,” he assured me. “One thing will trigger another. One key word and all of it will tumble out of you as if he door of an overstuffed closet had given way.”
He went back to discussing the mold of man. He said that to see it on my own, unaided by anyone, was an important step, because all of us have certain ideas that must be broken before we are free; the seer who travels into the unknown to see the unknowable must be in an impeccable state of being.
He winked at me and said that to be in an impeccable sate of being is to be free of rational assumptions and rational fears. He added that both my rational assumptions and my rational fears were preventing me at that moment from realigning the emanations that would make me remember seeing the mold of man. He urged me to relax and move my eyes in order to make my assemblage point shift. He repeated over and over that it was really important to remember having seen the mold before I see it again. And since he was pressed for time there was no room for my usual slowness.
I moved my eyes as he suggested. Almost immediately I forgot my discomfort and then a sudden flash of memory came to me and I remembered that I had seen the mold of man. It had happened years earlier on an occasion that had been quite memorable to me, because from the point of view of my Catholic upbringing, don Juan had made the most sacrilegious statements I had ever heard.
It had all started as a casual conversation while we hiked in the foothills of the Sonoran desert. He as explaining to me the implications of what he was doing to me with his teachings. We had stopped to rest and had sat down on some large boulders. He had continued explaining his teaching procedure, and this had encouraged me to try for the hundredth time to give him an account of how i felt about it. It was evident that he did not want to hear about it anymore. He made me change levels of awareness and told me that if I would see the mold of man, I might understand everything he was doing and thus save us both years of toil.
He gave me a detailed explanation of what the mold of man was. He did not talk about it in terms of the Eagle’s emanations, but in terms of a pattern of energy that serves to stamp the qualities of humanness on an amorphous blob of biological matter. At least, I understood it that way, especially after he further described the mold of man using a mechanical analogy. He said that it was like a gigantic die that stamps out human beings endlessly as if htey were coming to it on a mass-production conveyor belt. He said as if they were coming to it on a mass-production conveyor belt. He vividly mimed he process by bringing the palms of his hands together with a great force, as if the die molded a human being each time its two halves were clapped.
He also said that every species has a mold of its own, and every individual of every species molded by the process shows characteristics particular to its own kind.
He began then an extremely disturbing elucidation about the mold of man. He said that the old seers as well as the mystics of our world have on thing in common– they have been able to see the mold of man but not understand what it is. Mystics, throughout the centuries, have given us moving accounts of their experiences. But these accounts, however beautiful, are flawed by the gross and despairing mistake of believing the mold of man.
He said that the new seers are the only ones who have the sobriety to see the mold of man and understand what it is. What they have come to realize is that the mold of man is not a creator, but the pattern of every human attribute we can think of and some we cannot even conceive. The mold is our God because we are what it stamps us with and not because it has created us from nothing and made us in its image and likeness. Don Juan said that in his opinion to fall on our knees in the presence of the mold of man reeks of arrogance and human self-centeredness.
Out of Body Experiences
The next night I was thinking about walls again and how I wish I could see through them –not physical walls per se, but that’s how i thought of the limitations that I knew were keeping me from seeing a greater perspective: the walls. If I remember having been somewhere else before this life then how did I get here and why don’t I remember more? Before I went to sleep I decided to ask to see beyond the walls. I reasoned that my beliefs must be the limiting factor, blocking out other information and perspective that is also available. And that fear (basic survival circuitry) was probably a big part of the power behind limiting beliefs. So I asked ‘my higher self, source, god, or even just whatever part of my mind that might be able to hear me’ “how did I get here?“. And I threw in a bunch of stuff about what I reasoned about limiting beliefs and offered to accept even an uncomfortable amount of Unknown, if that’s what it took.
The Doorway / Dweller on the Threshold
{since I’ve written about this before I will quote}
Over a period of several months I had many out of body experiences that were very similar. Each time I would be lying in bed very awake and as soon as I felt that hypnagogic slump, I would jolt awake again to find my body paralyzed. I could sense my room, the bed, all my physical senses, but I could not wiggle or move in any way. Needless to say this was pretty disturbing the first several times this happened. What happened next would vary a bit from one experience to the next. Usually I would start hearing strange sounds, very much like overhearing distant space signals and tuning into some while tuning away from others. Sometimes there was music.
Within a minute or so I would suddenly PoP back into full functionality, but in a completely different realm where I was bodiless and could sense in all directions at once -a kind of spatial feeling/sight. I could reach out with my consciousness and sense different things in the space around me, like concentrations of energy. Soon I picked up on a conscious entity of some sort, so I flew over to it. It was positioned near a doorway of some kind. It said (telepathically) “this is where you want(ed) to go”, implied that I’d asked for this experience, “but you might not be able to get back” (seemed like a practical disclosure more than a threat or anything like that).
As I pondered the option of entering the doorway, suddenly I feel this immense pulling sensation, as though the entity is pulling me toward the doorway against my will. I resisted. The pressure continued to increase until I felt something like panic and fear of death like I never have in life -it felt like I was ‘fighting for my soul’. This lasted for a while; every time I felt certain that I could not continue holding out against the pressure, I would manage to keep hanging on. Just as the pressure got unbearable… POP and I’m back in my bedroom breathing heavy and jumping up to walk around my room.
This went on for several months and for a while it got to the point that if I felt the paralysis starting to happen I would will myself to move until I could, and then stay up to avoid the experiences. Eventually I tried a different approach, which was to go into the doorway. This time when I transitioned to the bodiless realm I flew straight over to the meeting spot but the entity was no longer there. I moved toward where the portal had been and tried to fly through where it had been before. I kept going and going and finally bumped up against a humming energy barrier of some kind. Try as I might I could not penetrate the barrier. Every attempt to force my way through just bounced me back harder, the stronger I tried.
There were many variations about what this might mean, as I thought about it over the several months these events took place, but going back to the framing question one thing was clear, it had to do with ‘how I got here’. At first I thought maybe it was a trick, and that the experience was more like a recording/reliving how it was that I had been lured into this life experience. I even thought maybe it was an internal representation of deciding if I was okay with having an out of body experience –maybe the doorway would lead to the kind of OBE that people tend to associate with the phenomena –where one can see something like physical reality and hover around, or fly in some similar world. More recently I have all this supplemental validating information that tie these experiences to a revisiting of ‘the Fall’, when I or humankind were given an option to choose service to self over service to others; an option to explore physical reality and all its gratification games [for what it's worth, I don't think it's a choice so much as one step in the very natural path toward individuation, but that's a whole other topic]. When the ’struggle for my soul’ took place and the pressure kept building, I essentially relived this Fall. As the pressure grew and grew I could feel myself taking on such weight -the gravity!- and limitations blocking me in, until CLUNK I was back in my body>bedroom>earth breathing hard, jumped up walking around my blackened room forgetting who I am though I somehow know this breathing I must have a name. Until it returned to me I focused on the cyclic breathing and how this rhythm seemed to propel the walking breathing vehicle ever onward in search of survival and safety. I could remember a similar experience from The Pit and the Pendulum, but couldn’t remember my name or anything identifying about myself. I kept moving about the room, with outstretched arms, feeling for a wall or light switch, but I guess kept just barely missing those landmarks because I started getting panicky at the prospect of walking forever in this darkness not knowing who I am. Finally, I found a wall, my fingers traveled to the light switch. I flicked it on, and FLOOD, I was me again, complete with all my memories and identity.
Interesting, the definition of Dweller on the Threshold is different than the one I was thinking of. Check out the Wikipedia page.
This Dweller is the sumtotal of all the personality characteristics which have remained unconquered and unsubtle, and which must be finally overcome before initiation can be taken. Each life sees some progress made; some personality defects straightened out, and some real advance effected. But the unconquered residue, and the ancient liabilities are numerous, and excessively potent, and – when the soul contact’s adequately established – there eventuates a life wherein the highly developed and powerful personality becomes, in itself, the Dweller on the Threshold. Then the Angel of the Presence and the Dweller stand face to face, and something must then be done. Eventually, the light of the personal self fades out and wanes in the blaze of glory which emanates from the Angel. Then the greater glory obliterates the lesser. This is, however, only possible when the personality eagerly enters into this relation with the Angel, recognises itself as the Dweller, and – as a disciple – begins the battle between the pairs of opposites, and enters into the tests of Scorpio.”
…
“Nevertheless the Dweller on the Threshold is seen in contrast to the Solar Angel, both of which need to be cast aside for the disciple to walk through the gate of initiation. It is said that the dweller arrives at full potency prior to taking the third initiation. this makes sense as it is in the third initiation that the disciple enters into life and also overcomes illusion.
Very thought provoking. I can see the horrible fighting for my soul bit being the perspective from that of the Dweller, the falling a unification and initiation into the next phase. Which certainly has been about fully immersing in life and overcoming illusion.
Dual Consciousness
Along with the sleep paralysis stuff that came before the voidlike OBEs, as I got better at fighting the paralysis if I didn’t want to go to the doorway place, I started having OBEs of that more typically noted kind: seeing something very similar to physical reality but being free to sort of hover around the room. Some things were the same and some were different than the physical version. It seemed like these were thoughtforms that physical forms manifested through/from, but this is just theory, I haven’t had many of these ‘realtime’ / near-physical OBEs.
One time after the paralysis stuff happened, I perceived a presence, a type of soft light up in front of me and off to the side a bit. I felt like I was being pulled up toward it, against my will. My upper body was being lifted toward this light. I was freaking out until I realized that the way my body was moving was not physically possible (the angles). I started floating away, across the room. This was the clearest realtime OBE I’d had, but felt at a loss as far as how to control my movement. As I started floating away from the bed, I turned my attention to the bed, and suddenly I was back in it, paralyzed, and sensing this uncomfortable ‘alien’ presence in the room (the light). Then I was in the floating body again. I switched back and forth several times, and held consciousness in both bodies at the same time, though this was short lived. I understood that the sort of looming presence while I was in my body during other experiences (in this case it was not looming, but a bright light -not uncomfortable, but strong), was me at the other, higher, frequency. I do not recall seeing my body while being the ‘lighter me’. It just didn’t come up // there was too much else to notice.
Higher Self messages about / connection to others
I had heard my higher self talk to me in verbal messages, when in (organic, not induced) altered states, and nearly verbal messages every once in a while –strong intuition about myself in a given situation. But I hadn’t heard these kinds of clear insight bits about others until seeking further connection with a friend that had seemed rather relevant from the beginning. I had been at a gathering and heard a distinct message that the person about to show up was somehow important or more like will be interesting/relevant in some deeper way. Well, over a period of a couple of years I got to know this person a bit better and we started communicating via letters somewhat regularly (I enjoyed the way his mind worked, sense of humor and saw open ended opportunities for learning from each other). I’m not sure about the applicableness of ideas like member of same soul groups or just like-spirited people having easier access to each other’s higher selves, but could be / i can see how this is not untrue, he had several traits that enhanced ones about myself that I liked and showed these personal edges and frontiers in new ways. I’m not sure if the chain of events and messages would have happened with another person -like a window of imprinting toward future lessons, if the rather final messages about the status of the relationship refer to the particular person, or a general level of development and interaction that will be possible at some time in the future. But I get ahead of the story.
One day when we were talking on the phone, discussing meeting up after not seeing one another for several months. Suddenly, there was this distinct verbal message “he’s not ready to do that. He needs to focus on [the romantic love thing]“. Well, okay, so that’s not too terrible, there *is* a matching capacity for the kind of flowing, transparent, dual-control type of interaction I was thinking about. The search didn’t come up empty with him, but so he ‘wasn’t ready to do that yet’. How long will it take? I received the message, but didn’t know how it applied to practical, everyday reality so what to do, but see how the interaction goes.
We made plans to meet along with his plans to vacation with other friends of his. A perfectly normal set of unfortunate circumstances rendered me ill with very bad flu just before the trip. It could be said this was due to moral pressure stemming from the romantic relationship I was in, resulting in recurring illness until I removed myself some time later. Likewise, there were several signs of moral pressure coming from this friend’s friends. I’ve been writing so much for the GSJ site that I forget you might not be familiar with esoteric philosophy concepts like the General Law which keeps cells in their place, serving the body, and how moral pressure is one facet. Anyway, what’s interesting is there were signs of interference -some based rather clearly on natural paths of personal development (natural developmental thresholds encouraging greater awareness), and some that seemed like outright interference intended to separate those who might benefit greatly from comparing notes. Yet again, who is to say that this unrequited friendship was not a necessary step in some part of my development and/or his. Nearly from the beginning of the trip there was interference in the form of indoctrination by his friend. At the very beginning he even made some observations and comments implying that this friend had some more superficial connections to him, or that I was likelier to understand some introspective ideas. But then as soon as we met up with the others everything started falling apart. Again, in hindsight I can see a combination of General Law and seeming coincidental circumstances where my flu and elevation sickness rendered me much less capable of fighting these pressures. I was not able to tap into my higher critical thinking or many basic knowns. Anyway, as the trip progressed I became like a scapegoat and in the end, I could see that that message I’d received while discussing the trip was just plain unavoidably true. The few interactions we’d had had mostly been based on very different definitions of some basic terms we thought we were talking about. Wherever I meant developing a deeper friendship, he heard romantic relationship and in an attempt to see if we couldn’t burn through that -try it on and move on, I muddled things even more by trying to entangle about that which was the ting he had to do –that which I did not need to or have an interest in. Don’t get me wrong, he was the most interesting person I’d interacted with up til then, but my ideas of the optimal relationship were quite different than what he had in mind.
I went home very dejected, and (I can see now) entered into a sort of depression that lasted for a couple of years (roughly about the bullshit romantic paring that is assumed to be the ultimate relationship by so many, and how this assumption has fucked up so many of my friendships –saw how it separated me from meaningful interaction with others , how many friendships were potential exclusive romantic bonds to the other person). But also to do with the nagging sense of loss over that particular friendship, lost opportunities, lost recognition and community. I mean what good was that message about the type of interaction I wanted existing, but not with him just then? What was I supposed to do with that? I knew it was true in some way i couldn’t fully appreciate, but what to do with the lacking [viability toward fluid, transparent interaction] of all my relationships, in general?
Chakras Exist
Apologies for the tangentials, but this bit is interjected with some basic energy body discoveries. One night I sensed a tingling swirling of energy in my lower abdomen. I tried to dismiss it as a number of things, but it wouldn’t go away and kept getting more noticeable. It finally occurred to me that perhaps it was one of those chakra things I’d heard about. I decided I would feel along my spine and see if I could find more of these energy centers, then the next day I would research and see where these supposedly were located. I reached out form that center with my awareness and found another blooming a little higher up, and another, and so on. The next day I found some chakra charts online and sure enough they matched up with the spots of energy I’d found the night before.
This is too early in the timeline, but is the only other chakra awareness type of experience a couple of years later, so here it is: I suppose I hadn’t experienced as much of a blooming of energy when I discovered the heart center. I just couldn’t ever really connect or feel it like the others, in an immediate way, as though it was slightly out of phase. One day I was just doing whatever and in the corner of my mind a thought of the friend occurred. It lit up my heart center with a bulging warmth and light. Interesting. I’ve since been able to use my feelings for others very close to me in life to trigger this same kind of resonance from the heart. It’s interesting because the heart center is certainly connected -has always been, even before these modulations- to my love of all beings, yet it took specific cases to tune into it with my human mind.
It wasn’t until I was 18 or 19 that I let in books on meditation or magick. So during this time I played around with different types of meditation and thought about metaphysics. I recall getting into a meditative state, sort of charging up, and then being somewhat surpised to find that I had little need to breathe the air. I don’t know if I’d saturated my bloodstream with oxygen or what, but I would sit and watch the minutes tick by (in my mind, not looking at a clock) without moving my diaphragm. Perhaps it was my perception of time that had changed and not my body’s need for oxygen.
OBE Meeting
I guess I was about 21 or so when I had a singular experience where I connected with that same friend in an out of body state. I’d just fallen asleep and was drifting toward some dream bubble or another, when suddenly I was awake (mentally, but not physically) and tuning into a signal. It just felt familiar, exciting and happy -an unexpected adventure that had something to do with interacting with a specific other being -a friend. Suddenly I’m standing on a sunny beach. It’s like a virtual reality world or something because there were very few colors and the shapes were all very simple -had simpler shapes substituted for how the object might look in real life. Yet it was all so sunny and beautiful, despite the simplified representations. I was on a small island, walking along near the beach with a sort of bouncing moonwalk stride. That was funny too and made me laugh -I realized I was not in my dream so much as a meeting place on the edges of another person’s dream. I was not moving of my own accord, but being rather gently pulled along toward whatever this meeting was to be.
Just as suddenly, I’m in a different bubble of reality. It is a smallish space surrounded by openness (looked black at the edges, but just regular edges of focus, the boundary demarcating a set aside bubble for meeting / having experience). Oh, ok, it’s [the same friend]. Could it be? We seemed to have the similar question-thought at the same time, and looked across at each other to try to find an answer. We sort of looked into each other –like you can just tune into this or that and then back out again. Yep, we both concluded, that’s really you! I felt very happy and excited and wanted to think up some activity we could do –wondered what he might want to do/ what would happen next. But then things changed very suddenly and I was back in some kind of puppet body again, but this one I had even less (zero) control over. I was still there with my friend, but things had warped into his personal dreamland. Either he’d fallen back to sleep or had been all along, and the previous moments were a connection between the more aware aspects of us. The dream version shifted sexual. It was not disturbing or anything like that, as many dreams and ideas of transcending personal limitations or connecting with others and aspects of ourselves involve sex. But it was a little weird to be puppeted around, just a passenger in the dream body I inhabited within the dream. I’m sure I could have left if it bothered me. It was very quick and I was still wondering about the entire experience. I’d rather see my friend even if I was living in his dream for a few minutes, him unaware that it’s really me. How silly/fun is that? whatever. When the dream built to a crescendo, shall we say, there was a huge exchange of energy that alarmed my physical body. It reeled me (nonphysical me) back in. I sort of floated, swimming in the energies and just wondered about the whole thing. I then heard the higher self type of voice, but more audibly and distinct than ever before: Smiling (a beaming, uncontainable joy), he/it said “patience“. I was so fucking happy, for weeks (or maybe it was months) nothing was able to knock me off this larger perspective, nothing distracted me, nothing got my emotions going, nothing confused me. Patience, hunh? I think the word was chosen quite well for how many years and intervening lessons and other supportive pieces have filled in and continue to fill in –these experiences were critical to either my development or that of others through my connection to them. I think perhaps that I am not waiting for that type of free interaction and exploration, it will be there again when I’m through with this dip, but that perhaps the patience message and nearly painful sort of waiting as the years have stretched on have something to do with my desire for others to wake the fuck up and get on about creative creation or whatever would be more fun and use to All/everyone –more than being about that particular person. Though, I would indeed enjoy exploring these ideas with someone who is capable of such creative storytelling and thought synthesis, someone who is so intelligent and fun. For all I know, the closeness was something only I could feel all along, and that this sort of experience was to bind me to people, the people I wanted to mix with and help. But I know that like attracts like, despite the respective internal mirroring or sorting happening OR NOT happening at the time of such resonance sparking err meetings. There have been bleed through types of connections with this person, but for the most part I must assume he meant what he’d said about not wanting to see the magician’s hand and being busy with bonding over bonding.
And see this relating of B Influences becomes more progressively difficult in the telling as life immersion takes me deeper. As for the relationship stuff, I went on to spend a few years in serial friendship relationships until I realized the other parties only saw the romantic relationship aspect and had little interest in the pursuit of consciousness and so were not capable of true friendship. Some of these relationships before I came to more of a conclusion this way, involved the Lucifer Principle –(borrowing from concept/book of same name) that is to say that I was essentially unwelcome in the circles of eternal-pairing bound cuddle freaks. I was a heretic, a ruiner of young men, the black magic woman. Here I thought we were all adults free to express ourselves and welcome others expressions.
The Power of Thought (consciousness of little I’s?)
Some situation arising from this misaligned perspectives were a kind of foreshadowing of betrayal and what all the organized stalking stuff brought along, but walking home one night after being ousted as a manipulator I was rather fuming about the hypocrisy but a clear known came through: it was important not to forget what I know about the power of thought. As attractive or harmless as it might seem to imagine pounding on one of the accusers, I didn’t need that complication. They were jerks and nothing need be done about it.
Organic Portals
When I was about 22 I experienced what others call organic portals. So as to match up the phenomenon, I’ll go with that label, but I thought of them more as hive-/-watchers. I did not read anything about other people’s awareness of these kinds of people until last year, some 10 years later. Anyway, one day I was walking in the grocery store, shopping. On one aisle one of the other people turned to look at me, and stared at me with a sort of unplaceable expression, a watching. It wasn’t like a rude or jaw-dropped kind of staring, just a watching. No big deal. I guess they were thinking about something else. I went on about my shopping. I passed some ‘normal’ people doing their own thing. Then on another aisle I noticed that another person was staring at me in that same way. There was nothing personal feeling about it. The strangest part was the clear impression that it was the same person watching me as before, though they were clearly different people. It just felt like the same personality. I continued shopping. The same thing happened -there were ‘normal’ people, and these folks had a distinct energy about them, a vibrant bubble of flowing energy. Not that I listened to their thoughts or anything, but I could hear thinking going on –these were complex, individuated beings –as I’d assumed we all are. Then I’d pass by one of the others, and there was a stillness. They just didn’t have the same whirlwind of energy about them. There was a hollowness of some kind. They weren’t empty, but were of a different sort of hive consciousness. As strange as it sounds, I could sense information about me as seen by an earlier watcher, being utilized by a successive watcher -there was a look of recognition as they seemingly tapped into the pool of collected info. This is when the morphing sort of thing would happen such that I could then sense the same presence as the first coming from the successive watcher. I didn’t doubt these experiences, but had nothing to do with the information so left it suspended, along with an idea that it surely is possible it was just my perspective and perhaps the watcher people were just daydreaming -maybe those who are deep in daydreaming/fantasy thoughts give off a general flavor of presence.
Strange Fear Perspective (of the Fields of Control?)
I’d enrolled in a flight training program when I was 24. At this point I’d flown solo in the pattern (landing and taking off repeatedly at the same airstrip) and gone on one solo cross country flight. During this second solo cross country flight, I experienced pretty violent turbulence -not unheard of on hot Texas days, but I had not experienced anything close to this degree of turbulence. What with the little Cessna being even lighter with just me in it, the hot weather thermals were bouncing me all over the place. If it had been bumpety bump bump (up and down) turbulence, that would have been one thing, but this turbulence was making the plane roll violently so that I was suddenly looking at the ground out the side window, then whack, back upright, then whack rolled onto the side. Nerve racking, to say the least. But I got to the destination and landed a little fast and heavy from nervousness. I just sat on the ground, collecting myself, trying to get up the nerve to get back in that little plane and head back.
I got in, did the radio calls, and took off, back to home base. About 30 minutes into the flight I heard what I assumed to be a heavy (very large and/or wake turbulence generating aircraft) over the radio. This didn’t happen all that often and the sound was different, the person sounded very far away and tinny, like a robot in space. The turbulence started happening again. I kept fighting the fear because as a pilot what else are you gonna do? It was definitely a case of the fear of fear, because I noticed that the fear was causing me not to be fully in touch with my critical thinking and decision making. That worried me. Then I started hearing voices -not form the radio, and not verbal so much as suggestions to just give in to the fear. I started trying to match up this weird experience with anything I’d experienced before, and the only thing that came to mind was the Borg (yeah, Star Trek). It was like the voices were telling me that resistance was futile. The fear built to such a degree that I found myself saying I’d rather be assimilated than to have this weight of responsibility riding on my shoulders (?!). Anyway, weird experience, but seems telling in a larger perspective as far as undercurrents of dealing with becoming conscious of the forces running this world -the idea of staying asleep and manipulated or awakening to the powers that be. I suppose I was struggling with the fear of seeing things I wasn’t sure I wanted to see.
Precognition via Dream Symbols
Up until this event I had had some precognition types of dreams, and had just started getting a feel for the different types/qualities of dreams. I could differentiate more easily between what was just daily subconsciousness sorting, what was deeper personal or collective unconscious sorting, and what was a message of things about to come – yet -and this is still mostly the case- most of the precognition types of dreams seemed sort of useless because I could never decode them before the event came to pass. Anyhow…
One night while I slept the same symbol kept overlaying various dream scenes, and at regular intervals. I kept dreaming and every so often this symbol would crackle on (much like a neon light flickering and then shining strongly), stay overlaid for a moment, then crackle back off again. It was such a notable experience that when I awoke I drew the symbol on a piece of paper and stuck it to the wall.
About a week later I offered to teach a friend to drive using my standard transmission truck. We went off on some dark back roads near the airstrip. Surprisingly, this friend didn’t stall a zillion times trying to take off in first gear (like most new drivers) and so we were off! There was a long stretch of road, but not as much as I would have given us had I known he’d be so quick on mastering the take off. Long story short, I hadn’t thought of this contingency and so hadn’t gone into the lesson of turns –to slow down, push in the clutch, etc, and he jerked the wheel, sending us rolling into the ditch. I don’t remember any of that though. As with all severe concussions it seems, my memory cut off about 5 minutes before the accident. I recall driving down that long stretch of black road, but from a different vantage point. In my memory, the night is aglow (had been pitch black in reality) and my head is much larger and above where it normally (physically) is located.
I wasn’t able to remember or make new memories for about three weeks, as far as I can piece together. I would call places and they would tell me that I’d told them I might call again, not remembering I’d already called -just weird stuff like that. Just before I got my short term memory back, I was beginning to get very frustrated. One night I left in a huff about not knowing what the hell was going on (there were many symptoms of aggression and anger -pretty common concussion symptom, which I understand completely now -it’s as though the person is trying to tell themselves and anyone who might be able to help that something is *not right*). I remember looking up to the starry sky and having the unmistakable certainty that the stars had moved considerably from where I remembered them being. As soon as I questioned this it was as if it called me back to myself, and I saw the stars as they had been my whole life -in just the right places. But that first impression didn’t go away entirely. I just stood there being aware of the two conflicting impressions.
As short term memory and regular identity and all that came back to a more or less normal state, I suddenly noticed the symbol on the piece of paper. I’d seen that somewhere! Then it came together. I looked at the stitches and new scar running along the inside of my thumb/hand, from the wrist bone toward the first thumb joint. The scar matched the symbol exactly. I know that sounds like it would be easy to see the same pattern where there might not have been such similarity, but it was not a simple line, there was a distinct shape to the scar, including some little dots and smaller shapes next to the main scar line. All of this was in the symbol I’d drawn.
I tried to remember where I’d been during the memory lapses. I could not really remember clearly, but I recall being in a sort of gray fog, with other beings or sounds or events almost coming clear to me through the fog. Like they would approach and I could just about hear/see them clearly, and then I was lost in the fog again. I suppose this was a pretty accurate representation of what it was like for that part of me trying to interact in the usual ways but not having the proper anchors for things to make sense.
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I’ve had the odd out of body experience, or higher self voice telling me things in teaching/learning dreams, or letting me know so-and-so is doing fine, but largely the B Influence type of experiences have continued in a distinct life era with chapters labeled covert harassment, or organized stalking, for example. Several experiences of sharing and more conscious interaction have occurred, many creative projects, so there is a lot of fun and promising experiences, along with the very trying experiences of betrayal and… what amounts to realizing just where the human condition is situated as far as a progression from reactionism to true individuation is concerned, and many of the common hurdles along the way -the forces and the different effects on beings of different developmental stages.
I mainly wanted to get some of the main B experiences down on paper so that I can refer to them. Though I couldn’t resist in a few places above, most hypothesis or greater degrees of sorting these experiences can be found in other pieces on this site and my others.