Mar 26, 2023·edited Mar 26, 2023Liked by Daniel Pinchbeck
breaking some new ground i see
very fresh essay! lots of colorful language. great job letting go. Thanks for taking us here. I want to hear more like this! the story about your trip was the best
something similar happened to me yesterday. Tons of synchronicities led to a paranormal event. I just moved into my apartment. Then me, my friend, and my Mom were at her sketchy hotel. We ended up getting locked out of my Mom's hotel room. As we walked to get a replacement key, one man wearing a blue suede suit and blue suede curly cowboy boots was standing in the lobby. He wore a staff of hermes necklace. I thought that was odd and random because he was dressed like a pimp. He just stood out and even talked to me for no reason really.
I even brought it up to my friend, I said, "look it's lucifer coming to tempt us." He laughed and agreed, "Yeah that's strange."
Then I just knew. I thought, uh oh...things are about to get weird. Let me stay alert. I should have listened to my intuition and other obvious signs that said we should take the stairs.
Long story short (I'll share details later)....we got trapped in an elevator--so liminal. It got stuck while we were in it and wouldn't move. We ended up calling 911 while we were in the elevator because the staff was taking too long.
The fire department even showed up. LOL.....There's more extreme synchronicities that I won't share now....this happened yesterday. I wasn't tripping. Just pure raw high strangeness.
I agree with everything in your Playa article and have a suggestion on how you could implement magic in relation to its content. I would "amplify" (in the Jungian sense of active imagination) your numinous experience by writing a fictionalized version of it. As a journalist, you are inhibited from confabulating details that are understandably sketchy and fragmented such as whether or not you shoved the cop, etc. A way to access the BM egregore would be to eliminate the reducing valve of responsible journalism and re-experience the experience in the imaginal and narrate it from there in first person and present tense. As Graham Greene said, "A novelist should have a bad memory." If you feel obliged to accurately report on a past event, or remember it too specifically, you cannot amplify in the imaginal. At best you would create gonzo journalism (usually fabricated anyway). Magick, as Crowley defined it, is the "Science and art of creating change in conformity to will." Writing, which of all media has the least mechanical resistance, is your most ideoplastic, thought-responsive medium over which your greatest ability to create change in conformity to will, so amplifying such a numinous experience which you remember poorly, but still have high emotional resonance, is an ideal opportunity for you to do MAGICK. For example, here's a few sentences from my about-to-be-published fantasy epic,Parallel Journeys, of the state of consciousness you describe that the DSM would call "capgrass delusion" :
The whole time, my head throbs with fearful perceptions. What if the strangers we pass are not people, but extras— person-shaped automatons? They fill in crowd scenes everywhere I look, swarming into trains and subways, mutely walking down sidewalks holding lumpy plastic shopping bags in the hot sun.
I try not to focus. I can almost fool myself into believing they’re real if I squint and glance across them quickly. But horrified curiosity forces me to look closer. The illusion of realism collapses as I behold the shoddy, counterfeit motions of hollow, doll-eyed puppets going through their programmed routines.
They’re a mechanical swarm, army ants endlessly looping around a Mobius strip. They run on rails, like the subway trains rattling by. The man spitting on the platform has always been spitting there and always will be. It’s all just loops, loops, loops . . .
I tried to ride the edge between journalism and imaginal amplification in an article I wrote about my first BM experience. (originally published in Reality Sandwich): https://zaporacle.com/incendiary-person-in-the-desert-carnival-realm/ Even in 2008, it struck me as a glamorous version ofwthat theosophists would call the "lower astral" It begins this way:
I became aware of myself within my dream and found that I was in some sort of desert carnival realm. I stood alone in a vast expanse of chalky dust, some of it powdery, but most of it caked and cracking beneath my feet. In the distance were scattered jewelries of electric light, and as I turned around I saw that they extended in all directions. The scattering of neon jewelry was punctuated by occasional fireballs which rose like jack o’ lanterns, living for a fiery heartbeat before they disappeared into the high desert night. Beyond the lights and fireballs, the chalky expanse was ringed by desolate mountains.
As I stood there, I felt waves of a haunting emotional lucidity pass through me, a sense of my whole life summed up within the peculiar alchemical mixture of blessings and wounds of an entire mutant incarnation, and these feelings seemed to radiate outward into the desert carnival realm, searching for something elusive, like a fugitive and forbidden desire.
As if conjured by my feelings, a large neon-lit sailing ship blasting techno music came careening toward me, spewing an explosive wake of dust. It passed within feet of me, and I saw that it was filled with harlequin-costumed party-goers, cocktail glasses in their hands, their gazes transfixed by carnival thought forms. They were benignly oblivious to my presence, and it felt as if the ship were a conjuration of my haunted feelings, the missed party of adolescence now become visible in the desert night, propelled by blasts of techno into the darkness as it receded from view.
The ship was followed by dusty gusts of desert wind. The elements felt so physical, and I began to realize that maybe I wasn’t merely lucid within my own personal dream. Perhaps I was caught in some collective dream, a bardo playing itself out in a lower astral plane. Perhaps this was a realm where spirits, newly separated from their bodies, indulged unfinished appetites together, a last anything-goes party wherein they could gradually burn out the last vestiges of mortal desires in a realm of nocturnal entertainments and swollen dream objects. When bardo-goers tired of clinging to this final desert carnival, they would be released, their spirits liberated for the further travels that awaited them.
I wonder if you are familiar with Dr. Iain McGilchrist’s work on left and right hemisphere brain function? Seems like it would overlap with this first attention and second attention bit. I saw he recently had a discussion with Sheldrake that I haven’t watched yet. There is an egregore talk of Vervaeke’s you may be interested in as well. Very rich topics thank you for the illumination.
Nice. During some distant feelings I have had, there is the wonderment if what I and others, who can relate to what you conclude as possible, could contribute to the paradigm shift necessary to retain our lifeforms. I'm in.
Gebser, Quantum Entanglement, Morphic Resonance... and so much more evidence for: the expansion and development of individual consciousness is apriori for positive collective change. So, 100% with you. Re "Occult." Sorry Daniel but that's terrible branding no matter how well meaning or persuasive is the metaphysical argument. It's just not going to fly with enough people. Crowley kind of messed things up and "cult" is embedded in the term. As you know, words matter. Kind of like the anti-semitic trope "globalist."
Forgot to add....What a fascinating story. My God. All the way through it, I was thinking that you were tapped into something omnijectively real, almost like the *demonic underpinnings that were starting to play a larger part in the proceedings, as you went on to explain. When you have artistic expression tied to these kinds of spiritual forces, it would make proceedings feel heavier. And I wouldn't want to take hallucinogens in that atmosphere.
* maybe daimonic? Not sure what the difference is. One more morally neutral perhaps
We contribute to the greater morphic field or collective unconscious beginning here....maybe.
A firing neuron perceives self, by creating synchronized perturbations in the electro-magnetic field. It creates an electromagnetic mirror image of its own actions, in this way. When billions of neurons do this, eventually an idea of the entire self forms. But it is only ever an idea.
The 'soul' or vibrational self, that has been built with the help of the brain, is fully released after death. But there is likely some escape before death, through non-locality, the interaction between the individual's unconscious (whatever that is, precisely) and the greater collective.
Lol, “a scion of one of the world’s wealthiest families...”
Please say it was Elizabeth Koch. Haha
Feel like I hit this same bardo realm once after doing multiple yage sessions in one night.
My theory is that it happens when you take psychedelics when your serotonin supply is already depleted. Then more norepinephrine is released than other hormones, and the journey turns dark.
A very astute summation according to what I have read. Although three, or four more integers are beyond that binary in my experience. I am 68. I still struggle to understand branes. Not sure the mathematicians are “there” yet. The discovery of zero was the bridge that unlocked a new perspective within Western mysticism creating the “and” conceptually.
My simplistic exploration beyond the binary. No books to read on this yet that I can afford or find. There is more to the freeze that we are not looking at culturally.
Blah blah blah. I always thought Jean was a woman.
breaking some new ground i see
very fresh essay! lots of colorful language. great job letting go. Thanks for taking us here. I want to hear more like this! the story about your trip was the best
something similar happened to me yesterday. Tons of synchronicities led to a paranormal event. I just moved into my apartment. Then me, my friend, and my Mom were at her sketchy hotel. We ended up getting locked out of my Mom's hotel room. As we walked to get a replacement key, one man wearing a blue suede suit and blue suede curly cowboy boots was standing in the lobby. He wore a staff of hermes necklace. I thought that was odd and random because he was dressed like a pimp. He just stood out and even talked to me for no reason really.
I even brought it up to my friend, I said, "look it's lucifer coming to tempt us." He laughed and agreed, "Yeah that's strange."
Then I just knew. I thought, uh oh...things are about to get weird. Let me stay alert. I should have listened to my intuition and other obvious signs that said we should take the stairs.
Long story short (I'll share details later)....we got trapped in an elevator--so liminal. It got stuck while we were in it and wouldn't move. We ended up calling 911 while we were in the elevator because the staff was taking too long.
The fire department even showed up. LOL.....There's more extreme synchronicities that I won't share now....this happened yesterday. I wasn't tripping. Just pure raw high strangeness.
i have some theories. very underworld moment. ;)
I agree with everything in your Playa article and have a suggestion on how you could implement magic in relation to its content. I would "amplify" (in the Jungian sense of active imagination) your numinous experience by writing a fictionalized version of it. As a journalist, you are inhibited from confabulating details that are understandably sketchy and fragmented such as whether or not you shoved the cop, etc. A way to access the BM egregore would be to eliminate the reducing valve of responsible journalism and re-experience the experience in the imaginal and narrate it from there in first person and present tense. As Graham Greene said, "A novelist should have a bad memory." If you feel obliged to accurately report on a past event, or remember it too specifically, you cannot amplify in the imaginal. At best you would create gonzo journalism (usually fabricated anyway). Magick, as Crowley defined it, is the "Science and art of creating change in conformity to will." Writing, which of all media has the least mechanical resistance, is your most ideoplastic, thought-responsive medium over which your greatest ability to create change in conformity to will, so amplifying such a numinous experience which you remember poorly, but still have high emotional resonance, is an ideal opportunity for you to do MAGICK. For example, here's a few sentences from my about-to-be-published fantasy epic,Parallel Journeys, of the state of consciousness you describe that the DSM would call "capgrass delusion" :
The whole time, my head throbs with fearful perceptions. What if the strangers we pass are not people, but extras— person-shaped automatons? They fill in crowd scenes everywhere I look, swarming into trains and subways, mutely walking down sidewalks holding lumpy plastic shopping bags in the hot sun.
I try not to focus. I can almost fool myself into believing they’re real if I squint and glance across them quickly. But horrified curiosity forces me to look closer. The illusion of realism collapses as I behold the shoddy, counterfeit motions of hollow, doll-eyed puppets going through their programmed routines.
They’re a mechanical swarm, army ants endlessly looping around a Mobius strip. They run on rails, like the subway trains rattling by. The man spitting on the platform has always been spitting there and always will be. It’s all just loops, loops, loops . . .
I tried to ride the edge between journalism and imaginal amplification in an article I wrote about my first BM experience. (originally published in Reality Sandwich): https://zaporacle.com/incendiary-person-in-the-desert-carnival-realm/ Even in 2008, it struck me as a glamorous version ofwthat theosophists would call the "lower astral" It begins this way:
I became aware of myself within my dream and found that I was in some sort of desert carnival realm. I stood alone in a vast expanse of chalky dust, some of it powdery, but most of it caked and cracking beneath my feet. In the distance were scattered jewelries of electric light, and as I turned around I saw that they extended in all directions. The scattering of neon jewelry was punctuated by occasional fireballs which rose like jack o’ lanterns, living for a fiery heartbeat before they disappeared into the high desert night. Beyond the lights and fireballs, the chalky expanse was ringed by desolate mountains.
As I stood there, I felt waves of a haunting emotional lucidity pass through me, a sense of my whole life summed up within the peculiar alchemical mixture of blessings and wounds of an entire mutant incarnation, and these feelings seemed to radiate outward into the desert carnival realm, searching for something elusive, like a fugitive and forbidden desire.
As if conjured by my feelings, a large neon-lit sailing ship blasting techno music came careening toward me, spewing an explosive wake of dust. It passed within feet of me, and I saw that it was filled with harlequin-costumed party-goers, cocktail glasses in their hands, their gazes transfixed by carnival thought forms. They were benignly oblivious to my presence, and it felt as if the ship were a conjuration of my haunted feelings, the missed party of adolescence now become visible in the desert night, propelled by blasts of techno into the darkness as it receded from view.
The ship was followed by dusty gusts of desert wind. The elements felt so physical, and I began to realize that maybe I wasn’t merely lucid within my own personal dream. Perhaps I was caught in some collective dream, a bardo playing itself out in a lower astral plane. Perhaps this was a realm where spirits, newly separated from their bodies, indulged unfinished appetites together, a last anything-goes party wherein they could gradually burn out the last vestiges of mortal desires in a realm of nocturnal entertainments and swollen dream objects. When bardo-goers tired of clinging to this final desert carnival, they would be released, their spirits liberated for the further travels that awaited them.
I wonder if you are familiar with Dr. Iain McGilchrist’s work on left and right hemisphere brain function? Seems like it would overlap with this first attention and second attention bit. I saw he recently had a discussion with Sheldrake that I haven’t watched yet. There is an egregore talk of Vervaeke’s you may be interested in as well. Very rich topics thank you for the illumination.
Nice. During some distant feelings I have had, there is the wonderment if what I and others, who can relate to what you conclude as possible, could contribute to the paradigm shift necessary to retain our lifeforms. I'm in.
Gebser, Quantum Entanglement, Morphic Resonance... and so much more evidence for: the expansion and development of individual consciousness is apriori for positive collective change. So, 100% with you. Re "Occult." Sorry Daniel but that's terrible branding no matter how well meaning or persuasive is the metaphysical argument. It's just not going to fly with enough people. Crowley kind of messed things up and "cult" is embedded in the term. As you know, words matter. Kind of like the anti-semitic trope "globalist."
nice one! though did want to hear more about your playa bender before you dropped into the history of the ideas ;)
Forgot to add....What a fascinating story. My God. All the way through it, I was thinking that you were tapped into something omnijectively real, almost like the *demonic underpinnings that were starting to play a larger part in the proceedings, as you went on to explain. When you have artistic expression tied to these kinds of spiritual forces, it would make proceedings feel heavier. And I wouldn't want to take hallucinogens in that atmosphere.
* maybe daimonic? Not sure what the difference is. One more morally neutral perhaps
We contribute to the greater morphic field or collective unconscious beginning here....maybe.
A firing neuron perceives self, by creating synchronized perturbations in the electro-magnetic field. It creates an electromagnetic mirror image of its own actions, in this way. When billions of neurons do this, eventually an idea of the entire self forms. But it is only ever an idea.
The 'soul' or vibrational self, that has been built with the help of the brain, is fully released after death. But there is likely some escape before death, through non-locality, the interaction between the individual's unconscious (whatever that is, precisely) and the greater collective.
Lol, “a scion of one of the world’s wealthiest families...”
Please say it was Elizabeth Koch. Haha
Feel like I hit this same bardo realm once after doing multiple yage sessions in one night.
My theory is that it happens when you take psychedelics when your serotonin supply is already depleted. Then more norepinephrine is released than other hormones, and the journey turns dark.
But who knows.
A very astute summation according to what I have read. Although three, or four more integers are beyond that binary in my experience. I am 68. I still struggle to understand branes. Not sure the mathematicians are “there” yet. The discovery of zero was the bridge that unlocked a new perspective within Western mysticism creating the “and” conceptually.
My simplistic exploration beyond the binary. No books to read on this yet that I can afford or find. There is more to the freeze that we are not looking at culturally.
Blah blah blah. I always thought Jean was a woman.