Life in VALIS

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By Kingsley L. Dennis

Source: Reality Sandwich

VALIS is a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. The title stands for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, which in some respects is very close to the living intelligence I discuss in this series of essays.[i] A living intelligence also suggests a non-local field view of reality. The latest findings in the quantum sciences (notably quantum mechanics and biophysics) posit a field-view understanding that is said to underpin the construction of our universe, and hence the nature of our reality.

In the past, various people — mystics, psychologists, and consciousness researchers — have alluded to this intelligence field by a variety of names: cosmic consciousness, superconsciousness, transpersonal consciousness, integral consciousness, etc. All these descriptions share common themes; namely, a heightened sense of intuition and empathy, a feeling of greater connectivity to the world and to people, a sense of ‘inner knowing’ (gnosis), and the realization that humanity exists and evolves within a universe of intelligence and meaning. Forms and intimations of these new consciousness patterns are already emerging in the world, but as yet they have not become a part of our accepted paradigm.

As Dr. Richard Bucke stated in his work Cosmic Consciousness, the early signs of this new evolutionary development have been appearing within humankind for some time:

The simple truth is, that there has lived on the earth, ‘appearing at intervals’, for thousands of years among ordinary men, the first faint beginnings of another race … This new race is in the act of being born from us, and in the near future it will occupy and possess the earth.1

Such signs — or evolutionary mutations — have included, for example, visionaries, mystics, artists, psychics, and a smattering of young gifted children. I would posit that social and cultural events have occurred throughout world history that have served to seed higher functioning into human consciousness. Such events would have taken the form of artistic movements; scientific innovations; faith movements; cultural/social revolutions; architecture; fraternities; myths and legends; sporting fixtures, and more. All such socio-cultural impacts affect human consciousness in a way that prepares the human mind for periods of development and change. Within these seemingly random occurrences lie the components that act as the ‘technologies’ for developing human consciousness. In recent years we have seen the rapid expansion of our informational flows, and thus human awareness in general.

The increasing manifestation of a collective human consciousness — or rather a collective of minds accessing the living intelligence — is most likely to be in line with certain evolutionary necessities. Preparation has been necessary through a succession of events that form an overall pattern of mutually reinforcing stimuli aimed at raising humanity’s psychic awareness. This includes the expansion of intellect, psychological awareness, social development, humanitarianism, empathy, and creativity. These developments have also served to stimulate human intuition. In other words, there have been moments throughout recent human history that helped prepare the ‘mental soil’ for new patterns of consciousness to slowly seed and grow. According to one well-placed commentator on this subject:

The human being’s organism is producing a new complex of organs in response to such a need. In this age of the transcending of time and space, the complex of organs is concerned with the transcending of time and space. What ordinary people regard as sporadic and occasional bursts of telepathic or prophetic power are…nothing less than the first stirrings of these same organs.2

Similarly, the revered Persian poet Jalalludin Rumi stated,

New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity/Therefore, O man, increase your necessity, so that you may increase your perception.[ii]

On the whole, socio-cultural and material forces are slow to react to changes in expressions of human consciousness. Yet this is nothing new, as throughout history there have been individuals who, feeling the need for transformational change, have been caught up in social-cultural upheavals. These events and human efforts, according to Gopi Krishna, indicate a stirring of the human evolutionary impulse:

I can safely assert that the progress made by mankind in any direction, from the subhuman level to the present, has been far less due to man’s own efforts than to the activity of the evolutionary forces at work within him. Every incentive to invention, discovery, aesthetics, and the development of improved social and political organizations invariably comes from within, from the depths of his consciousness by the grace of … the superintelligent Evolutionary Force in human beings.3

I would further add that in order for continued human development to occur there are particular periods of human history wherein humanity becomes ready, or in need of, the activation of particular faculties — our evolutionary potentials. During such transitional periods humanity will acquire — or be coerced into developing — new capacities for accessing consciousness (a.k.a. the living intelligence).  As in all paradigm shifts, old energies must inevitably give way to the new.

In the years ahead a new wave of young people will be manifesting a consciousness that is simultaneously open to spiritual impulses as well as to the latest in scientific research. A new generation will be growing up with the desire to develop a collective sense of wellbeing, connectedness, empathy and creative vision. What we refer to as the ‘nonlocal’ will to them be the same as integral interconnectedness, and will feel natural and normal. New patterns of thinking and a stronger sense of intuition will also be a sign that greater access to the field of living intelligence is occurring. This access is the same as, in our older language, direct interaction with nonlocal and non-ordinary states of consciousness.

The experience of direct nonlocal consciousness used to be the domain of experienced practitioners (shamans, mystics, psychics) who would have undergone rigorous and lengthy training. Our ‘everyday consciousness’ of the local view of the universe has been until now largely unprepared for the realms of non-ordinary reality. In Western civilization especially, the nonlocal mode of perception (subjective experience) has not been encouraged, or even recognized. As such it has lain dormant, atrophied, and largely left to the province of the esoteric sciences. The myopic, linear, and rational view of reality has resulted in the dominating values of competition, power, ego, and greed. A nonlocal, intuitive sense of reality, however, will be one that embraces the values of Connection ~ Communication ~ Collaboration ~ Consciousness ~ Compassion. It is my view that the new generation(s) of young people in the world will be the first to embody these values in a widespread manner — thus ushering in a new epoch for the development of human consciousness.

Connected to Living Information

It appears that the Earth is now receiving different forms of energetic impacts — especially electromagnetically — which will alter the Earth’s resonant energy signature. As the Earth’s magnetic field is not a static shield, but rather like an oscillating wave, fluctuations in the field are known to affect living systems upon the Earth. Biological bodies, being electrical energy units, are sensitive to external energetic and atmospheric variations, though usually these reactions operate at a subconscious level. Likewise, magnetic variations can have unusual effects on human consciousness. Our sciences are now understanding more and more how human life – our thoughts, emotions, and behavior — are affected directly by fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field.[iii] As the energetic resonance of the Earth alters over time, this will undoubtedly affect how human DNA calibrates itself as a newborn child enters into the world.

The knowledge that human DNA can be influenced and modulated by frequencies (sound, light, language, and thought) has been utilized by various spiritual traditions over the ages. This can be seen in the variety of exercises that utilize thought focus (prayer), sounds (music, chanting, singing), light (both natural light and produced light, such as in stained glass), and language (specific recitations such as a mantra and zikr). Similarly, various shamanic practices have alluded to the notion that DNA can be accessed through deliberate, conscious intention.4 DNA appears to function, therefore, not only as a protein builder (the minority function) but also as a medium for the storage, receiving, and communication of information.

If we understand that information is processed by us on a neurobiological level, then we can accept that our nervous systems are channels for information. Since we know that DNA is present throughout our cellular structure, we can be sure that our complete physiology is involved in and related to external energy fields — electromagnetism, gamma bursts, solar rays, as well as consciousness fields.

It appears that part of our human DNA ‘energetic signature’ can be re-calibrated in our lifetime through exercising various techniques, as in a range of meditative practices and associated stimuli (as described above). For many people, these are the exact practices that have guided them through their lives. It may be that in past epochs direct intervention — such as wisdom teachings, mystery schools, and the like — were required in preparing individuals to access the living intelligence as the current environment alone was not sufficient to provide the catalytic trigger.

This situation, I speculate, may now be changing. The young children being born today appear to be already more connected with a form of intuitive intelligence. Contact with one’s own intuitive intelligence is another way of saying a person manifests a degree of gnosis. And true gnosis is a form of transceiving of information; that is, the receiving as well as transmitting of nonlocal information. Such gnosis is likely to be in the form of informational exchange between the human nervous system and living intelligence, which together in-form the body consciousness field. A more coherent connection between a person and the living intelligence field suggests greater potential/capacity for a self-initiated awakening, without the need for external teaching environments. It may be the case that humanity has just been waiting for the establishment of an energetically conducive environment. And that time may now be at hand.

Fields of Resonance

In preceding years the human socio-cultural environment was not conducive to individual development on a large scale. For this reason many wisdom teachings or streams of perennial wisdom had to operate quietly, or as clandestine operations. And yet the human capacity to access consciously the living intelligence field is without doubt an in-born natural ability. Only that for most people this capacity has lain dormant as, like an under-exercised muscle, it was never properly used. As one source recently pointed out — ‘The information you need is encoded in the structural makeup of every single cell in your body. Contact is there.’5 The same source also noted that:

When you are aware of your totality, the Life-impulse will transmit to you everything that you need to know in any given situation. Its message will always come as your first spontaneous impulse. Be attentive.6

We now know that the entire genetic information for a human body is contained in each of the body’s many trillion cells. It may be the case — only speculative at this stage — that accessing the living intelligence also operates through connection/communication with the information that is en-folded in these communicating fields of energy. That is, our human physiology — DNA, cellular structure, nervous system, etc. — acts as a whole, coherent, transceiving apparatus that filters our consciousness from the nonlocal intelligence field. The bodily ‘transceiving apparatus’ resonates with the various energy fields that originate literally under our feet as well as above our heads.

Geologists are developing their understanding of how Earth energies are transmitted both along the surface of the crust as well as within the core of the Earth. Latest research indicates that the Earth’s core behaves more along the lines of a crystalline structure, rather than as the molten mass that many of us imagine. In 1936 it was discovered (by the seismologist Inge Lehmann) that the Earth has a solid inner core distinct from its liquid outer core. This solid inner core was deduced by observing how earthquake-generated seismic waves were being reflected off the boundary of the inner core. Likewise, the outer core was found to be liquid, as earlier suspected. However, more recent observations have shown that the inner core is not completely uniform. Rather, it contains large-scale structures indicated by seismic waves that pass more rapidly through some parts of the inner core than through others. It has even been suggested that the inner solid core is formed from iron crystals. What is known by science is that the inner core, through its dynamo action, plays a significant role in the generation of Earth’s magnetic field. Similarly, the crust of the Earth is known to support a network of energized, or ‘magnetized’ paths — variously called ley lines, Earth grid, pilgrimage routes, etc. It appears that the Earth manifests particular tracks, or routes, of increased energy upon which it is said many ancient temples, ceremonial sites, gatherings, and the like have been based. Indeed, many gatherings and buildings today continue to be based upon certain accepted energized ‘hot spots.’ Quite literally, the energy fields of the Earth pulsate under our very feet. In addition to this, above our heads the Earth’s magnetic field, interacting with solar and cosmic rays, envelopes humanity in a bubble of fluctuating energy.

The latest findings in science tell us that the Earth’s electromagnetic field is a sensitive membrane that responds to solar activity such as sun spot cycles, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and solar winds. We also know from neuroscience that human brain activity creates small electrical charges. Further, the human heart is now understood to act as a vibrant generator of electromagnetic energy. Collate this with a human nervous system and cellular structure that communicates as a coherent quantum field, then we have intrinsic resonance between human biology and our terrestrial, solar, and cosmic environments. We are literally living amidst a VALIS Vast Active Living Intelligence System.

This understanding connects us with notions of a nonlocal field of consciousness that has been referred to over the years as the noosphere (Teilhard de Chardin; Vladimir Vernadsky); Overmind (Sri Aurobindo); and the world sensorium (Oliver Reiser). We can also consider this ‘noosphere/overmind’ — a.k.a. living intelligence field — as emerging as a form of planetary consciousness. If this is the case, then humanity may be instrumental in facilitating the emergence of a single planetary organism with a shared living intelligence (i.e., consciousness). A collectively aligned conscious and aware human civilization could become a physical channel for this living intelligence. This suggests that, as a species, we would have arrived at the point where we now needed to interiorize the evolutionary process for further development to occur.

The manifestation of consciousness through humanity appears to be undergoing an increased psychic compression that may serve to synchronize life on this planet. This process, in fact, is nothing ‘esoteric’ as it has been part of human civilization from the first day our ancestors began to worship an external presence. The convergence of human consciousness/thought patterns takes place in ceremonial worship, and is central to human prayer. If we look at the salah practice of formal worship in Islam (it constituting one of the Five Pillars of Sunni Islam), we see that this ritual prayer obliges the worshipper to pray five times a day facing Mecca. These specifically designated times of concentrated states of consciousness create an intense convergence and focused stream of energy across the globe directed toward the geographical location of Mecca. We have many other forms of consciousness convergence (or mental synchronization) upon this planet, throughout a myriad of socio-cultural-religious-spiritual ceremonies, events, gatherings, etc. For example, the ‘Global Consciousness Project’[iv], established by Roger Nelson at Princeton University, has demonstrated how human consciousness becomes collectively coherent and synchronized at moments of global emotional release. In the past, however, heightened synchronization in the human collective consciousness field was induced by external triggers[v]. It is to be speculated whether a change is underway upon this planet that will result in supporting greater coherence in the human consciousness field. If this is the case, we may suspect that this will facilitate a clearer contact between the human transceiving apparatus (the human body) and the nonlocal living intelligence field.

It is my own sense that the coming generation(s) will be among the first to awaken en masse to an era of instinctual gnosis. That is, a generation of instinctively aware young children who inherently feel an intentional connection and communion between their ‘self’ and the living intelligence. This contact will be a young person’s primary contact in their life, providing trustful feelings and instinctual guidance. This, we can hope, will assist in making our epochal and monumental planetary transition less turbulent and more coherent. The 13th century Persian poet Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī – known in the West simply as Rumi – suggested this intentional coherence when he accurately wrote about the distinction between acquired and instinctual intelligence:

Two Kinds of Intelligence

There are two kinds of intelligence: One acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead

from within you, moving out. 7

This ‘second knowing’ which is the ‘fountainhead’ within us corresponds to the source of living intelligence – present within our very cells. Through accessing this contact/communication we are likely to find ourselves actively engaging with a developmental impulse unfolding upon this planet.

Notes 

1 Bucke, R. (1972/1901) Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind. London:  The Olympia Press.

2 Shah, I. (1982) The Sufis. London:  Octagon, p.54

 3 Krishna, G. (1993) Higher Consciousness and Kundalini. Ontario, CA:  F.I.N.D. Research Trust, p.166

 4 Narby, J. (1999) Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. London:  Phoenix.

 5Carey, K. (1995/1982) The Starseed Transmissions. New York:  HarperCollins, p.47

 6Carey, K. (1995/1982) The Starseed Transmissions. New York:  HarperCollins, p.41

7 Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī, ‘Two Kinds of Intelligence’, Mathnawi IV:1960-1968 (Trans. Coleman Barks) 

[i] See the first part –  The Rise of an Intuitive Humanity

[ii] Taken from Rumi’s Masnavi

[iii] See research material at HeartMath Institute – https://www.heartmath.org/research/research-library/

[iv] See http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

[v] Examples include the death of Princess Diana in the UK, and the World Trade Center collapse in the US.

 

These Are Gnostic Times

Christopher Knowle’s “The Secret Sun” is a blog I’ve followed with great interest since there’s some overlap in our pop-culture tastes and philosophical views. However, he’s been noticeably absent for the past year. Chris recently posted an update sharing his personal struggles and current concerns on The Secret Sun:

It’s been nearly a year since I’ve posted here, having been overwhelmed by the two irreducible realities in my life; work and chronic pain. Many a plan and project has been sacrificed on the altar to these unrelenting gods. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve gotten started on a project only to have to back burner it when the need to pay the bills rears its head. 

These gods are like some Janus-faced thing; one a stern taskmaster that nonetheless allows me to maintain some semblance of a middle class American life, the other a wild beast that seems to serve no purpose at all but make everything in my life more difficult, more tiring, less enjoyable. I’ve learned that my particular condition is known as the “rabid dog” of chronic pain conditions among health care professionals, and that even fibromyalgia specialists (who are used to dealing with a vexing disorder) find themselves exasperated by it.

I recently discovered that even a floatation tank aggravates it. Any normal chronic pain condition would benefit from floating in a nice, warm epsom salt bath, but with me it just irritated all of the damaged nerve clusters (known as “trigger points”). So needless to say most of my surplus energy has been spoken for.

For my part, I think the local environment is the primary stressor with my condition (particularly the humidity, barometric pressure, static electricity and mold), which is all too appropriate for a diehard AstroGnostic. I’ve tried everything but it beats back everything you throw at it. Because I don’t belong here.

The problem is that I want my daughter to be able to take advantage of the outstanding public school system as her brothers did, since that experience allowed her oldest brother to graduate with highest honors from a major university this year and score a good paying job even before he was finished with school. The notion of self-sacrifice has taken a beating in the Selfie Decade, but as my grandpappy used to say, fuck that shit. Do the best for your children.

So this Janus-like lord that’s parked itself over my life like a permanent Saturn transit basically drove me to close up shop, for the very immediate and compelling reason that I very much didn’t want to die.

I hadn’t planned to make a book-length series out of the Secret Star Trek thing, it simply imposed itself upon based on a random detail in Star Trek into Darkness. But in addition to putting in 12 to 14 hour work days I found myself driven to capture this story as each new revelation came to light. It was insane. Obsessive-compulsive workaholic binge madness.

For sure a lot of it had been percolating in my unconscious for some time, but that weird tingling in my sinuses just wouldn’t leave me alone, that signal that drives me on to dig up hidden connections. But that’s not always the healthiest thing to do when your energies are required elsewhere.

What’s more, I have to say the response to the post didn’t feel commensurate to the information that was being revealed. This is very much a product of the new Internet reality, one I can’t exactly say I’m crazy about but one that needs to be adapted to nonetheless. I’ve come to understand that longform posts (like, say, this) are self-defeating in an age when more and more people are accessing the Internet through their phones.

Which goes to show you that the notion that evolution leads to things getting better is one of our culture’s most pernicious myths. 

Nearly everything is getting demonstrably worse.

But it’s OK- I’m addressing a small core of people here intentionally. I don’t plan to be doing a lot of long-form blogging in the long run.

My longterm plan is to reactivate The Secret Sun Radio Mystery Hour, which I had already planned to do before hardware problems made that an impossibility (ie., my computer got all messed up). 

I still haven’t fully solved those problems. I have a new computer but now we’ve been having a lot of problems with our current ISP and the router (if it’s not one thing…). But once those are addressed- hopefully by summer’s end- I hope to start up the Mystery Hour again. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a couple years now, but if you’ve gotten this far you’ll understand how events have conspired to keep me away from the microphone

With the onetime major alt.research podcast becoming something very much unrecognizable to those of us who were there in its early days, there seems to be an opening for something interesting to fill the vacancy. But I will only pursue this if I can do so with the highest level of professionalism I can muster. I have to admit that I got complacent with a few podcast appearances in the past, simply because I was too busy or preoccupied to prepare like should. I regret that and don’t intend to repeat that in the future.

I’m taking suggestions for hosting services. My experience with FraudBean was a nightmare.

SPEAKING OF NIGHTMARES

I don’t think I need to go into too much detail as to how much worse things have gotten out there in the past year, how the world seems perched on the brink of a conflagration the likes of which it hasn’t seen in 70 years. 

The past few days I was going through some old posts and it was depressing to see news stories of people’s expectations for Obama (that Peace Prize seems like the sickest joke imaginable now), and how they’ve been dashed.

The American Republic has given way to Empire, of that we can all agree. Liberals say nothing at all about it (well, besides mocking the Kulaks in flyover country) because they are hypnotized into believing they will be the courtiers in the new Imperial palace, but in reality the rugs are slowly being pulled from beneath them. By the time they notice it will be too late and they’ll all be out on the street.*

One of these rugs is publishing. Borders is gone and Barnes and Noble is in very serious trouble. Ebook sales are falling as well. The major publishers are fighting Amazon for the right to charge full price for Ebooks (which benefits neither authors nor consumers), a fight that may go down in history as their Waterloo.

I’m seeing this from the inside and can’t say more than it’s much worse than it looks from the outside. I haven’t published anything in 4 years because my experience with Secret History of Rock n’ Roll didn’t whet my appetite for another go-round. I simply can’t deal with the limitations imposed on my work by commercial publishing.

My work needs the tools of academic publishing- footnotes, bibliographies, indices, appendices- otherwise it’s too easy for skeptics to dismiss out of hand. I also need as much room as I need to put my points across. All of this is anathema to commercial publishers who are convinced their customer pool is made up of idiots. But I don’t. I think the people who are drawn to alternative points of view want as much data as you can give them.

My first book was self-published and I must say it was the only truly positive experience I’ve had in the two decades I’ve had my work in print. And with publishers expecting authors to do more and more of the promotional work, there’s really very little reason to continue with conventional publishing anymore.

So that is something else I wish to pursue in the future. I’ve got quite a few projects in various stages of development so finding compelling material won’t be a problem. Finding time might be, but that’s another story…

THE WORK

The Work (as in the Great Work) continues on. I’ll save that for a later post but all I can say for now is that it’s been rather stunning and has seriously fucked with my previously held beliefs in causality, agency and whatever hell else you want to throw in. And this is from a guy who’s been messing around with Synchronicity and the rest of it for decades now.

What is the point of it? The point seems to be to find strength to carry on with the work in a world seemingly hellbent on making miserable, mindless robots of us all. 

And that’s quite a point.

I’d like to say the bad guys will lose because good always triumphs but right now that’s a pretty hard prediction to make. But people like us have been here before, and maybe by looking at how they dealt with the Black Iron Prison we too can work up some coping strategies of our own.

32 years ago The Bad Brains wrote a song that declared “These are Coptic Times.” I don’t know if they really understood the meaning of the word, maybe they thought it just sounded heavy and Biblical. What these are are Gnostic times, there are no two ways about it.

These are the times prophesied by the Gnostics and the times most conducive to Gnostic thought. Not necessarily Alexandrian or Bogomil Gnostic thought- the genius of Gnostic thinking is its elasticity and adaptability. A Gnostic canon is an oxymoron.

I think in the days to come a new Gnostic thinking– one that has shaken off the dust and cobwebs of the library and the lecture hall– might be the difference between sanity and the Abyss.

There’s a strange symmetry of history as we stand on the brink of a new Cold War with Russia and China; the Gnostic Gospels unveiled themselves in 1945 at the dawn of the first Cold War, now a major diaspora of Gnostic peoples- Mandaeans, Ismailis, Yezidis, Druze- looms as Obama’s ISIS mad dogs run rampant through Mesopotamia and Syria.

Already many of these Gnostic people have sought refugee status, it will be fascinating if they break centuries of separation and seek to make connections in their new homes.

Scholar Harold Bloom saw Gnosticism as America’s native religion and perhaps the already waning atheist/nihilist phase is a necessary step in shaking off the last vestiges of Puritanism and evolving into a purer, more self-aware variety of Gnosis. One that has broken away from the stifling Medieval past.

2000 years ago Gnosticism and Christianity struggled for the hearts and minds of an Empire, but the world wasn’t yet ready for Gnosis and Gnosis wasn’t yet ready for the world. Then too the Empire’s cosmopolitans and sophisticates shunned all gods and mysteries, only to see their legacy wiped forever from the face of the earth. The same fate awaits their counterparts today. The question remains who will inherit the future?

 * Literally. Worse still, they may well be served up as scapegoats to the burgeoning far right, that is angrier than I’ve seen in my lifetime.