the timboucher experience

Fantastic Planet wrote an awesome post which I linked to earlier called Gnosticism: The Ultimate Conspiracy Theory? If you haven’t checked it out already, please do.

Anyway, in it, he talks a lot about “control systems.” I think, the specific mention of it is to Jacques Vallee who theorizes that the UFO phenomena somehow act as a creepy control mechanism of some kind for the human race psycho-spiritually. Gnosticism too is very concerned with control systems in the form of archons - as are conspiracy theorists of all shapes and stripes.

Somewhere along the line, wondering what the purpose of all these various control systems is triggered a memory of a part of an exceptionally dense Philip K. Dick essay entitled Cosmogony & Cosmology. I’m in no way able to summarize the whole article, but he talks a lot about the gnostic view that the material world is illusory, and that there is a real true god beyond it, rather than the demiurge that most people worship. To clarify a couple terms before I throw the quote at you, the “artifact” roughly means the illusory material world, and the Urgrund means the true god who lies beyond it.

Now, to refer back to my original description of the artifact as a teaching machine. What is it teaching us? There is a puzzle here, in the sense of a game; we are to learn step by step either a series of gradually more difficult lessons or perhaps one specific lesson. During our lifetimes we are presented with various forms of the puzzles or puzzle; if we solve the puzzle we go on to the next step, but if we do not, then we remain where we are.

The ultimate lesson learned comes when the teaching machine (or the teacher) is denied, is repudiated. Until that moment comes (if for some of us it ever does) we remain enslaved by the teaching machine — without even being aware of it, having known no other condition.

Therefore the series of lessons by the artifact are intended to lead to a revolt against the tyranny of the artifact itself, a paradox. It is serving the Urgrund by ultimately bringing us to the Urgrund. This is what is called in theological terminology “the secret partnership,” which is found in the religions of Egypt and India. Gods who appear to combat each other are, on the transmundane plane, colluding for the same goal. I believe this to be the case here. The artifact enslaves us, but on the other hand it is attempting to teach us to throw off its enslavement. It will never tell us to disobey it. You cannot order someone to disobey you; that is both semantically and functionally impossible.

The reason this is so awesome to me is that it essentially reverses everything. It says that the purpose of control systems is not to control you, but to befuddle you and inspire you to transcend them. Which turns the current state of the world on it’s head. This means that the seeming rise of the Great Shadow across the land is not the harbinger of our destruction, but the spur which will finally drive us onward to liberation.

Dick continues:

Those persons on whom the artifact, through its projected world, heaps pleasure and rewards are less likely to take a stance against it and its world. They are not highly motivated to disobey it. But those who are punished by the artifact, on whom pain and suffering are inflicted — those persons would be motivated to ask ultimately questions as to the nature of the entity ruling their lives.

I have always felt that the basic constructive purpose of pain is somehow to wake us up. But wake us up to what? Perhaps this paper points to what we are being awakened to. If the artifact through its projected world teaches us to rebel, and if by doing so we achieve isomorphism with our true maker — then it is the hard road that leads to immortality and a return to our divine source. The road of pleasure (success and reward by and in this projected world) will not goad us to consciousness and to life.
We stand enslaved by a ruthless mechanism that will not listen to our complaints; therefore we repudiate it and its world — and turn elsewhere.

The computerlike teaching machine is doing its job well. It is a thankless task for it and an unhappy experience for us. But childbirth is never easy.

• Subliminal Advertising & Micromessaging
• Illusion of Control In Emergent Systems
• The Scientific Rationale Behind Total Surveillance
• Mind Control at Guantanamo?
• The Divine Spark