You know, it should disturb me that I find a lot of this occult/Gnostic stuff making sense to me more and more.

Why is that?

The more I read of Christian mystics, the more this general idea seems to come through. I’m not sure that the exact details are correct or that they need to be, but the sense of the Divine Realm - Heaven, the Kingdom, etc - existing in a sort of parallel - no, not exactly parallel, more like tangential - continuum seems to be there. This universe as a kind of subspace within a wider realm in which things are more real than here.

It’s interesting to me that Plato described a similar sort of setup in his Republic as Dick’s VALIS, or even L Ron Hubbard (may he have attained some kind of peace with the beyond, the old charlatan) and his ‘imprinting stations’. Similar to near-death type experiences.

It seems to me that just about all the occult systems derive from some actual glimpse of reality, and of this world as being merely a way-station to points beyond. But it also seems that some of them catch a look at reality and go ‘aieeee we’re all just hypno-programmed drones aieee this world is a sham God is an evil machine’ and spiral down into paranoia and some go ‘well, if this is just an illusion then it’s all actually okay and the point is to listen to what the Invisible Lover is trying to teach us at every moment’. Same reality, same glimpse, totally different reactions. And it also seems that even true glimpses of Reality can go really rancid if they’re taken the wrong way. Also that things There seem to work so much differently, or bigger, than here - like a hyperdimensional elephant - that it seems very hard for returning mystics to be able to map concepts onto anything approaching intelligibility. “Words not lawful for a man to utter” was how the Apostle Paul put it in the King James version, which seems to sum up the sheer frustration of not even having a shared physical model to correlate with.

The idea of Mythical Time having more than the one linear dimension also rings true. Similar to Heim Theory with its multiple timeline dimensions. Or Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime. Things in There seem to travel quite without respect to our physical laws. What Is, is, both forward and backward in our kind of time. More like sideways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da_Vinci_Code

On the glass over the Mona Lisa, Saunière wrote the message “So dark the con of Man” with a curator’s pen that can only be read in ultra-violet light. The second clue is an anagram for Madonna of the Rocks, another Da Vinci painting hanging nearby. Behind this painting, Saunière hid a key. On the key, written with the curator’s pen, is an address.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virgin_of_the_Rocks

Gawd, I miss being out there.

The other side of this coin - breaking through to mythic time, or having mythic time break into your life - is re-learning how to navigate ordinary time.

The title of your post seems to be an anagram - would you mind sharing what of?

Erm, that’s what I did to come up with this part…

I meant from a collaborative perspective, instead of a singual entity. Sorry if i wasn’t clear about that.

As in, taking a boatload of ideas from everyone and combining them into one massive theory?

Erm, that’s what I did to come up with this part…

BTW, if this is supposed be working towards a “grand unified conspiracy theory”, shouldn’t it be done in more of a group setting? As in, taking a boatload of ideas from everyone and combining them into one massive theory?

Eh?

Early on when I began it, I realized that part of its necessity is to realize A SELF–which is now only an embryonic entity.

I relate it to one of Gurdjieff’s many excellent aphorisms (his second-to-last):

“#37: Man is given a definite number of experiences—economizing them, he prolongs his life.”

If we seek “freedom” and possibly even “immortality”–although this takes many different possible meanings–how better to do it than to make room in ourselves for the truly new, by letting go, and by properly contextualizing the old by real self-knowledge?

We infrequently do experience timelessness and even formlessness by grace, seemingly by some planetary alignment, but can it happen at any moment? Can it happen permanently in a universe of impemanence?

Each person has a Jesus and each a Pilate within. Each a Heaven and each a Hades. I think there is no need to look for it outside.

I’ve thought a lot about “the final conspiracy”, it seems it must ultimately be utterly impersonal and amount to no less than Nature in the hermetic sense.

Yep, that’s where I’m going. Never fear! And in the meantime, don’t get caught in the words. Just enjoy the ride!

Also, with regards to P.K. Dick’s theory and your framing of it, you might look into Nietzsche and his concept of the Eternal Recurrence; and also, P.D. Ouspenksy, Gurdjieff’s old disciple, who likewise held a view of the the Eternal Recurrence very similar to both NIetzsche’s and P.K. Dick’s–not sure if he received it from G. or if it represents a conclusion he came to through his own experiences and insights.

Nice work again, Tim. Looking forward to part 2.

Anyone read Corbin?

I’ve thought a lot about “the final conspiracy”, it seems it must ultimately be utterly impersonal and amount to no less than Nature in the hermetic sense.

Bilderbergers, alien invasions: these are “standard” causal explanations for the otherwise inexplicable correspondances observed by the conspiracy enthusiast. I cannot accept these explanations as final, but feel they are manifestations or instantiations of symbolic realities. (Sorry if that makes no sense, this is the area where the language I have really fails me.)

Impersonal causal theories fall under the category of “archetypal” cosmogonies, such as Ibn Arabi’s conception of the Divine Names calling out to be realized, or the reciprocal dialectic between unity and multiplicity in neoplatonism.

An infinite cycle is the closest our mind can get to simulating/emulating timelessness.

But just because people seem disconnected from the Original Source (I prefer calling it the Self) doesn’t mean they are. The Self is always here, and anyone can ‘tune in’ to it at anytime. It still directs our lives, whether we are conscious of it or not.

Your notion that we are stuck in a terrible time loop, suggested by those ‘uncanny’ temporal sensations we all have, could have a less emotionally-laden explanation: perhaps it is because confusion sets in when the mind attempts to grasp the experience of Self consciousness in what you call Mythic Time. A singular finite cycle is the closest temporal mode to eternity (infinitely large cycle).