rigorousintuition.ca

[Aeolus Kephas]

I guess people here are familiar with Jake Kotze's work?

I discovered Jake's work ("scrying" popular culture for hidden archetypal resonances) a few months back, and was curious to find out more about his philosophy, so invited him onto the Stormy Weather podcast (link below). As you'll hear if you listen to the show, Jake and I have pretty much the same take on things, but seem to opt for a different emphasis. Jake is more playful and "optimistic," leaving me to play my usual role as somber doomsayer and devil's advocate. Is the species really heading for "galactic consciousness" or is it simply self-destructing? More to the point: is there a difference?

Jake argues that the conspiracy view of global events and culture is passé, because behind all the plots is a single intelligence guiding everything – thus propagating a religious view over that of paranoia. Yet isn’t paranoia a form of religion and religion a form of paranoia? My counter-argument is that the two views need to co-exist, at least for now, rather than for the one, "holistic" view to prematurely supplant the other.

In my view, Jake is trying to hopscotch over the global web of control we are ensnared in and go straight to the Source (via movies, no less!). I don’t think this is possible, or even desirable. Since we have no choice but to interact with our culture and society, we have no choice but to acknowledge the forces that are controlling it (and us). Jake says he no longer sees it this way, that since all is One, the controlling elite don’t exist. OK, but then neither does he. So who’s having this conversation? So long as there is a subject-object relationship between the perceiver and what is being perceived, surely we have no choice but to recognize (and honor) the layers of good and evil that come between us and "It." Isn’t that just good manners? More to the point, how can we counteract the manipulation if we aren’t fully cognizant of it?

In Jake's own model (one I have also written about in different ways), there are two views of reality. I have called them focused and unfocused awareness (tonal and nagual); Jake describes them, very effectively, as "side-on" and overhead views. Though he uses a mandala image, I would posit a maze as a more apt example: from the one POV, side-on, we see an endless series of corridors and walls; from above, we can see the pattern of the maze itself (and therefore the way out).

Jake himself admits that it's not about the "higher" view supplanting the lower but both viewpoints co-existing; yet isn’t he attempting just such a supplanting with his dismissal of the conspiracy layer (of pop culture) as irrelevant to his concerns? As I see it, the side-on view of the maze does not allow for intelligent movement down the labyrinth, while the overhead view takes us out of the reality experience entirely. Therefore, as Jake says, free movement between the two points of view would seem to be the key. Of course, the POVs aren’t equal, because being stuck in the maze doesn’t give us the option of rising above - while once we are looking down, from an “impersonal” viewpoint, we still have the option of returning to "the trenches" (though at the risk of forgetting and getting snared by a personal perspective again).

Put differently, once we move the assemblage point beyond the dualistic view of “us and them/good and evil,” we retain the memory/understanding of dualism, and the option of returning to it without being restricted by it. While we are still ensconced in polarity consciousness, however, we cannot ever see beyond it – it is all we know.

Though it's true that from the overhead view, there are no controlling elite, only movement of energy, this is a luxury that only avails as long as we are outside our reality tunnel. Once we move back inside it, the conspiracy comes into being again, along with everything else. If our movement to unitive awareness is premature, however, if it depends on a denial/rejection of the polarity view, then it is clearly a suppression of truth (and the personal) rather than its evolution.

It could be that I am simply attached to my viewpoint and too jaded to see Jake’s “follow your bliss” optimism as wholly authentic. Or it may be that Jake simply likes watching movies too much to admit he’s using them as much as a means to escape reality as to access it. I am not sure. Probably a bit of both.
_________________
"We are all skating on thin existence."
www.aeoluskephas.com/forum

[Raamin]

I discovered Kotze's work about a month ago myself, first through his youtube videos, then through his blogs. I find him sincere and his ideas worth sharing, though to make that assertion here, I first had to coax and cajole my mind to assimilate yet another flood of unsettling and alien concepts. That's happening to me ever more often these days; in some respects I am a late riser to the terrible dawning of Truth.

More to the point, I am glad you brought Kotze up, because I do feel that many of the readers here would benefit from a dispassionate look at his ideas. Since I found them illustrative of subtle reality despite my own idiosyncratic path towards the same, and since you asked so many questions in your post, I thought I'd post with the double intent of giving my ideas on synchromysticism and addressing your questions as I understood them.

Since I am new here, forgive this introduction: at the sacred pool of Thoreauvian prose I first drank the water of transcendental desire, and how strange! as its coolness refreshed me, it also kindled a fire. To feed it, mythology, anthropology, Eastern thought, Indo-European linguistics, Tolkien, Islam; then a materialistic atheism inspired by Darwin and Dawkins, and a lot of evolutionary biology and psychology; a psychedelic experience that, while tantalizing me with the fragrance of bliss, showed me how wrong I was about everything; and then the explosion of learning. Hallucinogens, McKenna, Krishnamurti, Osho, deep politics, consciousness, Hindu and Vedic thought, yoga as psychological and physiological reprogramming, and all the things R.I. visitors enjoy. From that general direction...

We are at the end of one cycle and the beginning of another; so when you ask whether what awaits us is Galactic Consciousness or self-destruction, and whether they might not be the same, you are expressing a subtle point.

Consciousness is eternal, beyond structure, beyond time; it's not going anywhere, it's not becoming anything. In all life, consciousness exists in some form or another -- cow, grass, tapeworm, human, -- but it's all the same fundamentally. Only when the embodied consciousness makes the mistake of identifying itself with its gross vehicle does the illusion of "I" as a "separate" actor arise.

The point is, EVERYTHING is now changing at an accelerating rate in a cycle that has repeated (presumably) innumerable times before, whether "life" wanted it or not; as above, so below. One can be silent in one's being, observe these changes and oneself, and understand this. So whether we all starve or all achieve living enlightenment, nothing "real" has died and consciousness will have achieved its ends. The best we can do while alive, then, the real flowering of man, is to live simply, greedlessly, and with love for all as reflections of ourselves. Extravagance, ravenous consumption, and division got us here; whatever happens now, old mindsets (what an oppressive word!) certainly won't save us.

This is why I agree with Kotze that "the conspiracy view of global events and culture is passe" in a certain sense, and I think this should really be understood. Yes, we are all being actively manipulated in certain ways -- fake elections, fake values in media, fluoridated water, satanic ritual abuse, 9/11, etc.

But not everything is a centrally-controlled, prepackaged, fore-thought machination. Again, even the "Illuminati," to the extent that that name is valid, are only agents of change subordinate to higher reality; do you think history could have really played out any other way than it has? When agriculture was born, the first stone was laid in the Patriarchal Left-Brain Solar Death Cult's humanity-spanning mental prison. Consciousness seemed to want to move in that direction, and it did, with blood and with time. Now consciousness wants to move elsewhere, and all our mental constructions (including my own ever-changing ones) are mutating furiously to impose sense on it. As if. Again, all we can do is individually face the worst as calmly as possible and try to subtract from misery and add to love; as this site attests, individual change has far-reaching effects.

As for the paranoiac vs. holistic/mystic approach, in my mind there need be no distinction between them. They're the same! "Para" (beyond) + "nous" (mind, or even visual perception) -- I suspect that, despite the pejorative use, the real meaning is "perception beyond appearances," which in an oppressive culture could very easily become a dangerous and derided thing. And the mystic approach is based on the understanding that there is a unitary reality behind the appearance of the manifold -- "things are not the way they seem." Whether "facing" conspiracies or following synchromysticism toward transcendent truth, the goal is the same: first really see things for what they really are, and then action will happen all on its own.

So... I don't think Kotze is "trying to hopscotch over the global web of control," though he doesn't wring his hands too much about elite machinations as many of us tend to. Yes, we do need to acknowledge that conspiracy exists, and to confront its depredations in 4-D, but to say that "going straight to the source" is self-indulgent, impossible, or undesirable is essentially mistaken.

EVERYTHING comes from formless consciousness beyond time and matter, noumena and phenomena alike. Ideas are many, but truth is one. In you is all the truth of the universe; to go to the source, then, is necessarily "self-indulgent," following the inner guide's endless return to the source of its awareness. And when you have reached the climax of ingoing, there is a reversal and an outgoing of loving wisdom. And that loving wisdom that acts without thinking is the real goal for humanity, since illusion then has less and less of a hold over our and others' lives.

Before I give my defense and understanding of synchromisticism as an interpretive or divination-tool, A.K. said:

"once we move the assemblage point beyond the dualistic view of 'us and them/good and evil,' we retain the memory/understanding of dualism, and the option of returning to it without being restricted by it. While we are still ensconced in polarity consciousness, however, we cannot ever see beyond it – it is all we know,"

and that

"it's true that from the overhead view, there are no controlling elite, only movement of energy, this is a luxury that only avails as long as we are outside our reality tunnel. Once we move back inside it, the conspiracy comes into being again, along with everything else. If our movement to unitive awareness is premature, however, if it depends on a denial/rejection of the polarity view, then it is clearly a suppression of truth (and the personal) rather than its evolution."

Yes, once we have moved past dualistic, divisive, separative thinking it remains to us only as a "non-valued" tool with no "power" over us -- because consciousness has had a veil removed. Once the veil's off, it's understood for what it is, even appreciated for its particular charms. Agreed.

The thing is, the overhead view isn't a "luxury," it's reality! The "reality tunnel" of personality and conditional being and historical identity that we crawl back into when not "viewing from above" is the actual luxury, because it is ultimately false. Look what the ego, the nation, religion have done for us! Only by the understanding of them for what they are do they lose their power as blind directors of our action and become simply tools. This understanding historically seems to have come at terrible cost, but again, it's all a larger process. We are not separate from it all!

Operating from false premises leads ultimately to faulty understanding. That's what got us where we are! You know this, of course, but the point is, we can't just keep going back to our reality tunnels, even if they are warm and have all of our stuff there. If there is a true and lasting overhead view established, the side view becomes another veil or mask that we wear for pleasure.. with no illusions that the mask is really "us."

So to say that rejecting the validity of a dualistic/polar views as unnecessary is a "suppression" of truth and the "personal," and that it is not true evolution is itself a dualism: i.e., "you can't have one without the other." What I'm saying is, both views do exist, but the "personal" one is temporary, subject to wild change (are you who you were last week? last month? fifteen years ago?), and the source of confusion, suffering, and ignorance during physical life. Everyone's "person" (literally, "mask") wants something else, until it's catapulted (by love, meditation, psychedelics, or whatever) into timeless, wordless perception -- then the game's up!

So Kotze is going all-out for "the source": so may we all.

As for synchromysticism: the universe is a giant holograph, everything in it a scaled fractal representation of the whole, playing out in its longer or shorter span the cosmic drama of which it is only an element; as above, so below. Everything resonates everything else to a greater or lesser degree, and the more densely something is connected to something else -- in any sense -- the greater the resonance.

So when there is any kind of dense, multifaceted, complexly arranged or intensely interacting system available for our conscious inspection -- especially one whose atmosphere we swim in, absorb, and breathe at all times, like astrology in one age or t.v and films in another -- when we look at it with an intuitive and metaphorical eye, holding on to the principle "as above, so below," it becomes a tool for divining the larger meanings and processes around us. The I-ching, tarot, astrology, and a hundred other systems have been used to that end. Why not popular culture?

One can appreciate it in "two ways" just like the "two views" of reality. Yes, Eddie Murphy is just some guy living his life, acting in movies, deciding things to the best of his ability... but he can also be interpreted, because of his involvement in this giant culture-system, with a "top view," as a black star resonating galactic center and enlightenment in several unrelated movies. Both are "right," see, but it depends on the "level" of consciousness involved in the looking. I think we should all be following our synchronistic inclinations towards truth.

I've been finding it hard to keep silent these days.

[Perelandra]

[Aeolus Kephas]

Raamin

Impressive posting, makes me very happy to have inspired such a response. There’s actually very little of your argument I want to counter. And yet, although I agree with just about everything you say, the fact you are saying it suggests you didn’t quite grok my own point—or rather, I failed to make it clearly enough.

E.g.:

[FreeLancer]

It's a holograph. Oh OK. That makes all the difference.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2418/1513696758_5612fff9f8.jpg?v=0

[zhivkov]

Thanks FreeLancer that photo has always had a huge emotional impact on me. If I am remembering right the man who took it comitted suicide.
_________________
"you gave me in secret one thing to perceive, the tall blue starry strangeness of being here at all"-Franz Wright

[Alfred Joe's Boy]

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

"the conspiracy view of global events and culture is passe"



Yeah, right. thhhphh.
_________________
CIA runs mainstream media since WWII:
news rooms, movies/TV, publishing
...
Disney is CIA for kidz!

[8bitagent]

I first discovered Kotze's unique perspective in early 2007, with the youtube short "911 stargate"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUvSqY3po24

My God that blew my mind. I've ever since called 9/11 a "megaritual".
Sadly, like Chris Everand(maker of "The Illuminati", "The Illuminati 2", "Spirit World", "Secret Space 1 and 2", ect) I get the feeling Kotze doesn't have all his facts straight about Crowley. (In that short he refers to Lam as "Aiwass", misidentifies Oz as "77", ect) Though I find Kotze's pointing out of Bush reading "My Pet Goat" as an "homage to Pan at the start of the 9/11 megaritual" amusing.

I've emailed a few times with Kotze, and I do have to strongly disagree with his conclusions about 9/11. He calls it "our consciousness illuminating" or some crap. I'm with David Icke; 9/11 was a giant Satanic ritual to instill trauma, reverberations of the spirit realm and pushing us further toward a destructive aeon changing era.

Though, I do like Kotze's latest, a short film by someone else who interviews him and goes into an esoteric viewpoint of the three esoteric buildings of 9/11: The Twin Towers, The Pentagon, and The Black Monolith From 2001(AKA the Millennium Hilton)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSm9m_C8Mbw

Kotze bases virtually all his work around 9/11(and for good reason), I do find brilliant in his own way. The Kurt Russell flying into the WTC in Escape from New York and then going through the portal in StarGate shows the unique near autistic way his mind works.

Now what Kotze gets at, is what I have arrived at as well...that like the JFK/Lincoln synchroniscities, the cosmic giggle works in mysterious ways.
Like the Stock Market crashing to 777.

I don't attribute everything to "The Illuminati"(black brotherhood),
but certainly there are mysterious powers at work in a playful and strange manner..that which we would now dub "Synchromystical".

The idea of "resonating" and "consciousness" that Kotze mentions a lot is insanely intriguing any way you slice it. You really have to truly shatter one's own paradigm in order to see the world, consciousness, history and life in this matter. Hence why I think for both myself, Kotze and many others, 9/11 is a rosetta stone and understanding point.

I wish I could be as positive in outlook as Kotze; but I cant help but call things evil when I see evil...instead of seeing some existential metaphysical Buddhist sort of "interpretation"...I call staged terror, genocide, ect as I sees it.
_________________
"We should not be here. I'm scared, this is creepy. You know what I mean? This could go very deep, Carol. This could be like, you know, like with the Warren commission, or something. I don't like it."-Woody Allen, Manhattan Murder Mystery(1993)

[8bitagent]

I want to give you an example of "synchromysticism" that is truly strange, to those who know where to look:

On October 11th 2006, pretty much two years ago, the Yankee's star pitcher Cory Lidle crashed his small plane accidentally into the upper portion of a New York City highrise. With smoke billowing out and fire, it instantly reminded people of 9/11/2001.

But lets look at the date: 10/11/06, flip it 180 upside down:
90/11/01. Or 9/11/01?

The apartment he crashed into happened to be the VERY same apartment of the woman who literally almost died when a Cat in the Hat Macy's Date parade float left her in a coma.

See what I mean? You can't make this stuff up folks.
_________________
"We should not be here. I'm scared, this is creepy. You know what I mean? This could go very deep, Carol. This could be like, you know, like with the Warren commission, or something. I don't like it."-Woody Allen, Manhattan Murder Mystery(1993)

[FreeLancer]

Don't get me wrong-- I think what Kotze and other synchromystics are doing is really interesting stuff. But I can't and won't swallow nonsense like the purpose of 911 was for "illuminating consciousness." Tell that to the mother of three who burned to death in those towers. Tell that to her children. Tell that to the Iraqi families who are homeless. Tell it to the 19 year old soldier at Walter Reed who's learning to use a spoon again.

That kind of theory sounds great within the confines of a cozy middle class existence, with a skull bong on one side and Cool Ranch Doritos on the other.

Yea, that's quite a bargain-- other people's children are tortured and you get your consciousness illuminated.

[8bitagent]

[Occult Means Hidden]

[Hammer of Los]

I am sure Goro Adachi was the originator of the concept of synchro mysticism. The original and best, you might say, always a mind blowing read. Watch out for the woo! I liked to read his site when it was free in its entirety, before he added a subscribers's section. Yes, I'm a cheapskate.

I have no reason to doubt what Adachi is saying about Kotze. It all seems a trifle unsavoury, stealing someone else's ideas and taking credit for them.

But I am sure there are two sides to the story.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]