A Sirius Man Eats Whole Wheat Bread

Samuel Beckett wrote of James Joyce:  "To Joyce reality was a paradigm, an illustration of a perhaps an unstatable rule…It is not a perception of order or of love; more humble than either of these, it is a perception of coincidence."  Before we can comprehend reality, we must perceive it accurately, we must examine closely.

Upon closer examination, the apparent continuity error in the game of chess between HAL and Poole in 2001: A Space Odyssey was not an error, it was simply a bluff made by HAL to gauge the perception of Poole.   This truth, although in plain sight, was buried by Kubrick, and would only be discovered by the majority of his audience until many years later.  It appears Kubrick, like HAL, was also bluffing.  Was it for the same reason HAL bluffed Poole?  To gauge the perception of the audience?  Sneaky bastard.

Joel and Ethan Coen are a couple of sneaky bastards too.

There is nothing wrong with simply appreciating A Serious Man as a dark comedy, or enjoying 2001: A Space Odyssey as an epic special effects driven science-fiction film.  But the Coen's are, as I said, sneaky bastards.  And like Kubrick, they are offering us something much more profound than just a comedy.

In A Serious Man, Lawrence "Larry" Gopnik and Arthur Gopnik are brothers, who both involve themselves with extremely complex and intellectual exercises.  One embodies the madness of artistic creation, the other the burden of proof.   

The Mentaculus

Arthur is a lonely lumpy soul who spends his time gambling, lurking, and obsessively scribbling into print a work called The Mentaculus, a title that conveys a calculus of mentation.  It is his "probability map of the universe", and is written in a language that seemingly only makes sense to Arthur.  One quick glance and it looks as though poor Arthur is quite ill, mentally.  Yet it reminds me of something else written in a language no one can seemingly understand….

James Joyce, one of the most highly respected artists of the 20th century, spent the last 17 years of his life working on what he called his Work In Progress, which eventually became Finnegans Wake.  Finnegans Wake is a work of literature that makes absolutely no sense to 99% of the people who attempt to read it.  The other 1% claim, rather loudly, that it is a work of genius.  It would be a whole lot easier for the majority to dismiss this book if it weren't for the fact that so many intelligent and respected people populate the 1% who revere Finnegans Wake.  What the hell do they know?  What do they see that the rest of us can’t?

It is possible that The Mentaculus is Arthur’s Work In Progress.  Unfortunately, Arthur is living in Minnesota in the 1960's, and cannot command the kind of audience that Joyce did.  We don't even know if Arthur has ever allowed anyone else to read it.  Ironically, he lives with the one person who might make sense of his masterpiece, his brother Larry.

Schröedinger's Cat

Larry is more successful than Arthur, he has a wife and two children, a career, and a solid social identity.  

Larry is very intelligent, a Professor of Physics, and spends his time lecturing on the laws and theorems  calculated by people even smarter than he, yet he remains the epitome of "those who can, do, those who can't, teach."  Larry is shown lecturing on the Schröedingers Cat thought experiment, and it is a good reflection of Larry's life.  Larry is both Teacher and Student, Married and Alone, Faithful and Faithless, Found and Lost.  It all depends on the observer.

Schröedinger's cat is also a good reflection of the Standard Model of Quantum Physics at the moment, as it remains both Fact and Fiction.  The calculations and equations of quantum physicists promise a unified theory of everything, an explanation for the existence of time, space, and the universe that we live and die in.  The mathematical equations have promised that matter is composed of certain scientifically observable objects, the most important being the top quark, the bottom quark, the tau neutrino, and the Higgs Boson,  So far the bottom quark (1977), the top quark (1995) and the tau neutrino (2000) have been discovered, just like the calculations have promised.  But the Higgs Boson remains the elusive companion of this group, and is still referred to as the Hidden Variable.  We can't claim the Standard Model to be fact until this is finally observed.

"In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork". Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark". Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of the gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark", as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork". But the book represents the dream of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau" words in "Through the Looking-Glass". From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark", in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature."

 Murray Gell-Mann

Arthur and Larry (Art and Law), two very different brothers, are actually both searching for the same thing, the hidden variable to life, but all they have to show for in their search is loneliness and divorce.  It is said that it is always darkest before the dawn, and for Arthur and Larry, it's getting pretty dark in Room 2³ of the Jolly Roger Motel.  

"Arthur, you've got to pull your self together"

"It's all shit Larry.  It's all shit."

"Arthur don't use that word."

"It's just fucking shit."

"Arthur."

"Look at all that Hashem has given you.  What has he given me?  He hasn't given me shit."

"Arthur, what do I have?  I live at the Jolly Roger"

"You have a family.  You have a job.  Hashem hasn't given me shit.  He hasn't given me bubkes!"

"It's not fair to blame Hashem, Arthur.  Please.  Sometimes….please calm down.  Sometimes you have to help yourself."

"Hashem hasn't given me shit.  Now I can't even play cards."

We have two brothers embracing in the void of an empty swimming pool, lost in a world where Hashem, the divine God they were raised with, has abandoned them.  

There is a message next to Arthur, (a sign?),  that is painted on the concrete, a message that neither are paying attention to.  The audience is most likely not paying attention to it either.  

The message is never revealed completely, but common sense tells us that 3 FT NO DIVING is painted on the concrete as a warning to those who would jump into the shallow pool.  Nothing profound.  But a knowledge of James Joyce and quantum physics is not a common sense, it is a rather uncommon sense, and in this scene, seen through a lens informed by Joyce and quantum physics, the perception of a very curious coincidence occurs.

James Joyce uses the symbol "Ǝ" in the architecture of Finnegans Wake to represent what the Buddhists call "void" and the Taoists call "wu-hsin" or NO MIND.  This NO MIND represents the "class of all possible minds", meaning the aggregation of all possible minds.  This mind does and does not exist, like that damn cat, and is best expressed in the paradoxical language of mystics and the mathematical equations of quantum physics.  Robert Anton Wilson in his brilliant essays on Joyce equates Joyce's Ǝ with the Hidden Variable of quantum physics.

If we allow ourselves to fill in the missing letters through this lens, this message, written on the edge of a void, might be trying to say:

Ǝ

NO 

DIVINE

WHY?  Well, we have two brothers embracing each other, one a poor man's James Joyce, the other a poor man's Schröedinger, and both are lamenting their relationship to the divine.  The message is both pessimistic (NO DIVINE = NO GOD) as well as optimistic ( Ǝ NO DIVINE =  the Hidden Variable, the class of all things Divine is right by you!).  The Coen's have planted a message that seemingly embraces both the pinnacles of artistic and mathematical expression, a message buried as deep as the bluff of HAL.

But do the Coen's believe that the message is the pessimistic one or the optimistic one?  

There is a clue, another message buried somewhere else in the film, one that is more explicit even though it only appears for a brief second of screen time.  If you are paying very close attention, I think the Coen's are very clear as to their answer, because it seems that the elusive companion of the quarks, the Hidden Variable of the Standard Model of quantum physics is as close to Arthur and Larry as the coincidental message painted in black by the side of the pool.  It's right there in The Mentaculus.

I think I'm going to go re-read THIS.

Update:  Courtesy of The Secret Sun

Watching The Detectives

Do you see the Celebrity or do you see the Student?  Do you know the Answers or do you ask the Questions?

"Sometimes - well, let's say all times - things are changing. We are judged as human beings on how we treat our fellow human beings. How do you treat your fellow human beings? At night, just before sleep, as you lay by yourself in the dark, how do you feel about yourself? Are you proud of your behavior? Are you ashamed of your behavior? You know in your heart if you have hurt someone - you know. If you have hurt someone, don't wait another day before making things right. The world could break apart with sadness in the meantime."

COAR 64

Do I have to do this all over again?

Didn't I do it right the first time?

Do I have to do this all over again?

How many times do I have to make this climb?

Didn't I? Didn't I?

Can I see my way to know what's really real

They say time can fix things by itself

I know life's more than just some kind of deal

Won't you tell me what all, when my soul comes off the shelf

Didn't I, oh, didn't I?

Peter Tork, Monkee

"We are imprisoned inside the linear assumption that I'm a person in a place, I'm alive, most people aren't - but in fact when you deconstruct all that, THAT is fiction - the truth is more an onrushing magma of literary association. The character of life is like a work of literature. We are told we are supposed to fit your experience in the model that science gives you - probabilistic, statistical, predictable - and yet the felt datum of experience is much more literary than that - we fall in love, we make and lose fortunes, we inherit mansions, we lose everything, we get terrible diseases, we're cured of them or we die of them - it has this "Sturm und Drang" aspect to it which physics is not supposed to have but literature always has. What I'm willing to entertain at some depth is the idea that salvation is somehow the act of encompassing comprehension, an act of apprehension of understanding and this act involves everything.

Somehow the career of the Word is the overarching metaphor of the age, and if the book is the central metaphor for reality then reality itself is seen as somehow literary, somehow textual, and I believe this is how reality was seen until the rise of modern science. Everyone assumes tools are tools and that's that, but for McLuhan the entire toolkit of modern Western man can be traced to the unconscious assumptions of print - for example - the idea of the individual is a post-medieval concept legitimized by print. The idea of the public, this concept did not exist before newspapers because before newspapers there was no public, only people, and rulers very rarely passed on their thinking and only then for utilitarian reasons. The idea of an observing citizenry somehow sharing the governance of society is a print-created idea... the idea of interchangeable parts without which our world would hardly function there would not be automobiles, aircrafts or modern buildings - that idea comes from the interchangeability of letters in a printer's block, the concept of easily reformulated sub-units. The linearity of modern city planning is an unconscious bias imbibed from the world of print - they make sense if you're a print-head, but one of the peculiar things is that animals do not possess language, many human societies do not possess writing and very few human societies invented printing and yet once invented it feeds back into the evolution of social structures and defines everything and yet it is an extraordinary artificiality. Reading is not looking, reading is an entirely different kind of behavior; nobody opens a book and looks at print, we READ print.

Notice that the world created by print is a world of gestalts - buildings, highways, bridges - we know how they're supposed to look, we don't experience astonishment each time we enter a home or institutional edifice. There is a built in set of syntactical expectations in linear space, and when those are violated this is very noticeable and becomes the basis for architectural or design innovation. All of the breakdown of linearity in the 20th century can be seen as new behaviors emerging as the cloud of print-constellated constipation is lifted."

Terence McKenna, monkey

Before I go further, you must decide whether or not you believe that there exists a physical and spiritual bondage that necessitates salvation.  If you do not believe or have no life experience that suggests that such a condition blankets the human condition, than this whole blog probably seems a bit silly, and a bit fucked up.  More power to you.  I sometimes review what I have written here and laugh, secretly thinking that a cry for salvation is simply a symptom of weakness, fear, and sloth.  But not as much as I used to.

If you have had life experiences that suggest that a physical and spiritual bondage does exist, or if you find yourself in a state of physical and spiritual bondage right now, salvation is our number one priority.

"The unconscious is not aware of its own 

mortality"

Sigmund Freud

"The unconscious mind is aware of its own 

immortality."  

Aleister Crowley

What if physical death does not release us from bondage?  What if good behavior and good deeds are not enough.  What if prayer and devotion are not enough?  What if money, fame, and the security of possessions only make us forget the task at hand?   If Terence McKenna is correct, that salvation involves "the act of encompassing comprehension," then school is always in session.  Every blind spot must be illuminated, every chicken accounted for.  We cannot allow any informational monopolies, no Christian wisdom, Hebrew wisdom, Muslim wisdom, Sufi wisdom, scientific wisdom, occult wisdom, Republican wisdom, Democratic wisdom, ancient wisdom or modern wisdom.  There can only be Human Wisdom, and the goal would be to access as much of this information as possible and then share, analyze, and interpret All and Everything in as many ways as possible, increasing all of our chances for salvation.   We are all Detectives working on the same case.  

"Find The Others"

Timothy Leary

For 17 years I've followed a trail of clues that have led me to read, listen, attend, endure, and experiment with just about EVERYTHING that promised a new source of information, a new clue towards the mystery of salvation.  And from the start I scribbled my thoughts in school notebooks, napkins, the inside cover of books, envelopes, in a Moleskine or two, and finally over the last three years an official journal.  I had entertained throughout the years of writing the next great American science-fiction novel, a Hollywood screenplay, or developing a stand-up routine.  My intent was to transform my pain and suffering, my trials and tribulations, my notes and my gnosis into fortune and fame.  Turn on, cash in, cop out.

But this is not the world I was born into, the world has changed.  We are living in the Age of Information.  With this blog, I AM writing a novel, I AM writing a screenplay, and I AM doing a stand-up routine.  It's just all happening at the same time.  And this melting pot of memories, observations, ideas, dreams, and feedback is available to anyone who stumbles upon it, from Japan to Belize to Germany to Arizona.   


Not only is it available to read, it is open for global response.  Anytime someone responds to these posts and adds a new idea, offers a correction or disagrees with anything, the informational content increases and we get closer and closer to our goal.    


We must keep our eyes and ears wide open to the North, to the East, to the West, and to the South.

Blog Lady

"I carry a log - yes. Is it funny to you? It is not to me. Behind all things are reasons. Reasons can even explain the absurd. Do we have the time to learn the reasons behind the human being's varied behavior? I think not. Some take the time. Are they called detectives? Watch - and see what life teaches. "

COAR 2600

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, than a symbol is worth a thousand pictures"  

Jay Weidner's Second Law of the Universe

Here is a review of the Control Open Apple Reset post, in which the Unprogrammed, the Programmed, and the Deprogrammed are asked "What do you see in this picture?"

U: a giant, a tree, a man, a man, a man, a man, a man, flowers, mountains, leaves, berries, the sun, a hill, blue sky, grass, deer

P:  The Buddha achieving enlightenment

D:  Balance

U: a man, a woman, a snake, lions, horses, sheep, a turkey, bulls, an elk, a peacock, birds, a zebra, an ostrich, a river, trees, mountains, grass, flowers, a tiger, a rabbit, a cheetah, a pelican, a rooster, a chicken

P:  Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as Eve hands Adam the Forbidden Fruit that leads to the Fall of Man

D:  Awakening

U:  a man, boxes, a woman, a room, a floor

P: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, redeeming the sins of Man upon the Cross

D:  Sacrifice

U: a man standing, a man lying down, ropes, a crowd of people

P:  Muhammad Ali defending his title as World Champion

D:  Success


Each of these types has unique qualities that are hardwired into them.  For example, lets's say I ask them if there is a dinosaur in the painting of the Garden of Eden.

The Unprogrammed will look again, and if the dinosaur is there, they will agree.
The Programmed will without looking, tell you there isn't a dinosaur.
The Deprogrammed person will say "I didn't see a dinosaur".

There is a Fourth Way of perceiving these pictures.

This fourth way incorporates the vision of the Unprogrammed, the Programmed, and the Deprogrammed.  This fourth type of person can see the thousand words, the picture, and the symbol.  They have access to and process all of the available information.   For example, when looking at the picture of Muhammed Ali, the fourth type of person can see a successful man named Muhammad Ali.  They also can see the Balance and Sacrifice necessary for success, as well as the world Awakening to this new type of Champion.  They also see Enlightenment, The Fall, Redemption, and War.  This person can also see violence, fear, exploitation, and corruption.  This person sees how all of the animals, rivers, plants, planets, and human beings that ever were are involved.  This person is extracting All and Everything from this picture.

Did Stanley Kubrick see the All and Everything?  

Գեորգի Իվանովիչ Գյուրջիև

"There is art and art. You have doubtless noticed that during our lectures and talks I have often been asked various questions by those present relating to art but I have always avoided talks on this subject. This was because I consider all ordinary talks about art as absolutely meaningless. People speak of one thing while they imply something quite different and they have no idea whatever what they are implying. At the same time it is quite useless to try to explain the real relationship of things to a man who does not know the A B C about himself, that is to say, about man. We have talked together now for some time and by now you ought to know this A B C, so that I can perhaps talk to you now even about art.
"You must first of all remember that there are two kinds of art, one quite different from the other - objective art and subjective art. All that you know, all that you call art, is subjective art, that is, something that I do not call art at all because it is only objective art that I call art.
"To define what I call objective art is difficult first of all because you ascribe to subjective art the characteristics of objective art, and secondly because when you happen upon objective works of art you take them as being on the same level as subjective works of art.
"I will try to make my idea clear. You say - an artist creates. I say this only in connection with objective art. In relation to subjective art I say that with him ′it is created.′ You do not differentiate between these, but this is where the whole difference lies. Further you ascribe to subjective art an invariable action, that is, you expect works of subjective art to have the same reaction on everybody. You think, for instance, that a funeral march should provoke in everyone sad and solemn thoughts and that any dance music, a komarinsky for instance, will provoke happy thoughts. But in actual fact this is not so at all. Everything depends upon association. If on a day that a great misfortune happens to me I hear some lively tune for the first time this tune will evoke in me sad and oppressive thoughts for my whole life afterwards. And if on a day when I am particularly happy I hear a sad tune, this tune will always evoke happy thoughts. And so with everything else.
"The difference between objective art and subjective art is that in objective art the artist really does ′create,′ that is, he makes what he intended, he puts into his work whatever ideas and feelings he wants to put into it. And the action of this work upon men is absolutely definite; they will, of course each according to his own level, receive the same ideas and the same feelings that the artist wanted to transmit to them. There can be nothing accidental either in the creation or in the impressions of objective art.
"In subjective art everything is accidental. The artist, as I have already said, does not create; with him ′it creates itself.′ This means that he is in the power of ideas, thoughts, and moods which he himself does not understand and over which he has no control whatever. They rule him and they express themselves in one form or another. And when they have accidentally taken this or that form, this form just as accidentally produces on man this or that action according to his mood, tastes, habits, the nature of the hypnosis under which he lives, and so on. There is nothing invariable; nothing is definite here. In objective art there is nothing indefinite."

G.I. Gurdjieff from P.D. Ouspensky's In Search Of The Miraculous
    

❄️😇❄️😇🔥❄️😇❄️😇🔥❄️🔥❄️😇

❄️😇

COAR 2.0

Control = Set and Setting.

Open Apple  =  ?

Reset  =  !

What iAhuasca Is: The Lunatic Is In The Second To Last Row

If you want to experience first hand the differences between how the programmed and the un-programmed man experience film, follow these directions:

iAhuasca

1.  Pick a new release movie that is playing at a local theater, preferably an action/adventure movie that will most likely be heavy on visuals and special effects, and preferably isn't more than 100 minutes.  Avoid reading reviews and seeing extended previews as much as possible as the less you know of the plot the better.  In reality, it can be any film.

2.  See the film at a time when the movie theater will be crowded.  Friday night, Saturday matinee or night, or opening night are the best options.  There is a certain adrenaline that is more accessible while trying this in a crowded theater as opposed to an empty theater.  Trust me, it's the best way.

3.  Select an album of music that you plan on listening to on repeat for as long as the duration of the movie.   I suggest Dark Side of the Moon because it is a cinematic album, and contains very universal themes, but really, use your intuition, and select any album that you enjoy.  

4.  Bring an iPod or any mp3 player and set the repeat option on.

5.  DO NOT BRING ANY EXPECTATIONS OTHER THAN BOREDOM.   ACCEPT THAT THIS IS AN EXPERIMENT AND THAT THE RESULTS VARY.  

6.  When the movie starts, understand that the burden of the storyteller is completely on you.  Pay attention to all of the available information on the screen and construct your own narrative.  Try to anticipate where the story is going to go based on your intuition.   If you think this is something too strange or weird, understand that this is a very natural process, one that is pushed into the subconscious of the heavily literate programmed man.  It is what young children do every waking moment of their lives.  A two year old is constantly inventing a narrative to explain the world they inhabit, and this is precisely the nature of the un-programmed mind.  Trust that any questions you have will be answered, and that it will all make sense eventually.  

7.  At the end of the film, take notice of the energy and emotion you are feeling, and see if it matches the energy and emotion of the theater.  Observe the audience with the same lens that you have been observing the movie.  

8.  Now that you have your own experience of the film, you can read the reviews, and see if your experience of the film matches the experience of the programmed minds of the reviewers.  See if there are themes that you missed, or themes that they missed.

9.  After a few days or a week, or when the movie comes out on DVD, watch the movie as it was intended.  Try to see how much of the story matches with the story you created on your own.

I first tried this myself in 2009.  The idea arose during a walk to the movie theater.  I knew the idea was absurd, but the idea that somehow this could ruin a Hollywood movie, or that I could lose out on important experience was equally absurd.  The only thing to lose was the $9.50 for the ticket.

So I walked into the Friday night showing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and pressed play on Dark Side of the Moon.    I had not read the Harry Potter books, and to be honest, even though I had seen the previous films, I remembered very little.  They were all very long and to be honest quite boring.  I knew the characters, but I wasn't really in tune with where the story was going.

The two and half hours raced by and I was caught off guard when the credits rolled.  I was in an absolute state of shock.  I could hardly move.  As I turned to look at the crowded theater, almost every single person was already standing up, putting on their coats, and racing for the doors.  I wondered, did we see the same movie?  Had they even processed the experience?

TRY THIS.  JUST ONCE.  YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE. 

This is modern magick that is legal, safe, and available to anyone with an mp3 player and $10.  Most people who read this will dismiss it as too bizarre, or can convince themselves that they get it, they understand it, that it can't teach them anything new.  Don't be that asshole.  I should know.  Most of the time, I am that asshole.

A Really Big Shew Part 5: The Chicken Is The Chaos Of The Egg

A quick recap:

Kubrick, having read and understood McLuhan, realized that when watching the same film, "literate" man and "non literate" man have access to information the other does not.

"Literate man" has been programmed to see film in a specific way.
"Non literate" man has not been programmed to see film in a specific way.
This begs the question:  does this programming effect the way in which "literate" man "sees" reality?  If so, what information is "literate" man no longer able to see?

Let's return to the story and of the violinist in the subway.  Is this proof that the programming of "literate" man has altered his sense ratios in such a profound way that the violinist in the subway was as invisible to them as the chicken was to the filmmakers?  Did they not stop to listen not because they were in a hurry, but because they simply did not know that the violinist was even there?

McLuhan and Kubrick recognized that the programmed man was living deep in a Gutenberg Galaxy, and the un-programmed man was still living on planet Earth.  The goal of modern man is not to maintain residence solely in one domain, but to be able to travel freely between both.

Chess involves a certain type of literacy, in which the player must be able to read and interpret as much information as possible.  Information, in chess, is power.  Seeing the game from multiple perspectives gives us more information, and a good player sees the game from the perspective of both sides of the board, as well as aggressive and conservative.  Chess is also a game that is as much about technicality as it is about psychology, and moves are made that occur outside the realm of the board itself, moves that are within the rules, but subject to integrity and etiquette.  They are just as important to the language of chess as the moves of the pieces.  An extremely literate player, the programmed player, is aware of all of these sources of information.  

But, does the truly un-programmed player still have access to information that is invisible to the programmed players?  Is there a source of information that is only available to the person who has never played the game of chess?  

McLuhan and Kubrick would say that there is a source of information within a game of chess that is only observable to the un-programmed, and the programmed player who can access this information becomes a more powerful player.  So how does a programmed player learn to see something that has become invisible to them by virtue of their programming?  

A player must deprogram, or to put it more poetically, a player must be born again.  How does someone go about deprogramming?  

How can someone be born again?

We now have three people in this game of chicken:

1.  Un-Programmed Person

2.  Programmed Man

3.  Deprogrammed Person

A fourth Person will arrive at some point, but let's just focus on this power trio for now.