Burrows

I just watched The Pilot [of A Brave New World] and noticed a running image of your work : The Human Centipede.

GM: (laughing) You know I haven’t seen Human Centipede. I can’t watch horror movies.

Well my guess is that those forms of one long continuous being, which looks like A Centipede, is your visual description of A Self, moving through Time, which you said you learned in Kathmandu in 1994 as How Things Actually Are. How does this experience still interact with Your Life?

GM: We can’t see any direction in Time. 

We can’t see Back, and 

We can’t see Forward. 

We can Remember Back 

and Imagine Forward, 

but that’s it. 

We’re trained to feel like ‘Individuals’ so we don’t actually see ourselves as the extended processes that we are, shapeshifters who transform through decades from small, plump baby things to large and horny muscular teenagers, to hard-working, middle age adults, and finally desiccated seniors dying on beds. 

If we sped that up and showed one human life over ten minutes, it would be a body horror werewolf transformation more outrageous and horrifying than any seen onscreen.

But to me it’s like the color of the sky, it’s so self-evident that to see a bird fly past the window is to imagine its skipping solid trail through the medium of time.  In Time, We are all Connected, there’s just no denying that. There’s nothing mystical about any of this. I’m talking about stuff that is Simply Real.

Imagination can give you the ability to look backwards and forward. So, when you run it backwards, think how your grown-up mature body was once smaller, less massive, less capable of interacting with the environment – that’s real. Run it back to the beginnings of life on earth ad it’s clear that we all are one thing. A Singular organism made of many parts, just like a human body with its billions of individual skin cells – which die and fall from the body every day.

So, what does that mean? If people learned this in school, if we understood and accepted, we were all the same fucking thing(!) it might help prevent The Collapse into mad Division that’s occurring, just now. It’s just a Matter of Perspective that could change everything.

But The Organism We’re Part of might be sick, who knows? 

When cells in A Body turn against one another and The System that supports them starts breaking down, it’s cancer…

You had the gnostic experience. To just hear it or read it is one thing but when you have the experience that seems to be the most convincing thing.

GM : Well, it seems to become self-evident. It’s really like someone turns your head around in Plato’s Cave and you realize that there’s A Light and someone’s doing Shadow Figures with their fingers. Once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it.

And it’s ‘Oh, of course’! Of course! There’s no denying it. 

But I guess to have that experience is its own confirmation. It’s like living by the sea all your life, then having to explain that to someone living inland who’s never seen The Ocean and doesn’t believe an ocean could exist because they’ve never seen one.

To me it can be confirmed intellectually by just Thinking about Time and how You are Embedded in Time --

You Know You Had to be Six Years Old to be here. 

So, Where The Hell is ‘Being Six’? 

A.) In The Village.

A.) It's be-hiiiiiind YOOOU...!!

A.) Behind The Walls.

A.) Some where -- 

Beyond The Sea.

Well, 'Being Six' exists,

in a Time Direction 

that You Can’t See 

or Point to, 

but it’s still there. 

 

To misunderstand that is equivalent to Flying from Los Angeles to London, then, after touching down at Heathrow, insisting that Los Angeles no longer exists!

And once You’re Truly Aware of Time 

as The Medium 

through which We Transmit Our Physical Signal, 

then there is no denying 

that Your Personal Track  winds its way,

Back into Your Mum 

and She goes back to Her Mum 

and it all goes back to 

That single Dividing Cell 3 1/2 Billion Years ago. 

 

To me, that’s just basic mechanical shit. That’s not Mysticism. 

I’m not interested in ghosts and spirit worlds. 

If I’m going to have Transcendence, I want to be able to Touch it.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

What is the meaning of The Virgin Birth? 

In India, there is This System of The Kundalini, 

as it’s called, the idea of The Centres, 

Psychological Centres up The Spine. 

And they represent the psychological planes 

of concern and consciousness and action. 

The first is at the rectum, 

and this is that of alimentation. 

 

The Serpent represents this, 

you know, a travelling oesophagus

going along just eating, eating, eating, eating. 

And all of us are — we wouldn’t be here 

if we weren’t eating. 

And then the second,  

The Second Centre

is at The Sex Organ Centre, 

and that’s The Urge to Procreation. 

The Third Centre's called, 

is at The Navel, and this is where 

You Eat and Want to Consume. 

And it’s not the alimentary eating, it’s 

The Mastering and Smashing 

and Trashing of Others, do you see? 

This is the aggressive mood.

Now, The First is an Animal Instinct, 

The Second is an Animal Instinct, 

The Third is an Animal Instinct, 

and these three centres are located  

in the pelvic base, do you see. 

The next one is at the level of The Heart, 

and this is The Opening of Compassion.

 And there you move out of 

The Field of Animal Action 

into a field that is 

properly human and spiritual. 

Now, in each of these centers there is a symbolic form. 

At the base, the first one, there is the form of the lingam and yeni, the male and female organs in conjunction. 

At The Heart Chakra, there is again The Male and Female organs in conjunction, but in Gold. 

This is The Virgin Birth. 

It’s the birth of spiritual man out of the animal man. 

Do you understand?

BILL MOYERS: 

And it happens?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

When you are awakened at the level of The Heart to Compassion and to 

suffering with the other person. 

That’s the beginning of Humanity. 

And the meditations of religion properly are on that level, 

the heart level.

BILL MOYERS: 

You say it’s the beginning of Humanity, but in these Stories, that’s the moment when gods are born, 

The Virgin Birth, it’s a god 

who emerges from that chemistry.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yeah, and you know who that god is? It’s you. 

All of these symbols in mythology refer to you. 

You can get stuck out there and think it’s all out there, and so you’re thinking of Jesus and all the sentiments about how he suffered and all; 

what that suffering is, is what ought to be going on in you. 

Have you been reborn? 

Have you died to your animal nature and come to life as a human incarnation?

BILL MOYERS: 

Why is it significant that this is of a virgin?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, it is that the begetter is The Spirit. 

It is a spiritual birth. 

The Virgin conceived of The Word, through The Ear.

Not My Favourite Play

Like Gloucester at the end 

of his cliff, eh, Watson?

"The Universe — the entire space-time continuum, from big bang to heat death, no less — was not a linear stream of events 

with beginning, middle, and end. 

That was only how it felt from the inside. 

In fact, the totality of existence looked more like a ball of sphincters, constantly moving through itself in a way that was hypnotic and awe inspiring to observe. There was Shakespeare scribbling King Lear 

on one wrinkled fold, and just around the corner from him, 

forever out of his line of sight, was the Cretaceous period and tyrannosaurs padding past his wife Anne Hathaway’s cottage.

And, as if to confirm that ours was not the only universe, it was explained to me that what I was seeing was a nursery of some kind. In order to grow their “offspring,” the chrome angels had to “make” time, because, as they pointed out reasonably, only in time were things able to grow as I understood it. Time was a kind of incubator, and all life on Earth was one thing, a single weird anemone-like mega-Hydra with its single-celled immortal root in the Precambrian tides and its billions of sensory branches, from ferns to people, with every single detail having its own part to play in the life cycle of a slowly complexifying, increasingly self-aware super-organism. It was as if I had been shown an infant god, attached to a placental support system called Earth, where it could grow bigger, more elaborate, more connected, and more intelligent. 

Growing at its tips were machine parts; 

cyborg tools made from the planet’s mineral resources. 

It seemed to be constructing around itself a part-mechanical shell, like armor or a spacesuit. “It” was us, all life seen as one from the perspective of a higher dimension.

I was told to return and take up my duties as a “midwife” to this gargantuan raw nervous system. It was important to ensure the proper growth and development of the larva and to make certain it didn’t panic or struggle too much when it woke up to its true nature as a singular life form. Incidentally, what we experienced as “evil” was simply the effects of inoculation against some cosmic disease, so I wasn’t to worry much.

Sigmund Freud: 

Who am I, that your friends should wish us to meet? 

Sherlock Holmes: 

Beyond the fact that you are a brilliant Jewish physician 

who was born in Hungary and studied for a while in Paris, 

and that certain radical theories of yours 

have alienated the respectable medical community, 

so that you have severed your connections with various hospitals 

and branches of the medical fraternity, 

beyond this I can deduce little. 

You're married, with a child of five. 

You enjoy Shakespeare and possess 

a keen sense of honour.

Sherlock Holmes: 

I never guess : it is an appalling habit, 

destructive to the logical faculty. 

A private study is an ideal place for 

observing facets of a man's character --

That the study belongs to you exclusively 

is evident from the dust : 

not even The Maid is permitted here, 

else she would scarcely have ventured 

to let matters come to this pass. 

Sigmund Freud: 

Go on. 

Sherlock Holmes: 

Very well. Now, when a man collects books on a subject, 

they're usually grouped together, but notice, 

your King James Bible, your Book of Mormon, 

and Koran are separate, across the room in fact, 

from your Hebrew Bible and Talmud, 

which sit on your desk. 

Now these books have a special importance for you 

not connected with a general study of religion, obviously. 

The nine-branched candelabra on your desk 

confirms my suspicion that you are of the Jewish faith; 

it is called a menorah, is it not? 

Sigmund Freud: 

Ja. 

Sherlock Holmes: 

That you studied medicine in Paris is to be inferred 

from the great number of medical texts in that language. 

Where else should a German use French textbooks but in France, 

and who but a brilliant German could understand 

the complexities of medicine in a foreign tongue? 

That you're fond of Shakespeare is to be deduced 

from this book, which is lying face downwards. 

The fact that you have not adjusted the volume 

suggests to my mind that you no doubt intended 

referring to it again in the near future. (Hm, not my favorite play.) 

The absence of dust on the cover 

would tend to confirm this hypothesis. 

That you're a physician is evident when 

I observe you maintain a consulting room. 

Your separation from various societies 

is indicated by these blank spaces 

surrounding your diploma, 

clearly used at one time to display 

additional certificates. 

Now, what can it be that forces a man to remove 

these testimonials to his success? 

Why, only that he has ceased to affiliate himself 

with these various societies and hospitals and so forth, 

and why do this, having once troubled to join them all? 

It is possible that he became disenchanted 

with one or two of them, 

but NOT likely that his disillusionment 

extended to all. Rather, I postulate 

it is THEY who became disenchanted 

with YOU, Doctor, and asked you 

to resign, from all of them. 

Why, I've no idea. But some position 

you have taken, evidently a medical one, 

has discredited you in their eyes. 

I take the liberty of inferring a theory of some sort, 

too radical or shocking to gain ready acceptance 

in current medical thinking. 

Your wedding ring tells me of your marriage, 

your Balkanized accent hints Hungary or Moravia, 

the toy soldier on the floor here ought, I think, 

to belong to a... small boy of five? 

Have I omitted anything of importance? 

Sigmund Freud: 

My sense of Honour. 

Sherlock Holmes: 

Oh, it is implied by the fact that you have removed the plaques 

from the societies to which you no longer belong. 

In the privacy of your study, only 

you would know the difference.