You Don't Understand The Implications

“When I was doing The Invisibles… I kind of went method acting on it. So if I had a transvestite witch character then I had to become a transvestite witch and see what that felt like and I had to summon Mayan and Mexican Gods and deal with Them and see what They look like and copy down what they have to say… I became the King Mob character, the Lord Fanny character… I was living out that book. The idea was to do almost like an art installation… you know I wound up in hospital because I had my lead character in hospital. This shaven headed bald guy who had lots of fun and sex and girls. So when he got sick, I got sick and when he got well I got well.

And I found I could put things in… and it was very weird I still don’t know what it is and I ask other people to try this… 

Try and implicate Your Art and Your Life to such a degree that You can’t tell the difference anymore and strange things start to happen. Reality becomes very plastic. And it seems as if you can press buttons in Your Little Voodoo World, your little fictional Creation… and real things will happen… 

The more We test it the more it becomes a Human Technology that We can give to EVERYONE…”

Read more: http://runesoup.com/2012/04/the-tarot-of-unpopular-futures/#ixzz3IW9TQdBh

Queen of Hearts

JUST IMAGINE 

THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR

THE ULTIMATE DECEIVER

THE ULTIMATE CAMOUFLAGE

“Look! They’ve got that bird done up to look like PRINCESS DI!”

Who’s the Daddy? For Lion Cubs, It’s Safer Not to Know

Promiscuous lionesses keep cubs safe from infanticide by confusing paternity.

Posted Apr 29, 2019

Stotra Chakrabarti, Asiatic Lion Project of the Wildlife Institute of India.

Courting Asiatic lions in Gir.

Source: Stotra Chakrabarti, Asiatic Lion Project of the Wildlife Institute of India.

African lions seem to exemplify the conflict between genders. A coalition of males will defend their right to exclusively breed with a group of females against intruding males, who won’t think twice about killing all the cubs in order to hasten the siring of their own with the females.

But in a subspecies of lion, infanticide and sexual coercion are much rarer – and much of it appears to be due to the savvy mating strategy of the females.

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The Mane Event

Asiatic lions are now found as a single population in the Gir forests of Gujarat, western India. Their social organization differs from that of African lions: adults live in same-sex groups that interact primarily for mating. Unlike in African lions, adult male Asiatic lions are not an integral part of any particular pride and live their lives alone or in coalitions on the edges of the territories of multiple female groups.

The Asiatic lion project of the Wildlife Institute of India, led by Yadvendradev Jhala, is one of the longest ongoing carnivore research projects in India. Since the mid-1990s, Jhala and his colleagues have been amassing individual-level information on lions through careful observations and radio-telemetry tracking of cats. As a result, researchers have come to know the life histories of many of these lions since their births.

Stotra Chakrabarti, who joined the Asiatic lion project for his graduate work, says that following lions up-close and personal is an adventure. Although much of the work involved long hours watching lions catnap, he also had to learn what to do when charged by a mating pair or a lioness with small cubs (the answer is to never show your back; instead, stand your ground, thrash a stick about, and shout).

“Our long acclimatization processes with our study individuals made us gain the lions’ confidence, allowing us to observe them from close quarters,” says Chakrabarti. “They accepted us – maybe like a persistent fly that meant no harm to them!”

Stotra Chakrabarti, Asiatic Lion Project of the Wildlife Institute of India.

An Asiatic lioness solicits mating.

Source: Stotra Chakrabarti, Asiatic Lion Project of the Wildlife Institute of India.

Battle of the Sexes

In a new study, Jhala and Chakrabarti detail the social structure and mating behavior of Asiatic lions. Over several years, they observed 70 individual lions belonging to 11 male coalitions (ranging in size from one to four males) and nine female prides (ranging from three to eight adult females and their cubs).

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They discovered that each female pride was encompassed by the ranges of two to four male coalitions, whose ranges overlapped with one another. Lionesses mated with multiple males belonging to rival coalitions before conceiving, contrary to the African lion system of a single male coalition monopolizing mating opportunities.

“In this system, where females inevitably encounter many males, promiscuity helps the lionesses familiarize (through mating) with many such rival coalitions and confuse paternity amongst them,” says Chakrabarti. “Males from several coalitions get convinced that the Cubs have been sired by them and thus, do not kill them.

“Female promiscuity helps lionesses safeguard their cubs against infanticide, deter sexual harassments from males, and possibly enhance genetic variability in their progeny.”

Adjacent established male coalitions exhibited low to medium levels of aggression toward each other but were tolerant toward the same litters, suggestive of confused paternity. The researchers only observed infanticide when totally new males invaded a female group’s territory.

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Big Cat Habits

Jhala and Chakrabarti believe the differences in mating strategies and the social structure of lions in Gir and Africa come down to differences in resources. The prey of Asiatic lions tends to be smaller, non-migratory and found in higher densities than that of African lions. The result is smaller group sizes and more seasonally uniform territories in Asiatic lions.

Stotra Chakrabarti, Asiatic Lion Project of the Wildlife Institute of India.

Asiatic lion cubs and mother.

Source: Stotra Chakrabarti, Asiatic Lion Project of the Wildlife Institute of India.

Another factor is that males may not be able to contain and control lionesses in the dense forest habitat of Gir, which provides more cover for females than open African savannahs. Plus, maintaining a monopoly over a female pride could require males to fight with adjacent coalitions, leading to injuries and fatalities.

Finally, Jhala and Chakrabarti have documented pronounced hierarchies within male Asiatic lion coalitions (unlike groups of male African lions, which are more egalitarian). Asiatic lion coalitions have a dominant male who does most of the mating and gets the “lion’s share” of food from kills. The optimal size of a coalition is two males, and this might render them inefficient at maintaining exclusivity over a large area with several female prides.

Whatever the reasons, Jhala and Chakrabarti’s research shows that species have extraordinary potentials to adapt to their surroundings. Even large, charismatic species that we think we know, like lions, can change their strategies when faced with different environmental conditions.

A Story

Finch:

You've Information for us?

V:

No, you already have The Information. 

All the names and dates are inside your head. 

What you want, what you really NEED, is A Story.

Finch:

A Story can be True or False.

V:

I leave such Judgments to YOU, Inspector.

 

On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with boxcutters directed by a man on dialysis in a cave fortress halfway around the world using a satellite phone and a laptop directed the most sophisticated penetration of the most heavily-defended airspace in The World, overpowering the passengers and the military combat-trained pilots on 4 commercial aircraft before flying those planes wildly off course for over an hour without being molested by a single fighter interceptor.

These 19 hijackers, devout religious fundamentalists who liked to drink alcohol, snort cocaine, and live with pink-haired strippers, managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in New York, while in Washington a pilot who couldn’t handle a single engine Cessna was able to fly a 757 in an 8,000 foot descending 270 degree corskscrew turn to come exactly level with the ground, hitting the Pentagon in the budget analyst office where DoD staffers were working on the mystery of the 2.3 trillion dollars that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had announced “missing” from the Pentagon’s coffers in a press conference the day before, on September 10, 2001.

Luckily, the news anchors knew who did it within minutes, the pundits knew within hours, the Administration knew within the day, and the evidence literally fell into the FBI’s lap. But for some reason a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists demanded an investigation into the greatest attack on American soil in history.

The investigation was delayed, underfunded, set up to fail, a conflict of interest and a cover up from start to finish. 

It was based on testimony extracted through torture, the records of which were destroyed. 

It failed to mention the existence of WTC7, Able Danger, Ptech, Sibel Edmonds, OBL and the CIA, and the drills of hijacked aircraft being flown into buildings that were being simulated at the precise same time that those events were actually happening. 

It was lied to by the Pentagon, the CIA, the Bush Administration and as for Bush and Cheney…well, no one knows what they told it because they testified in secret, off the record, not under oath and behind closed doors. 

It didn’t bother to look at who funded the attacks because that question is of “little practical significance“. 

Still, the 9/11 Commission did brilliantly, answering all of the questions the public had (except most of the victims’ family members’ questions) and pinned blame on all the people responsible (although no one so much as lost their job), determining the attacks were 

“a failure of imagination” 

because 

“I don’t think anyone could envision flying airplanes into buildings ” 

except the Pentagon and FEMA and NORAD and the NRO.

The DIA destroyed 2.5 TB of data on Able Danger, 

but that’s OK because it probably wasn’t important.

The SEC destroyed their records on the investigation into the insider trading before the attacks, 

but that’s OK because destroying the records of the largest investigation in SEC history is just part of routine record keeping.

NIST has classified the data that they used for their model of WTC7’s collapse, 

but that’s OK because knowing how they made their model of that collapse would “jeopardize public safety“.

The FBI has argued that all material related to their investigation of 9/11 should be kept secret from the public, 

but that’s OK because the FBI probably has nothing to hide.

This man never existed, nor is anything he had to say worthy of your attention, and if you say otherwise you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist and deserve to be shunned by all of humanity. 

Likewise him, him, him, and her. (and her and her and him).

Osama Bin Laden lived in a cave fortress in the hills of Afghanistan, 

but somehow got away. 

Then he was hiding out in Tora Bora 

but somehow got away. 

Then he lived in Abottabad for years, taunting the most comprehensive intelligence dragnet employing the most sophisticated technology in the history of the world for 10 years, 

Releasing video after video with complete impunity 

(and getting younger and younger as he did so),
Before finally being found in a daring SEAL team raid 

Which wasn’t recorded on video, 

in which he didn’t resist or use his wife as a human shield, 

and in which these crack special forces operatives panicked and killed this unarmed man, supposedly the best source of intelligence about those dastardly terrorists on The Planet.

Then they dumped his body into The Ocean before telling anyone about it. 

Then a couple dozen of that team’s members died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.

This is the story of 9/11, brought to you by the media which told you the hard truths about JFK and incubator babies and mobile production facilities and the rescue of Jessica Lynch.

If you have any questions about this story…you are a batshit, paranoid, tinfoil, dog-abusing baby-hater and will be reviled by everyone. 

If you love your country and/or freedom, happiness, rainbows, rock and roll, puppy dogs, apple pie and your grandma, you will never ever express doubts about any part of this story to anyone. Ever.

This has been a public service announcement by: the Friends of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, SEC, MSM, White House, NIST, and the 9/11 Commission. 

Because Ignorance is Strength.

THE PURE UNIVERSE

 

THE PURE UNIVERSE 

(śuddhādhvan) 

The so-called Pure Universe comprising the top five tattvas is Not A Place; it is the divine Reality that pervades the whole of the manifest universe. 

The top five tattvas are essentially a description of God/dess. 

 

Though divided into five levels, they are all aspects of The Divine and are referred to as phases of God’s awareness. 


The differences between them are differences of perspective and emphasis. 

To reach any of the five tattvas of the Pure Universe is to attain complete liberation and awakening. 

 

TATTVA #5: PURE MANTRA-WISDOM
(Śuddha-vidyā)

 

The level of Pure Wisdom is also the level of mantra (besides meaning “wisdom,” vidyā is also the feminine word for “mantra”). 

The wisdom spoken of here is not any type of intellectual knowledge but rather the various phases of Śiva-Śakti’s self-awareness expressed in the form of the seventy million mantras— all the mantras that have ever existed or will ever exist. 

For the Tantrik tradition, mantras are actually conscious beings, analogous to angels in the Western religions. 

Someone who attains liberation on the level of tattva #5 becomes a mantra-being. 

We know that this doctrine, that mantras are conscious, was taken seriously because the texts tell us that if A Guru grants initiation into The Tantra to someone who subsequently falls from The Path, then that guru must perform a special ritual to apologise to The Mantras for putting them to work needlessly. 

It is absolutely crucial to understand that in this tradition A Mantra, its Deity, and its Goal are all one and the same.

Thus, for example, Lakṣmī’s mantra OṂ ŚRĪṂ MAHĀLAKṢMYAI NAMAḤ is the Goddess Lakṣmī in sound form; it is her sonic body.

Nor is her mantra something separate from the goal for which it is repeated, i.e., to cultivate abundance, for it is the very vibration of abundance (and, as well, the other qualities of Śrī: elegance, charm, grace, beauty, prosperity, and auspiciousness). 

So, all the various “deities” of Indian spirituality exist on the level of the Śuddha-vidyā tattva as phases of Śiva-Śakti’s awareness, the many facets, if you will, of the One jewel. 

Further, there are countless mantra-beings on the Śuddha-vidyā level that do not correspond to known Indian deities; perhaps we can suppose that the deities of all spiritual traditions exist on this level, insofar as they can be understood as having sonic forms. 

One who reaches liberation on this level sees the entire universe as a diverse array of energies, but with a single essence. 

She sees no static matter, experiencing everything as interacting patterns of vibration. 

The wonder of that which she sees takes precedence over her I-sense, though there is unity between them: “I am this!” (idam evāham). 

The divine Power that corresponds to this level is kriyā-śakti, the Power of Action. 

This is so because the primary characteristic of mantras is that they are agents of transformative change, i.e., of action. 

TATTVA #4: THE LORD (Īśvara) 

This is the level of the personal God, God as a being with specific qualities, that is, the Deity that can be named in various languages (whether the name be Kriṣhṇa, Allāh, Avalokiteśvara, YHWH, etc.) 

This is the level of reality that most monotheistic religions presume to be the highest. Īśvara is a generic, nonsectarian term for God (also found in Patañjali’s Yoga-sūtra). 

This level is associated with jñāna-śakti, The Power of Knowing, for Īśvara holds within His being the knowledge of the subtle pattern that will be used in the creation of the universe. He empowers His regents on tattva #5 (who are really aspects of Himself) to stimulate the primordial homogenous world-source (Māyā, tattva #6) with this pattern, “churning” her so that she begins to produce the differentiation of the lower tattvas, starting with the contractions called the kañcukas (#7 and below, see “the five shells”). 

At the level of Īśvara there is a balanced equality and identity between God and His incipient creation. The Sanskrit phrase said to express the experience of reality at this level is aham idam idam aham, or “I am This; This am I.”


There is a fascinating and purely “coincidental” parallel here with the self-declaration of the God of the Hebrew Bible, who when asked for His Name (at Exodus 3:14), replied simply, ehyeh Asher ehyeh, “I am That I am.” 

In Śaiva Tantra, it is not only God who exists at this level; so do any beings who have reached that same awareness. 

Thus the difference between Īśvara and other beings abiding at tattva #4 is one of office, not of nature. 

 

TATTVA #3: THE EVER-BENEVOLENT ONE (Sadāśiva) 

The word “God” is no longer applicable here, for this level transcends any form of a Deity with identifiable names or attributes. 

This is the level on which only the slightest subtle differentiation has just begun to emerge between the absolute Deity and the idea of the universe, the universe that S/he will create out of Him/Herself. 

Thus, it is the level of icchā-śakti, the divine Will Power, the creative urge or primal impulse toward Self-expression. 

The Sanskrit phrase said to express the experience of reality at this level is aham idam, “I am this,” or “This incipient totality is my own Self,” where there is identity between the Divine and the embryonic universe held within it. 

The sense of “I” has clear priority, wholly enveloping the “this”; so all beings who attain unity-consciousness with emphasis on the “I” pole abide at this level. 

The Sadāśiva-tattva is the first movement into differentiation, for at the level of tattvas #1 and 2, there is absolute nonduality. Abhinava Gupta tells us that the Divine at this level is called Sadāśiva, “eternally Śiva,” to remind us that even as a universe begins to come into being through the power of the Will, the Absolute loses none of its divinity, it is “still Śiva,” which of course also means “still blessed.”

Historically, Sadāśiva is also the name of the high deity of one form of Śaiva Tantra, a form that was later surpassed by the worship of the conjoined and co-equal pair of Śiva-Śakti. 

He is also pictured as the form of Śiva that sprouts the five faces that speak the five streams of sacred scripture. 

Thus Sadāśiva is sometimes considered the first ray of divine compassion. 

TATTVA #2: POWER / THE GODDESS (Śakti)

In the traditional tattva hierarchy, Śakti is #2, but in the nondual schools, care is taken to emphasize that Śiva and Śakti switch places, for they are two sides of the same coin. 

That is, neither Śiva nor Śakti has priority—it is a matter of which aspect is dominant in any given experience. 

The word śakti literally means “power, potency, energy, capacity, capability.” 

In NŚT, all powers are worshipped as goddesses, or rather as forms of the Goddess (Mahādevī). 

Śakti can no more be separated from Śiva than heat can be separated from fire. 

All forms of energy are Śakti, and since matter is energy (as the Tāntrikas well knew), the whole manifest universe is seen as the body of the Goddess, and the movements of all forms of energy are Her dance. 

The various aspects of Śakti are covered in detail above. 

The term śakti is often used to specifically denote spiritual energy, or God’s transformative power. 

In the scriptures, this meaning is often conveyed with the special term rudra-śakti, which refers to the primal, awe-inspiring divine Power that flows through us in spiritual experience. 

An infusion of this divine Power is called rudra-śakti-samāveśa, where samāveśa refers to the spiritual experience comprising an expansion of consciousness, a dissolution of the boundaries between self and other, a sharing of self-hood with God and/or with the whole universe, and often an blissful influx of energy. 

 

TATTVA #1: THE BENEVOLENT ONE (Śiva)

In the context of NŚT, Śiva is not the name of a god. 

 

Rather, the word is understood to signify the peaceful, quiescent ground of all Reality, the infinite silence of transcendent Divinity, or, in the poet’s phrase, the “still point at the center of the turning world.” 

 

While Śakti is extroversive, immanent, manifest, omniform, and dynamic, Śiva is introversive, transcendent, unmanifest, formless, and still. Śiva is the absolute void of pure Consciousness. 

(To be more accurate, Consciousness is never absolutely still, so on the level of the Śiva-tattva, there is what Abhinava calls kiṃcit-calana, an extraordinarily subtle movement, an imperceptible and exquisitely sweet undulation.) 

 

The word śiva is traditionally interpreted as “that in which all things lie (śī).” 

 

Thus Śiva is the ground of being, that which gives reality its coherence. 

His nature is beyond any qualities and is, therefore, difficult to express in words, but in Essence of the Tantras, Śiva is described as the coherence and unification of all the various śaktis. 

 

Thus, He is called śaktimān, the one who holds the Powers, or rather “holds space” for their unfolding. 

 

However, since Śiva is literally nothing without the Powers of Consciousness, Bliss, Will, and so on, it is usually Śakti who is worshipped as the highest principle in NŚT. 

 

Śiva is that which grounds and coheres the various powers; He is the Lord of the Family (kuleśvara), the center axis of the spinning wheel of Powers. 

 

As the coherent force, Śiva hardly has an insignificant function, but as he is not an embodiment of potency himself, he is less likely to attract worship in a spiritual system that is focused primarily on the empowerment of its adherents. 

 

The previous paragraph defined Śiva primarily as spaciousness, the hosting space for the energy that is Śakti. 

 

 

This space/energy polarity is the one given in a Trika text called Vijñāna-bhairava, among other sources. 

We should note that in other contexts, the roles are defined differently. 

 

For example, the influential Recognition school (a subset of the Trika) defines Śiva-Śakti as the two complementary aspects of one divine Consciousness: Śiva is the Light of Manifestation (prakāśa), also known as the Light of Consciousness (cit-prakāśa), and Śakti is blissful Self-reflective awareness (vimarśa). 

 

This pairing is sometimes concisely abbreviated as cid-ānanda (Awareness-Bliss). 

In this way of understanding Śiva-Śakti, He is the illuminative power of Consciousness that manifests and shines as all things, and She is the power by which that same Consciousness folds back on itself and becomes self-aware and thus can enjoy itself. 

 

While new students of the Tantra often want a simple, cut-and-dried definition of the polarity of Śiva-Śakti, the tradition does not offer one. 

Indeed, as this paragraph has shown, we get different definitions within the very same school. 

These need not be seen as contradictory, however, for the ultimate reality of Śiva-Śakti transcends all thought; the diverse explanations are just varying orientations or angles of approach to that one 

Reality, serving different students in different contexts. 

In another schema, that of the radical Krama school, Śiva disappears entirely, for there the two aspects of the One are represented as different facets of one Goddess: the indescribable Void of absolute potential, the formless ground of all reality (Śiva’s usual role) is represented as the dark and emaciated, terrifyingly attractive Goddess Kālī, who devours all things and makes them one with Herself; and the infinite Light that encompasses all things and beings with loving compassion and insight is represented as white and full-bodied Goddess Parā, overflowing with boundless nectar. 

But, Abhinava Gupta stresses, these apparent opposites (black and white, empty and full) are simply the two forms of the one great Goddess. 

The Krama school simply wishes to avoid the inevitably dualistic implications of the image of Śiva-Śakti as two beings joined together. 

How to reconcile these different presentations? 

The answer is simple: they need no reconciliation, for they are each perfectly fitted to the system in which they occur; and the absolute Reality beyond words can be represented by any of these schemas or by none. 

It is important to note that the term Śiva or “God” never loses its importance in this tradition. 

Some might construe the more refined philosophies of NŚT as atheistic because they wholly repudiate the notion of God as a separate person, “a guy in the sky,” or indeed as anything separate from your essence-nature as dynamic free Awareness. 

Yet it is significant that these very traditions continue to use the term “God” and its synonyms (such as maheśvara, “the Great Lord,” and parameśvara, “the Supreme Divinity”). 

It seems to me that they do not want to dispense with the love and devotion that is inspired in so many by this personalizing of the Absolute. 

They want a path of intimate relationship. 

At the same time, remember that the tradition gives us a beautiful nondual definition of the word “God,” one worth repeating: 

...in actuality it is the unbounded Light of Consciousness, reposing in its innate Bliss, fully connected to its Powers of Willing, Knowing, and Acting, that we call God. (Essence of the Tantras) 

It is in the context of this definition that we may understand such scriptural statements as “Nothing exists that is not God.”

 

But here we are anticipating the next segment: for “beyond” even tattva #1 is that which unfolds all the tattvas, from 1 to 36, within itself as the expression of its blissful self-awareness.