“In some ways the debate around the Trans question is the most suggestive of all. Although the newest of the rights questions also affects by far the FEWEST number of people, it is nevertheless fought over with an almost unequalled ferocity and rage.
• It affects ALMOST NO-ONE
• Women who have got on the wrong side of the issue have been hounded by people who used to be men.
• Parents who voice what was common belief until yesterday have their fitness to be parents questioned.
• In the UK and elsewhere the police make calls on people who will not concede that men can be women (and vice versa).
Among the things these issues all have in common is that they have started as legitimate human rights campaigns. This is why they have come so far.
But at some point all went through the crash barrier. Not content with being equal, they have started to settle on unsustainable positions such as ‘better’.
Some might counter that the aim is simply to spend a certain amount of time on ‘better’ in order to level the historical playing field.
In the wake of the #MeToo movement it became common to hear such sentiments. As one CNN presenter said, ‘There might be an over-correction, but that’s OK. We’re due for a correction.’
To date nobody has suggested when over-correction might have been achieved or who might be TRUSTED to announce it.
What everyone DOES know are the things that people will be called if their foot even nicks against these freshly laid tripwires.
‘Bigot’, ‘homophobe’, ‘sexist’, ‘misogynist’, ‘racist’ and ‘transphobe’ are just for starters.
The rights fights of our time have centred around these toxic and explosive issues. But in the process these rights issues have moved from being a product of a system to being the foundations of a new one.
To demonstrate affiliation with the system people must prove their credentials and their commitment. How might somebody demonstrate virtue in this new world?
• By being ‘anti-racist’, clearly.
• By being an ‘ally’ to LGBT people, obviously.
• By stressing how ardent your desire is – whether you are a man or a woman – to bring down the patriarchy.
And this creates an AUDITIONING PROBLEM, where public avowals of loyalty to The System must be volubly made whether there is a need for them or not.
It is an extension of a well-known problem in liberalism which has been recognized even among those who DID once fight a noble fight. It is a tendency identified by the late Australian political philosopher Kenneth Minogue as ‘St George in retirement’ syndrome.
After slaying the dragon the brave warrior finds himself stalking the land looking for still more glorious fights. He NEEDS his dragons.
Eventually, after tiring himself out in pursuit of ever-smaller dragons he may eventually even be found swinging his sword at thin air, imagining it to contain dragons.
If that is a temptation for an actual St George, imagine what a person might do who is NO saint, owns NO horse or lance and is being noticed by NOBODY.
How might they try to persuade people that, given the historic chance, they too would without question have slain that dragon....?”
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 allone andthe 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.
"Jacob shows his willingness as well as his greater intelligence and forethought. What he does is not quite honorable, though not illegal. The birthright benefit that he gains is at least partially valid, although he is insecure enough about it to conspire later with his mother to deceive his father so as to gain the blessing for the first-born as well.
“Later, Esau marries two wives, both Hittite women, that is, locals, in violation of Abraham’s (and God’s) injunction not to take wives from among the Canaanite population.
Again, one gets the sense of a headstrong person who acts impulsively, without sufficient thought
(Genesis 26:34–35).
His marriage is described as a vexation
to both Rebekah and Isaac.
Even His Father, who has strong
affection for him, is hurt by his act.
According to Daniel J. Elazar this action aloneforeverrules out Esau as the bearer of patriarchal continuity.
Esau could have overcome the sale of his birthright;
Isaac was still prepared to give him the blessing due the firstborn.
But acquiring foreign wives meant the detachment of his childrenfrom the Abrahamic line.
Despite the deception on the part of Jacob and his mother to gain Isaac’s patriarchal blessing, Jacob’s vocation as Isaac’s legitimate heir in the continued founding of the Jewish people is reaffirmed.
Elazar suggests that the Bible indicates that a bright, calculating person who, at times, is less than honest, is preferable as a founder over a bluff, impulsive one who cannot make discriminating choices.”
Hebrews
Chapter 12
1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
3 For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
4 Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:
6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
8 But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
10 For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.
11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
12 Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees;
13 And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.
14 Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:
15 Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;
16 Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.
17 For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
18 For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest,
19 And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more:
20 (For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart:
21 And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:)
22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
23 To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,
24 And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.
25 See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven:
26 Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.
27 And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.
28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:
29 For our God is a consuming fire.
Revelation
Chapter 11
And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein.
But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.
And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.
These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth.
And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.
These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.
And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.
And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.
And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves.
And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.
And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.
And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.
And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.
The second woe is past; and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly.
“Sometimes in my live shows I ask the audience if they belong to any groups: a football team, a religious group, a union, a book club, a housing committee, rowing club – I am surprised by how few people have a Tribe.
Whilst the impact of globalisation on national identity cannot yet be fully understood, I can certainly appreciate the reductive appeal of statist myth. I become ultra English during a World Cup, the last one in particular was like a jolly revival of the ‘death of Diana’ in its ability to pull a nation together in collective hysteria.
But soon enough the bunting comes down, the screens in public squares go black and we are atomized once more. The space between us no longer filled with chants, ditties and ‘in jokes’, eyes back on the pavement, attention drawn within.
I’m not suggesting the deep alienation that Late Capitalism engenders can be rinsed away by joining a bowling club, but it’s a •START•.
And having a Teacher within the group to which you belong provides intimacy and purpose. In the guru traditions of India the love between teacher and student surpasses all other forms, for here it is explicit that what is being transferred in this relationship is nothing short of God’s love and how an individual can embody the divine.
We live in lonely and polarized times, where many of us feel lost and fractured. It is evident in our politics but political events reflect deeper and more personal truths. I’ve been trying for a while now to explain what I feel is happening in the societies that I’m familiar with, by which I mean Europe, Australia, the United States – not that I’m claiming to be a sociologist, I don’t have a clue how to approach whatever the hell may be happening in Pakistan or China, but here, here in our post-secular edge lands where the old ideas are dying and the new ones not yet born, I feel a consistent and recognizable yearning for meaning beyond the dayglow ashes of burnt-out consumerism, lurching dumb zombie nationalism, starchy, corrupt religion and the CGI circus of modern mainstream media.
I’ve been watching for a long time and I knew before Trump, Brexit, radicalism and the ‘new right’ that something serious was up.
• YOU KNOW IT TOO •
Sometimes we despair and sometimes we distract because it seems like too much for one person to tackle and we’ve forgotten how to collude.
Yet alone, I am nothing”
Excerpt From
Mentors
Russell Brand
COMIC URBAN LEGEND: Writer/Artist John Byrne has been involved in an inordinate amount of eerie coincidences.
STATUS: True
I almost considered putting a "False" for this one, if only because, upon looking into this bit, I found stuff like:
Byrne is sometimes believed to possess the power to predict events in our world, when he does his comics, and of course these events are predominantly tragedies.
And THAT, of course, is totally bogus, as well, come on. Heck, I would go further to say that I doubt the veracity of "is sometimes believed," as I don't think there's anyone who ACTUALLY believes that.
But anyhow, yes, John Byrne has been involved in an inordinate amount of eerie comic book coincidences.
Fairly early on in his career at Marvel, Byrne drew an issue of Marvel Team-Up with writer Chris Claremont that involved a blackout in New York City.
Soon after the issue was released in 1977 (and months after Byrne had drawn it), New York City had one of its largest blackouts ever.
The next year, when Byrne was on Uncanny X-Men with Claremont, the pair had Japan be struck by an earthquake (courtesy of Mose Magnum).
In 1978, Japan was struck with a number of earthquakes.
(Speaking of Claremont, towards the very end of his run with Byrne on Uncanny X-Men, the pair depicted the dystopian world of 2013 in "Days of Future Past." One of the characters from that story made it to the present, and in a later issue of Uncanny X-Men (#189), the character included a (in retrospect) chilling "flashback" to the destruction of the World Trade Center.
)
Soon before Byrne's first issue of his Superman reboot, Man of Steel, which involves Superman having to save a damaged space-plane, the Challenger space shuttle was destroyed...
Finally, and perhaps most notably, in late August 1997, Wonder Woman #126 came out, reflecting the short-lived death of Wonder Woman, Princess Diana of Themyscira.
That Saturday, the REAL Princess Diana was killed in a car accident.
Some weird stuff, no?
Byrne, himself, wrote in to Scientific American magazine after Michael Shermer had written a skeptical look at a different writer's claims to have predicted the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and stated most of these facts, concluding:
My ability as a prognosticator...would seem assured-provided, of course, we reference only the above, and skip over the hundreds of other comic books I have produced which featured all manner of catastrophes, large and small, which did not come to pass.
More than that, for Knowledge of Runes, and for Power, He Sacrificed Himself to Himself.
He brought War into The World: Battles are begun by throwing a spear at the hostile army, dedicating the battle and its deaths to Odin.
If you survive in battle, it is with Odin’s Grace,
and if you fall it is because he has BETRAYED you....
“Sympathetic magic involves making a scale model, a simulation, or isomorphic mapping, of the real world, and by causing changes in the model—whether by sticking pins through the heart of a voodoo doll or painting spears in the hides of a herd of cave-wall aurochs—real-world events can be persuaded into a synchronous relationship with the magician’s will or intent.
Will, as anyone who has ever tried to give up smoking or start exercising should know all too well, is the power humans have to act against our tendency toward inertia. Will motivates us to undertake hazardous journeys, build cathedrals and jet aircraft, and change our lives. With strong enough will-power, we can alter our behavior, our surroundings, our beliefs and ourselves. Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in the real world where stories are read.
A story can make us cry and laugh, break our hearts, or make us angry enough to change the world. A story can make us angry enough to change the world. We know that medical placebos work when a trusted authority figure, in the form of a doctor, simply tells us they will.
There is even a “nocebo” concept to explain why some people get sick or die when they are cursed by a witch doctor or wrongly diagnosed by a medical doctor. We know that hypnosis works. There is observable evidence to suggest that what we believe to be true directly affects how we live.
As the first few years of the twenty-first century wore on, I wondered just how badly people, especially young people, were being affected by the overwhelmingly alarmist, frightening, and nihilistic mass media narratives that seemed to boil with images of death, horror, war, humiliation, and pain to the exclusion of almost everything else, on the presumed grounds that these are the kinds of stories that excite the jaded sensibilities of the mindless drones who consume mass entertainment.
Cozy at our screens in the all-consuming glare of Odin’s eye, I wondered why we’ve chosen to develop in our children a taste for mediated prepackaged rape, degradation, violence, and “bad-ass” mass-murdering heroes. “
And so All-Star Superman: our attempt at an antidote to all that, which dramatized some of the ideas in Supergods by positioning Superman as the Enlightenment ideal paragon of human physical, intellectual, and moral development that Siegel and Shuster had originally imagined. A Vitruvian Man in a cape, our restorative Superman would attempt to distill the pure essence of pop culture’s finest creation: baring the soul of an indestructible hero so strong, so noble, so clever and resourceful, he had no need to kill to make his point.
There was no problem Superman could not solve or overcome. He could not lose. He would never let us down because we made him that way. He dressed like Clark Kent and took the world’s abuse to remind us that underneath our shirts, waiting, there is an always familiar blaze of color, a stylized lighting bolt, a burning heart.
You're being called back to your life again, Neelix.
Don't turn your back on it.
We're your family now.
NEELIX:
It's not enough.
CHAKOTAY:
It is for us.
‘His function on this crew is diverse.’
That's what Seven of Nine said about you.
Even our Borg understands how important you are on this ship.
It's not just the duties you perform,
it's the way you make people feel when you're around.
NEELIX:
That Neelix is gone.
CHAKOTAY:
I don't think he is.
(Ensign Wildman enters.)
WILDMAN:
Why didn't you answer me?
I had to have the computer track you down.
Naomi thought she saw a monster in the replicator.
Neelix, what's going on?
NEELIX:
I'm trying to decide some things.
CHAKOTAY:
That little girl needs you, Neelix.
Monsters in the replicator?
Who else on this ship can handle that?
(Neelix thinks about it, then turns off his tricorder and hands it to Chakotay.)
NEELIX:
Duty Calls.
“One reason we hesitate to carry our own gold is that it is dangerously close to God. Our gold has Godlike characteristics, and it is difficult to bear the weight of it.
In Indian culture, there’s a time-honored custom that you have the right to go to another person—a man, a woman, a strangerand ask him or her to be the incarnation of God for you. There are strict laws governing this. If the person agrees to be the incarnation of God for you, you must never pester him. You must never put a heavy weight on himit’s weighty enough as it is. And you must not engage in any other kind of relationship with that person. You don’t become friends, and you don’t marry him. The person becomes a kind of patron saint for you.
J. Krishnamurti was a wonderful man. Lots of people put gold on him. One afternoon, he and I went for a walk in Ojai, California, and a little old lady was kneeling alongside the path. We just walked by. Later he told me, “She has put the image of God on me. She knows what she’s doing. She never talks or asks anything of me. But when I go for a walk, she somehow knows where I’m going to be, and she’s always there.” What was most touching was his attitude. If she needed this, he would do it.
This is the original meaning of the terms godfather and godmother. That person is the carrier of Godlike qualities for you. Nowadays we think of a godparent as the one who will take care of us materially in case our parents are not able to see it through. But the original meaning was of someone who carries the subtle part of your life—a parent in an interior, Godlike way. It’s a wonderful custom. Most parents are worn out just seeing their child through to physical maturity. We need someone else who isn’t bothered with authority issues, like “How much is my allowance this week?” Being a godparent was originally a quiet arrangement for holding a child’s gold.
When I was sixteen, two years after meeting Thor, I desperately needed someone like that. So I appointed a godmother and godfather, and those two people saved my life. They knew instinctively the duties of this need, and they fulfilled them. My godmother died when I was twenty-two, and I wasn’t ready to give her up. It was the most difficult loss of my life. I was forced to take my gold back before I was ready. My godfather lived until I was in my fifties, and by then I was ready to let him go.
I love the idea of godparents. Sometimes young people come circling around me, and I bring up this language. “Do you want a godfather?” If it fits, we work out the necessary rules. “You may have this out of me, and you must not ask that.” These are the old godparent laws. It’s a version of the incarnation of God in Indian custom.
Sometimes Gold Is Dark
I love India, but being there can be challenging, sometimes even dreadful. During one visit, I nearly sank in the darkness.
An Indian friend and I went to Calcutta. He wanted to see his father, who lived in a politically sensitive zone near the city, where foreigners were not allowed. So I said, “Please go. I’ll stay in Calcutta while you visit him.” My friend tried to help me get a hotel, but there were no good ones, so I ended up in a sleazy hotel in a dark part of town. Because he was so anxious to see his father, once he got me settled, I encouraged him to go.
Within hours, a woman on the street thrust a dead baby into my hands, children with amputated limbs poked their stumps into my ribs begging for money, and lepers and corpses were lying in the streets where I walked. It was too much for me, and I didn’t know how to get away from it. Normally I could just go to my room and hole up. As an introvert, that isn’t difficult for me. But my room in that hotel had paper-thin walls, and someone was actually dying in the room on one side, people were screaming and fighting in the room on the other side, and there was a nightlong political rally in the square outside my window. I just couldn’t take it. I had more in me than I could hold, and I started falling to pieces.
Gold comes in many varieties. Sometimes our gold is bright, but at other times it is heavy and difficult, and seems anything but golden. I had no friends and no telephone, and couldn’t cope. Then I remembered the custom I’d witnessed with Krishna-murti. I needed to ask someone to be the incarnation of God for me, someone with whom I could share my burden.
I went to a park nearby to look for a candidate. After standing still and observing many people for about twenty minutes, I selected a middle-aged man who was wearing traditional Indian garb. I felt a particular respect for him. He walked with great dignity. I continued to watch him closely.
Finally, trembling, I went up to him and asked, “Sir, do you speak English?”
“Yes.”
“Will you be the incarnation of God for me?” It was the second sentence I spoke to that man.
And, God bless him, he said, “Yes.”
I told him who I was and how frightened and burdened I was feeling, and that I was unable to stand it. I poured out my misery, and he just listened without saying a word. Finally I wound down and apologized for splashing all over him. I felt so much better. I had my feet under me again.
I thanked him, and then I asked, “And who are you?”
He told me his name. I said, “Yes, and who are you?”
He said, “I am a Roman Catholic priest.”
There are very few Catholic priests in India, and I had picked one to be the incarnation of God for me.
He had listened, heard, and understood.
Then we bowed to each other and went our separate ways. Because he did that for me, neither of us will ever be the same again. He did exactly what I needed with a grace and a dignity that lives with me to this day.
Excerpt from: "Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection" by Arnie Kotler.
I spoke in the car about the hole at the center of this donut.
And yes, what you and Harlan did that fateful night seems at first glance to fill that hole perfectly.
A donut hole in the donut's hole. But we must look a little closer.
And when we do, we see that the donut hole has a hole in its center - it is not a donut hole at all but a smaller donut with its own hole, and our donut is not a hole at all!”
