A Response to Sandy Hook

"The whole of occultism is based on the supposition that there is nothing supernatural."

- Madame Blavatsky

On December 12, 2012 - 12/12/12 - I was given the news that I would have to get out of the house I was occupying, and that was now being sold, in two weeks.  It put me into a light state of shock as I'd been expecting more notice and wasn't really prepared.  Two days later, Dec. 14, the shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut occurred and it affected me much more than previous tragedies of a similar nature.  It seemed like a line had been crossed that had to get a response.  It's only now that I'm getting caught up from the move enough to get my thoughts down.

The overwhelming feeling I had was not sorrow, grief or depression.  Just a sense that something has to be done, it cannot continue.  The public response in the media mainly called for gun control as a solution.  There was some talk about better help caring for mentally ill children.  I'm all for better gun control, whether that will happen or not in any effective way remains questionable.  Even if it does, it's not going far enough.  The morning of 12/14 I heard on the BBC News about an out of control maniac in China who went on a rampage and killed 20 victims with a knife.

People attempting to solve this problem will offer up suggestions based on their reality tunnels and belief systems.  For instance, the NRA's solution is to put more guns in every school which seems a really dumb idea to me.  The politicians will debate and try to legislate because that's what they know to do.  So it shouldn't be much of a surprise that a lover of poetry, magick, and music such as myself would come up with esoterically derived suggestions to the solution of random violence.

To start, a basic metaphysical theorem not  accepted or acted upon by the general public:
everything appears connected.  Whether it's Bells Theorem in Quantum Physics, the mysticism of Eastern religions, the Hermeticism of the Golden Dawn, or the literature of James Joyce as exclaimed by  writer Robert Anton Wilson in his book Coincidance, this idea turns up in a wide array of contexts and cultures.  It allows what Albert Einstein called 'spooky action at a distance.'

Before going too much further I'm going to give the short form of this position paper:
Grokking Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love with proactive empathy and sympathy as they sing and play to the Shekinah covers the extent of what I wish to catalyze/communicate. 

Shekinah, Shechinah, Shechina, or Schechinah, (Hebrew: שכינה) is the English spelling of a grammatically feminine Hebrew ancient blessing. The original word means the dwelling or settling, and denotes the dwelling or settling of the divine presence.

 - from Wikipedia

It helps if you know Jimmy Page's background.

 Spooky Action At A Distance

Bell's Theorem introduces the rationale for the the existence of non-local behavior.  It says that particles once in contact can always affect each other at faster than light speeds over great distances of space.  This provides a material basis for the Law of Contagion in magic which states that objects that have been in contact continue to share a magical link after they've been separated, no matter how great the distance.  A magical link means that producing a change of some kind upon one object can result in  a similar change on a target object that it was once in contact with.  Spooky action at a distance.  If the Big Bang theory is true, then at one time all the particles of the Universe were in contact with each other in a very compressed fashion just before the Universe, as we know it, popped into existence.

This provides a scientific basis for the notion that an individual or group of individuals can positively influence events at a great distance from themselves.  Don't believe me, and don't believe Bell, try it for yourself.  By the end of this essay I hope to give ideas on how to make these experiments. A good example of Spooky Action At A Distance finds itself in Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger I when he "sees" his son Graham in danger, creates a cone of light around him, and later finds out that  cops on the way to bust or harass Graham and his friends  mysteriously turned away and left them alone.

Anyone can, potentially, learn how can cause positive change at a distance.  Most people can not, to start with, because they've been told/programmed/conditioned - you can't do that!   Beliefs Unlimited, by Dr. John Lilly makes an effective remedy for coming unstuck from a constricting belief or set of beliefs.  It starts out:

In the province of the mind what one believes to be true is true or becomes within certain limits.  These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

Morphogenetic Fields and Morphic Resonance

In his books A New Science of Life and The Presence of the Past Rupert Sheldrake presents an explanation for spooky action at a distance with the idea that similar phenomena have a connective field, " an invisible region of influence like the magnetic field around a magnet."  He calls them morphogenetic fields. 

"Morphic resonance is the process whereby similar things in the past influence similar things today"

Morphic resonance may have something to do with the Law of Similarity found in magic.

Sheldrake writes: "Since these past organisms are similar to each other rather than identical, when a subsequent organism comes under their collective influence, its morphogenetic fields are not sharply defined, but consist of a composite of previous similar forms. This process is analogous to composite photography, in which 'average' pictures are produced by superimposing a number of similar images. Morphogenetic fields are 'probability structures,' in which the influence of the most common past types combines to increase the probability that such types will occur again."

<sup>In other words, once a school shooting occurs, the probability increases that it will happen again.  The so-called Arab Spring, spontaneous revolutions in several countries around the same time last year, may exemplify this kind of field and resonance.  Already noted above is the killing rampage a maniac went on in China earlier the same day as the Sandy Hook tragedy with very similar results.  

A good summary of Sheldrake's ideas:</sup>

Possibly related to  morphogenetic fields exists phenomena known to shamen and other sensitives as "atmospherics." If you take out the word "audible" in the radio definition, you get a pretty clear picture:

"audible disturbances produced in radio receiving apparatus by atmospheric electrical phenomena (as lightning); also : the electrical phenomena causing these disturbances "

These atmospherics could also manifest as obsessive thought forms that, in extremity, could lead to psychopathological behavior.  Later, we'll examine how these atmospherics can get safely handled and sometimes cancelled out or rendered insignificant. 

The Three Basic Centrums of Human Activity

The intellectual, the emotional, the physical.  The thinking, feeling, movement centers, as given by G.I. Gurdjieff and expanded upon by Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Antero Alli and probably others.  Gurdjieff said that in order to really do anything of consequence effectively the three centers need to function harmoniously together and go in the same direction.  

I'm currently reading a book called Beelzebub and the Beast by David Hall that presents and sometimes compares the ideas of Gurdjieff and Aleister Crowley.  In both their systems, the idea of Will seems paramount. 

We have numerous great systems of training for the intellect, wonderful Universities and centers of learning to enrich and develop the rational mind.  We can drop into any library and freely partake of a wide variety of stimulating intellectual ideas.  We can also drop into a gym in nearly any city and exercise our physical body for a nominal cost.  All kinds of books  and videos about how to develop and strengthen the body; competitive athletics to see how far it will go.  As for the emotional centrum, mainstream culture, especially Western culture, leaves us pretty much on our own.

The story goes that Gurdjieff was asked why little talk of love appeared in his system.  He replied something to the effect that humans don't know the experience of real love or even that of a real emotion of any kind.  Talking about love would only confuse things with false notions of love.  E.J. Gold states in his book Practical Work on Self: Chapter 1 that the feeling centrum, under ordinary conditions, does not function voluntarily as a result of the thinking and moving centrums being reversed.  You can get the details in the book but for all practical purposes it means that the feeling centrum functions very weakly compared to its capability.

Gurdjieff maintained that people didn't know real love but that they could begin to discover it by practicing with pets or small children.  In my mind this obliquely connects to Crowley through his musical progeny, Led Zeppelin, who in their song that conjures Horus, The Song Remains the Same, has the line "everything that's small has to grow, and it always grows..."  In the live versions of this song that I've seen from the film of the same name and from the recently released Celebration Day Plant does a great ad lib after that line.


While writing this I just got an automated telemarketing call that started out:  It's time to listen to solar energy... then I hung up ...and thought , 'alright, alright I'm getting there... geez, give me a chance.'


To summarize so far:  Multiple solutions need to get applied to the problem of random violence in schools.  Gun control would help slow it down but you see a lot of opposition to it, and the process by which anything really gets done moves painfully slow in America.  Apparently every day something like 30 people die from guns.  In my opinion, gun control isn't enough.  We must have a collective raising of consciousness.  This has started but needs help.  Morphogenetic fields explain how the raising of consciousness from wherever you are can have a positive influence on something far away.

Aleister Crowley's most basic idea for collectively raising consciousness was to encourage people to find out what they liked doing the most, from the deepest level, and then do that as much as possible.  He put it as: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law which is synonymous with being true to yourself, or Joseph Campbell's, follow your bliss.

The second part of Crowley's  formula goes: Love is the law, love under will.  One interpretation, certainly not the only one, is that whatever you're calling "love" can be directed or placed by will much like you would direct or place your attention on something.

A Poetic Approach

Arthur Rimbaud was a French symbolist poet who probably has more of a contemporary influence than generally realized because of his influence on other popular poets.  In his essay Systematic Derangement of the Senses he writes:

The first task of the man who wants to be a poet is to study his own awareness of himself, in its entirety; he seeks out his soul, he inspects it, he tests it, he learns it. As soon as he knows it, he must cultivate it! . . .

I say you have to be a visionary, make yourself a visionary.

A Poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons and preserves their quintessence's.

The word "systematic" ties the derangement of the senses to a function of some kind.  It's not random derangement or chaotic derangement but systematized.  The system can be very basic.  For instance Leary's formula of set, setting, and dosage provides a systematic approach to the derangement of the senses.  Adding intention  systemetizes it more. It can get even simpler than that and still show great effect.  Smoke a joint ( becoming increasingly legal) and listen to Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, or Beethoven, Led Zeppelin, Coltrane (or whatever) and spread the joy the music gives over the world, or your girlfriend or boyfriend, or your cat, etc. etc.

Derangement of the senses doesn't have to involve drugs or alcohol.  Any kind of meditation results in a systematic derangement of the senses.  My favorite, of course, is the floatation tank.  Music performances, particularly full scale rock shows have proven very effective in the past.  Obviously, not any old way of deranging the senses is good for you or useful for the whole.

Humor

You could call it a special case way of deranging the senses, but humor remains an extremely effective method for transforming malaise into good cheer.  Laughter causes an extremely beneficial chemical reaction in the body.  It also radiates out and can change the mood of the immediate environment significantly.  They say that laughter is contagious, another way of saying that the field of energy it produces has influence.  So just think, you too can help change the world simply by smoking a joint, if that be your fancy, and watching a stand-up comedian you love or a funny movie.