Space Migration Number B

Tom Jackson over at RAW Illuminations posted an old essay by Robert Anton Wilson circa 1977 relevant to the recent topic here: S.M.I.²L.E.

I hadn't seen this before, and a few things stood out for me. Didn't know Mark Train wrote an essay called Man, A Machine. First heard this idea from Ouspensky via Gurdjieff. Currently, the most complete investigation and practical application of this model in book form exists as The Human Biological Machine as as Transformational Apparatus by E.J. Gold. Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson works in similar fashion but makes less overt reference to the model 'Man as machine.' However, he makes it quite clear in I Robot, the title of the essay.

The last few sentences invokes I.²:

When the robot awakens and becomes a self-programmer, it can easily have all the goals promised by the alchemists: The Stone of the Wise, the Medicine of Metals, True Wisdom and perfect Happiness. All of those traditional terms are metaphors for the awakening of Intelligence-squared.

Usually people are libertarians or fascists or snake-worshippers or Republicans or nudists or whatever, because of conditioned networks that fit smoothly into their imprints. People achieve Intelligence-squared, and become effective libertarians, only if they work for it.

Practicing the exercises in Prometheus Rising and/or The H.B.M will expand the mind and therefore constitutes neurological space migration. Finding ways to break free and go beyond conditioned belief systems, getting out of habitual reality tunnels, even just temporarily, inevitably results in space migration. We bias Here to Go, as Burroughs, Gysin, Crowley, and Groucho cheer us on with this slogan. Changing out of a reality tunnel suit if only for a casual stroll down Alternity Way also goes by the modern psychological term "breaking set." Christopher Hyatt (not his "real" name) describes breaking set very clearly in an Introduction to The Eye in the Triangle by Israel Regardie. To see examples of breaking set in action, watch any of the classic Marx Brothers films. The Brothers Marx constantly messed with and agitated reality tunnels in playful, humorous, non-violent, and non-hateful ways.

"By a commodius vicus of recirculation" breaking set recalls the Egyptian deity Set whom I called the cousin and enemy of Horus last post. Since then, I found a poem by Crowley in his collection, The Winged Beetle called The Twins. It portrays Set slightly differently, fleshes out the metaphor more. Started reading it because the first stanza grabbed my attention:

Have pity ! show no pity !
Those eyes that send such shivers
Into my brain and spine : oh let them
Flame like the ancient city
Swallowed up by the sulphurous rivers
When men let angels fret them !

It recalled the theme of confronting, overcoming, transforming obstacles or challenges. The protagonist of the poem describes the nature of the antagonist, their own nature and the intensity of their battle. In the fifth stanza their identities get revealed:

Look! in the polished granite,
Black as thy cartouche is with sins,
I read the searing sentence
That blasts the eyes that scan it :
"HOOR and SET be TWINS."
A fico for repentance !

The shock that your mortal enemy unveils as a different kind of you, your twin. Hoor represents another name for Horus. They get reborn in the tenth stanza after using the Death formula in the ninth:

Wherefore I solemnly affirm
This twofold Oneness at the term.
Asar on Asi did beget
Horus twin brother unto Set.
Now Set and Horus kiss, to call
The Soul of the Unnatural
Forth from the dusk ; then nature slain
Lets the Beyond be born again.

This poem has a dedication to Austin Osman Spare ironically Crowley's oppositely charged twin of sorts in some occult circles. Phil Baker in his Spare biography suggests this could read as an encoded love letter. Perhaps on a base level this holds true, but it overlooks the inner alchemical symbolism that Set = the individual's natural tendencies and habits. In this scenario, the reception, integration, and crystallization of expanded consciousness goes against nature. It doesn't seem natural to wake up the robot. The H.B.M. talks about a defense mechanism to the waking state.

In terms of Leary's 8 circuit model the first four "terrestrial" circuits take shape, through imprinting and conditioning, as a natural course of living and growing up in whatever culture and society one gets born in. The four "extra-terrestrial" circuits usually remain below conscious awareness. For the potential meta-programmer getting to know hirself, resistance gets encountered as soon as they attempt to permanently reimprint/recondition the terrestrial circuits or activate the post-terrestrial circuits. Some systems suggest not trying to change anything at all at first but instead observe the self and gather data. This, however, results in some change by the principle that the act of observation changes the thing observed. Reimprinting/reconditioning shows up metaphorically in Crowley's poem as the death/rebirth archetype.

A highly recommended film that has as one of its themes - higher consciousness learning to get along with ordinary conscious - is Beetlejuice. They won't let me post this clip here but if you watch it you'll see a good personification/representation of the atavistic, chthonic type of critter that crops up when starting to shine the light of awareness into the subconscious mind. I highly recommend viewing this clip when you have an extra 5 minutes. Seeing film segments outside the context of the whole film puts them in a whole new light. This clip also demonstrates a classic 'loser script' the subconscious likes to throw at most, if not all of us from time to time when it gets annoyed from being prodded out of quiescence. Robert Anton Wilson refers to this same loser script somewhere in Prometheus Rising, if memory serves. See if you can tell what I'm talking about.

Space and Time

Relativity theorizes that the faster an object travels the slower time goes by for it in relation to other objects not going as fast. In 1971 two scientists, J.C. Hafele and R. E. Keating set out to verify this idea by putting four atomic clocks on regular commercial flights and flying them around the world twice, once traveling eastward, then going west measuring the change in time relative to another atomic clock positioned on Earth at the U.S. Navel Observatory. Their findings said: These results provide an unambiguous empirical resolution of the famous clock "paradox" with macroscopic clocks." Time sped up relative to the Earth's surface when traveling west and slowed down, or dilated when traveling east in the same direction as the planet's rotation.

Time dilation as allowed by Relativity means that someone traveling on a rocket away from Earth will age more slowly than the people they left behind. It's been suggesting that a practical application of this phenomena would allow travel to nearby stars without having to spend a whole lifetime getting there. However this requires a new, as yet undiscovered system of propulsion. The Orion Project was a serious effort at designing spacecraft with a new method of propulsion using a series of atomic bomb explosions. Concern over fallout ended it in 1963 even though these explosions were supposed to occur in Space. This interests me because in at least one instance in Against the Day Pynchon lets some dynamite explosions get used as a metaphor for migration to alternate spaces. This apparent non sequitur leap into literature makes more sense if you saw the last post, maybe.

The image of a rocketship speeding away from Earth into Space powered by a carefully timed series of hopefully non-radioactive explosions at a high enough velocity to enable serious time dilation recalls one of William Burroughs' instructions for humankind to "get out of time and go into space." He echoes this theme with the last words in The Western Lands ( his take on the Egyptian Book of the Dead) "Hurry up please, it's time."

Burroughs had some interesting techniques for self-metaprogramming and breaking set like this example from The Soft Machine:

Whatever you feed into the machine on subliminal level the machine will process--So we feed in 'dismantle thyself' [...] We fold in writers of all time in together and record radio programs, movie sound tracks, TV and juke box songs all the words of the world stirring around in a cement mixer and pour in the resistance message "Calling partisans of all nation--Cut word lines--Shift linguals--Free doorways--Vibrate 'tourists'--Word falling--Photo falling--Breakthrough in Grey Room."

Can literature take us out into space, that endlessly vast space and spaces outside our conditioned reality tunnels? Shaking William Burroughs hand as we met catapulted me into a heretofore unknown space and awareness which I wrote about here. If part of that dude's awareness really existed out of time in some alternate space then it had a magnetic effect because it certainly felt like a timeless moment to me.

I can recall two other instances where it distinctly felt like time became suspended a little, or stretched out. One happened the first time I ever saw Robert Anton Wilson lecture. It was at the Open Center in New York sometime in the late '80's; Peter Lamborn Wilson introduced him. Seemed like RAW took us all on a free form journey through cutting edge ideas of brain-change technology, conspiracies, zen jokes, zen riddles, and witty commentary on current events. To be honest, I don't remember exactly what he talked about, only that I got a very strong contact high. He took a break about 90 minutes in but it felt like I'd been there forever and could have stayed forever. I told my ex-wife as we got into this large elevator, that it felt like time dilated, which I'm sure is the first time I said those words aloud, not realizing that RAW was on the other side of this freight elevator. I glanced over at him to see him looking intently at me; he had overheard what I said.

The other time I'll mention was at a Ravi Shankar concert at Carnegie Hall with his classic band of Ali Akbar Khan on sarod and Alla Rakha on tablas. When it ended it felt like I'd only been there for 10 - 15 minutes although three hours of clock time had elapsed. The music definitely entered timeless chambers and disconnected me from consenual reality except in the most basic navigational sense. It felt like traveling through the heavens on sound and trance with Shankar the Guide steering the way. Somewhere Gurdjieff talks about the excellent acoustics of Carnegie Hall, and how they had a sacred quality unlike anywhere else in the world. He directed several dance performances there. Good acoustics + top of the world music = a non-chemical pyschotropic effect of great magnitude - seems how it works for me.

A less artistic, more scientific and sobering examination of the idea of going out of time into space gets told by Franklin Merrell-Wolf in his classic PATHWAYS THROUGH TO SPACE A Personal Report of Transformations in Consciousness:

The time principle dominates in the case of consciousness manifesting in primitive forms. It is thus in the massive or numerical sense preponderant, for not only is the bulk of human life under its sway, but as well all of subhuman life. In the historic sense Spengler is right when he says that spatial comprehension comes into dominance only as a culture flowers. It is born and sustained in this world with difficulty. But, on the other hand it wields the ultimately victorious force. The cosmic integration of Sir Isaac Newton is a good illustration of the power of the spatial principle. He gave an especially strong impetus to the conceptual grasp of the universe under law. By supplying a command over a planted time mystery that had held humanity in its thralldom before his day, he effected a substantial degree of liberation for human consciousness. A considerable sector of time-mobilized nature now stands definitely conquered by man as a result of the spatial understanding introduced by Newton and other men like him.

When you have an extra 10 minutes, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku gives an excellent interview on how new data from the WMAP satellite project can quite possibly redefine our concepts about Space. He also mentions another satellite system called LISA - Laser Interferometer Space Antennae - scheduled to go up in five or six years which again could radically change our understanding of Space. LISA consists of three satellites to be positioned in a triangulated formation three million miles apart from each other.

I.2

Leary wrote:

We are designed to use our Heads (I²) in order to Use Time (L.E.) in order to Use Space.
Of these three associated imperatives Intelligence Increase is the most important.

So we'll start there, in the center of S.M.I.²L.E. It seems appropriate that I.² finds itself placed between Space on one side and Time on the other. The quote is from Info-Psychology. Note the unusual capitalization in the first sentence.

I found a useful definition of Intelligence given by Robert Anton Wilson posted by Mark Frauenfelder on Boing Boing.net's RAW week celebration:

Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies, etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission."

How do you Increase Intelligence? A good question, however a definitive answer would defy the principles of Relativity, in my Newtonian Opinion. Everyone is different, and every circumstance different, therefore the answer changes from person to person, and even from moment to moment with one person. It can make for a highly enjoyable artform. Suggestions can be made for the taking or leaving of. All the information on how to Increase Intelligence is out there, just a matter of finding what works for you.

The relativistic nature of Intelligence Increase appears built into the formula.

I.² = I x I which, if you look at them as personal pronouns suggests self-study, self-examination and contemplation. Not a formula of the old time, Eastern imported, going to a Guru and following everything they say unquestioningly in order to merit, accidentally stumble upon, or get bestowed with some kind of Enlightenment or Intelligence Increase. One of Leary's other slogans offers an alternative, "Think For Yourself, Question Authority," which fits right in with I.².

I.², I multiplied by I, ("I an' I" as Bob Marley sings) implies finding a way to become your own Guru. In Thelemic terms, I would call this discovering the connection that eventually leads to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. My recommendation for initiating this line of work: as much as possible, discover what you would really like to do in this life. This is called formulating a True Will. It doesn't have to be anything earth shattering or utterly altruistic, like bringing down Wall Street, it can be as basic and ordinary as playing music, gardening, cooking a meal, road repair, anything !, as long as it doesn't interfere with anyone else doing their thing. You can start by looking at what you like to naturally do along with your desires, hopes and dreams. The ancient Greeks called this process gnothe seaton which means Know Thyself.

The Crowley connection with Intelligence Increase makes sense ( apart from the fact that it works) when you remember Leary's letter quoted in the last post where he gave S.M.I.²L.E. as his response to Crowley's 'Do what thou wilt.' Leary states on record that he felt he was carrying on Crowley's work.

Following your own path as it grows and changes over time effectively Increases Intelligence due to a simple principle the television news show 60 Minutes used to employ: " zero interest, zero attention, zero information." This means that if you have no interest in something, your won't pay attention to it and won't learn anything from it. On the other hand, your attention gets naturally drawn to what interests you.

In the 60 Minutes Principle, which I first came across in The American Book of the Dead, the second component, after finding out what you're interested in, is learning how to use attention effectively. Attention can be placed, withdrawn, focused, concentrated, split, diffused, distracted, seduced, etc. You can direct it, or it can direct you. It can get strengthened, like a muscle, through use by doing things that require heightened attention like playing music well. Various exercises exist that strengthen attention, any martial art or yoga has that effect. My favorite is a kit called Zen Basics.

More on the art of applied attention can be found in a book called The Human Biological Machine as a Transformational Apparatus by E. J. Gold which also contains a scientific and detailed approach to Intelligence Increase along the lines of gnothe seaton.

Crowley stressed the importance of developing strong concentration skills as one prerequisite for effective magick. As he recounts in his Confessions, Crowley took to concentration exercises with great gusto after one of his teachers, Oscar Eckenstein, showed him how to discover for himself just how weak his attention functioned. You can discover how strong or weak your own attention operates through some basic feedback techniques. For example, focus your attention on the second hand of an analog clock and see how long you can keep it there before the mind wanders.

You can, perhaps, research some I.² methods through finding out what people possessed of genius do to increase their intelligence. Over at RAW Week, Propaganda Anonymous asked Phil Farber how he rates Robert Anton Wilson as a magician:

Phil Farber: I rate Bob up there with the best. More so than any other writer on the subject, he was able to reconcile critical thinking, modern physics and linguistics with the ancient traditions of magick. Privately, Bob was a devoted practitioner and explorer. He brought his wide-ranging intellect and his personal spark of creativity to the job of understanding and updating the techniques. He did the work, for real.

Ingesting the entirety of Propa Non's interview will I.² . It features a panel discussion with a number of RAW luminaries, Douglass Rushkoff, RU Sirius, David Jay Brown, Antero Alli, along with Farber. Perhaps that panel rates more like I.⁵ or I.⁶?

I also recall an interview DJ Fly Agaric did with Wilson where Fly asked him when the last time he did yoga was and RAW replied, that morning. That's consistent with the advice he gave to 'do it every day.' Meaning, whatever practice or discipline you're currently taking up - do it every day. If learning to play the guitar, practice every day, etc.

Another great resource with suggestions for I.² is Timothy Leary's The Game of Life, his kabbalistic rendering of the 8 circuit model of consciousness that also contains contributions from Robert Anton Wilson. Leary formulated this model to articulate a comprehensive Map of the Levels of Consciousness. Based on an eclectic blend of previous maps of this kind, occult knowledge, Cabala, scientific research, comedy, Leary and Wilson's gnostic realizations, and who knows what else, this model portrays itself more along the lines of a speculative taxonomy of consciousness, both physical and metaphysical, than a dogmatic Absolute Truth with rigid boundaries to be believed in at all costs. The fact that the authors revised and updated the theory over time makes this evident. Any useful theory of consciousness, vital and alive, will change, develop, and grow in light of new research. Parts of it will get rejected and modified as people and circumstances change. You don't have to unquestioningly accept any theory hook, line and sinker, to get some useful, practical benefit from it. Wilson lucidly illustrates this in an interview with Lewis Shiner when he writes of moving to Yellow Springs, Ohio early in his writing career:

I was offered a job editing a magazine for a place called the School for Living, which later moved to Maryland. The School for Living had a very interesting philosophy, which was "back to nature, live on the land, eat health food" — and a bit of anarchism and Wilhelm Reich. I agreed with about half of that and thought the over half was kind of flakey, but it was interesting. I thought it would be a great idea to live on a farm and see how I did at it.

The whole of this excellent interview lives in the Resources links at RAWIllumination.net

I'm not necessarily recommending anyone study and/or memorize the 8 Circuit Model, but it can't hurt. Just wanted to point out that numerous exercises, research experiments, suggestions for Intelligence Increase, whatever you want to call them get hinted at, alluded to, or downright explicated in The Game of Life.

As an example of the density of Intelligence Information found there, I'll briefly quote from "Caste 14." Leary divided each of the 8 brain circuits into 3 stages ( related to Gurdjieff's Law of Three - discussed about 2/3rds into this post) making 24 stages or what he called castes.

Caste 14

NEUROGENETIC TECHNOLOGICAL STAGE:

Self-Actualized Intelligent Control of the Body .../ Physiological Feedback Control/ The Yogin/The Artist-Aesthetic Reality Architect/ The Resurrected Body/Driver-Seat-Control of the Soft Machine/Body Engineering/The Sorcerer-Warrior/ The Reichian Adept/ The Holistic Health Healer.

That's from p. 172 in my 1993 New Falcon edition. The next page talks about the tarot card associated with this caste:

Stage 14

Tarot Death (card 13) DEATH-REBIRTH (Aries II) ... The disciplined control of one's body function... The science of conscious body performance. Karate. Yoga. Dance. Non-competitive sports designed to get high, to stretch body and mind. The direction of one's own aesthetic environment and responses. The conscious acceptance of one's life as a Work of Conceptual Art.

p. 173

A piece of common senses advice from Dr. Tim I personally benefited from - if you want to learn something, hang out with people who seem smarter than you at the subject you wish to learn. This relates, in a gentler way, to P.D. Ouspenky's stern dogmatic pronouncement that transformation is absolutely impossible unless one finds a School. At a stage in my life when I took Ouspensky way too seriously, I attended a workshop given by RAW and got a chance to ask him what he thought about Ouspensky's statement. RAW simply said, "I think it's a good idea," and bypassed commenting on Ouspenky's insistence, who, by the way, has doubt surrounding whether he followed his own advice.

This kind of a "School", sometimes called an Esoteric or Mystery School can sometimes exist very briefly, informally, and nondoctrinaire. Any group working together for the purpose of Invocation makes for the broadest definition of this type of School, but it could just as easily read: any group gathered together for the purpose of Intelligence Increase. They don't necessarily have to work closely together in physical Space or simultaneous Time to function as a School. Some extraordinary online courses I've attended operationally existed as this kind of a School, in my opinion and experience. The community of musicians around Bill Laswell comprise an informal, nondoctrinaire School that has greatly increased the transmission of Musical Intelligence over the years.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Many different kinds of intelligence exist. Here in the West we often reflexively associate intelligence with one particular type, intellectual intelligence. Modern education emphasizes acquiring knowledge through extensive intellectual intake. This doesn't seem the case everywhere. Anyone who has spent time in Africa sees evidence for different kinds of intelligence that the average Westerner likely remains largely or wholly unaware of.

We can start a list of different kinds of intelligence we know about: instinctual, intellectual, intuitive, physical, emotional, political, psychological, musical, poetic, symbolic, allegorical, alchemical, morphological, occult, etc. We can speculate, postulate, theorize, and research, (I xI) as others have: plant intelligence, mineral intelligence, the DNA intelligence resulting in the unfoldment of our biological vehicles, etc. - see The Game of Life for further examples.

Gnosis describes an accelerated form of Intelligence Increase. It refers to the direct experience of knowledge as opposed to knowledge taught in the ordinary way which requires belief for it to get accepted. The "aha"moment of sudden realization signifies gnosis.

The articulation of gnosis derives from Ancient Greeks:

Among the gnostics, gnosis was first and foremost a matter of self-knowledge ^{... [12]} Knowledge that first relieved the individual of their cultural religious indoctrination and then reconciled them to their personal deity.

Sounds reminiscent of 'Do what thou wilt,' and of the Knowledge and Conversation of the HGA.

A little more on this archaic sounding abstraction, the Holy Guardian Angel. How it gets perceived, and oftentimes its definition appears relative to the observer. Even Crowley gave personally contradicting accounts of this motif at different times in his life. Many magicians consider this experience a uniting of the microcosm with the macrocosm. This corresponds with the gnostic aphorism to :

make the inner as the outer, the outer as the inner, then make the two one.

Crowley also called it the epitome of one's True Will. In my experience, the HGA functions as a Guide. It doesn't have to get believed in as "real" in order to serve as an extremely effective, practically useful metaphor. I see it connected with John Lilly's Coincidence Control. It can occur and issue forth in a seemingly endless variety of ways and forms. Robert Anton Wilson illustrates the relativistic, shape-shifting nature of the HGA in his epic Illuminatus! Trilogy, another superior source for I.²:

"You look like an angel," Chips admitted grudgingly, "but I don't believe any of this. Time travel, talking trees, giant toads, none of it. Somebody slipped me a drug."

"Yes, somebody slipped you a drug, but I'm your holy guardian angel, and I'm slipping you this envelope, and it'll make everything all right back in London...

"Who are you, really?"

But the tree only repeated, "Don't lose that envelope," and walked away, turning into an Italian teen-ager again, and then into a gigantic woman carrying a golden apple."

Hoist

I'm a longtime proponent of that particular kind of synergy generated by what John Lilly called, "The Dyadic Cyclone", a two unit group of opposite polarity that works and functions in a special way.

The Dyadic cyclone is the combination of two personal centres. In this book it is a male and female combination -- two rotating cyclones with their enclosed centres, one rotating to the right and the other rotating to the left. In The Dyadic Cyclone, Toni and John ask the question 'Is it possible to merge two centres, two cyclones, one male, one female, in such a way that there can be a rising, quiet centre shared by both?

A question arises: can a Dyadic Cyclone make great music? Recently I've worked on 3 different projects motivated by highly creative Dyads, and the answer, so far, is yes. Two of these remain "in progress" and will be spoken of later. Soon you will be hearing about a powerful new 7 piece group from Norway called Hoist.

The core of Hoist, and their primary songwriters, comprises lead vocalist Stian Leknes and pianist/lead vocalist Marita Røstad. Stian and Marita are a marvelous contrast of opposites in sound, style and background. His vocal sound is rough and gruff, reminiscent of Louis Armstrong, Howling Wolf, Dr. John, and Tom Waits. Stian didn't set out to sound like any of these characters, his voice naturally evolved into it for some unexplained reason when he made the switch from singing death metal songs to Hoist's repertoire which encompasses several genres. Her voice is very sweet and delicate. Marita teaches voice and piano at a prestigious Norwegian conservatory. They both have strong control over their instruments and both sing with tremendous passion. The dynamic of their contrasting vocals recalls the legend of Beauty and the Beast.

Hoist

Hoist's rhythm section is solidly anchored by the brothers Elide, Daniel on drums and Allesandro on percussion. Magnus Mortensen holds down the low end on the acoustic double (upright) bass. Kurt Sprenger's guitar playing ranges from haunting atmospherics to energetic metal style leads. Kristoffer Lo on tuba and flugabone ( as its name suggests, an instrument combining a flugelhorn and a trombone) adds a free jazz sensibility along with low end reinforcement, and dark atmospherics. Lo at times ran his horns through a pedal board and a bass amp.

Their music is existentially electric, eclectic, at times ecstatic, beholden of great beauty hidden inside tales of darkness and tragedy. Folk with really heavy tones is how my assistant described it when asked. Piano driven, storytelling, space exploring, bluesy, jazzy, metallic, tragic and real. The songwriters of Hoist have clearly tapped into reservoirs of knowledge far beyond their own, reaching into what some people call the Collective Consciousness.

Track 2, "Rosemary " tells the tale of a misunderstood, disaffected Illuminatti:

No, it's not what you would think,
Nor is it obvious in anyone's dream,
No it's not the beauty and the peace,
So, she took her love, she took her smile,
does anyone know how her eyes could shine

Hoist.

The third track, "Darkfriend" bears strong similarity to a character known as the Dweller on the Threshold. The description given in the song sounds quite accurate. This character also makes an appearance in Robert Anton Wilson's Schrodinger's Cat trilogy.

"The Murders You Did Not Write," this one written by Lo, is a very heavy, slow New Orleans style dirge, a requiem for the victims of the brutal tragedy that occurred in Norway last year. They told me that everyone in Norway knows people who were killed there because it's such a small country. Songs like these show one way how artists can help heal this kind of psychic pain. I mixed it on Thanksgiving and brought flowers in to help bring the mood out.

After recording "Room 123" I asked them why they chose that number, they said no particular reason other than it fit. I told them about the 23 Conspiracy. The next morning Daniel and Allesandro mentioned a couple of small coincidences with 23 and this project. When they flew back to Norway after the recording, Gate 23 was their connecting gate. Last week I mixed an instrumental track called "Room 122" for the band Materialized.

This project was not without difficulty. To start, Hoist's intention was to record and mix the album at Prairie Sun in California. Unfortunately the State Department turned down their work visa request for some obscure, inconsequential reason. So they asked me to record them in Europe then mix it at Prairie Sun. I chose to record at my favorite studio in Europe, La Fabrique in St. Remy, France.

On the ride from the train station in Avignon to St. Remy I found my attention drawn to the trees and foilage that passed by in the crystalline clear light unique to the south of France. The light still had its intensity despite the overcast skies and stormy weather. The various kinds of trees looked intentionally arranged as if forming some kind of language and engaged in an other-wordly dialog beyond my comprehension. I remembered that Gaul ( ancient France) was home to Druids at one time. Also recalled Robert Graves' investigation of the Celtic Tree-Alphabet language, Ogham, in his classic work, The White Goddess.

A storm began shortly after my arrival at La Fabrique. At around midnight all the power went out and stayed off. We began our session the next morning without any electricity but with news of its expected return in a few hours. The power was restored on time as promised and stayed on for the duration.

While waiting, I gave the band my rap about how strong resistance inevitably accompanies very positive endeavors. Gurdjieff's Law of Three states that every phenomenal event has 3 aspects which he called holy affirming, holy denying, and holy reconciling. Positive, negative, and neutral. Ohms Law, the law that describes how electricity functions, appears a perfect example of Gurdjieff's "second fundamental cosmic law" ie the Law of Three.

Ohm's Law describes the relationship between current (affirming force), resistance ( denying), and voltage (reconciling) in an electrical circuit. Current is equal to Voltage divided by Resistance. If you have a high resistance value, you need to get much more voltage to maintain a strong current. Power describes the rate at which electricity gets used, transferred, or transformed. Power is equal to Current multiplied by Voltage. The amount of Power over time defines the Work done.

In optics, or radiometry, the term power sometimes refers to radiant flux, the average rate of energy transport by electromagnetic radiation, measured in watts. The term "power" is also, however, used to express the ability of a lens or other optical device to focus light. It is measured in dioptres (inverse metres), and equals the inverse of the focal length of the optical device.

- Optical Power

Watts, coincidently, is the name of the Zen Master (first name Alan) who turned Robert Anton Wilson on to Aleister Crowley.

Whether related to Gurdjieff's Law or not, I have repeatedly observed over the years that the more powerful and real the music I'm working on, the stronger the resistance to it. A great example of this occurred when Bill Laswell was producing Yothu Yindi in Australia. The music was powerfully shamanic and vital. All kinds of resistance surrounded the project the epitome probably being when Bill and I were threatened to be taken to jail if we didn't explain what we were doing in Australia. Apparently another producer, the guy who worked with all or most of Australia's pop groups at the time, had phoned Immigration Authorities and filed a complaint. It was true, the label who hired us, Mushroom Records, hadn't given us proper work visas. Bill just told these Feds that we were only rehearsing at the studio in preparation for recording them for real back in New York. They accepted our story with very few questions and appeared even more relieved than we were with our legally approved reality scenario presentation.

This "resistance" to music doesn't seem intentional or malevolent, or maybe I'm just not that paranoid. Like the storm at La Fabrique it appears more like a blind, mechanical occurrence that has to happen to make the circuit as powerful as it can get. Even when a human agency is behind the denying force the action appears mechanical and reflexive. I was amazed that Bill mentioned socializing with that same rival producer in Australia as if nothing had happened, clearly holding no animosity against him. But then why would any conscious individual, out of danger's way, get upset over a mechanical act of nature whether human or not?

O.T.O. reviver Grady McMurtry alluded to the strong resistance against gnostic teaching in the statement, "the gnosis always gets busted" as told in Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger. While making a valid point, the pessimistic ( in that moment) McMurtry seems clearly wrong with the always part. I have never had a music project overwhelmed with resistance so much that it failed to be brought to completion once it had started. Some proposed projects didn't get off the ground due to blind mechanical resistance. Bill Laswell was set to make an album in homage, and about the influence of film director Alejandro Jodorowsky on music. The funding was in place and we met with Jodorowsky in his Paris apartment. He was agreeable to the idea, and also very generous with his hospitality. Unfortunately, due to the childish and boorish behavior of some American politicians against French interests around the start of Iraq War II (blind, mechanical resistance), the funding dried up, the project cancelled. Any album that has been able to start working in the studio has never failed to be completed, in my experience. Readers of my interview in Tape Op a couple of years ago heard of my story of out of control electricity frying our Pro Tools rig and 2 expensive mics when recording Sibiri Samakein in Mali, West Africa. Despite the challenge, the recording got made ( the studio had a back-up DAW ie a digital audio workstation) came out on KSK and sounds amazing. I welcome resistance, bring it on!

Once Hoist and I were up and running things were going well - sounding incredible as the World will soon hear- until one rocking take picking up steam suddenly had the sound abruptly stop. Quite a shock, last thing you're expecting. Turns out the mute switch on the Studer A800 Multitrack was engaging without permission, as if anything blind or mechanical needs permission.The able technical staff at La Fabrique found a solution after wrestling with it for a bit. After that, our space was set, our circle drawn, and nothing major further interfered with what turned out to be a substantial and powerful musical document called Ami Noir.