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SKILL. THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF THIS SECTION IS TO PROVOKE AND INSPIRE THE EFFORT. IN OTHER WORDS, IT'S A MASSIVE PROVOCATION. This, like the nomorefakenews home page, is a daily scroll. Like no other, I assure you. It consists of quotes from authors, art reviews, pieces from my own book-in-development, NOTES TOWARD POWER AND FREEDOM, and...many other things. Who can say? And so, here we go.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25. At this point, I have written all I need to write on this Power X page. And as you can see, I have begun integrating the material and point of view of Power X with my home page. If I feel the need to return to this page and make new posts, I will. Otherwise everything will be written for the home page of www.nomorefakenews.com. I suggest you read and re-read the material on this Power X scroll. There is much to think about and act upon.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24. DECENTRALIZE ENERGY SUPPLY GLOBALLY.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23. Belittled, ignored, downplayed, ridiculed, the power of the individual imagination flies like a great flag over the catastrophes of nations. It is the power that can create a different sort of world, a better world.
ADD: Since 1776, it HAS created a better world, once a relative freedom prevailed which allowed it to flourish.
ADD: Now is the time. These are the days.
ADD: To find more of that power. To use it. To earn a new place in the sun for all people everywhere.
ADD: Who are the proponents of imagination? To what party do they belong? Where is their leader?
ADD: None of these exist. Never did. You are the one. You are the proponent. In all times and places, such individuals have existed. They discover that they can create without limits. The potential is there. The power is there.
ADD: A group dedicated to the imagination would fail. It would degenerate into programmatic assertions and platforms and binding regulations. It would eventually place the collective over the individual. That is not the way.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22. What is your power?
ADD: What is your imagination?
ADD: What is your creative power?
ADD: How can you tap into it in a deeper way?
ADD: Where does your creative power come from?
ADD: What is reality?
ADD: What do you want to create?
ADD: These seem like the most foolish questions to ask at a time like this. But in fact THESE are the questions which, being brushed aside as inconsequential, have led us to the current crisis.
ADD: These are questions which, when unexamined, give rise to substitutes that result in people throwing bombs and crashing planes and launching missiles.
ADD: The "secret societies" which control this planet have answered those questions for themselves, and however insane their answers are, they have acted on them.
ADD: The bottom line is, they have one power and one power only: to keep you from asking and answering the questions and finding more and more creative power with which to act.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21. If you have any capacity or interest in this area: develop alternative energies. Now.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20. See the puppet game. See the string-pullers/see them do their work. Unravel the deception. Create a different world. This is the time.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19. Not only you but every human being shares the common impulse to create reality. In the long run, you win with other people by treating them as if they have this desire, and as if they can accomplish it. They can, and so can you.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18. A person says, "In view of this tragedy, how can I mount my own dream and ride it into the future? How can I believe that my own power is equal to all that devastation? No, that devastation is greater."
ADD: WRONG.
ADD: WRONG.
ADD: Now, if you tie your dream to a project which will ALSO reverse the lunacy, then you just multiplied that power of yours by a factor of 1000.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17. When the enemy seems implacable and too huge to approach, you have the perfect opportunity to use that belittled faculty called the imagination. If you do just that, you discover you have a new foothold on the universe itself, to say nothing of other universes.
SAT.-SUN., SEPT 15-16. Remember, you have the perfect right and the absolute power to believe anything you want to.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14. Tragedies and disasters and great crimes induce people to fall back on their own hard-wired ideas about reality and right and wrong. The very ideas they have long ago given up for more intelligent and wise and creative discoveries about life...suddenly those old ideas resurface and they are once again front and center.
ADD: The life they are trying to create suddenly becomes irrelevant. All that goes out the window.
ADD: That is what THEY want you to do. They want you to revert to type. They want you to polarize. They want you to go back to being an irrational human being.
ADD: Don't do it.
ADD: That way is nowhere.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13. The rebel does not give up. The rebel does not seek to deny what happened, he moves out in front and works for the answers. The rebel takes risks. He does not spend all his time figuring out where the price of oil will go, or the price of gold, he forwards new energies like hydrogen. He may think about oil and war and what will in fact happen, but he makes the NEW happen too. He is the vanguard. He is relentless. He is not totally caught up in the moment. He does not a seek a premature "healing" that is merely cutting off both the problem and the solution. He works to control his emotions. It may not be easy, but he works at it. He also uses his emotions to awake the slumbering ones.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12. No one said it would be easy. That doesn't mean it isn't possible.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11. To keep your head, while around you all others are losing theirs. It's not just a platitude.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10. Reading a translation of the I Ching, that famous work of hexagrams which can be used to "do a reading" for a person. Actually, these symbols are a system, and although they are used for divination, their real purpose has a larger reach. Readers simply study the meanings of all the 64 hexagrams and glean what they can from this fascinating philosophic machine, as one commentator has called it.
ADD: I noticed that hexagram number 1 is CREATIVE POWER.
ADD: The other 63 seem to slide down from there.
ADD: In other words, everything after hexagram 1 is a way of dealing with life and society on lesser terms.
ADD: Much wisdom is possible re hexagrams 2 through 64, but it is a caliber of wisdom which is a substitute for the absence of hexagram 1.
ADD: So it is with life. One can adjust all over the place, but without imagination and creative power, there is a hole.
ADD: The hole cannot be filled except by claiming and using and understanding the underlying meaning of creative power.
ADD: And as I never tire of saying, every human being has the soul of an artist.
ADD: Does this mean that everyone must paint or compose music? Of course not. Does it mean that those who do are automatically living life with great knowledge? Of course not. That's why I say a person has to understand the MEANING of creative power. The meaning in terms of its own implied philosophy, in terms of how creative power truly lays out what a human being can be all about.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 9. Another solution. Become a videographer. Travel around the US, or focus on your own town or city. Tape interviews with people. All sorts of people. Ask them anything. Get them to talk about what's really on their minds. At length. Put up a website and show the videos.
ADD: Viewers would begin to see the difference between what media present as real human beings and what real human beings have to say when they get the chance. For better or worse. Just show it.
ADD: I guarantee you, this will be quite different from the "reality-TV" shows or the internet sites that track the daily lives of roommates.
ADD: Under the general category of WAKE-UP CALL.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8. A reader writes, "When I first came across your website, I was overwhelmed by all the negative news. I was chilled to the bone by what I found out. Nevertheless, I went ahead and subscribed to your newsletter, and I discovered an even deeper level of manipulation. Surprisingly, it didn't make me feel worse. It made me feel better. I had reached 'rock bottom.' If this was what was going on then I could somehow deal with it. As you've written, it's being in the middle ground that causes all the anxiety. You know what is wrong, but you don't know how the strings are being pulled. The newsletter gave me the missing pieces of the puzzle. It still does, with all the new revelations every week. Then you started the PowerX page. I began to see daylight. I saw my own role in changing the paradigm. That was the key. I changed from being an observer to a doer, a rebel. I see how all these elements of your information fit together..."
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7. Today's post is simply this: Read my article on education on the home page and decide what a true rebel would do about THAT.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. Once any kind of barrier is erected between learning and action, several things ensue.
ADD: People begin to believe that only "positive news" is acceptable. Why? Because truthful "negative news" is too frustrating, since no action will be taken.
ADD: Hence, George Washington might have said, "Don't give me these reports about King George and taxes and all that. It's a downer. I'm trying to run a farm here."
ADD: Thankfully, that was not his response.
ADD: Where, in the learning process, do we discover that action is irrelevant?
ADD: The truth, even if it is "negative," is supposed to be a spur to action, to correct injustice and create a better state of affairs.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5. The rebel realizes that suppressed technology in the past has changed the present, that we would live in a different world right now if medical and energy technologies which were crushed and lost were available in 2001.
ADD: The rebel can think about these things, and can work to restore lost technologies.
ADD: Another solution.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4. The rebel does not succumb to paranoia. He recognizes the different between finding out what is really going on in the world and succumbing to that news.
ADD: The rebel knows that, if he persists in DOING NOTHING, then the truth will paralyze him.
ADD: You cannot discover the truth and do nothing for very long.
ADD: Discovery and action go hand in hand.
ADD: Action is the antidote that burns away the bad news.
ADD: Intelligent action making use of the imagination is the CURE.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3. The rebel is not waiting for answers.
ADD: The rebel is not waiting for solutions.
ADD: The rebel is not waiting for support for his ideas.
ADD: The rebel is making a new beachhead.
ADD: The rebel is not afraid of truth. He uses truth for its function: to serve individuals. If what seems to be true does not serve the individual, then it is rooted in a deeper falsity.
ADD: The rebel sees this. He sees "the illusion of truth" for what it is. NOT ENOUGH.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2. Readers are always asking, "What can we do to create solutions?" You'd be surprised at how many answers are lurking on this page and the home page. Here's another one. Read today's piece on the home page and start a group of citizens which rallies to side of the small farmer against the USDA re terminator technology. A very worthy cause, on behalf of people, food, survival.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1. I have made a tentative arrangement with an art dealer to carry some of my work. In our discussion, we spoke about painting as a language, a glimpse of another level of discourse, one which perhaps was once present but is now largely lost.
ADD: I say this is more than possible. Somewhere, sometime, we were able to "talk" with symbol and form and energy and shape and color in a back-and-forth way. Such conversations were the norm...and they were very exhilarating.
ADD: They helped define life on another level. This level has been largely shut down, but it can be resurrected.
ADD: Not as artist and audience. But as CONVERSATION.
ADD: SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF ART.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 31. Two readers today. The first writes, "Will power is a lesson that I have been learning more about lately. If I know what I really want to do--and now I do--then will power is the only thing separating me from getting what I want. It's stark. But the path is very clear."
ADD: Reader two, B., a valuable resource for many articles and insights, informs me that Michelangelo, every morning, would eat a plate of pasta and then go chip rock for sixteen hours.
ADD: At the age of 89.
ADD: Every day.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 30. A reader writes, "I've lived my whole life on the basis of my imagination. But I never stopped to consider what this means. Now I'm beginning to realize that imagination is a power which helps define what life is really all about. I'm taking charge of this aspect, using it much more consciously. That's a big difference. In fact, the conscious part has changed my whole approach to my life. I find I have a lot more energy, and my outlook is very positive. Things aren't perfect, and I still come up against problems, but now I have a basis for dealing with those problems. This is quite a change for me. As far as what I want to do in life, I'm thinking and planning in much bigger ways..."
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29. Here is another message from a reader: "I found it troubling to think about what I really wanted to do in life, as opposed to what I was already doing. But I managed to go through with it. The results, after a few weeks, were amazing. I've started to plan out my future in a completely different way. I'm still having problems with this shift, but they're my problems. I caused them, and I'm feeling I can solve them."
TUESDAY, AUGUST 28. A reader submits the following: "This imagination thing...I couldn't get a grasp on it. I couldn't really find it within myself. But when I began to think about what I really wanted to do in life, the fog moved away. I saw a road I wanted to take. And then my imagination turned on like a light bulb. It was very powerful...I suppose the lesson is, the imagination is not interested in working for something that's not interesting or inspiring. But when you're ready to move in a direction that really suits you, the whole thing changes..."
ADD: Exactly.
MONDAY, AUGUST 27. Creating out of the imagination has a momentum factor.
ADD: When the velocity reaches a certain point, one begins to realize that reality is a kind of taffy-energy.
ADD: It is very pliable.
ADD: An artist friend has told me that when he works up a head of steam in his studio late at night--and this guy paints every day of his life for long hours--objects begin lifting off tables and moving around.
ADD: I believe him.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 26. This is a good day for reading this page all the way down and making some notes and planning that thing called the future.
ADD: Yes, a human being can conceive of a future and then launch a plan and action.
ADD: Something new.
ADD: Something different.
ADD: An invitation.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 25. The rebel is suspicious of "global solutions."
ADD: He knows they usually add up to less individual freedom.
ADD: The rebel correctly assumes that, all over the world, there are local heroes who are solving serious community problems where they occur.
ADD: The rebel knows the difference between top-down and bottom-up.
ADD: The rebel understands that the idea that no one is doing anything good anywhere is a media-fostered delusion.
ADD: The rebel steps up to the plate and makes his ideas known. He is not waiting.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 24. The rebel does not seek perfection in society.
ADD: He leaves that to the fascists.
ADD: He knows that every attempt at such perfection is an obsession for control, not morality, not freedom, not justice.
ADD: The rebel is not anti-science, he is against the use of science to create perfection.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 23. The rebel knows that there are different kinds of laws. There are laws that govern society, whose purpose should be the protection of freedom and the prosecution of those who interfere with freedom.
ADD: Those laws provide the platform from which free individuals can create the future.
ADD: Then there are laws which purport to limit a view of what reality can be. The rebel knows that these laws are entirely whimsical and bogus.
ADD: Those latter laws always posit some authority who has special knowledge about reality.
ADD: This is a con.
ADD: The rebel discovers this.
ADD: The rebel is concerned with getting past those laws.
ADD: The rebel is not merely an information junkie. He wants action, and he wants to spread the truth.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22. When somebody tells the rebel the whole world or the whole universe is built THIS way, and it has immutable laws, he starts sniffing around for the con.
ADD: Because if its name isn't FREEDOM, there is going to be a con.
ADD: The "immutable" laws are ALWAYS framed by a few people and their armies who want control.
ADD: Sooner or later, it becomes apparent that there are whole layers of laws, laws behind laws, and "researchers" exult in discovering them.
ADD: These laws maybe exceptionally useful in solving problems, but they are cons.
ADD: Scams.
ADD: Shell games, designed to keep the kiddies down on the farm.
ADD: Just because certain laws of physics enable people to build an atomic bomb...that doesn't mean we are bound by those laws. It's a CON.
ADD: A limited truth can be a con.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 21. The rebel is not satisfied unless he is creating.
ADD: The rebel may try to sabotage that impulse, but it won't work.
ADD: The non-rebel strives to fit in. The rebel seeks to invent.
ADD: The rebel looks in from the outside, but he affects what is inside through action.
ADD: The rebel does not accept a morality whose highest goal is to fit in.
ADD: Others may believe that the rebel is perched on an abyss, but the rebel knows otherwise.
ADD: He knows that a society based on conformity and mechanical organizations is a dying art form.
ADD: A rebel inspires others even if they tell him otherwise.
MONDAY, AUGUST 20. The rebel knows that patterns of mind and thought keep people confined to boxes of various sizes.
ADD: The rebel knows the difference between liberation which is really nothing more than random destructive action and true freedom.
ADD: The rebel flies the flag of real freedom.
ADD: The rebel knows the difference between a phony use of the idea of creativity to justify stupid actions and real imagination.
ADD: The rebel flies the flag of imagination next to the flag of real freedom.
ADD: The rebel has the soul of a real artist.
ADD: Without imagination, this world will sink into a swamp of systems which will never liberate anyone.
ADD: As DH Lawrence wrote, "Great souls, the only riches."
ADD: A great soul is creating and he knows he is creating.
ADD: All systems of human social order suffer the fate of decay, because they are not being imagined with great fire NOW, because they become mechanical.
ADD: The American system opened the door to individual freedom, and whether it lives or dies depends on what people create with their freedom.
ADD: TRUE freedom is one of the ultimates.
ADD: We may surround this freedom with lethargy and with all sorts of conditions and we may attack those who use this freedom to do immoral things...but in the end, the question is: ARE WE GOING TO FIRE THIS HARD-WON FREEDOM WITH CREATIONS WHICH WILL CARRY US INTO A FUTURE OF EXPANDED CONSCIOUSNESS AND INDIVIDUAL POWER, OR ARE WE GOING TO BURY OURSELVES IN MECHANICAL DETAILS?
SUNDAY, AUGUST 19. The rebel is not only solving problems.
ADD: The rebel is finding problems and is discovering how they were created.
ADD: The rebel, in other words, is searching out the problems that give rise to problems.
ADD: The rebel is always widening the struggle.
ADD: The rebel is looking for underlying causes.
ADD: The rebel finds that failure to have faith in the imagination is a core problem.
ADD: The rebel finds that people have endless numbers of excuses for ignoring their own creative powers, and that no amount of surgically removing these excuses will put an end to them.
ADD: The excuses are turned out on an assembly line.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 18. Once again, today's posting here is simply a recommendation that you read the first posting of the day on the nomorefakenews home page. Yesterday's newsletter interview with Jack True was all about power X, and it was one of many I had over the years with Jack. We were colleagues in fleshing out methods by which the individual could arrive at many new plateaus of creative power.
ADD: NO LIMITS.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 17. For a completely different view of the map of consciousness and creativity, I recommend all the Seth books by Jane Roberts.
ADD: Smash hits at the time of their publication 30-40 years ago, these books are extremely bracing, whether or not you agree with their conclusions.
ADD: In fact, that is their beauty. They provoke thought about basic questions of the Self.
ADD: How vast is Self? What are we possibly doing, behind the scenes of our own awareness, to forward our cosmic goals?
ADD: Seth is a "channeled entity." Which provokes more disagreement. Which is good. You can't read these books without launching your own introspective investigation of your power, your imagination, and the possible infinite dimensions of consciousness.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 16. The only posting today is, read (or read again) the top posting on the nomorefakenews home page. And think about it. And get back to me if you are motivated to.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15. The rebel finds facts and then connects those facts to form a picture.
ADD: The picture informs. The picture spells out what is happening behind the drone of information.
ADD: The picture educates.
ADD: The rebel discovers that a true picture is an inspiration, a call to action.
ADD: A picture formed out of facts focuses the mind.
ADD: The rebel's RESPONSE to the picture is a creative act.
ADD: When the rebel finds that he is stalling at the picture, he also finds that he is becoming confused and unfocused. He is delaying his response.
ADD: The desire to act from absolute 100% information is an excuse. In important matters, no one acts from 100%.
ADD: The rebel acts.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 14. The rebel finds answers. He finds them in the past and in the present and in the ether floating around, and he finds them within himself. Wherever he finds them, he then CREATES them.
ADD: The rebel creates.
ADD: The rebel comes to terms with the fact that he has the soul of an artist, because any other conclusion, sooner or later, has the effect of shrinking the dimensions in which the rebel can act and drains away vital energies.
ADD: The rebel, as one reader, B., pointed out, knows that things can get better or worse, and he knows the difference.
ADD: He goes about creating that which will make things better.
ADD: The rebel knows he is creating. He doesn't shrink away from this.
ADD: What he creates may be a past gem that has been lost, or it may be a gem that has never been seen before, or it may be a gem that has never been made before...but the act of creating makes it new and makes it now and makes it, well, COMING FROM HIM.
ADD: For example, in this sense, creating the US Constitution now, even though it was formulated long ago, is a LIVING enterprise, and it has human agents NOW who are doing more than reinstating lost glory. They are breathing new life into that document. They are putting their shoulders and minds to the wheel of change. They are both putting things right and making something new. They ARE reinstating a truth, and they are inventing a symphony which was written 200 years ago and has been gathering dust. They are re-inventing it with every note they now play.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 9. The rebel wants to make sense. He wants other people to understand that sense.
ADD: The rebel finds out the difference between what is commonly accepted and what is actually true.
ADD: And he presses on that.
ADD: He presses hard.
ADD: The rebel is not walking a fine line. He is building a super-highway of truth.
ADD: The rebel learns that justice can be obtained on that super-highway.
ADD: The rebel discovers how to translate his ideals into information and knowledge.
ADD: The rebel does not wait for the truth to hit him in the head. He discovers it and spreads it.
ADD: The rebel does not linger forever in the satisfaction of knowing he has a handle on truth. He spreads the truth.
ADD: The rebel is creating new experience.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8. The rebel sees where things are going. He acts on his knowledge of the future.
ADD: The rebel discovers there are many possible futures that can be created.
ADD: The rebel tempers his impulse to destroy with the knowledge that a better situation must replace a worse one.
ADD: The rebel finds ways to succeed.
ADD: The rebel is looking to build a better reality.
ADD: But the rebel does not delude himself that this better reality can be introduced without the rejection of the worse reality.
ADD: The rebel knows how to reject.
ADD: The rebel does not wallow in some sort of fairyland where "everything good works out" without effort.
ADD: The rebel does not confuse taking a short vacation with "allowing the natural evolution of better futures to take place."
ADD: The rebel does not stand aside.
ADD: The rebel does not believe in "a natural evolution to higher realities" absent human effort.
ADD: The rebel does not think that "the stock market of human existence" is a cosmic cycle that is beyond human control.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 7. The rebel may believe he is free from every form and message of brainwashing and mind control, but sooner or later he realizes that even he has bought into some brands of lunacy and limitation and he accepts that easily and then offloads these heretofore hidden influences on his mind.
ADD: The rebel is quick to see that categories of struggle such as left vs. right and capitalism vs. socialism, while they have limited validity, are really masks for the larger issues and larger struggle, such as, CONTROL BY THE FEW OVER THE MANY. FREEDOM VS. SLAVERY. FREE MARKET VS. RIGGED MARKET.
ADD: The rebel takes action. The rebel spreads the truth. The rebel finds a way to speak the truth without having to put up with every single objection and resistance made by every single person...
ADD: The rebel on one level knows it is all a game, but he also knows and feels that the future of life on the planet is REAL, and justice and injustice are REAL.
ADD: The rebel is not afraid of anger. He is not afraid of HIS OWN ANGER. The rebel does not believe he must transform that anger into love. OUTRAGE AT INJUSTICE IS REAL.
ADD: The rebel finds a way to express his anger so that it has effect. He is not just screaming at random 24 hours a day.
ADD: The rebel discovers that when he does express his outrage so that it will affect others and move them, he is not bathing in a stagnant pool of his own anger. He is not seething.
ADD: But then, the rebel believes in the future. He is not dedicated to failure.
ADD: GIVEN ALL THIS, OUTRAGE AT INJUSTICE WHICH RESULTS IN CONCENTRATED ACTION TOWARD TRUE CHANGE CLEANSES THE PORES.
MONDAY, AUGUST 6. Okay, I think you get the point about this amazing rebel called Merlin. I could go on, but you get the point.
ADD: Let us get back to the generic true rebel. The true rebel does not give up. He doesn't wallow in his own struggles. He acts.
ADD: The rebel finds an avenue. He finds a way to teach and lead.
ADD: The rebel digs for the gold. He accepts the fact that there is ordinary soil and ordinary rock to get through on his search for the gold.
ADD: The rebel doesn't accept the eternal corruptibility of the world. He doesn't accept the picture of the world which the media paints.
ADD: The rebel paints his own picture and he shows it to others. He shows others that history is, among other things, a record of human achievement.
ADD: He finds ways to wake himself up and wake others up from their usual slumber and acceptance of "things as they are."
ADD: The rebel will reach a hundred people to find that one who wants to wake up now. The rebel learns that waking up is a progressive thing. It is contagious.
ADD: The rebel does not give up.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 5. From an artistic point of view, the Roundtable was an architecture. A band of men welded together by a sworn oath, girded in metal, in steel, devoted to a cause, bound to the leader--yet a company of equals.
ADD: The Roundtable was Merlin's dream. A dream-machine of the coming age, a machine that would attract attention in the mythical part of the consciousness of everyone. The Roundtable. Almost an egalitarian machine. Part of the new era of technology, a part which would never be forgotten.
ADD: A juggernaut-dream of armor and hope and promise and devotion to a cause...the finding of the Grail, the missing object which would restore a magic and harmony among equals to civilization.
ADD: This was Merlin's immense creation: a machine of equals girded in steel, in power, devoted almost unconsciously to the restoration of magic. A company of men flying a flag of the new rational religion and yet seeking the older forms of magic.
ADD: This was no small accomplishment.
ADD: It was the answer to the question, how do you make a human machine that wants unconsciously to find its own magical roots?
SATURDAY, AUGUST 4. Merlin foresaw a day when humans would be looked upon as machines, in a new technological era. Even religion and faith and prayer would be standardized.
ADD: He ensured that the mysterious, multi-dimensional search for the Grail, by the Roundtable knights, would result in tales and legends of encounters with magical creatures and beings (e.g., fairies, witches, guides)...and these stories would proliferate through time, giving people a remnant of the Old Dream.
ADD: The dream of magic, the creation of realities in spontaneous non-scientific ways.
ADD: The true rebel does not believe that human society can be transformed by new social arrangements alone. The true rebel recognizes that there is an open door into other dimensions of experience.
ADD: The true rebel does not have faith in the engineered society.
ADD: The true rebel wants the future to yield to freedom over tyranny.
ADD: Merlin was launching a potent message in a bottle to the future. Which survived in the form of much literature and legend passed down to generations of people starving for a way out of the box.
ADD: That is Merlin's legacy.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 3. Merlin is the rebel with a cause. He launches the search for the Grail, through Arthur, and reality is decentralized. Knights journey to many different sorts of realms and realize that space-time is a box among many dimensions...and the whole coming era on Earth will be an attempt to focus entirely on the space-time box.
ADD: The rebel decentralizes reality.
ADD: The rebel does not remain true to a cause when the cause is exposed as a limitation on perception.
ADD: The rebel discredits all attempts to define and enclose some ultimate external reality.
ADD: Merlin's inspired "search for the Grail" opened up the space-time box and revealed the magical proliferating nature of realitieS.
ADD: And this was the legend, embodied in the Roundtable, that he passed on to the consciousness of the human race. For the time--like NOW--when such a legend would be needed.
ADD: This universe and its presumed rulers are an attempt to CENTRALIZE reality.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 2. Merlin sees the oncoming rush of the new ceramic morality, which can be shattered by a single blow. This morality, which replaces the much more flexible and humane morality of the era of magic, will be demonstrated by the affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, who is the wife of Arthur.
ADD: Their secret affair will be discovered, and it will smash the tight trust of the Roundtable.
ADD: There is little Merlin can do about this.
ADD: So he looks elsewhere for answers. He assures that the search for the Grail by the knights will continue. For it is in this search that some remnant of the magical era can be preserved. The knights journey into other dimensions not of this Earth. They encounter new creatures and beings, and they bring back this incredible knowledge with them.
ADD: Time and space are not merely parts of a box. One of the essences of magic is understanding and experiencing this.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1. MERLIN, THE ULTIMATE REBEL.
ADD: Merlin said, "I will create a society of knights through my pupil, Arthur. He will form an alchemical mixture of the new and old in this Roundtable. The new will be the fervent iron-clad loyalty of principle and asceticism and puritanical morality and marital fidelity and brotherhood. This is the coming coloration of morality. This is the new thing, in which the sin is the hammer that breaks the porcelain of prescribed behavior.
ADD: "Arthur and his knights will become the embodiment of this stern and attractive and fragile new morality, and yet we will mix with that, molecule by molecule, a sense of the old era of magic, in which the brotherhood confers more-than-human power, in which spells and ceremony are articles of faith that yield up psychic powers, in which the sword Excalibur functions as a wand and weapon of more-than-physical power.
ADD: "And with this mixture of the old and new intact, this myth of Arthur, this chapter of history will live forever in the minds of future humans. They will be drawn by the ascetic quality of it, but they will also find the spirit of magic, and they will accept that too. And thus, as the machine age dawns, as the age of rational religion dawns, the memory of the old magic will never be eradicated...because it will live as an infiltrated archetype in the souls of everyone, as the myth and legend of Arthur and his knights."
ADD: And it has.
TUESDAY, JULY 31. WHO WAS MERLIN? He was a man from the old age of magic. He was a philosopher of sorts, an observer who had watched, countless times, in countless dimensions, the unraveling of one age and the coming into being of another.
ADD: Merlin has seen, over and over, the erosion of societies and the building of new harsher societies on the ashes.
ADD: He has seen people put their faith in the power of machines to create. He has seen people lose faith in their own ability to create.
ADD: He has seen people weave together the dream of a single god who will embody all the creation that is. He has watched with fascination as the people abandon their own capacity to create in favor of a central ruler who does all the creating.
ADD: In this incarnation, he takes on Arthur as his student. Arthur, who will one day be king of the knights.
ADD: He teaches Arthur that the future Roundtable will be a magic circle of trust and loyalty.
ADD: And that, imbued with this faith, its members will be able to carry out the great Adventure. They will be able to overcome enemies. They will be able to FIND THE MISSING GRAIL.
ADD: Merlin knows that the meaning of the grail is not clear to those who will search for it. He knows that it will take many forms in the minds of the knights. He knows that the grail is not the object which will build the religion of the new god into an unstoppable force.
ADD: Rather, the grail is the familiar object which has been lost, and the object which will restore harmony to the realm. Millions of times, in the infinity of dimensions, he has seen this drama played out. A realm of magic finds its harmony dissolved, and the object which in its magic will restore that essential goodness must be located and brought back to the throne where the good king waits for the restoration.
ADD: This will be the mission of the Roundtable. It is doomed to failure on certain fronts...and yet...
EARLY EDITION, TUESDAY, JULY 31. CONTINUING THE REWRITTEN MYTH OF MERLIN.
ADD: The sword, Excalibur, was the point of perfection rising through the dream into the present.
ADD: It was the impossible object, the thing imbued with power and magic so that it could be used to achieve an almost impervious protectiveness from harm.
ADD: In this, it was a holdover from the age of magic, in which thousands of creatures and beings and people created new things and sights and smells and sounds and moods and colorations and art and structures from nothing, spontaneously, or from existing energy snatched out of the ether.
ADD: But the sword was also a an artifact brought about through intense labor, and in this it was almost a machine.
ADD: It suggested the new age which was being born, the technological age, the new era. It was an era in which the old magics would fade into oblivion, to be replaced by a monotheism, by a religious posture in which the supplicant would seek salvation from the pain and weariness of the declining ALIVENESS and richness of the age of magic.
ADD: The age of magic passes into the age of the machine. The age of magic and spontaneous creation which is not bound by "ordinary science" passes into an age of religion in which a "rational god" is posited as the single ruler of All. Who makes all the laws of existence and offers in return, salvation from strife.
ADD: This is where MERLIN positioned himself. In between the ages. And he chose as his great pupil, Arthur. He offered Arthur a clear track to obtaining the sword, Excalibur.
ADD: Arthur was a classic blank slate, a student waiting for the teacher. A boy who contained the seeds of the leader, the appearance of the leader. He lived in a somewhat puzzled undercurrent, because he was trying to see through the fog of his own destiny. And finally, he did. But that is later.
MONDAY, JULY 30. THE MYTH OF MERLIN. THE INSIDE SCOOP.
ADD: Once upon a time, there were many intersecting dimensions. There still are, but we've forgotten all about it. We're drunk and stoned on tranqs. We're bleary, but all that will now change.
ADD: Merlin of course was a magician. He was THE TWILIGHT MAGICIAN.
ADD: He created that which was not there before--which, after all, is the definition of magic.
ADD: Why twilight? Because he positioned himself in those times and places where there was a passing from an age of diversity and sparkling wit and magic into an age of THE SINGLE THING, THE DRIED OUT RELIGION, THE OVERSEER, THE EXHAUSTION.
ADD: Merlin was the bridge guy. He presided over the slow-motion disaster. And eventually he tired of this. He became too sad, was reborn too many times in the same role. He became bored with his own gig.
ADD: So he decided that with Arthur, this would all change. King Arthur would be his most subtle creation, the one who would sink into the very soul and subconscious of the race and stay there for as long as necessary, waiting to be reborn as THE HARBINGER OF THE ARTIST, THE VAST CREATOR WHO KNOWS NO LIMITS AND NO EXHAUSTION.
ADD: This was Merlin's plan, and it had many, many improvised parts.
ADD: First, there was the Lady of the Lake. She is the dream itself coming out of the depths below the still surface. She is the signal that the thing has begun. She pulls away from the dark bottom and slowly moves up to the surface, raising above her head the GREAT HONED SWORD.
ADD: And the sword comes up first out of the water, its tip first into the gloomy afternoon, the silver and gray afternoon. That glinting perfect sword, that machine, that thing honed to exceeding perfection coming up first out of the water and breaking the surface of the dream like a thing out of Dali. The surreal moment.
ADD: The impossible occurrence. The entrance into nature of the honed and polished perfect thing. The magic weapon which can defeat any enemy. The work of art which can bring down the mindless forces of oppression.
ADD: And yet...it is not exactly a work of art. It is a technological product. It is the beginning of another age. It is the intrusion of the machine into the pastoral meadow and forest.
ADD: The meaning of the sword is startling and hopeful and ominous all at the same time. Excalibur. The thing which will be transported to the stone where it will be placed, waiting for the man who can remove it.
ADD: The sword. The entirely unpredicted object. Unique. Riveting to the eye. Absorbing the desire for power, for bringing Justice to the world. The sword opens the way. It releases the desire for justice. It comes up out of the dream held by the dripping hand of the Lady and she emerges too and very slowly, her hair plastered with a great sheen against her head like a helmet.
ADD: She is asleep. She is sleeping with the sword in her hand. She is the unconscious dream producing the desired object against all odds.
ADD: And Merlin has arranged this moment. He has sponsored it. He is present for it on the edge of the water in the trees, watching the new clock of time come into being. But this time, he says, it will not end in sorrow. He has a different way. A way to infiltrate the coming SINGLE OPPRESSIVE KINGDOM WITH A MEMORY THAT WILL NOT DIE.
ADD: More later....
SUNDAY, JULY 29. A rebel has faith in freedom.
ADD: A rebel believes that freedom is an answer.
ADD: A rebel believes that if more people understood freedom, they would never have a child unless they were prepared to raise that child in freedom--which means, in part, that the parents DO NOT ABANDON THE CHILD TO FREEDOM, they teach freedom, they give freedom, they reveal freedom, they show that freedom is a living breathing thing--not a cop-out.
ADD: Freedom means not gouging someone else's freedom.
ADD: Freedom is life.
ADD: Freedom means respecting another's freedom.
ADD: Freedom is much more than trying to make a child a copy of the parent. Freedom means much more than passively letting a child destroy himself.
ADD: Freedom is the springboard. From freedom comes imagination and creation.
ADD: Sooner or later, a free child wants to learn. And when he does, he really learns.
SATURDAY, JULY 28. A rebel is not WAITING AROUND.
ADD: A rebel invents SOLUTIONS.
ADD: A rebel knows that a paucity of apparent solutions is a self-created mirage.
ADD: A rebel knows that what is wrong with the world is no excuse for doing nothing.
ADD: A rebel PROCEEDS.
ADD: A rebel doesn't waste his time trying to awaken the devotees of sleep.
ADD: A rebel doesn't get hung up on those who won't look at the truth.
ADD: A rebel doesn't use the intractability of others as an excuse for doing nothing.
ADD: A rebel doesn't spend his life on those who won't get out of the box.
ADD: A rebel recognizes the symptoms of those who utterly believe in authority.
ADD: A rebel recognizes those who put their faith and freedom in the hands of authorities.
ADD: A rebel does not cower before scientists with their pronouncements.
ADD: A rebel invents SOLUTIONS.
FRIDAY, JULY 27. The true rebel both attacks and creates.
ADD: The rebel is not trying to build a single world for everyone else. He is trying to build freedom.
ADD: The freedom from which individuals can build many worlds.
ADD: The rebel can intensely create his own word while still understanding that others build their own.
ADD: The rebel finds or creates a platform from which to act.
ADD: The rebel understands that acceptance can easily become passivity.
ADD: The rebel does not accept acceptance as the ultimate principle.
ADD: The rebel does not accept that the world is doomed to be what it is.
ADD: The rebel does not act within boundaries of stagnation.
ADD: The rebel destroys stagnation.
ADD: The rebel is not a fan of "the human condition."
ADD: The rebel changes the human condition.
THURSDAY, JULY 26. I keep getting emails about the rebel series of pieces, so I'm continuing.
ADD: A rebel does not accept defeat. Crashing into the ashes becomes somehow the occasion for a new offensive. A new spring offensive.
ADD: A rebel reaches out. Even after he has painted himself into a corner.
ADD: A rebel knows that his imagination is always there. It can never be destroyed. The destruction of imagination is impossible.
ADD: A rebel is, like a good fighter, always looking for openings.
ADD: A rebel will deliver the truth in whatever form he chooses.
ADD: A rebel does not waste his time asking for permission to oppose the villains.
ADD: A rebel does not conclude that wallowing in crap is more world-wise.
ADD: A rebel makes sure he is not being mindless and stupid.
ADD: A rebel does not accept what ANY group tells him merely because the group appears to be devoted to the Good.
ADD: A rebel does not reject power.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 25. "Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night." Edgar Allen Poe.
ADD: "One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves." Albert Camus, The Rebel.
ADD: "On the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence--through a curious transposition peculiar to our times--it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself." Camus, The Rebel.
ADD: Think about this as a perfect description of the medical cartel at work.
ADD: "Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being." Camus, The Rebel.
ADD: "What is a rebel? A man who says no." Camus, The Rebel.
ADD: "The theme of permanent revolution is thus carried into individual existence." Camus, The Rebel.
ADD: The true rebel is not a criminal. The true rebel builds new things.
ADD: The true rebel is involved with art.
ADD: The rebel learns how to accept what is and how to reject what is.
ADD: The rebel knows the difference between blind striking out and digging up the truth out of a sea of lies.
ADD: The rebel knows his value to the future, and more than that, the rebel knows his own intrinsic worth. Then, now, and forever.
ADD: The rebel is not someone with a can of beer and a Confederate flag. The rebel is not someone who wears a KKK hood. The rebel is not a social planner with a foundation grant. The rebel is not someone who believes that everyone should believe in his god.
ADD: The rebel is always learning more about freedom. The rebel rejects all forms of coercion.
TUESDAY, JULY 24. A true rebel (who is not a criminal) does not wait for someone to tell him it is all right to launch a counteroffensive against entrenched fear and ignorance.
ADD: A rebel learns to overcome his own fear.
ADD: A rebel does not wait.
ADD: A rebel does not allow comfort to overtake his sense of what needs to be done.
ADD: He does not hold on to conventional ideas at the level of his being where action is born.
ADD: He does not feast on hope to such a degree that it makes him lethargic.
ADD: He does not refuse help.
ADD: A rebel gives help to those who are already on their way to exposing the crimes of the enslavers.
ADD: A rebel is not so paralyzed he refuses to turn fantasy into reality.
ADD: A rebel does not consider every feeling that bounces down the pipeline a signal ordering him to stop or start his action.
ADD: A rebel learns that by doing what he decides to do he will find NEW feelings.
ADD: A rebel courts the old and the new, the tested and the untested, and he courts them long enough to learn what he can learn from them. And what he so learns he uses to renew his action in the direction of changing reality.
ADD: A rebel makes his own newness.
ADD: A rebel finds that by inventing reality he can achieve victories.
ADD: A rebel finds he can discard old ideas. He is not so sentimental about old ideas that it forces him to walk the same path everyone else is walking.
MONDAY, JULY 23. Imagine that a person can create all the sensations his body feels.
ADD: He can create them without having a body.
ADD: And also imagine that he can immediately change any sensation his body feels in response to life.
ADD: In which case, the so-called normal or average or unpleasant sensations his body feels are entirely changeable on the moment by him.
SUNDAY, JULY 22. My pieces on The Rebel seem to be striking a nerve. That is good.
ADD: Einstein was a good example of a rebel.
ADD: He was deeply annoyed that the new physics of his time was suggesting that, at the most basic level, energy was BOTH a wave and a particle. That disturbed his sense that the universe should be coherent. He didn't like the idea that a seeming contradiction should be at the heart of the description of the universe.
ADD: So he consciously set out to destroy that double-headed theory.
ADD: His theories of special and general relativity were, in part, mounted to achieve that destruction. Of course, at the outset he had no math to justify his theories. It didn't exist. So he decided he would have to invent/discover such a mathematics.
ADD: He consciously worked from his own imagination, and he was determined to make a universe that would conform to that imagination. But he went further than that. He wanted the universe he "created" to be the real universe too.
ADD: What a huge undertaking!
ADD: What a rebellion.
ADD: And, to a surprising degree, he succeeded. He gave himself a universe that actually responded to physical experiments he conducted based on his theories. He invented a theory which could be confirmed by physical test cases.
ADD: "I want THIS universe. I'll make a theory that asserts that universe, and then I'll carry out experiments which confirm that my theory is correct."
ADD: A rebel with a cause.
ADD: The rebel says, I WANT X TO EXIST. I'LL CREATE X. I'LL PUT IT INTO THE WORLD. IT ISN'T THERE NOW, BUT I'LL CREATE IT. AND THEN THE WORLD WILL SEE IT IS THERE.
SATURDAY, JULY 21. Well, GD, RK, and MC all passed my little math test from yesterday with flying colors. 100%. Congrats. You will all be contacted soon about that train ride to Mars. I understand it takes 14 years, but if you pack a decent lunch, everything should be okay.
ADD: Here's an email from a reader of this Power X page. It made my day. It concerns my piece on The Rebel, and the page in general: "It's working. I am getting the message...Power X agitates me. I like it. I hate it. What if I decide to DO SOMETHING?????? Then the fire heats up for sure...I used to ASPIRE TO becoming a statue!!!!!!!!! Couldn't quite pull it off."
ADD: For a real rebel (who is not a criminal) dissatisfaction is a form of happiness.
ADD: That fact often slips under the public radar screen.
ADD: We are taught by ads that happiness is frothy and easy and natural and able to be bought for a few bucks and then a few more bucks...and if we don't have that happy thing there must be something wrong with us.
ADD: We are also led to believe that dissatisfaction is pathological. A symptom that needs to be cured, erased, wiped out like a germ.
ADD: The only 2 presidents in the last 40 years who projected even the slightest amount of dissatisfaction--whether it was real or not--were Kennedy and Reagan. And they were perhaps the most popular presidents during that whole period. Wonder why. Was it because they were tapping into that stormy well of dissatisfaction that lives in EVERYONE?
ADD: Opposition to the status quo is really like a good workout. It gets you into gear. It moves you into another realm. It suggests even better things to come.
ADD: Those who reject dissatisfaction are desperately trying to find a fur-lined box they can live in, and it's a losing search.
ADD: No institution of any society ever spent a cent on preparing and educating true rebels. That should tell you something.
ADD: In ancient cultures, if you had a dream at night, you automatically interpreted that dream so that it would fit into the prevailing myth-structure. That should tell you something.
ADD: It's a sneaky truth, but the rebel really has the high ground. He has the lever that can move the world.
FRIDAY, JULY 20. I am preparing a nomorefakenews special on medical research fraud, as defined in purely conventional med terms, based on published mainstream studies.
ADD: But in order for this to make sense, readers must be able to translate percents into fractions. You know, in order to perceive the true impact of the fraud.
ADD: So I want you to refresh your arithmetic skills.
ADD: Here is the following test. Translate the following percents into fractions: 26%, 32%, 58%, 6%. Fractions must be reduced to lowest terms. You must not use a calculator or a table. You must work by hand.
ADD: And to make it a bit harder, you must translate the following fractions into percents: 2/17, 3/11, 26/37. No cheating. No chewing gum. No Ritalin.
ADD: The first winner to email me with a sworn and notarized statement that he/she did not use a calculator or other bogus device, gets a free train trip to Mars. Winner means all answers correct.
ADD: Many moons ago, when I taught algebra to teenagers at a school in Connecticut, I found they couldn't do these problems. They were totally at sea. They couldn't take, say, a fraction like 3/13 and turn it into a percent and a decimal.
ADD: Of course, neither could I. I had to spend a couple of hours the night before this lesson refreshing my skills. And in the process, I realized I had never been taught the whole translating operation with clarity.
THURSDAY, JULY 19. A rebel with a plan who also happens NOT to be a criminal can do nothing but good.
ADD: Good for himself and good for others.
ADD: If you were not a rebel, you wouldn't keep coming to this page.
ADD: So get a plan.
ADD: The juices of rebellion which do not fuel a project begin to back up and sour the whole person.
ADD: Those juices form a stagnant pool.
ADD: A rebel may be wise, but in the absence of action, that wisdom is simply growing dissatisfaction. It results in nothing. It seems to become an enemy of the person himself.
ADD: A rebel is born when he sees that the box called society is in some way a sham. At some moment, everyone becomes a rebel. But to accept that nothing can be done is to sign a treaty of surrender.
ADD: A rebel who surrenders is on his way to becoming a statue.
ADD: But a statue can be transformed at any moment. It is never too late.
ADD: A real rebel WORKS. He forwards a project, a plan. He makes an effort. He becomes ingenious. He doesn't think a frozen smile is the ultimate ideal.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 18. Another book recommendation, which comes via a reader...and after seeing the author, David McCullough, on C-Span 2 over the weekend, I add my urging. The book is John Adams. It has been at number 1 on the NY Times best-seller list, which shows that Americans do, in fact, hunger for stories about REAL heroes.
ADD: If you happen to have $50 million or so, I suggest you buy up truckloads of these books and give them out to citizens all across the US.
ADD: Another great book (readers write all the time asking me for a booklist) is John Robbins' Reclaiming Our Health. Robbins blows a hole in the medical system that lets PLANETS in.
ADD: If you're a book hunter, try to find the series of volumes called DRAWINGS OF THE MASTERS. I believe there are 11 books in the series. I just purchased Italian Drawings (15th-19th centuries), for 8 bucks from a local second-hand store. I'm eyeing all the others on a high shelf in that store. The publisher is Shorewood. My Italian volume is copyright 1963. Libe of Congress catalog card number 63-19843. The plates are magnificent and numerous. Very little text. Looking at these drawings, you are at the birth of the exhilarating discovery of VOLUME...how to produce dimensional volume in the human figure on a flat page. It really quickens the pulse, even if you're not interested in painting or drawing.
TUESDAY, JULY 17. Once upon a time, before television, there was a thing in America called READING OUT LOUD. That was quite a dinosaur.
ADD: I suggest you resurrect it.
ADD: Here is a SPIRITUAL EXERCISE for you.
ADD: Find a book of poems by Dylan Thomas, go to a quiet room, lock the door, turn off the phone, shut down your pager, and read the poem Fern Hill out loud. Just you. Alone, in the room.
ADD: Read it aloud five times from start to finish.
ADD: And then the next day, do it again. Five times.
ADD: And so on, for a week. Every day.
ADD: Don't read it in a monotone, as if the secret police might break in on you if they knew what you were doing. READ it. OUT LOUD. Give it some juice. As if you wrote it. As if it were your poem.
ADD: There are people who actually think this is greatest poem ever written in the English language.
ADD: Try it. And then write to me.
MONDAY, JULY 16. A book for you. I've mentioned it before and quoted from it on the home page. THE UNDERGROUND HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION, by John Taylor Gatto. Published by The Oxford Village Press, New York. ISBN # 0-945-70004-0. 212-529-9397 for orders by phone. I give all this info because the book may be hard to find in stores.
ADD: Aside from the startling history it presents, in showing how American education has sunk into its current swamp, it's the WRITING I admire. It has muscles. It has a passion that comes so obviously from the mind and guts of the author. That doesn't often happen these days, and the phenomenon is even more rare when the book is non-fiction.
ADD: Gatto is an American original. Like Eric Hoffer and Henry Miller, he is one of those men who has escaped the cubicles of security and the rewards of corporate America with his mind fully intact and his talent crackling. He doesn't just present facts (although there are miles of them in the book). He weaves them in a way that allows FREEDOM to breathe through.
ADD: As you read the book, you are also making a friend. Gatto himself. It's a very welcome feeling. Gatto describes the trench we are in, and then he's there too with us. He's not afraid to tell you what his research MEANS. He's like a Sugar Ray Robinson of education. He moves with great grace and authority, he sees the openings, and when he's ready he puts the man DOWN on the canvas.
ADD: This is an underground book. It doesn't spend all its time trolling for a wide undifferentiated audience. It aims directly at the minds of potential readers. It makes its own audience happen.
WEEKEND EDITION, JULY 14-15. ON MY HOME PAGE, along the left column, you will see a listing for The Southern California Institute of Clinical Nutrition. I strongly suggest you visit it and hunt around.
ADD: It is run by my wife, Dr. Laura Thompson. Her clients have some fantastic stories to tell about their health changes. And now I'm doing a daily scroll of alternative health news on that site. Mostly ignored studies about the benefits of nutrition and other modalities.
ADD: The supplements that Dr. Thompson offers are tremendously high quality products. She does much research on this subject, because she knows that there can be a world of difference between several brands of the same nutrient.
ADD: Her books are packed full of vital health information. She specializes in brain nutrition, nutrition for kids, and natural hormone therapy for both men and women. But she covers many other areas as well.
ADD: She works with each client as an individual, having concluded that there is no single protocol that fits all.
ADD: So put her website on your daily list of sites to visit.
WEEKEND EDITION, JULY 14-15. OOOOO! Scary movie. If the brain is not the mind, then what is the mind made of? OOOOOOO! Scary.
ADD: Suppose the mind is made of......NOTHING?
ADD: Suppose the mind is YOU BEING ACTIVE WITH THAT THING CALLED THINKING OR THAT THING CALLED CREATING OR THAT THING CALLED IMAGINING?
ADD: Suppose the mind is you making an arrow into the future. By choice. By will. By your own power.
ADD: Suppose it's really that way. Suppose you are really free.
ADD: Suppose you have the power to launch yourself into the future.
ADD: Suppose you can do it.
ADD: Suppose the rest is all very thick baloney sold by a bad deli.
ADD: Suppose the answer to the koan, "What is the sound of one mind working?" is....NO SOUND AT ALL. Just the sound of space.
ADD: Suppose the results of mind are fantastic creations of every sort made by you. Boom, boom, boom. Bingo, bango, bongo.
FRIDAY, JULY 13. I've gotten a number of replies from my pieces on the film AI. Interesting, today's newsletter interview with Mel Winslow, ex-military man, rakes Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan over the coals as well. Winslow was blistering in his criticism. You can probably get under the wire if you subscribe now on the the home page. We'll make sure you get today's issue.
ADD: Hollywood has an unerring way of making reality unreal even when it doesn't want to.
ADD: That gives unreality a bad name. But there are of course films which do, in fact, present reality in an unreal way and triumph. If you get what I mean.
ADD: In this vein, I recommend a 1957 classic directed by Orson Welles, A Touch of Evil. Welles also stars in it. This drama shows that the dark corners of experience can be uplifting.
ADD: Welles used Chuck Heston and Janet Leigh as foils. He let them do their usual turns in such a wacko setting that they stood out as a quite comic commentary on Hollywood itself. Only Welles would have thought of that.
ADD: At 24, when a lot of young men were still trying to figure out how to part their hair, he directed and starred in Citizen Kane. There has never been a debut like that in film. But apparently Citizen Randolph Hearst didn't like Welles' version of him, so Welles had a very tough time getting future work in Hollywood.
ADD: The opening sequence in Touch of Evil is the longest continuous tracking scene in film history, and legend has it that Welles did it that way--and in one take--because he didn't want the studio to cut it up in the editing room.
ADD: A talented photographer friend of mine saw the film for the first time on television. She came in half-way through and didn't know what it was. Her comment was, "Was that the movie where every frame looks like a great black and white photograph? Yep. It is. See it on the the biggest screen you can. And don't expect the usual Hollywood fare. The overlapping interrupting dialogue is a Welles trademark.
THURSDAY, JULY 12. Watch for a new book coming soon. It's called The Next Trillion, by Paul Zane Pilzer. Subtitled, "Why the wellness industry will exceed the $1 trillion health care (sickness) industry in the next ten years."
ADD: Here's a quote: "By the year 2010, an additional $1 trillion of the US economy will be devoted to 'wellness industry'--providing healthy people products to make them feel even healthier, look better, slow down the effects of aging, or to prevent diseases from developing in the first place."
ADD: And this: "No one really wants to be a customer of the sickness industry. Everyone wants to be customer of the wellness industry."
ADD: And this: "Most wellness industry sales did not exist only two decades ago. Today they already total approximately $200 billion in annual sales, about half the amount spent on US automobiles."
ADD: Looking for a business? Want to make money and do something worthwhile? Thinking of shifting your sights? Want to envision a dream and make it work? Here is very fertile territory.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 11. I've been getting people's favorite science fiction films since I ran the piece on AI yesterday. Day the Earth Stood Still. Forbidden Planet. Close Encounters.
ADD: On my home page, I recommended the 1936 masterpiece, The Shape of Things to Come, directed by Alexander Korda. Sometimes just called Things to Come.
ADD: First of all, if art fails to move us, we can hang it up. We can put a Gone Fishing sign on the whole civilization and forget it. Art is what keeps the imagination alive. It gives us glimpses of what could be, might be, of what we ourselves can create if we widen our scope, if we decide that hair style and brand of beer are not truly the limit of human creation.
ADD: Things to Come builds a city of the future in black and white, and it's a thing to see. A world destroyed and a world rebuilt. The new world is very high-tech slavery, but with a promise of glory.
ADD: It's from a novel by HG Wells. 1933. Some say Wells was a political fascist, but his novels (read The Time Machine) explore ideas that have to do with slavery and freedom. Hope and despair.
ADD: Korda also directed another classic, Thief of Baghdad. You could do a lot worse than renting these two films. Baghdad is full of the kind of magic that thrills children and adults. It has the wild adventure of pulp science fiction without the excessively wooden characters.
ADD: If you've sworn off reading science fiction because the newer books don't seem to transport you into other realms, don't seem to engage your own thoughts and imagination, go back to the early AE Van Vogt novels and have a whack at them. They are are full of a strangeness that points up the fact that writers can present a highly individualistic view of realty. Years ago I met Van Vogt. He showed up with his two dogs, made charming conversation, and he was full of ambition even at his advanced age. Cantankerous, reserved, old-world, Hollywood, arrogant, very independent. An innovator down to his fingertips. An artist who had forged a place for himself in the world. Nothing mushy about him. A tough customer.
TUESDAY, JULY 10. Well, I saw AI, the film that is sort of sweeping the nation. It's not Kubrick, but not much is. It tries, like 2001, to graduate through a series of escalating episodes to a shattering climax. But unlike Kubrick, this way of telling a story is not coming off the press freshly minted and incredibly lucid. Instead there is a visual haze and a dark meshing of weird semi-visible machines that try to blend the episodes. They don't work. They obscure.
ADD: The boy, David, is directed with too much closed-box obsession. This kid resentfully wants his mommy and her love and he is programmed for exactly that...and when he gets it, it doesn't ring as the transformation of a robot into a human. Love does not seem to conquer all, which is the message of the film.
ADD: It's too bad, because AI IS an attempt to go beyond the bounds of ordinary story telling. It is an attempt to let the imagination go to wild places. And there are several stunning images. For example, the quick hit where David sits on the ledge of a half-sunken skyscraper and looks out over the gray water-logged city.
ADD: I don't want to be too harsh, because I admire any effort to surpass the usual Hollywood boundaries. And I would ordinarily say, better luck next time, but I don't think this is going to be a learning experience for the director. His Close Encounters is the film he should be studying to see where the next step is. The problem is, where are the great scripts going to come from? The writers are degenerating into mush, for the most part.
ADD: A suggestion. One that no one wants to take. Grab a great science fiction novel, like AE Van Vogt's World of Null-A, and just film it in perfect sequence, keeping all the dialogue, and don't cut in unnecessary special effects, and you would have a killer of a film. Film the novel. Achieve the mood through precise restrained sets and through excellent acting, and unleash that baby on the public. The budget would be low, and the profits would be surprising.
ADD: Hire a director like Lumet and tell him to do for science fiction what he did for police drama in Prince of the City. If you haven't seen Prince of the City, rent it. It's also episodic, but the scenes are like fine bones and the effect is extremely powerful.
ADD: The problem with AI is basically with the script, which sags in many places. It's really a second draft of what should have been five drafts.
MONDAY, JULY 9. I once had a book in mind. It was called, THE STORY OF YOUR LIFE. Subtitled: The Interview as a Form of 21st Century Therapy.
ADD: It wasn't really about therapy in the usual sense. I really meant: This is therapeutic in the widest sense.
ADD: I had noticed, in interviewing people for articles, that they changed after 4 or 5 hours of talking, especially if the article was about their own experiences.
ADD: The key was asking all sorts of questions, bringing out lots of details. It then occurred to me that if I interviewed a person about his life in general--everyone's life is interesting when you get into it far enough--there might be a good outcome.
ADD: So I tried it with a couple of people. The results were remarkable. So I tried it with a number of people. Same thing. A greater and renewed sense of being alive.
ADD: I wasn't trying to cure anything. I had no particular agenda. It was just a very long interview.
ADD: I wasn't trying to establish causes for any of the person's problems. So this wasn't therapy. I was really just trying to keep myself from being bored. Therefore, I jumped all over the place with my questions. And I took my cues, often, from the person's answers. He moved when he was 9? What was the trip like to the new house? Did you drive? Can you remember what the countryside looked like? Any damn thing. And since I like detail and image, I might ask, Well, what did those houses you passed look like? The person would tell me. Harmless interview. But something happened.
ADD: People like to talk about themselves and their experiences. Why not? And I would take the interview wherever I wanted to. Your father went to jail? For how long? What were the charges? Did you ever visit him? When did he get out? Were you there when they released him? What did he do when he walked out of prison--what was the first thing he did?
ADD: Did you wear a tux at your wedding? Where did you get it? Harmless stuff. Who paid for the tux? Did your family like your girl friend the first time they met her? Did they fake it? What did they serve for supper? Did it taste good? Was it raining out?
ADD: Anything.
ADD: And sooner or later, something happened. The interviewee felt more alive. For real. And it wasn't just a brief flicker.
ADD: I'm not advising or recommending. But it does occur to me that if people started doing interviews of this kind--well, who knows? It's far more interesting than a lot of what passes for chit chat these days.
WEEKEND EDITION, JULY 7-8. The subject of the imagination and its power is so poorly understood in our culture it's a wonder that we are still here at all.
ADD: The modern "version" of imagination seems to be, "Your thoughts and words create your reality. So be careful what you think or say."
ADD: This is sheer baloney. It breeds an atmosphere of caution and fear. No, the truth is, who cares what you think or say in an unguarded moment. It's irrelevant. Imagination is the prow of a very large ship, and it is the CONSCIOUS prelude to what you create.
ADD: Conscious. You consciously imagine what you want and then you consciously create it. That's a whole different story. But many people don't want to find out what they really want, and they don't want to risk actually creating THAT. So they settle for a perversion of Buddha's message. They shrink into a little box where they believe that a stray word or thought is their god and tyrant.
ADD: That's a dead-end street. It goes nowhere. It winds up in a weird befuddlement. It's a version of the old "Don't think of a pink elephant."
ADD: In my experience, the people I've run across who believe in that shrunken version of what imagination is NEVER GET WHAT THEY WANT. They are always dissatisfied. They are always stalling on the runway. They are picking through a graveyard of dead thoughts and trying to find one that seems to be a good and proper thought.
ADD: This is really an application of the bizarre rule, "Always be polite, no matter what." It's being polite and frightened of your own thoughts, and the ceiling on this is very low.
ADD: The real rule is, FIND OUT WHAT YOU REALLY WANT, ENVISION A CLEAR VIEW OF THAT, AND THEN GO AHEAD AND CREATE IT. THROUGH YOUR ACTIONS.
ADD: A culture based on that would be something to behold. And it's "REALLY WANT," NOT "SORT OF WANT." Not seem to want. Not supposed to want.
WEEKEND EDITION, JULY 7-8. For most people, imagination is a spark that dies. They try it out for an hour, it seems to lead nowhere, and it is rejected along with a lot of other ideas.
ADD: One more thing for the garbage heap.
ADD: A toy that wore out fast.
ADD: That is why a lot of people shy away from art. It reminds them that the very imagination that created a riveting painting was the very thing they threw away.
ADD: Finding the way back home can be trying. But art is a place to start.
ADD: An afternoon of forced imprisonment in a museum is my personal recommendation. From room to room, looking at the paintings.
ADD: "Why should I?" "What good is it?" "What are these paintings about?" "What does this have to do with me?" "It's all junk." "It's all history." "How is this going to make me rich?"
ADD: Ignore the voices. Look at the paintings. Think about them. Walk inside them.
ADD: Find something there you like.
ADD: Then go to a bookstore, perhaps at the museum itself, and pore through the plates of paintings. Look for Piero della Francesca. There are several good books of his work.
ADD: The translucent universe of Piero.
ADD: Thought of as a painter's painter.
ADD: And don't dismiss the sudden moments of feeling, as you look at his work, that some greater harmony you had forgotten is now restored.
ADD: I know all this is cruel punishment, and why should one bother...but why not? Who knows? Maybe something greater is waiting.
FRIDAY, JULY 6. TWO READERS GET IT RIGHT. The poem quoted from last night is Ash Wednesday, by TS Eliot. I'm happily surprised. I congratulate the winners. Their trip to Mars will take place soon, and they are instructed to look for faces carved in the rocks and other anomalies.
ADD: All right. Let's take it further. Just give me the name of the poet who penned these lines. "Only our love hath no decay;/ This, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,/ Running it never runs from us away,/ But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day."
ADD: No fair just plugging in the lines to a web site and coming out with the answer. And oh yes, the lines are also to be READ.
ADD: Here are some lovely lines from Christopher Marlowe (1564-93). The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. "Come live with me and be my Love,/ And we will all the pleasures prove/ That hills and valleys, dales and fields,/ Or woods or steepy mountain yields."
FRIDAY, JULY 6. Encouraged by the correct answer on the quote from The Fountainhead, I proceed. Just testing the waters. Who is the poet who wrote this, and what was the poem? The prize? A free trip to Mars on the morning train.
ADD: Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive toward such things (Why should the aged eagle stretch his wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign?
THURSDAY, JULY 5. READER GETS IT RIGHT. The quotes from the novel yesterday? The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. One reader IDed the book and author.
THURSDAY, JULY 5. I have here the recent story of a boy diagnosed with ADHD. The boy's mother discovered he had a wheat allergy, and took him off all wheat products. It wasn't easy. Then she consulted with a nutritionist, who designed a supplement program. Then over the next three months the boy's grades improved and he slept better. He told her the school he was attending was full of distractions. She investigated and found that the classes were too large and out of control. She switched him to another school.
ADD: No more "ADHD." No drugs.
ADD: Over the years I've heard hundreds of stories like this. But in each case, something different was done. It wasn't one formula. But the absence of treating drugs was a common denominator.
ADD: Anybody want to do a book? Just hunt around and collect stories and publish them. Case histories. Go into the details. People will thank you for it. You can be sure I'll plug it on the site.
ADD: You could do a similar book on depression. There are lots of people out there who have cured themselves with non-drug solutions.
ADD: People always write and ask me about "solutions" to the world situation. Well, here's one. It's quite straightforward. Any takers?
JULY 4. Happy 4th!
ADD: Here is a quote from a 20th-century American novel. A quite challenging quote. See if you can identify the novel. It shouldn't be too hard.
ADD: "The creator is not concerned with disease, but with life. Yet the work of the creators has eliminated one form of disease after another, in man's body and spirit, and brought more relief from suffering than any altruist could ever conceive."
ADD: And this: "Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees."
ADD: These days, what passes for spiritual teaching seems, more and more, to emphasize the agreeing aspect. As if agreeing is some form of high art and implies a Oneness with the universe.
ADD: The universe is portrayed as the ultimate entity which one needs to harmonize himself with...and then all will be well. Since when?
ADD: Is acceptance the key?
ADD: Is acceptance the highest value which ensures that you will fulfill your deepest dreams?
ADD: Is this the thing we have all been subconsciously striving for?
ADD: Acceptance?
ADD: Is this the philosopher's stone?
ADD: IT IS NOT.
ADD: Acceptance is like a good night's sleep. If you can get it, it's good, because it recharges the batteries and it sets you up for the new day.
ADD: To fulfill your deepest dreams, you need to create what you imagine. That's obvious. To create you have to make a new reality come into being. One that was not there before.
ADD: That too is obvious, if you think about it.
ADD: Does this mean that creating is just a another way of saying "I'm aligning myself with the universe."
ADD: The meanings of the words tell the story. Create and align are not the same thing.
ADD: How about this? "We American colonists in the year 1776 will gain our freedom if we align ourselves with the current state of affairs. The King is what is real. The King is part of the universe and the universe is evolving, and if we just sit here and ALIGN, ACCEPT, AGREE, eventually the universe will absorb the King and move on to the next phase, which is freedom. We don't have to actually create a revolution."
ADD: Or: "In the year 2012, as several ancient prophecies predict, time itself will change and all history will end. We will move into another echelon. All the rules will change."
ADD: Such ideas are all around us.
ADD: But creating is an entirely different thing. And since it is, since it is in fact an opposite principle, you can consciously and with full purpose widen the limits of your own creating.
ADD: Does that sound old-fashioned? It isn't.
ADD: To create freedom on a new continent had many risks. One was this: Once freedom was achieved, what would they do with it? Sit in the middle of it, as if it were a high-class puddle, and absorb the benefits?
ADD: A subject for thought on the 4th of July.
EARLY EDITION, WEDNESDAY, JULY 4. Before we go any further on this new scroll, there is one poisonous idea we have to dispose of: "The practice of magick is the work of Satan."
ADD: Spare me. First of all, my analysis is not about whether magick works. This is not about whether SOME groups have used magick as a front for Satanic practices (of course some groups have). Some groups have used boys' clubs as a front for Satanism. Does that mean all boys' clubs are really the devil's franchises?
ADD: The Vatican started this attack on the women it called witches. And on the alchemists. And on Galileo and Bruno and so on. The Vatican attacked anyone who offered an alternative way of looking at reality. (And of course we all know that Galileo was Mephisto in disguise. At night he spread his bat wings.)
ADD: The modern diluted version of this is is an attack on "New Age magick" under the rubric of: "THESE PEOPLE SEEK A POWER THAT IS RESERVED FOR GOD. THEY SEEK TO OVERTHROW GOD AND SUBSTITUTE LUCIFER." Really? How about the power to harness water for electricity? How about the power to build a jet plane? How about the power to heal disease with nutrients? How about the power to machine the barrel of a rifle so that the bullet exits smoothly and with force? How about the power to look through a telescope at another galaxy?
ADD: Where does it say that the power to create a reality is Luciferian--because that is what magick amounts to, once you lose the odd-sounding word. The power to create a reality that was not there before.
ADD: In a study reported in the Journal for Scientific Exploration some years ago, a volunteer was able to influence the molecular distribution of water in a container. With his mind. Precise and sensitive measurements showed this. Was he exercising a power reserved for God? Afraid not.
ADD: We are looking at the historical remnant of a scam. A scam to limit the power of the individual.
ADD: Magick is just a word. Nothing about it implies any necessary connection to Satanic rituals or blood sacrifices or anything of the sort.
ADD: If I accepted the old Vatican formulation, I would have to say that Beethoven was a master Satanist, because he certainly did create power. Someone might reply, "But that's different. That's not like being able to look at a glass on a table and push it across the table with your mind."
ADD: To which I answer, "Here's the difference. Beethoven, now couched in comfortable history, doesn't scare you. But if you saw a man point his hand and make a plant jump out of the ground and say HOWDY you'd run screaming into the night. And that's your problem. And you call that problem THE DEVIL. But really it was just you being scared. Would you be scared if a person could levitate a tumor out of the body of your daughter and take away her cancer? Would you want the person to put that tumor back in there because 'the devil had made it happen?'"
ADD: I don't think so.
ADD: Am I saying I know people who levitate plants and tumors? No. I'm saying that Beethoven's symphonies are just as good. At least as good.
ADD: Let's not tiptoe around this issue. Because the imagination of the individual has no limits. It has no borders. It has no moral stricture to contain itself to embroidery and doilies. That stricture is what drives people slowly into the garbage heap. For various reasons, they think they are not supposed to create. That's just a self-destructive opinion.
ADD: If Michelangelo had decided to employ his talents building a vast monument to humankind or to the crows or the alchemists or to the women called witches, instead of concentrating on a particular church ceiling, he would have been slowly roasted with olive oil and peppers, and it would have been called the Will of God.
ADD: Sorry. No sale. No deal. No dice.
TUESDAY, JULY 3. Most modern romantic classical music falls flat on its face.
ADD: Yet, if the true romantic spirit could be embodied in a modern symphony or concerto, without being smarmy and thick and goofy, without sounding like the score for another mindless movie or an ad for life insurance...
ADD: There are a few pieces. And they sweep you up to such a degree that life itself seems magnified. Magnified now. And possibilities shatter the old pattern of routine, of drudgery.
ADD: Here is one. Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto. But you must ignore all versions except the Leonard Bernstein-Isaac Stern, now re-issued | |
