Infinite Cafe - Mind Jam, Open Dialogue, Q&A [9/12, 6 pm MDT]

Commons Cosmos Café
21

I think you’re right, Johnny. “Embodied” is a sloppy term, insofar as how can we not be embodied? Even “out of body” still entails a kind of subtle body. Even flowing as light through a hypercube entails shape and form.

The better question, perhaps, has to do with the nature, dimensionality, and internal dynamics of embodied experience—inner and outer, energy and structure being mutually relative and intertwingled terms. But more than that, whatever body your report yourself being in or out of, there is always some kind of story involved. And the story is what ends up being most interesting.

For example, your story involves an ascent as well as a descent, and resolves into a mood, some scenery, and a question: "How do I let them know how much I love them?”

There is message in your story, I dare say—an attempt to communicate. Can I receive that message? How do I let you know I received it?

I like Kripal’s approach because it focuses on becoming receptive to, and then hopefully understanding, the messages we are receiving from these ‘alternative sources,’ without undue presumptions regarding the ontological status of the sender, or the messenger. It seems to me this opens up the discursive field to much more that is potentially of significance…especially as we are entering into uncharted territory in so many regards as individuals and as cultures.

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22

Once I was in a dream bar, fully lucid, and I met a man who shook my hand, and I asked," Where do I know you from?"

He said," I’m Joseph."

Then I was startled and began to fall back into the physical and as I awoke in bed I recalled that Joseph was character in a story I had written but had abandoned. I suppose that there is a place for such characters to hang out, waiting for the author to open up the channels. These entities are often shy, and wait forever before someone befriends them.

This dream saddened me, for he had shared his secrets with me and I had not honored his gift, but tucked the manuscript in a drawer and forgot about it. I still felt the warmth of his hand in my physical hand. Something gets imprinted, some kind of shape, quality, affect is transferred. How we language this or if we language it all is up to each of us as participant-observers. It is ineffable, an infinite semiosis. Free association but with a direction.
_
" Joey-" I whispered his name, re-imagining our contact in that dream bar. " Please forgive me."

By the way, I completed a version of the Joseph story and it became In the Crack which you published. Much thanks Marco!

The magic and mythic do not sit still, they are irrupting into the mental realms all the time. When we enter other dimensions we take our templates and stories with us, that is the only thing we take with us. The only thing we can really comprehend is a story. Theory emerges out of story telling.

I believe that when I use the personal pronoun ‘I’ that much more is going on than the mere use of a linguistic device. The ‘i’ is also a verb so the Self System is engaged in a potentially semiotic activity in many different kinds of bodymind. When ‘I’ report my experiences from other realms to earthlings I have to find a story that will make sense to them, which often occured in a non linear fashion. And when I am in the experience, narrative is arranging and re-arranging the alternate environment, depending upon mood, momentum, intensity and intention. There is a difference when in the physical, which I am engaged in now at my desk typing, remembering, commenting. I feel confined to the personal but I know on other levels that I am creating conditions for another adventure. I use my earthly experiences to contrast and compare. This is to bring perspective, a healthy mental functioning, into a liberation initiative. When I am participating in what I call extra-physical there is a much vaster memory than is accessed than in the physical, which is necessarily constricted.

I have found when I return to the physical from alternate worlds I have to do a quick imprint of what happened in that wider and vaster memory so that physical brain can register it. If I don’t do this the thickness of the physical brain will not recall anything, for it is much too subtle. I must translate from the multi-dimensional into the human formation. I’m sure many people are having extra-physical experiences ( I have seen them on the astral) but they have little recall. I have interacted with people and told them that their bodies are asleep and they are free to fly and have many other extra-physical experiences but they are too astonished to re-center in the extra-physical and decide stay asleep. There is probably a wisdom in that.

I believe ( another belief), that the brain is a reducing valve, and is set up to keep out most of what is happening in the Cosmos, to serve a definite purpose. I believe that experiences I have had in the extra-physical carry across and an imprint is left in the physical. What we do, with such experiences, and who we share it with has a lot to do with what kind of narrative emerges.

But much of the trans-physical has not got enough shape or form to mediate with, there are communiques from the field of all possibilities which are way beyond the human radar system. Some of us can pick up a signal and there may be some information that is seeking a code. This is when dance and song are more helpful than language. I call this the Bird’s code ( another story) which I may have the courage to write about some day. These communications are often fraught with peril. These conjunctions and juxtapositions and deviant logics can blow a fuse. I believe other non-human species, are shaping our world too and as we become more Cosmo-ethical, ever greater demands are place upon us.

Lucid dreaming works with your own energy. OBEs are different. You are in an OBE beyond the body. It is a difference in orders of magnitude. But they are related. You can go from the lucid dream to an OBE by intending it. You are no longer dealing with your own thought forms, rearranging psychic furniture but enter into an objective realm, some call the Imaginal realm, not to be confused with the Imagination…

Kripal describes the narrative nature of the para-realms beautifully. The participants often report that they feel that they are like a character in a movie. We are a sign, constantly morphing into something else-

And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name. -Shakespeare

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23

A View From Nowhere.

At the risk of appearing incredibly delusional I offer up this report as an update to the previous inquiry. I am keenly aware of the risk of trying to operationalize the magic powers that are being manifested in this humble servant. After this report I hope I can let go of the pressure to explain these para-normal events for they have made me feel quite inadequate.

I theorize that ‘we’, the royal ‘we’, are creating the conditions but are not in any way in control of these experiences. This is a beneficial experience and I imagine that such experience is available to everyone, and it is my belief that it would be a great delight for everyone to develop their own Vison Logics and find an appropriate time and place to make this happen and in the most ecological way, to gather the harvests.

9/30
I performed skull breathing, a Vajrayana practice, in a sitting posture for twenty minutes. Lying on my right side, relaxed, I felt something Other take over. The breathing pattern changed, there was a shallow, rapid, panting breath, for a minute followed by a deep and long inhalation and exhalation, and this pattern continued for a long time, and then a new development occurred.

On the exhalation at the very end of it, when there was no air in the lungs, the most unusual sounds emerged, high pitches repeated for a long time, and they had the sound quality of Mandarin, strange, foreign diphthongs, operatic , the sounds emanate from the head area, high soprano, doing something almost like coloratura, light and ethereal and this I could not do consciously, for I am a baritone and this is outside my vocal ability to pull off. And the sounds continued even as I stopped breathing. There was no inhale or exhale but the sounds continued to be made, hovering around my head, with vibrating over tones.

I was in a conscious physical state with these sounds coming through and feeling exalted. I felt this was a totally autonomous Other than my own intelligence, which was using my anatomy and physiology in ways that ‘I’ cannot do, for an essentially aesthetic purpose. I felt a sense of awe and wonder and surrender but not at all like submission. I could have stopped the unfolding of this event but would not do so. I felt I was held within a great benevolent energetic field, a current of vitality, and quite subtle and infinitely gentle. My metaphor here is of being caressed by an ancient, invisible, musical/ linguistic intelligence and that my body was being explored, and that sounds were being produced that were one of a kind.

I kept thinking thank you, thank you, thank you…which I repeated in English and internally not wanting to interfere with the vocalization which was quite physical. I was grateful to this co-intelligence and I felt I was being upgraded into a more perfect union.

Then there was strong third eye activation, a field of gold and red pixels and charts and diagrams and formulas, flowing, morphing in many varied colors of remarkable richness and clarity. There was a long stretch of these fantastic displays and then I went ‘out of the body’, floated above the bed and saw that it was empty.

The room was in a bluish gray light and I felt that it was a simulation and that I was in a phase space between physical and extra-physical and I sent energy to where I knew, my physical body ought to be. I was able to be a healer of my own body-mind and it was as if there was a double operating, and on a continuum which was made up of subtle affective and relational qualities and ‘I’ was, although it was not in a visible condition to me from the space ‘I’ was viewing from, able to receive the intention. This is a sense of being and becoming simultaneously in different kinds of space. I am giver and receiver at the same time and with a sense of coherent agency. A view from nowhere.

The pleasures of this experience lasted awhile and I was in such a complete sense of fulfillment that I felt able to relax and enjoy the sense of grace, for I felt that I have been given a marvelous experience and that though I wanted to share this I knew this was not up to me. I could only wish for others that they too would be a vehicle for such grace, and I felt an overwhelming sense that all would be well as I was released from the constraints of physical form. My intention is to serve.

I feel that a new cycle is starting, a finer quality of attention, and a capacity to take no view or many views all at the same time. I will continue to chop wood and carry water.

As I have finished this report, I register the norms of the ordinary human condition, the coffee is good, there is a cool breeze and I have a slightly stiff neck. Quite ordinary state of body mind. I feel I have done my duty and externalized this process and can now return to hermit mode. Thanks, whoever may be tuning in, for your kind attention.

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24

Happy Sunday, Johnny.

Thank you for these reports. I am reminded of a website I have explored previously, called Erowid, whose purpose is to document the range of experiences people have with psychoactive substances, as well as to provide the best known scientific data regarding these substances. There are hundreds or perhaps thousands of “trip reports” on the site, in addition to research papers and cultural paraphernalia. Many of the reports I’ve read are rather poorly written and not very interesting, but some of them are good. The website also functions as an advocacy arm for the movement to decriminalize (bring reason to) the exploration of consciousness in general.

I mention the site as an example of what you/we might be doing spontaneously here, in terms of sharing our “reports” and reflecting on matters of meaning, method, and madness with respect to experiences in the physical, extra-physical, imaginal, and aperspectival. I have never (that I recall, in this body/lifetime) had the kind of experiences you have described—I have had other types of run-ins and encounters with weird, uncanny, beautiful, infinite intelligences—but IF I EVER DO have a bonafide OBE, I will be better prepared for it, thanks to information you have provided, not just in these reports, but through our whole history of conversations.

It’s hugely important, it seems to me, that you can articulate—narrate—all you can from your experiences, and I think it also helps that you are an actor, who resonates sympathetically with beings and gives them human voice. You write:

And so I wonder what we might do with your reports—and how we might bring them into fruitful dialogue with those of others. @brian.george5, for example, has written pieces that echo some of your own themes, although with different dynamics, narrative structures, characters, and story lines. Part of what’s powerful about his writing, in my view, is that it’s evident that he’s not just “imagining” what he relates—although, sometimes he is; and there are sometimes moments of pure whimsy or absurdity—but one gets the feeling, as one does with you, that what he’s describing is real.

This makes such writing educational, at the same time that it carries aesthetic pleasure. Albert Murray espoused the view that good literature is essentially instructive. Of course, “instructive” is not the same (and may be the very opposite) of linear, didactic, political, etc.

When you share your reports and fulfill your duty as communicator/translator between realms, and return to hermit mode, what do you hope happens next—for whoever is tuning in?

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That, Marco, is a well crafted question. You aren’t flying by the seat of your pants, but instead you enter the weave of the system. You have , in this instance, gathered together some of my language patterns and created a question with drive and momentum and might I add-a bit of panache. When you have listened carefully to what the other person actually says, then the questions can be crafted with great care. And you have listened well.

I hope that I can approach the future with courage and grace.

Courage, which is located in the chest area, can touch fear, and a rainbow of pure primary colors blending slightly, with the dark, cold fear, and that warm courage comes from the back, through the chest, out the front and sort of forms a circle, a rotating hoop around the torso. It is gentle and not the combative kind of courage, when you have to raise your fists and place demands, no, I like the gentle kind of courage that registers the fear and holds it gently, not blaming others for the fear, and stays open and alert. Gentle courage protects.

Grace comes from above, just above my head, and it is golden and descends into the crown and activates the third eye, in the middle of the mind. I do hope to refine this inner organ of sight, the traditional eye of Isis captivates me as a symbol but the actual experience of the activated third eye is becoming fascinating, the interplay of the pixels in bold colors flowing together to form images and witnessing this display is astonishing but a strain sometimes on the physical system, I feel eye muscles, twitch and stretch. Inner sight is different from outer sight and another skill set is required to blend visual, kinesthetic and auditory systems. Vision emerges out of such blends, and the use of language creates the logic that gives direction to the sometimes random searches. I have found the both aspects of our nature inhibit one another in our waking lives but in alternate worlds they compliment. I often ask entities who are strange a simple question," Who are you?" Some of the answers I get are puzzling and varied.

I hope we can learn how to use all of our knowledge and use all of it well!

Today, my friend Seth, whom you met when in New York, was visiting. As I told him about the report I shared here, when I spoke of the strange sounds that came through my body, we both heard and felt a loud buzzing sound that lasted for a few seconds. It was very subtle, but palpably felt and there were no electronic devices in the room!

" Weird," Seth said," It felt like the buzz went through the whole building."

I felt a Trickster was fucking with us.

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26

This is how I feel with any conversation, any thought-to-mouth process. In the January 30th Cafe I was very grateful to be allowed the space to practice imperfect thought processes and to air half-baked ideas…you said it perfectly here TJ, the airing has a wonderful way of leading towards clarity.

Though I did not risk watching the first 40 minutes of your silent staring into your screen’s eyes, just thought I’d point out how quickly this Cafe stuff came together. Glad you have found a few faces to stare right back at you. (and somewhere around the 57 minute mark, when you go into the nothing is something and thats something riff, I was reminded of a great movie I :hearts: Huckabee’s in a scene in which they repeat “How am I not myself?” Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin play “Existential Detectives” and are “investigating” Jude Law’s character…a solid movie!)

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Yes, indeed. It may be a tale told by an Idiot, but the Café is now a real happening, and I couldn’t be more pleased with how our humble little discourse events are evolving. Thanks for adding your willingness to noodle and air and half-bake to the mix. Let’s just not half-bake the blueberry muffins. The toothpick test is still our friend.

I :heart: Huckabees was a really fun movie, one I would definitely watch again (someday). It figures an Undercover Agent would be in league with the Existential Detectives of the world. :male_detective:

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