We’ve gone to the fucking moon. We have the Internet, insulin pumps, penis pills, and ps3s. Knock it off with the conceit of perfect understanding. Killing I understand. I want to kill people all the time. Compared to what goes through my mind when I can’t find my wallet, Vlad the Impaler was Mr Rogers. However, I would never say that God wants me to. That’s not true either. I would say God wants me to, if I wanted others to join me. Meanwhile.. God stays silent. The more I think about it, the more I like the demiurge idea. Anyway, if you’re going to kill, have the balls to own it. Say you blew up the towers because Americans are assholes, not because a guy you never met said some shit, hundreds or thousands of years ago,  that *might* justify your actions. Trust me. If the glorious day dawns, when I have the societal green light to open the little black box on another person (if someone threatens or hurts my family, say), God’s going to have nothing to do with what transpires.

Since we, as a country, decided to pussy out of big time space exploration, we have to look to other countries for cool space news.

Japan has developed a probe which will use a solar sail to push it through space. Photons have mass, which is why light can be trapped by the gravitational pull of a black hole. You can read the full article here.

So, although acceleration is going to be super duper slow, it can attain insane speed. Think about it. If you’re being pushed along by particle/wave going at the speed of light, then in a vacuum, you should be able to eventually reach nigh light speed, no? I think you should, and Isaac Newton does too. Maybe Einstein does, but Newton is up in space (at least a piece of the apple tree that gave him the idea that gravity happens.)

It’s the Coolest Shit Ever. Space stuff rules. We should go to space. Yes. The Moon, Mars, Encelades, Europa…. somewhere cool. It’s mythologically necessary.

We, individually, and collectively, cannot allow ourselves to cease striving to experience something commensurate to our capacity for wonder. (to paraphrase Fitzgerald)

I’ve been listening to Stephan Hoeller lectures, as I go to sleep at night. This has given me a pretty good introduction to Hoeller’s brand of gnosticism. I have been assailed (in a way) by gnosticism for over 25 years.

I would buy occult books in my idiot teen years, and one of them was “The Other Bible” which was (to 15 year old Marky) a snoozefest; mainly because there were no spells within to get me laid. Yes, I was a deep one. What the Other Bible had was a boatload of gnostic (Nag Hammadi) scriptures, full of those divine names constructed of mainly O and A. It seemed stupid to me at the time, and gained me nothing re: sex so I shelved it.

When I practiced Siddha Yoga, in my 20’s, gnosticism would rear its head in lectures and classes that I would take… and I would poo-poo it as simply Christianity turned upside down. It seemed unbelievably ridiculous.

When I studied religion at the University of Oregon, and I took an upper division class on Heresy… I was given gnosticism again. This time I had to digest the cosmology, and then present it to the class. Basically I taught gnosticism that day. It struck me as a video game. The soul’s journey after death past guardians, and archons, and demons, and… demiurges… seemed a direct analog of a video game, with it’s creatures, and puzzles and boss battles.

There’s more to it of course. The Matrix trilogy is a pretty good allegory for the whole gnostic thang. The creator deity isn’t “God”. He’s kind of a half simple embarassment (like George W Bush)… accidental offspring of the divine Sophia. This half wit creates our universe, and that explains why the old testament god is such an irrational dickwad.

Anyhoo, since I have grown older and more/less wise/foolish  stumbled across the site of BC Recordings, and their archive of gnostic lectures, by one Stephan Hoeller. They have several, actually a lot, of free lectures, and I nicked them all. I like them. Hoeller is an old man, almost 80, and he has a Hungarian accent, so he sounds exactly like a cartoon psychiatrist, which is strangely apropos because one of the pillars of Hoeller’s gnosticism is Carl Gustav Jung, for whom I have tremendous respect.

So I have a new interest in Gnosticism. Not a belief, but an interest. Belief is the kudzu of the soul, interest is ticklish and fuzzy. So, if you’re interested, take a look at this video, which is simply a lecture of Hoeller’s with a slide show, and see if you dig it. Hail Eris.

I cut/pasted the below text straight from Drudgereport. I love the frankness and the obvious intelligence of Obama. I especially like how he answered the last question. He’s cool dude, and he’s from Chicago, so you know he’s crooked.

In a sobering holiday interview with C-SPAN, President Obama boldly told Americans: “We are out of money.”

C-SPAN host Steve Scully broke from a meek Washington press corps with probing questions for the new president.

SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?

OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we’ve made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we’ve seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.

So we’ve got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it’s putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.

So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare. If we don’t reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can’t get control of the deficit.

So, one option is just to do nothing. We say, well, it’s too expensive for us to make some short-term investments in health care. We can’t afford it. We’ve got this big deficit. Let’s just keep the health care system that we’ve got now.

Along that trajectory, we will see health care cost as an overall share of our federal spending grow and grow and grow and grow until essentially it consumes everything…

SCULLY: When you see GM though as “Government Motors,” you’re reaction?

OBAMA: Well, you know – look we are trying to help an auto industry that is going through a combination of bad decision making over many years and an unprecedented crisis or at least a crisis we haven’t seen since the 1930’s. And you know the economy is going to bounce back and we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. I have got more enough to do without that. In the same way that I want to get out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries…

SCULLY: States like California in desperate financial situation, will you be forced to bail out the states?

OBAMA: No. I think that what you’re seeing in states is that anytime you got a severe recession like this, as I said before, their demands on services are higher. So, they are sending more money out. At the same time, they’re bringing less tax revenue in. And that’s a painful adjustment, what we’re going end up seeing is lot of states making very difficult choices there…

SCULLY: William Howard Taft served on the court after his presidency, would you have any interest in being on the Supreme Court?

OBAMA: You know, I am not sure that I could get through Senate confirmation… (That’s why I love this guy. He’s smart and funny.)

I am I.

All is dispersion. These are the quality of things.

The Tenth Aethyr is the world of adjectives, and there is no substance therein.

When I lived in the ashram, back in 1991-92, my roommate, Richard, would read aloud from the Yoga Vasistha. This story was the first, in my recollection, that gave me the satori experience, and really defined what I had been experiencing in my meditations. Nondualism, nonexistence, existence, turtles all the way down. The nonesense of no sense.

I bring you a story from that holiest of holies, The Yoga Vasistha, so that perhaps it may serve as a koan with which to punch through and bring samadhi, THAT, Om, The Visitation of the Holy Spirit, what have you. Words… fuck em.

The Non-Existent Princes:

Once upon a time in a city which did not exist, there were three princes who were brave and happy. Of them two were unborn and the third had not been conceived. Unfortunately all their relatives died.  The princes left their native city to go elsewhere. Very soon, unable to bear the heat of the sun, they fell into a swoon. Their feet were burned by hot sand.  The tips of grass pierced them. They reached the shade of three trees, of which two did not exist, and third had not even been planted. After resting there for some time, and eating the fruit of those trees, they proceeded further.

They reached the banks of three rivers; of them two were dry, and in the third there was no water. The princes had a refreshing bath and quenched their thirst in them.  They then reached a huge city which was about to be built. Entering it, they found three palaces of exceeding beauty.  Of them two had not been built at all, and the third had no walls. They entered the palaces and there found three golden plates; two of them had been broken into two, and the third had been pulverized.  They took ninety-nine minus one hundred grams of rice,  and cooked it. They then invited three holy men to be their guests; of them two had no body, and the third had no mouth.  After these holy men had eaten the food, the three princes partook of the rest of the food cooked.  They were greatly pleased. Thus they lived in that city for a long, long time in peace and joy.

…. (I excised some stuff)

What is known as the creation of the world is no more real than this story. The world is nothing but pure hallucination.  It is nothing more than an idea.

[THIS EXCERPT IS TAKEN FROM SUNY'S CONCISE YOGA VASISTHA TRANSLATED BY VENKATESANANDA]

ephrix erõti periarchés d’ aneptoman
iõ iõ pan pan
õ pan pan aliplankte, kyllanias chionoktypoi
petraias apo deirados phanéth, õ
theõn choropoi anax
SOPH. AJ.

Thrill with lissome lust of the light,
O man! My man!
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady!
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ass, come over the sea
To me, to me,
Come with Apollo in bridal dress
(Shepherdess and pythoness)
Come with Artemis, silken shod,
And wash thy white thigh, beautiful God,
In the moon of the woods, on the marble mount,
The dimpled dawn of the amber fount!
Dip the purple of passionate prayer
In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare,
The soul that startles in eyes of blue
To watch thy wantonness weeping through
The tangled grove, the gnarled bole
Of the living tree that is spirit and soul
And body and brain — come over the sea,
(Io Pan! Io Pan!)
Devil or god, to me, to me,
My man! my man!
Come with trumpets sounding shrill
Over the hill!
Come with drums low muttering
From the spring!
Come with flute and come with pipe!
Am I not ripe?
I, who wait and writhe and wrestle
With air that hath no boughs to nestle
My body, weary of empty clasp,
Strong as a lion and sharp as an asp —
Come, O come!
I am numb
With the lonely lust of devildom.
Thrust the sword through the galling fetter,
All-devourer, all-begetter;
Give me the sign of the Open Eye,
And the token erect of thorny thigh,
And the word of madness and mystery,
O Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan Pan! Pan,
I am a man:
Do as thou wilt, as a great god can,
O Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! I am awake
In the grip of the snake.
The eagle slashes with beak and claw;
The gods withdraw:
The great beasts come, Io Pan! I am borne
To death on the horn
Of the Unicorn.
I am Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan!
I am thy mate, I am thy man,
Goat of thy flock, I am gold, I am god,
Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod.
With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks
Through solstice stubborn to equinox.
And I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend
Everlasting, world without end,
Mannikin, maiden, Maenad, man,
In the might of Pan.
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan! Io Pan!

– Aleister Crowley

I have been getting a little more into my Hindu, advaitist side. It just snuck up on me. I started reading the Bhagavad Gita, and then… boom. I’m all spiritual… kind of. For me. The deities in the above picture are (from left to right) MahaLakshmi, Ganesh, and Saraswati.  I have had a fairly consistent connection with the latter two, and I’m starting to et acquainted with the former.

In short, I’m getting a notch more spiritual. It’s a good thing.

That’s not true, though. I was mad. Mad at him for blowing his brains out. Well, I’m older and perhaps wiser, and I must say that I seem to lack a certain twinkle in the eye that came from aligning with the Gonzo. Who am I to judge? We all have that right to say, “enough”, I believe. Sorry, Doc. I was just mad. I still love you.

Warren Zevon is another one who has gone, but from mesothelioma, not lead. This clip has Warren and Hunter S Thompson hanging out in a hotel room with some bimbos (yeah, they are. Just look) and Benicio del Toro.

Warren was already dying, and Hunter was already counting down the days. There’s nothing profound about the video. I just found it and … pined.