Robert Anton Wilson, Ability to communicate with the Universal Consciousness? Options

Hi guys,

I've been reading Cosmic Trigger and pondering the subject raised by RAW in the book.

Wilson states that he found the ability to talk to aliens telepathically, specifically Aliens from the Sirius constellation, which he basically equates to tapping into the universal consciousness, or speaking to A universal Consciousness, something equivelant to what Philip K Dick called VALIS (Vast Active Life Intelligence System). Grant Morrison also talks about his own Alien Abduction experience in which he was taken from the top floor of a hotel in Katmandhu and taken outside of time and had reality explained to him.

Now, Wilson talks about everyone having their own reality tunnels, to quote Timothy Leary "any reality is an opinion, " which leads me to think that all of these experiences, Phil K Dicks' VALIS to Wilson's Sirius communications to Morrison's Katmandhu experience (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyfXUe3w73o&feature=related) are all one and the same thing...a communion with 'something' which their brains translated and filtered into the images or voices they experienced. These experiences are highly symbolic, something I attribute to our unconscious minds, our dreams are highly symbolic, it's the language of the subconscious and not really vialbly interpreted by our waking minds (ever tried to rationalise a particularly weird dream that somehow made sense when you were asleep?). The two minds are incompatible.

In Phil K Dick's experience his attempts to rationalise what he went through almost drove him mad. He realised it was better to leave it unquestioned, un-explained.

I've had experiences with animals that have given my symbolic mesages, just by their very appearance in my life. At other times I've had highly prophetic dreams, highly symbolic dreams and on one occasion (even though I was born Catholic but am no longer) a dream in which I was on a beach and was following a set of footprints. High up on the promenade next to the beach I could hear people having fun at some sort of carnival, then a voice told me to "Stay on the path, I'm going in the right direction."

Now, whether the experiences I've had are a similar kind of experience to the experiences these great men had, I don't know. At least it's not as vivid or sensationally, overtly magickal as theirs. Their experiences seemed to lead to transcendence on a spiritual and mental level.

I guess my point is, has anyone on here ever experienced something similar? Is there any way to invoke this kind of experience? Is this something that could be invoked by Kundalini energy at all?

You're right on track, in my opinion. Here's what I've found in my own sphere of experience.

Like you say, "their brains translated and filtered into the images or voices they experienced". We forget sometimes that the brain is what does the phenomenal thinking that we experience inside our heads. So when we experience images, voices, etc., at the very most those experiences are the brain interpreting higher experiences - and at the least there is nothing higher than the brain about it.

For myself, if I tried to describe it, it would sound overtly 'magical' - so I think that even if their experiences were more sober than they sound, part of the appearance of that experience is in it's explanation. They might have been moved by it, but experienced it somewhat differently than it comes off. For instance, in my life I have these experiences on a daily basis now. Internally, the most non-embellished way i could describe it is as a flash of insight. But, that tells you very very little about the experience. So if I want to explain it further I have to use language to describe it in a way that cannot but come off as excessively sensational:

(recent example) My current boss is speaking with a client in front of another therapist. She gives the therapist a brief glance, and then makes a comment to the client. All at once, the entire situation is laid out in my mind - I see not just the comment and the arrangement, but the communication between them expressed in how they are positioned, by the keywords used in the comment, by the order of actions, and in connection with this communicational geometry I know an even more subtle underlying geometry which creates this the way the subconscious creates a thought: she makes this comment in this situation in order to assert control over both the therapist and the client, and does so because the therapist has made a suggestion to the client previously which predisposes the client to coming back, but to see the therapist instead of the owner, who performs specialized modalities. A series of insights regarding the reasoning on the part of the client and the therapist coalesce, and I see in my mind's eye three luminous bodies, two of which have a connection and the third does not. The third unconnected body extends a heavy light into the connection and tries to overcome the connection for itself, while outshining the 'therapist' luminous body by creating flashes of light instead of increasing its overall light. The client's body draws back from the new connection and dims, and the therapist's body vibrates in a harsher way to shake off the owner's controlling energy, and the result is that the client's body withdraws from the greater whole of the clinic itself. I know that this client will not come to the session they just scheduled with the owner. Sure enough, he doesn't show up - and gave us false information. It all happened in a flash, and none of it really happened in the mind the way it sounds - it happens as a sudden knowledge that trickles down into the senses. There are other elements involved - the reaction of the clinic as a conscious entity, the vibrational resonance that washes through everyone there as they make their reactions to the scene, the overall place of the clinic entity in the community as it's connection is formed from connections to clients. Understanding comes first and then the brain makes sense of it.

More mystically oriented is an experience of seeing the web of connections between people, places, structures, both mental and physical. There were psychic structures which overlaid physical ones, and spiritual structures that formed as a result of multiple psychic structures, and the same in reverse. People changed and adapted as luminous beings caught in a spider web, while some individuals seemed more solid, passing between the threads instead of being caught and lead by them. There were cracks in the entire structure that were sometimes closed by spiritual structures, but sometimes representing large cracks. And the structures weren't just the places, they were overall social constructs as well. Memes flitted back and forth, like soundwaves and interference patterns which strike one psychic structure and then resonate outwards, creating sympathetic vibrations in others. But, it wasn't exactly something existing in a temporal or spacial way - the structures were all layered in a way, like a hypersphere where different structures existed from different points of view? This happened during meditation and came, again, as a kind of flash of insight.

From my perspective, there was no thunderclap of enlightenment, there was no extremely altered state of consciousness, I didn't shake or cry, it was, for lack of a better word, almost casual in nature. I was open to it, the experience came, and I didn't attempt to hang on to it or take a moment to bask in the light of gnostic wisdom. It just happened, and I thought, "Ah, okay." It's likely that this is how it happened for those authors as well, but describing it makes it sound like a vast and mystical experience.

Now, alien abduction... well... Grant Morrison is an interesting character.

Invoking these experiences is, in my opinion, mostly a matter of being open to them. You'd think it would simple enough to sit down and just say, "Okay, I'm listening." But, you've got to convince more than just your conscious mind. You've got to look at your entire life, and the entire world - not just the 'mystical parts' - as an ongoing conversation about reality. Everything you do, from wiping your butt to tending to the needy, is a statement about how reality works, the movements between physical, mental, and spiritual; a road is not just a road, a grocery store is not just a grocery store, shaking hands and exchanging greetings is not just social niceties. If you look at the world through this eye, and soberly - not drowning out the Voice with your own - then it communicates with you, explains itself, and demonstrates its principles. If you grasp after the insights, they will always be just out of reach. If you watch and wait, with an attitude of wonder at the beauty of even the 'ugly' parts of reality, they will come sometimes on a daily basis.

peace

Vagrant, way to let if flow man. Especially the final two sentences, well they were touching, what more can I say. Now really the question is very philosophical in nature, are we idealists, everything formed in our mind? I doubt it, however, we are not lost, the sea of consciousness that precedes us is very, very real. Jung's theory of the universal conscious is very accurate, but as magicians, we have better sources and better ideas than so much of today's bitter psychology and it's subsequent petty scientific conflicts. I think the finest naming of this is the 'communion with the ancestors' which is one of the great tentants of appalachian magic and the surrounding area. These ancestral voices, however you might like to view them can help a magician truly grasp the plight of reality.

Which of course, brings the idea of aliens and animals into the mix, how can they relate to the ancestors? Well, firstly let's pretend that aliens don't exist... However, ancestral knowledge tells us of worship of the heavens, worships of the idea of aliens, or gods ascending from the heavens, if a modern man or woman would to touch the ancestors and therefore those potent belief in gods, it's very safe to assume that what he sees as alien, in the past that would be god. The reason for this lack of accordance is a thread in and of it's own of course. To go even further, one could suppose that the very belief of those many gods, of the ancestors great zealotry is so ravenous that, those beliefs themselves could be seen as 'alien'. Where do animals come in? Basically same idea, only with different characteristics, for instance, in modern times, a person more associated with animals might be seen as more primordial and earthy while he/she who has the feeling of aliens might be seen as more abstract and airy.

One other thing that's definitely worth touching upon, which vagrant has hit well is the idea of connection and inter-relation. Of these things the most important is Reflection. Now this is a very quick explanation but allow me this: these authors that we speak of, perhaps every little thing happened the way they describe on first impulse. However, the truth is that they are writing in retrospect, after their own interpretation their experiences. They sound so much more concrete than they probably were, that's the point. Reflecting on our own meditations, as seemingly silent and peaceful that they might have been introduce a plethora of new experience. So harken to those words that VD has stated, he describes it well, that well written point, recognition of everything at the moment is pointless. The recognition that one really finds in the moment is of what will happen, it's the meal without the chef who knew how to make it; it's only through reflection we can can hope to have the resolve to filter all of the information that comes to us in a single moment of insight. From such experience, perhaps, perhaps it's possible to see outcomes, results, love and dreams that our hidden from the view with the the entirety of the scope of all that is.

Assuming its not all just types of hallucination/imagination, then I tend to view it as a two way street.... the 'entity' or 'system' you want to commune with seems to have to want to participate AND you have to be committed and persistent. It might explain why things like sacrifice existed so frequently, maybe not necessarily effective.... but is understandable that it could have been or at least thought it could be. Sacrifice can range a minutes silence, giving money to a charity, living chaste/poverty, obedience, pain, blood letting, to those crazy animal and even human murders, but the point is in my experience and looking at history it seems to be a common part of forming an agreement or bond. Whether the formed entity or system is external or a product of the subconscious is harder to tell, but even if it is from the unconscious it can be an important avenue to access subconscious faculties. I'd like to think that we can access the spiritual or otherwordly through the subconscious and so for me the nature of these experiences you are reading about say more about the people who are having the experience then the entity or system they are possibly communicating with. I think the details are those retrospective personal filters which add the contextual details to allow better understanding. Perhaps the greater the detail though does reflect the greater intensity of experience, with personal context being forced into being by the conscious mind as it fills the void of the meaningless presence of something beyond our minds normal ability to perceive.