RAW THOUGHTS

[Bobby Campbell]

A thread to cuss & discuss half-baked dot connections within
our shared Maybe Logical Discordian Universe(s)!

[Bobby Campbell]

ITEM! The Yankee & Cowboy War
Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate and Beyond
by Carl Oglesby



Available as a PDF from Archive.org!

An oft cited fav of RAW's, which reads almost like an Illuminatus! appendix, describes a secret history of conflict between Northeastern and Southwestern power elites.

It plays almost like a "previously in the History of the United States" recap / recontextualization of our contemporary political strife. There are so many plot lines & trends that Oglesby identifies back in 1976 that we have now seen come to actual fruition, that there is a slightly eerie quality to his more paranoid ruminations. (Defactualization -> TechnoFascism)

Oglesby comes across as arguing in good faith about the cracks in the official stories of United States history, though perhaps with a pronounced grudge against the establishment, which maybe tints his perception and pushes him towards favoring any explanation other than those officially provided by the government.

Given the content of his investigative reports, this preference is perfectly understandable, admirable even, but with current events demonstrating the logical conclusion of oppositional defiance as an epistemological strategy, it's hard not to second guess his methodology.

Also, I find engaging with this type of material interesting, but must admit that I lack the scholarship to do so meaningfully.

One of the most compelling parts of the book were lengthy transcripts of conversations between Jack Ruby and Justice Roberts during the Warren Commission. From his own words, Jack Ruby seemed to be insinuating that he was ensnared in a vast web of conspiracy, for which Oglesby provides compelling and convincing contextual support, But! I don't really have any basis to critically analyze Oglesby's narrative. It might as well be fan fiction for all I actually know.

Though I do now have a new fav JFK theory! Oglesby suggests that some of the funny business that arrises within the investigation stems from Justice Roberts assuming that Russia was the real culprit behind the assassination of JFK, and that if that were to be discovered, a nuclear world war would be the inevitable result. So given the choice between the truth ending the world, and a lie preserving it, he chose the lie of the lone gunman. Ignoring any other possibilities, just to be on the safe side.

As history, I would assume this is probably very suspect, but as a story, it's a pretty good one!

I'm particularly interested in the alt political dichotomy Oglesby outlines:
Old Money Vs. New Money
East Coast Monopolist Vs. Western Tycoon Entrepreneur

Those specific lines have probably blurred a bit, but I can def dig the general idea of political divisions amongst the ruling class having much less to do with ideology, and way more to do with conflicting business interests.

Maybe!

[Bobby Campbell]

On March 4, 1971, Terence & Dennis McKenna conducted their experiment at La Chorrera, in which they experienced contact with an apparent extraterestrial, higher dimensional logos, by ingesting a psychotropic concoction as part of an idiosyncratic ritual, a harbinger of ever escalating high weirdness.

Between July & August of 1973, Timothy Leary conducted a group telepathy experiment while incarcerated at Folsom Prison, resulting in supposed contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence from the future, delivering a message which Leary then transmitted under the name "StarSeed".

On July 23, 1973, Robert Anton Wilson began experiencing contact with a higher intelligence from the Sirius star system which continued until around October 1974.

In 1974, John Lilly came to believe in a network of cosmic entities, and that he had achieved contact with the local representatives: E.C.C.O. (Earth Coincidence Control Office)

On February 20, 1974, Philip K. Dick experienced a transference of cosmic information from a Vast Active Living Intelligence System (VALIS), which continued throughout February and March of '74.

And that's just off the top of my head!
WTF was going on in the early 70's??

To hazard a guess, these were all exceptionally bright people enveloped in a countercultural zeitgeist of sci-fi psychedelia, living in a world where Woodstock just landed on the moon, and Spaceship Earth was undeniably on the verge of something HUGE. So when their imaginations became exposed to extreme circumstances, by hook or crook, they envisioned new kinds of gods, networked cosmic intelligences. (Basically anticipating the internet?)

Worth noting that these experiences all went on to inspire very influential books and systems of thought. To whatever extent these were actually pathological breaks from reality, they have functioned in our culture as successful visionary revelations.

Though in this there is most certainly a survivor's bias at play. For every Robert Anton Wilson, who carefully navigated the destabilizing consequences of psychotomimetic experiences, and extracted useful and entertaining life lessons along the way, how many less fortunate souls maybe got less admirable results?

COSMIC TRIGGER WARNING: Self Harm

On March 26, 1997, the bodies of 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult were discovered in a house just outside of San Diego, having participated in a ritual mass suicide, orchestrated as part of an extraterrestrial/metaphysical belief system, in which they hoped to board a spaceship trailing the Comet Hale–Bopp.

Okay, so that may feel a bit out of left field, let's step back a sec...

In March of 1972, Marshall Applewhite & Bonnie Nettles met and pursued a spiritual quest that eventually resulted in apparent contact with an extraterrestrial divine intelligence that bestowed upon them a mission to fulfill biblical prophesy by dying, being resurrected, and ascending bodily to a literal, physical heaven, on an actual spacecraft.

In 1974, the "cult of cults", what would eventually become known as Heaven's Gate, was formed.

This timeline places "The UFO Two" firmly in the High Weirdness cluster of the early 70's.

So I guess pretty obviously I recently watched the Heaven's Gate documentary on HBO, and before even catching on about the funky 70's stuff, noticed a weirdly familiar vibe in the archival footage, which felt like a southern preacher's imitation of Timothy Leary's guru schtick.

Or even one of those especially weird, self-transforming-machine-elf workshop events Terence McKenna would put on, except at the end of the UFO cult show these cats took off with half of the audience to go live in the woods!

The Two apparently ran an alternative spiritual bookshop in the early 70's, so maybe were familiar with some of the psychedelic literature of the time. Their visionary experience is hypothesized as resulting from an LSD trip, so there may be more than coincidence at play here.

They referred to "beliefs" as "programming" which seems like it could have been taken directly from John Lilly's work. They also seemed to have a general sense of the concept of reality tunnels, or more specifically that people viewed the world according to their programming. Which I suppose shouldn't be much of a surprise, since cults depend on deconstructing existing belief systems. So if they say your concept of self & reality is illusory, it has the ring of truth, but then can use that as a wedge to instill far grander delusions.

Sort of like if you watch a Charles Manson interview, and half the time he's doing a folksy Alan Watts routine, which attempts to disarm you for the more direct sociopathic manipulation.

In "Everything is Under Control" RAW reports that Applewhite & Nettles, then going by the names "Bo" and "Peep" walked out of a lecture he was giving in Houston in 1978. At the time they were identified as "leaders of a typical UFO contact cult."

Terence McKenna also reported early familiarity with The Two:

"I couldn't believe the way in which the media portrayed the Heaven's Gate people as very careful thinkers, very reasonable people — I mean, I heard about this thing in 1975. Somebody said, 'Hey, there are these two people who are running around who say that they're off a spacecraft. You wanna go see?' [extremely irked voice] 'NO!'"

There's home video footage of members in the 90's driving home after holding a public meeting, wherein their message got pretty decisively rejected by those in attendance, and they are clowning on a particularly critical dude deemed too dumb to receive their truth, they mock him as a "bonehead," much to their own delight.

Generally speaking, it is pretty difficult to see the irrationality of our own unexamined assumptions, by proxy, I glimpsed the bars of a Black Iron Prison.

I suspect the sheer magnitude of the infamy generated by the media circus that surrounded the discovery of the mass suicide presented itself as a fulfillment of prophesy to many of the ex-members who were left behind. Several of whom took their own lives in belated attempts to join in on the space rapture.

Perhaps the most haunting aspect of the documentary is the running commentary from a left behind lapsed member who remains convinced he fucked up and missed out on spiritual ascension.

On April 22, 1997, one month after the Heaven's Gate mass suicide, Timothy Leary's ashes were launched into space on a Pegasus rocket.

"We are sending a comet to your solar system as a sign that the time has come to look to the stars."

An excerpt from Timothy Leary's StarSeed Transmission, which in hindsight, makes the 1997 appearance of Hale–Bopp Comet a very strange dot to connect amongst the stars, but the better view might be a bit more Earthbound.

As someone who spends quite a bit of time in mental & digital ideaspaces, I can sometimes accidentally fall into the error of treating my body like a vehicle that carries my mind around. Not as a conscious ideology, like the Heaven's Gate cult, but just as a consequence of having an introverted personality w/ an interest in computers & art, esp during quarantine.

What's the opposite of alienation? Reconciliation?

So my take away from all this is a reminder to return to my body more often, and maybe not just pour coffee into myself in front of a screen until somehow productivity starts to happen!

RAW's take away was basically that they would have remained harmless weirdos, except the fallout from the Waco massacre pushed them over the edge, which the doc also touches on.

The documentary takes a sympathetic view, depicting the members as basically regular people who were just kind of unlucky.

Terence McKenna, as noted earlier, was much more sick of this type of shit, having been around the paranormal block maybe a few too many times, and thought we shouldn't be shy about calling out harmful nonsense, with the caveat being we should also notice how much of our culture is comprised of equally absurd notions.

(Also, I kind of like how TM refuses to break kayfabe and acknowledge that his whole thing is having the wildest nonsense around!)
 
The balkanization of epistemology continues unabated, and ultimately these are just fragments of an unknowable big picture, so it goes!

[ArchangelIdiotis]

The Signals From The Stars post, meditations on the plausibility of delusional thinking when it came to RAW (strongly?) suspecting he may have received communications from an alien... If I had read this thread before I posted my thoughts on this subject in another of the pd.com boards, I would have posted those thoughts here.

I too am skeptical about whether it was real aliens. I consider the two most plausible possibles that (1) it was a hallucination of alien communications or (2) telepathy is real and everything, but it was just pranksters from earth staging an elaborate practical joke.

I just finished reading the Starseed Signals: A RAW Perspective on Timothy Leary PhD, and the gullibility of 70s RAW about the possibility it was aliens communicating with earthlings is one of two main flaws I seem to have detected in early RAW thinking. The other major flaw I suspect comes from the letters at the end of the book.

On giving up suffering: "If one is trying to give up something, then one has an object - which causes suffering." (G, Hill, last letter.) I respond: bullshit.

- RAW, page 429 paperback edition.

I translate the lack of an object as the answer to ending suffering to mean total selflessness is without suffering, because the self cannot attach to objects if it has been transcended. Selflessness as Nirvana, love not bound by the ego unconditionally expanding.

I cannot say how selfless it is possible to actually become. But RAW's conclusion that the koan is bullshit because the 8 circuits are an object that can overcome suffering seems to me to miss the point. Without noticing the approach of selflessness of mysticism and right hand esoteric paths, 8 circuit consciousness can become a thing which inflates one's pride in one's "level of consciousness".

I try to share my research into 8 circuit consciousness. So I don't discount that Wilson and Leary's research into this avenue was important. But I don't think intellectual enlightenment is as sustainable unless it induces less pride and more (openness to) love.

edit: the object is selfishness because it is a possession. it requires selfishness to value a possession, or to have anything for one's self rather than all sentient life, or whomever one loves.

[Bobby Campbell]

Thanks for the reply, ArchangelIdiotis!

I translate the lack of an object as the answer to ending suffering to mean total selflessness is without suffering, because the self cannot attach to objects if it has been transcended. Selflessness as Nirvana, love not bound by the ego unconditionally expanding.

I cannot say how selfless it is possible to actually become. But RAW's conclusion that the koan is bullshit because the 8 circuits are an object that can overcome suffering seems to me to miss the point. Without noticing the approach of selflessness of mysticism and right hand esoteric paths, 8 circuit consciousness can become a thing which inflates one's pride in one's "level of consciousness".

I try to share my research into 8 circuit consciousness. So I don't discount that Wilson and Leary's research into this avenue was important. But I don't think intellectual enlightenment is as sustainable unless it induces less pride and more (openness to) love.

I haven't read The Starseed Signals yet, but am currently re-listening to the Cosmic Trigger audio book, which is from the same era of RAW, and do find myself occasionally bumping into RAW's optimistic gullibility, though to be fair, it's easy to second guess from 40 some odd years in the future.

I'm going to wildly speculate that RAW claiming the 8 circuit model leads to the end of suffering is him doing a bit equating the 8CM to the Buddha's 8-fold path, which is specifically about alleviating suffering.

I like this paradox of striving for selflessness reinforcing selfishness, otherwise what does the striving? (If I've restated it correctly!)

For my money the paradox maybe gets resolved by a caveat in the concept of sunyata (emptiness), which basically means that selflessness doesn't mean an absolute absence of self, but rather the lack of a permanent intrinsic identity, and that one shd recognize the self as a temporary & conditional entity, not as something completely non-existant.

I think you've hit 2 great points about the 8CM that I emphatically agree with!

The way that it gets viewed as hierarchical levels of attainment seems counterproductive, and does indeed lead to weird, nonsensical, elitism.
Also, unnecessary fragmentation! Most 8CM commentary isolates the functionality of each system, whereas I like to imagine it working holistically.

I also def agree the model over emphasizes the intellect over the heart. The 4th circuit seems very underdeveloped in both RAW & Leary's version of the model. The social-sexual circuit kind of gets skipped over to get to the fun psychic trippy stuff. They generated way more material about sexy cosmic consciousness than say, what it means to function as a supportive member of a family/community/society.

I don't know if RAW wd agree with this specific criticism of the 8CM, but he did talk about the psychological dangers of opening the crown chakra before opening the heart chakra, metaphorically speaking!

I find myself increasingly grateful that I really only use the 8CM in the context of making my sci-fi comix, where I am completely untethered from the expectation that it be in any way true or real 

Best wishes!

[ArchangelIdiotis]

I like this paradox of striving for selflessness reinforcing selfishness, otherwise what does the striving? (If I've restated it correctly!)

For my money the paradox maybe gets resolved by a caveat in the concept of sunyata (emptiness), which basically means that selflessness doesn't mean an absolute absence of self, but rather the lack of a permanent intrinsic identity, and that one shd recognize the self as a temporary & conditional entity, not as something completely non-existant.

Recently I have been writing a theory of Nirvana that sustains a self of some kind: the mystic falls in love with everything and nothing, and surrenders, for the benefit of the attachments, all attachments to this everything and nothing so that the only attachment left is to everything and nothing.

Sorrow is transcended. Everything and nothing persists in being everything and nothing regardless of what happens to the sentient life forms that exist.

Perfect union with one's true love results from every experience, it is all everything and nothing, so that love may continue to increase regardless of circumstance, permanently.

Only sentient life can benefit from the conduct of the mystic to have attained this state of mind. The mystic can benefit, is part of everything too. Since hir is indirectly in love with all sentient life, hir wants whatever is "best" for all sentient life (including hirself). This could help solve global warming...

This may even permanently activate higher circuits of RAW, Leary, Antero Alli, and all's 8 circuit model.

Emotional control is easier with simple love. It is possible to release fear at will, and to make pride small yet positive, and to thru meditation on nothing attain a non verbal union with one's immediate experience.

*edit: I strongly suspect that actual Nirvana is without a self, selfless love more profound than that described. But the above would generate the most love of any state of mind I am capable of discussing at this time.

[ArchangelIdiotis]

I hope this doesn't distract from the original purpose of the thread very much, but I just finished the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra and my thoughts on Nirvana have solidified:

Ego free because all pride is released, whether thru meditation or any other means. All positive and negative sense of self esteem.

All emotions except love are released.

Love in its simplest state is unconditional, all embracing, and none attached. And the heart expands unconditionally.

So: the heart is trained to embrace everything and release lesser emotions than love. Expanding unconditionally is profoundly blissful because potentially infinite love is tapped into.

[Bobby Campbell]

I can dig all of that, AI!

And no worries about the original purpose of the thread, distractions are encouraged 

Just to connect some dots with you...

Releasing both positive & negative self esteem reminds me of Jung's concept of enantiodromia, the idea being that psychical states call forth their opposites. A bipolar pendulum, of sorts. Neutralizing value judgements might could create some balance.

I know what you mean about euphoric & holistic love!

Interesting thing about language where it condenses a multiplicity of ideas into a single symbol, which then gets used interchangeably, with somewhat confusing results!

"Every word is a fossilized poem."

Eros: Romantic Love
Philia: Brotherly Love
Agape: Divine/Unconditional Love

"Love, yes. Word known to all men"
- James Joyce, Ulysses

"All you need is love"
- The Beatles

"I'm lovin' it"
- McDonalds Slogan

"Love is the law"
- Aleister Crowley

"Love is metaphysical gravity."
- Bucky Fuller

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