"Imagination can produce a level of well-being that is
bulletproof, in the sense that, no matter what happens in life, there is
a back-up, there is something that can be created beyond the current
crisis..." (The Magician Awakes, Jon Rappoport)
"When I use the word 'magic', I mean everything that can spring from
imagination. Not the silly little things. The big things. The launching
of entirely new realities that outdistance what society is producing.
And setting a limit on what the individual
can imagine and create, and how far he can go, is very much like
promoting the idea that every human is ill and should be a medical
patient all his life. It's sheer propaganda that seeks the lowest common
denominator, as a sales gimmick. In the case of imagination,
we're talking about the future of civilization and human life on the
planet---whether it rises or falls, whether the population finally
accepts the notion that every person is a victim and there is no way
out..." (Notes on Exit From The Matrix, Jon Rappoport)
In the human psyche, from the moment a newborn baby emerges into the light of day, he/she has a desire for magic.
We are told this is an early fetish that fades away as the experience of
the world sets in. As maturity evolves. As practical reality is better
understood.
In most areas of psychology, sensible adjustment to practical reality is
a great prize to be won by the patient. It marks the passage from child
to adult. It is hailed as a therapeutic triumph.
In truth, the desire for magic never goes away, and the longer it is buried, the greater the price a person pays.
A vaccine against a disease can mask the visible signs of that disease,
but under the surface, the immune system may be carrying on a low-level
chronic war against toxic elements of the vaccine. And the effects of
the war can manifest in odd forms.
So it is with an inoculation of reality aimed at suppressing magic.
One of the byproducts of the "reality shot" is depression.
The person feels cut off from the very feeling and urge he once
considered a hallmark of life. Therefore, chronic sadness. Of course,
one explains that sadness in a variety of ways, none of which gets to
the heart of the matter.
It is assumed that so-called primitive cultures placed magic front and
center simply because "they couldn't do better." They didn't have
science, and they couldn't formulate a "true and rational" religion with
a church and monks and collection plate and a European
choir and an array of pedophiles.
Historically, the impulse for magic had to be defamed and reduced and
discredited. Why? Obviously, because the Westerners who were poking
through ancient cultures had already discredited magic in
themselves---they had put it on a dusty shelf in a room in a
cellar beyond the reach of their own memory. But they couldn't leave it
alone. They had to keep worrying it, scratching it, and so they
journeyed thousands of miles to find it somewhere else---and then they
scoffed at it and tried to crush it.
And we wonder why, under the banner of organized religion, there has
been so much killing. At a deep level, the adherents know they've sold
their souls and they're depressed, angry, resentful, remorseful, and
they want to assuage and expiate their guilt through
violence.
But the urge for magic is forever.
And yet the charade goes on. While paying homage and lip service to
ordinary practical reality seasoned with a bit of fairy-tale organized
religion, people actually want to change reality, they want to reveal
their latent power, they want to create realities
that, by conventional standards, are deemed impossible.
They want to find and use their own magic.
In our modern culture, we're taught that everything is learned as a
system. That, you could say, is the underlying assumption of education.
It has far-reaching consequences. It leads to the systematizing of the
mind. The mind is shaped to accommodate this premise.
"If I want to know something, I have to learn it. Somebody has to teach
it to me. They will teach it as a system. I will learn the system. I
will elevate the very notion of systems. Everything will be a system."
In the long run, that gets you a lump of coal in a sock, a spiritual cardboard box to live in.
The intellectual enrolls at Harvard, he studies anthropology for six
years, he flies to a jungle in South America, he digs up remnants of a
lost culture, he infers they performed arcane ceremonies six times a
week, he writes monographs---and he concludes they
were a very picturesque society with fascinating customs and totems,
and their brand of magic can best be understood as an inevitable
consequence of their matriarchal organization, which itself was an
accommodation to rainfall levels.
Back home, the anthropologist takes two Paxil and goes off to teach a
class on the meaning of ancient eyebrow trimming in Tierra del Fuego.
Systems are wonderful things. They produce results. They take us into
technological triumphs. They help us become more rational. But when they
are overdone, when the mind itself becomes shaped like a system, it
reaches a dead-end. Then the mind works against
the unquenchable desire for magic. Then society is organized as a
tighter and tighter system and turns into a madhouse.
And then people say, "Maybe machines can actually think and choose and
decide. Maybe machines are alive. What would happen if we grafted
computers on to our brains? It might be wonderful."
People move in this direction after their own minds have been shaped,
like putty, into systems. They don't see much difference between
themselves and machines.
The desire for magic in every individual is squelched. So the first
order of business is the restoration of imagination, from which all
magic flows. Imagination is sitting there, always ready, waiting.
Imagination is saying, "The mind has been shaped into a system? I can
undo that. I can liberate the mind and make it into an adventurous
vessel. I can provide untold amounts of new energy."
Life is waiting for imagination to revolutionize it down to its core.
Since imagination is a wild card that technocrats can't absorb in their
systems, they pretend it a faculty produced by the action of atoms in
the brain. They pretend it is a delusion that can be explained by
demonstrating, for example, that a machine can turn
out paintings. Or poems.
"You see? We don't need humans to make art. Computers can do just as well. Imagination isn't mysterious at all."
Technocracy and transhumanism flow from the concept that the human being
is just another machine. And any machine can be made to operate more
efficiently.
Meanwhile, imagination waits. It never vanishes. It stands by, just in
case an individual decides to live a life that overflows with creative
power.
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