Coming Home to Roost Dream and Preparation 02-08-2025

Last night in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, in the cusp between here and yet to come, I had yet another coming home to roost “slide show”. In that, things come home to roost for some people whom I once had acquaintance of. I take no joy or glee from these happenstances, these scenarios, rather a tinge of sadness at folly and adamant folly to boot. For example if you falsify any official document there is a chance down the line that it could come back to bite you on the arse like a rabid chihuahua. If you succumb to temptation and allow the tendrils of evil to find purchase, they rarely let go and your relationship becomes symbiotic. Without knowing it you supply the food. Short of a full blown exorcism it is game over in terms of liberation for this lifetime. Nobody involved in such a symbiosis will ever believe or accept such a statement.

Everything seems normal to them. Their playbook seems to work and they have success in the world and among peers. They can handle whatever mini-crises are sent to them. Or so they think.

The thing about karma is that it can be subtle. People who believe they are thoroughly entitled do not imagine that it exists. When something happens that is “bad luck” , “unfair” and not an effect which they have had a hand in causing. One day, perhaps in a lifetime to come, people get to have the penny drop whilst incarnated and they see with irrevocable clarity the outcomes and consequences of their actions, their emotionally charged bile and punitive vengeful thoughts. Theory has it there is a review at the time of death too. I witnessed bedside my father struggling with his. It was not pretty.

I have started mentally preparing for my operation and other commitments later in the year. It has become reasonably obvious in the twilight that I need to return to the A-U-M meditations and revisit Phowa practice just in case. I probably need to start doing more stretching exercises and work at building back some muscle in my legs and hips. At the end of the month I start a new birth-year, leading me further into my final pinnacle. Who knows what is in store aside from some hippie action in the operating block.

My understanding is that when people incarnate, they choose all the circumstances of their birth to enable them to learn from a “lesson plan” that might help them best evolve and work at karma. They made this plan themselves. For example I was born into a family in which the education mantra was strong. I was sent to boarding school in another country, education was more important than any close familial relationship. I subsequently ended up working  in “education” for a couple of decades. I planned this before birth.

In the birth lesson plan trajectories of whom you are “meant” to meet are bullet pointed. The possibilities exist. These individuals have the wherewithal through which you might learn. Human choice must be allowed. Thus it is possible to completely screw up the lesson plan which you yourself wrote. Literally miss the boat by miles. You can fuck up a life and badly so, through your own arrogance. The moot point is were you always destined to fuck up or did you simply act that way out of bloody-mindedness? Did you cut off your nose to spite your face or had you zero choice in the matter? In the grand scheme of things learning will inevitably ensue. But it may be many lifetimes later that such a great learning opportunity re-presents. People learn painfully yet effectively through loss.

It is the karma of snakes and ladders.

The thing about dreaming is that timing is never atomic-clock accurate. But when the dreams increase in frequency it does mean that the event is getting nearer in time, it will happen sooner. It also means that the likelihood or probability is increasing.

Dreaming by its very nature cannot be an exact science….

Saint Hilarion of Gaza

Hilarion (291–371), also known by the bynames of Thavata, of Gaza, and in the Orthodox Church as the Great was a Christian anchorite who spent most of his life in the desert according to the example of Anthony the Great (c. 251–356). While Anthony is considered to have established Christian monasticism in the Egyptian Desert, Hilarion, who lived in the coastal area near Gaza, is considered by his biographer Jerome (c. 342/347 – 420), to be the founder of Palestinian monasticism – regarding this claim see also Hilarion’s contemporary, Chariton (mid-3rd century – c. 350), founder of monasticism in the Judaean Desert. Hilarion is venerated as a saint exemplifying monastic virtues by the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

Origin and life as a hermit

Hilarion was born around 291 to pagan parents in Tabatha, a village five miles north of Gaza. Hilarion was at least bilingual, speaking both Greek as well as Aramaic which was common around Gaza. His pagan parents sent him in his youth to study with a grammarian in Alexandria, where he gave, according to Jerome, a remarkable proof of his ability and character and became an accomplished speaker. While in Alexandria, he heard of the hermit Anthony and set off to study with him. After two months of learning the ascetic life from Anthony, Hilarion started to feel that the many visitors who came to Anthony for healing or exorcism were too much to bear and he decided to set off in the wilderness of Palestine to live alone as a hermit.

Hilarion returned to Gaza where he found his parents dead and subsequently gave away his goods to his brothers and the poor. He then established himself as a hermit in the desert inland from the coastal road, seven miles from Maiuma, the port of Gaza. Though he went on one occasion to Jerusalem to venerate the holy sites, he chose not to live in the Judaean Desert as he did not wish to appear to confine God within prescribed limits, believing he could be close to God anywhere. Around 308, he built a hut where he lived in solitude for 22 years and which survived into the time of Jerome. Hilarion wove baskets as he had learned in Egypt where this was a common monastic occupation. Here he also struggled against fleshly desires and Jerome said that the devil tempted Hilarion by igniting the “flames of lust” in the young man. Hilarion fought this sexual desire by mortifying his body with hunger, thirst and strenuous labour.

Life in Gaza and attributed miracles

After the 22 years he lived in his solitary hut, Hilarion was approached by a brave woman who sought a cure for her sterility. First, he resisted, but soon he prayed for her upon which she was healed. From then on, Hilarion spent his life surrounded by disciples and people in need of healing and exorcism. Jerome reports several episodes in which Hilarion heals people, drives out demons, foresees the future, performs miracles and speaks divinely inspired words of wisdom. In one instance, Hilarion was able to heal the three children of Helpidius, who would later become praetorian prefect. In Bethelea, Hilarion healed miraculously a certain Alaphion, which led to the conversion of the prominent family of the historian Sozomen.

As there were no monasteries in Palestine or Syria at the time, people began to flock to Hilarion for spiritual training. Sozomen, possibly due to his local sources, singles out Epiphanius and Hesyach as the two most outstanding in the circle around Hilarion. Epiphanius, who is known by the bynames ‘of Eleutheropolis’ and ‘of Salamis’, became his disciple after returning from Egypt and would later go to Cyprus where he introduced monasticism and was elected bishop of Salamis around 367/368. With many more people seeking his guidance, Hilarion established a monastery during the reign of emperor Constantius (337–361) which, by the time he was sixty-three, consisted of a large community with many visitors.

Final years and death

Hilarion remained in Gaza until three years after the death of Anthony (around 356), upon which he went to the place where Anthony had died in Egypt in order to escape the crowds that visited him. While he was there, the pagan Julian became emperor of the East in the winter of 361/362 and the city authority of Gaza attempted to arrest Hilarion who then had to flee. Jerome’s and Sozomen’s account differs slightly as Jerome writes that Hilarion escaped arrest in Egypt and lived there until Julian’s death before travelling to Sicily, Hilarion went according to Sozomen directly to Sicily. From there, he went soon to Epidauros in Dalmatia where he was said to have stilled the sea during the tsunami of 21 July 365 by drawing three crosses in the sand. Immediately after that, he went to Cyprus.

Hilarion was welcomed in Cyprus by his old disciple Epiphanius who encouraged him to stay. He initially settled near Paphos but later retired to a more remote place twelve miles away. Here, Hilarion died at the age of eighty and was buried. Ten months after Hilarion’s death, his disciple Hesyach stole his body, which was perfectly preserved and smelled sweetly, and interred it in his own monastery at Maiuma.

In literature

Johann Gottfried Herder wrote the poem “The Paradise in the desert” about the teacher-disciple relation between Anthony and Hilarion in 1797. This motif was also taken up by Gustave Flaubert in his The Temptation of Saint Anthony, though changed, as Hilarion attempts to tempt Anthony away from his faith by creating doubt.

Hermann Hesse adapted a biography of Hilarion as one of the three Lives of Joseph Knecht, making his Nobel Prize–winning novel The Glass Bead Game (also known as Magister Ludi).

————————–

Excerpted from Wikipedia

Faux Pas and Extracurricular Activities

————————————————————————————

Faux Pas: a significant or embarrassing error or mistake: blunder

especially a socially awkward or improper act or remark

: an embarrassing social mistake

A faux pas literally means “wrong step” in French.

You could just use the term “fuck things up” instead, but if you wanna look classy, use “faux pas”.

———————————————————————————–

There is in human thinking the notion of social hierarchy where status and kudos are important. It is easy to misread these often unwritten pecking orders and clues. One can get things wrong. Some cultures are more sensitive than others to such mistakes. When pecking orders abut things can be indeterminate and the possibility for miscalculations high. To prevent error some societies, start with the concept of humility and perhaps “lower” themselves until the minefield is better understood and thereby negotiated.

A big cheese in one system is small fry in another. I found that in “business” and “industry”, for example, academics are not held in very high regard. A VC said to me that from time to time they do invest in a “prof in his garage” but that such things were very risky, early stage. A young Ph.D. student might see Prof. X, in his garage, as being near deity perhaps having aspiration to emulate and to join the Gods. Working across hierarchies and socially invented pecking orders can be tricky. Some prefer Stilton others Emmenthal. It takes all sorts.

Apparent power can be gained by association. A long time ago when on business selling some science ideas in Tokyo, I was on a mission from my then Sensei to hunt down any video / film footage of various “obscure” old-school Iaidō masters. I was given some text in Japanese and the addresses of various martial arts shops dotted around Tokyo. Sensei was an advanced practitioner of various Ryu and Japanese trained. These shops were well off the beaten track and some had a dōjō associated. On a number of occasions on furnishing the Japanese text the shopkeeper called into the back and an older Japanese man came out to help me. They took the task very seriously and furnished me with more “leads”. It was obvious that I had kudos / respect by association even though I was a low grade student. It was the Ryu and his mastery that conferred. I was ultra polite and very careful so as not to bring disrespect and dishonour. They were very keen to help and found it interesting that Sensei was teaching in a small classical dōjō in London. I knew that disrespect might, if gotten out of hand, prove fatal. It was all very good natured and fun. No faux pas was made and allowance was made for my gaijin degrees of gauche.

At the time I was a lecturer in physical chemistry and soon to be start-up co-founder. Nobody where I worked could possibly have understood all the subtleties of what my major extracurricular activity was. This was more important to me, in some senses, than my job!!

We really do not know what is going on for others. There is a back story for most about which we are very largely ignorant and unaware. It is easy to barge around like a bull, on amphetamines, in a China shop and make huge fuck ups. The more arrogant and know-it-all we are the more likely it is.

Like a frog in the bottom of a well people can be a big-Gouda in their silo unaware that there are oceans out there. People are blind and blinkered in their silos. You can try to tell a well dweller about life outside the well but they may not accept that such a thing exists. In the absence of six-sigma proof they will deem extra-well existence impossible and mere conjecture, pseudoscience even. Because they have not seen an ocean, they will not accept your stories about them. Their adamant insistence means that they will probably never have the experience. They will go to their “graves” saying “I told you so. I am right. Oceans are figments of imagination!”

If someone unaccustomed to an ocean goes swimming therein, it is easy for them to get out of their depth. They may not have had this experience before and the notion of being out of their depth is alien to their omniscience. If you say, “careful you are out of your depth”, they are likely to pooh-pooh and disregard. When they get tired and can no longer swim, panic can set in. Being out of their depth they do not know how to proceed.

In general, I have found that trying to warn people that they are stepping into something they do not understand is fruitless. You warn, are assumed weird and a numpty. They disregard the warning and proceed full steam ahead into clusterfuck territory. There is nothing you can do, if an arrogant person needs that experience, who am I to rob them of it? By definition it is impossible to teach a self-diagnosed omniscient or know-it-all, anything.

People in silos or wells are ignorant of life outside the well but they don’t know it nor will they accept it.

If for example you were a skilled physical chemist accustomed to using synchrotron radiation to elucidate the properties of lipid membranes and you were thrust into the midst of a Vajrayana demon banishing ritual it is unlikely that you would take it seriously and believe. You might think it quaint and an indigenous ritual. You would not feel nor note the exorcism. After all synchrotrons are more real and more important than Vajrayana magic.

Maybe one day you might on a whim play with a Ouija board. Because you know best there would be no danger of you opening a portal and allowing a demon in, to feed off your aura and possess you.

People do not understand that “expertise” does not travel well between contexts and worlds. And if you are sufficiently ignorant to make the faux pas of pissing off a demon, there could be hell to pay, literally.

But of course, outside of your well, demons do not and cannot exist, you are adamantly correct about this, are you not?

Last Few Years – End Game

Since we have been in France several people have commented that I am still young. I have not and do not believe them. I do not see myself as young. I don’t feel that I have two decades left. I feel increasingly decrepit.

The average UK male life expectancy in the UK might be 84 but I have smoked a lot, drunk a lot and have early stage COPD. The government web site “thinks” on average that I will make the state pension age of age of 67. I am less sure. Various anti-tobacco web sites suggest that I have taken around ten years off my life expectancy. Someone like Boris Johnson is the same age as me. There is no way I could countenance his reported familial circumstance. I simply could not hack it. Some of my erstwhile peers are still having useful and successful careers. My overt socio-political career effectively stopped nearly two decades ago. I am done in that context.

The end-game trajectory looks pretty simple.

Many of the things which are advertised as activities for the aged are of no interest to me. The sanguine advertisers’ pictures of garden centre visits, SAGA river cruises, stairlifts, cremation plans and incontinence pants don’t really light my candle. Weirdly old farts like me are pictured using smart phones like a teenager! I will not be a grey-fox male model nor a complicit cripple smiling to camera and simpering in a wheel chair, thanking my lucky stars.

There is a disconnect in perception. People see sixty-year olds differently from how I experience it.

There is nothing on my bucket list and no residual ambition. I am not keen on bingo nor lawn bowls. I do not want to play bridge nor socialise with my fellow gummy-bear toothless.

I don’t really have much of anything to offer which people might want and/or pay for. I know some things but the things I know are not that which people desire or want. These will go up the crematorium chimney with me.

I know that on the warrior’s path anything might and can happen. So, if something hugely life-changing happened I would not be overly surprised. It looks mightily unlikely now.

I could treat myself to a new camera and renew my photography. I am 90% sure that I could write a truly terrifying occult based psycho-terror novel. Exorcism might feature. Cancer epidemiology and life expectancy / month graphs could be included. I could add some chem-bio-gene terror to the plot, maybe throw in a few mutations.

It remains a hypothesis that other people have karma to work out in respect of me and that I can in no way facilitate this process. Either they will do it in time or I will pop my clogs first. I am powerless to help, incommunicado and our circles are unlikely to cross again this life.

If we down-size the garden a lot. I will need something to do.

I don’t really have a vision of where to from here…the current horizons however are not large…

Evil and Exorcism – Quantum Exorcism

Last night we watched the film “The Rite” starring Anthony Hopkins {even though he was not the main character}. In the film a young man, reluctantly training to be a priest, encounters the phenomenon of exorcism via the seasoned exorcist Hopkins, and the trainee ultimately performs his first full blown exorcism of a demon which identifies as Baal which had possessed Hopkins. There was not much in the way of special effects and it was not a CGI tour de force. I suspect with Hopkins it could be done as a radio play, like Under Milkwood. The human mind could conjure some scary stuff, in the wee small hours. His voice is evocative.

Needless to say, there were a few noises in the {our} house here during and after the film. These could have been demons but were most probably the stray cats. Notably stray cats also featured in the film.

The crux of the film, in the denouement, is that the trainee exorcist priest accepts the reality of the devil the demon which by “quantum entanglement” proves the reality of God. One implies the other. Once the protagonist has acknowledged both he can call, now in full faith, on God to evict the demonic tenant.

Developing this tenuous theme further, good and evil exist as a quantum superposition state in each of us. It is by our actions that we resolve the superposition state and are then either mostly evil in orientation or mostly good. Schrödinger’s cat is either a bad feline or a good one. We look, we test, we observe and the good/evil wavefunction is resolved.

A residue of good exists {perhaps} in an evil person and vice versa. Nobody exists as a 100% pure good eigenstate; nobody is 100% impure evil. The coefficients can very over time.

If we do not believe in good or evil the wavefunction {and the cat} do not and cannot exist.

I’ll postulate that the best trick evil has ever managed is to render the entire subject or evil largely taboo in modern society. Few say that some of the alleged content of “Only Fans” is wicked or evil. We could say humanity has been hoodwinked to lower our standards.

Evil has done a “good job”, a phrase that certain American political figures are keen on.

The film suggests that modern psychological intervention may help those “possessed”. It does not mention some of the barbaric horrors which the psyche-profession has enacted over the decades and centuries upon the so-called insane. Bad things have been done in the name of “science” as well as in the name of “religion”.

This crux of accepting, acknowledging without drama perhaps, the notion and influence of evil is a game changer. Whilst one imagines that evil does not exist, one is free to indulge in self-centred and gratuitous pass times. The norm is never questioned and the evil “demon-adviser” on the shoulder says “go on, everyone is doing it. You would not want to miss out, would you?”

A little more clarity, where one sniffs the sulphur in the air and notes, if only as a hypothesis, evil; can change orientation. This, if only for as long as it takes to succumb to temptation. Noting might be seen as a first step in acknowledging the influence of evil.

The film suggests that the “demon” “evil” had been stalking the trainee from his young days as a child, subsequent to the death of his mother in the Adams Family profession of undertaker.

Temptation need not be entirely salacious. It can be as simple as taking a short cut, cutting corners, being economical with the truth, bullshitting. The notion of getting something for free or at a reduced price is a cornerstone of temptation. Talking bad of, belittling, slagging off; are not exactly luminous beacons.

I’ll wager that no human being alive has never succumbed to some temptation or other.

One could say that some, in lust for power, turn to the dark side. The coefficient of the evil wavefunction is higher. The superposition is skewed to darkness and not light.

If one has largely succumbed to evil then there is little hope of redemption by self. The habit has become entrenched. One needs external assistance to exorcise the evil or re-balance the quantum superposition.

Hence one needs a Hermit-like quantum operator {exorcist} to act upon the evil-good superposition state to change it from one state to another. To lift it up from the low point and to address the uncertainty as to whether good and evil are actually real world things. To rebalance.

——————————————————

What is your g/e probability?

Are you largely Good or largely Evil?

Are these two variables coupled?

If we are certain in one what limit does that put on the other?

Are you sure?

—————————————————————

Is the Notion of Exorcism Vicarious?

I am back to this topic because in some sense exorcism is not something that one discusses in polite circles, certainly not with a cup of Earl Grey and a slice of Battenberg. It might be spoken of in the dead of night to scare just before one gets out the Ouija board. In broad daylight many scientists might scoff at the notion and speak of psychological problems, delusions or schizophrenia. Yet to the practitioners of voodoo (or Voudou Lalwizyàn) the notion may not seem so obscure. There may even be a buck in it. There is a current exorcist in our department at Saint Brieuc.

—–

“Abbot Placide Guillermic, nicknamed Tadig Kozh, (born January 5, 1788, in Plounez, died April 28, 1873, in Bégard), was a Catholic priest and canon mythologized by Breton beliefs. Little biographical information is known about him, but eyewitness accounts mention the exorcisms this rector of Bégard performed at Méné-Bré in the Saint-Hervé chapel. Anatole Le Braz recounts that Tadig Kozh possessed knowledge of life and death, as well as supernatural powers, enabling him to reincarnate indefinitely, and to command demons and the wind.”

From Wikipedia

—–

Tadig Kozh performed exorcisms in a local chapel on a nearby hill.

In the movies the exorcisms are often dramatic, with profanity, bodily fluids and some garish biologically impossible movements. People possessed puke, piss and defecate. The exorcist is challenged by temptation, often sexual, by guilt and with fear. The faith of the hierophant is called into question and tested thoroughly. In general, there is some resistance from the possessing evil / demon which has some kind of anthropomorphic or zoomorphic shape. Rarely is the bad-doer entirely abstract. Sometimes the hierophant gets possessed to save others.

I’ll postulate that a fair deal of imagination is present and that may comment on the psychology and hang-ups of script writer and director. A good commercial director knows that sex sells so they would aim to include at least some nudity, preferably young and female.

I’ll speculate that those writing such material have not had personal experience either as hierophant or the person being exorcised. The theme music of such moves enters the collective consciousness.

While things remain in the realm of imagination, they are safe if a little creepy. If, however, a rite of exorcism started to become reality, detached observer orientations might fade. If it started to dawn on you that you yourself or a loved one were in need of an exorcism, what would you do?

Would you call up the departmental exorcist?

Look in yellow pages or on line?

Answers to the question “Can exorcism be done by Zoom?” suggest that it is possible and also by ‘phone. There may be a fee. A perusal online suggests that churches do not charge fees {but a gift may be welcome post hoc}.

I am not belittling here. What is very serious in the life of some is very serious.

An alternative movie script is when a sceptic doubts and gets drawn into situations way beyond their ken and control. The arrogant sceptic is punished and shits several large bricks. Their end may not be entirely happy.

The general gist is don’t take the piss of things you don’t understand.

In scenes of exorcism with whom do you most empathize?

Are you with the priest, overcoming doubt to banish with the help of God?

Are you with the helpless and afraid family whose loved one is possessed and whom they love and fear the loss of?

 Or are you with the demon telling the feckless priest of a non-existent religion to fuck off?

There is something vicarious and voyeuristic about watching a dramatized exorcism and not far below the surface are sexual overtones of possession and dominion. It could be said that portrayals of exorcism are a tad kinky.  There are S&M elements to movie portrayals.

Any movie which holds the attention must be at least a tad vicarious. We might imagine ourselves Hermione Grainger, Sheldon Cooper, Thor, Lara Croft, James Bond or Wotan Wagner in Ragnarök. Unless we are drawn in, we do not experience the emotional engagement.

Which poses the question would you prefer to be exorcised or to attempt an exorcism?

Is The Concept of Evil Taboo?

I’ll speculate that the use of the word evil in its sense as an antonym to good has waned. To talk about evil is less common than it once was and that as a concept it is nearly taboo. Human brutality does not require any demonic influence it is bad enough without outside influence. The days when the churches could ensure bums on seat with the spectre of evil are passing.

In this sense it could be argued that evil has won, it is off the agenda and out of the consciousness. By subtlety and subterfuge evil has been redacted. The media when it broaches the subject uses the extremes of CGI to create outlandish portrayals. Whereas evil does not need to cause pustules and scars in those it possesses. They can wear neat uniforms, appear highly organised healthy and yet send millions to die in gas chambers harvesting their dental gold in the process. Evil wears, most often, a human face not a fictional demonic one.

We watched “The Pope’s Exorcist” last night. The film was heavily influenced by Catholicism and the iconography thereof, it even suggested that the Spanish Inquisition was the work of the Devil. Torturing people in God’s name does not resonate with the teaching of Jesus. It is not the work of a lamb. It suggested that evil and the devil, the demons, Satan, cause delusional and abhorrent behaviour in humans.

How simple to pass the buck and avoid responsibility.

I can watch films about exorcism without fear or empathy for the possessed and their family. I do not need to look through my fingers. Yet I can still be surprised by a sudden well scripted twist. I may jump a little but I am not scared nor shitting my pants metaphorically. I was not raised, indoctrinated, in Catholicism therefore its imagery and points of reference do not bind me like they may others. I am reasonably sure that I could attend an exorcism in whatever tradition without being scared witless, nor being overly sceptical.

I am not worried by the concept of devil or demon, yet I accept fully the notion evil as a concept and a force, a driver in the lives of some /many.

The weird thing is those influenced by and enacting evil are the most likely to deny that they are so doing. They are blinded. They have justified their evil thoroughly by the use of rationalisations and even precedent. Precedents are not always exemplar of good, beauty and humanity at its best.

I accept exorcism as a concept in that a being can be helped to drive out the evil influence which it harbours and gives succour to. Evil influence flows into a being, by the path of least resistance. Once it has gotten a foot in the door so to speak and is invited in by the tempted person over the threshold, the thin end of the wedge is driven home and the floodgate of influence can open.

Soon life before the “wise” guidance of evil is forgotten. The sense of cahoots grows. Evil knows well how to fertilise so that its tendrils root and grow. The light from before wanes and there is nothing to compare with any longer.  The contrast between light and dark fades to grey.  It becomes ever easier to succumb and justify each dodgy act. Malicious pleasure starts to seed and germinate. The temptation of power over in whatever flavour grows strong and less satiable.

To the eye of a seer the evil influence can be discerned. In cases of medium to strong influence one can see a dark black ink like tendril above the head of the strongly influenced being. It looks like a drop of ink in water. The darker the ink the stronger the influence. At this stage the evil is not well incorporated and is readily dispersed. Once there is no gap between the tendril and the form, the evil influence is already partially rooted. In some the influence is profound and it is aback the eyes where the seer sees. They have in their beingness an unpleasant vibe, somewhat cloying and suffocating. It is difficult to spend long in such presences without feeling drained.

If someone you know drains you by the simple fact of proximity, then chances are they are influenced by evil. Evil likes to feed.

I can think of more than a handful of people with whom I have had an acquaintance, who could benefit from a prolonged and profound exorcism. But of course, evil would keep them well away from anyone who might lessen its influence.

It is a strange occult fact that evil is always attracted to good. And that good needs encounter with evil in order to learn. Good tends to give the benefit of the doubt which is its Achillies heal and this is something evil learns in the evil 101 class.

It is an interesting metric to watch exorcism films. Where does your empathy lie? What frightens you about the devil taking your soul to toast in the inferno for eternity?

If you are impeccably pure of heart and deed, no such fear would arise.

The Unknown and The Unknowable

Many do not know with humility where for them the known ends and the unknown begins.

Moreover, their assessment of what is known may be inaccurate in that they imagine they know more than they actually do. Anyone who has taught undergraduate science can testify that there are many students who imagine they know more than they do. They may be confident and exhibit braggadocio concerning their knowledge. They may even pass exams and imagine a mastery over a subject when in fact they have just passed an exam. A qualification is not synonymous with full knowledge. The measured knowledge is qualified to a yard stick. Knowledge begins post exam in its subsequent application. When you have to teach something in public, then you learn. Each time you teach it a new facet, previously un-noted, may be revealed. You could say that teaching is also a process of learning for the so-called teacher.

It stands to reason then, that the scale and scope of the unknown can not even be estimated. Therefore, it cannot be factored in, in a reliable way. There may be some things, concepts and states of awareness which are unknowable, particularly so while in meaty carnate human form.

You do not know what you don’t know and are, by definition, unaware of the gaping hole in your knowledge. Though you may self-diagnose prematurely as omniscient. There are many who imagine themselves smart and with wide, deep and profound knowledge of life, the universe and everything.

42

To give a trite example what it feels like to be dead is unknown when alive, yet because we all die, it is not unknowable because we all get a chance to experience it. The level to which we are conscious in the death state may be variable. We don’t know for sure.

In the new age literature, I encounter many who talk about the buddhic and atmic planes or awarenesses. There is a certainty in language which is not necessarily backed up by personal experience. It is for them a theory, a hypothesis and not an experiential reality. In the blue books opus direct and continued experience of these states, in the model hypothesis, is as a result of initiation and evolution.

Humans like to model in their own image and may draw glowing enlightened figures, perhaps partially because states of awareness and consciousness of highly abstract natures are not easily diagrammatically rendered. In the Ancient Wisdom traditions, the atmic “plane” is sometime referred to as the nirvanic plane, implying it is the awareness of the post nirvanic being lacking a causal vehicle having blown it off. They may fail to imagine awe and the austere nature of universe, perhaps they imagine a soft radiant glow, with comforting pastel shades. Cosmogenesis is not nice and fluffy; it is cosmic and violent beyond comprehension. The scope is far beyond human experience. We can just do our best to observe, model and understand.

For a scientist the use of the two dimensional nomenclature of plane is very unhelpful and distracting. Plane implies matter and physicality {excluding imaginary numbers}. When I have been reading these things, I find that the legacy nomenclature from the Victorian mediums and early twentieth century occultists off putting and something which I need to put to one side to get to the gist. The use of etheric “plane” instead of emotional is old fashioned.

I have seen the word Toltec described as man of knowledge and uttered with a bit of awe. I have yet to meet a so-called Toltec who can solve Schrödinger’s equation for a particle in a three dimensional box. Tens of thousands of undergraduates do this every year. There is a whopping great gap in knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology and engineering, in my opinion. They may have knowledge but it is far from complete.

Similarly, many scientists may profess profound knowledge. They may pooh-pooh magic, chakras, ghosts and exorcism. They may even soap box. I’ll wager that I could spend the wee small hours in a haunted house with them and have significantly less fear. Even though ghosts do not exist, of course. If I started to do a rite of exorcism, they would probably shit their pants.

Both groups have the unknown and the extent of it is also unknown. I could play on words and say that the extent of the unknown is the unknowable for any give life because we can only map out so much unknown in ~ 85 standard earth years.

I’ll make a statement; it is common for human beings to imagine themselves more knowledgeable than they actually are. There is an arrogance which is out of proportion with their tens of kilograms of meat measured against a planetary and cosmic scale. Yet they have trouble not being adamant and assertive about things which they know little or nothing about.

————————————————————–

Do you know where the unknown for you starts?

Have you an inkling of just how vast that unknown is for you?

Expat Living – Exorcism Dream – 19-08-2024

Here is this morning’s dream.

I am talking with someone not known to me about living as an expat whilst growing up. I tell them that I was particularly fond of Spider and Tembo in Zambia. I spent quite a bit of time with them whilst my parents were otherwise engaged. They let me sit in on their advice sessions for younger men of a lunchtime. I say that that Tembo in Swahili means elephant and that I am of the elephant dreaming class.

The scene changes to the wooden veranda of a house here in Brittany. It is the veranda of our house. I am standing there. I am approached by several British expat couples They are walking towards me largely unconscious and zombie like. They want me to join them. To ward them off I begin a rite of exorcism, “in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti!”

This has no apparent effect. They get closer and one woman grabs my arm. I shake free. I then will them all to wake up out of their slumber. Slowly one by one they wake up.

In the dream I know that this is a warning not to fall into the customary habits of British expats in France and to stay clear of expat group think.

Dream ends