A recent gem

More from 'Ultimate Journey'

Ultimate Squee

A Space Monkey. Below is an excerpt from "The Ultimate Journey", Stanislav Grof, and a few panels from "Squee", Jhonen Vasquez. Is the general misunderstanding and condescension toward mystical and transcendental matters in our culture today accidental, or contrived? You tell me...

Parasites and Confusion

At times, Jhonen Vasquez can seem too dark, at others, just right.

In other news, a recent skin rash has reared its ugly cause; mild scabies, or more likely, a non-contagious skin parasite which resembles scabies (as I have not passed it on to my mate), which I have realized I've had for a long time, and am now combating with good diet and tea tree oil, mixed with high heat last week. The paranoia of mechanistic-science-based medicine nearly threw my whole perception of synchronistic unity for a loop, and perhaps it yet will, but my knowledge of the Force is strong at the moment.

Agrippa

Prefatory note to Occult Philosophy, Book I

He would have been/is happy about this

(PKD stands for Philip K. Dick)

AirPod

A car that literally runs on air. Click for full page.

Grof passage

Copied from Beyond the Brain, Stanislav Grof, p. 298-299

'What should be seen as sane, normal, or rationally justified depends critically on circumstances and on the cultural or historical context. The experiences or behavior or shamans, Indian yogis and sadhus, or spiritual seekers in other cultures would be more than sufficient for a diagnosis of psychosis by Western psychiatric standards. Conversely, the insatiable ambitions, irrational compensatory drives, obsession with technology, the modern arms race, internecine wars, or revolutions and riots that pass for normal in the West would be seen as symptoms of utter insanity by an East Indian sage. Similarly, our mania for linear progress and “unlimited growth,” our disregard for cosmic cycles, our pollution of such vital resources as water, soil, and air, and our conversion of thousands of square miles of land into the concrete and asphalt one sees in places like Los Angeles, Tokyo, or Sao Paulo would be considered by a Native American or a Mexican Indian shaman as absolutely incomprehensible and dangerous mass madness.'

Final Invisibles

We love you, Grant.

More Invisibles Snippets

Tiny House

Full article

Living in something like this is an eventual goal of ours.

From 'Reality Sandwich'

'  The logic by which this taboo operates is illustrated in paradigmatic form by the discursive regime of the New York Times Magazine article, "How Psychedelic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death."  As indicated by the title, the key medical breakthrough attributed to psychedelics in the article is their ability to aid certain individuals in establishing a modified relationship to death.  Elsewhere, a leading psychiatric researcher claims that psychedelic substances, taken under favorable conditions, have the power to "alleviate or even eliminate" fear of death, and "to positively transform the experience of dying," in those who receive them.
 
Patients approaching the end-stages of a terminal illness have been the principal subjects of research in this area, and the New York Times Magazine article focuses almost exclusively on such cases, reporting their results as the latest achievements of cutting-edge medical science.  However, far from being confined to any narrow clinical context, the relation to death is a problem that must be faced by all civilized human beings.  Indeed, this problem, rooted in the modern-historical conception of death as the absolute negation of the existence of the separate self, is one of the fundamental sources of the suffering and alienation inherent in civilized life.  It is not only the sudden awareness of mortality brought on by extreme illness, but the unbearable, irresolvable consciousness of death inscribed in all lapsarian worldviews, that calls for our attention.  And yet the New York Times Magazine article excludes the possibility that psychedelics could be utilized by independent experimenters to break through the pain and fear encoded in the modern consciousness of death.  On the contrary, the author assumes from the outset that such transformative effects of psychedelics do not actually manifest beyond the boundaries of institutional and clinical studies -- an assumption which many readers of this journal will recognize as patently false.  '

Full article

Adventure Time

A beautiful picture of Raffess.

Photomontage

This requires some explanation. I got the song 'hamsterdance' irrevocably stuck in my head once, for 24 hours. I couldn't sleep. It was driving me insane. A beloved Reiki healer said that I had a lot of dark energy surrounding me. This quote, again from 'The Invisibles', struck a chord.

Empirical Experience Data

More gems

This one will be incomprehensible to anyone without a disturbing degree of familiarity with Star Wars trivia.

This next one is in reference to Raffess' recent bout with a wolf worm, which doesn't have a canine body, but looks something like the head of this GIMP produced beast of darkness.

Department of Thruthanoia

Concerning 'Google Goggles'. Didn't want to make an account...

More "Invisibles"

Break the Spell

In memory of Bill Hicks

"You don't even know what 'Manichaean' means, do you?"