My article "The Universal Heart" was recently published in the British hard copy magazine Indie Shaman. I even made a cover blurb! Please be a good ol' chap and go on over to http://www.indieshaman.co.uk/indieshamanshamanicmagazine.html and purchase a copy!

Many thanks to Indie Shaman for the opportunity!

Chapter 23 – Limited Space: An Excerpt From Gregor Samson’s Akashic Memoir



A reflection:

There is a valid reason to explain my great affinity for Charles Fort.

It was a few years ago. My life was a malaise, a perpetual gray cloud hovering over every facet of existence. I was recovering from a traumatic state of circumstances: the destruction of my marriage and parental rights being stripped away like they were just a pair shoes torn off my feet. One minute you’re a dad, the next you’re just another shmuck off the street. Fatherhood is a flip of a coin: heads, your weekend for playing in the park with that little girl who looks up to you more than any other guy; tails, back to the loneliness of bachelorhood. It’s a schizophrenic existence and tough to walk in any sort of balanced framework.

Eventually my role became diminished. Circus Dad that Alice only wanted play-things from. There was no respect, no connection, no serious embodiment of the paternal nourishments I so longed for long ago. As well, any attempts from her mother to shut me out of her school life, church life—anything else that might have made me a real father—were ignored by the courts on the traditional basis that “mother knows best.”

Well . . . she knew best on how to diminish my status of fatherhood to such a point that defeat was inevitable. I became a broken filament. The shattered pieces of purpose were no longer there to try to piece together. I was lost; no stones to toss, nothing to throw them at.

My marriage was no better even when we were legally bound. The gray was always there, almost dream-like, walking through fight after fight after fight. We were never meant to be together, and I think I remember one night, waking up, looking over at her pale skin and auburn hair and thinking to myself, “Who is this person? How did I get here?” Even though that marriage was a prison I tried so hard to break from, the fallout was so destructive on my psyche it shattered my immune system—contracting a plethora of conditions consuming my body’s ability to function in any normal capacity. External dependencies on chemical agents were a must! In a coalesced haze of social disparity and physical illness, I wandered aimlessly from month-to-month; a beleaguered automaton inept at any prospect of joy or fulfillment.

One day, I stumbled into Spivey’s Bookstore on Westport. Spivey’s is housed in a rugged brick building constructed in 1910, five floors of nooks and crannies and portals to dark places. Ol’ David Spivey himself sat on a rustic, beaten chair covered in soot and dog hair, near the back of the dilapidated tenement. He’s a caricature of himself, munching on his cigar and reading stacks of yellowed newspapers through bottle-lensed spectacles. A droopy bloodhound lay quietly at his feet as a chestnut colored Great Dane with bulky hind-legs lumbered quietly around the corner to see who entered through the bell-tinkle door. The old fray-haired lady at the counter with twinkly eyes smiled at me. Ol’ David never interacts with customers, just sits there quietly reading his decades-old newspapers. The place is a concoction of rooms randomly situated with no rhyme or reason other than to stack shit: old dust-worn tomes a century old; cluttered piles upon piles of maps of the world when countries had different borders, or when the New World was uncharted territory; books capriciously stacked out of order on crooked shelves along with bowls of water, dog food, and cat food; and yes, the occasional feline languidly brushing by your feet as you peruse the cobweb aisles. I love the place.

This one particular day, I was in the basement, next to the water heater, sluggishly browsing the book stacks of (mostly) biographies. I was in a supine mood. But I happened upon a hardback with golden leaf embroidery and a torn spine. Don’t know why it caught my eye . . . many pages were missing, including the publishing information and title, but scanning the book I realized it was a series of non-fiction articles about a man named Charles Fort and his eccentric ideas. The last half of the book contained excerpts from Charles Fort’s own publications The Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo!, and Wild Talents, along with essays from various writers regarding his unpublished works X and Y. Flipping through the dingy, crumpled pages I came upon a passage chiming and glimmering among all the others:

“ . . . there are no coincidences, in the sense that there are no real discords in either colors or musical notes. That any two colors, or sounds, can be harmonized by intermediately relating them to other colors or sounds.”

Without knowing a thing about this Charles Fort guy, I purchased the compilation immediately.

So, who is Charles Fort? And why is he so important? The books highlighted in this unknown volume are the pinnacle of Fort’s achievements from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Charles Fort, I would say, is the god-father of the layman’s investigation of anomalous phenomena. Fort wasn’t a scientist, in fact, never even finished high school. Apparently he wanted to be a famous writer and never succeeded in his fiction work. Depressed from the negative reviews of his first novel, Fort began spending his spare time in the New York Public Library. For years and years he read . . . pretty much everything: newspapers, scientific journals, history, astronomy, psychology, and sociology, whatever he could get his hands on. Reading through a plethora of various articles, stories, and other accounts, instances of unnatural events began to trickle to the surface. Interested in data normally ignored by mainstream science and culture, he uncovered hundreds upon hundreds of eye witness accounts: frogs raining from the heavens; fish raining from the heavens; unexplained disappearances; cases of spontaneous combustion; unidentified flying objects; cryptozoological sightings; ghostly apparitions; aerial phenomena, such as ball lightening and airships (before there were any such thing); and so on. Fort recorded these anomalies on tiny little strips of paper he filed away in shoeboxes labeled by category of phenomenon. What few friends he had marveled at the stacked columns of shoeboxes lining his apartment walls.

After years of collecting these notes, to Fort, a pattern emerged.

The product of that pattern was X. To Fort, X was the great mystery, an external or objective force that guided all things. In all of Fort’s reading he discovered a universal law, a formula underneath all seemingly disparate things. This force acted as a great attractor, or influencer on all of society, all nature. In essence, Fort was a believer of orthogenetic evolution. He believed evolution was not a set random processes, but a guided system headed toward one great goal. However, this goal was a malevolent one, directed by a force which convinced us we had free will whereas free will was actually a simulation:

“I shall try to show that X exits, that this influence is, and must be, evil to an appalling degree to us at present, evil which at least equals anything ever conceived of in medieval demonology.”

Fort even went so far as to blame this presence for his publishing foibles: “I suspect that strange orthogenetic gods are mixed up in all this.”

So, what unearthed for me were two realizations: a.) Charles Fort was the godfather of supernatural inquiry, until he came along no one took seriously the notion of approaching the subject in an investigative manner; and b.) Charles Fort was also, according to my own researches, the godfather of modern conspiracy theory in a time when science and reason ruled the psychological and sociological landscape.

In fact, according to Fort, X ruled over all. Even, as this sentiment bellowed into my gut, over reality and consciousness itself:

“I am convinced that everything is fiction.”

This was when I was indeed convinced, or rather vindicated, of the unreality of reality.

So it was that I became a Fortean. His legacy has continued through the long-lived Fortean Society and a publication of anomalous phenomena called The Fortean Times.

I recall, not too long after getting that book, I had a visionary experience of the nightmarish variety. A flash of light flickered across my perception and I collapsed to the floor. Do I hear music? If there is music at all . . . it is the sound, it is part. Then, on the ground, I felt fluid, underwater liquid motion of my body, all feels underwater. Consciousness is not lost. I was fully aware of what was going on and immediately . . . there is no wait—no second—no mere moment . . . I was immediately pulled away from the waking reality without warning—the beast crawls through my ribs. But, there is no choice, I stay with it. I have to. I am being pulled out of this world and all I can think of is I am leaving Alice behind; I want to be with Alice . . . but she is back there, in that world asleep at her mother’s—at Kathleen’s—house away from me, because now I am in another place and time entirely. Parts of me, little streamers of dull luminescence, get tugged underground, roller-coaster streams, rungs in a pulley being tugged and dragged underneath . . . to an Other world.

I am slipping in. I hear my mouth, my body back there in that other place, screech in shock, in terror of being gone. The beast in my ribs jumps into my stomach and laughs.

First, the legs go under. Then, the mid-section and torso. All the way to my head. Then, before I know it, I am THERE. There I am. No, no . . . there is no other . . . there is . . . I am in this world, but I am in another . . . this world . . . the other, an eye (so much bigger).

I awake in the eye of me (so much more than this) and, no . . . it is Lovecraftian! I am in a room somewhere, in a vast place—that is nothing—some space of a building. It is limited. I am, right now, you are, right now, we all are, right now, out in a limited space somewhere(when) . . . and I am dreaming away, dreaming this world (the one whose denizens are reading this) and that is what life is . . . merely a dream, literally . . . a fabrication . . . a fantasy . . . because I, and others like me trapped in this limited space inside this building, complex, pod space in somewhere(when) (resonating with almost every dream I have ever had, every dream I am in this complex, this building, maze, and I am trapped in there and that makes up that entire world, that entire universe, dimension) and that is real, that is where I really am and here . . . here we are all dreaming this, we are all trying to get away from that limited space and concocting this whole experience we call “life.”

What is terrifying through this episode is that this concept is no longer an idea, it is real. I am Here. I am in This Room. Then, feeling the pull, tugging back into the dream, into the reality-dream that is my apartment and Alice and Kathleen . . . this is all I have in the face of what is waiting for me when I finally wake up; when we wake (die) we go back to that space, those corridors that are emptiness and it (they) are all watching me, a matrix revealed, it really is.

Fear boils at this point . . . I want back, back into the dream, into the place where we can revel in the things that don’t matter because what lies beyond is something, and that somewhere(when), it is that limited complex of building, that small space, that we are trapped in . . . the us, maybe all of us in one, person among a few—am in, I am in the room there, wooden floors, I am lying on the floor, no bed or mattress or furniture and I see my eye, looking at me here in the dream because the barriers have been broken by that flicker of light, the veil lifted, eye is bigger than the me in dream, in this realm. I know, and I say, ‘No, no, no, no ,no, no why are you trying to wake up? Go back and take care of the dream you have! No! What the fuck are you doing, take care of what you have now because when you get Here it is not enlightenment!’ You are really a prisoner trapped in a place of rooms among a few other people that are lost—you don’t know where they are—and it is terror because you don’t know who you are, who you are trapped by, and why or what for or what you are or where you came from, it is all all all all all all made up! This is all made up and when I slipped back into this realm, when I am slip-sliding, slithering back into this “conscious” world, the reality structures (so solid; not flimsy, cloudy, psychedelic stuff) reassemble. I can feel this fabricated world put itself back together, fabricate the illusion around me of sight, touch, taste, hearing, all of these lies we pass off as senses.

And I know then how fragile it all is.

All of this building block, tinker-toy reality is assembled and can fall apart so easily and it does all the time: we don’t understand . . . every minute lunatics break it apart; crazies who maim torment torture and control others and magicians break it all to pieces. Why are we doing this? We can’t let this dream fall apart because all of us . . . we are all fragments of mind gone awry, end up back in that same room we are trapped in (beyond forever because we cannot comprehend) the pace and time for the real reality to sink in; this is all NOT real, that is precisely why we HAVE to protect it! Keep the dream . . . for as long as we can . . . keep those fragments that are there because it is the only relief that we have in that wooden room that has Nothing on the other side, absolute Nothing in the universal sense. Don’t you understand what that means? WHAT? We (I, you) were a cosmonaut that breached that place of Nothing in a psychonautic scheme, and there we are at the edge of finality, finally cracking with lunacy, choked with the understanding that there is Nothing there! Oh God, we are (I, you) so scared, I want my life, my dream, my Alice, and let it last while it can—death is no solace . . . I cannot tell my little girl that anymore . . . life is the solace . . . death is the return to that insanity, that break . . . which is why life is precious, needs to be catered to. Treat it like a dream . . . free from thought . . . freeeeeeeee from emotion . . . true freedom without desire without want without need of security . . . there is no security, only then can we truly realize how to be, TO BE . . . . this is all a figment of our crazy imaginations. The only place that is Real, the place of the break, the matrix pod breach next to Nothing . . .

There is no eternity here!

This episode left me . . . isolated. Vulnerable. The Fortean way was—is—my only way out!

Maybe I encountered X, maybe I didn’t. But I want to find it . . . I want to make it mine so I am no longer afraid. So I’ve searched, been searching, for that common law, that underlying framework that governs everything. I became like Charles Fort. Because that is the only way out of the fear, isn’t it? To understand?

There is something wrong here. Something is not right with the world. Western civilization, more than any other civilization, has affected the ecological stability of the planet . . . being the most destructive force in human history. We blindly follow the shadows on Plato’s cave wall, what Jim Morrison calls “The Dim Cave.” Everything is dim; it is bleak, for that is how the mists of illusion are allowed to manifest a simulation of what is real, rather than display the ultimate and horrible truth.

The panacea for this plight in humanity, I am beginning to realize, is not some scientific remedy or political shake-up: it is merely a realization, an awakening. Mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme advertizes our “cousin” relationship with everything in the universe, especially planet Earth. When science, from Newton’s womb, has tried drastically to isolate itself from Nature and its observations of Her makings, I can imagine Isaac pissing himself in his own grave when the percolations of quantum mechanics began to seed themselves in the scientific community.

Look at super-string theory: that all matter in the universe, down to its finest point, really just consists of tiny vibrating strings, smaller than the smallest particles known to man. These strings can experience an infinite number of vibrational patterns that are referred to as “resonances.” Physicist Michio Kaku likens this phenomenon to a musical instrument, the frequency of vibrations coming from the string determines the mass of the particles in which it resides. In his book on parallel universes, Hyperspace, he elucidates this idea:

“Matter is nothing but the harmonies created by this vibrating string. Since there are an infinite number of harmonies that can be composed for the violin, there are an infinite number of forms of matter that can be constructed out of vibrating strings . . . the universe itself, composed of countless vibrating strings, would then be comparable to a symphony.”

The Universe, I conceive, is a vast orchestra of vibrations whose music is composed by the strings that resonate inside every particle of existence. These strings are all equal, exactly the same in every way. The only difference from one string to another is the vibrational sequence that resonates from each one, determining the differentiation of the particle.

This is tantamount! The threshold of scientific discovery! Just recently, the Solar Physics and Space Plasma Research Center from the University of Sheffield discovered that our very sun emits acoustic sound waves in the milli-hertz frequency akin to “musical instruments such as guitars or pipe organs.” Beyond that, researchers at the University of Virginia spend their time analyzing the background radiation produced by remnants of the Big Bang, the primordial explosion that created the Universe. They have discovered that this radiance itself broadcasts sound waves that give an idea of how the Universe sounded during the first 400,000 years of its existence. Sound is everything! Vibration! Frequencies!

What I find most interesting is that the realms of mystics and primitive societies have known this about the Universe all along. Not only that, but these societies have always “listened” to the resonance offered by Nature. Again, Brian Swimme has discussed how the aim of primitive peoples was to live in “resonant participation” with the Universe, which is how the drum came to be one of their most sacred instruments:

“The drum was part of the sacred techniques for orchestrating the unity of the human/universe dance . . . In their rituals and in their life in nature, the first peoples attended to the music sounded in their depths by the surrounding mysteries.”

Primitive societies strove to live in harmony with the frequency of the world around them. Through the drum they were able to tune themselves in to this frequency and direct their lives in accordance with this rhythm. It is determined that the shaman, the medicine man, has always been the leader of these primitive cultures in this regard. The shaman’s main function, according to mythologist Joseph Campbell, is “to keep mankind in accord with the natural order.” The shaman is the one who instructs the society. The shaman is the one who experiences the resonance offered by the Universe and imparts what he/she learns to the people. Brian Swimme believes that because of this new knowledge we have of the cosmos (i.e. – quantum theory), science must accept and embrace the shamanic way of life:

“. . . the scientist must participate to some extent in the shamanic powers so characteristic of human presence to the universe in any significant manner. The capacity of Einstein to transform the Newtonian science of his day through his teaching of relativity required a shamanic quality of imagination as well as exceptional intellectual subtlety. So we might say that the next phase of scientific development will require above all the insight of shamanic powers, for only with these powers can the story of the universe be told in the true depth of its meaning.”

Joseph Campbell, as well, recognized the ability of the shaman to listen to the resonance of the cosmos. Since the strings that comprise us are all the same, we can assert that Carl Jung’s “collective unconscious” is an extension of the vibrations that resonate from these strings. What the shaman receives from their ecstatic visions and experiences rings throughout the orchestra of the Universe, and what it is saying is that “We are all the same!” “We are only different from nature by choice!” “We must live in tune with the symphony of the cosmos!” “We are a collective!”

The problem with the modern human is that we do not act like a collective.

You want to end war? Famine? Poverty? Hate? Want to protect the fragility of this dream? Then consider this: we are all made of elementary particles. Each particle is made of a vibrating string. Each string is exactly the same. We are all exactly the same. As well, this is the same for every particle in Nature. We exist of the same elementary particles as everything in Nature: trees, rocks, birds, coyotes, elephants, worms, jellyfish, clouds, stars, etc. Every organism in the Universe, every string, is identical. We are only differentiated by how much these strings vibrate. We only differentiate from anything else in Nature, and ourselves, by our resonance. We are defined only by our vibrational frequency. The Butterfly Effect remains true in this energetic conglomeration; the vibrations of one’s suffering—from the smallest flower—resonates throughout the rest of the cosmos—to the largest star.

The great mystic Jiddu Krishnamurti understood. He understood that, not just philosophically, we are all part of the same stuff. “There is no difference between the individual and the collective,” he said. “I have created the world as I am.” He understood that the world is not an external object from the person, a thing to be tested in a laboratory. Krishnamurti’s statement is that we are in a constant state of participation at all times with the world, we are never not participating!

“I can observe myself only in relationship because all life is relationship.”

These are the words of understanding the world. Not controlling it. Not dominating it. These are the words of integration, not war. Assimilation, not segregation.

It is my assertion that the key to this integration and assimilation is in the recognition of ourselves as patterns of vibration, and nothing else. There is nothing to fight about, because those borders you see dividing this land from that are just an illusion . . . just a dusty old map lost in Spivey’s tottering stacks. What X is, is ego. For it is ego that asserts our individuality over all else. It is the ego that says “I am” and not “us.” Ego tells you to stand up for yourself, to forget about the other person’s needs, where they are coming from, what their plight is. They don’t have the history that you do, after all . . . ego establishes those walls building up stalwart around you to protect you from all the badness in the world. “A confident man is a dead human being,” Krishnamurti said. That is because a confident man believes he has nothing more to learn, believes he and only he is in the right, the Universe could only be on his side. He is clothed in the drapes of ego, they keep out the weather of collectivity. No need to ponder over the needs of others, it is I that must be looked after, he would say.

He forgets about the orchestra. He forgets that the conductor is conducting us all. His instrument is no better than any of the others.

What allows this ego to work is fear. Fear of losing identity. Therefore, control comes into affect . . . by controlling one’s environment, one controls the security of one’s identity. So, in essence, what if the Dominators, the Illuminati, the governments and politicians and corporations are not all deliberately part of the same plan? What if they do not meet in small gatherings in tribute to X, this malevolent force that directs us all, that exerts its control over our lives? What if they are not as organized as most of us in the conspiracy community assume?

What if they are all just normal dicks like the rest of us?

Then, why does it all point to something? Why does everything get traced to something, some X, pulling the strings? Is it the Illuminati? The Dominators? The Brotherhood of the Dragon? The Freemasons? Grey aliens? Who? What?

A further sentiment from Krishnamurti rings true: “The simple fact is that we are afraid, not that we are afraid of this or that.”

The true conspiracy is not that we are being controlled by aliens, the Illuminati, or X. The true conspiracy, we should realize, is that we are all being controlled by ego. That is why everything is so scary, because ego survives by turning everyone—everything—into a conspiracy. That’s how its identity remains intact.

The only true conspiracy is ego itself!