Portable Shrines

Here’s the latest installment of Extra Dimensional. Check out the last installment HERE.

“The soul is not in the body, the body is in the soul. Do you understand? Look…..we….. are……..you. Try to remember.

The above is something that seemingly omnipotent alien beings tell Jack Frost in Grant Morrison’s brilliant series The Invisibles, right before he learns to bend reality to his own will for a brief period. Despite being one of my favorite pieces of art in any medium, I still don’t own the series in its entirety due to my inability to commit to buying things like graphic novels when I can get them for free at the library (you actually have to get The Invisibles through inter library loan as the SPL doesn’t have it). But in this case I’ve made an exception and decided to buy a volume every six months or so to slowly run through it all again for a second time. About a month after reading that particular passage, I woke up from a deep lucid dream state where I felt as if I’d been submerged in a rich and luminous reassuring energy that was hell bent on imparting a distinct message to me.

When I found myself returning to semi-normal consciousness I struggled to grasp onto this particular nugget of wisdom due to its strange and otherworldly nature. It was becoming rapidly lost in translation between realms. But then it was as if a visible translation program emerged in my mind’s eye and quickly codified the intent of the message into terms I could easily comprehend. “The soul is not in the body, the body is inside the soul, try to remember.” It didn’t get through with optimum efficiency, but it couldn’t have come across any more clearly. I briefly basked in a feeling of existential bliss and slowly drifted back to sleep. In attempting to pursue a more shamanic or magickal life path, as I’ve been doing for the last four years or so, events start to happen that seem impossible and yet, if you think of the world as rooted in a more expansive cosmology, they all begin to make sense. Accepting that differentiated world view is a fundamental tenet to truly pursuing a life of sorcery

Of course, The Invisibles was largely written as a means to help Mr. Morrison (who has a documentary coming out later this year called Talking with Gods) explain an alien encounter he had in Katmandu, where sentient beings invaded his life and took him outside of the time stream. He was shown that we are eternal energy sources being grown inside of time as a means of creation, but aren’t even fully aware of ourselves as of yet; still infantile in our development – which further explores the idea that higher forces are manipulating us as a means to expand reality or “increase novelty” as Terence Mckenna would have referred to it. To quote the man himself, they showed him that:

“the universe was, was a larval form of what they are, which is fifth-dimensional entities. And the only way to grow a fifth-dimensional entity is to plant it in time, henceforth our universe.”

I’ve personally had similar experiences where I’ve been bestowed with revelatory insights from beyond, along with thousands of others throughout history who willingly come forward despite the heavy derision that’s typically shown to this kind of thought by our culture. In fact, Mr. Morrison claimed that The Invisibles, which was inspired by this encounter is what he refers to as a hypersigil i.e. a magickal work designed to direct the intertwined plotlines of our lives in a more positive and fulfilling direction. Evidence to its efficacy? It inspired a contact dream experience in me that could only be translated though means of that particular work. The idea of art as a potentially spiritual technology is something that’s important for us as a species contemplate as our population continues to balloon out of control. Maybe it’s finally time for us to focus on expanding inwardly rather than outwardly. Let’s analyze this one minor experience of mine for a brief second. Grant Morrison has an alien encounter, writes a series of graphic novels trying to explain said experience to himself, and in doing so inspires spiritual contact in someone he’s never met. One could theorize that the very intent of these contact experiences is to effect our collective psychology with wider arching psychic ripples such as these.

Aubrey (of Portable Shrines), recently forwarded me a podcast interview with author Erik Davis (here), where he discussed the writings of H.P. Lovecraft in a similar context. Since Lovecraft (who was a staunch materialist) culled a great deal of his material directly from his own nightmarish dreams, are they in fact a similar attempt at inner dimensional communiqué from realms hitherto unknown? Was Lovecraft serving as a flesh conduit to a very particular and indifferent universe within? Definitely worth considering.

As I’ve entertained these new cosmological notions in my own microverse, I’ve found the potentiality for art inspiring changes in my dream worlds has become decidedly more prominent. The power of suggestion is so important in understanding human behavior, which is a fact that most of us would rather ignore, but hints at the very nature of magick itself. Art is suggestion. In its purest sense, it exposes us to the subjective worlds of those who create it, thereby serving as a gateway to esoteric enclaves of perception which were otherwise inaccessible. It is a means of externalizing the internal, and thereby expanding reality itself.

The idea that “life is an art project and not a science experiment” is a catch phrase that’s been circulating around Pinchbeckian Next Age circles for a while now, and while I don’t really have time to get into it here, I had a particularly potent lucid dream a few years back after watching Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain, that seemed designed to educate me in no uncertain terms as to the greater legitimacy of this concept.

With all the horrors that confront us every day we turn on a television or peruse the daily news on the internet – as our plutocracy seems on the verge of inevitable collapse – as our world leaders spend an increasing amount of their energy developing new ways to distribute the world’s resources even more inequitably – the future of our society can seem increasingly bleak, and it’s justification increasingly difficult. But you’ve got to admit that despite all our tragic-comic failings, we’ve sure made some great records – written some amazing books – made some mind blowing films, etc.

In fact, themes of good vs. evil are typically the very cornerstone to much of this expression. Would rock music still retain its greatness without throwing up a flamboyant middle finger to our culture of chemical and sexual repression? More importantly, what is the true nature of pursuits such as these? Why is externalizing the internal so very important to us as a species? All significant questions to entertain when contemplating the true nature of existence. At the heart of all manner of psychically transformative phenomenon such as psychedelic trance rituals, out of body experiences, near death experiences, and even alien contact encounters lies a kind of telepathic fifth dimensional communiqué. Rather than talking in words, the recipient of these epiphanies receives fully functional three dimensional, metaphorically instructive scenarios projected directly into their being

As our information technology continues to develop at an increasingly baffling rate, I find it particularly fascinating that we seem to be unconsciously conjuring a form of synthetic telepathy whereby we can now communicate in this manner artificially. We seem unknowingly compelled to create the means by which we can transmit ideas, movies, songs, images, and complex data more rapidly; as if despite our staunchly materialist world view, we’re still working towards unlocking our own potential to transcend the limitations of the written and spoken word.

It would be my advice to those interested in understanding more about their spiritual nature to utilize these new advances in technology as a means to constantly manipulate their own consciousness intentionally; to bend their world by filling their personal universe with the infinite and rich artistic information currently at our disposal. Despite the bleakness of our failing political systems and religious institutions, there’s more amazing stuff out there than ever before and accessing it has become increasingly easy to do, not to mention inexpensive (checking out stuff from the library is free, they even have discs by Portable Shrines bands like Magik Markers, Psychic Ills, etc.). In a world where art can either be the doorway to alternate realities or the mind numbing agent that further enslaves your behavior by subconsciously suggesting a life of hollow consumerism, one thing is for certain: you’d better learn how to choose it wisely.