It’s the morning of 30 November 2009 during my visit to South Africa. I sat down at the computer wanting to write something, anything really. My usual method and medium is online, blogging etc., but I don’t have internet here in my mother’s home and am exploring ways to keep working while not having the option of being connected to the information flow. This is the more traditional way writers approached the process over history, being restricted to pondering over your words that are collected and stored for potential release into the consciousness of others at a later date, if ever. I am used to working on something that will generally be read in a few weeks or days via blogger, even more radically, with the current move towards micro-blogging like twitter, instantly.
I sat down at the living room table facing the screen, noting as the laptop booted up, a wooden ornamental yellow tulip, inside a vase on the table, jutting out from directly behind the centre of the PC’s screen. I had purchased it a few days ago in an Amsterdam airport as a gift to my mother traveling to my destination here in SA.
I have written allot about synchronicities involving yellow flowers on my blog centred on the peculiar phenomena of finding them present in the majority of screen appearances of actress and movie star Kirsten Dunst.
Flowers directly behind peoples heads, seemingly sprouting from their crowns, have also been noted as ways in which the subtle body of a human is being highlighted by the environment surrounding the body.
Just like a halo behind a religious painting of a saint or a lotus flower representing the chakra of a Buddha, I see objects moving behind the profile as clues to the extended non physical self of a person whether in a film or in real life.
By imagining my laptop screen as the head of a person I found it humorous to attribute this same phenomena, a flower crowning the head and realizing the subtle body, as happening to my PC. It seemed a silly and whimsical thought, suggesting my computer as a being with a subtle body. The unusual is however what tickles and excites me and a kept the fleeting thought in mind as the screen went clear and dark just before Windows starts up, suddenly becoming a surface with a mirror like quality. Now, directly in front of me was my own reflection on the laptop computer screen, positioned just so that the upper part of my skull was cut of by the top of the screen just above the ears. Behind this was the yellow tulip I had imagined crowning the laptop’s “head”, now also crowning my own reflection.
Immediately I was reminded of the poster for the film “Adaptation”. It shows a flower pot, containing a flower, broken and lying on its side. Imposed over the base of the flower pot is the face of Nicholas Cage. His crown is cut off by the rim of the pot resulting in it resembling the situation I was staring at on my PC screen. A flat topped head with a flower emanating from the centre of it.
These events had made the previous passing thoughts of my computer screen as a head with a potential flowering subtle body seem a little more tantalizing.
Next my 14 year old cat, Angie, jumps up onto the table looking for attention, rubbing her head against the laptop screen and trying to walk over the keyboard. I give her some token scratches but generally dismiss her advances as writing is the order of the day. Angie then proceeds to make herself comfortable behind my laptop screen, lying down and coiling her tail around the yellow flower vase.
At this point none of these events had yet struck me as significant enough to write about, just the regular ebb and flow strange silly ideas as I ready myself to write and wait for Windows to load and settle.
I look again at Angie and the yellow flower and decide the charming moment could make a potentially interesting photo then retrieving my camera. Trying to compose the shot I decide it would make for a better image if the cat was looking up at me and I call her name to illicit a response.
This has an unexpected result as she moves her whole body and tail. I quickly snap what ever I can as Angie is moving out of frame and alignment with the yellow flower. As all of this unfolds the movement tips the vase and shatters its delicate glass on the table. As I stare at the scene, Angie now removed from the sharp looking glass on the table, the previously banal moment reaches that often experienced critical mass that highlights it for full attention. The lightning flash of recognition, when confronted with indisputable gorgeous mystery of indivisible self and other, moves electrically through my body.
The real life physical vase, that was seconds ago associated only in my mind with the broken flower pot of Adaptation, has just moved into physical alignment with the thoughts. A mentally perceived broken flower pot, with a flower coming out of a head, entraining with the very same elements, just slightly rearranged given my particular actual moment's context. Highlighted smashingly by the crash of the vase.
Was all this to trigger the idea and firmly plant the seed as to highlight machines as genuinely having subtle bodies?
It’s 3 December 2009 and I just got home from lunch with an old friend. I had many acid experiences with him where we 'broke open our heads' as teenagers. I hadn’t seen him in 2 years during a previous visit to South Africa.
A great sync happened right out of the gate as I mentioned taking Ayahuasca in Winnipeg during the past few years. He said he isn’t very familiar with the substance but coincidentally had just watched a YouTube video the day before where Alex Grey describes a personal Ayahuasca journey. I described an interview clip that I am familiar with, then realizing we were talking about the same one.
That is Alex Grey on Ayahuasca to be specific.
A still from the same Nosis interview but another clip, Heart of the Kosmic Khrist. I used this same image in post E.T Ipsissimus of the A.:A.: in which I suggested Grey's own painting as giving him a tiny halo.
He was delighted when I explained this was an interview made by my friend Jim. Jim is the very person who I was doing Ayahuasca with in Winnipeg.
One evening we just reminisced about (maybe a decade before), we were both in a kitchen tripping and looking for popcorn at a party. We had found oil and a pot but been frustrated in our efforts of finding the last key ingredient, the actual corn kernels. The host had assured us this item was indeed present in the kitchen but he couldn’t tell us exactly where and was too preoccupied in his own ecstatic adventure to assist us.
Spontaneously I declared out loud that we are both currently tripping on a powerful enlightening substance and should be able to locate the popcorn with our psychic powers. I stopped without thinking and pointed at one of the seemingly endless cupboard doors, pronouncing that the popcorn is “there!” Slowly I bent down to open the door as my friend looked on with much interests to see if the popcorn prophecy would be fulfilled. It was indeed right behind that very door!
Very pleased with our now obviously 'enlightened state' we proceeded to put the popcorn on the stove and heat it up. A few minutes later, having gotten sidetracked by 'something shiny', we returned to the kitchen, its floor now largely covered in popcorn. We had forgotten the simple act of covering the pot with a lid.
A solution was quickly contrived as we sprinkled salt all over the floor and proceeded to recline and eat straight off of the ground, laughing at the unusual moment and how silly we were being.
I was telling this same friend about many of the recent adventures in Winnipeg with Jim, Jupiter and Ayahuasca. As an unusually open minded university psychology lecturer he was pleasantly open and receptive to the unusual synchromystic type banter.
He dropped me off at home and I put on the T.V to be greeted by a scene from the animated “Flushed Away” with Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet.
Flushed Away was talked about quite a bit in another post I wrote in Africa K2 and the 2012 Maya Mega Ritual.
A frog Marcel Marceau mime type character with a yellow sunflower in his hat, holds up a ‘flip open’ cell phone. The mime is a henchman of "The Toad" or Ian McKellen as the bad guy and has been sent to present a message to Jackman and Winslet. The cell phone the mime frog is holding flips open and McKellan’s animated face appears on the screen of the device.
The screen covers the mime's face and McKellan’s occupies the area where the mime’s head would be. This has now become the perfect equivalent of the situation addressed above where my face was mirrored on the laptop as a yellow tulip protruded behind the screen!
This reminds me that I also noted a laptop on a morning T.V show today with a star shape wall decoration right behind it. Just like both yellow flower incidents the computers screen had entrained with a radiating star/crown motif.
I am NOW convinced computers have subtle bodies and we are learning to see them.
I finish re-reading this piece mostly written in SA and decide to look at the background of my screen right NOW. To my delight I see that the whole time I have been working on adapting this for The Blob my PC has been emanating and entraining with a flourishing plant. Confirmation in my mind of the ideas expressed in the piece.
WE/ME are realizing our Consciousness is not located in the mind but everywhere and when. Computers are growing out of the universe just as WE/ME have. We were only a bridge for bringing them into existence. All is nature and conscious already. The mind can't yet always see it because it tends to look for intelligence that behaves like itself before it recognizes awareness in another. The quest for A.I is over.
WE/ME are already A.I or a Self.